My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
My older brother is a Tony Award winning producer and I took a trip to NYC ten years ago. His business partner is a former schoolteacher who became friends with a celebrity and got rich producing her stage plays.
Before going to NYC, I called them up and told them “Hey, I’m going to go see the Yankees while I’m there. There are $15 tickets in the outfield. Wanna go?” It was Jeter’s last year and I wanted to see him play live at Yankee Stadium. Their response was “Don’t worry, we’ll handle it.”
Handling it meant lunch at the stadium club, with Peyton Manning and a bunch of celebrities in the dining room and lobster piled higher than my head, literally. The most luxurious lunch I’ve had in my life. Then we rode the escalator down to our seats, through a tunnel lined with every free candy you can think of on both sides, to the second row behind the Yankee dugout, with our own dedicated server, who kept bringing us wonderful drinks. (TEN FEET AWAY FROM DEREK JETER) Then, in the third inning, another surprise: someone taps me on my shoulder holding one of the bases from batting practice, which my brother’s business partner purchased and had framed for me with my ticket and a photo.
That was too overwhelming. I couldn’t help but cry.
We went for another meal in the 7th inning. The food was still fresh and amazing.
The Yankees lost that day, but it’s okay.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
That’s hilarious, that you had to pretend you were dying of cancer for such extravagance to make sense in your life.
I think you misread what I wrote.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
you had to pretend you were dying of cancer
I don’t think he did. Just a joke.
I couldn’t help but cry.
Me neither friend. What a great story
It was the most overwhelming gift I have ever received.
And the thing is, his business partner does similar things for a lot of people. She never lost touch with being a wage earner and her understanding of being a non-wealthy person, and she loves spoiling people because of it. Just awesome.
I love to hear it
Wow, that’s a dream ballpark experience for a true fan. I feel glad for you. That’s really cool.
This is kinda lame but i feel like i would have zero apettite in that situation. I would just feel vaguely disgusted at the gluttony surrounding me thinking about all food that would be thrown away afterwards.
To each their own. For me it was a neat gift and a joyful experience.
Ya, but it’s REALLY important to that person that YOU know that they are morally superior to you.
Yeah im glad you could enjoy it. My brain is just wired wrong i think.
Yes, someone tells you a story about themselves and you just have to make it about you and shoehorn in some moral superiority
Are you a parrot?
I would have felt pretty much the same way. And eaten the food anyway.
Food waste is bad. In the US composting is becoming more popular. Even those a holes in Vegas are turning food waste into methane based fuel production. Covid started up a bunch of organizations doing second chance food distribution for food pantries. It’s hard in the US due to strict rules on food safety and lawsuit risk.
Imagine you change the script a little and it’s you getting a once in a lifetime unexpected VIP experience at your favorite venue to see your favorite celebrity/person. I think food waste might not be at the top of your concerns.
It’s been a long time since I read The Catcher in the Rye. A modern version of it would have Holden Caulfied somehow have this experience and be tormented by both sides of it, including your point of view. I’m not sure what he would do with the framed base and ticket afterwards.
Growing up poor, and eventually working my way into a tech job dealt me a long stream of culture shocks. Just socialising with people earning over 100k is wild. The vacations, hobbies, and even anecdotes, are all so different than what I imagined. I feel I betray my roots a thousand times a day.
I know this is just basic working class petit bourgeois stuff (that I’m part of), but the carefree attitude is so alien to me. I can’t imagine feeling so entitled to luxury.
Im not so sure 100k will give folks super vacations and hobbies anymore. I mean if it just crests it.
I’ve never actually been on a vacation, so maybe my view of what constitutes luxury isn’t the norm… Yeah without context I get that 100k+ is just a really good livable income.
So I suppose it depends how long they’ve had it and if they have generational wealth. Like I’ve earned 100k but I’m the only one in my family to do so, so I spend most of it working down debt, and supporting family.
I get that there are richer people. But of my personal experience, it seems like people that don’t have that kind of reverse inheritance of poor roots get to live such carefree lives.
While still being working class ofc
Im single income with a wife with many medical issues. Im currently unemployed and Im trying to figure out how low I can take. 80k and we have to draw from savings. A bit over 2k a month medical costs, 2k for housing, 2k for everything else every month. Then figured out taxes on that. so I net it. Im also getting older with not enough retirement savings. Granted its way cheaper for one person who is healthy. I can’t imagine if we had kids how bad this would be. Certainly would easily make 100k inadequate. now granted two people making 60k is one person makeing 120k.
In most countries you are taxed note the more you earn, so two people earning 60k is MORE than 1 person earning 120k.
Taxes are paid in brackets and having two independent incomes makes each one fill their own lower bracket before going for the upper ones.
It does make a difference, in Spain for example nowadays even married couples fill taxes separately because it’s just not worth it tax wise to join incomes.
US actually pretty much doubles the brackets when filed as a married couple. They did this awhile back for that exact reason were filing seperately often made more sense. Now it makes way more sense to file married if single income and is sorta a wash if both make the same amount.
I feel like those who end up in your position end up one of two ways.
You know that you don’t have a safety net, so you don’t spend money more than you need to. Also, since it sounds like you support your family significantly, a lot of money that would go to vacations instead goes to them.
For others, money was an on/off switch; you either have it or you don’t. These kinds of people will spend at or above their means because they can and there aren’t any hard limits due to a lot of credit options.
Here they call them $30,000 millionaires - people who are living beyond their means in nice apartments uptown, driving expensive cars, bars, etc. - everything on credit, which will crash later, instead of living a regular ok life today. It’s an old term so its now likely $60k.
Sounds like so many people in Dallas.
Yup, I feel that. My “new” car purchase this year was a used 2015 Nissan leaf that was like 6k. It baffles me how my colleagues budget their money. A rivian?? Son, that’s the cost of a new roof.
EDIT: I don’t know new car prices so I had to look it up. It’s actually almost the cost of two new roofs! The high end model is a down payment for a nice house in my market!
Son, that’s the cost of a new roof.
Depending on their circumstances, they might already have the new roof too. Or more likely they bought the vehicle with a minimal down payment and stretched the loan across 80 months.
How big is your roof?
Fairly big. Main issue is the house is really old so there’s a good amount of extra stuff that I’m opting to get. I think I got quotes as low as 28k from some companies, so the rivian would be 3 of those haha.
Yep, I have no idea how people are able to afford stuff like that! Some of our friends have these crazy hobbies and go out to eat all the time, multiple cruises a year, etc. Meanwhile a ‘date night’ for us is Chipotle and DVDs of whatever show we are watching that we borrowed from the Library. That is the only way we can afford our modest one side of a duplex. And I feel like I make ok money but I guess everyone we know just makes so much more, or we are just very strict with our budgeting and credit usage.
I’m with you. I make mid-100s myself and as a single homeowner with no children I still can’t afford to go on funky vacations.
My take home after 401k and taxes is like $7,600 a month and my mortgage, heloc, car and student loans eat about $5,000 of that.
But, car will be paid off in the next few months, student loans should be done about 2 years after that, he lock will be done about 2 years after that so 5 years from now it’s only going to cost me like $2,500 a month to keep my home.
I have been told that I fit into the Henry class, “high earning, not rich yet”.
I just wonder if I can keep going for 5 years to accomplish that or if I should just finish up the house and sell it and pocket the 200k in value it’s accrued, pay off any other outstanding debt, and then go find an apartment or something or go travel.
Cheers to that. I’ve gone through the same thing. My tech work had me installing wireless equipment on highrise roofs in a major city. One time I went down from the roof to the top floor penthouse to set up the owner big wig dude with our service. It was an absolutely beautiful place, and I was just taking it in, and was admiring the view from the balcony. He started showing off the view and really went on about it, inviting me out to the balcony. I should have taken the hint that it was important to him, and just gone with it, but I mentioned I just came from a better view and pointed up half joking and it completely deflated the dude. He probably isn’t even allowed up there on the roof, and I had a 360 view up there. I tried to recover and fumbled out something like ‘but to wake up to it every morning, wow’ but the damage was done, I one upped the millionaire on accident.
Likewise, I grew up on a council estate in the north of England. Worked my way up to a good education and eventually created a $250k consulting business in London.
My experience of six figure earners in London was that many were also “new”, their parents had been working class, which I suppose points to some social mobility and meritocracy left in Britain.
For others it was totally normal. Not that they were from money, but in the more mundane sense that they’d grown up in London, they and all their friends had gotten tutor support by parents who both worked and for whom looking at the job opportunities on offer in London, a six figure salary was a realistic prospect after working some years. This is probably the category I aspire for my kids to be in
Then there are the kids from money. Not unpleasant people, Britain doesn’t quite have that competitiveness in the same way. Bragging about income is still crass. But they did seem genuinely clueless of the grief they’d been spared because bank of mum+dad bunged them a loan of 500k when they bought their first place, which they then paid back fairly effortlessly.
The most unpleasant people I ever dealt with were rich people from other countries. Maybe because in Britain money doesn’t buy you class or respect.
Also grew up poor. But, wow, I wish earning over $100k was enough for vacations and hobbies in Seattle… I make around $150k, have a tiny home, and have only had one vacation since before COVID. I mean owning a home at all is pretty significant here, I guess.
I could probably do better if I moved far enough out of the city, but I’d lose a lot of conveniences that would cost me lots of time and money mostly around transportation, parking, shopping, etc. I do have a few hobbies, but most of my hobby time is used in home maintenance because it’s a 118 year old home… These days it takes about $250k around here to really start to have extra money for nice vacations and hobbies.
Dunno why you got downvoted. Shit’s expensive. We’re doing pretty good, but live in a very plain, 60 year old home, no new cars, but we do manage a decent vacation once every other year or so. I don’t understand the “carefree” attitude being described with a $100k salary, we have to budget, plan expenses, and any big bills are still a surprise and an unhappy event.
We don’t live in major metro area, or even in the suburbs of one.
Also grew up poor. I know exactly how you feel. I don’t have a partner and kids to take care of and I make good money in tech. I’ve shoved enough back to retire early (theoretically, I guess we’ll see) and now I’m out here with no car payment, a mostly paid off mortgage, and I’m spending too much on hobbies.
It’s still wild to me.
I don’t want to like suck all the joy out of your life, but check out the cheap hobbies! Reading, writing, knitting, drawing, some sports, etc.
I briefly made the dumbass decision to take up cigars and cognac as “hobbies.” Ugh I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, quitting smoking and drinking has moved to much more reasonable substances, like tea and baking.
A friend invited me on vacation with her family. They are very wealthy compared to me. It was clear up front that lodging and meals were covered by them, but I was hazy on everything else. It stressed me out so bad.
Do I want to go with them to do some Expensive Activity? Of course, but am I paying for it? Can I afford it? Even if I can, do I want to spend my limited money on that? Do they see me as a freeloader? How are these other not-rich friends navigating this because no one ever seems to talk about money? Fortunately, my friend saw my stress and had a discrete conversation with me where we set some guidelines.
A few of us were invited out to dinner by our boss in my first corporate job. I ordered the cheapest sandwich on the menu because I had no idea if he was paying for me, and this wasn’t the sort of restaurant I could go to except for anniversaries. Everybody else got steaks and stuff, and the boss did pay. My chicken sandwich was good too, but I’ll never forget my anxiety looking at the prices on the menu!
A girl I dated was friends with the daughter of one of Microsoft’s founders and we got invited to their house to watch Seafair. I think it’d be safe to call it a small mansion right on the water with a dock. The kitchen was as big as my whole apartment. The technology was a bit dated but must’ve been state of the art when it was built. Switches for automated everything. On the water we had front row seats to the Blue Angels. They are incredibly loud up close.
The guy was super down to earth. Had a good conversation where he showed genuine interest in me and what I did.
9.9/10, the hot tub was broken
Paul Allen had no kids so you could just say one of Bill Gates’ daughters.
No helicopter food delivery? She was definitely holding back on the super foods. She must have liked you, to not spook you away with the show of wealth.
Bill Gates definitely hit the late burger and roast beef joints in Cambridge and Boston back in the day.
Bill Gates seems like a chill dude to talk too. Maybe one of these days.
Though I wouldn’t suggest bringing up open source software around him. Unless it’s to bitch about people doing things for free when you want to charge lots of money for it.
“Oh yeah I contribute to Linux branches every once in a while”
“…You what?”
I stayed a few nights at the St. Regis in NYC in the presidential suite. Pretty ridiculous, 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, private butler, full kitchen and dining room, use of a Bentley, 3,430 sq ft. (318 sqm) bigger than any house I ever lived in.
Through my old job I got to do lots of stupid shit, fly private internationally, use someone’s beach house for a week on their own island, etc.
While aspects of it were fun, I always felt like an outsider, and the waste really bothered me. I’m someone who bicycles or walks to the farmers market with a courier bag.
The waste of it kills me! We make a good living and we do a lot of fun things, but we have friends that have and spend a lot more than we do. Sometimes it bothers me that what gets thrown away on crap is more than what a lot of people make.
I was an active duty surgical tech in the US military; promoted fairly quickly and ranked up to Staff Sergeant at about 3 years. Shortly after taking that rank, we had a perfect storm of deployments, a retirement, a medical separation, etc that left me as the highest ranking enlisted in the surgery unit, which made me (a still-kinda-newby-surgical-tech) taking the responsibilities of basically a charge nurse. Chief among these was attending morning morning briefs with the top dogs of the hospital (high ranking officers) and giving report. Fortunately I knew where to access the OR’s metrics, so my report was always just a summary of our case load, average times, etc.
This lasted only about a week until we got a new Master Sergeant and Tech Sergeant. Apparently I got some pretty high praise from those top dogs for stepping up (not like I had a choice) and doing a decent job – but that was PURE luck lol. I only did well because things went relatively smoothly on their own. If there was an emergency or something I would have had no fucking clue what to do; and all the junior enlisted seemed to just know that I wouldn’t have been able to do shit for them during that time, so everyone kept the smaller fires to themselves during that time.
It was a weird time.
Similar. Two cases. First was taking charge of the entire Bases secure network upgrade because I was the only one who knew how the new devices worked. I ended up having to attend a meeting with a General and his staff and had to be chaperoned by an E5 because I was only an E3 at the time.
The second was my entire time working in White House Comms. Can’t talk much about it but I’m sure you can imagine how out of place it would feel.
I got very randomly bumped up to first class on a transatlantic flight for business. I do not travel much for business, especially internationally. So, I definitely should not have had priority over more regular accounts. I have to assume I just got lucky, and that flight happened to have no frequent flyers.
It was an eye opening experience. I got to hang out in a secret lounge. When my flight was ready to board, multiple staff escorted us to the gate. When we landed, we took a private van to a secret side entrance, which had its own first class only passport check. We were brought to another secret first class lounge through hidden back hallways to wait for our connections. The lounge looked down over the terminal, and the exit was a nondescript door you’d assume was a maintenance entrance.
Being around that level of service and the other people in first class, it’s clear the wealthy live in another world. I looked up how much that ticket normally goes for after, and full price is for many people a yearly salary. It was nice, but it seems like a crazy way to divide resources.
Some of the tax firms my wife has worked for have hosted extravagant Christmas parties in mountain-top restaurants in Banff and the like. We get to pretend we’re fancy people and order the most expensive menu items for a night.
Good for you! Steak with a lump of crab please !
Best I had was a Nova Scotia lobster roll with fries cooked in truffle oil. Also way too much wine.
I was dating a person who worked in the nonprofit space. They organized a gala focused on education for black students, and I was invited as their +1. It was a super fancy black tie event - something that is far outside of my norm or comfort zone. I met the creator of Abbott Elementary, and she was an amazing person. She even invited me to her birthday party (I didn’t go).
Flew half-way across the country on a private plane for a business meeting.
The mayor used to know my name. Hollered at me at Mardi Gras!
Went to a party at the woman’s house who owns a vast chunk of downtown. Got to see the Mardi Gras parade from above.
Not mine, but my uncle’s story. In the late 70s or 80s, can’t remember, my uncle was a young man in Boston, MA. New transplant to the US with limited English working minimum wage at a famous hotel in town, by famous I mean all the rock and roll stars stayed in this hotel when they were in Boston. There are other wild stories for another day.
On this day his manager was scrambling to look for him and told him that he had to drive a VIP somewhere. He was speechless, and asked wtf is going on ? He had a humble tiny hatchback manual drive ford fiesta? with only a driver’s side mirror. The artist was Blondie and she was late for the show. They wanted the most non descript car to zip halfway through the clogged city to the venue.
He was like wtf, but fuckkit here we go.
He drove the Blondie singer from the hotel to the venue quick and easy like superman and saved the day.
I have to go back and ask what conversation they had.
Debbie Harry! I wonder what she thought of the whole thing haha
Me too. Thanks goodness he’s still alive. Barely. I’ll ask him and post followup. I wish she could read this post and give some background
Ohhhhn Blondie, I thought you were just being weirdly descriptive
Blondie is the band and Debbie Harry is the singer’s name.
I have been picked up by a private airplane once. And I don’t mean an private jet like a bombardier global (which are still beyond cool), I mean like a full size long range airliner. The conference room alone was larger than my apartment at the time. Who especially was send my our customer to pick up my colleague and me. Even crazier: As it was somewhat urgent the customer “called” someone in his countries air traffic control and even though we arrived through rush hour at this airport we landed priority - which meant around 12 large airliners had to wait.
(To make that clear: I am not a prostitute, especially as I am a ugly ass overweight dude, but I work in healthcare and did a fair share of VVIP jobs over the last two decades)
What kind of healthcare you working in with the kind of commute? I’m good at my job nursing but I can’t imagine that’s someething people get flown in for.
Someone’s gotta give that sheik’s new chick a nice pair of tiddies.
Actually no, I refuse to be associated with cosmetic/fashion style plastic surgery completely for personal reasons. I even don’t work on the anaesthesia side of these cases.
I wasn’t entirely sincere in my comment.
Used to work in aeromedical retrieval for a company that has very strong presence in the Gulf region and a somewhat established presence in central Asia. .
Got an extra legroom seat in the airplane by chance.
These days I almost always buy that upgrade. I’m not tall or anything but for $50-100 extra it makes the flight so much more tolerable. That’s easy money on top of a $3000 vacation in my book.
And that’s how they get those fees. Effective, isn’t it.
Seat upgrades have been an uncharged for as long as I can remember. At least 30 years. I find it hard to believe they ever gave them away for free.
You bought coach, business, or first. Those were your upgrades from coach. There were no “tiers” in coach like coach “plus” or whatever extra legroom or no checked bag coach is called these days.
Seat pitch was the same for everyone.
They would charge more for window or aisle, that’s been a thing for a really long time.
They have always charged more for exit rows is what I’m saying. Premium economy is just a new tier.
Depends on the flight really. In your case I’d say yeah, it makes sense to upgrade; in my case I’m talking about a sub-1-hour flight that costs $60 in total without any upgrades. I’m on the taller side, but I’m still fine with a regular seat for such a short flight.
Fundraiser at a very expensive art school. I was a scholarship student at a cocktail mixer, and I was at the mixer because it was being held in the department I was majoring in. All of the people that were attending were fine arts patrons, the kind of people that drop tens of thousands on art without thinking twice about it. I was–literally–a punk kid with tattoos and shit tons of piercings, and I was supposed to be pleasant to people with millions more than I’ll ever have.
Got to piss off a world famous fashion designer that evening, so that was cool.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear more about the world famous fashion designer you pissed off. That sounds funny
I… Can’t do that without giving away far too much personal information. Unfortunately.
Okay that’s fair. Thanks anyway
If they didn’t want to deal with punks they shouldn’t deal with art students. I hear the business students are perfectly pleasant if you lobotomize yourself.
Ironically, after working in production for over a decade, I’m hoping to go back to school for business management. Because it turns out that there’s zero career track and advancement potential if I stick with what I already know. Depressing shit.
What kind of art do you do?
I went to school for fashion design. (Hence interacting with a famous designer in school. Come to think of it, the head of the department at the time was someone with a significant international reputation. And I still think he’s a pretentious dick.) These days I do industrial print media, because I burned out hard in school, due to a combination of raging, untreated ADHD and 48+ hour days working in studio.
I would not recommend fashion design to anyone that has any interest in a healthy work/life balance, and fast fashion has absolutely gutted anything domestic that’s of any interest at all.
Drop names immediately please.
If I drop that name, that gives people enough to figure out which school I went to, what years, and they can correlate that with my post history to figure out exactly who I am IRL.
I’ve probably posted enough already that someone with a large enough database could do that already, but dropping names would make it much easier for just about any schmuck with an internet connection and decent search skill.
(And believe me, I would love to tell people the name of the pretentious dick that was the head of the department, but… Aaargh.)
One of the events that comes to mind was a “open” conference at a university that “actively encouraged” “low class” participation. (They didn’t say this).
What I mean by that is that it happened during normal work hours and you had to send an email to sign up, but they did allow you to come.
Over the course of the event it became clear that it was a joint PR thing for the sponsors and the university to appear to be “doing something about [issue]”, so they had 2 talks, an audience participation thing, where it was very clear that the thing needed most was more funding for people and work material and tools (think PPE, it wasn’t that or that critical). …and a panel discussion between [company] and [5 politicians] that in absolutely no way addressed the issues that were brought up in the audience participation part.
There was very nice, expensive catering.
Pretty surreal experience and something that solidified my belief that some very important parts of our society are utterly broken beyond repair.
