(assuming you weren’t “born rich”)
What do you define as being “rich”?
Or how would your life change if you won the lottery?
Without such wealth, can you still do something like what you would desire with such wealth? (Like if a person wants an expensive car, they might be able to read and discuss about what they like about such cars, etc.)
I was born rich. If I hadn’t been born rich I’d probably be shivering right now as it’s cold outside.
I was not born rich, but my parents are extremely hard workers who managed to move our family from lower to upper middle class.
My Dad graduated HS with a D average. And he only did that well because the California school system at the time flatly refused to fail any students. Ever.
At the time I was born he worked at a Levolor factory, making blinds. Later, he became an upholsterer at La-Z-Boy. For the time, he was making crazy good money - $14/hr! (And this is in 1980s dollars, equivalent to around $50/hr today!)
But… He didn’t much like it. Six years sfter swearing off school forever, Dad decided to go back to college. And not just to get his GE’s. Nope, Dad decided to become a friggen lawyer. (I guess he decided if he was going back to school, he was going to do All The School.)
For the next several years, he studied during the morning, slept all day, then worked graves overnight. I saw him for literal minutes a day, when he got home from school and when he left again for work.
I was four when he started and eleven when he graduated. Through that time, the sweet money he’d made before seemed like crazy wealth. More than once, our family ran out of food. And more than once, our neighbors (who themselves were only just making do on welfare) would “secretly” leave enough groceries on the doorstep for us to eat for another week.
Of course, there was no money for childcare. My mom took care of us, while doing what she could to earn money. She taught piano and guitar lessons, arranged an underground daycare for our neighbors, and whatever other odd jobs she could do from home.
I grew up in that struggle. We never went completely hungry, though I did skip a few lunches to make sure my younger sibs didn’t need to.
And eventually, Dad graduated and became an attorney. And suddenly… We had money.
We bought real milk, instead of powdered milk.
We could eat at McDonald’s - an amazing luxury.
We lived in a house with actual walls instead of painted cinderblock.
We started going to the dentist and doctor more often.
We didn’t buy a new car. My Dad had an 81 Toyota Tercel that he ultimately put 300K miles on before hitting a deer finally totaled it in Feb 2000.
A couple times, we even went to Disneyland.
…
So that’s what changed when my family suddenly became “rich”.
My life would probably be vastly different than it is now. I probably would’ve gotten an actual diagnosis for my autism, I used to be mute when I was very young, rode the short bus and attended speech therapy classes. My folks would’ve been able to afford a childhood behavioral psychologist, would also have afforded a private tutor when I struggled in school. I probably would’ve been better educated and I probably would’ve been better prepared for college as I ended up dropping out to try my hand at the workforce. My grandmother who lives in NYC was a nanny for a rich family, they sent their kids to an equestrian school and later in life their kids studied abroad. The family also has an away home in another state. My granddad inherited a sum of $200k from his dead mother who lived in the UK, but that money is probably long gone by now
Also, my parents probably wouldn’t have gotten divorced, they divorced primarily for financial reasons, my dad lost the house that his family helped him buy. Now my mom’s second marriage is coming apart for financial reasons as well as my stepdad wanted to take an equity on the house to pay down his cc debt and feed his gambling habit. I also would’ve accomplished some of my milestones a lot sooner. I financed my own car back in 2022 at the age of 24, it’s a 2015 Chevy Spark.
My idea of rich is enough money to not worry about bills, maintenance, groceries, and also having the disposal income to afford some modest luxuries. I think the sweet spot for some would be the point where money is secondary to time as a currency as you’re money rich and time rich.
If I’d won the lottery, I’d be able to achieve a lot of my goals much faster and with much less effort, one them being paying down my debt such as my car loan. I’d also be able to dream a lot bigger like trying my hand at starting a local business like a modern arcade or a gamer lounge. I’d also like to try living abroad, but these are some of my way out there dreams. Some of my lower goals are very much achievable without being rich like paying off my debt or buying a three set bookshelf, but it will take a bit longer. Some of my bigger goals will require more time, money, and effort.
Maybe I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now. My wife and I started a small business 20 years ago which became moderately successful. We managed to save and invest enough to have a very comfortable retirement … I don’t know if it counts as “rich” but we certainly feel rich. And the best thing is we earned it and we we earned it together. And we had a lot of fun along the way.
I would run my own buisness instead of working for somebody else.
Rich is being firmly out of subsistence struggle, social studies here in France have converged to a definition of rich being ~5times the minimum acceptable subsistence salary (locally speaking).
