Have you ever felt humiliated for looking "poor"?

[FIREdreamer]

The "are you afraid to look poor" thread, reminded me of a few embarrassing moments...

We make good money (close to four times the median household income for our state), yet we live a fairly typical middle class lifestyle so that we can save a sizable chunk of our income. We live in a nice, but certainly not upscale neighborhood, we drive older cars (a 2001 VW jetta and a 1997 Mazda Miata) and we wear good quality but not necessarily fashionable clothes. Basically from the outside, we don't stand out from the average joe and we certainly don't look rich at all. More than 90% of our wealth is completely hidden in investment accounts than nobody ever sees.

Last year we went to Best Buy to buy a large screen plasma TV. We paid for it cash and we then proceeded to park our Jetta right in front of the store for the staff to load the TV in the car (off course we were too cheap to pay for delivery and installation since we did not need to have the TV hung to the wall). There comes a HUGE box (much bigger than the TV itself), that clearly would never, ever fit in our car. So, right in front of the store, we start removing all the unnecessary foam and packing material until we can fit the darn thing in the car. In the mean time, some people are staring and making fun of us, commenting that people like us (meaning "poor" people) should not buy a TV like that. Some stupid guy in a suburban kept pointing at us and laughing. My wife felt really humiliated. I was too, but a quick glance at our Vanguard accounts was all I needed to get over it.

But that's the problem. With so much of our money locked away out of sight, people are often under the impression that we are "poor".

Another humiliating moment, was last Easter. We were invited at my wife's boss for Easter dinner and they had invited their neighbors too. One of the neighbors told me that the week before he had called the cops on a kid who was collecting money for charity door to door because he drove a Honda Accord 2004 which did not fit in "this kind of neighborhood" (I wish he was kidding but he was not). My wife and I looked at each other wondering if we should go park our jetta out back before he called the cops on us...

So have you ever felt humiliated for living way below your means?