I’ve read ALL the posts with interest, I see some tangents (who'd eat fish eggs?) but a couple of main points are missed or some may be socially tone deaf? I think a lot of it comes down to a condition we learned in Sociology 101: Homophily, otherwise known as “birds of a feather stick together”. People like to hang with their own, they feel more comfortable whether it’s ethnically, politically, age-wise, denominationally and yes, socio-economically.
I remember 29 years ago we joined a babies group with our first born, hosted at a McMansion, the son of a Fortune 100 CEO. Chit-chat started about starting a college savings fund and he said “my parents have taken care of that”, meaning the full ride. My wife expressed interest that we get together as couples but I had no interest, having grown up next to super affluent suburbs I knew the personality type from high school. Life on Easy Street.
However, my entire life I’ve divided folks who’ve “made it” (or ER'd) into two categories, the ones who really earned it through their merit: hard work, intelligence, saving, initiative. And then the ones who got it handed to them. I am in my early sixties and I can’t tell you how many of our friends the last five years or so came into enough inheritance that they are now on Easy Street, or what many call ER here. It becomes hard to relate to them after that happens, really. They no longer have the kinds of concerns mere mortals do, such as keeping the old car running, ins premiums, new roof, etc. They get to exhale. Many are discreet about it, don’t want anyone to know they didn’t really earn it (not cool) so they don’t up their lifestyle. Those are the ones we can still go out with but others become the Howells from Gilligan’s Island! When you see the new Land Rover in the drive it’s a give away someone died.
Me, I’m winding up a 38 year career having my own biz in the creative services field so that’s basically a fancy way of saying I’ve been freelance my entire post-college life, a term my old man equated with unemployed, akin in the old days to the term consultant (you don’t have a job). So I’m the guy for 4 decades at the end of the driveway at 8:30AM in a bathrobe picking up the newspaper, or at the dog park, yoga class and coffee shop in the middle of the day on a weekday and I know the drill, especially if I’m dressed down and didn’t shave. People are feeling you out to see how you fit socially with them, they’re curious, not impolite or nosey. Often they are unemployed, call 99’ers, meaning they have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance checks. In fact, when I hear the term ER, as in “Joe took early retirement” to me that has always meant Joe was forced out or his job became “redundant” in a merger, etc., so ER has not had a pleasant ring to my ears due to all the folks I know that were forced into it by merciless megacorps. Many of my clients were ER'd which is bad for my revenue. When I stumbled on this website I thought ER was for the Forced Out folks to compare notes.
Our big splurge once a year is a kick ass international travel vacation, sometimes adventurous, ranges from $8-12K, and we play it down with certain friends and relatives, don’t even post on FB. We don’t brag about it. My mom gave us some great advice: when we do retire in 2 years we won’t have the guts to blow such bug wads of money so do it now. So we will save road trips to the national parks for true retirement, just did a test at Yellowstone this summer, international is tougher physically so do it now. But I digress…
So in sum, when I meet up with folks who don’t seem to be doing as well as I, and all we have in common is our dogs sharing a ball, I play it down, sometimes don’t mention my exotic profession or even the subdivision we’re in b/c I know it will trigger envy. And when the DW wants to get together socially with people who I know are trust fund babies or lucked into a big inheritance I decline. Not that they’re bad people or I’m envious but that our concerns/perspectives in life are so very different. Your relationship to money, your nest egg is a different mindset, no sweat equity is represented just custodial. You can call it envy but I have a basic lack of respect, no matter how well I like them on their other traits. We come from working class origins and are now I guess you’d say upper middle class but we EARNED it.
I love this board, the only thing better I’d like to find is one similar to this that is exclusive to micro biz/freeancers/independents since our concerns are quite unique. Well, that’s my two cents. Oh P.S. I have a billionaire client who picks me up in his private jet a few times a year. Sometimes there’s several family members on board hitching a ride. What they talk about we mortals could not relate to, such as “finding help”, decorating the fourth home on some island, etc. And yes, I am envious because they didn’t earn it, all trust fund babies, and I can’t relate to them even though one-on-one they are the nicest people!