Not blurting it out

[5Miler]

We still live in the same house I bought new in 1991 when I transferred into town as a rookie manager with $20K in the bank, enough furniture to sparsely fill two rooms and a 10 year old Pontiac Grand Prix. Can you say house poor.

Not sure what neighbors think but I keep my daily driver in the driveway, 2001 Silverado with clear coat peeling off of every horizontal surface in the Georgia sun. It runs. DGF has her 2002 Trailblazer with 64K miles but it's garage kept as mine won't fit, so it looks just about like new. Half the neighborhood uses a lawn service but I enjoy doing it myself so I can play with my electric yard toys.

We have a group of friends we travel with and they all know we usually book business or first on anything over 2 hours these days. We also like to travel and take a lot of cruises, often with our friends but they rotate as most can't afford to go with us every time.

I do know that nobody has a real clue as to the extent of our resources including my two sons. All I tell them is when I go they can expect a little something but it won't change their lives. They don't need it anyway and they encourage our adventures.

Otherwise, we are like anyone else in the neighborhood, grumbling about insurance price hikes, tax bills, food prices and the cost of gas. DGF and I are by no means wealthy, but we're banging on our fourth trip around that highway to 7 figures.

 

[BigNick]

Here's the "stealth wealth" recent thread with a lot of replies:
https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/stealth-wealth-118614.html

I liked this, from an early post in that thread:

>>I know colleagues are complaining about gas prices, food prices and interest rates

We buy most of our groceries at a discounter. But it's very nice not to have to worry about the fact that olive oil has doubled in price here in a year (due to a bad harvest). It's all over the news, but although we don't live like millionaires (however millionaires live, I wouldn't know) it's nice that an extra $30 a month on food bills isn't going to cause a blip on our chart. I'm aware that we are probably in an atypical position on that, relative to the great majority out there who live paycheck-to-paycheck regardless of their income.

 

[rk911]

We have a new regional government in the part of Spain where we live. I don't like them much from a political point of view, but the other day I read that they are increasing the wealth tax threshold from <below what we have> to <above what we have>. This will save us about $1,000 this year. We don't really need another $1,000, but hey, I just fill in the form and the tax office tells me what to pay, that's the deal right?

The other day we were discussing the new government with (politically like-minded) neighbours and the subject of the wealth tax came up briefly. I don't remember the exact details of the conversation, but I very, very nearly revealed that we have enough in the pot that we have been paying it for the last couple of years. Our neighbours have no idea that we are worth 7 figures. We live in a normal apartment block with a modest car.

Is anyone else "under the radar" when it comes to letting on what you have in the bank? Do you have any strategies for preserving that?

Based on our gifts to my sis and her husband and to my nephew and his wife they likely suspect but beyond that we also live a under-the-radar life. Typical middle class neighborhood, driving a 14-yr old and 20-yr old vehicles (recently sold the oldest and bought a new Wrangler). Zero debt, NW upper 7-figures. Biggest outward clue is our motor home but as we're old folks, and everyone knows that old folks ALWAYS buy motor homes, that likely seems normal. At some point my nephew/his wife and my sis/her husband will know since they will likely be our successor trustees. We're not purposefully 'hiding'....we're just living like we've always lived.

 

[Tom52]

Money is never discussed in our crowd of friends and acquaintances. Some seem to be more extravagant, especially on autos and vacationing and houses, but some may likely have more money but tend to live a more modest lifestyle.

No one seems to care how much our friends have and it would seem a bit gauche to even be interested.

 

[catii]

With the properties we own out here, it's pretty easy to tell we're worth 7 figures. The nice part is that, (a) we have no mortgages, & (b) property is not the majority of our net worth!

 

[LateToFIRE]

This is a big "it depends". We have a lot more than some of our close friends and family, like orders of magnitude more, so are careful what we say when the topic of money, inflation, etc. comes up. At this point, given the value of our real estate is public info, would not take much to conclude we are well into multiple millions. I'm also in a relatively high income bracket, kinda difficult to hide that too.

On the other hand, we live around and associate with people who often have orders of magnitude more than us, in some cases we're talking off the chart kinda dough. So, we feel kinda poor next to some of these folks.

All in all though, I try to keep a reasonably low profile relative to our means. For example, I drive a luxury car, but its heading towards 200K miles. I admire lots of fancy new vehicles I might like to have, could easily afford, but not sure I want to be that flashy guy. No judgement at those who are comfortable with that - more power to yah. That's just me.

 

[flyingaway]

We have a new regional government in the part of Spain where we live. I don't like them much from a political point of view, but the other day I read that they are increasing the wealth tax threshold from <below what we have> to <above what we have>. This will save us about $1,000 this year. We don't really need another $1,000, but hey, I just fill in the form and the tax office tells me what to pay, that's the deal right?

The other day we were discussing the new government with (politically like-minded) neighbours and the subject of the wealth tax came up briefly. I don't remember the exact details of the conversation, but I very, very nearly revealed that we have enough in the pot that we have been paying it for the last couple of years. Our neighbours have no idea that we are worth 7 figures. We live in a normal apartment block with a modest car.

Is anyone else "under the radar" when it comes to letting on what you have in the bank? Do you have any strategies for preserving that?

Are you worried that your neighbors will ask you for money from now? Or otherwise what is the problem?

 

[Gumby]

Are you worried that your neighbors will ask you for money from now? Or otherwise what is the problem?

Sadly, some people (not all, by any means, but enough to matter) will treat you differently if there is a disparity of resources between the two of you. And that works whether you have substantially more or less than they do.

 

[rk911]

Sadly, some people (not all, by any means, but enough to matter) will treat you differently if there is a disparity of resources between the two of you. And that works whether you have substantially more or less than they do.

Absolutely correct. We live the life we want because it fits us, not because we're trying to hide. But we also don't flaunt our wealth.

 

[sengsational]

People know we live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and could easily look up a value on Zillow. They could not, however, determine whether we have a mortgage.

Not that many would bother, but are you sure about the mortgage not being public? I went to a person's county records web site armed with just a name and address, and in a few minutes had a list of mortgages and which were satisfied. I looked up the going rate at the time of the active mortgage to determine what was left to be paid.

 

[Gumby]

Well, I have learned something new today.

In Connecticut, all the land recording is done by the municipality, as our counties are just lines on the map; there is no county government. I have always known that you could go to our city clerk's office and go through the records vault to find deeds, transfers, mortgages, releases and such, which was a tedious task when I did a title search prior to buying my house. But I learned today for the first time that it has all been scanned and is now searchable on-line.

Your method of figuring out the current balance would not have worked for us in the past, though, because we always made extra principal payments over the years. Now, however, as revealed in the records, we don't have a mortgage at all.

 

[youbet]

Is anyone else "under the radar" when it comes to letting on what you have in the bank? Do you have any strategies for preserving that?

Yes.

Don’t be a blabby mouth.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Not that many would bother, but are you sure about the mortgage not being public? I went to a person's county records web site armed with just a name and address, and in a few minutes had a list of mortgages and which were satisfied. I looked up the going rate at the time of the active mortgage to determine what was left to be paid.

Yes, same around here, and you can see the terms of the mortgage or refi, and whether there was a lien release on the latest (meaning it was paid off).

But as to BigNick's question, our neighbors probably don't know, but a few friends who are closer than family do know. We're actually all in fairly similar positions financially, so we've been talking about retirement planning to varying degrees of specificity. Part of the reason we discussed it is one of them was named as an alternate guardian for our child when they were little, since we don't have a lot of family left, and most of them would not be suitable guardians.

But I'm not particularly worried about neighbors knowing. We're not going to lend money to anyone, whether we like them or not, even if any of our neighbors knew us well enough to ask. It just doesn't usually come up.

 

[N02L84ER]

We have used the same homeowner's insurance company since 2017. We quietly paid off the mortgage in 2018. We had a tornado damage claim in 2023. The insurance company thought we still owed on the mortgage and had us send them a copy of the release. We try to fly under the radar on all things financial.

 

[TheWizard]

We try so. We came out of the closet a bit by buying an expensive EV, but our neighbors apparently aren’t informed enough to know the cost. The bright red color though was considered shocking by gossiping neighbors, ha ha.

My new car is bright red also.
I also do not have nosy neighbors, so it's a non issue...

 

[BigNick]

Sadly, some people (not all, by any means, but enough to matter) will treat you differently if there is a disparity of resources between the two of you. And that works whether you have substantially more or less than they do.

Yeah, this is about it. We live in a large apartment building with a lot of politics and drama (one of the more enlightened members of the neighbours' WhatsApp group calls it "Falconcrest"). We are very probably among the richest 2 or 3 out of 100 apartments, and we don't need this added to all of the other reasons for petty conflict that some people seem to relish. Our immediate neighbours are fine, but when we told one that we were flying to Japan in business class we could see that this was not going to be immediately forgotten.

 

[athena53]

Sadly, some people (not all, by any means, but enough to matter) will treat you differently if there is a disparity of resources between the two of you. And that works whether you have substantially more or less than they do.

Some of my siblings probably have more than I do (I know one does) and none struggle. DS and DDIL know about what I have and don't care. I do pay for the occasional experience not in their budget and write them a check annually that's a nice chunk but not enough to take away their independence and their pride in providing for themselves and their 3 kids.

Outside of the family, my concern is more that it will attract a criminal element who thinks I'll have thousands of dollars of cash in my house (I don't) or people asking for charity or loans. When my Ex inherited $300K from his mother in 1983 and made sure people knew how "rich" he was, a childhood friend called. His GF worked at a bank, she'd embezzled $$$ (the Ex thought they might have "borrowed" it for a drug deal) and he wanted to know if the Ex could lend them some money. He didn't, thank heaven.

 

[Koolau]

I know some folks assume we're "rich" because we live in Hawaii. But that's sort of like assuming someone is rich because they live in a McMansion. Unless you know how much someone has left over after PAYING for (fill in the blank) it's difficult to tell status just from appearances.



Heh, heh, when people see what we drive, I'm guessing they lower their estimates of our wealth. Another fallacy of going by what people (appear to) own.



And, no, we generally don't talk about what we have or don't have among friends and family. Keep 'em guessing.

 

[BigNick]

Heh, heh, when people see what we drive, I'm guessing they lower their estimates of our wealth. Another fallacy of going by what people (appear to) own.

We have a 2017 Toyota Yaris hybrid. It's two feet shorter than a Prius, although it's still not the smallest model that Toyota sells in Europe. Gets *googles translation* 50mpg in town and keeps us nicely under the radar, in more ways than one.

 

[big-papa]

Most would never guess our financial status with any level of accuracy, although our closest friend group are all of a similar nature. We do live in a nice neighborhood but not in one of the flashier houses. We tend to buy cars and keep them till they die, etc. DW and I are like minded in that we think of our finances more to support "doing" rather than to support "having"...

cheers.

 

[flyingaway]

What do you feel if you find that your neighbor has more money than you thought that he has?

 

[W2R]

Now that I think about it.... TBH I can't imagine that anybody that we know gives a hoot about how much money I have in the bank. No reason for them to care. They have all they need, I have all I need, and surely there are more interesting topics for conversation than comparing bank account sizes.

But then maybe I'm more naive than I think.

 

[rwdflynavy]

We live in south west Virginia and I've got a military pension. Most of my neighbors don't know much about the military and assume we live on that pension and my part time work. That is true, but they don't know we have a net worth in the 7 figures.

We still have a mortgage because I lucked into a refinance of 2.25% for 30 years in 2021. Not paying that off early!!

 

[Andre1969]

Not that many would bother, but are you sure about the mortgage not being public? I went to a person's county records web site armed with just a name and address, and in a few minutes had a list of mortgages and which were satisfied. I looked up the going rate at the time of the active mortgage to determine what was left to be paid.

This had me curious, so I decided to give it a try. Here in Maryland, all that stuff is what I'd call "semi-public." I had to create an account to access it. I looked up myself, and sure enough it showed the deed, the original mortgage, and each time I refinanced. So, if someone wanted to go through the effort, they could find out roughly how much I still owed on the place.

Some of their info is spotty, though. For instance, my Mom bought a house in Charles County MD in 1979, and sold in 1980. I could find information on the deed transfers, of when she bought and when she sold, and the prices. But, no mortgage information. For some odd reason, I do remember that the mortgage was $389/mo! I was only 9 when she bought the place...it's weird the things that can stick in your mind, though.

Oh, here's an interesting one. I looked up my maternal Grandparents' house. I remember them saying the house was $8500 originally, and that they borrowed money from a relative. Looking at the records, it appears they borrowed $7,000. The terms were kind of odd, though. It was 4 1/2%, but instead of a normal fixed mortgage where all payments are the same, this one was $20/mo, plus interest. So if I'm doing the math right, it sounds like the first payment would have been $46.25 ($20 principal, and the interest would be $7K*4.5%/12 or $26.25), but then over time, the overall payment would actually go down.

I just noticed though, that the deed on my Grandparents' house doesn't list the purchase price. And the mortgage just lists the mortgage amount and terms. So, some of that older information can be spotty, I guess.

 

[rk911]

What do you feel if you find that your neighbor has more money than you thought that he has?

Somewhere between 'hmmm' and 'good for them'.