In a moment of procrastination I went to Twitter and found something to spout off on.
It’s about the coverage of the election.
Ha, ha, yea right. I’d rather piss razors than talk about politics, thank you very much.
I did peek at Twitter and though I’ve seen some story about people making 6-figures feeling broke for the millionth time, I failed to contain my need to pop off this time. Actually, the triggering source material is totally innocent. It’s a nice post by Ben Carlson, one of the first finance bloggers I started reading about a decade ago when I first started trying to learn about investing (I’m a trader and trading is not investing).
I tweeted his excerpt with my thoughts. I reprinted a lightly edited version below the screenshot. It’s in reference to HENRYs (high-earner-not-yet-rich), an acronym nobody in the history of the world has ever uttered without a derisive smirk. In some circles, they are known as the “working rich”.
I’m sorry but if you’re actually rich you don’t think of these people as rich and if you’re a regular person you don’t consider these people working class. This acronym is the personal finance version of the “finger cuffs” nickname memorialized in Chasing Amy. You’re under 50, live near the coast, and are worth $5-$15mm. Congratulations, the inflation you moan about also went into your income.
Let’s just get to the sauce already.
The tweet thread:
This post is fine, reasonable posture. …but if I may piggyback off some of the numbers in the post… I want to repeat what the post says but with slightly different emphasis which leads to a large difference in framing.
For example, it talks about people in the top 5% of income or wealth being disappointed, and you’d be better off going in with lower expectations.
When I think the harsh but true reality is being in the top 5% when you measure against the whole population just… isn’t that special.
When I was a kid, being rich was like Robin Leach stuff. It felt totally unattainable. And you know what? It is. Rich, as defined by its day, is unattainable.
Of course, someone will say, “Actually, it is attainable,” and my argument is… it’s not for people who complain that they don’t feel rich or whatever. Because the mindset that comes with Robin Leach-level desire would never accept the top 5% as being entitled to anything. It’s a failure.
So when the article says to lower your expectations, my reframing is: get serious about what being excellent means. You’re not even close if you’re a top 5%er. So either get serious about what it takes to be rich, or be seriously gracious for what you’ve gotten. All the woes of inflation and yadda yadda hit everyone.
You’re still stack-ranked in the same relative sense. Moaning is so unbecoming; it feels like such a confession of how duped you were by thinking school was real life or that X dollars mapped to Y.
I just don’t feel like being rich is something I should ever expect unless I’m so badass that I’d be comfortable being at a table with people that are unmistakably badass.
You’re a PM at a tech company and you don’t feel rich? Of course you don’t. You shouldn’t. You’re not scarce AF. You haven’t taken a massive risk and come out on the other side.
The fact that there are normal people who became very rich by being in the right place at the right time shouldn’t influence your expectation of that likelihood.
(Houses are so expensive where I am not because everyone is a celeb… it’s because I live within 50 miles of “I’ve been at Google/Pinterest/CRM/Dash since pre-IPO.” That’s called hitting the lotto. Most of the people in tech who have been around for 20 years have been bouncing around from one high-paying job to the next but falling short of the exponential. I use this analogy a lot.)
To get where I got in my career required flipping heads 10x in a row and tremendous effort. That earned me comfort. But to become one of the bosses who are ballplayer-rich, I’m probably staring down another chain of 10 in a row. I don’t get that life in this life. I’m lucky to be anywhere near the one I got, but it’s utterly unremarkable, and this is inclusive of being very good at my job.
Smart, hardworking, etc. Table stakes. You’re not special. Comparing your 5%-ness with the masses is nothing more than a poorly adaptive exercise in self-flattering benchmarking.
I suspect the mambas are looking to transcend comparison and would never use it to self-soothe or justify. If you want to feel rich, expect alien powers from yourself instead of expecting that being way above average should entitle you to an alien life.
No looking over the fence at others.
Look in the mirror. Are you doing truly alien shit?