Vile thread. This was a watch forum once.
Sorry Ryan but if ‘a large proportion’ of your salary is taxed at 45% you’re enormously wealthy. To suggest otherwise is just bizarre; for example that run down of your outgoings must only account for a max of 50% of your take home on a monthly basis.
Good for you by the way; you’re obviously a grafter and IMO deserve every penny. But to suggest you’re not wealthy is something I can’t wrap my head around.
I would consider Ryan an enormously high earner (in comparison to the UK) but not enormously wealthy based on the details he has given, because he sounds like he has a large mortgage to pay off.
I consider wealth and salary two different things. There are probably many forum members here with a greater net worth than Ryan and a lower salary, due to age and/or property appreciation.
This thread be like........
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Just waiting for skylady to add his 2p.
Pointless thread and should be deleted.
I'm considerably poorer than him.
This thread definitely does have an air of ‘I don’t like to talk about my wealth, but as you ask....’
What’s up with some people, quite depressing really.
That’s fair enough.
But I think there’s obviously a truth, at least in the bigger world outside forums, that certain watches appeal to the types that flaunt wealth. Harry Enfield chose matching gold Rolexes for Stan and Pam. What could have been a better choice at that time ?
Vile thread........oh here's a load of pictures of my watches🤣🤣🤣🤣
I have no aspiration to feel wealthy - I am very fortunate to feel happy and have good health.
It's certainly true, I've seen it loads of times at VIP functions overseas and the same applies to cars (I don't get invited to many such events back in Blighty but I'm sure it's the same). They are an easy way to indicate 'success' and are part of the reason for prices being driven upwards.
Without wishing to get sucked in to this, there's a difference between portraying the trappings of wealth, and flaunting wealth itself. People's motives and behaviours are often difficult to comprehend (should you have any desire to comprehend them) and, further, our individual responses are always going to be governed by our specific frames of reference.
Most people I know just earn more and spend more so they constantly feel poor. They will always feel poor too because they don’t understand true wealth and richness. Often doing well paid jobs that demand much of their time they then revert to buying ‘stuff’ to fill the void that working all the time creates. They get swept along trying to project a lifestyle they feel will impress others rather than investing in themselves, cars they have borrowed on the drive to impress the neighbours and leave at the train station 12 hours a day. Watches that they wear are more for others than themselves and that eternal nagging fear they will lose it all driving them mad daily.
Some of my richest friends have little money and are considerably more happy than any I know with a ‘bragging’ balance sheet. I read a post above breaking down that if you have a £600k mortgage and a car on PCP that’s £2k a month. Well the answers simple, don’t rent a car you can’t afford and buy a more modest house! I generally find that the ones who are ‘showy’ are always the most insecure as they don’t actually know what happiness is so they try and buy it.
NB: they also tend to be very unhealthy as they don’t have time for exercise and add to the problem with excessive calorie and alcohol intake (both of which they use as a measure of success)
RIAC
Many truisms there, Kerry, and it's easy to get caught up in the cycle of consumerism as everything we see around us encourages us to do so. Bea and i have been talking about how we might simplify our lives ahead of moving overseas, and it's something I intend pursuing over the coming months/years.
It’s undeniably true, but it doesn’t mean these tokens of wealth don’t have other merits. I think that’s why people here get wound up. Just because you bought something for “good reasons” such as residuals, history, quality of workmanship, etc, that doesn’t mean that someone seeing your Day-Date won’t assume you bought it simply to show off.
The problem with having more money than before is that it as soon as your spending habits have adapted you are aware of the next rung up the ladder, and the inner sense of dissatisfaction with your lot identifies the next things to aspire to. There's always, always someone richer, always products you can't yet afford. And so, while you progress up the ladder, the view remains the pretty much stable.
This must be an expression of the more general issue of one's level of happiness. By and large, happy people are happy, and miserable people are miserable. Give a happy person deep misfortune and before long they'll be finding joy hidden away in the corners; make a miserable person suddenly rich and they'll simply have new things to grumble about.
It is possible to transform from being one person to the other, but if you simply replace the warping pressure of poverty with an equally burdensome pressure of aspiration (or grow a sense of grievance that you're not being given the respect that your wealth and success deserves) then it's not going to happen.
Something Wordsworth wrote has always resonated with me, 'Getting and spending we lay waste our powers', from the poem' The world is too much with us, late and soon'.
Unclear on why this thread has been described as 'vile' to be honest, as far as I can tell folks are just relating their own experiences, points of view and opinions on a subject which for better or worse is often central to 'our' existence/happiness. I like to try and learn/test my own notions about this.
Last edited by Passenger; 24th November 2019 at 11:55.
Such a sad and depressing thread, in so many ways.
Because I guess quite a few of us find discussion of wealth rather........crass.
Genuinely why, I've been rather buoyed up by how many members clearly value their 'free' time, health and youth over the pursuit of more material gewgaws, and this on a forum which sometimes can be viewed, from certain angles, as dedicated to the pursuit and praise of the material.
I don’t find the thread vile or crass. The posters, in the main, have written thoughtful and reasonable analyses. No-one has really approached in a ‘Harry Enfield character’ vein. Whilst some of the figures being bandied around are large, it makes me realise the pressure such wealthy people take on.....and I’m glad that my tastes are considerably more modest. However, I wouldn’t criticise them for their ambition. Different horses for different courses; nothing wrong with that. It’s a free world.....albeit with extremes of haves and have-nots (who in general I feel sorry for, especially if it is not their choice).
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I kinda see where you are coming from but nobody as far as I can tell has started in on displays of total net worth and isn't that view a little bit, not sure of the right word...dissonant or incongruous maybe, on a forum often fixated on Swiss or other luxury brands whether horological or automotive etc...these 'things' whether consciously or not in the mind of their owners are positioned, marketed and sold as 'avatars' to display wealth and worth.
This is the template for my future life :-) I’m currently working my notice and next year I shall be a house husband :-o
My wife believes (based on combined salary) that we are or should be wealthy, but she can’t understand why we seemingly don’t have any spare money and don’t have all of the “things” that our peers have. The answer is that for the last 3 years pretty much everything I earn has been ploughed into savings and pensions and we’ve effectively been living off her smaller salary. She’s expecting us to be poor when I stop work but in reality she won’t notice any difference, and when she stops working in 2 or 3 years time the savings will kick in.
I can fully understand if you have high outgoings on car finance, service charge, mortgage, phone etc (or pension and savings) that you might not feel there’s a lot to spare, and it’s often not a simple matter of moving house to a cheaper area. The question was how wealthy do you feel, not how much do you earn.
I think I felt better off in my 30s even though I had a lower salary, a bigger mortgage and a single income - but back then I was also happy to go backpacking on holiday and wasn’t saving nearly as much.
I don’t find this thread vile either. It’s seems perfectly OK to flaunt it on numerous threads (including non watch threads) but not discuss it. Typical British attitude to money.
I know there’s the odd post that makes you wince, but just move on through that.
I’ve also been interested in the balanced responses about money vs time.
As you were IMO.
In fairness, it’s the interjections from one particular poster that helped derail things.
For me, along with that, it’s the few somewhat smug postings and the general feeling that they’ve worked hard for what they have and that somehow those who don’t have much haven’t. It’s barely disguised, but it’s there.
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not just about sums it up for me.
I earn below national average and find it interesting reading the perspectives of others, especially the big earners who spend eye opening amounts.
I particularly liked reading Passenger's post with reference to having time with his family.
As Brian said, time is a one time resource. This is something that is easily forgotten.
If you can spend your time exactly how you want, then you are truly wealthy.
Getting back on point. Is £80k enough for you to feel wealthy?
I think this is any easy one, and mostly related to house prices (hence mortgage costs), as that is the biggest differentiator across the UK.
Live in the cheaper house price locations in the UK with a mortgage and I believe you will feel wealthy on £80k.
Live in the much more expensive house price locations in the UK (and especially London) with a mortgage and you may/will not feel wealthy on £80k.
Live anywhere in the UK and you’ve paid off your mortgage, and you will feel wealthy on £80k.
As someone who earns a decent salary and has recently paid off the mortgage, I do feel wealthy for the first time in my life. But that point only came after 28 years of hard work.
I feel wealthy for the first time in my life, not because I can (or have the desire to) buy posher cars (I drive an 11 year old Volvo and have no intention of replacing it), but because of the security it provides and because I now have the option to buy time.
Jumping on a couple of comments that linked high salary to high workload. I'm not sure this is exactly correct. In my experience people getting paid the really big bucks (we are talking well into 6 figures and also in the 7 figure bracket) come into 2 main categories. The first category is the ability to make decisions and then live or die by them (typically executive leadership) and the other category is people whose remuneration is directly linked to profit/revenue they bring in (such as salespeople).
Another thing that will add £20k per annum to your salary is the ability to be a competent public speaker as most people are terrified of doing this.
Sorry for the slight side track but there are many people earning low salaries who work bloody hard and their poverty is in no way linked to their work ethic
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