How do the not-so-grassroot live?

I was chatting with Racer1ab earlier about houses and garages and the normal stuff when we eventually rambled off topic to other people's houses.

To make that long story short, I was raised middle class by a mechanic and was lucky enough to have a mom around that didn't work much when I was young, but that meant we didn't have much spare money, so we lived that way. Now that I have moved out they live in a beautiful house on a lake, but it was due to blood, sweat, and tears. Their house isn't much, but it's nice. Houses there run from around $100,000 on up. A few famous neighbors here or there.

I bumped into a guy at the TalkStL dot com studio who was in to talk sports from a manager's angle. He had just bought a house in the same town as my parent's, just on an adjacent lake. He told me all about it and that I should "stop by and visit" some time. I think he had parking for somewhere around 12-16 vehicles. The fish tank needs to be cleaned by a scuba-diver. More luxuries than I can remember. Wouldn't it be nice?

This is what $30,000,000 will build ya. (He paid a fraction of that price)

I don't know why I felt I had to share, but I did.

Looks like he actually paid $4,750,000. That's a good deal.

I never got that kind of house building. Obviously they are trying to impress someone, but to me it comes off a bit too 'try hard', like the house equivalent of this:

Yes, it's insanely expensive, yes it's one of a kind, but it's just too much. I get the feeling I never want to talk to the person responsible because I would loose too many brain cells.

And, for the record, fancy belongings REALLY don't work to impress people when the creditors are taking them away. Then it makes you look stupid, not classy. The guy who swooped in for 1/6th the price, though? He's the smarter one for sure.

Met a group of 1%ers while overseas recently. The kind of folks who sell their company to Bain Capital.

One way they identify is when asked where the are from, they always reply with at least two places-- usually Florida and someplace they don't spend the winter.

The next step up is three places, with the third usually Aspen or Vail.

Not bad people by any means, but way different lives than anyone who works for wages or a salary.

That reminds me of what my mother told me. She worked at my high school so we could afford it. A nice Jesuit school. I didn't do well. lol

She works at the REAL rich kid school. The pro-sports kids go there and such. She is kind of PR and is very personable so she asks where people are going for spring break. My favorite answer this year: "We're going to Paris, but only staying for two days because we're going to Dubai after that."

Having the money doesn't make them bad people at all. In fact, I enjoy living life the way I do. I work hard and I get to play hard when given the chance. I just do it with less money.

They're my customers.

Good people (the ones I work for anyway). I dislike the term 1%ers, the douchebag occupy creeps use that term for anyone they don't agree with.

One of my customers donated the property and bankrolled the construction of an entire summer camp for kids: http://rockridgecanyon.com/

He once told me "It's not every day that you get to build your own lake"

One of them built a new wing at a Ronald McDonald house.

Another funds an addiction treatment center.

Every time I hear someone complain about the rich getting a tax break, I usually ask them which hospital or cancer clinic they built.

I can't wrap my head around that kind of house/lifestyle. How much does it cost just to heat and cool a place that size?
My house is no larger than a walk-in closet in that house I'm sure.

The problems just grow proportionally.

One guy I deal with lives here in B.C. but has a house in Arizona.

He got a call from the city (house in Arizona) about his unusually high water consumption over the last three months.

Three months that no-one was living in his Arizona house.

Another had a similar thing happen while on vacation, they came home to water running down the staircase and out the door of a beautiful house with oak floors, not the laminate kind.

I don't know how much it costs to re-pipe a house but it can't be cheap.

I'm sure they're insured but it's still a huge PITA.

You can keep those problems, I'm happy with my normal-sized house in "almost-the-country" suburbia.

I work on those houses all the time. I never will figure out why two people need fourteen thousand square feet, or seven thousand square feet EACH for a house. You could go days without ever bumping into another family member. The jobs are sometimes fun though because when you are richer than god you put your monster house in some pretty weird places.

bearmtnmartin wrote: I work on those houses all the time. I never will figure out why two people need fourteen thousand square feet, or seven thousand square feet EACH for a house.

Well, I could easily understand needing 14,000 square feet of garage & shop space. :)

The bottom end of the 1%ers is about $340,000 annually. Now, that would be really nice to be earning but it's not the kind of number that most people associate with the really rich. I worked with people that made that kind of money and most of them thought of themselves as middle class, which I would argue. A couple of them conceded that they "were probably upper middle class". I think it's just a case of we want more than whatever we already have too often naively thinking we'll be happier.

maybe I'd be happier … maybe I wouldn't .. but I'm well acquainted with the happiness associated with lower middle class income (maybe even upper poor class LOL )

I'd be more than willing to win the lottery and try out the upper middle class problems

bearmtnmartin wrote: I work on those houses all the time. I never will figure out why two people need fourteen thousand square feet, or seven thousand square feet EACH for a house. You could go days without ever bumping into another family member. The jobs are sometimes fun though because when you are richer than god you put your monster house in some pretty weird places.

I think you answered your own question :)

DeadSkunk wrote: The bottom end of the 1%ers is about $340,000 annually. Now, that would be really nice to be earning but it's not the kind of number that most people associate with the really rich. I worked with people that made that kind of money and most of them thought of themselves as middle class, which I would argue. A couple of them conceded that they "were probably upper middle class". I think it's just a case of we want more than whatever we already have too often naively thinking we'll be happier.

I think much of it depends on where you live $340k wouldn't go far in Manhattan for instance. Heck in many parts of NJ the cost of living would kill $340k pretty quick. I make a good living (not $340k good) but with the cost of living around here I am often broke anyway. I could move south and make 1/2 my pay but have a better lifestyle due to cost of living (and if I find a job in the area I want I'll do that eventually)

In reply to JThw8:
Oh, agreed. I was just making the point that the 1% starts at a point much lower than most people think, just ask 10 of your friends to guess where it starts. I know I could sell my home here in SE Michigan and buy cheaper elsewhere, BUT, if I could figure out how to sneak into the 1% I could have another home in a southern state where cars aren't rusty. Then I could have a big pole barn and several project car threads on this forum. I guess money can buy a little happiness.

I'm trying to figure out what the heck I could even fill that much space with if I were mega rich. Actually, I have some pretty cool ideas that I think top what they are doing.

Aside from the obvious ballroom (because dancer), I would want a combination climbing wall/ball pit room... or maybe one of those big gymnastics spring floors. I mean, if I were that wealthy, I wouldn't care what people think and just put in the most fun stuff I could.

It's interesting straddling the world of the 1%. A number of the people my wife knows or works with are there. They still have to chose what to spend their money on. A big house means fewer vacations or less savings. They still think about the cost of cars not because they can't afford them, but because using that money on cars means they can't use it on anything else. I'm not sure I know anyone who can indiscriminately buy stuff and not think about it.

N Sperlo wrote: To make that long story short, I was raised middle class by a mechanic and was lucky enough to have a mom around that didn't work much when I was young, but that meant we didn't have much spare money, so we lived that way. Now that I have moved out they live in a **beautiful house on a lake**, but it was due to blood, sweat, and tears. Their house isn't much, but it's nice. **Houses there run from around $100,000 on up. A few famous neighbors here or there.**

Where the berk are you living that you can get a nice house on a lake for only $100,000?!

In reply to mazdeuce:

True... the owner of my last company was firmly in the 1%. He and his wife drove nice cars at the time (BMW X-5 4.4 & M-B CL300 - this was 10+ years ago), but I'm sure they could have afforded nicer cars if they wanted them. However, his real passion was flying. Over the 10 years I worked there, he had a few different planes, but a year or so before I left he bought a jet.

I almost pulled it off. I got 2/3rds of the total package right out of the stocks. I was born healthy and white in the US when you could still slap a woman for spilling your scotch, operate motor cars when drunk and openly despise people who didn't look like you. All I needed was for the biographer voice in my head to finish the sentence with "Born to a life of privileged excess few could begin to fathom" and I'd be living the real American Dream.

It is an interesting lifestyle. If I made the kind of money that the top 1% make, I probably wouldn't make any of those purchases, because I'd simply retire in 3 or 4 years and spend the rest of my life enjoying myself.

This is somewhat appropriate. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-act-like-a-millionaire-2013-8

I also have read the book "The Millionaire Next Door". http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-Stanley/dp/0671015206

Some of the people in the 1% are the ones you would least expect. I'm not one, and it'll be a long time before I have a shot.

Sky_Render wrote:

N Sperlo wrote: To make that long story short, I was raised middle class by a mechanic and was lucky enough to have a mom around that didn't work much when I was young, but that meant we didn't have much spare money, so we lived that way. Now that I have moved out they live in a **beautiful house on a lake**, but it was due to blood, sweat, and tears. Their house isn't much, but it's nice. **Houses there run from around $100,000 on up. A few famous neighbors here or there.**

Where the berk are you living that you can get a nice house on a lake for only $100,000?!

In the neighborhood, not on the lake. They would be the run down ones that just won't sell. I've only seen them down to about 125k. Still about 2-3x the size of mine...

On the lake they start around 200k depending on the market. I wish that's where I was living.

CGLockRacer wrote: This is somewhat appropriate. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-act-like-a-millionaire-2013-8 I also have read the book "The Millionaire Next Door". http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-Stanley/dp/0671015206 Some of the people in the 1% are the ones you would least expect. I'm not one, and it'll be a long time before I have a shot.

Any see that study that shows the turnover rate among the "1%"?

It was something like every 10 years 60% (or more) of them were new faces.

If I had that kind of money I wouldn't blow it all on a monster house. I'd put a cool, sensibly sized house somewhere fun, and blow the rest on various DIY projects, cars and planes, and adventures with them.

I'd be happy enough to break into the middle class though. Be able to afford a decent house, have a family without all of us living in grinding poverty, all that good stuff I naively dreamed about as a kid.

They say that the problems just get bigger but it's nice to be able to just whip out the Amex Black card to deal with those problems instead of perusing CL for used tires to make it through the season. I'm slap in the middle of middle class and it's not nearly what it was 20-30 years ago.

A distant relative makes a very tidy 8 figure income annually and I'm always perplexed about what he does with it. Big savings account I guess, even his Manhattan penthouse apartment was only 1/3 of his earnings for one year. His 911 Turbo cost him a days pay.