They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public.
They used to use hidden signals of wealth to show themselves to each other but not reveal themselves to the public —but now it’s a contest for crass popularity.
I guess Robin Leach opened the crack and Instagram et al opened the floodgates. It’s a bit pathetic.
What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it?
> They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public.
When did this happen? Do you mean the gilded age where the wealthy had giant, showy mansions built now used for various museums, or funded massive libraries and stuff in their name? Do you mean when the wealthy hung up painted portraits of themselves everywhere? Do you mean when the wealthy were building literal castles and starting literal wars on their name? Do you mean when royalty proclaimed to be a royal was to be divine??
I don’t think the wealthy have ever stfu’d about their money…
> What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it?
They're still around, and people still don't know it. Some of those older people you see working at the grocery store have been "retired" from executive positions and need something to do until they reach retirement age. Lots of diligent people working normal jobs and without vices manage to become quite wealthy while living unremarkable lives.
These people will always be interesting to me. They "won" the game, they accumulated wealth and made a comfortable life for themselves. Yet they usually live frugally and die with several millions just because they never actually spent the money.
Some of my relatives were like that. Lots of money in the banks, 70 years old, yet his wife would chastise him for buying a small $16k Mazda truck to replace his +10 years old $12k Ford truck.
The reason most people want to be rich is to have a good lifestyle. Sure, lifestyle inflation is a thing and you want to have money in the bank for emergency and retirement, but being the old guy with lots of money is no better than being the old guy with a solid retirement fund if you're just going to sit on the money.
> but being the old guy with lots of money is no better than being the old guy with a solid retirement fund if you're just going to sit on the money.
I'm confused - those are the same person.
Most "millionaire next door" types are not people who suddenly had a million dropped into their account.
They're the people who routinely make good choices with their money. That includes putting it in a diversified investment portfolio and taking full advantage of all the legal ways to reduce expenses (of which - retirements accounts are a great option - the tax savings you get filling your 401k compound to quite a nice bit of cash over a 40 year timeline, not even mentioning the principle you contributed).
So in this case - I'm with the guys wife: He's 70 already, what's he really going to be using that truck for? It sure isn't going to be heavy labor (he's 70). Couldn't a smaller more efficient car have done the same job? And it's a 16k truck - so it's either incredibly low trim and lightly used, or nice but heavily used (because 16k is dirt fucking cheap for a decent truck unless it's 10+ years old).
So is she nagging because he spent 16k, or because he spent 16k on something that's not really practical for that point in their life? I'd bet money it's the later.
Not even mentioning - a 70 year old might easily live another 25 years. Blowing all your savings now is a terrible call if you need long term care later in life (you want to talk about expensive, long term care makes that 16k truck look like a match box car)
Don't get me wrong - if you're perfectly happy with your lifestyle despite spending very little money, that's absolutely okay. My point is, you can not just overspend, you can also oversave - if you have the money to make your life better (really better, not wasting-money-better), you're on the wrong side of this.
That larger truck might be a waste of money, but it might also be easier to get into, save fuel and keep you safe in the case of a crash. Now, most people are clearly on the overspending side of things, but a large pile of cash won't make your corpse more comfortable either.
Sure - and you can get hit by a bus tomorrow, making the whole discussion a moot point.
That doesn't change the fact that the people who end up in the situation the OP was referring to (decent amount of capital late in their lives) tend to be the same people who have decided that they can, in fact, live a comfortable life without having to spend a ton of money. They aren't always right, but my point is that folks without that mindset aren't the ones in that position later (at least not usually).
What's the point though. You just skimped your whole live to end up old and with a bunch of abstract "wealth".
Best way to do it is to buy exactly what will fulfill you, and not a cent more. Maybe that 3 week trip to ___ will, maybe the expensive dinner won't. Etc.
I think you're implying a value judgement I'm not making.
Who's to say they think they're skimping?
Who's to say that they didn't buy exactly what fulfilled them, and it was only 20% of their take-home pay, so they just shoved the rest of it into investments?
Basically - money certainly matters, but only to a point. Once you're fairly comfortable satisfying your genuine needs (food, clothing, shelter, time) more money isn't really going to change how you feel.
It's a mental trap to assume that happiness can be bought, if only you had a bit more money. It leads to empty, hollow, soulless people.
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> Best way to do it is to buy exactly what will fulfill you
My advice? Buying things will never fulfill you. Real fulfillment isn't about having the next shiny ____.
I'm not saying you shouldn't buy that thing, but you should be doing it with intention - How does this fit into my life? What uses do I have for it? Who will I share it with?
No I think we are on the same page. I'm just assuming these are "excessively frugal" type people. Agree 100% that money only matters to a point. I've traveled to many places, and had a few "luxury" type experiences and I'm certain that the juice isn't worth the squeeze for that type of stuff.
I would say the main two goals would be to: have enough money to work when/on what you want (this could be like 500k), and the long term goal is have enough money to make a bigger impact on a community or even the world (prob like 10 mil - 1 bil).
Only if you inculcated the same standards into your children, which is definitely not a given. If you were just a miser and your children didn't understand your reasoning, I would expect them to blow their entire inheritance and leave a pittance to their children.
Yes, absolutely, and it would be a great idea if you don't trust the financial competence of your beneficiaries, but you want them to have access to your assets. The problem is that those trusts may be viewed as overly restrictive or unnecessarily burdensome to the beneficiaries and so may not be created in the first place. IE beneficiary needs $X for a rational business investment, but can only get $X/4 out of the trust within the timeframe, even though 1000*$X in total is in the trust.
> IE beneficiary needs $X for a rational business investment, but can only get $X/4 out of the trust within the timeframe, even though 1000*$X in total is in the trust.
I mean, the trust can (usually) invest money without it being considered a distribution. I suspect that happens a lot based on the trustifarians I see in capital-intensive businesses and crushing it (due to below-market cost of capital).
I feel bad for their competitors having to prove themselves to a bank or other arms-length financier.
I certainly agree society has gotten a lot more ostentatious, to the negative. But there's still a bit of a "kids these days" vibe to this comment; people (by which I mean the long-established aristocrats) have been decrying the tasteless, crass vulgarity of the nouveau riche since at least the late Roman Republic.
Anyone who read The Great Gatsby in high school should be familiar with the disdain for the nouveau rich amongst old money. The movie Caddyshack also does a good job at depicting this.
I think you have a valid point, although I think it should probably be the "decimillionaire next door" to keep up with inflation and retain its original meaning. This is a case where the floor dropped out and the ceiling is falling, when a "millionaire" doesn't really mean what it meant many years ago.
In 1904, $1M inflation adjusted is $31M now. In 1956, it's $9.9M. Seems to have peeked at 2007/8. The uptick to "billionaire" started around 1982 which is about $2.79M. Words are very discrete bins and usage lag.
While there is a very valid point that many who frequent this site may be considered millionaires and by some, considered wealthy relative to the median in current times, that isn't to say the median hasn't been falling in terms of the sheer scale of wealth these days.
If we even accept the premise (and it's a doubtful one, obscene wealth was always visible), it's worth pointing out that a lot of wealth is generated simply by being in the public eye. Cynically put, the not-wealthy like having a look at the things they'll never have enough to hand over money for it.
As for "millionaire next door", they're still around. The US has 20 million of them. But most of the "next door" wealth is achieved through doing a "normal" job. (I.e. jobs that most other people can relate to, and could possibly achieve working in)
Ostentatious wealth is requiring arbitrage of some form, at scale. Celebrities arbitrage fame. And it's a smart business, because part of their payment is more fame. Hence the "crass popularity" contests. People pay them for that popularity and make them more popular.
There have always been rich people who flaunt their wealth and crave attention, just as there are those who are, as you say, the "millionaires next door". The difference is now, I can easily check in on the lives of the ones who crave attention anywhere in the world. We no longer have "local celebrities" like we used to, as their fame is rarely only covered by the local papers.
People always seem intrigued by the lives of the rich and famous, and tabloids have been milking that for generations. Before the internet, that was the best way to keep up to date on celebrity gossip, and it was a lucrative market (see also: MTV Cribs).
It just seems like the rich are so much worse these days because it's so easy for them to get attention. Some have even turned it into an art form, knowing how effective ragebait is at getting clicks. (Remember Logan Paul's Japanese forest video?) Combine that with the reduction in our media landscape and increase in outlets which just report on drama, many of which get reposted with only minor rewording on more general outlets, and it's much more difficult to escape this stuff today.
All this said, I would agree that the rich generally are worse today, but that's a byproduct of capital coalescing in new forms to lobby for awful laws spurring greater inequality, and it would have happened without the internet. They were also bad in the past, but unless you went out of your way, it was difficult to get a grasp on how wealth multiplies and the horrendous practices of many large corporations. The popularity contest becoming inescapable, on the other hand, is a direct result of our hyper-connected world.
How would you know they aren't still majority? There were always conspicuously wealthy people, but now there are more wealthy people in general. It's inevitable both the quiet and noisy segments would grow even without other changes.
The real wealthy folks still are hush about their capital. The folks you see flinging cash and status around are - and always have been - the nouveau riche.
Perhaps but Bezos, Branson, Ma, Musk, etc, aren’t the quietest bunch regarding their monies. We even have those who are wealthy but need to tell us how unwealthylike they live such as Dorsey.
>Perhaps but Bezos, Branson, Ma, Musk, etc, aren’t the quietest bunch regarding their monies.
Well, those are also crude nouveaux riches. Heck, they even had to somehow work for their money (even those of them that got some hefty support from their parents).
I'm not even sure that many are really rich. I recently read that the average net worth of a Ferrari owner is less than one million pounds and that most Ferraris are financed.
Low net worth includes people with $0, but also people worth negative millions because they have a lot of debt. The only way to get that much debt is if you’re rich.
It’s better to look at assets excluding debt. This also shows the problem with student loan relief, which is it mostly benefits dentists.
My theory is that too many of the “wrong” people got rich, so the luxury industry and media worked together to increase consumption and funnel the nouveau rich money to the “right” wealthy people.
I wonder the same thing, especially with respect to the lower rung of wealth. I'm shocked at how much of the top 1% views themselves as victims of higher rungs of the top 1% instead of having attitudes commensurate with their wealth, privilege, and social status.
They've been replaced with nouveaux riches who want to show off to their poor friends (and enemies) that they've "made it".
The "millionaire next door" also has low time preference, which is how they made their money. They don't spend extravagantly but reinvest that money into their business, stocks, real estate, etc. That's also why they're stealth rich.
They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public.
They used to use hidden signals of wealth to show themselves to each other but not reveal themselves to the public —but now it’s a contest for crass popularity.
I guess Robin Leach opened the crack and Instagram et al opened the floodgates. It’s a bit pathetic.
What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it?