Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I guess it depends. I think your coworker is fulfiling a dream. I plan to go to Hawaii in the winter. It is lavish and completely unnecessary but it has sentimental value to me. I have never been a beach person but the ocean is a truly powerful force. It feels good.
I think folks tend to show off with cars and houses. I guess it is their prerogative. I do not really care but it would be nice.
I resent people who attain professional success with little effort or aptitude.
Yeah my existing friends aren’t the jealous type, if they were they’d have been weeded out by now. They’ve known me for a long time and they’re happy, well off guys too. My poorest friend is the only one who owns a house ironically lol he’s a police officer and he’s also my youngest and most frugal friend. He does well for himself. But my other two friends are too busy to bother buying right now and it doesn’t make sense for my doctor friend because he couldn’t make the proper downpayment yet. At his income level I bet he gets something in the $1-2M range when he buys so he’ll be sitting pretty too.
i have noticed that you can get a higher class of friends once you get out of high school at least. my college friends are the most successful as a group. that is no coincidence, they were filtered based on their ability to get admitted to the school and to pay for it. after that, i picked my town and most friends are in my town or other local towns. so they are overall a pretty successful group. its the high school ones that are the most mixed.
my least successful friend from college is a cop also. i wish he would have had some better guidance in college. he followed what he thought was fun and not what an adult should have told him to do. but its not the worst situation, its not like he is living in poverty.
another thing i noticed is that almost all of my indian friends are doctors. they are probably the most successful ethnic group in my circle of friends. its impressive.
Yeah my existing friends aren’t the jealous type, if they were they’d have been weeded out by now. They’ve known me for a long time and they’re happy, well off guys too. My poorest friend is the only one who owns a house ironically lol he’s a police officer and he’s also my youngest and most frugal friend. He does well for himself. But my other two friends are too busy to bother buying right now and it doesn’t make sense for my doctor friend because he couldn’t make the proper downpayment yet. At his income level I bet he gets something in the $1-2M range when he buys so he’ll be sitting pretty too.
A couple of them surprised me. They didn't seem to care what you had or did, but one thing--usually inconsequential--would tick them off. I once won the pot at a house party where we all bet on a horse race. It was a whopping $350. I wasn't supposed to win because I was a newer member of the group.
I grew up being happy for other people. I don't understand other people who aren't. So what if someone has something nicer than me. I'm the type of person who is more motivated by what i want and don't care so much what the other person has. I think what other people have only bothers me if they did something negative to get it like back stabbing, stealing, selling drugs, income tax evasion, etc.
Yeah I’m focused on my own goals so I’m not overly concerned what other people have really. I have a lot and if I can’t be happy then it’s a psychological issue and nobody should feel sorry for me there lol.
My best friend loves being a police officer, it was his dream job! I don’t blame him, he’s the only one who works a job I love to hear about. My other two friends’ jobs bore me and they bore them too I’m sure. My primary “work” (my company) bores me too, I can’t think of too many things that are usually very exciting about it. I avoid talking about it that much because if I don’t want to hear about it from my own top employee then I doubt anyone else does
My best friend graduated college with a business degree and spent several years trying to become a police officer. It’s an incredibly difficult field with the odds stacked against you, which meant he landed 100 miles away sadly. While trying to get hired, he went back to college for a backup career and got another degree in accounting (hired his last term lol). So he’s pretty highly educated but he makes more money as a cop than he would doing most other things especially with OT and he absolutely loves it. There’s no substitute I think for enjoying what you do. He already owns a home, bought it when he started a few years ago, and already almost $100K in appreciation. Plus he’s the most frugal man I know, he saves everything, and does every bit of maintenance on cars and his house by himself.
Because I hated the way I was spending my time the last few years I stepped away from the day to day with my company at the first of this year and I’ve been a lot happier. It’s ironically enough going to be our best year ever through August (company just turned 10 on Sunday!). I guess apparently it didn’t need me to succeed
Well at lunch a coworker who I do know fairly well said, You know "jean" brought that condo just to show off.
.
That was an inappropriate comment to make about a co-worker. It might be true but it's not something I would say to a co-worker.
There are also people who brag about their possessions, trips, and such and then when others react negatively to it, they accuse them of being "jealous".
So we had a retirement party at my job today. Nice lady (I didn't know her well) worked 40 years in my division but in another building. we always chatted about Ocean city NJ which is one of our favorite places.
Anyhoo, of course talk turned to what she'll do in retirement, she mentioned that she just purchased an Oceanfront condo in OC and chit chat went on.
Well at lunch a coworker who I do know fairly well said, You know "jean" brought that condo just to show off.
What the heck?? so I asked "what do you mean" and got people who buy oceanfront condo's do it for the "status".
At first I just kinda thought "ok, low blood sugar has kicked in" but then I got to thinking, I do read that line of thinking a lot. People who have big houses, or if someone buys a luxury car.
This is just my brain rattling around. Do we really think people who purchase luxury items do so for the "status" or could a little bit of the green monster be rearing it's ugly head.
lol, I did admit to jealousy, I would love, love love to have a place at the beach. it's my retirement dream but I'd like to think I'd still be happy for someone who achieved their dream.
Sour grapes. I would be happy for someone who was able to buy an Ocean City condo. I would want to be friends with that person!
I'm sure there are people for whom showing off might be PART of why they buy something, but I doubt anyone just buys a beachfront condo to stick it to those who can't.
As I said, sounds like sour grapes.
I've been broke most of my life. Couldn't even afford a condo/home of my own until I was 52. I have never in my life owned a new car. There was a time when I was envious of people for whom everything just seemed to fall into place, but not anymore. No one else's life affects mine.
I'm not broke anymore. Not rich, and never going to be, but things are better now than when I was younger. If you've got a big house or this or that or the other thing, enjoy it.
So we had a retirement party at my job today. Nice lady (I didn't know her well) worked 40 years in my division but in another building. we always chatted about Ocean city NJ which is one of our favorite places.
Anyhoo, of course talk turned to what she'll do in retirement, she mentioned that she just purchased an Oceanfront condo in OC and chit chat went on.
Well at lunch a coworker who I do know fairly well said, You know "jean" brought that condo just to show off.
What the heck?? so I asked "what do you mean" and got people who buy oceanfront condo's do it for the "status".
At first I just kinda thought "ok, low blood sugar has kicked in" but then I got to thinking, I do read that line of thinking a lot. People who have big houses, or if someone buys a luxury car.
This is just my brain rattling around. Do we really think people who purchase luxury items do so for the "status" or could a little bit of the green monster be rearing it's ugly head.
lol, I did admit to jealousy, I would love, love love to have a place at the beach. it's my retirement dream but I'd like to think I'd still be happy for someone who achieved their dream.
I think it's more the case that your coworker bought a oceanfront property because she, too, would love, love love to have a place at the beach. (and me too!)
Whomever said they think it's a self-confidence/self-esteem issue has it right.
I understand that position of being bitter. Before I discovered MMM/FI community around 2013/2014 I struggled with being jealous and feeling bad about our financial situation. EVVVEERRYYYONNE seemed to be doing better than us, and well, objectively a lot of them were. I really wanted to be in a better place than we were at. It was tough to accept the present when all I could do was think about the future.
But since then we've had five good years of confidence-building success in various areas. And I feel like I have a great amount of agency in my reaching identified goals. In my particular neighborhood I'm probably still surrounded by more affluent people, but it's possible that they're using more credit to fund a more affluent lifestyle. It really doesn't matter honestly.
One of my clients/friends/neighbor is the midst of a major, whole house renovation. Last year she was in the midst of a major, whole house beach house renovation. Two years earlier she was in the midst of a major, whole house renovation in another city nearby.
Her houses are beautiful, and she's a beautiful and intelligent woman. I admire her, but I don't want to have her life. She is Ms. Complain-y pants getting buried from the minutiae of constant remodeling (if I had to make as many decisions in a day as she does I would complain too). She's a single mother with a couple of young kids and between that dynamic and her busy lifestyle she's only at her beach house once every other month or so. I mean, she certainly can afford it, so no big deal, right?
But the reality is that every asset adds a degree of time management constraint. So even when she's not at her beach house, even if she didn't visit it at all, she needs to still manage it or carry a relationship with a company that will manage it for her.
What I hear from her is "I have this lovely beach house.. but I really wish I had more time to enjoy my life"
And she recently invited me over to talk about my lifestyle because I talk a lot on social media about stoic, simple, frugal living. I like to talk about the books I read and I'm reading more books this year than ever before. I mean, I can see why she wants to talk to me about it, but I don't know how helpful I would really be. As far as I'm concerned the frugal living/FIRE community bloggers do a fine enough job, but maybe she just wants to get to know me more? That'd be nice. Like I said, I admire her. And maybe since I don't have jealousy issues over her beach house it improves the connection between us.
i am jealous of people that have a short commute/can work from home/can take more days off. im trying to figure out how to accomplish that for myself. now i am jealous of jonathanb because he can step away from his company and let it function without his daily involvement.
Haha I’m baffled by my own company sometimes. I worked my tail off the last two years, I spent so many sleepless nights thinking of how to turn things around, grow the business, anything I could imagine. By the end of two years I felt like I had just wasted my time with little to show for it. So I told my sales lady / top employee I’m either going to shut down the company or she needs to take over the day to day work so I can pursue my larger dreams (filmmaking, specifically screenwriting and directing). She agreed to take over and said she wanted to do it so I’d feel less frustrated. And somehow against any sort of logic despite working about 5 hours a week at the company, it’s a record year through August.
I think maybe the reality is our business is tougher to grow than I expected so my best bet is probably to keep expenses under control and maximize profits. It may not lead to a great income but it’s capable of sustaining very solid levels. If there’s some secret for our particular business in growing much larger, we certainly haven’t figured it out. I don’t feel too bad though, a major venture-capital funded company TurnHere partnered with Yellow Pages and entered our space many years ago trying to undercut us and had vastly more substantial resources in every respect but they only lasted a few years before folding - they figured out what we already knew lol which is that the key to success in our market is to keep costs exceedingly low. That’s why we work from home and stay lean. We couldn’t survive otherwise. Probably says something about the business, but oh well. It is what it is, I’m a mixture of proud and disappointed depending how I look at it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
