<p>Well... "rich"-ness isn't just how much money you have sitting in your bank account. Possessions do count as wealth. If you have $100,000 worth of merchandise but $5 in your bank account, you're richer than the person with $0 worth of merchandise and $10 in his/her bank account. </p>
<p>Household or individual income is what measures richness; richness is purchasing power.</p>
<p>They really don't bring that much nicer of stuff to school, even if they do. Between me and my roommate, both kids on scholarship at expensive LAC, we had the room with probably the most stuff on our floor that everyone always liked to hang out at, but most of the stuff we had bought ourselves with our own hard-earned money. It wasn't anything special (Xbox, futon, HDTV, etc.) but we crammed more in our room than other people did in theirs.</p>
<p>Probably the biggest sign at my school is dress. It seems that everyone who has money at my school (which is a lot) wears brands such as Lacoste or Vineyard Vines. Then there is vehicles. Probably the most common brands of car on campus are Mercedes and BMW.</p>
<p>But everyone commenting about how not rich people try to act rich are correct for some people. I guess at my school, though, the trend is that if you dress rich you actually are rich. There are "posers," but not many likely because of the exorbitant tuition prices.</p>
<p>old money vs. new money...</p>
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Well... "rich"-ness isn't just how much money you have sitting in your bank account. Possessions do count as wealth.
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<p>Well not really. Most "possessions" have little actual value. They might mean sometime to the owner, but financially they're generally worth only a tiny fraction of the original purchase price if anything at all. If you have a house full of priceless paintings then you could count that as part of wealth and property can be counted as wealth, but most other possessions... no. </p>
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If you have $100,000 worth of merchandise but $5 in your bank account, you're richer than the person with $0 worth of merchandise and $10 in his/her bank account.(especially those fancy cars) deprecate in real value at lightening fast rates.
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<p>Again it's not really so simple. That $100,000 worth of merchandise may only actually now be worth $20,000 or even much much less. At the end of the day it's only the liquid assets that really count. A pile full of stuff isn't very liquid in terms of CURRENT wealth (e.g. how wealthy are you now that you wasted all your money on that stuff). Also, if one's in debt up to their eyeballs to afford all that fancy stuff (as many of these folks who look "rich" are), then they're most certainly not rich... just vain and financially stupid.</p>
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Household or individual income is what measures richness; richness is purchasing power.
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No. Wealth is measured by assets not income. Apart from a few special purchases (e.g. property) most money that is spent essentially just disappears into thin air. You spend $200 on a fancy pair of jeans that, the second you walk out of the store, is now only worth $30. In that split second $170 of your assets just disappeared. It's called depreciation.</p>
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I've got an HDTV, a fridge, and plenty of clothes and shoes to go along with my laptop and my 4 gig MP3. [sarcasm]Must be rich. [/sarcasm]
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Yeah, that actually would make you pretty rich, believe it or not. Even though I attended a private, top 10 LAC, I only knew a few students that could afford to have HDTV, cable, and a fridge.</p>
<p>I work with a guy that owns a bunch of rental properties that he bought many years ago when prices were dirt cheap. He maintains the properties himself and is a stickler on keeping them in good shape. And he rents to many section 8 renters (public assistance). Many of his tenants live better than he does. He drives an old car, wears old clothes and he told me that he expects his kids to pay for their own educations. He could retire on the income of these properties or sell them and live off of that. He is a tireless high-tech worker and always strives to do more work with current resources. They guy is rich but you'd never know it from talking to him, looking at him or looking at his kids.</p>
<p>I have another millionaire friend. He lives in an ordinary house. He has two cars. One is a late 1980s Buick with a leaky gas tank. He has tried to fix it himself many times but he may have to give up on this car. He just got his other car, a 1990s Integra past inspection. He's tried to fix it himself for six months with a welding torch on the exhaust system and finally gave up and paid the shop to fix it. So now he's got a valid inspection sticker and doesn't have to worry about being pulled over. He's also a high-tech worker but you wouldn't know that he has a lot of assets from how he looks, dresses, the car he drives, the house he lives in or the places where he shops.</p>
<p>There are lots and lots of ordinary, average people with a lot of assets behind them but you wouldn't know it unless you got to know them well. And this is true of kids too. Don't judge a book by its cover.</p>
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Yeah, that actually would make you pretty rich, believe it or not.
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Hah, yeah, I thought the same thing. I am pretty well-off and I can't say I have those things. Must be priorities, I guess ;).</p>
<p>Saxonthebeach6</p>
<p>Their false sense of entitlement I really think you have this mixed up a false sense of entitlement is when you expect all bills to be footed by someone other then yourself and then think its not good enough.</p>
<p>Wikipedia:</p>
<h2>Entitlement is a guarantee of access to benefits because of rights, or by agreement through law. It can also refer, in a more casual sense to someone's belief that he/she is deserving of some particular reward or benefit.[1] It is often used as a negative term in popular parlance (i.e. a 'sense of entitlement'). The legal term, however, carries no value judgment: it simply denotes a right granted. In clinical psychology and psychiatry, an unrealistic, exaggerated, or rigidly held sense of entitlement may be considered a symptom of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.</h2>
<p>For those making fun of the rich: you may be in their shoes someday doing the exact same thing and with the exact same attitudes. I grew up in your typical single-parent household without resouces. My wife lived the poor life in a third-world country with a single-parent. Of course we worked hard to provide much better for our kids and that's what we're doing with a combination of hard-work and a lot of luck.</p>
<p>It's a little easier to have perspective if you've been on both sides of the tracks.</p>