Comment by jerojero
2 months ago
Seems weird that you have to advice people that they should hide their success from people they're befriending.
Living a double life like that doesn't seem right to me. It has something to do, perhaps, with the type of people you're surrounding yourself with. If someone can't be friends with you without asking you for money why are you keeping such people around in the first place.
Using discretion or being modest isn't necessarily living a double life. I'm sure there are plenty of things you're not open about; that doesn't necessarily make you fake, does it?
I thought we were talking about friends? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the meaning of the word.
I wouldn't imagine being friends with someone and not trusting them with knowing how successful I am.
I think maybe, and this might be a cultural thing, a lot of people tend to use the word lightly. I simply wouldn't get to a stage of being friends with someone I am not able to trust in such a way that I have to hide how much money I have from them.
I think the issue here is that with retirement levels of money existing friendships can become strained.
If your high school friend earns 50k a year and you earn 100 then I mean sure, you have different toys, bigger house, whatever, but you're both existing in the same universe with similar constraints.
If your high school friend earns 50k a year and you suddenly have 60 million like the guy in the post then it's more of a test because your lifestyle can just differ hugely.
Some people can handle it but with others there will be an underlying resentment. There are lots of layers to it. They look for work - you look for suitable employees.
Having said that, in my experience there are only really a few major cut-offs, one between homeless/terminally skint and working, one between working and being able to live off of investment income, _maybe_ one at the sort of bodyguard required super famous level. Inside those it's just sort of like, yeah ok, your car/yacht/jet/whatever is better than mine, cool.
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My friends can accurately assess my net worth within a factor of +/- 5, but where exactly in that range isn't necessary for them to know. Even my closest friends probably can't reliably put it within +/- a factor of 2 (nor do they need to for any valid purpose).
I’ve never shared my specific financial details with any friend, before or after, so perhaps a different definition of what it means to be a friend. I haven’t bought a bunch of expensive crap that would give it away.
It’s not about living a double life. I don’t secretly blow cash on hookers and blow, I just live a pretty modest normal life and don’t talk about the details of my investments or means. Mainly I don’t have to worry about anything really.