Hacker News Reader

Comment by saget | Hacker News Reader

How you dress is very important. Knowing enough about current events and having your own, thoughtful opinion about them. Knowing a number of books and using them in conversation. Rules on when to be blunt are different. Never order a burger at a restaurant. I could go on but it's a hard thing to summarize. (source: was middle/lower class, now have many 1% friends)

View on HN

What's wrong with burgers? Expensive restaurants often have really good burgers.

And Ikea has some really good furniture one could assemble themselves, too...

The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make. The only way to stay wealthy is to spend less than you make (and have your investments outpace inflation). One of the best ways to do that is to not inflate your lifestyle, like starting to think you're too good for things like putting together your furniture from Ikea.

> The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make.

This is hilariously wrong.

Over the long term, it is correct. I think you may be spending with investments.

Feel free to elaborate on why it's wrong. I don't mean spending less than you make at all times, and I don't mean "make" as in "earn at a wage-earning job", there are many more ways to make money than that. In the long term, your wealth is the money you've made (including capital gains), minus what you've spent.

You might say that's completely obvious, but it helps some people to be reminded of it.

It's not wrong, but think of it this way: if you short a stock, your downside exposure is unlimited because the price can go arbitrarily high, but your upside is finite because the stock can only go to zero. In the same way, you can only decrease your spending so much, even to zero, but you can increase your income by an unlimited amount.

Yep, you're right. For many people, though, increasing their income substantially is harder than decreasing their spending substantially, and also, many people are in the habit of increasing their spending when their earnings increase by, say, switching from Ikea to higher end furniture, or trading in that used Honda for a new Mercedes. For many people, it's so bad that they end up not saving any more, while putting themselves in a more precarious position if their income ever dried up.

"Wealthy" and "wealth" mean different things.

You also used the word "only".

Your sentence read as "you can't become rich other than just saving on expenses." Maybe you can see how that is a really weird thing to say.

Some of the wealthiest people I know are also the cheapest. The other week my gf's parents (very well off) refused to go to a clinic that their insurance didn't work at after their son cut off the tip of his finger. Took them and hour to find a place to go. It seemed absurd from my perspective to put a few hundred dollars in front of a medical emergency when you can afford a private plane, but I guess that's part of why they're rich.

If it is a few hundred dollars to stop the suffering sooner it sounds like OCD.

Heh at that point, I'd say they're being cheap to the point of not being practical. A slightly greater chance of restoring that finger to full use is worth a lot more than a few hundred bucks if you're not seriously low on money. But yeah, their cheapness probably has something to do with why they have so much money stored up.

If furniture can make or break you, we're talking about degrees of middle-class-ness, not wealth.

It's not just furniture, it's staying at nicer hotels, going to Bora Bora instead of Hawaii, buying a Mercedes instead of a Honda, buying a boat instead of renting one. Each thing on its own wouldn't break someone with some money, but it adds up. And you can keep ramping that up, especially if you get into something like private aviation.

I think it has to do with it being a finger food and having less "class" associated with it. It's not always an issue but I have definitely received judgment for ordering a burger

in America, it suggests an acclimation to fast food.

In America, everyone eats burgers and is acclimated to fast food.

This is not even remotely true. Were you joking?

Friend's father is thoroughly blue blooded and won't even eat fries with his fingers (will use a knife and fork)

I was told by a friend in sales that it was an sacking offence for an IBM salesman to be seen in a Mc Donald's

The burger at a nice restaurant is usually the token 'affordable' item.

That said, I'm a big fan of burgers and order them often. Screw what other people think.

>never order a burger at a restaurant

Whelp there goes my dreams of hanging with rich people

Au contraire, just stop by JG Melon on Manhattan's Upper East Side, longtime favorite burger joint of wealthy prep school types (and Mike Bloomberg).

oh wow.. brings back memories... back in the 90s use to go there for dinner on Thursday and then to Webster Hall for Psychedelic Thursdays (free entry with train badge/button)

They had good burgers and chef salad was good as well...

P. J. Clarke's is another one where you could get decent burgers.....

Great, I’m moving to Manhattan in a month!

The rules about books, food, and current events could just as well come from "how to fit in with graduate students in the humanities (and sometimes other disciplines)." Which might explain why I and my friends never "coded" as poor when I was in graduate school, even though I was technically living below the federal poverty line for a few years.

It's sort of a weird position and a good example for illustrating the distinction between social and economic standing. Grad school often feels like an extended exercise in class-passing.

The burger thing depends on context. I know some law firm partners who regularly get burgers at Peter Luger (popular steakhouse) with each other, but would never get a burger at a dinner with clients.

Never order a burger at a restaurant.

I've noticed that waiters/waitresses seem to treat me worse if I order a beer where I could've ordered wine. Especially when the cuisine is French or centered around steak.

I could see that. Luckily, craft brewing is getting so big that some places also have interesting beer selections presented almost like a wine list. Probably not French places though, or higher end steakhouses. :/

I mean, if you're into sour beers at all you can easily pay fine wine-like prices for beer.

Well, the hell with them. Beer is the better drink and making it requires more sophistication (it's definitely a more complicated process).

> Never order a burger at a restaurant.

... unless you are taking part in some 'whimsically proletarian' sort of event, or making some sort of 'statement'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com