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Comment by daotoad | Hacker News Reader

Level 0 is missing here. They want to know if they can afford rent AND food this month. They might be able to squeak by if nothing goes wrong. But something always does. Whether the 12 year old car needs an expensive repair or someone gets sick and misses work or even a parking ticket can leave them struggling to get by.

Also missing is level 4: I don't have to work to be at level 3 levels of comfort.

There's a tiny fraction who own significant wealth that are in a special level 5 or higher. "I don't care what anything costs."

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There's a tiny fraction who own significant wealth that are in a special level 5 or higher. "I don't care what anything costs."

I think there is a point where the costs become non-monetary.

Which is to say, there is a level up where the things you wish to do with your money require regulatory or social approval which can be quite a bit more "expensive" and onerous.

Here is an example:

In recent years, George Lucas wanted to build a third rural campus in Marin county[1] on a piece of ranch property that he already owned. Despite providing his own, fully staffed, private fire department[2], bequeathing a vast majority of the land to open space, and generally absorbing all possible costs (and, in my opinion, developing with a very high level of taste and restraint) he was denied at every turn and eventually had to give up on the project.

This was not due to lack of funds.

[1] The first two being Skywalker Ranch, home of Skywalker Sound and Big Rock Ranch, home of the new winery/retreat.

[2] Which also responds to public emergencies off the ranch.

The article is about level of wealth, so in a sense a level 0 means "does not qualify as wealthy". I think the scale is fine on the lower end but agree it could go "higher". Although your example of level 4 takes into account some sort of ROI, which is not present in any other level.

I don’t know... all these levels are over complicating a simple concept. The way I look at wealth is binary: “Can I stop working today and maintain a lifestyle that I am comfortable with indefinitely?” Most people, even those who consider themselves well-off, cannot say yes to that question. People like to try to gauge whether they are middle class or upper middle class or upper lower middle class... whatever. There is no real defining characteristic. At the end of the day, most of us are N missed paychecks away from insolvency. N may be large but unless it’s infinite, we are in the same bucket: our labor pays for our existence, not capital.

There are people who can just sit there collecting checks and their lifestyle is never in jeopardy, because of investment income. They’re the only ones I’d consider truly wealthy.

Yep, people in the "upper-middle class" delude themselves into thinking they are in some special transition zone between the serfs and the aristocrats. A grasshopper is much larger than an ant, but neither are worthy of notice next to a bear.

I strongly urge you to review that perspective on wealth.

First of all, the real fuck you money is enormous if you really want to forget about money problem altogether. You don't want to wonder if you can afford that expensive car and if it will impact your ability to buy an expensive car 10 years down the road. Second, you do not want to worry about your wealth in general. If you would just have it in a bank, then you definitely should. Inflation being just one of many things to consider. You could spread your investments all around the world and be doomed only in case of some world war or other catastrophe, but to do it well you need a lot of funds and a lot of effort.

So what you would really want is a cashflow. Your assets providing you comfortable enough paycheck each month without your wealth diminishing too much. Real estate investments seem like a pretty good option for that, although you probably still want to diversify not to depend on a single government. But without any effort on your side, optimistically, your income will only stay the same. Which is likely not to make your brain very happy because it is really good at adaptation.

You may think I'm overcomplicating it, you still can choose to work if you want to, it's the comfort that you don't have to and can continue without worrying about basic needs (whatever they may be for you). In that case though, if you are living in SF, there are so many places in the world where you can move with little to no savings and be set for life.

Would you want that though? Or do you prefer to be coding/creating or whatever it is that you are doing? Skillset also can kind of work like FU money. Knowing that at any point you can find a decent job and have money problem solved.

But my short point, apart from suggestion to reconsider the attitude yourself, which you can do much more through-fully that I can in a comment, is that you either are doing what you like - in which case keep doing it, especially in IT it is likely that you have the money problem solved, as long as your passionate about it - or you don't, in which case you can start doing something else and switch to the first scenario or just quit and live a slow life in some place where your money is worth a lot.

Number of people with FU money attitude who will actually achieve it, without lying to themselves, is infinitesimally small. Question to how many of them it will bring peace/happiness/satisfaction I leave unanswered.

I'd use as level 4: I don't care how much my (primary) house costs.

Beyond that there might be, "I don't care how much my second (third, etc.) house costs".

And of course, there's the level where someone asks, "how many houses do we own, again"?

There's a scene in an episode of the "Parks and Recreation" show where Peter Serafinowicz is playing "His Royal Excellence Lord Edgar Darby Covington, 14th Earl of Cornwall-Upon-Thames and 29th Baron of Hertfordshire". He and Andy (Chris Pratt's character) are standing in a courtyard and His Excellence is pointing out the buildings his family owns.

Andy: "So what else does your family own?"

Edgar Covington: "Well... have you heard of Scotland?"

Haha I remember that episode. 'I own that one... And that one... I own that one... Wait no, I don't.....'

level 3 includes your level 4, there is no "having to work or not" stipulation, so that's fine. One higher level of "I don't need to think about what anything costs", however, would be useful, if only to unpollute the numbers by taking out the folks who can walk into a marina office, buy a 30 million dollar yacht on the spot, and walk out still having roughly the same amount of money as they did before they walked in.

Practically speaking, the people in your level 0 category would respond to a financial setback by accumulating debt, generally via credit cards. This puts them below level 1 by definition. Being at level 1 means being wealthy, though obviously not level 2 or level 3 wealthy. I think this is clear from the article, especially the "no longer" in the level 1 definition.

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