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Comment by drivebyhooting | Hacker News Reader

As a wealthy American with a massive spending problem, I’ll say there’s diminishing returns. You can spend a huge sum on organic groceries, and ski lift tickets. Is it 100x better than my former WoW subscription and $10 university food? Not really.

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I think it depends on how you describe "wealthy". The life of someone who makes $200k a year isn't hugely different from someone who makes $50k. You still have to drive yourself to work and sit in rush hour traffic with every other peasant, for example.

When I think about wealth and quality of life, I'm usually trying to eliminate the mundane in my personal life without even thinking of the "cost". I can afford healthcare, and car maintenance.....but I'm not at a level where I can keep a personal assistant on-call 24/7 to sort through my mail and then go buy groceries even if I want them at 2am or something. It's interesting you mentioned spending a "huge sum" on organic groceries....I think I eat decently well but I live in Japan where adequate-quality food in adequate portions doesn't bust your wallet, especially if you have a USD income.

Until I can just tell someone "I have identified a problem. Make it go away, these are your restraints and constraints in finding a solution." I will still consider myself a peasant, no matter how much grass-fed beef or how many Swiss watches (just bought my first... a used limited-edition Edox) I can afford.

>I think it depends on how you describe "wealthy". The life of someone who makes $200k a year isn't hugely different from someone who makes $50k. You still have to drive yourself to work and sit in rush hour traffic with every other peasant, for example.

One of the biggest differences between those salary levels is the housing they enable. 200k salary will allow for owning a home in most places (in the US, at least), while 50k will not. From there flows a lot of other things, like crime/safety, schools (if you have kids), etc, and even can improve your example: 200k can get you a place closer to work with a shorter commute, even if some of it still is spent in rush hour.

Being able to afford healthy food is definitely 100x better.

Healthy food is not as expensive as people claim. At least the average person can afford fruits and vegetables and staples they can cook. Most of our health problems are from overeating and eating a high amount of junk and sugar, not from being unable to buy everything at Whole Foods.

Being able to fly international in Business Class for annual vacations should you choose to is a choice many would consider 100x better than $10 University food.

Sure. I didn’t make my point clear. 100x expense doesn’t mean 100x utility. There are a lot of “consultants” in HCOL cities grifting from high earners.

I had a baby proofer try to charge me 4 grand for a handful of outlets and corner pads.

That's not grifting. The baby proofer asked a high price. You declined. No one was conned.

Baby proofer is a job that people hire for??

yah, rich people are extremely stupid in ways that doesn't really hurt them because it's a small portion of their income. How jimbo might do something stupid and spend 10% of his disposable income on scratchers trying to get rich, rich people do the same, it's just 10 % of their income is a large number and they are usually chasing convenience or experience rather than riches.

As a fellow (?) American who does not have fuck you money, but also does not have to work anymore, I can see how 100x wealth could make my life 100x better if played right. And I am not talking about ski lift tickets vs WoW subscription or organic food vs ramen, which really have trivial differences in value.

> who does not have fuck you money, but also does not have to work anymore

I don’t understand how those can both be true. Having enough money that you don’t need to work anymore is pretty much the definition of having ‘fuck you’ money.

I guess I meant "fuck everyone" money, my mistake.

whats your vibe feedback on "subscription/escrow approach to angel investing" ?

A 4-$-figure subscription goes into a escrow pool, and disciplines you into reducing other expenditures

you can make periodic invest/decline/accumulate decisions from the pool in various funding rounds

Just curious: what do you mean by "massive spending problem"?

Probably lifestyle inflation. For tech bros it might be buying a $4000 workstation to "play with llama/stable diffusion". For a normie it might be spending $100k on a luxury SUV/pickup.

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