Tacky question

[Rhea]

I honestly think it depends on how you define "wealth."

This.

DH and I were talking last night. He's just paid his tax bill and it was higher than expected. It'll be a lean couple of months for us and I said we were poor now. DH's response was to roll his eyes and open our fridge.

We live well above the poverty line and want for nothing. We have absolutely no debt. Our car and our educations are fully paid for. We don't have a mortgage, we still rent. I do own several nice pieces of jewellery.

In terms of the world, yes, I'm wealthy, ridiculously so. Compared to this forum, I'm probably the poor cousin with my little $2.5K wedding set. But wow, to have that much disposal income for a shiny thing on my finger! I'm rich! My fridge is very full. We don't need to move money to pay for our bills, including our smart phone bill or high speed internet.

I don't think I'll ever be in a position to own a 2+ carat diamond in a custom-made setting so not diamond forum wealthy perhaps. But wealthy all the same. I'm mostly here to watch and enjoy other's pretties.

 

[House Cat]

Not wealthy but content. Our only debt is our house. We buy everything with cash, even if that means we don't drive the sexiest cars or wear the best clothes. We save for big purchases. Our kid's college educations are completely covered. We eat good food, have a bit in savings, and are working on our retirement. At some point, I would like to pay off our house, but we live in California and property values are very high. Sometimes I think that dream is unattainable.

But we aren't wealthy at all. I hope to save for my upgrade this year, but it seems that whenever I do, something always comes up!

 

[jordyonbass]

Obviously don't have a mortgage lol

Jordy,

It isn't obvious to me. I don't know what you mean. Do you have an entire house paid off (or more than one of them) or do you rent?

Deb

Oh I wish I had a house fully paid off, I'd consider myself a very wealthy guy in his late 20's in that case! I meant I don't have a mortgage as we rent our place, it's just too expensive to buy a house for us. We would need a $50-100k deposit and repayments would be nearly twice what we pay for rent as it is. Home buying in Australia is expensive and people throw away their hobbies, wages and social lives for their mortgages. We'd rather not do that at this point so we can enjoy ourselves.

 

[azstonie]

We paid off the house 5 years ago. We have no debt. We spend an insane amount of money on our two Westies (internist vet, canine dermatologist/allergist vet, rehab/PT canine therapist, orthopedic surgeon) because they count on us and we take that responsibility very, very seriously.

Our two biggest expenditures are my jewelry jones and the Westies.

No children.

My DH has just started up with cameras. THANK GOD because before that it was just me buying jewelry: DH: "How many rings can one woman WEAR?"

 

[diamondringlover]

not by a long shot...i dont live paycheck to paycheck anymore, but we just squeak by..we owe another 8 years on our mortgage and we just got a new to us 2011 pickup truck..so what ever little extra we had is now going to a truck payment. we go on vacation most years, this year we wont...hubby's job is a little iffy right now so we gotta watch all our spending in case he loses it...me and him make close to the same amount so we cant afford to lose half our income....there is very little left over for pretty sparkly things

 

[momhappy]

I agree that this depends entirely upon your definition of wealth. What's considered wealthy to one, may not be to another. There are so many variables. I would think that there are lots of different income levels on PS.

 

[Slickk]

Interesting topic I wanted to chime in what I tell my NYC suburb middle class students.

"If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world.

If you have money in the bank, your wallet, and some spare change you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy."

 

[katharath]

Interesting topic I wanted to chime in what I tell my NYC suburb middle class students.

"If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world.

If you have money in the bank, your wallet, and some spare change you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy."

I love this

 

[missy]

Interesting topic I wanted to chime in what I tell my NYC suburb middle class students.

"If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world.

If you have money in the bank, your wallet, and some spare change you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy."

I love this

Yes I love this too.

It's all relative isn't it. There will always be people who are richer than you and people who are poorer than you and being happy is being able to be truly appreciative and content with all you have in your life and not comparing yourself to others. The grass is not always greener.

 

[AprilBaby]

We have no mortgage, we have no debt, we can vacation several times a year. The kids are done college. We both work. We live, in a nice area. To the world we are wealthy. To the Donald trumps of the world we are not. It's all perspective.

 

[dk168]

I have a professional qualification, and work full time.

In 2006 I took out a 30-year mortgage to buy my current home when I was 41.

I live alone with no dependent except for a cat and a dog.

I would not consider myself as wealthy. Comfortable with no major monetary worries, yes - it helps that I have got rid of my non-priority debts except for the mortgage a year ago.

I have to plan/save up for major purchases or spendings. For instance, my trip to LA is being paid for in stages: flights first, hotels next, then non-jewellery spending money, then as big a pot as I can manage for jewellery purchases.

DK

 

[stracci2000]

All of you, who in the past have posted photos of your 2+ carat diamond purchases, and all your upgrades, are wealthy in my book. If you say you are not, perhaps you just dont realize it.

 

[NOYFB]

Wealthy? Ha ha! No. That being said, DH and I both have decent paying jobs and are child free...well, we have 2 cats, one with a lot of medical expenses right now. That pew calculator indicated that we were "upper middle class" but didn't take into account our location. If we had the same income where my sister lives, in rural OH, we'd be considered wealthy. But not here in Chicago. We are "comfortable" in that we don't worry about paying the bills and have a little bit extra for vacations and hobbies (mine: bling and interior design, his: guitars/recording gear). We have an underwater mortgage, I have a ton of student loan debt (thank you private grad school!) and we are working on paying off some credit card debt. We own 3 vehicles, but they are by no means new - one is 1996 and the other 2 are 2004.

Interesting question and responses.

 

[Dancing Fire]

I am mooching off my wife...

 

[december-fire]

I am mooching off my wife...

I wish I could help you out, Dancing Fire.

Unfortunately, my private jet just needed some engine work so now I'm broke.

 

[monarch64]

I think it's a great question, not terribly tacky. In fact I think if there were less of a hush-hush attitude towards talking about finances we would have fewer people in debt up to their ears and in poor financial health. What does Kenny say, "sunshine is the best disinfectant?" I think public school economics education should include discussion on how to deal with debt, good debt vs. bad debt, and all the things you need to know about money to prepare for the real world with a practical approach instead of expecting families with all their emotional money baggage to talk to their kids candidly and truthfully about it.

We are by no means wealthy--firmly middle class according to the Pew link. We do live in a LCOL area and don't have debt aside from a mortgage, but I took a major hit back in 2008 and have struggled to rebuild financially ever since. I learned a lot of hard lessons and can honestly say I have grown from the experience. I was fortunately young enough to start over and had family who helped me enough so that I could maintain some sense of normal although "normal" was nowhere near the lifestyle to which I had been accustomed either growing up or in my twenties. Sometimes I look back and am really thankful for the way things worked out, as much as they sucked at the time. It taught me a lot about who I was as a person, with and without money and all its material trappings. "Builds character!" Truly, it does.

While I would love to be financially well-off and feel like we never had to worry about money again, I also think that there is ALWAYS worry no matter one's income/state of wealth. For now I feel content with our ability to move things around if need be to afford mostly whatever we want within the constraints of our budget/income, and knowing our plan and talking about it often makes me feel secure--sometimes that feeling is better than having all the cash in the world.

Jewelry purchases are few and far between these days and that's ok. I loved diamonds/gemstones/jewelry as a child and will always have a deep appreciation for beautiful pieces whether I can afford them or not. The lovely treasures posted here and their lovely owners are what keeps me coming back to PS. I have really enjoyed watching trends evolve here and seeing so many other posters share their pretties and themselves over the years. I think we can all agree that we are wealthy in the sense of community we have here. If we could bottle that and sell it, we'd all be rich beyond any Kardashian's wildest dreams.

(Thanks for reading my book. Sheesh!) Edited to fix typos.

 

[wildcat03]

According to the Pew link, both my SO and I are upper income. However, I'm a high earner with a fair amount of student debt. I only just started really earning my income within the last 18 months. We live pretty conservatively. Our cars are paid off. My mortgage payment is perfectly acceptable based on my income. I have some disposable income but feel fairly guilty when I spend it. I have a 5 year plan to wipe out the student debt. Some of it I could take care of in more like 2-3 years (and may in fact do that). The rest of it will (hopefully!) be taken care of in June 2020. We both contribute the maximum allowed to retirement - that is our first financial priority.

I am hyper-aware that these are the good times and that fortunes and health can turn on a dime. My biggest fear is losing my job. My SO is self-employed, and although he generates a good income, I'm also aware of the unique challenges that poses. I always think that we are middle class, but whenever I say something like my my SO (who is in the finance field) reminds me that we are absolutely not and that we are really quite privileged. I like telling myself that I am middle class, though. I never want to get snobby or forget what it was like in medical school when I sat down mid-semester and did the math to figure out whether I could afford to actually drive to school for the rest of the semester and how much ramen I would have to eat to make that happen!

 

[momhappy]

All of you, who in the past have posted photos of your 2+ carat diamond purchases, and all your upgrades, are wealthy in my book. If you say you are not, perhaps you just dont realize it.

I don't think a 2+ carat diamond necessarily implies that someone is wealthy. Again, different people define wealth differently, which means that it's not about a lack of realization, it's about how one perceives wealth.

 

[momhappy]

I forgot to add that a 2 carat ring doesn't have to be expensive - I've seen large, poor quality diamonds and/or large cluster-ring styles that are not as costly, so not all 2 carat (or larger) rings are created equal.

 

[telephone89]

I forgot to add that a 2 carat ring doesn't have to be expensive - I've seen large, poor quality diamonds and/or large cluster-ring styles that are not as costly, so not all 2 carat (or larger) rings are created equal.

One thing I notice on other websites, is that people count the entire ctw of the ring, including the pave. So I've seen posts like "2ct ring!' and the center is 0.75 and has a pave shank and pave band. So, there's that too.

To me; all you americans who went through school without debt or paid for your kids college w/o debt are wealthy to me. Your post secondary is so expensive!

 

[ame]

I guess I don't consider "wealth" to be exactly monetary. And I think that's what a lot of the posts are boiling down to. I basically figure if you have a roof over your head, food in your belly, some semblance of your sanity, and people in your life that you care about, you're wealthy beyond words. Anything else--like employment, transportation, bling, a healthy savings--is icing.

 

[ksinger]

Wealthy can be defined several ways, but all definitions that aren't airy-fairy "how I see it" WAGS that include my entire personal situation plus my psychological state, involve real numbers and demographics, numbers that don't shift themselves to put me in a category I'm more comfortable with for emotional or ideological reasons, and that don't get into the minutiae of the cost of living in my zip code. It's pretty well documented that most Americans shy from calling themselves wealthy, or rich, or upper class, because our cultural mythos almost demands we see ourselves as classless even though we absolutely are not. So everyone claims the middle if they can. We don't want to say "rich" and who really wants to claim "poor", so middle is where everyone wants to fall.

If you look at page 7 in the following document, you can see some stats (a few years old but still) of household net worth by age group within quintile.

Median Household Net Worth, by Net Worth Quintiles and Age of the Householder: 2000 and 2011 - pg 7

https://www.census.gov/people/wealth/files/Wealth%20distribution%202000%20to%202011.pdf


By this measure, I am somewhere between the 4th and 5th quintile for my age group. Or another way of saying it, my net worth puts me probably in the 80-90th percentile of all households in the US. I'm shocked, seriously. But it doesn't matter how I came by it, or how I feel about it or that in spite of that fact, I worry that I might not be in that position tomorrow, right now my having a greater net worth than about 79% of the people in my age group, in this overall wealthy country, means I'm wealthy by just about any reasonable standard that doesn't rely primarily on emotion. Do I FEEL wealthy? No, but then I'm not sure how that is supposed to feel..

While I made some good choices over the years, this state of affairs is mostly not through my own efforts, intelligence, or general wonderfulness. I'm just damn lucky, and I know it.

 

[Matata]

Using Ksingers link as a guide, I'm above the 5th quartile for my age group. And I didn't get here based on luck but rather by refusing to play the hand I was dealt. Grew up poorer than dirt in a ghetto where my family was the poorest among the poor. Worked damn hard for a long time to ensure a different legacy. I'll never feel safe enough, secure enough but having grown up in an atmosphere so oppressed that I couldn't breathe due to ever present fear, I appreciate that the financial resources I now have allow me the luxury and time to take a breath.

 

[packrat]

I don't know how to figure it out but that's ok..I have a feeling it would be depressing to look at. Our *coughcough* "retirement plan's" were just started four years ago, we have no savings, the kids have no savings, no college fund, we still have quite a bit left on the house, and we owe on my vehicle and credit card. We do, however, have 2003 and a 199-something truck paid off. We have a business at home that *could* have the potential to be a nice gig. And I have my wedding set. Ha!

 

[stracci2000]

All of you, who in the past have posted photos of your 2+ carat diamond purchases, and all your upgrades, are wealthy in my book. If you say you are not, perhaps you just dont realize it.

I don't think a 2+ carat diamond necessarily implies that someone is wealthy. Again, different people define wealth differently, which means that it's not about a lack of realization, it's about how one perceives wealth.

Really, Momhappy?? What did yours cost?
Spending $10,000 or more on a bauble is decadent. If you have that kind of money to spend on a "pretty" then I would say that you are well above the poverty level.
The exception is if you inherited it, or found it on the sidewalk.

 

[sonnyjane]

All of you, who in the past have posted photos of your 2+ carat diamond purchases, and all your upgrades, are wealthy in my book. If you say you are not, perhaps you just dont realize it.

I don't think a 2+ carat diamond necessarily implies that someone is wealthy. Again, different people define wealth differently, which means that it's not about a lack of realization, it's about how one perceives wealth.

Really, Momhappy?? What did yours cost?
Spending $10,000 or more on a bauble is decadent. If you have that kind of money to spend on a "pretty" then I would say that you are well above the poverty level, and you probably have a housekeeper, too.
The exception is if you inherited it, or found it on the sidewalk.

Yikes, that's venomous. I don't know momhappy's story but just seeing someone with a 2ct. ring doesn't mean anything. Some people pay for things with credit cards - in other words, money they don't have. I'm more "wealthy" with zero debt and no ring than debt and a ring? I'm not implying that any of the people on PS spent money they didn't have (in fact my interpretation is that most of us are pretty responsible about money) but if I saw someone with a 2 carat ring I wouldn't assume they were rich with a "housekeeper" that's ridiculous.

 

[Laila619]

All of you, who in the past have posted photos of your 2+ carat diamond purchases, and all your upgrades, are wealthy in my book. If you say you are not, perhaps you just dont realize it.

A 2 carat ring is a very expensive purchase, so yes, I would assume either the couple is quite well-off, or the man has a high salary if he purchased and proposed with such a diamond.

 

[stracci2000]

Yes, Sonnyjane, my comment was ridiculous, that's why I edited it out.
But I still maintain that purchasing a large diamond certainly displays your economic status.
And 2+ diamonds shouldn't be trivialized. They are not commonly seen on hands where I live.

 

[sonnyjane]

Yes, Sonnyjane, my comment was ridiculous, that's why I edited it out.

I just priced out quality 2 carats. I have a one carat. We will say the difference between those two is $10,000 for argument's sake. I drive a Honda Civic that cost me $28,000. I could have gotten a KIA for $18,000 giving me enough to close that gap and get a 2 carat ring. It just depends on how people choose to allot their money. For a family of 4 to go to Disney World could easily be $4-$5,000 or more. I wouldn't consider a family that can afford to go to Disney twice in their lifetime "wealthy". They could be comfortable, but I wouldn't consider them wealthy. I guess what I'm saying is a 2 carat ring isn't an instant criteria of wealth for me. Someone with a 2 carat ring could have made sacrifices to purchase it because it was something they wanted. Yes it's a luxury item but it's not a private jet or a summer home in the Hamptons.

 

[ForteKitty]

Depends on where you bought the 2ct diamond. I bid and won (pretty much stole) a beautiful 1.99ct GIA fancy light yellow oec diamond for my husband's sister for $2400. I'd hate for people to judge her based on her diamond.