【海外の反応】金持ちの本当の贅沢は「失敗できる余裕」だった件、深すぎてワロタ

The ability to make one mistake without it ruining your life

I work with bay area rich people and they have community that deeply extends their opportunities. If you wanted to pick up Burning Man tomorrow you can use your mate’s RV without charge. Want to make exhibits? Come to your colleague’s airplane hangar which he owns and runs as a metallurgy workshop. Never created a propane fueled dragon sculpture before? Your friend’s husband is bringing his team to make it for you. Here’s enough ketamine to keep you high all quarter thanks to your ai founder chum. Hated your dragon installation because you were in a dark k-hole and couldn’t communicate to the craftsman your vision? Your mate’s wife is the on the board of a commercial office association and they will buy it as public art giving you money and them a tax write off.

Edit: spelling and thank you for the awards!

Depends how rich we're talking about. I knew a billionaire once. He didn't carry a wallet. Nobody ever presented him with a bill for anything. It was all just taken care of by his people without a word. But if you were at the restaurant sitting at the next table over you wouldn't notice a thing.

Also all of his clothes, even the casual clothes, was custom made for him. Never had any branding on it.

This is more of an "upper middle class and higher" than straight up rich, but "Not having to budget".

I grew up (very) poor, and I'm reasonably well off now, and that has been one of the biggest differences.

You go to a fancy steakhouse. There's a burger dinner plate on the menu for 25 bucks. There's a steak for 95 bucks. You feel like a steak today. You just order the steak.

The friend who you invited along who isn't in the same socioeconomic class as you is looking at the burger plate wondering if they can get it cheaper if they order just the burger without the side, while sweating at how you're planning on splitting the bill.

This is a contrast that people born well off don't realize, and that even every day people may not consider just how big of a deal it is in term of cognitive load.

Time without constant pressure.

Not just free time, but the ability to make decisions without every choice being tied to survival, bills, or exhaustion. Being able to rest without guilt, turn down bad opportunities, solve problems quickly with money, or disappear for a while without your life collapsing.

A lot of wealthy people also buy convenience in ways most people barely notice. Things getting handled before they become stressful. Good healthcare fast. Quiet spaces. Reliable transportation. Access through connections instead of waiting.

From the outside it can look like “they just seem calmer,” but a big part of that calm comes from having buffers between themselves and everyday stress.

A gargantuan amount of social capital. And I'm not talking upper middle class, but really rich people. Their entire "work"-day consist of managing connections. Because if you need something in a world where everyone has functionally infinite money you need something else than money to get what you want.

This grants them a safety net that others don't have, because even if they go bankrupt they'll always have a friend with a third vacation home where they can stay until all the decade long lawsuits have been settled.

In my opinion this is where the line between working class(upper middle class if you want) and rich really is. No exact dollar amount, but at a safety net that exists outside of money.

Laundry service. I remember when I was a kid my mom paid some lady that hung out at the Laundromat to do our laundry for us. I mentioned that to a teacher or something and they assumed we were rich. We weren't, not even close. It was literally some trailer park lady that set up shop and did people's laundry for like $5. But looking back as an adult that's definitely rich people behavior, especially if it includes pick-up and drop off.

The gift of preventative maintenance

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett wrote a book called The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class. She suggested that Inconspicuous Consumption (as opposed to conspicuous consumption we all learned about in school) is the biggest one.

Money spent on stuff like education, personal services, health and longevity activities. And as others have said, a lot of money affords the possibility of reducing or removing friction related to decisions, time, and outside pressures.

Quiet. Rich people live in places that are quiet (even if they are in the middle of a city, they are away from busy roads, have significant landscaping to dampen noise, etc.), have quiet appliances, sound proofing in their homes, exceptionally quiet cars. The only noises they hear are the ones that they want.