To wish I was rich?

[antelopevalley]

Not mega-rich. But to own an ordinary house and have half a million in the bank rich.
I have no family beyond DP and the kids. It would be so lovely to have a really good safety net, and to choose not to work when life is tough.

Why do you want to know? You know that you aren’t about to do anything with it, you’ll just continue to underachieve and snipe at people who actually bothered to get out and try to do better.

that was in response to this comment.

Having so much money is a huge responsibility. That would be stressful in itself maintaing the wealth and building it as someone with no experience.

@antelopevalley I wish this all the time, we’re in crippling debt despite having on the face of it good jobs. I do remind myself all the time that I’m very lucky to be in a situation where our only problems are money related.

@Leavingthisblank Trust me I could cope with the responsibility.

My mother always said it's better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable but money is a very good antidote to misery.

I also think our lives and wants change as we move through them. I did the City career at an Investment bank from 21 to 35. At 35 I was absolutely burnt out and happy to be a SAHM for 8 years. At which time DH's career was beginning to take off but the reason I could be a SAHM was because I had my own house in London, my own money, and was able to support DH financially at a point in his career when the lackmof funds and room in a shared house had him on the brink of throwing in the towel. From the age of 27 dh has worked his socks off. He is a workaholic and that comes with its challenges. I was born with a silver spoon, dh probably had to share a plastic one!

We are both early 60s and I went back to work nearly 20 years ago and retrained. Now Director level in a quasi public sector organisation. I work about 50 hours pw (occasionally 60); DH now works about 40-50 hpw but has two hours travelling every day if he has to go in. I don't think I can keep up this pace much longer and DH certainly couldn't do the 70/80 hpw's he used to do.

DH could only work as he did in his 30s/40s/50s because I took on the entire mental, domestic and child related load. On a spreadsheet we probably both averaged 70 hours a week so it was fair in a way.

I wasn't academically clever, I didn't go to university, but I have a head for figures, can analyse facts quite quickly and am able to juggle plates and manage up and down. I am very very tired.

@Nidan2Sandan but having more money does not eliminate worries, you will have other things to worry about

😂😂😂

I can't decide if your posts are serious or piss takes

I’m not sure why this poster is getting so much stick. It isn’t an unachievable aspiration - I’d say every single one of the senior directors of my company is either in this position, or has the potential to be. (And therefore, by extension, many other people who do similar roles in similar industries.)

It isn’t easy, no; and it won’t have come without making sacrifices and no doubt very difficult decisions at times. And it isn’t achievable for everybody. But it is achievable, for more people than probably think it, if they really wanted to achieve it enough.

But the majority of people in reality choose a good work-life balance and a level of family and leisure time which limits their earning capacity, and ultimately would probably agree they prefer that to working 80-plus hour weeks and having a quarter of a million in the bank.

I know so many people from normal, working class backgrounds who are now wealthy, and all achieved it through working out which-high-paying career or trade they could possibly achieve, and then working towards it.

It’s generally taken a lot of preparation, then a huge amount of intelligent effort, but a great many have made it.

My husband goes on trips with a supercar owners’ club, and was surprised the first time he went to find out that 90% of other owners were not finance professionals; they were plumbers who’d branched out on their own with a few staff, or an academic who’d used his knowledge to get some consultancy work, or a regional manager for a supermarket who had worked their way up from a Saturday job.

If the sim is far more modest than they have achieved, which is for a nice house to be paid off, and £500k in a private pension fund or investments, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it can be achieved.

It's a lot more likely though.

That's simply not true

I have been really poor and really rich and I haven’t find any correlation between wealth and happiness.

@FemmeNatal It is very rare for people to move more than one class distinction up from their parents.
I come from a poverty background, underclass, rather than respectable working class. I have moved up to a respectable working class. You have no idea how hard it was for me to get here.
The idea of choosing well-paid jobs is a laugh when I am older with no internet when young and zero idea of what well-paying jobs were or how to get them. The wealthiest people I knew as a teenager were teachers and the GP.
But I would like life to be easier. It will not be, but I can still dream.

No it wouldn’t - take it from me there are some things that money just cannot buy

@DaphneeBridgerton Trust me it would. I have suffered a tragic bereavement. Life would be much easier if I did not have to be back at work within days to bring in the money.

People who make these comments really don't understand, they've bought into the 'if only you'd just work hard enough!!' shite

Why not? What do you know about the OP that makes you so sure that there’s no way for her to achieve it?

Why is class being brought into this? I thought that you were talking about earnings.

Literally any bad thing that happens is made easier with money. Everything.

But then how do you explain all the examples of those who’ve done exactly this, who’ve worked out a plan, and put it into effect?

If you don’t even try then of course it won’t happen, but plenty of people can and do become wealthy from poor beginnings.

We’re pretty comfortably off but £50k down on IVF and we can’t have kids. Money isn’t everything. You are very lucky too.

Oh and I have been both comfortable and poorest of the poor because I grew up from a young age being hungry, cold and often homeless and living in squalor (single parent, MH issues, chaotic benefits , Thatcher). I’d still choose being able to have kids over wealth.

I don't think I've ever tried to be rich. I work as little as I can get away with in a professional career. I'm about to turn 40 and seriously considering spending the next decade trying to make my bank balance look good. 😆

The only way to get that level of wealth without family money helping you is to run your own business. Even with a professional career you would struggle especially if you aren’t starting it straight fro uni.
The only people I know who are that well off have family money/ inheritance or have their own business ( nb not a side hustle, cupcake/ mlm./ crafting one).

@FemmeNatal it is very rare. Look at the stats.
Lots of people claim to be from a very poor background but are lying. Like Alan Sugar whose parents set him up by giving him thousands to buy and sell.
It is very difficult to really start from nothing. Most people do get some kind of a leg up and then play it down when they make money.