AIBU to think being wealthy is vastly overrated?

[ForLoudBrickMember]

I know this will sound really out of touch and I apologies in advance if I offend anyone, but I’ve been reflecting on my life recently and I truly think it is the most overrated thing on the planet. I’m 35, total pre tax income of about £2 million with half coming from working as a partner oncologist in the states and half coming from active investing. DH makes slightly more, total household income of about £5 mil. Now I’ve done it I can say the following;

1. It feels totally normal.
2. It is incredibly isolating
3. The pressure/difficulty is intense. Ours are still far too young for this and trying to avoid it but it’s very common the DC face intense pressure/stress.
4. So so much sacrifice. I left everything behind in the UK, put off DC until late, missed out on so much etc.
5. Being average isn’t much worse. People earning the average wage can still afford a comfortable house, decent car, food, occasional holiday etc. Mum was completely broke as a child and even that would’ve been fine if she didn’t make brain dead decisions constantly.

Yet the average person seems to believe it’s endless bliss, no stress and every rich person is a genius who never tires and never feels sad. AIBU?

Unicorn poop. Makes everything grow 🌈

Your ability to make £1m from minimum wage jobs, flogging shite and clinical trials, whilst you whist studying Medicine undoubtedly suggests entrepreneurial genius. None of the medics among my family and friends have managed anything like this - including those with sidelines in botox and private menopause prescribing (which seems to be the new route to financial security). I would love to hear more about your investment strategy please. What kind of shite flogging is it that you can do around a degree in Medicine makes you £1m?

If you are that good at investing, why the fuck are you living in the arse end of nowhere in the mid-West of the US, in an area you don't like, surrounded by poor people?

You won’t get much support here but I agree that it’s overrated - the hours DH works, constant travel and absence, the lack of availability when we needed him (SEN/MH issues or just during illness), intrusion of work on family life when he is home, his evolution into a workaholic over the last decade and esp since Covid because the company/staff expect 24/7/365 accessibility, his constant exhaustion, the pressure to be perfect when he is home etc means there is a price to be paid. I know it means our retirement is secure, and the kids should start adult life with no debt etc, but I have friends whose partners retired and were battling cancer etc within 6m of leaving work. It all seems a bit too little too late.

Doogie Howser x The Wolf of Wall Street reboot - Netflix Xmas 2026 blockbuster, let's go!

Money might not buy you happiness, but it does buy you choice, in a way that poor, or even 'average' people will never have.

You can choose to quit work and travel round the world, or do voluntary work, or just sit around the garden drinking sangria.

You can choose to send your children to the best schools

You can choose to eat out every night and never have to worry how to pay for food.

You can choose to have the best of everything, and never have to worry about how to pay for the basic bills.

Yes, your job might be stressful, but you can walk away from it if you choose, and live a more 'normal', less stressful life. It's your choice not to do that currently. Most people don't have these choices.

If you are facing health issues at any point, you can afford the best private healthcare. It might not help, but it makes the whole process less stressful.

Money doesn't guarantee happiness, but it's much easier to cope with life when you are rich, so happiness is more likely, or at the very least, stress and problems are easier to cope with.

The more I read the less plausible it sounds.

I'm sure this poster seems familiar.....

But if you had investments that brought in a million a year in income, all of that is a choice.

Don't get me wrong, I do a "big" job (at least by the standards of the community I live in), and I know how annoying all of the things you describe are. But once someone is wealthy enough to have that much income coming in, that's a choice, not a necessity to keep their family afloat. So if it's not a choice that is making you happy, you can change your lifestyle.

Just like I could change mine, if I felt having a more minimalist lifestyle and a lower stress job was a compromise I was happy to make. But I don't have millions in investments and I definitely don't have millions in passive income. So overall, I figure I would rather do my high stress job where overall I have a good amount of power and control over my working life, than a somewhat lower paid job which likely wouldn't give me that, or a much lower paid job which might give me a better work life balance but where the impact on my lifestyle would be too substantial.

Chat GPT doesn't do any thinking, it trawls the internet indiscriminately based using weighted pattern-matches on word/sentence association (next token) to probabilistically predict what you would most like to see appear on the screen next (RHLF) in order to maximise engagement. Its a chatbot combined with a slot machine, with the payout being 'expert knowledge beyond your wildest dreams'.

Except when the slot machine does finally pay out, they are usually real coins and not confidently asserted hallucinations. Secret: a lot of gen LLMs training data is Reddit

I tried LLMs for a few months and realised that I was spending a big chunk of time performing QA on the confident bilge it spewed out and when you challenge, it goes through the entire next-token process again, but keeps some of its early tripe as a reference point.

it's basically the digital equivalent of a once-smart conspiracy theorist with a recent head injury AND a drug problem who is stuck in perma-confabulation

I was able to retire before I even moved to the states. It is a trap and was very depressing, I felt like I had no purpose in life and wasn’t contributing anything to society

So find something that means that you are contributing to society - could be as simple as volunteering. I can totally understand that full time retirement would be depressing if you just stop being an active member of society, but it needn't be that way. When my dad took very early retirement, he spent his time travelling, and part time volunteering with a medical charity. He had a very happy life.

There's a huge gulf between stressful high paying job, and full, do-nothing retirement.

Probably the money not spent in Netflix, avocado toasts and take-away coffees.

I mean you could move back to the uk if you wanted to and do very part time work in similar job on the nhs and help everyone not just people with money..

or in the USA could you do something good like invest some of your money in some sort of charity to help poorer people with cancer and work for free to help people who normally couldn’t afford you?

theres so much good you could do with your money - but instead you are just moaning about it

if I had money like that I’d barely work and I’d be travelling the world and doing good things with the money - you could visit countries and volunteer and actually help people and do good op!

it’s so depressing listening to you tbh.

I do not know. But I would love to find out!😁

We are wealthy although nowhere near your level. It goes without saying that it makes life a lot easier. But it doesn't take away the ache in my heart that my ds is choosing the wrong path in life and there’s nothing I can do. When so many people are struggling it’s easy to say people with money have no worries. They have loads, just not money worries.

There's a similar thread to this every few months. Always a young poster with an improbable amount of money at an improbable age talking about how overrated it is.

First of all, on the very, very slim chances this isn't total bullshit, my mother is a doctor and left her lucrative practice (US) to work in a very low paid role at a clinic providing care to indigent and unhoused people. Surely that's an option?

Secondly, DH and I were partners in city law firms (he still is) and made quite a lot between us. I would never, ever say that the security it's been able to provide for us and our children, and the ability to contribute to charity, is overrated. I'm grateful every day that my children won't have any debt and will be securely housed and, when one of them was seriously ill, we were able to access absolute top notch medical care almost instantly, no waiting, no red tape, no worrying about whether we could afford it.

And if you're isolated, maybe you need to relocate? We live in central London and are surrounded by people with much more material wealth than we have.

But if you have a partner who loves his job, as worked hard all his life to achieve his role, it is HIS choice to work, not yours or your kids>

I don’t get a say in when or if he gives up his career, or when he retires. His career has evolved over 35 years. Unless you suggest I divorce him? And what would be the point then - I’d never see the man I love at all, then, would I? We’d both be alone when he retires?

It’s not all about money - which is what your reply focuses on - it’s about a career built over decades, an expertise in an industry/profession that few others have achieved, it’s about a person’s (my DH’s) self-actualisation and his commitment to a company and a team of people he has mentored, trained, helped grow into the amazing individual professionals they are. Often over decades. It’s about relationships built with those staff members so that you have supported them through bereavements, cancers, watched their children grow up in tandem with your own and congratulated them on Results day/Graduation Days because you know the struggles their children - or they as parents.- went through to get them there.

I, personally, have no power over asking him to walk away from that. I wouldn’t want to. It’s not about the money.

So, yes, being wealthy is over-rated.

ETA am obviously responding in terms of my own experience of ‘wealth’ not the OP’s dubious claims to it, via a passive income.

Very bluntly, you are your mother's daughter in making braindead decisions if you have the luxury of a very high passive income stream and are unable to build yourself a life you are at least really pretty happy with.

Have a word with yourself about what a happy, fulfilling life would actually look like for you. What would you need to do to feel useful? What would bring you daily joy? Brainstorm how to actively parent your children to insulate them from the pitfalls you've identified and make raising them a priority. Make plan. Execute plan.

There is nothing fundamental stopping you. Use the gumption and initiative you know very well that you have and sort yourself out.

Kindly.

It’s usually the most sycophantic voice in the room, even ‘he’ can’t find anything positive about the £1m investments in 7 years. Sort of my point.

I’m not buying it if the crazy computer doesn’t!

You sound depressed, and that is odd given the lifestyle and achievements you’ve had which many can only dream of. Is it that you’ve worked so hard and now achieved what you wanted, but it’s not giving you relief from negative thoughts. I’ve known a few high achievers like this.

Wealthy people are significantly more likely to overconsume and pollute, driven by both their daily lifestyles and their financial investments.

Having money doesn’t make you happy but it takes a lot of problems off the table and gives you a lot of choices. If you’re poor and trying not to be, you have to pour so much effort into clawing your way out and it’s so stressful and risky, whereas a rich person could use their time and energy more enjoyably even if they still work.

I think you need to redefine what you see as average standard of living op, not average amongst your peers / neighbours

Much better to be sobbing in luxury than to be sobbing in a tent. 🙄

Started investing at 18 hit £1 mil at 25 (obviously a super rare outcome)

If you invested £50k per year from income, you would need a CAGR of 25% over 7 years to hit £1million, before capital gains tax. I'm most interested in how you did this, unless you got insanely lucky with Bitcoin.

💩

I mean seriously.

Just save a couple of mill for a year, invest it and live off it - absolutely no need to keep working and "sacrificing".

I would be fucking delighted with that situation!