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?

It reminds me a bit of the film Parasite, when the 'poor husband' tells his wife that the 'rich wife' is 'Rich, but nice'.

Whereupon 'poor wife' responds, 'She's not nice in spite of being rich. She's nice because she's rich'. So true. Wealth smooths the path, eliminates so many stresses and just makes life so much easier. We could all be 'nice' in such circumstances.

I have to say I agree about the time.ibe you’re mentioning being out of touch. Unless maybe you’ve done all your training in the US??

But I do think that having more money doesn’t make you happier and there is a ceiling after which it doesn’t matter. There has been quite a few studies on that and that ceiling is actually much lower than most people think (around £60k if my memory is right).
I know a couple of people who work with the very rich (much richer than the OP) and theyre all miserable, worried about ‘not being in the group of the super rich’ anymore etc….

I think after that, it’s a question of puttimg some meaning into your life.
Op seems to do that through work.
I think sometimes, I wish this would go towards giving back to society - the charitable work the way it was thought in the 19th century.

It's all relative. Low earner, high earner, super wealthy - everyone lives to their means. Each has a different set of worries.

I have worked for the super wealthy and it never makes them happy! So in response to the OP - as much as us mere ordinaries roll our eyes and say "Boo hoo, must be terrible", I'm inclined to agree!

I'd still like to be a million quid behind you though OP. I've had a surprise tax bill of £20k, do you do requests?

Really, so where did your seed money come from? Júnior doctors salaries are notoriously poor.

Where did you do your specialist training?

When did you have your children - that’s a lot to fit into 10 years…

I'm guessing you grew up pretty comfortably off as your sense of what it takes to be 'comfortable' and how being wealthy would compare to being non-wealthy feels quite out of touch reality. Also your reference to your mother having been poor at some point in the distant past before you were born indicates any material discomfort is pretty far in your family's distant past.

I'm also running the maths which is that to have an income of £1m a year from investments you must have had a substantial nest-egg to invest in the first place and some support from professionals in putting it in the right way (unless you have a genuine Midas touch in which case, quit medicine and become a fund manager - I'll invest!)

Feels like a case of a person born privileged who isn't acknowledging the privilege and denies it's important anyway because they'd be fine poor... like come on, really.

BTW I have actually been both. Wealthy is way, way better.

So how are you working as an Oncologist in the US? You said that you were already in a position to retire before you went to the US, so where does that fit into the timeline?

US stocks have grown hugely and many people in the US are very home focused. That said, the maths doesn’t look right to me either.

There has been quite a few studies on that and that ceiling is actually much lower than most people think (around £60k if my memory is right).

My recollection is that it was somewhat higher, but there have likely been different studies.

Even so, your figure is about twice the average annual salary. So the vast majority of people will never come close to earning that much.

I think sometimes, I wish this would go towards giving back to society - the charitable work the way it was thought in the 19th century.

No way. Making philanthropy a rich man's game meant governments didn't have to take the responsibility for looking after society. It also allowed said rich men much greater control of society. A very Protestant, 19th century way of thinking. There are still elements of this in the contemporary United States. No thanks.

@ForLoudBrickMember I've sent you a message, hope you don't mind. Hope it's not too cheeky of me.

I was wondering this too. I assumed start up?

So quit if its not all its cracked up to be.

The difference in everything you say is choice. You have the choice to be in the situation you are in.

Big house - Sell it and live in a smaller house
Big pressure - Quit. You dont need to work another day of your life
No time - Quit
No children - Quit - make lots of babies
Blah blah blah blah blah.

Every single thing you say is not the bed of roses people think it is. Its all through your own choice process.

You could walk away from the life you lead now at any point and by a few simple choices be happy for the rest of your life.

In many collectivist societies or indigenous cultures, social safety nets rely on family, clan, or village support rather than individual bank accounts. When people know their community will share food and shelter in times of need, the personal drive to hoard individual financial security decreases.

I took ‘income’ to mean growth and not purely dividends.

My investments grew by about that last year and we don’t have 10’sM

So about £1M of your yearly income comes from investments? So you could give your work tomorrow and still have a yearly income of £1M. The majority of people will take most of their working life to earn that kind of money. If you hate your lifestyle so much then work out what you want to change and change it. You can afford to. But I suspect you are too driven to really be happy doing that.

In the past I’ve had to choose between sanitary protection and food for the kids because I couldn’t afford both. I have a science degree and am far from stupid but unfortunately mental health difficulties have prevented me from fulfilling my potential. How insensitive to come on here acting all naive about how being incredibly wealthy (not even just comfortable) feels overrated.

I’ll join the queue for your handouts seeing as your money is so abhorrent to you.

Your issues aren't because you are wealthy though.

You could have sacrificed everything and not been successful/wealthy.

• The standards are very high which drives up cost. The average American would have a mental break down in an NHS hospital.

The average American cannot afford healthcare, therefore they would be grateful if they were in the UK and was able to use the NHS.

• All the top jobs here pay a lot more. You just wouldn’t be able to get anyone intelligent, hard working etc to do the job if the pay was the same as in the UK.

There are lots of intelligent people in the UK - what are you trying to say here?

I know - I'd choose the wealthy over true poor for sure (but luckily I'm in the higher normal bracket) but what I suppose Ive seen is that unless it's been handed to you, that level of wealth isn't attractive if you're having to work on you wedding day/sacrificing seeing your kids grow up. What's the point if you're not enjoying it more often than not?

They could retire tomorrow - they have more than enough in my eyes, but they won't - it's like it locks you in to this lifestyle?

But the true luxury I think is lost on very wealthy people sometimes (like OP) is options. Poor people rarely have options, OP can drop it all and live on the 1M income from investments. But I imagine that isn't an attractive option for them and they have lost a bit of a grasp on reality and empathy for those without so much "Mum was completely broke as a child and even that would’ve been fine if she didn’t make brain dead decisions constantly."

I’m not wealthy, but I AM better off than I was when young. The big downside to having been poor and then escaping it is that you live in fear of returning to where you began. I grew up on a horrible council estate in the 1980s. I hated it. In fact, II still have nightmares in which I have to go back there and live.

My main memory is of ugliness - ugly accents, ugly voices, ugly jokes, ugly clothes, ugly minds. As a consequence, I am a fanatical believer in art and beauty and the ‘life of the mind’. I took my children to art galleries and museums and I read to them every night (the Narnia books, Roald Dahl, The Wind in the Willows etc). I also scraped together enough to send them to private schools, and would do so again. I tried to surround them with beauty and peace as kids because I was surrounded by ugliness and noise - by The Sun newspaper and empty vodka bottles and constant shouting and fighting.

This is why I loathe the way the left romanticise working class life. The people I lived around weren’t ‘noble’, ‘dignified’ working men. There were some awesome people on that estate - really wonderful human beings. But there were also countless lazy, ignorant, violent, entitled, self-pitying s*umbags who should never have been allowed to raise children.

Couldn't you have stayed in the UK? Do we have a surplus of oncologists?

Working generic min wage jobs, clinical trials and flogging shite online while too young to get a job.

Honestly I can’t be bothered with this anymore given the comments I’m getting but if you must know;

Started investing at 18 hit £1 mil at 25 (obviously a super rare outcome), initial money coming from min wage jobs, student loan, under table work when under 16 and flogging (legal) stuff online.

I finished med school slightly earlier took some time off, got bored very rapidly. Did the exams for the states during time off, got some us us clinical experience during time off, applied during foundation program then left when I got an offer, started in USA age 26 on j1 visa, finished IM age 29, finished fellowship age 32, DC age 32 and 34, made partner age 34, applying for GC currently.

Yes so to have made a million as a one off? If say, you invested £100k and they grew tenfold you could make a million, sure. But the OP is referring to a million annual income from investments. This could be dividends on shares I guess - but to make a million a year in dividends based on regular listed stocks you'd have to own around £90m worth (dividends c.1%). I tell ya it would take a long long time to build up £90m worth of shares on an NHS salary :-)

But maybe the investments are property? £1m a year would be a huge portfolio.

Or a friend did a tech start up and they provided some seed capital and the company has been wildly successful?

The maths is odd.

Yes but the training, pay, lifestyle etc is very poor.

You could always come back and work for free, you got enough money.

but it sounds like you don't like all the money? And if you have great investments coming in, surely you can afford to live and work in the UK again?