I don't want to make a lot of money. If I did I wouldn't be trading from home. OPM about put me on the looney farm. I don't want money, I want lifestyle, especially lifestyle that doesn't need customers. Nice car is not optional out where we live and nice means 4 wheel drive. And we don't call them cars. Cars are for salesmen. See, I don't need to impress anybody and I don't go anywhere I am not dressed for and if I'm not dressed for it then I don't want to go. I think it's the quality of the person you are taking clothes off of that matters more than the clothes you are taking off of them.
Expensive/fancy/so-called nice things are way overrated, in my opinion; You expect those things to magically transform you to everlasting Happiness and success overnight in a supernatural advantageous way. But of course, it never does...or the allure fades away rather quickly. I use to buy virtually all my stuff used, on eBay. -- But now, I just pickup whatever I need at Walmart w/o putting too much thought or planning/time into it (kind of like getting an instant market fill, in a highly liquid thing) Cheap things fill my need just as much as any 'quality' thing does. A $3,000 Rolex watch, and $500 name brand leather dress shoes...doesn't make me any happier than buying stuff that costs a small fraction of that. I believe most people buy stuff for wrong reasons...either due to marketing making you believe you need it, or trying to impress people you hate.
It's not all nice, some need to get out of the house, some need comradarie, some need OPM to trade. I'm not a people person. I like to be alone. Trading allows me to dress less fashionably, so that's a plus. I get very bored keeping up with fashion. But I do like very high quality everything including clothes and it is getting so frustrating that the brands I have bought for decades for the quality are now made in Asia with inferior materials or workmanship. They don't have tailors that make the kind of clothes I like and I have checked out some of those $700 bluejeans and that's not the solution. Many would gladly pay double or triple just to buy the old brands the way they were.
You are conflating quality with price. A $3,000 Rolex will tell time worse then a $25 Timex. My 2009 Honda Fit is undoubtedly more reliable then a 120-grand Porsche that my neighbor bought a year ago (except for picking up women, maybe). However, a $350 pair of Allen Edmonds dress shoes has lasted me over 8 years of daily wear and is still going strong (3 re-soles by now, 25-30 dollars at a local cobbler). Empirically, before that I was paying a $100 per pair (+/- 20) and they lasted about a year to two a pop. I see a definite improvement in IRR there The experience made me decide that quality trumps quantity. At the moment I own 4 items of general purpose footwear - a pair of dress shoes, a pair of running shoes, a pair of hiking shoes and a pair of winter hiking boots (both by Arc'teryx, virtually indestructible and yet comfortable).
Maybe if you go for sturdy brands, I used to buy and wear quite a few 1000$ shoes and 2000+ suits (most often on sale though, or after sales actually when living near the brand head office ). Higher price especially for non shoe clothing usually means more fragile cloth which get spoiled easily. Trendy suits and shoes also get unfashionable - about durability , living now in a place too hot to wear suits most of the time plus working from home, the house's pussy raising her kittens in the dressing didn't help the european collection's - quite a sad mess. 1000bucks shoes are far from eternal either, although they seem more kitten resistant.
Yeah, rich people tend to stick with their own kind. Yesterday I went to a rich neighborhood in New York City. Many people there wore designer clothes and Hermes handbags worth $25,000 or more. I don't think they want to show off. It is just common a lot of people are doing that in that community. They don't want their peers to look down at them. Some guy have inherited couple buildings in Manhattan from his deceased parents who died of car accident. He is in his twenties. He spends money like crazy. He doesn't work and doesn't go to school. He goes to clubs and bars almost everyday and travel a lot. I don't think he will go broke because these properties each year generate couple million dollars profit after expenses for him. He is all set for his whole life.
Fundamentally incorrect, it's the difference between "new money" to be rich yet live rich and "old money" to be rich yet look poor having the biggest stick when some moron comes along to make trouble. The psychological problem is not understanding the difference. You might want to read this given you're missing the core aspects of life http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-06/doug-casey-end-western-civilization "Unfortunately, they ignore that, and completely ignore that the way a person or a society becomes wealthy is by producing more than they consume and saving the difference. That difference, savings, is how you create capital. Without capital you’re reduced to subsistence, scratching at the earth with a stick." "Worse, it forces people to desperately put their money in all manner of idiotic speculations in an effort to stay ahead of inflation. They wind up chasing the bubbles the funny money creates." Almost 12,000 posts and still can't get that right, public forums are funny.