Every large city has its share of fine homes and it is likely that many of them draw admiring and envious attention from people who'd love to live in them. No doubt many think, "If I only lived there, I could have more time to enjoy life, could be in better health, and would have fewer financial worries."
What is not seen, of course, is the amount of work and pressure that can be the price of such residences.
I often suspect that no small number of the owners of those large homes drive by more modest places and think, "If I only lived there, I could have more time to enjoy life, could be in better health, and would have fewer financial worries."
2 comments:
Quite well put. However much the rich seem to have more choices, the fact is they can become trapped by their wealth. That is, once you've lived a while in a 5,000 square foot home, you just can't move into a 1,500 square foot home easily. You also can't face your one time friends at the country club you had to stop going to because it was too expensive.
The social pressures are real the rich face, and it often leads them to keep up appearences and live quite beyond their real means, leading to ultimate financial and emotional ruin. I know a one-time doctor who ruined his financial, marital, and mental health in just such a way.
Therefore, one should enter a change of standard of living with great care and caution. Keep in mind that one incease leads to another, such as buying a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood means you can't keep driving that old car, you must get a newer, bigger one. As such increases in lifestyle cascade, you find yourself always behind the eight ball, and finally trapped into a high stress job you hate just to keep up the life you've built for yourself.
As Charles Dickens said in David Copperfield, "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
Pawnking,
Thanks for your comments and the quote from Dickens. I especially like your points about the social pressures and the need to be cautious.
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