Goldmine Sachs wrote:
Actually, we don't know where they live. Nor do you know their wealth position or whether $400k is net after liability insurance.
You just find a way in your head to rationalize your life vs. someone who is potentially your neighbor. I hope it's your neighbor and you can stew for the next 25 years about the wasteful couple who happen to be saving more than you, donating more to charity than you, sending their kids to better schools, going on great vacations, driving nicer cars, and by virtue of the medical profession, commanding more respect in the community.
If you truly don't care you'll be satisfied enough not to vent on message boards.
Not saying everyone needs to have my life style. A guy making $400,000 could save 15% of his income and do quite well while still buying more expensive cars than me, a bigger house, better trips, etc. Good for him. I've heard all too often from doctors though that they are getting killed with liability insurance. I know two who have left treating patients to work for drug companies where they don't have such an expense. I know a third who left her practice to be a medical reporter for the local news station for the same reason. Now, to answer your other assertions as only I can:
1) Someone else deduced that based on his salary that they lived in a more expensive area. Seemed reasonable to me that it's true, and we've not heard a denial.
2) I make enough money to buy pretty much any "normal" luxury car out there, but I choose not to. I don't value cars other than the transportation, reliability, and safety they can provide. My next door neighbor bought himself a Jaguar and had to sell it three years later because he couldn't afford it; never should have bought it to begin with. I'd much rather drive my 12-year-old reliable Saturn. Not envious of anyone else's car whatsoever.
3) Maybe they CAN dontate more to charity than I do, but if you count my church as charitable giving (which I do), and if you go on statistics, then it's unlikely they give more than I do. Good for them if they do though. The world needs more givers. Why would I be envious of someone who gives more than I do?
4) Regarding schools -- of course they need to be able to get into those better schools first, except that those with wealth have an easier time of getting in as even Ivy League schools now admit to taking a large number of students who come from wealth (so that they pay the full fee or that their families donate money for a new library, etc.) even if they don't measure up academically. Fact of the matter is that if my children are both accepted to Harvard or any other school of their choosing, not only will I have to pay less for that education (based on financial need), but because I've been so frugal with my spending, I can free up enough money to send them to the school of their choice even if I have to pay full tuition. Easily done with the combined incomes of my wife and me. Easily.
5) I don't work to command respect in my community. If I want to do that, I just do yard work in the front yard with my shirt off. Anyone who blindly respects doctors (dermatologists at that) just because they are doctors is a fool, and I wouldn't want their respect anyway. "Oh, you're a dermatologist? So, you pop pimples for a living? NICE."
6) If they're doing all the wasteful spending that I think they will be doing, then they won't be going on any better vacations than I will as that's the only thing I will spend serious money on for my own enjoyment. Travel builds character. Also, when I'm still just 60 and retired, I can travel as often as I like. I've already built in the system to allow me to have more income as a retired person than I do as a working person. Gonna travel a lot more then while he's still working.
7) People can do whatever they want to with their lives. This young woman asked for opinions and I gave mine just as many others did. I happen to be passionate about saving and investing. I don't hate wasteful spenders or wish I had all those things they do. I don't understand why they spend as they do though, and my hope whenever I speak of saving and investing is that some just-out-of-college kid will read it and decide that the time is now to save and invest. If only just a few percent of his salary...gotta get in the habit early. If you wait until you're 40 to start saving for retirement then you're going to be working longer or having to save much much more at the end. Best to do it early so that you can save less at the end and have extra money to spend on fun things between the ages of 40 and retirement.