Suddenly your $300k house/apartment is too small, and you aim for one that's 5-10 times more expensive.
Then your cars get more expensive.
You start looking at a summer home.
You get a couple of kids...and they turn out to be extremely expensive:
- Daycare
- Prep-schools
- Private tutors
- Prestigious Universities
Because you want to maximize their chances of success, and have planned their academic life for the next 15-20 years.
It all adds up. And since you're surrounded with peers that live the same lifestyle, you get conditioned that this is all normal.
Here's a personal example, and one that I never, EVER, thought I'd fall for:
I bought my first "real" suit after graduation, and paid $1000 for it. I felt like a real baller, but was also anxious about wearing it. What if I got stains on it, what if some douchebag with a cig bumped into me, what if, etc. I could afford it, sure, but it felt like A LOT of money for a piece of clothing.
Years later, and I'm buying suits 5-6-7 times more expensive. The old $1.5k ones don't feel right - the fabric isn't nice enough, the fit isn't as good, the small details are lacking.
Internally, I rationalize and convince myself that all these small differences are truly making the price (premium) worth it. And since I make good money, it doesn't mater.
But, what if I lost my income? Or had to settle with a "normal" job, making $45k a year? There's no way in hell I could afford spending 10% of my income on one thing. But at the same time, downgrading from luxury like that, and all the way down - it's not even like going from 3-ply to 1-ply TP, it's like going from 3-ply to newspaper.
And that's just for something as trivial as a men's suit. When I was a student, I didn't even own a suit - and had absolutely zero interest or care about wearing one. But then you get put in an environment, and ridiculous things start to get normalized.
I know people that swore to the shittiest of shit lite-beers, but now obsessively shop wine bottles worth tens of thousands. It doesn't happen overnight - but is rather a very gradual process.
Great comment. I'm still in school but I noticed how my lifestyle got slightly more expensive after I made some money through internships, or after I've been on vacation and enjoyed myself (and seen others enjoy themselves).
I used to think of myself as a very minimalist no-frivolous-spending kind of guy. I would do meticulous research on products to maximize the quality to price ratio (with strict upper bounds on price of course). Nowadays I just don't bother. I think you're right that the process is gradual. When a culture built around consumerism surrounds you, there is no choice but to become more consumerist.
There are apparently people who are able to maintain a frugal, minimalist and prudent lifestyle even when they're very rich, seeing from various stories and anecdotes. But yeah the moral of a lot of stories we hear is always to remind people constantly about how they should not lose themselves after they get rich. Says exactly how hard it really is for a large portion of people then.
Suddenly your $300k house/apartment is too small, and you aim for one that's 5-10 times more expensive.
Then your cars get more expensive.
You start looking at a summer home.
You get a couple of kids...and they turn out to be extremely expensive: - Daycare - Prep-schools - Private tutors - Prestigious Universities
Because you want to maximize their chances of success, and have planned their academic life for the next 15-20 years.
It all adds up. And since you're surrounded with peers that live the same lifestyle, you get conditioned that this is all normal.
Here's a personal example, and one that I never, EVER, thought I'd fall for:
I bought my first "real" suit after graduation, and paid $1000 for it. I felt like a real baller, but was also anxious about wearing it. What if I got stains on it, what if some douchebag with a cig bumped into me, what if, etc. I could afford it, sure, but it felt like A LOT of money for a piece of clothing.
Years later, and I'm buying suits 5-6-7 times more expensive. The old $1.5k ones don't feel right - the fabric isn't nice enough, the fit isn't as good, the small details are lacking.
Internally, I rationalize and convince myself that all these small differences are truly making the price (premium) worth it. And since I make good money, it doesn't mater.
But, what if I lost my income? Or had to settle with a "normal" job, making $45k a year? There's no way in hell I could afford spending 10% of my income on one thing. But at the same time, downgrading from luxury like that, and all the way down - it's not even like going from 3-ply to 1-ply TP, it's like going from 3-ply to newspaper.
And that's just for something as trivial as a men's suit. When I was a student, I didn't even own a suit - and had absolutely zero interest or care about wearing one. But then you get put in an environment, and ridiculous things start to get normalized.
I know people that swore to the shittiest of shit lite-beers, but now obsessively shop wine bottles worth tens of thousands. It doesn't happen overnight - but is rather a very gradual process.