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Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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All of these are defining "rich" relative to your expected level of spending, which is not how the general public think of the term. Someone who FIREs into a lower-middle class lifestyle which they need to clip coupons to maintain may be "rich" in some spiritually meaningful sense, but Joe Public is going to think of them as a bum.

The stupid think of rich as "currently enjoying a lifestyle above upper-middle-class". (Complicated in the US context by very high salaries and share options in some upper-middle class career fields such that a lot of upper-middle-class people can support a lifestyle above upper-middle class, particularly if they retire to a low COL area). The smart think of rich as "able to support an upper-middle-class lifestyle indefinitely without being subject to the grind and risk of an upper-middle-class career" - and so do most of the rich.

The other point is that if you define "upper-middle-class lifestyle" as a fixed income, then the gap between 2 and 4 is quite small - the difference in PV between "maintain upper-middle-class lifestyle for 40 more years" and "maintain upper-middle-class lifestyle in perpetuity" is small because of discounting. So the real difference between 2,3 and 4 is about the cost of grandchildren. 2 implies "upper-middle-class lifestyle for retired couple" whereas 3 (partially) and 4 (fully) implies "upper-middle-class lifestyle for family probably including private school fees".

So what do I think? Well if you have grandchildren who receive a lower-middle class upbringing, whether because you can't afford to help your kids or because you refuse to, then you failed at being rich. And if you don't have grandchildren, then Darwin has found you wanting and selected you out. If, as Gordon Gecko said, greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit, then I suppose you have failed at greed.

So to answer the original question, I think the ordinary English meaning of "rich" is most consistent with 3, but with the proviso that you can maintain an upper-middle-class lifestyle.