Money, status etc

roberty

It's stupid, and the sort of people it impresses are also stupid

RandallFlagg

ZenOvertone said:

Most of those cars are likely to be on finance of one sort or another (PCP or straight loan)!

^^ I just see big lumps of interest bearing debt driving around me and note that there are no car payments on my bank statement.

Which is the more satisfying experience? Driving to the local Asda in a luxury car knowing that I have a £350+ monthly payment going out, month in month out, on the never never, or, being completely debt free driving in my 7 year old bought and paid for, passed it's MOT and freshly serviced Citroen, seeing plenty of money money go into my pension each month bringing early retirement ever closer and seeing the cash fund to buy it's replacement in a few years build up?

I know the answer   

https://youtu.be/WbBVoe9Lr94

DrCornelius

I think before we queue up to proclaim to wearing sackcloth and sharing teabags despite being mortgage free ,  we need to recognise that there needs to be some balance .

As TTony mentioned , if we stopped buying ‘stuff’ the economy would grind to a halt and unemployment would go through the roof.

For me the key is , if you can’t afford it - don’t buy it . Quite a lot of us on here own expensive guitars and amps yet could easily gig with a Squier and a Peavey Bandit . I’d like to think no one is borrowing to buy a vintage Strat or a wood library PRS and as long as that’s not the case then good luck to them - they are buying something that brings them pleasure and there has to be an element of that to make life worth living imho.

My old man loves motorsport and is an ex engineer , loves engines and used to take them apart by the side of the road if his car had a problem. He lives in a fairly modest new build worth about £400k but drives a £80k car and every few years changes it for another one - pays for it outright and loses a shit load on trade in.

He does it because since a bad motorbike smash many years ago his mobility has got increasingly worse and now he can barely walk to the car from his front drive.  His ‘hobby’ is driving that car - it brings him a lot of joy and I’m really glad he feels able to do it.

RandallFlagg

Real wealth is giving generously.

When we were on holiday I stopped and gave a homeless man in Philadelphia some cash as everybody else was walking past him and told him to go get himself a hot meal and a drink and the grateful look in his eyes and heartfelt "thanks man, have a good day' was a truly rewarding experience.

It's something I want to do more of.

siremoon

Mrs Moon and I have a weakness for top end BMWs but that is nothing to do with impressing the neighbours, it's because we like them.  We know from an economic standpoint it makes no sense but that isn't really the point for something you like. 

The car is literally our only self-indulgence though.  We don't do fashion, "style", designer clothes, "name" trainers, stupidly expensive watches or jewellery.  We don't get the latest gadget just because it's there.  We use our mobiles until they break rather than get a new one every 5 minutes and apply the same philosophy to everything else.  Our main TV is 16 years old and we'll keep using it until it fails.  If I can fix something myself at reasonable cost then I do - for example our washing machine is 14 years old and I've changed the pump once and the motor brushes twice.

Sporky

Iamnobody said:

I’ve never been interested in projecting anything. 

I am very interested in projecting things. LED walls will take over most applications, but the relative lack of pixel gap in projected images, and the non-emmissive nature of the screens, have advantages in many applications. 

Sporky

I am a gazillionnaire many, many times over, but drive a 1976 Ford Fiesta with only one wheel and string for doors.. My clothes are little more than dirty dish rags stapled directly onto my body (secondhand staples, obvs). I live in a leaky bucket that used to have whimsical ducks on it, and my watch is naught but a dirty smudge on my wrist.

What do I win? 

ThePrettyDamned

Something society needs to address that will be extremely uncomfortable for all of us is that wealth doesn't buy rights. In fact, as we all know, the wealthy are indirectly responsible for an enormous proportion of damage to the world and probably thousands of human deaths per year. Not to mention the ongoing crisis of extinction.

Edited: "the wealthy" in the para above refers to basically the developed and rapidly developing world. Wealth disparity aside, I think we can agree that the UK is a wealthy place. 

Showing off for status is something I see others do, but no one I know particularly. There was one chap who loved to show off his tesla, and it was by far his worst quality. I think it's a bit different to pride. Pride in owning something seems very daft - like, it's not hard to own something. I am proud of my achievements at work and in my personal life because they were exceptionally complex to achieve. Buying a car is a piece of piss. 

(tongue in cheek) I use the car people drive in Cambridge as an indicator of intelligence. If you drive a smart car or tiny hatchback, maybe up to a Ford fiesta, you're pretty smart. The streets are tight, you can't go fast anywhere and there are cyclists and tourists everywhere you go. If you're driving a porsche cayenne or range rover sport you're a trend follower who doesn't understand how to make your journey easier, and your car is wasted in a tiny city, plus they smell bad and make everyone else's day worse. If you're driving a lambourghini through Cambridge, you probably enjoy creating traffic jams and wallowing in the misery of others because speed and efficiency are not concepts you know or care about, but loud exhaust go BRRRR. 

ThePrettyDamned

RandallFlagg said:

Real wealth is giving generously.

When we were on holiday I stopped gave a homeless man in Philadelphia some cash as everybody else was walking past him and told him to go get himself a hot meal and a drink and the grateful look in his eyes and heartfelt "thanks man, have a good day' was a truly rewarding experience.

It's something I want to do more of.

There is a lot of truth in this. You don't need a lot of money to give generously. Time is worth more than money to a lot of people, although I'd argue in the above instance perhaps that money went further than some time. 

CHRISB50

https://youtu.be/FSfRRBNPfFs

Sporky

It is one of my great regrets in life that I never developed the ability to read minds. So many people here are clearly capable of understanding exactly why others do what they do. The amazing thing is that almost invariably, these other people do what they do because they are inferior to the psychic observer.

stufisher

Really interesting discussion this one ... IMHO I think it's all about how we see ourselves and where we are in the hierarchy of needs

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Personally, my life is rich ... I have a loving wife, two healthy, happy sons, two fantastic granddaughters, no mortgage, I'm retired and live off my own pension (not yet at state pension age) and I'm debt free. 

Around 9 months ago I sold my 9 year old VW Golf because I don't need it ... I now drive a 25 year old VW T4 campervan because it better serves my purpose. I live in a three bed, mid-terrace in a one street village of 200-ish people and generally walk to the nearest town two miles away.

In August me and Mrs F went to Monaco to watch the Diamond League athletics and whilst it was good to see Monte Carlo it just left us stone cold. Wealth dripping out of every pore of every edifice but the place is soulless ... completely sterile. The roads were gridlocked with Ferraris, Lambos, Bentleys, Porsches, Range Rovers etc., etc. ... it is faster to walk than drive. So, I ask myself what is the point of it all? 

It has been said already but 'give and your life becomes richer' ... underneath all of the showy stuff I choose to believe that we're generally the same and in the grand scheme of things humans have just temporarily lost sight of what's truly important (the lower levels of the hierarchy).

Yes, I do indulge myself with guitars, I drink too much and I buy what I need when I need it but I just don't get the ostentatious/showy/image conscious thing ... totally weird to me  

RandallFlagg

DrCornelius said:

I think before we queue up to proclaim to wearing sackcloth and sharing teabags despite being mortgage free ,  we need to recognise that there needs to be some balance .

As TTony mentioned , if we stopped buying ‘stuff’ the economy would grind to a halt and unemployment would go through the roof.

I'm not suggesting people stop buying stuff, just buy what they can afford wit the money they have without being a slave to a lender and spending tomorrow's money today wherever it can be avoided. There is a reason the biggest, tallest most lavishly furnished buildings in most of the world's cities are financial institutions.

ThePrettyDamned

Sporky said:

It is one of my great regrets in life that I never developed the ability to read minds. So many people here are clearly capable of understanding exactly why others do what they do. The amazing thing is that almost invariably, these other people do what they do because they are inferior to the psychic observer.

If it wasn't clear, my tongue was firmly in cheek over my "intelligence" bit. Apologies if it wasn't - I'll make a wee edit to clarify. I don't actually think people who drive nice cars are lacking in intelligence. It is more about the irony that, the more expensive the car is, the more it tends to negatively affect traffic in the city, as the roads are so narrow. A larger car will often need to do a 3 point turn, holding up everyone else, and lambos are known to cause traffic jams along the fen causeway when it gets to the mini roundabouts. 

The bit of my post that was serious is the societal need to detach from materialism for the betterment of humankind, but as I mentioned, that will be an uncomfortable process to navigate and I'm not sure it's even possible. 

Sporky

No apology needed - I'm being at least as judgemental as everyone else. I think all of us have blind spots about how we view strangers. We get to see a moment of their behaviour, but nothing of their internal life. I remember a customer probably twenty years ago saying "the problem with young people these days is that they have no internal life". I asked him how he knew, and he got rather upset.

I don't disagree about materialism - new phones every year in particular, cars are more likely to move on to different owners.

UnclePsychosis

If you did a find/replace on this thread swapping the phrase "fancy car" for "expensive guitar" I suspect some people might start to feel a bit more uncomfortable with the conversation.

bertie

small  slightly relevant anecdote from  Caribbean cruise Mrs Bert and I went on back in the 90s. (ie 90% Americans and only a few Brits on board)

For some reason, probably more down to Mrs Bert than I - we got invited to sit at the captains table on "gala night"

of about 10 couples, pretty sure we were the only Brits out of all Americans..................  we sat down, shook hands with the "couples" nearest,   and to a man the very first thing they'd say is  "Hi,  what do you do?, how much do you make........?"   most of the conversation for the first 20 mins,  was completely cantered around money and what they had and where they "stood" in their community........................... for once,  I didnt say a great deal !!!  we actually won the cruise in a competition (or rather Mrs Bert did)   I think theyd have thrown us over board, or down in the bilges if they new what "commoners" they had at their table

Jo-to-po

ThePrettyDamned said:

Sporky said:

It is one of my great regrets in life that I never developed the ability to read minds. So many people here are clearly capable of understanding exactly why others do what they do. The amazing thing is that almost invariably, these other people do what they do because they are inferior to the psychic observer.

If it wasn't clear, my tongue was firmly in cheek over my "intelligence" bit. Apologies if it wasn't - I'll make a wee edit to clarify. I don't actually think people who drive nice cars are lacking in intelligence. It is more about the irony that, the more expensive the car is, the more it tends to negatively affect traffic in the city, as the roads are so narrow. A larger car will often need to do a 3 point turn, holding up everyone else, and lambos are known to cause traffic jams along the fen causeway when it gets to the mini roundabouts. 

The bit of my post that was serious is the societal need to detach from materialism for the betterment of humankind, but as I mentioned, that will be an uncomfortable process to navigate and I'm not sure it's even possible. 

I can’t drive down the fen causeway most days for all the Lamborghinis. They are without question the source of Cambridge’s traffic problems. 

monquixote

UnclePsychosis said:

If you did a find/replace on this thread swapping the phrase "fancy car" for "expensive guitar" I suspect some people might start to feel a bit more uncomfortable with the conversation.

Guitars I see slightly differently.

On several occasions I've bought a vintage guitar kept it for a six months or a year and then sold it again for basically what I paid for it. Other than strings and courier / petrol money it's pretty neutral behaviour. 

The trend for buying half a dozen Harley Bentons probably doesn't fall into this category.

Sporky

I think the condemnation of credit is a bit overworked too. A mortgage is generally seen as "noble" debt; why not a car on finance? Cars are jolly expensive these days. £x00 a month is a lot easier than £x0000 in one hit.

Two jobs ago I had a car allowance, which required me to have a car under 3 years old. I HPd the first one; the allowance covered the monthly payment, the mileage rate covered everything else. After three years it was still worth more than half the purchase price so I swamped it for another and paid even less per month. Plenty of people here would think I was a mug or a showoff for having a new car every three years in that period, but it was cheap and everything was in warranty.