Indeed. But then I recall the time - a few months ago - when I saw a Bugatti Veyron in Bond Street here in London. Those guys - and it's usually guys - are millionaires for sure.
(Bond Street is famous for its jewellers, Sotheby's, etc.)
... and for luxury living. Luxury car launches are covered on the hn frontpage as well, e.g. that weird car whose windows Elon broke... probably increasing its value in the process.
Fascinating, thank you. What staggers me is how the very well-off people who can afford the Ferraris put up with this nonsense. In my book the whole point of being rich is the increased freedom which surely includes not complying to idiotic requirements (and I don't mean the social and legal norms here).
I guess an urge for status signalling is very hard to resist.
This is ridiculous. Depressed and filled with existential dread over seeing pictures of rich people on yachts, really? Do you feel that way every time you pass by a large house or see an expensive car on the road too?
I'm not the OP but I _love_ cars and for me being a millionaire would allow me to enjoy cars properly.
I don't want a garage of Ferraris, McLarens or Lamborghinis. I want a garage of hot hatches, track cars, Caterhams, Lotus', fast coupes: a nice collection of "affordable" fast cars that I grew up aspiring to own.
I really, really recommend reading The Millionaire Next Door (I have no affiliation with it. It's kinda old-school, but in no way out of date.).
Almost the entire book is about how luxury goods are NOT consumed by rich people, but by semi-struggling middle class people. (BMW's, Rolex, premium liquor, etc.) (Or at least people who have to go in to debt to consume these things.)
(It's also about how rich people DO live, choose to buy stuff, negotiate, etc.)
Everybody in this thread who's saying, "duh, cars aren't supposed to be an investment," are technically right. And everybody should indulge in things that really make them happy. If cars are your thing, go on, do your thing. It's all good.
But in the Millionaire Next Door, it goes over how cars are an especially precarious purchase for most people, as they just really eat up a lot of money over time. For most people, even non-luxury car purchases require a loan.
Cars might be more dangerous for us than say Rolexes, because most of us think "well either way I have to have a car, might as well get a _____."
Anyway, maybe this article wasn't the most persuasive case, but it is true. Most rich people don't have fancy cars, or probably fancy anything.
(In the Millionaire Next Door, it says we get confused by this because there are a famous outliers who show off their wealth, so we incorrectly associate wealth with luxury, when they're rarely related.)
I feel like I should add an obligatory comment here: cars are a very poor indicator of true wealth precisely because luxury is explicitly designed to convey the opposite.
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