Ben Carlson

Where to begin?

The personal finance people would look at this and say, see, I told you, lifestyle creep.

These people, it doesn't matter what you make.

It's what you keep and what you spend.

But I also think that in a lot of ways, sentiment is completely broken these days.

And you have to watch what people do and not what they say.

And I think that the idea, the definition of what paycheck to paycheck actually means for people is totally distorted depending on how much money you have and how much money you earn.

Yes.

I also think that there is something in the financial media that's figured out if we put a stat out like this, the rage bait, we're going to get people really angry about it.

And I think that there's something to that where – They got us.

It's true.

And I also think that there's just this idea that –

I think social media has a big component of this.

The funny thing is, wealth inequality obviously is a problem for people.

The top 10% controls like 70% of the wealth in this country.

If you go back to the Gilded Age, like the early 1900s, the top 5% controlled like 90% of the money.

So it was, wealth inequality has always been a problem, but back then you didn't have like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt tweeting all day and showing their houses and showing their private jets.

And so I also think that the goalposts have shifted so much with people that they don't know how to answer these things correctly because social media has like opened the kimono for so many people that they don't really understand what wealth means to them.

Their relative basis of keeping up with the Joneses is so out of whack from what it was in the past.

I'm of the opinion that financial advisors love to say, like, just figure out what enough means for you, and then you'll be happy for the rest of your days.