Rude question, huh? And who's going to say 'yes'? Maybe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Maybe anyone with a net worth of $100 million or more. But who of the rest of us? Not a lot.
But maybe a few more, if you follow me below the fold
I'm filling in for Sarahnity, who's off on vacation....
I don't have any money saving tips, I've got some philosophy.
Measuring income seems easy, at first: "How many dollars did you make?" that's income! Well, there are questions like pre-tax or after-tax; over time you have to account for inflation; individual vs. household is a biggie. Even bigger, though, is that $1 is not the same everywhere. An income of $50,000 per year in rural Iowa is going to buy more than the same income in NYC. Not to mention what it might be in some third world places. If you're trying to gather statistics on the world, you have to make some sort of compromise. One cutoff for poverty is $1 per day, which is poor anywhere
But we aren't gathering data on the whole world. We're discussing amongst ourselves.
So, how to measure it?
Well, needs vary. If you live in Minnesota, you have to have heat. In northern Florida, it's a nice thing, but you won't die without it. In Hawaii....what's heat? With some jobs, you need to have nice clothes. I go to work in jeans, I own one suit. Since I do statistical consulting, I need a computer. Maybe, for you, it's a luxury. Hard to measure.
One thing everyone needs is food. Every adult needs something like 2,000 calories a day (it varies, I know....that won't matter). Every adult also needs certain nutrients - protein, vitamins and what-not. 2,000 calories of bread a day won't do.
So, based on the world, here's a class meter:
Rich: You don't worry about the price of food. You can easily eat a healthy and varied diet. You may think about what you e.at, and you might think before buying, say, caviar or whatever (indeed, you might not buy it ever), but cost is usually not an issue. You sometimes eat out in nice restaurants, as well.
Upper middle: You can easily eat a varied and healthy diet, but many foods are luxuries, for occasional consumption, if that. Eating out is definitely for special occasions.
Middle: You don't eat out, you watch your food budget, but you're never really short of reasonably good food.
Lower middle: You have to scrimp and save, but, with effort, you can eat enough healthy food to get by, usually. You often have to give up something to get enough food, but that something is not a necessity.
Poor: You are frequently or always short of food. You may be starving. You are surely malnourished, and the reason is cost.
But there are other aspects of wealth, as well, that are even harder to measure. For want of a better word, I'll call this spiritual wealth, using 'spirit' in its widest sense, not necessarily anything remotely mystical or religious (although it might be). This sort of wealth: Laughs engendered, hugs received, love requited, joy spread, fear reduced, hate reduced, pain alleviated. Those are important, too. And when we look at being frugal, we need to balance money with other forms of wealth. There is a Yiddish saying:
Love is like butter: It goes well with bread
which I take to mean that you first need to attend to not starving. In the shtetls of Eastern Europe, starvation was a frequent companion and constant threat. But once we've covered basic needs, there are other needs. And we can be more frugal if we realize that more stuff is not a substitute for the other needs. You need to eat. But eating at a 5 star restaurant, while certainly enjoyable, is not a substitute for a hug.
Perhaps, in gaining a better appreciation of just how rich most Americans are, in material terms, we can better understand how poor many of us are, in terms of other things? Perhaps, if we are more frugal, materially, we can be more spendthrift, spiritually? Perhaps if we realize, with the Taoists, that
He who has enough is rich
we can pursue other forms of wealth?
How to do this? Well, I used the word spiritually. I am an atheist, and like Gandhi's quote
To bring pleasure to a single human heart, by a single act, is more valuable than a thousand heads bowed in prayer
and Spider Robinson's
Pain shared is lessened, joy shared increased
I claim no high ground on this. I am not at all good at practicing what I have preached, above. Probably worse than many of you. But when I use the word "we", above, I explicitly mean it to include myself.