Ask HN: How to continue to be gracious about the good fortune of rich friends?

Everyone was jealous of the next level up. I was making 300k and my high school hometown friends were like "holy cow, you're so lucky this is amazing, you have your own apartment" meanwhile I was annoyed I couldn't keep up financially with my trust fund boyfriend who had $3 million a year to piss away with random trips to Bermuda. My CFO was jealous of the Principal who could take netjets and didn't have to fly first class everywhere. The NetJets guy was jealous of the billionaire principal who had his own jet. That billionaire was jealous of the main money dude who had family money inherited from the crusades. They all fought with their wives over private school tuition and horses. Everyone drank, did tons of drugs, had dramatic affairs and fought like cats and dogs with their families.

I left finance and went into healthcare and realized I'm pretty damn happy living a simple life. I kept a $1500 belt I bought from Henry Bendels that's incredibly ugly as a reminder of dumb decisions and having too much money to piss away on stupid crap!

Read Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones Book by Greg Campbell. Reading that made me realize how our planet has finite resources and I just I wanted to cleave the my own consumption habits so stopped needless shopping for "fun" and started being a stubborn bastard about driving my 12 year old Hyundai into the ground. It's not much but it's my own private rebellion against the gaping maw of endless consumerism.

Worship your family, friends, love ones, health, music, doing things that make you feel alive, shared experiences and nature over shiny toys and stuff that just sits around collecting dust and looking pretty.

At the end of the day, we're all the same food for worms anyways no matter our net worth. Enjoy your friendships, realize they probably have their own internal struggles and problems they're dealing with and try to be there for them in whatever way you can!

It may sound like pat advice, but -- maybe you need to start looking for new friends.

The kind who wouldn't think twice coming over to your "shit rental" (which would probably be considered quite rich, not to mention safe and clean in much of the world). Just to hang out with you, watch a movie maybe, and share whatever kind of meal you're able to whip up on your gas stove.

Life is to short to be spent in situations of any kind where you feel uncomfortable in your skin. Even if it's not directly the fault of the people you currently hang out with.

But a good rule of thumb is: if you don't feel comfortable inviting these people to your home - or even telling them where (and in what circumstances) you live -- it's probably best to start moving on.

(And perhaps to other countries where the income distribution is far less skewed, and people are far less hung up on relative wealth and status as they are in the U.S. -- at least for a few years or so, to get over the current anxiety you're facing, and start to feel human again. But that's a side topic).

Otherwise, find some new friends and stop torturing yourself.

I want them to know so they can make a conscious decision for themselves rather than unknowingly go down a path full of glass ceilings.

Edit: and a good influence pushing me into buying property a decade earlier certainly would have had massive effects on my life too.

Point is leverage your friends’ experience and influence, I’m sure they have a wealth of knowledge or can help you gain a step up (keyword: help, not give you a free ride). Others have said ‘don’t copy’ and I agree in some contexts, but my friends certainly have business gaps I can fill which are mutually beneficial.

It won't.

If they are happy, it's because they're internally happy. The riches are unrelated. I've met rich people who are very happy, and some who are alcoholics who can barely form a sentence.

    “We make ourselves miserable by first closing ourselves off from reality and then collecting this and that in an attempt to make ourselves happy by possessing happiness. But happiness is not something I have, it is something I myself want to be. Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over my body.” –Roger J. Corless (Not George Carlin)

Unless you're the richest person on Earth, there will always be someone with more money than you. Likewise, unless you're the poorest person on Earth, there will always be someone with less money than you.

So, if you find yourself between these two extremes, a change in viewpoint is the only thing that can get you out of this funk. I have several friends (no joke) who have become billionaires over the last few years. I've slipped into periods of jealousy, but it's taken some mulling to realize that I only want what I think they have. And what is that, exactly? More "stuff"? A bigger house? How are things going to really make me feel happy? Fact is, they won't, and they can't.

I can feed myself and my family. I am healthy (now, at least--for many years, I was not). I have shelter. I have friends who I care about and who care about me. If you have these things, you have wealth--or at least enough of it to be happy.

I suppose I'm on the opposite end of you, and I overcompensate by never inviting people to my house. I go to other people's houses, including and especially those with "shit rentals".

I find myself somewhat guilty of my own lavishness (even though really it's not that lavish).

I don't really have advice, other than to say that if they're your friends you should actually just tell them it makes you ashamed and see their response. You don't want their pity necessarily, but I think it's important that your friends know how you feel.

As they say luck is when opportunity meets preparedness. So make your own luck.

If your rental house has what you need, keeps you warm and dry and lets you cook your meals in it, why be ashamed of it? Unless you're Elon Musk (or Vladmir Putin or Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum), someone will always have more money than you.

If you decide the game is about being the richest person, 99.999999987% of people will lose that game. If you decide that the game is about enjoying life, friendships, and similar, over 90% of the people can win that game.

Context: I'm in the "millionaire next door" category, probably like plenty of middle-aged tech folks. Our "nice" car is a 2015 LEAF. The other one is a 2005 Honda CR-V. Somewhere in the top 5% household income, low single-digit millionaire, but exposed to a lot of people who have made tres-commas money, have their own jets, or whatever.

Either suck it up and utilize your anger and envy as impetus for changing your situation into one that you're satisfied with, detach your own self worth from that of your friends or continue to be a baby and keep crying in your slum.

my mother came from a family of cotton pickers, I got a leg up and my children will be getting an even bigger leg up.

This might seem unnecessarily harsh but crying will get you nowhere.

Like you, I had a really good and genuine relationship with those people, some were also looking up to me for career inspiration and advice (I am a senior technical leader with patents, great professional achievements, …). One IPO that put them in the $20m, out of complete luck (they were hired as simple individual contributors on “plain” projects) changed everything.

One time, after the IPO and a few quarters of the stock rising, I was told by one of them: “why do you work so hard rather than choosing a good pre IPO company and stay at the bottom and chill and retire in a couple years?”

No shit. That was the last straw. I cut all those people off my life because it was too painful to witness their change in lifestyle and attitude, and how they kept subtly rubbing it in my face at every social event, implying that their course of events was all part of a smart master plan, rather than 99% dumb luck.

I am sad for losing those connections and I have wonderful memories of the time together (vacations, “bro” trips, …), but overall I am happy about this choice, to me it’s as if the people they once were effectively died as the IPO happened.

I have done financially very well but it’s not comparable to their level, and the effort and sacrifices required from my side was easily 10X theirs. I know this should be obvious in adulthood, but life is not fair at all. I am also aware of how privileged my position is (for now), compared to the people dying of cancer in their 30s, so I don’t let it affect me too much.

One tool they advise using is negative visualization. Take a minute right now and imagine how things could be worse. Your apartment could have a leak in the roof. You could have to share it with a roommate who steals from you. You could be living on the street.

This is not to say you have no problems. Not at all! But sitting with thoughts about how your life could be worse might help you be happier with your situation. You say you're "at the bottom with nothing". It's easy to think about your life only looking up and seeing how far you have to go; harder to look down and see how far you have come.

Additionally, imagine what the "stunning house" costs them! Not money, specifically, because they have it. But how much must they worry about being broken into. They have to deal with fixing everything that could go wrong, while you can call your landlord and have them fix it -- or even move out!

Be careful not to become too attached to things you can't control. If their expensive house burns down tomorrow, would they be too used to it to rent a smaller place? That's attachment that would make it harder to live.

Jealousy, like every other emotion is part of being a human and the sooner you come into terms with that, the better it will be.

I think you are holding yourself to an unattainable moral standard. If spending time with your friends is unsettling for you, then it's time to move on. They may or may not be intentionally showing off their wealth but frankly that's irrelevant because the only thing that matters is your well being.

Further, I urge you to think about the word Relationship: it's RELATE+SHIP which is the process of continuously _relating_ to someone, so if you can no longer do that with your friends, your relationship is meaningless.

As for the question of wealth and happiness in general, my own view on this is that is varies from person to person. I personally like to have _some_ savings, own a property and be able to take a vacation once a year.

I opt in for optimizing my quality of life rather than wealth and this means finding avenues to work _less_ and focus on things that truly matter to me: spending time with my significant other and family members, exercising and sleeping well and eating good food.

I'm not going to respond to a last minute email or be "on call" and miss the opportunity of having sex with my fiance.

I sure as hell don't want to be the person who missed all those joyful moments because I was too busy chasing millions and building the next Facebook. What am I going to do with millions on my death bed?

Life is all about balance.

https://youtu.be/MDej3riTOS4

How to become rich immediately by lorax2013

In modern life, Jake Paul comes and make billion dollar in 2 years selling poisonous content. When he accumulates billion, he becomes God figure that will enlighten our youth from darkness.

In Canada, PhD holders are renting shared rooms to keep the hustle going while illiterate immigrants who are getting into Flipping and Real estate investment market have accumulated multi million dollars in investments.

People taking shortcuts is the only secret way to richness in 2022 and onwards. If you have a 9-5 mindset, you will live and die poor.

First, when I was in my 20s, in the first dotcom bubble, many of my friends became ridiculously wealthy. I probably should have felt envy, but at that time I was very self absorbed and focused on my own projects. Also, I was very naive and thought there was not much utility to money beyond 40K to 50K a year. At the time I was making 100K a year and felt good enough about it.

However, as the years progressed and I entered my thirties my youthful dreams of having a successful software business were crushed. I began to see how money liberated my friends from the kind of drudgery I was condemned too. This was brought particularly into focus on one instance, when a friend of mine who was very successful was invited to a tradeshow where I happened to be exhibiting on behalf of an employer. My friend came to visit me at my humble little booth, and he was followed by a literal entourage of hanger-ons. After we had a chat he asked me to join him for an after party and told someone in his crowd to put me on a list so I could attend. Unfortunately, after the exhibit floor closed I was tied up doing manual labor ... packing demo hardware, hauling things to storage, etc. I was not able to get to the party until around midnight. My friend was totally oblivious to my peon duties and just assumed I was at some other party. I never told him the truth ... that I was just packing boxes ... not at another party. I had a few drinks and appetizers with him, but was so exhausted I fell asleep while sitting on a sofa near the bar.

The next day, to add insult to injury, I was waiting for a shuttle to the airport and my friend had a black car. He took me with him and dropped me off at the gate. I did not ask him about how he was getting home ... but I think he basically had some kind of speedy pass to bypass checkin.

These kinds of things happened from time to time in San Francisco ... but it never really bothered me to the point of depression. I just felt a bit frustrated that my journey was taking so much longer. I had 7 failed startups before I hit it big.

Now let me tell you a few advantages of hitting it big later: 1) I did not pick up any gold-digging women in my youth, which caused complications for several of my friends. When you get rich, you attract many women who are far more attractive than you could if you are not rich. Your brain gets hooked on that level of attractiveness and you have a sort of hedonic adaptation I think. Many of my friends ended up with women that are essentially cost centers. They don't provide much value add beyond companionship. I was lucky enough to meet a woman when I was broke. She basically invested in me, and we got married before I hit it big. She makes a large salary on her own and does the lion's share of domestic work too. She's also attractive. I met her because I was trying to make a living. She's not the kind of woman you meet on the party circuit. 2) Similarly with friends. All my friends are people I've known for a while. Not people that need things from me. I have friends that have hanger ons that are not good for them mentally as they validate everything they do without critical thinking. It can be dangerous. 3) My tastes and expenses are very low as a result of decades of cheap living. Although I'm probably about the same level of material wealth as my rich friends now, I think I have more optionality as I can withstand those 1 in 100 geopolitical changes and still have enough to provide for my modest lifestyle till death. I have some friends that are one tech/crypto/real estate bubble pop away from not being able to maintain their jetset lifestyle. There's more misery downgrading your lifestyle then joy from upgrading it. Its Hedonic adaptation in action. 4) As a result of good fortune I realized the real value of money is just the optionality and freedom from stress. Big houses and nice cars and stuff give diminishing returns. The irony is, everything I have now, I had before. And to be honest, my money sometimes adds huge stress to my life. I'm always wondering how to preserve it. I'm worried my cash positions are eroding due to inflation. I'm worried my stocks will crash due to fed action. I'm worried my crypto will go down. I'm worried I'm not invested in commodities and oil. I'm worried I didn't buy farm land ... what if everything collapses and I have to grow food for my kids. Should I buy some property outside the USA in case there's a collapse here. All these things were not even options before so I didn't worry. Now I worry all the time.

Edit: Your friends should have the sense not to talk about money around you when you don't have much. I actually make this error myself and need to do better. 90% of the time money and belongings are a useless topic.

You may well have pretty friends, learned friends, tenured friends. Married friends, hippie friends. ...

One person can't even be all of this at once. So why be jealous of it?

In general, people who are truly your friends and value you should be very open to the idea of you coming to them for help and asking how you can get ahead in your own life. A lot of success is just knowing how to play the game and which moves to make, as well as people connections. Most of the rich people that I know are there because someone else essentially gave them the path to take, and they just made the right steps.

If they are not willing to do this, then you honestly will probably be better off finding a new circle of friends.

Instead, try to approach these feelings with an attitude of compassionate curiosity.

First, notice that there’s nothing wrong about having these feelings. It’d be wrong if you were mean to your friends because of their success. But you can have these feelings and not be mean to them. The feelings are not the problem.

Second, understand that there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re having these feelings for a reason. There's a casual chain of events that's making you feel this way. So, why are they happening?

The obvious -and wrong- answer is because your friends have money and you don’t. But surely there are plenty of people in the world that have less money than you, and still manage to be reasonably happy. And even your rich friends could compare themselves with even richer people and feel inadequate about how small their swimming pool or their yacht is. Are they feeling this way?

You can ask other more meaningful questions: why do you feel the need to compare yourself with your friends? Why do you feel that you need a ton of money to validate you and make you happy?

These are not easy questions to answer. They often touch deep wounds -otherwise we wouldn’t be so keen to avoid them. But approaching them with curiosity and compassion is the only way to find the root causes of what’s making you so miserable.

I contrast this with how I grew up: with my brother, raised by a single mom who worked 2 or 3 jobs at a time, starved herself occasionally, and sometimes did illegal things (theft) to make ends meet. Among other...less savory experiences I had. My mom isn't around to see my good fortune. I would have loved dearly to buy her a house and take care of her so she could find peace in life she only found in death. Point is, I know what it's like to not be fabulously well off.

It isn't hard to keep my exuberance in check.

What I'm saying is: maybe being gracious has its limits. Perhaps your friends could use a dose of reality of what it's like to not be fabulously wealthy. I wish I had some idea of how that might be accomplished. Or perhaps you should find new friends. If your current friends might be offended by a reminder that their wealth and how they present their fortune has an emotional impact on those without it, then personally I don't know that I'd call them "good".

I'm as poor as you (renting a small apartment and will never be able to afford a house) and I also have very rich friends. Seeing them does not make me sad. We keep doing the same thing we did as teenagers, drink beer, talk about ultra-nerd things, etc. I'm not particularly interested in their houses, and when they talk about big money I mock them mercilessly "what happened to you? your ass used to be beautiful!". It's great fun overall.

Some other friends of mine are in big trouble. Drugs, cancer, etc. Seeing them makes me really sad and depressed. Moreover, when I avoid seeing them for a few months I feel very guilty because they rarely initiate contact.

It's that most people aren't very aware of their surroundings. Ultimately it's a choice whether one trains one's self to be aware or not. It has nothing to do with rich or poor. You see them, standing in the middle of the grocery aisle blocking the way, oblivious to the existence of other people - and a thousand other similar scenarios. The same goes for being emotionally aware of other people and context related to them.

It sounds like the only thing your friends can do pro-actively is abandon you as a friend, stop hanging out with you, stop inviting you around. What else could they do given that you get angry and envious around them, and that's obviously not their fault. I'd suggest you have to correct that mental mistake or it's guaranteed those friendships won't last much longer.

Alternatively, instead of swimming in negative emotions, learn from your friends. So many of them are becoming rich, if that's what you want then see about learning from their accomplishments. Turn your time around them into a learning experience instead of a depressive torture. Turn that negative into a productive positive. If they care about you, they'll want to see you be successful as well.

For ex. I don't have any millionaire friends or family, though plenty are much more successful than myself.

Millionaires and successful people will exist whether or not you're friends with them, but while they're in your circle, consider their invitations their way of sharing the wealth? Something not everyone has access to. They chose you, they value you.

Consider these successful people are also resources. Imagine you need help finding a job, networking, potentially even a bailout. Seems like a great place to start.

Being happy for others is not an obligation. The only person you need to be happy for is yourself. You don't need to subject yourself to their flexing, peacocking, or keeping-up-with-the-jonses.

That being said, envy is not easy to deal with.

Your friends might be the catalyst, but envy is generally fueled by some other underlying insecurity.

ex. you care what other people think of you, you think you'll be judged by your wealth.

You'll need to self-reflect on what that is exactly.

Every time you find yourself comparing yourself to someone richer, also pick out someone poorer and compare yourself to them at the same time. Should that poorer person be a ton more miserable than you? What does that say about how unhappy you should be seeing someone richer than you?

Realize that being close to a bunch of rich people says good things about your choices and not bad things. They have just gotten that final bit of luck to push them over the edge. Every way that you're similar to these people is a set of things you're doing financially correctly. You've weighted the dice in your favor, and you're just waiting for the roll to come up your way.

Context: These helped a ton when my friends were getting rich in startups. Eventually I did catch up to some of them, and they still help a ton when I compare myself to the ones who did way better.

Nearly everyone is both poorer than someone and wealthier than someone.

> shit rental house

See, you've got a rental house, and it sounds like you don't even need roommates to help pay for it!

You either have to really accept other ways which I think is hard or get better than them which is probably harder.

I grew up in a small town of Normandy, from middle class parents, left home at 19 with a financial buoy from the State and my parents to get a 5-year degree and learned to be very slim in desire, since I was spending other people's money, then lived in relative comfort with my girlfriend when we found okay jobs in Paris.

I was sort of sad then, having like you little fortune to show. I did two things: I saved like a monster, for 3 years, up to 20k USD, and I dived into English, to reach my fluency objective.

After 3 years, I left my girlfriend, moved to Hong Kong, burned half my 20k savings working with my parisian salary there looking for a job. 7 years later, I have a Porsche, earn 4 times my initial salary with a local wife earning even more, and have a lot of money saved in various shapes. I feel I won so far, while I dont forget that it can just disappear tmr and it's okay, will just have to find another angle of attack.

Find a skill you can tune more and take a large wealth producing decision that not everyone takes (leave your roots for a rich place needing your new skill, for instance). If possible, tame the jealousy, it's really toxic: have fun doing something special like I have living in China, and use that as your worth-comparator. And find a working partner.

How to be gracious? Recognize a few things. First, your friends don't need you, they keep you in their lives because they like you, they care about you. They choose to spend time with you, because they have the resources to not but they do anyway. You should feel loved.

The other side of that is, you can choose to be a positive impact in their lives, let them have their positive impact on yours, or you can choose to let your envy sour things. And it will, eventually. In choosing to have these people in your life, you're choosing not to put the weight of your envy on them at the very least, ideally, you're learning to let go of that envy.

You sound like you don't want to feel this way, which is a good sign. And also, of course it is implied, you want these things for yourself as well. So advice on how you get there would best be gotten from them. There's a selfish motive here for you, and that's OK, let them teach you how to do what they did, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to do so. Turn that selfish emotion from envy to curiosity.

As far as my finances go, I don't discuss them, especially online to random strangers, but I will say I'm better off than most of my peers, but I live off probably a lot less money than you do.

Things that happen in the world just are. We assign values to them as good or bad and then tell ourselves to feel a certain way about them, but that part is all in our head. Thing that happen inside our own heads are within our control (barring mental illness). We can decide to look at things a different way and feel differently about them if we want to.

If seeing your friends succeed makes you unhappy, would it make you happy to see them fail? If they lost their fancy house and great job and had to live out of their car and beg for food, would you enjoy that? If so, maybe you don't actually like these people if you wish them such bad fortune.

I don't consider myself poor (and by any objective measure, I'm not), but I have friends who make more money than I do. I'm grateful for the things I do have. Like I go to the grocery store and buy what I want without looking at prices. Lots of people don't get to do that. I've pretty much never had to be concerned about whether I could fill the gas tank in my car or not. For some people that is a serious struggle. Would I like to buy a giant house with a pool and yard and all that? Sure, maybe someday I will. It's nice that some of my friends can. But there's a lot of good stuff in my life already, too.

1) ditch the friends that aren't self aware ("I made a $1m on my house in one year") but not the ones that want to spend time with you and are just talking about their life

2) its relative, all relative, I'm sure they have friends that they're envious of, and i suspect if someone gave you $10m and gave all your friends $50m you might still feel the same way

3)separate the material things from the feelings your experiencing [1 below]

4) don't focus only on the money, would you want their spouse, health problems, family, work-stress etc?

5) find other ways to reciprocate with your friends without feeling embarrassed/that you can do cheaply, invite them to a beach picnic, or bbq in the park etc.

[1] when i was junior professional my peers all had fancy watched (either purchased or given to them) and i was envious / wanted to blend in - i was given some good advice, and instead of buying a watch to blend in I put the money into a discrete mutual fund, that i could redeem at at any time to buy the watch...after a few months of sticking with my casio (but knowing i could buy the watch)...i didn't really care about it any more and wasn't envious/self-conscious anymore...it was all in my head.

Realise that everyone has these feelings. Accept these feelings. I'm sure your friendships are based on more than a bank balance. You say you're ashamed of your house? Do your friends even care about your house?

At this stage in my life I'm glad to have successful friends who seem to respect what I have to say and encourage me to work hard and continue moving forward.

Some others have said it, but life is too short to spend it around people who make you feel like shit and don't realize they're doing it. Nice people can be shitty people - life is too short to spend it around people like that.

IMO - your reaction here would be very similar. May be you (and your friends) will have the ability to peacefully coexist OR you split up. It is harsh - but the friends who have remained from my poorer times are the ones who are able to be happy with the ups and downs. Some were lost along the way. I have tried and helped some as well - but that again requires a mindset that will allow you to take or give without issues. I will probably hire friends as well in the future - but probably only the ones who can handle it (am assuming I can) will last I guess. C’est la vie.

The tough part is - as you diverge in wealth in either direction, your focus and problems change with it. It is easy to think rich people have no problems - but in reality they have rich people problems. They do want to discuss these. They do want to enjoy their new found wealth with others. Sometimes it is just not possible to keep an open mind through all these - so we move on.

You don't need much to survive in this world. And that's enough to be happy. You can always trade down your friends to people who are less wealthy and the problem of keeping up with the joneses is solved near instantly. You also don't even need friends. Just drop them if they are a-holes, trust me they wont notice, especially those guys compulsively running rat race. They are the npc's of this world, and they don't even know it. Mindless drones working to outdo other mindless drones. They'll be working to out-status the next guy until they're dead. Trust me they are robotic status seeking machines. That's why they try to one up everyone, that's why they try to make you feel bad, that's why they try to hide the fact that they want to make you feel bad to fit in with society so society will accept them, that's why they kiss ass and kick down, that's why when their boss tells them to jump, they ask "how high?". They are a cataclysm of anxiety and compulsion driven, emotional status seeking machines. You find this out when you break their machine logic and they are unable to find a prewritten routine. They literally look like broken computers as you watch their OS short circuit, and you realize how little humanity they have.

> Rich people aren’t aware that their tales of success make people like me feel bad.

Because quite often they aren't aware at all. To live in a world of full of other people and not even be able recognize others exist.

You don't want to be them. You want to be in control of you and your destiny. Find your inner child. Find your soul and live your life.

Just like you don't have to live up to an economic ideal, nor do you have to live up to a rational/moral ideal. Maybe just fully have the emotions you're having rather than 'trying' not to because logic or politeness or whatever.

I'm sorry. Those are difficult feelings to sit with. You really do love your friends.

Context: someone with money and lots of loved ones with far less, a couple with significantly more. I am angry that my friend has a $2M home and two Teslas in the driveway for being at the right place/right time. But it's my own desire for more that feeds this envy. I almost never go see this friend and all his new gadgets, instead would rather pickup burgers and sit on the bed of my much closer friend's studio apartment and talk about things one can't purchase.

(For context, I have an adequate amount of money that is much smaller than many of my friends who are outside of academia, though larger than my friends who are social workers; but if I were to leave academia I probably could become significantly wealthier, so I can say all this from a place of privilege).

I don’t really have any specific advice, except for maybe try to be empathetic.

Your friends or family probably have all the exact problems as before, except now they can try to use money to fix them. But the money might not even work: think of all the celebs you know about who still struggle with mental health, drug abuse and family problems.

That is to say, understand the money doesn’t fix all their problems. So in other words enjoy the fancy meals or nice views your friends share with you. But remember there’s only one dimension of life that’s better for them.

For starters, every such person is one less who will ever come to you asking for money.

Secondly, those people are all contacts of yours who are good at making money; instead of wasting time on envy, use these contacts somehow to improve your own position.

I would just say, "Hey man, I noticed you've improved your economic situation quite a lot in the last decade, while I'm floundering. I am not a spendthrift, and work hard at my job, yet it's not getting me anywhere. Do you have any advice how to get in on some better action?"

Or whatever.

Maybe these people have businesses you could join or something.

I am aware of it, it also sort of makes me feel bad/uncomfortable in the sense that I don't per se think I deserve it more than people who have less. I don't want to come off as a show off, or confront them unnecessary. I would like to help, but I don't have the funds to actually resolve stuff, also don't want to come off as denigrating. It's difficult. What helps is to think we like each other and money is not relevant to that, the best we can do is be there for each other as friends. And I am confident they would let me know if they need & want help financially or otherwise, as I would with them.

I also have a friend who is properly rich imo, it does make me feel a bit envy at times and question my own situation, but again I like hanging out with the dude, and I don't mind spending time in his fancy house either haha. Instead of thinking "I don't have this" I just enjoy the perks.

The other thing that helps for me is to realize I don't need a fancy house, or car, or whatever. Money should not define you, and money can only do so much, it's no guarantee for happiness. Things obviously are more tricky when you don't have enough and actually struggle as that can make life very difficult, I've experienced some of that in the past and it's really just no fun.

(1) Getting a job that paid ~45K a year and paying off my debt

(2) Changing my mindset from hating rich people to wanting to have success like them. I still have bitterness, but now I try to think how did they became successful, and how can I become wealthy?

(3) Realizing that even though I grew up poor, there are people who grew up even poorer. It’s no use feeling constantly sorry for yourself. It only holds you back. You will always be more well-off then a lot of other people. And there will always be a lot of people who has it worse than you. I became grateful for what growing up poor taught me. A shit ton more resilience, empathy, and adaptability then someone who had it easy.

(4) I stopped comparing and designed my life how I want it within my financial limits. It also helps that I never wanted to keep up with the Joneses.

2. If being around a person makes you unhappy (for whatever reason), cease being around that person.

I learned these lessons the hard way. They are excellent heuristics.

I get it, we all get fomo from time to time, me included. Its ok to feel this way.

I have a friend who earned a few mil, without doing much work or being super smart. Then he turned into more mil with crypto because he had capital to invest. When he speaks to me it always feels like a gambler that never has taken risk into consideration just got super lucky and its frankly annoying because he doesn't even know how blockchain works. But does it matter?

We always feel like we are destined or privileged for fortunes because we worked so hard or have an intelligence of higher species above normal humans, but world just doesn't operate this way.

Frankly I just learned to live with the fact that there is randomness, there is luck, there is best effort and things you can control.

What helps though is focusing on doing what matters to you because when you are "flowing" and just intrinsically curious about stuff in your real life it pushes you away from materialistic success.

Ambiguity also helps, once you will be near death experience, all these things fade away.

I recommend Denial of Death book.

It's an almost Buddhist concept, but you cannot be happy comparing yourself to others. You must find what makes you happy and then not worry about the rest.

How cool it is that you can chill at some friends pool (for free!). Pools are expensive - Live cheap instead!

> I'm at the bottom with nothing:

Anything worth having, like "good people, great friends", is ... FREE! And you seem to have it. So that is definitely not "Nothing".

> Rich people aren’t aware that their tales of success make people like me feel bad.

Annoyed at bragging maybe, but bad? No. That's your fault. How does someone else's success (or riches) make your plight worse? It doesn't. And being rich doesn't make their life better either. If you say "now that sounds like bragging", you can embarrass them. Is that what you want? But you probably don't.

Tales are tales. Tell a tale of being cheap and poor. It'll be as fun as rich and daring. Telling either or both tales is just idle entertainment, neither are that serious.

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/key-factor-in-well-be...

I'm somewhat censoring myself when talking to the friends that have much less. I don't mention prices of things I buy, or the amount of money I earn or spend, because I know some of the things I comfortably impulse-buy are items that they'd have to spend months saving up for. I understand that while I'm happy about my new stuff, and I'm glad I got a good deal, mentioning (paraphrased) "oh, i saved your months salary on this neat new toy" will make me come off as bragging and arrogant and it'd not contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. There are things I simply don't mention I have because I know how they'd feel envious, not because they are bad people, but because they are human and it's somewhat in our nature to compare ourselves to our peers.

I have friends who are orders of magnitude richer than myself, and I guess my experience with being wealthier than others, makes it easier to brush it off, I try hard not to be envious or jealous, and I fail from time to time, and then I decide to keep away for a while, not because I dislike them, but because I value our friendship. I've sometimes poked at them, when they say "oh, I got this new thing, that cost N money" and I will say something like "I'm really happy for you, I couldn't afford that, it's what I earn in a year" and I think that while it's polite enough, they get the point.

Added context: We're not in the million dollar range, probably only one or two people I know are, and they're not close friends, or really friends at all.. We're still pretty average (way below HN "average" ;) )

I know I worked hard, but I know I didn't work as hard as my father or mother. If anything, I was reasonably intelligent and was lucky because I was internet savvy and knew enough to pick a career that was in demand. What I'm saying here is to dispel this weird idea that wealth is directly correlated with hard work or skill.

I follow an artist and game developer from Brazil. He routinely blogs about his life, and live in a small (but nice) apartment. It's clear that I'm able to afford a much higher standard of living than he, but in the end, it's me who's envious of him for his skill in artistry and game development, meanwhile I'm here writing fucking CRUD apps for some tech startup that's injected with VC money and is able to pay their employees inflated salaries so they can live in Valley homes.

What I'm getting at is what's probably no surprise to you -- it's easy to be envious of wealth and material possessions, but it's also easy to mistake wealth or self-worth.

I'm kinda writing this in a rush, so my advice to you would be to read the Stoics, perhaps A Guide to the Good Life by Irvine, and for some lighter reading, try Fumio Sasaki's book on Japanese Minimalism.

People with access to far more resources than me are still people and still have challenges. The shine is off; such wealth alone doesn’t make them interesting to me, it’s the choices they make that matter. Perhaps reevaluate your relationships with these folks? Ask yourself: why do I maintain these friendships, and to what degree are they transactional?

If they are your friends, you can tell them about how their stories make you feel. If they don't care, then maybe you need new friends.

I earn less than most US developers, despite almost a decade of experience.

Recently half my work place one the lottery in a pool. Most getting 200k each. I didn't go in the pool.

I drive a car worth less than 5k. My house is not in the best area and it needs work.

What you're experiencing used to be called envy. When you experience discomfort when someone else does well. Envy hurts you the most, you can experience joy when your friends do well. Their success can encourage and inspire you.

They key, I think, is knowing that you're a success. Well done you for what you have achieved. Another thing is to look at where you fit in the bigger picture. You're easily in the top 1% of global wealth.

There is something built in to us to climb hierarchies. You can climb without getting down that you're not on top. There is always a bigger fish, but you're a pretty big fish yourself.

Most people, according to social research (whatever that means in terms of scientific process), experience mostly similar happiness once they rise to an income where they are staying ahead of the bills.

This does not mean people are as happy as they think they would be if they had more income, but it is a never ending want for more. It does not matter how much more.

There is a documentary 'What Would Jesus Buy' that goes into a lot of this.

There is always a place for some jealousy and it does not ever go away. Life is not actually fair just because people pretend it is. Some people get the breaks, some people don't. I know people who made outrageous amounts of money by being in the right place at the right time. I know other people who are smart and work hard but don't seem to have hit it rich yet. Other people worked hard and took some risks and did well.

2. You did not elaborate in your post what is the reason for your own situation, but having a rental home implies you still have a bank account with a positive balance, even a regular income, so this is is not really "bottom"; and I hope for you that you will never know what "real bottom" means.

3. Rene Girard's main concept is "mimetic theory," which states that most of human behavior is based upon imitation. The imitation of desires leads to conflict, and when a buildup of conflict threatens to destroy all involved, they use a scapegoat to return to balance. Girard is a philosopher that Peter Thiel and some others have been much influenced by. Reading your post reminded me about his theory how people start to fight (like the biblical brothers Cain & Abel) once they start to compare themselves to one another and envy emerges.

4. So ask yourself: before seeing those successful friends/relatives, did you feel good about yourself? Do you have friends that if you had any kind of trouble, would stand by your side? Do you have a loving partner/family? Is there something that you like about your home, perhaps a property that made you decide to rent that one over others at the time? Using such questions you may overcome the habit of comparing purely materialistic matters.

5. I own a house, but I live in a crappy rental home which is walking distance to my work instead. If it helps you, I know some very wealthy people that I would never want to change with. Some have become materialistic, others have become afraid for their safety, and others still have started buying ugly things just to show of status and wealth (pitty for them). I also have some relatives in the U.S. that went from "poor" to "millionaire" via a combination of hard work and luck and then back to "poor" due to bad investment advice. Nobody has ever taken $1 to where they go after they die!

You ask how to continue being gracious and stop being depressed/envious, but why are you depressed/envious in the first place? It may sound like a stupid question, but it's important to how to approach the problem.

Do you feel depressed because you feel inferior to your friends? Or do you feel depressed because you want to have the money itself? Or is it something else?

If the first reason, that can be a lot "easier" fixed, as it doesn't require you to acquire wealth. This is personal acceptance. It's also something that can possibly be helped just by talking to the people you are envious of. Though I'll leave more advise to the other comments. The comment about your cousin makes me think that you feel inferior to these people and it's not necessarily the wealth amount itself.

For the second reason, I think a lot of people covered it fairly well in this thread, but you should think hard about what exactly you value. How much does what you really value cost in a dollar amount? Sure, you can probably rack up millions in dollars in ideas from travel, to trying expensive things, or having a huge house, but how much of that is really important to you. How much more happiness would a $1,000,000 house bring you verses a $200,000 house (or some cost adjusted similar comparison to your area)? Why are you jealous of someone's $1,000,000 increase in property value? If you received $1,000,000 right now, would that be enough to make you happy or would you still want more?

I won't make the claim that seeing my friend's success doesn't make me feel any envy or additional drive to do more. However, I am currently relatively content with my life, I have a certain reasonable lifestyle in my head that I am aiming for, and I have a goal to get there. Anything more would just be gravy and not something I would feel any significant depression or envy over.

But I wish a younger version of me would have met someone like present day me. I would have concluded, if that seemingly average guy can make it without stepping on anyone's neck and without greed then I would have had more optimism. So it seems wrong to hide my success.

Since I have no advice, may I ask a counter question ? If these are your friends it implies you think they aren't bad people and you are likely similar in many ways. Why are they a source of emotional pain instead of inspiration? Is it because the wealth gap has become so extreme ?

No, really. I've gotten screwed over and still feel no ill will towards the person who benefitted. I was in a department where if a manager gave someone the top rating they where required to pick someone for a bad rating to "balance it out". Complete bullshit and against company policy. The guy that got distinguished deserved it. I'm glad he got it. On the other side... f** the company, the department head, the manager, etc. But that guy is a good guy. He's probably making 2.5x what I do now since he made senior manager before I made senior (and he's younger). Still don't hate him. There are people who are better than me. I shouldn't resent them. I do hate the company.

This is adult life, except now it's about riches and fame and success -- like in school, some are going to be ahead of you and some behind. Sometimes this will be out of pure dumb luck and being in the right place + time (as many of our friends in tech are even if they hesitate to admit that) and other times because they _are_ better than you at things and have worked at it hard and earned it. We must all accept it at some point for what it is.

I'll say it again - define your inner scorecard first.

Personally, I value my man-cave and my free time. I view "things" and a big house as more shit I have to deal with in my life. Every item I own weighs on me. I don't want any more space than I actively use because that's just more space I have to maintain. Anymore more than the minimum just adds to the weight of the rock I have to push up the hill.

I'm jealous of people who can maintain that stuff. I'm jealous of people who seem to have no problem with household chores, if they have the money for a big house but not enough to hire someone to help them.

Poor person living in a emerging market country.

No, as a good friend you should be honest and communicative about your feelings. What you’re doing right now is building resentment which will culminate in a bad ending to the relationship while your friends stand confused about what happened. If they truly are good friends, they’ll value your feelings and strive to act accordingly. But you need to stop lying to them and have an honest conversation. The worst that can happen is that the friendship ends sooner and you’ve saved yourself years of hiding your pain.

Relatively speaking anyone in the modern western world has it pretty nice in comparison.

Enjoy life, learn to cook and laugh at people going to restaurants. If cooking and eating aren't your things, find what is and enjoy it, money is becoming less and less important to living a rich and enjoyable life.

I don't think it's possible in general for them/me to have friends who are poor, since you can't talk about certain things because of the reason you cite.

The only leg up with rich friends (outside of them being friends!) is that you can use their social network if you have a certain goal.

Just be wise about spending credits.

Ps. Just mentioning that you would like to speak less about financial stuff should be fine. They'll understand if you're both friends ( not acquaintances)

The unsaid things sound like on the lines of “they had good fortune, but why don’t I have it”.

Hard questions, probably not fit to be answered over a text forum:

If they are your friends, why do you feel bad when your friends have a happy event?

Are they really not your friends but there’s some other type of relationship there?

Do they make you unhappy because of their actions or are you unhappy with your own situation to begin with and comparing it to their situation? If it’s the latter, what can you do to improve your situation?

Hope some self reflecting questions help.

Being extremely wealthy sounds like a burden to me if you're a half decent person. The greater the excess income, the greater the moral dilemmas. I know I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I had huge disposable income and spent significant money in crap rich people seem to spend it on, like all those luxury brands with stores downtown. Let alone the really rich people that buy private jets and whatnot.

No, not for me. Programmers nowadays have good salaries and that is enough. As the modern philosopher says, more money, more problems.

For me, I want to be happy. Money is part of having a stable life, beyond that is meaningless.

Depression is something I've coped with as long as I remember.

> As a good friend I should feel happy for them, and I pretend to, but inside it makes me feel terrible.

Yep, it's unfair. Eeking out my slice of happiness in spite of all the slings and arrows seems almost like an act of rebellion in today's world.

"The path of the righteous is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil."

1. Have you tried talking to your friends about how it makes you feel? I get that that's vulnerable and might even feel embarrassing to bring up, but if they're really good friends of yours, they'll care about your feelings AND will be thankful for your honesty. Even if it feels awkward in the moment of or they're uncertain how to behave shortly thereafter.

It can be as simple as "I'm excited for your success and don't want to make you feel bad about it, but sometimes the details of how much STUFF you have really bring home insecurities about how much I don't have. It's enough to know you sold your house because the value went up without being reminded just quite how much it appreciated."

Letting them know how it can feel and asking them to be more aware doesn't mean you're a bad friend. It gives them the opportunity to gain some awareness of how their words impact others. As folks get wealthier it becomes easy to lose that awareness, and you bringing it up gives them the chance to reset some of their behaviors that are likely impacting other relationships as well.

To put it in a different context, if things are going really well in my marriage I probably won't dwell too much on that when talking with a friend who recently got divorced. I know they want good things for me, but I also understand that it could bring up painful comparisons or memories for them. Instead I can mention that things are going well without going into detail.

2. You mention that you "feel smashed with depression". Have you considered speaking to a therapist about your feeling or just mental health overall? I realize this is difficult when money is tight, but I also know that a fair number of therapists accept a sliding payment scale based on income.

Feeling bummed out because of comparison is pretty common and normal, especially in a culture like ours, so it may not be anything more than that. But if comparison is causing you a lot of negative feelings, it may be that deep down you've conflated happiness with financial success or security. Therapists are good at helping to identify the faulty associations we don't even realize we're making, and then seeing how to unwind those associations in ways that aren't obvious to ourselves or friends/partners we talk to.

In answer to your question about whether I have money or don't -- I work as a software engineer in the US so I'm certainly fortunate, but I'm in a big city so I have no plans to add a pool to my rented studio apartment any time soon.

You are angry as you are double-minded. You want to be happy for your friends but you can't be as you are not wealthy. I would suggest you be single minded and adopt a more robust philosophy of life.

No you're not. It's this exaggeration that's getting you into a tizzy. Stop it.

Instead think about all the things that money can't buy. Think about character and resilience.

> I encourage you add the context of whether you are one of those who have money or not.

My advice is timeless and was handed down from the dusty tomes of the east AND the west. Who I am and what I have doesn't matter. Listen to our ancestors.

https://www.amazon.com/Jackpot-Super-Rich-Really-Live_and-We...

In alot of ways it can actually be quite alienating.

There is also

/r/fatfire

on Reddit where Ive seen people discuss their experiences with private jet ownership for example

Yet he’s one of the nicest people I’ve met and never flaunted the fact he was a multimillionaire.

When we went to lunch at wendys he would pay, the next day I would pay. (This opposed to others who are always “nah I got this” all the time who make me feel like I can’t afford anything)

I don’t care if people have money. As long as they are nice people. But I’ve met people who flaunt their money and I simply just don’t talk to them. Got more important things to worry about than listen to someone gloat.

(I don’t have money. Just pay slip to pay slip saving a little bit each month and hoping I’ll be able to afford a house oneday)

Is there a way to email you? I'll send a few articles which might be helpful for you. (They are not worthy of HN discussion, so not commenting here.)

maybe focus on growing yourself in other ways. Financial success is great but it isnt the only ladder worth climbing. Take up a new skill that makes you better like a sport, and actually try to improve at it. youll find that the new peers you make while practicing this sport are oblivious to the financial jealousy you describe, why? Probably because they have more going on then just monetary success.

Develop your arts, money might follow if you want it that much.

This is a serious issue, im working thus out with therapist.

The existence of the feeling indicates that this matters to you - then what stops you from pursuing same goals?

You couldn't pay me to take up a life like most millionaires. Beyond $100k I think is just too much. Living in big empty houses with few to no friends. What point is there in making money if you can't be free? Look into FIRE, look into frugal living, study philosophy, meditate, take a CBT course. Money doesn't fix the problems, it just makes them much worse.

> As a good friend I should feel happy for them, and I pretend to, but inside it makes me feel terrible.

Sounds like a much more interesting problem. Try harder to become who you want to be. Figure out why you feel terrible. If it is simply because you are a greedy capitalist who looks up to wealth and down on poor people you might feel good if you make an effort to help someone.

https://github.com/lovingawareness/tao-te-ching/blob/master/...

Excess wealth just means more things to lose.