Slow down, ladies. Marie's trying to keep up with you
In Monday’s Carnival of Wealth, we briefly goofed on Marie at Family Money Values. Her submission frustrated us to the point where we were considering making her our Retard of the Month for November, but a) the Occupy Wall Street crowd deserved it more and b) it doesn’t look good if we give it to a woman 4 months in a row.
To summarize, Marie visited a rich friend’s house, then found rationalizations for not wanting to live there herself.
I’d be expected to keep up with (the neighbors)
I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing my own grass cutting in my much loved beat up old sweatshirt.
Think about Marie’s mindset, rather than her obvious dislike of hyphens. A self-actualized person doesn’t give a damn what other people think about such trivial social bugaboos. If Marie could afford such a house, she couldn’t enjoy it because Muffie and Philippa would be talking behind her back over cucumber sandwiches at the country club:
Muffie: Did you see that new woman mowing her own lawn yesterday afternoon?
Philippa: I know! It gave me the vapors. I had to lie down on the fainting couch for an hour while the butler brought me some Orange Pekoe laced with absinthe. For a second I thought she was one of our lawn care workers, but she didn’t seem Mexican enough.
Marie, you’re not going to believe this, but no one in the neighborhood cares about how self-conscious you are. And if they do, what do you care?
The homeowner didn’t look happy – I wondered why.
What did she give up to have that nice house? Did she marry someone she didn’t love, work in a job she hated or do something against her beliefs to get there? Was she lonely?
Or was her brother just diagnosed with leukemia? Did she have to euthanize a family pet the day before? Did she and her husband just fight over something meaningless, which happens to couples in all economic strata? Or did she simply have a pounding headache, exacerbated by trying to entertain critical guests who are making mental notes about what an unfulfilling house she lives in? But no, feel free to project whatever justification makes you feel better about the residence that you’ve chosen.
There weren’t many personal or family history items.
My own home is full of things my family has owned or that my spouse and I have collected through the years. The contents represent times gone by (ours and our ancestors) as well as times to come. The beautiful house I was in looked like it could have been a furniture store – displaying items for sale.
Okay, Marie, now you’re officially scraping. Congratulations on having a family history that’s worth preserving. Not everyone does. Your host could have a million legitimate reasons for not following your recommended keepsake-displaying procedure. She could have come from a violent past: lots of people do. Perhaps her parents were unfeeling jerks. Or she grew up in foster homes. How would you feel if someone made snap judgments about you from your appearance and demeanor? (Speaking of which, why not put a picture of yourself on your website so we can draw conclusions about you from it?)
And of course, the one reason Marie had been saving for the climax:
Keeping a million dollar house requires a lot of money.
Sweet Jesus, that’s irrelevant. First off, it’s safe to assume that someone who can afford such a house can afford its upkeep, and understood what that upkeep would entail before buying. But it gets better, as she breaks down that objection into sub-objections:
Cost of hiring services to keep up appearances (it’s too gauche to do the work yourself!)
Again, this unhealthy obsession with what others think. Muffie and Philippa long ago moved on from your disdain for class niceties, and are now discussing which pool boys they want to cheat on their husbands with.
There’s a little thing called Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage. We’ve discussed it here before. It means that if the oil tycoon who lives next door to the house you visited earns $500/hour, he shouldn’t spend time tending to his yard in the middle of a weekday when he can find professionals to do so for $18/hour.
Besides, Marie, you were in this neighborhood for the duration of one baby shower, most of which you probably spent indoors. There could well be plenty of homeowners who mow their own lawns and paint their own fences.
We can’t guess as to the strength of Marie’s self-image, but she’s giving us some pretty convincing clues in her other sub-objections:
Membership in the various clubs or associations that are either required or expected for you to fit in
Wardrobe costs (remember that beat up old sweatshirt? Can’t wear that outside).
Vehicle costs – how could you park your 1998 Toyota in that driveway?
That, right there, is as succinct an explanation of why poor and struggling people stay that way. Who gives a flying f what you drive? Especially when you remember that vehicles are liabilities, not assets.
A vehicle serves a purpose, and by its nature as a tool with lots of moving parts, gets gradually less useful as it’s used more. If you know that a car’s only going to last a few years before having to be replaced, you’d be insane to drop money into it that you could invest elsewhere. (You see, Marie? This is how rich people think.) Go ask financial bad example Floyd Mayweather Jr. how important it is to drive an expensive car.
Better yet, ask the richest man in Los Angeles how important it is. (He’ll be easy to spot, in either his Firebird, his Jeep Grand Cherokee, or his Taurus.)
And then, the perfect coda. Marie dispenses some advice gleaned from her years as an authority on expensive houses and whether it’s worth it to live in one or not:
Consider carefully before moving up.
Sister, no offense, but maybe only a person who lives in an expensive house should tell us whether to “consider” doing so or not.
Thank God for people like Marie. They make us remember why the top isn’t very crowded: because most people would rather kvetch than get there.
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