A friend asked me recently if I was rich. Maybe you get asked that a lot, but trust me, I don\u2019t get inquiries like this too often. Kind of caught me by surprise. My family never talked finances, didn\u2019t announce their bank account balances, really didn\u2019t tell us kids much of anything about how they were doing. And if they never told the family, you better believe it was unwritten gospel they didn\u2019t talk about it in public, with friends or relatives, with anybody. Ever. <\/p>\n
So I was caught off balance, checking account and equilibrium both, to be asked point blank if I was rich. You could imagine that the answer, assuming you deigned to reply, would depend on the person asking. If my pal Bill Gates asked me, I\u2019d say, \u2018gee, Bill, I\u2019m bumping along, but no, my hedge fund isn\u2019t one of the top 50 or anything, not really even in the top \u2026 actually, I don\u2019t even have a hedge fund right now, sort of embarrassed to tell you.\u2019 If one of my pals trying to make ends meet during the Covid shutdown asked, well, I might say \u2018Don\u2019t even think of asking me for a loan, you slacker!\u2019 Wealth, you see, is fairly relative.<\/p>\n
You ask most folks if they\u2019re rich and they\u2019re going to tell you no. But \u2026 if we considered that we\u2019re in America and we\u2019re on the South End to boot, hellfire, by nearly any standards you pick, we\u2019re the 1% of the world. We\u2019re rich. You don\u2019t think so, take a trip to Cambodia, Mexico, Costa Rica, just about any third world country and then tell me you\u2019re not wealthy. You are. Period. Don\u2019t argue with me, I won\u2019t have ears for it.<\/p>\n
But my friend wasn\u2019t interested in philosophic fiscal discussion, just wanted to know if I was rich. Asking an artist that question is akin to wondering if I might be vacationing this year with Bezos on his moon rocket, mostly a flight of fancy. I said yes I am, rich. And honestly, I consider myself rich, I really do. We have our house paid for, the one we built ourselves without a loan, without a 30 year mortgage. We pay cash for everything we have, car, truck, you name it. We live in paradise, we live modestly but we want for nothing. We still work, but not because we need the cash but because we like what we do. Even without that money, we feel enriched by working. And we have each other. We lived in a dilapidated shack for 13 years together, scraping by, tending our gardens, learning our trades. We\u2019re growing old together. And that\u2019s just fine too. Are we rich? You\u2019d have to be nuts to ask\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend asked me recently if I was rich. Maybe you get asked that a lot, but trust me, I don\u2019t get inquiries like this too often. Kind of caught me by surprise. My family never talked finances, didn\u2019t announce their bank account balances, really didn\u2019t tell us kids much of anything about how they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[3842,3843,3844],"class_list":["post-14408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-definition-of-rich","tag-money-talks-bullshit-walks","tag-riding-with-bezos"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14409,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14408\/revisions\/14409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}