How would being filthy rich change your weekend?

For me, it would not change much.

I have a key observation to back this up. I have friends from many income levels. This ranges from indebted students with limited budgets to millionaire entrepreneurs who can do whatever they want.

What’s different when I hang out with the students and the millionaires? Virtually nothing.

Regardless of group, my friends and I basically do the same things. We watch movies, go to restaurants, visit museums, play sports, and hang out on beaches and hiking trails.

How much can money change those activities?

Besides trying more expensive restaurants, I don’t see much improvement. More options would be nice, but I always keep in mind that “more expensive” does not translate to “better.” So, even then, we would probably eat at similar places.

All of this should not be too surprising. Weekends are not about money after all. They are about spending time in fun things. Even celebrities and athletes watch TV.

Would money play a bigger role in your weekend?

Cheap Fun

Hulu TV. Full episodes of many shows–Thanks Robbie.

http://www.hulu.com/



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  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    You’re forgetting about stuff like this:
    http://dinnerinthesky.com/

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    RohoMech: All I can say is wow. I’ll have to send this to my millionaire friends :)

  • Sujatha

    I wouldn’t mind flying out to Bermuda or the Bahamas for the weekend :) . Northeast winters are long and brutal.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    Sujatha: Yes, I was forgetting about weekend trips perhaps because I don’t frequently take them. At nice places like those, I’d need a one week minimum :)

  • David

    My uncle likes to say, “Being rich won’t necessarily make you happy, but being poor certainly will make you unhappy.” Are your indebted student friends living below the poverty line? Do they have affordable housing and health care?

    It’s true that most of us spend our free time doing things we enjoy (hanging out with friends, going to the beach, eating out) and that we will not enjoy these things any less with increased income. But you have previously written about how when you were working you had very little free time. You are still living in part off the savings gained from that job, and your financial security is based on a good college education, a year of high-paid labor, and the confidence in your ability to gain another job if necessary. An increase in income could mean actually building that emergency fund, or investing in your retirement, or giving back to your family/community.

    So is your question “How would being filthy rich {rather than well-off} change your weekend?” or “How would being {wealthy rather than poor} change your weekend?”

    Because if it’s the first one, dinner in the sky is clearly an awesome answer (thanks RohoMech), but if it’s the second one, it’s a far more serious and complex question.

  • http://thealmanac.wordpress.com Robbie

    Two things:
    1- I definitely agree that more expensive is not necessarily better. The most pleasure I have ever derived from a meal out was a hole in the wall Indian food place in SF where we each paid maybe $8 for tons of food.

    2- More cheap fun: Hulu.com has now been up for a couple of weeks. It’s awesome.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    David: I brought about raising serious topics for this fun Friday article–I apologize. I mainly wanted to criticize the money-envy of people who are generally well-off to begin with. I completely agree that going from poor to well-off is a big step. My point is that from there, it’s hard to improve on weekend fun.

    So sorry for the confusion. It’s hard to make catchy yet completely accurate titles ;)

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    Robbie: Your restaurant example is quite appropriate. In fact, it’s often more fun to find these “bargains” than go to well-known expensive places that everyone knows about.

    Hulu.com seems to beat Yahoo Tv in every aspect. Thanks for the pointer!

  • Christina

    I agree to a point…just to a point though. This semester, while I have no income at all, I’ve definitely avoided going out and doing those things that everybody does as much as I would like to. While I don’t know that I would do radically DIFFERENT things if I had more money, I think that the amount of times I did those things/felt comfortable doing those things would go up.

    Also, I think part of the reasoning is that having a greater income doesn’t necessarily mean you have more money to spend. Most people I know who make more money have bigger houses, nicer cars, etc. – all stuff that sucks your money away and leaves you with probably just about the same amount of expendable money.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    Christina: Your second point is excellent: more salary does not always translate to more spending money due to lifestyle choices.

    Your first point echoes David’s. I can agree that having too little money hampers weekend fun. I just find that we dream of what money will do for us, and when we get it, things never seem to be as great as they should. Perhaps it’s because of those other money-sucking lifestyle choices like you point out.

  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    Presh

    There is also a question of…preferences / tastes, we have a mutual friend who really likes cars, and is quite sad because owning / racing the high-performance ones is impossible without having a 7 figure income.

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