Humans of WSO: what do y’all prioritize more: money or status?
Money is important cuz it gives you freedom of your time
Status is important cuz it gives you mating success and gives you a higher quality, more sophisticated social network
For context, I’ve spent time doing 80-100 work weeks in an NYC IB bullpen. I’ve also spent time digital nomading in Latin America
The below is a generalization, but: -The expats I met while nomading were (in my opinion) pardon my french, complete dipshits. Very vain, surface-level, “passport bro-y”, a bit greasy, and lacked real substance. Yet, they have good money, given their US salaries in a low-cost country (which allowed them to park a buttload of $ away in savings which, obviously, can then compound). They also undoubtedly have a better quality of life given more freedom (financially, time, even year-round climate, etc) -Meanwhile, my coastal finance/tech friends have high status, and weirdly enough probably less $ (at least in terms of yearly savings) cuz they’re engrossed in high COL, debt from fancy degrees, keeping up with the joneses, etc. But they’re also smart as shit, have an impressive network, and you’ll learn something new every time you talk to them. They’re just significantly more polished and sophisticated than these “nomads”.
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I think it’s fair to argue that as you get older - or maybe BETTER put - once you’ve locked down a mate, status becomes significantly less important. I’m yet to hear anyone who’s settled down make the argument of status over money. But among single guys, money vs. status can be a heated debate…
So my questions are: 1) is there an age inflection point in life when money officially becomes more important than status? Or, does this inflection point depend more on relationship status rather than age? I’d argue the latter, but open to any disagreements 2) to step back - am I even correct to think that the relationship of money vs. status looks like this (see attached pic)? Or is my observation completely distorted?
***For each response, would be great to also hear what stage of life you’re in (including relationship status, because I do feel like that’s genuinely relevant here)
I want to fit in
Found the kid stuffed in a locker
Money all the way -- because I don't care too much about status. Listen, I'd be incredibly happy being a no-name fund manager just investing my PA of $20ml and spending my days how I please vs. at someone's beck and call. No brainer, money buys you freedom but the catch is you shouldn't indefinitely sacrifice freedom for money because then you will ironically never get the thing you're chasing
Go outside the NYC / LA / SF bubbles and you'll see status doesn't actually mean quite as much in most other places
Personally, I couldn’t agree more - especially on places outside of the cities you named (I’m from a tier 3 city in middle America, so I know). Yet for some reason, I still have these internal conflicts (hence why I took to WSO). If you don’t mind me asking, what stage of life are you in?
I'll just say I'm under 30 and have a serious gf. That's probably the other thing, once you date someone you think you'll be married to and have kids with, status goes out the window as the thing to optimize. At least my own experience
You can also go to a T1 city that isn't one of the above....go to Chicago or Boston for instance. Great quality of life at reasonable prices (compared to the others I listed at least) where status chasing isn't the be-all end all
Money. Status is overrated.
Your net girth is your net worth
This is really deep. I think tomorrow I might tattoo this across my chest in cursive. But, maybe the reverse: "your net worth is your net girth." Yeah bro that's it.
Would put up $1k or cover the cost of acquisition if you actually did it and posted proof
Nah, Power
Yeah, probably power.
I think it’s in your late 20s or early 30s when you start to have this introspection and realize you had your head up your ass the entire time. Or at least I did.
Anyone who says status is not someone I'd wanna grab a beer with. That's a childish answer indicative of deeply rooted insecurity. Your order of importance should be something along the lines of the following:
1. Comp
2. Job Satisfaction
3. Status
Anyone putting status first is trying to compensate for something.
Money is status.
Now that I’m in an investing seat, I think that status driven fundamentally ruin the industry for those of us motivated by the work itself, and sadly I think this is most funds with a brand name.
Status driven people don’t care so much about the art that is investing, therefore are not so motivated by achieving good returns (and this shows in results). These are the people who are hyper-aware of the heirarchy and their place in it, and they tend to reinforce it at every turn both in terms of taking advantage of their position (eg by being rude to those below etc) and also brown nosing those above. Most bosses love suck ups and these people are just too damn good at sucking up for bosses to be turned off by it. So these people can usually succeed by playing the game, climbing up the heirarchy, and this makes them feel really good about themselves.
So these are also the type of people who once senior enough insist ‘this team is a family’ (because they have no idea how rude people are to those below them, they only get the ‘good’ interactions) and really create workplace environments where everyone has to pretend to be best friends with each other or else not succeed / be labelled as ‘low EQ’ (ie doesn’t suck up enough).
There are teams out there led by people who care about the work first and money second and not at all about status, but they are exceedingly rare.
Important to note that being primarily motivated by money can also create toxic environments.
I think post 30 local status becomes less relevant than money.
What do I mean by that? Status is localized because “achievements” are not 1:1 translatable across different environments.
If you are working in finance, it has a status hierarchy, if you work in NYC, SF, or more broadly the USA; these all have their own status hierarchy as well. Together it means you have this sort of Venn diagram of status “x position in finance in NYC” which means little to the say 20th generation aristocrat in Italy whose family has been making wine (correspondingly that aristocratic status status may mean little to the Finance in NYC person).
By 30, I realised this quite deeply. That is to say status at the local level sort of taps out unless you figure a way to transcend it at a global level (Nobel Peace prize, things of international recognition etc) which is like aiming to be a billionaire - some people do, but it’s not really a valid use of one’s time.
So then you have money. By 30, pipe dreams of being a billionaire hit the reality of “you need money to actually buy this house today / pay for children” that is, others start to rely on you to provide in a way that you can’t just feed them your “dreams of being rich”. Again it’s localized; money goes further in different places, lifestyle is also a dictator of how much is needed, and like status you hit a saturation point (call it 10m) where unless you transcend your level (1bn) it isn’t really a valid use of your time to go beyond it.
What people tend to aim for after is usually something like “peace”; or contentment. You hope you hit it at 30, but pretty sure this is the mid life crises points you see. Where inevitably after some struggle against where you have ended up in life you tend to accept it a bit more deeply that “this is it”. If you come out of that in a healthy way then you tend to age well, hopefully you have children and can begin to move into this sort of wise father / grandfather role, which becomes more important to you as now realize the spotlight has shifted from you to them, that it’s about your legacy more than your own achievement (again not all people hit this).
Then by the end on your death bed you hope you’re in a stage of life where there was no regrets, you sort of went through “each stage” of life in a way that allowed you a great story - not overstaying in each.
Mental Health right now
Bro, random IB analyst or any white collar profession for that matter doesn't have status in the sense of getting you access to interesting people or "mating success". Any NYC model is gonna want to hang out with a creative or trust fund baby , not a boring wage slave who is balding at 28
So true
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