Life's Luxuries and Expectations

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Experiencing a different lifestyle can feel torturous when compared with modern conveniences. The gap between one's expectations and reality determines the perceived quality of life. One's frame of reference, like comparing oneself with others, plays a significant role in shaping this perception. Despite the luxuries of today, in the past, without modern amenities, life could still feel luxurious due to the absence of direct comparison. In the end, the realization that nobody will remember an individual in a hundred years highlights the temporary nature of personal significance.

Measuring wealth is easy. You just count it up. Measuring some of the downsides of wealth is so much harder and more nuanced. They can be so nuanced and hard to measure that many people won’t even believe they exist. A downside to wealth? How could that possibly be?

Let me propose that the absurdity of talking about the downside of wealth is part of why wealth doesn’t tend to make people as happy as they thought it would.

When the benefits of money are so obvious but the downsides are so subtle, the downsides you didn’t anticipate can be more jarring than the benefits you expected.

I want more money, of course. Almost everyone does, albeit for different reasons.

This is not an anti-wealth list -- just a collection of subtle downsides that are easy to ignore, and so common you may as well call them the only true laws of getting rich.