Meet the Henrys: High Earners Who Just Can’t Feel Rich – Here’s Why
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Yes, we got the latest from the Woe Street Journal. Yes, the Woe Street Journal. Another day, another acronym. Meet the Henrys. That’s right. I’m not making this up. It’s almost every day they got some new acronym for Woe. Well, the Henrys here. Henrys are what? Basically people that are stuck on a hamster wheel. High earner not rich yet. That is the latest acronym from the Woe Street Journal. 15 years ago, if you told April Little that she’d make $300,000 a year, she would have pictured a life free of financial stress. The white picket fence, I have the whole visual in my head says Little 38 years old, a human resources executive turned career coach in Rochester, New York.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but when I got to that proverbial mountaintop, I realized there’s a lot of expenses and I still don’t own a Whoa. Again, I’m sorry, my bull excrement meter is running pretty hot right now. She says she makes $300,000 a year as a career coach in Rochester, New York.
Yeah, I’m not buying that. I’m not buying that. Anyway, she says her multiple six figures is tough, carries $90,000 of college and grad school debt. Again, she makes $300,000. Again, that might be her revenues. I don’t know. Something done to add up here.
But then she talks about the cost of childcare and education for her three children. She’s making the husband play the Mr. Mom. Husband decided the better option was for him to leave his radio job to parent and homeschool full time.
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Okay, again, they’re talking about how 14.4 % of US households bring in $200,000 or more a year near a record, yet the money doesn’t have the buying power that it used to. Why would that be? I don’t know. Gee whiz, it might be that the government decides it wants to subsidize childcare, wants to subsidize healthcare, wants to subsidize college education, now wants to subsidize housing.
What happens when you subsidize things? Well, the price goes up. It’s exactly what’s going to happen. mean, you can’t doubt it. That will happen. And you take a look, the average price of a home now compared to other years, and it’s not even close. The Wall Street Journal says the essence of being a Henry is feeling a gap between what you have and what you think you need to be comfortable.
What these high earners consider essentials might be termed luxuries by the rest of us, but it’s also true that it takes more money to feel rich these days and their great fear is becoming a Henry, H-E-N-R-E, high earner, not rich, ever. Here we go. We got another anecdotal story here. Attorney Joshua Siegel doesn’t expect sympathy as he motors around Los Angeles in his Lexus SUV. He just figured at 40, haven’t risen to partner and
chair of a transactional tax group. He might be driving from a house he owns to a country club where he’s a member instead. His occasional golf outings take him from his rental home to a public course. And he talks about the cost of raising kids in one of the country’s most expensive cities. And he says, well, you know, a lot of people in my circles come from wealthy families and their parents gave them money for down payments.
He’s a son of an electrician and a dental assistant. he’s, he’s feeling like he’s treading water. Here we go. Another one, Monica, a 40 year old financial consultant says she and her husband have a net worth in the mid seven figures, but she won’t breathe easy until she has that eight figure net worth and talks about the daycare for her two year old taking a $30,000 bite out of the family.
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Budget man, things are tough out there. The Woe Street Journal finding us another acronym and more people to be upset about. Listen, I deal with these Henrys more often than not. And my experience is they live outside their means. And again, in today’s day and age,
Keeping up with the Joneses and social media has been put on steroids. It is what it is. Number nine on my watchdog on Wall Street, Markowski Investments. Guide to financial independence is you have more money than your neighbors and they don’t. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.