Wealth Disconnect

I am noticing more and more, incidences where my understanding of the world is tinted by a small case of wealth disconnect when I interact with people. Not that I am super wealthy now, but super wealthy compared to when I first noticed this kind of disconnect between poor and wealthy people.

The first time I realized the world we live in are completely different, even though we occupy the same physical space is during a negotiation with someone to schedule a time. When I was asked if I have vacancies on a particular day and I replied with “No I have to do dry cleaning that day.” A wealthy and stay at home mom interjected with disbelief: “How can dry cleaning take a whole day?” Not really understanding why she asked a weird question like that, I proceeded to answer the question by listing what I will have to do on the day in question.

“Well, I get off work at 6PM, then I have to carry my cloths on my bike to the dry cleaner that’s pretty far away… twice because the load is too big. Then I wait for them to finish at home while I COOK my own dinner. Then I ride my bike back around 11PM before they close, again taking two turn because there’s so much load. And that’s my day.”

The thing I do with money almost every day, because of how big the transactions usually are, numbed my sens of proportion. I remembered a time where losing $1000 caused insomnia and made me angry the whole day. I remembered thinking “Wow, that’s a nice piece of furniture” as opposed to “Just another piece of wood that serves a purpose”. Some of the comments of admiration that applicants made during the viewing really made me question whether or not I am living in lala land.

On the other hand, I could view it as a blessing. That the business valuation which is constantly going on in my head basically categorizes everything into two groups. Income generating assets and dead weight. I only view income generating assets in the same light that people appreciate a good piece of furniture. The problem is, an asset doesn’t really generate income, until a person actually tried to peddle it to a client to generate income. So they spend most of their time with me as dead weight.