Wealth Quartiles, and Who Is Rich, Anyway?

The other day, a question came up on my Twitter feed. Do you consider yourself rich?

I like this sort of question. Ideally, it inspires a little introspection and gets me to step back and get some perspective. Do I understand where we stand financially? Do I appreciate how lucky we are?

To get that perspective, it helps to understand what kind of money the average family has. We've written a lot about average incomes and income quintiles with this in mind.

I Guess I Like Cars Now?

So there was a slight omission in our last annual "are we on track for FIRE" post. Okay, two small omissions, that totaled twenty thousand dollars. Unintentionally following a trend that swept America while we were cooped up in a pandemic, we bought not one, but two, used cars: a 2015 Lexus RX350, and a 2006 Saab 9-3 2.0T wagon (or "Sportcombi" for Saab nerds).

What would have possessed us to buy two additional cars, mere months after writing an ode to the Matrix and the happiness of making one car work?