I can relate to a lot of this, I was pretty stinking poor growing up. Now I make good money. (I still buy used tires from shady lots tho).
But even now that I'm making good money, it boggles my mind how richer everyone else still seems. Like, how do so many young people have a favorite island in Hawaii? How is everyone out there affording new cars? People actually picked a college major without thinking about cost?
One thing I have to constantly wrap my head around is that being broke doesn't correlate to income. I have a family and a mortgage and savings and nothing left over for luxuries at the end of the month. But someone working as a bartender can afford a new Jeep and go to Vegas 4x a year because they have a good roommate situation and they are due to inherit their parent's second house one day.
> Like, how do so many young people have a favorite island in Hawaii? How is everyone out there affording new cars?
The reality is that oftentimes they simply can't, at least according to a responsible definition of "afford".
All we see from the outside is the brand new Jeep, we don't see the fact that they're underwater on a 72 month loan with 6% interest. The average car loan term in 2019 was 69 months, that's insane. Something like 30% of trade ins have negative equity.
Even ignoring debt, I've spoken to a surprising number of people who make great money and live lavishly but have effectively no retirement savings. The level of financial literacy in the US is abysmal.
I would strengthen your statement to say that almost everyone can't afford it. Median household income is around $67K in the US, and the median household assets (minus the house) at age 65-69 is $75K. So even if a third of your income is being replaced by social security, a typical household has not even two years of income saved. A 25th percentile household has less than 5 months! Most people save basically nothing, on net. Even 75th percentile households only have 4 years of income. Assuming reasonable investment returns, that's only saving 2.5% on average. Pensions aren't expensive, retirement is expensive! People, even ones who can easily afford it, often won't save.
I’m not sure the, everyone is in debt, is a good explanation for what you’re seeing. Everyone is in debt but that doesn’t allow you to sustainably live beyond your means. Sure you’ll get a small bump on your way to maxing out your credit cards but it won’t take long to reach your limit and then you’re worse off than you were before.
I think a better explanation is small inheritances. I think there are a number of people that have come into small inheritances. Enough to change their situation but not enough to move out of their social circles and because of that they’re very unlikely to let you know.
Say someone gets $500k from their uncle. Not a small sum of money but not a gigantic inheritance. You’re not going to immediately retire if you get that but you might pay off your mortgage. Now ask yourself what your lifestyle might be if someone came along and wiped out your mortgage. Now that Jeep or Audi might not be such a big deal and your looking at them thinking, “how on earth can they be doing that? They’re working the same job I am and I can’t do that”.
> Something like 30% of trade ins have negative equity
Could you please clarify what this means. E.g., A car "X" is traded in for a car "Y". X gets a trade-in-value of $2,000. That is, the cost to buy Y is reduced by 2,000. Where does the negative-equity in your point apply here please? Thanks.
I couldn't help but do the same thing when I was reading the article, in the opposite direction: "wait - you had a wife and you were poor?" When I was young and my income was low or nonexistent, it seemed like women could smell the poverty on me and I couldn't even get close to them. It was like trying to sneak up on a grazing gazelle - they'd hear me coming and just sprint to a safe distance. The more money I made, the closer I could get until I finally made enough money that they stayed close enough to talk to.
Even now, married 20 years, the author talks about the burden on his wife and kids if he went back to being poor - I'm sure my wife would just leave if I was genuinely stuck in a poverty cycle with no way of getting out, and I wouldn't really blame her.
All platitudes aside, comparison really is the thief of joy.
Lots of people have very different situations from what they project (witting or unwittingly), they might be running up debt to pay for their lifestyle or maybe they have profitable small side businesses, and bartend for the bills and social aspect.
Focus on your journey, and where you are on the path, don't get distracted with people "passing" you on shorter, longer, or completely different paths.
Certainly. My point was largely that poor vs wealthy is often hard to actually tell.
In the case of the bartender, this wasn't actually a hypothetical: I have more than one friend in this exact situation - they got one good inheritance, are waiting on another, and in the meantime live rent free at a parent's property. In both instances they even get aid from the state.
While they appear poor on paper (and they often describe themselves as poor), they have tremendous resources at their disposal.
I know someone who was doing the equivalent of the bartending thing. Her grandfather was loaded and all major expenses taken care of. She kept it quiet but would give coworkers a ton of shit for general life things that she didn’t have to worry about. “sorry I’m late I had a flat tire.” “That’s not an excuse. You should have found a way to get new tires so you’re not late like me.”
I struggled with this as well and then I started asking people about it, I grew up lower middle class and there were some very rough stretches of time during my childhood.
What I've observed:
1) They're not saving for retirement. $0.
2) They spend a lot using credit. New vehicles with 2k down and high monthly payments. High monthly credit card bills.
3) They have a lot of stuff but are essentially living pay cheque to pay cheque. One thing that surprised me was working at a company that got acquired and payroll got moved to the parent company which had a pay schedule that was 1 week later, so they told us we would get paid one week later than we had historically. Inconvenient, but no problem for me. Out of an office of about 40 people 15 said they wouldn't be able to pay their bills. These were all people who made over 6 figures.
Another thing I've noticed is that many people don't look at absolute price but instead look at monthly payment, I think raising interest rates are going to hurt a lot of people that from the outside seem to have a dream life.
> One thing I have to constantly wrap my head around is that being broke doesn't correlate to income. I have a family and a mortgage and savings and nothing left over for luxuries at the end of the month. But someone working as a bartender can afford a new Jeep and go to Vegas 4x a year because they have a good roommate situation and they are due to inherit their parent's second house one day.
I feel like we don't count our own responsible expenses but double count other people's luxury expenses.
A new jeep is maybe 6k/yr. A trip to Vegas is maybe 1k. That's maybe a total 12k/yr
If you're mortgage is 3k a month and he's paying 500 a month in rent, you throw in two kids @ $1,000 a month and maybe 500/month in savings and you're looking at 66k in expenses which dwarfs the 12k.
I am sorta in the same boat, because I grew up relatively poor I'm paranoid so I save/invest a lot and drive a Honda while my coworkers complain of dealer markups on their new Porsche :)
It would be a real bummer if civilization collapses and it would all be for nothing, but otherwise I hope to FIRE in a few years...
This is something I really struggle with.
I'm now middle class, but the horror of growing up poor still sticks with me.
I have severe nightmares about being poor again, I just can't go back.
I tend to overwork, and hoard thing at times.
The most difficult thing these days, is my kids. I'm extremely happy that they don't know how bad things can be, but I get extremely worried by that too.
I get worried, that they don't try hard enough because they don't understand how bad things in life can get. I get worried that they are far too trusting because times are so good and plentiful.
this shows how big a difference a good social net makes.
i grew up poor, with a single parent, on social welfare (because the parent could not work since they had to stay home to take care of us kids until we were older)
in germany.
social welfare paid our rent and gave us enough money that we could afford everything we needed. (we didn't need a car, and we didn't have a tv, but that was by choice. they would probably have paid the tv, had we wanted one). i never felt any struggle. when i moved out from home, i never needed money from my parents either. always paid my own way. i was never rich. i just learned to live frugal. and i am not at all scared of being poor again, because i know that there is a social net that i have access to if i need it.
There is no middle class anymore. That has been eliminated by deliberate policy.
At best you are mid-upper lower class. If you have any worry about being able to get along if you lost your job and had a major life-threatening illness, you are still lower class like the rest of us.
All I can say is to treat them well and set them up for success.
I've noticed folks sometimes fall into the trap of trying to give their kids nothing to teach them lessons. Early help in life has compounding effects.
I have been poor in a poor country and now I’m not. I make mid-high six figures and just bought a house. I have five years of expenses saved up and could extend it to ten with the right moves. Still, sleeping at night is hard, imagining that everything could collapse at any moment - I don’t know how I would explain to my kid that “we don’t have money anymore”. This feeling permeates every interaction I have at work - will I fuck up this email to the VP, then get fired, then become poor again? Makes for a very unhealthy relationship with work. Sometimes I wish I won the lottery - not to buy boats and cars and houses, but simply to stop being worried every damn minute of my life.
> but simply to stop being worried every damn minute of my life.
You would be worried nonetheless, because your brain will latch on to the next anxiety. Just like you thought that having 5 years of expenses would alleviate your anxiety. What you need is a good therapist to work on your anxiety issues.
As you likely know, you are at the point where more money won't change these feelings.
Therapy or meditation, likely both may help induce a shift. As the grip loosens you will find many things begin to change.
"Sleeping well at night", is likely the single most important thing you can focus on. If you choose to focus on that, it likely will permeate many aspects of your life..
You may find a deeper and more authentic experience and through that you may find that you actually have won the lottery. You are safe. You have 5 years of expenses - I guarantee you that you could figure out solutions to just about anything that comes your way in 5 years.
You're no longer trying to survive. It's now time to learn how to live.
It's funny how your brain is able to convince you that the immediate consequence of "get fired" is "become poor," even though you have a five year buffer in which to regroup.
I'm afraid there's simply no amount of money that can possibly remove the feeling that everything could collapse at any moment. If your sense of security is predicated on continuing to possess money, you will always be vulnerable to the fear of losing it, no matter how much you accrue.
If you won the lottery tomorrow, what makes you think you wouldn't worry about losing that money too?
I thought about that recently when I went to the grocery store - when I was fresh out of college, making ~$30k/year, I remember always going to the grocery store and keeping a running total in my head of how much I was spending so I didn't go over $70, since I knew my debit card would be declined if I did. Now I don't even pay attention to how much individual items cost - I just grab what I need.
I dunno. Even when I was making minimum wage, groceries never seemed like a significant part of my budget. I never understood people trying to save 10c to get, like, the cheapest mustard possible. Compared to the big expenses (rent) food was really a small percentage of a budget, especially if you avoid stocking up on meat or alcohol.
I remember being much more frustrated by friends trying to drag me out to eat at restaurants or throwing away food. Like, one sit down meal was worth three days of groceries!
Living on your own vs. having a family (even just a spouse) makes a huge difference here. Feeding just-yourself vs. feeding yourself-plus-others can make the difference between "Groceries are at the bottom of my expense list" and "groceries are my second-biggest monthly expense".
On a really tight budget, the kind of food makes a difference. I used to be living on about 150 USD food budget a month in college (non-us). You can bet I used to eat _a lot_ of rice.
Typically, this is how I measured my success as well: when I stopped looking at the prices of things and just shopped or ordered what I wanted without too much concern. (Within reason of course, because as a former cook when I want splurge it can easily hit 4 digits.)
Everything else never felt as a re-assuring,; I've bought lots of cars and motorcycles, signed leases, traveled etc... over the years, but nothing made me more comfortable than knowing that the food bill wasn't going to ruin my finances for the month(s) as it used to before.
I used to live on $100/month for food during university, it's partly why I decided to work in kitchens and I know I can stretch out a meal quite a lot and not lose on quality. And if it's just me, I tend to like simple meals that I can iterate upon: a ragu can turn into about 5 different dishes and all uses cheap(er) cuts of meat.
But I still remember having to wait to buy things from grocery stores like yogurts or juice or pasta only when they were on special (loss leaders) and it's actually how I got a pretty good at understanding the market dynamics of a food supply's value chain, which helped when I ran kitchens and when I got into supply chain.
It ultimately culminates in focusing my cuisine on farm to tables because eating in-season not only tastes the best, is more environmental, but when you're in charge of food costs in menu development you can achieve ROIs and ARRs to justify larger expenses by buying and sourcing from farms who you can count on for price breaks for other items/prioritization for other items by buying their entire harvest ahead of planting.
As both a former farmer and chef, this was a huge relief and allows you to utilize capital where it's needed most without taking as many loans for repairs, labour, training, expansion etc...
I grew up upper middle class and earn a mid-low six figure salary. I used to be quite frugal. Now I'm just apathetic to it. I don't care at all about money. I have no particular financial goals. I save a lot without trying. But savings scale linearly in non risky comp scenarios. And that's kind of boring because there's nothing that I could imagine wanting that doesn't require orders of magnitude more money than I have now. Aside from the vague "retire early" thing.
Not a complaint.
> There’s something that people with money say that doesn’t make sense: that regardless of how much money you have, you run out of it just as soon.
This is just a weird thing to me. I didn't feel this was true on a five digit salary much less what I have now.
> When you get a good job, someone will ask you how much money you want to dump into your 401k. You will probably say “none” because you are conditioned to believe that trouble is just around the corner
This was relatable. While never having to support a family of 4 on 35k, I did have a period of my life where I was very broke on my own. When I finally started to climb out of my situation, I remember thinking people were idiots for putting money in a 401k. You can’t get it out if you need it. It took 5 years of stable employment before I actually started putting money into a 401k.
The freaking idea that money makes problems go away is so powerful.
That's basically what I noticed as I get less poor.
Automobile problems...pay for it. Medical problems...pay for it. Did you get a parking ticket? Pay it. Now you don't have to worry about being towed.
America really crushes the poor in many respects.
If the poor had other options, like Job corps, or a sharecropper type situation where they can stay rent free and learn skills.... that would be one thing. But there's nothing available to poor people other than to just fucking be poor or get lucky...and getting lucky seems like a rediculous way to build a society.
Then you combine that with massive offshoring and automation..... It makes you realize capitalism is kind of bullshit if there's 7 billion people in the world willing to do the job.
In America, it can be all over the place. On one hand, the first time I had a corporate job I certainly felt very naked being the one guy with a ratty car in the parking lot.
On the other hand, you might have a CEO proudly drinks cheap beer and wears Kirkland Signature workboots to the office.
It's also an American problem. I notice it most in the pressure to have a nice front lawn. In some American neighborhoods, if you don't regularly cut your grass, people will call the police.
Participating in class signaling is optional, starting with the choice of where to live. I can tell you from experience that if you find the right neighborhood, you can have good access and security and not have to cut your grass regularly. It's a big country.
It really depends. In some, neighbors will assume you're going through a rough spot and cut it for you. It probably depends on how many generations removed your neighbors are from abject poverty. Too many and they lose touch with how easy it is to end up on one side or another of the line.
There is no middle class anymore. What you mention are lower class pressures.
Middle-class pressures, back when there was one, meant you were expected to get a new car every year. There were reasons for that, back then: tetraethyl lead additives in the gasoline destroyed engines in no time. But it was not a big drain on middle-class people, just an expense to keep up with.
"They" have been very, very good at convincing lower-class people they are now middle class. It worked! Fully half the voting population imagines, when they think they are voting to keep their own money away out of the poors' hands, really are voting to keep extreme rich peoples' money in the rich peoples' hands, along with most of what could have been the voters' money, besides.
They have got so good at it, people actually elected an out-and-out confidence grifter to the Presidency, and helped stage a coup attempt to keep him there.
My parents were middle class, maybe upper middle class. They felt exactly zero pressure to get a new car every year. Yes, this was still in the days of leaded gasoline.
I think, rather than "they" convincing people, that you have made up a definition of "middle class" that exists only in your own mind. It doesn't correspond to either the real world or to the definition that the rest of us are using.
I don't know why you're claiming middle class people used to get a new car every year. It used to be that a man with a high-school education could provide fairly well for his family as the sole breadwinner. But a new car every year is fantasy.
Readit News
But even now that I'm making good money, it boggles my mind how richer everyone else still seems. Like, how do so many young people have a favorite island in Hawaii? How is everyone out there affording new cars? People actually picked a college major without thinking about cost?
One thing I have to constantly wrap my head around is that being broke doesn't correlate to income. I have a family and a mortgage and savings and nothing left over for luxuries at the end of the month. But someone working as a bartender can afford a new Jeep and go to Vegas 4x a year because they have a good roommate situation and they are due to inherit their parent's second house one day.
The reality is that oftentimes they simply can't, at least according to a responsible definition of "afford".
All we see from the outside is the brand new Jeep, we don't see the fact that they're underwater on a 72 month loan with 6% interest. The average car loan term in 2019 was 69 months, that's insane. Something like 30% of trade ins have negative equity.
Even ignoring debt, I've spoken to a surprising number of people who make great money and live lavishly but have effectively no retirement savings. The level of financial literacy in the US is abysmal.
https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles-b...
I think a better explanation is small inheritances. I think there are a number of people that have come into small inheritances. Enough to change their situation but not enough to move out of their social circles and because of that they’re very unlikely to let you know.
Say someone gets $500k from their uncle. Not a small sum of money but not a gigantic inheritance. You’re not going to immediately retire if you get that but you might pay off your mortgage. Now ask yourself what your lifestyle might be if someone came along and wiped out your mortgage. Now that Jeep or Audi might not be such a big deal and your looking at them thinking, “how on earth can they be doing that? They’re working the same job I am and I can’t do that”.
Could you please clarify what this means. E.g., A car "X" is traded in for a car "Y". X gets a trade-in-value of $2,000. That is, the cost to buy Y is reduced by 2,000. Where does the negative-equity in your point apply here please? Thanks.
Even now, married 20 years, the author talks about the burden on his wife and kids if he went back to being poor - I'm sure my wife would just leave if I was genuinely stuck in a poverty cycle with no way of getting out, and I wouldn't really blame her.
My wife wouldn't and no woman in a relationship I know would care about this either.
Love is not based on income.
That sounds tremendous depressing.
A partnership is teamwork not two doing different things.
Deleted Comment
Lots of people have very different situations from what they project (witting or unwittingly), they might be running up debt to pay for their lifestyle or maybe they have profitable small side businesses, and bartend for the bills and social aspect.
Focus on your journey, and where you are on the path, don't get distracted with people "passing" you on shorter, longer, or completely different paths.
In the case of the bartender, this wasn't actually a hypothetical: I have more than one friend in this exact situation - they got one good inheritance, are waiting on another, and in the meantime live rent free at a parent's property. In both instances they even get aid from the state.
While they appear poor on paper (and they often describe themselves as poor), they have tremendous resources at their disposal.
What I've observed:
1) They're not saving for retirement. $0.
2) They spend a lot using credit. New vehicles with 2k down and high monthly payments. High monthly credit card bills.
3) They have a lot of stuff but are essentially living pay cheque to pay cheque. One thing that surprised me was working at a company that got acquired and payroll got moved to the parent company which had a pay schedule that was 1 week later, so they told us we would get paid one week later than we had historically. Inconvenient, but no problem for me. Out of an office of about 40 people 15 said they wouldn't be able to pay their bills. These were all people who made over 6 figures.
Another thing I've noticed is that many people don't look at absolute price but instead look at monthly payment, I think raising interest rates are going to hurt a lot of people that from the outside seem to have a dream life.
Comparing finances to others without actually having all the information isn’t worthwhile.
I feel like we don't count our own responsible expenses but double count other people's luxury expenses.
A new jeep is maybe 6k/yr. A trip to Vegas is maybe 1k. That's maybe a total 12k/yr
If you're mortgage is 3k a month and he's paying 500 a month in rent, you throw in two kids @ $1,000 a month and maybe 500/month in savings and you're looking at 66k in expenses which dwarfs the 12k.
It would be a real bummer if civilization collapses and it would all be for nothing, but otherwise I hope to FIRE in a few years...
The most difficult thing these days, is my kids. I'm extremely happy that they don't know how bad things can be, but I get extremely worried by that too. I get worried, that they don't try hard enough because they don't understand how bad things in life can get. I get worried that they are far too trusting because times are so good and plentiful.
Life can change good or bad in an instant.
i grew up poor, with a single parent, on social welfare (because the parent could not work since they had to stay home to take care of us kids until we were older)
in germany.
social welfare paid our rent and gave us enough money that we could afford everything we needed. (we didn't need a car, and we didn't have a tv, but that was by choice. they would probably have paid the tv, had we wanted one). i never felt any struggle. when i moved out from home, i never needed money from my parents either. always paid my own way. i was never rich. i just learned to live frugal. and i am not at all scared of being poor again, because i know that there is a social net that i have access to if i need it.
At best you are mid-upper lower class. If you have any worry about being able to get along if you lost your job and had a major life-threatening illness, you are still lower class like the rest of us.
I've noticed folks sometimes fall into the trap of trying to give their kids nothing to teach them lessons. Early help in life has compounding effects.
You would be worried nonetheless, because your brain will latch on to the next anxiety. Just like you thought that having 5 years of expenses would alleviate your anxiety. What you need is a good therapist to work on your anxiety issues.
Therapy or meditation, likely both may help induce a shift. As the grip loosens you will find many things begin to change.
"Sleeping well at night", is likely the single most important thing you can focus on. If you choose to focus on that, it likely will permeate many aspects of your life..
You may find a deeper and more authentic experience and through that you may find that you actually have won the lottery. You are safe. You have 5 years of expenses - I guarantee you that you could figure out solutions to just about anything that comes your way in 5 years.
You're no longer trying to survive. It's now time to learn how to live.
I'm afraid there's simply no amount of money that can possibly remove the feeling that everything could collapse at any moment. If your sense of security is predicated on continuing to possess money, you will always be vulnerable to the fear of losing it, no matter how much you accrue.
If you won the lottery tomorrow, what makes you think you wouldn't worry about losing that money too?
I thought about that recently when I went to the grocery store - when I was fresh out of college, making ~$30k/year, I remember always going to the grocery store and keeping a running total in my head of how much I was spending so I didn't go over $70, since I knew my debit card would be declined if I did. Now I don't even pay attention to how much individual items cost - I just grab what I need.
I remember being much more frustrated by friends trying to drag me out to eat at restaurants or throwing away food. Like, one sit down meal was worth three days of groceries!
Typically, this is how I measured my success as well: when I stopped looking at the prices of things and just shopped or ordered what I wanted without too much concern. (Within reason of course, because as a former cook when I want splurge it can easily hit 4 digits.)
Everything else never felt as a re-assuring,; I've bought lots of cars and motorcycles, signed leases, traveled etc... over the years, but nothing made me more comfortable than knowing that the food bill wasn't going to ruin my finances for the month(s) as it used to before.
I used to live on $100/month for food during university, it's partly why I decided to work in kitchens and I know I can stretch out a meal quite a lot and not lose on quality. And if it's just me, I tend to like simple meals that I can iterate upon: a ragu can turn into about 5 different dishes and all uses cheap(er) cuts of meat.
But I still remember having to wait to buy things from grocery stores like yogurts or juice or pasta only when they were on special (loss leaders) and it's actually how I got a pretty good at understanding the market dynamics of a food supply's value chain, which helped when I ran kitchens and when I got into supply chain.
It ultimately culminates in focusing my cuisine on farm to tables because eating in-season not only tastes the best, is more environmental, but when you're in charge of food costs in menu development you can achieve ROIs and ARRs to justify larger expenses by buying and sourcing from farms who you can count on for price breaks for other items/prioritization for other items by buying their entire harvest ahead of planting.
As both a former farmer and chef, this was a huge relief and allows you to utilize capital where it's needed most without taking as many loans for repairs, labour, training, expansion etc...
Not a complaint.
> There’s something that people with money say that doesn’t make sense: that regardless of how much money you have, you run out of it just as soon.
This is just a weird thing to me. I didn't feel this was true on a five digit salary much less what I have now.
This was relatable. While never having to support a family of 4 on 35k, I did have a period of my life where I was very broke on my own. When I finally started to climb out of my situation, I remember thinking people were idiots for putting money in a 401k. You can’t get it out if you need it. It took 5 years of stable employment before I actually started putting money into a 401k.
The freaking idea that money makes problems go away is so powerful.
That's basically what I noticed as I get less poor.
Automobile problems...pay for it. Medical problems...pay for it. Did you get a parking ticket? Pay it. Now you don't have to worry about being towed.
America really crushes the poor in many respects.
If the poor had other options, like Job corps, or a sharecropper type situation where they can stay rent free and learn skills.... that would be one thing. But there's nothing available to poor people other than to just fucking be poor or get lucky...and getting lucky seems like a rediculous way to build a society.
Then you combine that with massive offshoring and automation..... It makes you realize capitalism is kind of bullshit if there's 7 billion people in the world willing to do the job.
It's a total clown world.
On the other hand, you might have a CEO proudly drinks cheap beer and wears Kirkland Signature workboots to the office.
Sorry but it doesn’t go both ways.
If you can afford to live in one of these neighborhoods, you are already middle class.
Middle-class pressures, back when there was one, meant you were expected to get a new car every year. There were reasons for that, back then: tetraethyl lead additives in the gasoline destroyed engines in no time. But it was not a big drain on middle-class people, just an expense to keep up with.
"They" have been very, very good at convincing lower-class people they are now middle class. It worked! Fully half the voting population imagines, when they think they are voting to keep their own money away out of the poors' hands, really are voting to keep extreme rich peoples' money in the rich peoples' hands, along with most of what could have been the voters' money, besides.
They have got so good at it, people actually elected an out-and-out confidence grifter to the Presidency, and helped stage a coup attempt to keep him there.
I think, rather than "they" convincing people, that you have made up a definition of "middle class" that exists only in your own mind. It doesn't correspond to either the real world or to the definition that the rest of us are using.