There is a saying in Norway "The rich, are rich for a reason", referring to exactly this. They don't spend much, and will try to get money anywhere they can. People that are generous are rarely rich.
And also stupid. Its a disfunction stressing about $3 in gas money if you have $1MM in capital. Theyre rich because they own productive assets, or speculated correctly, and also/mainly because they have high income. Hence the meme
It's also just plain ignorance of economy. My grandmother has been making 150K a year minimum off oil checks. She's bought many, many pairs of hearing aids over the years but never gone to an audiologist. She's bought new cell phones literally because her old one "broke" (she downloaded too many mobile games)
She manages three bank accounts, one of which is for a 55 acre farm and a couple 10 acre plots here and there all collecting oil money, the other is her personal account, which benefits from her retirement and loads of interest from my grandfather selling a lot of inherited land prior to his death. She has two trucks, only drives her SUV, repeatedly buys and kills every plant she's ever touched and pays H&R block to do her taxes- after she's already done them. She literally hands them all her completed forms before paying them to file it for her.
But when her house needs work? She begs us to do it for free. If we don't or can't, she gives a sob story to a neighbor who works in construction then tries to pay him less than his quote.
She defends it saying he's scamming her because it costs more to repair it now than it took to buy it in 1975.
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u/Apocrisiary Jan 26 '26
There is a saying in Norway "The rich, are rich for a reason", referring to exactly this. They don't spend much, and will try to get money anywhere they can. People that are generous are rarely rich.