You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve had the urge to fill the room with uppercuts when someone says they’re having trouble living on $120,000 per year.
Oh, how I’ve looked forward to writing this post. This is based on an experience I had with a client who was particularly difficult to work with, and who one day, in the course of casual conversation, happened to bring up what troubles he was having living on an income of a mere $120K per year.
Of course I just smiled as if to say “Yeah, I hear ya brother,” but inside I was thinking about how I’d like to carefully rearrange his facial structure with my fist. Well, not really, I’m not the type to want to hit people, but it sounds better than saying I was rather bemused. Although I did feel a certain desire for violence when this same client’s website sucked up all the bandwidth in our datacenter and then he neglected to pay any part of the $13,000 bill we got stuck with, even though he said he would pay part of it. But hey, I guess he needed it more than I did, after all, he’s got a lifestyle to maintain.
This reminded me of a rich guy that was speaking at a local conference awhile back. He was going on and on about how people should live below their means, and how people are too focused on materialism and money and success, etc.. He then used an example of not needing the newest, fastest car all the time. Then he closed with the classic line of “my driver is welcome to drive me around in any car he wants.” So annoying. If you’re having trouble living on $120K a year, more money is only going to increase the number of problems you have, as apparently you lack any money management skills at all.
Maybe he got a raise now that his website is apparently so popular. What a putz.