The Most Expensive Thing You Can Copy Is Someone Else’s Normal

[Seth Walsh]

The Most Expensive Thing You Can Copy Is Someone Else’s Normal

You can share someone’s lifestyle without sharing the circumstances that make it affordable.​

Imagine a group of friends arranging a wedding weekend abroad. Someone drops the accommodation link into the chat, a few people agree, and suddenly the cost has been established without anybody actually discussing it. You could pay it. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that paying it would undo several months of saving, and explaining that feels more embarrassing than quietly booking the flight.

Everyone will appear in the same photographs. Same restaurant, same clothes, same view behind them. Years later, you could look at those pictures and reasonably assume that everyone was doing roughly as well.

A shared table tells you very little about what it costs each person to be there.​

Now imagine that one guest lives in a flat his parents own. Another pays market rent and sends money home. A third has a decent salary but considerable debt. Nobody is lying about their job. Nobody needs to be secretly rich. There is already enough difference here to make copying one another expensive.

This is the part of social class that deserves more attention: the same behaviour can preserve one person’s position while gradually weakening another’s. You can spend years doing what your peers do, apparently keeping pace, while moving further away from the security they take for granted.

What the salary leaves out

Take a deliberately simple example. Two people each bring home €3,000 a month. After essential expenses, one has €600 left and the other has €1,600. They both spend €400 on the same weekend. For the first person, that leaves €200 for saving and everything unexpected. The second still has €1,200. The payment was identical; the sacrifice was not.

Repeat that across holidays, weddings, restaurants and the neighbourhood everyone wants to live in. Eventually the first person begins to wonder why saving requires so much discipline when his friends seem to manage it without thinking. He has copied their spending while assuming their income explains it.

Housing support is especially easy to miss because it often looks so ordinary. There needn’t be a mansion, a chauffeur or an allowance arriving every Friday. A family-owned flat can sit quietly underneath an otherwise unremarkable life. The person living there may work hard, pack lunch and dislike expensive clothes. Those habits are real. They simply aren’t the whole explanation.

Behind similar front doors can sit very different obligations.​

This is also why “we earn about the same” is such a poor foundation for comparing progress. What reaches your bank account matters, but so does what has already been paid for, what you owe, and who depends on you. Some people are building their own financial base. Others are adding to one that was established before they started working.

The expensive version of this happens at work

The same mistake becomes more consequential when the thing being copied is a career.

Suppose two graduates accept a prestigious role in an expensive city. One has reliable housing support; the other needs the salary to cover everything. A modest starting wage may be manageable for both. But if the promised progression fails to arrive, their choices begin to separate. One can stay for the experience and contacts. The other has to decide how many more years the name on the CV is worth.

That doesn’t make prestigious jobs fraudulent. A demanding, initially underpaid role can lead somewhere excellent. The question is whether there is evidence that this particular role does, and whether you can afford the route. Someone else’s willingness to remain tells you surprisingly little when you don’t know what remaining costs them.

A path can be sensible for your colleague and a bad bargain for you without either of you being less talented.

Advice becomes dangerous when those differences disappear from the story. “Take your time.” “Move to London.” “Try the business.” Each might be good advice. Each also comes with bills, a waiting period and some chance of failure. The person recommending it may have forgotten to mention how those were covered in their own case.

Sharing a commute doesn’t mean sharing the same freedom to change direction.​

Belonging can become another bill

There is an awkward social element to all this. People usually arrange things around what feels normal to them. They choose the restaurant they like, suggest the trip they can afford and assume everyone will say something if it is a problem. Often there is no deliberate exclusion at all.

But saying something has a cost too. You may not want to explain your finances to the group. You may be new, hoping to become closer friends, or tired of being the person who needs a cheaper plan. So you agree. After enough repetitions, maintaining the friendship begins to require a level of spending you cannot comfortably sustain.

That is where the usual advice to surround yourself with successful people needs more thought. Knowing capable, generous people can improve your life enormously. Yet an expensive setting only helps if worthwhile relationships actually develop there. Paying to stand near affluent strangers is a very uncertain purchase.

A useful friendship allows you to be known beyond what you can spend. It can survive a walk, a simple meal or an honest refusal. If every encounter requires you to stretch financially, you should at least recognise the arrangement you are maintaining. Access to a venue and a place in someone’s life are different achievements.

What would actually count as moving up?

On a forum about improving yourself, it is easy to get very good at the things other people can immediately recognise. Appearance matters. Social confidence matters. An attractive home and an interesting life are worth wanting. But the improvements need to leave you with something you can sustain.

Consider someone who gets a pay rise and immediately commits all of it to a more expensive car and flat. His life may become more enjoyable, and that has value. His dependence on the next paycheque may also remain exactly where it was. He has changed what his income purchases without changing how urgently he needs it.

Another person might look much the same after the raise while becoming able to withstand a period without work. From the outside, very little has happened. In practice, negotiating with an employer has become easier. An unexpected expense is less disruptive. A change of direction becomes possible.

That is a substantial improvement even if nobody compliments it.

The point is not to turn every pleasure into an offence against your future. A holiday can be worth the money. Living somewhere expensive can buy a shorter commute, better work or relationships you would otherwise struggle to maintain. The mistake is making those decisions mainly because they are normal for people whose circumstances you haven’t accounted for.

Nor can you solve the information gap by inspecting everybody’s clothes, accent or photographs. You don’t know their private arrangements, and they don’t owe you an explanation. What you can know is whether your own commitments are leaving you stronger over time.

The most useful lesson from understanding class is learning which comparisons to stop obeying. Someone else buying a home doesn’t establish your deadline. Someone else accepting poor pay doesn’t establish the value of your work. Someone else booking the weekend doesn’t establish what you can comfortably spend.

Return to that group chat. Perhaps you decide the wedding matters enough to justify the cost. Perhaps you attend for fewer days. Perhaps you cannot go. Any of those can be an adult decision made with a clear view of your circumstances.

The expensive mistake is booking because you need the photograph to show that you are keeping up, then spending the following months paying for a resemblance.

Spoiler: Related reading and image credits

Related discussions by Seth Walsh:
Social Class and Finance/Consulting Jobs
Why Social Class Can't Be Faked
Your Network Shows Who You Are
Who Gets to Have a Bad Year?

The scenarios and numbers in this thread are illustrative.

Photographs via Unsplash:
Outdoor gathering
London residential street — Matteo Bellia
Train platform — Jose Figueroa

Images illustrate the settings discussed; no claim is made about the circumstances of the people pictured.