Mar 11, 2026
“Wretchedly poor people are fortunate to revel in a Christmas spirit untainted by material possessions” - The Onion
God I love old Onion News Network. Of course, being poor isn't better than being rich. If it was, the method for a rich person to become poor is very simple.
However, is there an underlying truth here? Poorer people tend to have stronger bonds with their families and communities. It's also said that people with less are able to derive joy from humbler things. For instance, the constraints of a budget requires you to be resourceful and scoring a deal in the clearance section can feel amazing, something unlikely to be meaningful if you're rich. Every dollar you earn is meaningful as it's imminently necessary for survival. But these potential benefits are still outweighed by the health, safety, and opportunities that money brings.
Is there a way to reap some of these so-called psychological benefits of being poor while actually being rich?
A potential solution is a mortgage. We already have a word for it: House poor. Usually, house poor people are not poor. They feel poor because all of their money is tied up paying off the house. As a house poor person, you feel like you have to work hard in order to simply keep the roof over your head.
This is an illusion though. Your mortgage payments are not merely covering shelter. You are actually accumulating a vast amount of wealth into an asset. Enough to buy the bananas required to fill an Olympic swimming pool. You will end up quite rich, when you felt like you were poor the whole time.
As a renter, your rent is more closely tracking your true cost of shelter, and your expenses (especially if we include the opportunity cost of a down payment) are less. You end up with all this extra cash flow, making you feel rich. Even if you don't touch it and dutifully invest it, you're voluntarily saving excess money today to make you even richer in the future. This is a very different feeling to being forced to pay a mortgage. Yet, the actual wealth of the two scenarios is roughly the same.