I had a lot of problems with this growing up but not in the way the article is describing. To this day I still don't know how much my parents make other than "enough". I know that technically they are in the 1% due to owning a successful S-Corp. I know that if they are ever killed in a way that looks suspicious there is enough money in play that my bothers and I would be immediate suspects. I know that we go on a lot of vacations and do a lot of things that are above normal. The biggest problem is that I don't know where that line was. I don't know just how much I would have to earn to live the same lifestyle as the one that I grew up with. I don't know how to compare my level of financial success to that of my parents. The worst part is that I ended up saying a lot of things that made me seem like a spoiled brat without realizing it.

As a kid I would say shit like "why wouldn't you just buy a new computer if your broke" or "I went to my grandfather's house in Mexico for Christmas" without realizing that what I had was better than a lot of people have it. My parents taught me how to budget, how to save, and how to live frugally but at the same time I never lived a "normal" life and I was very blessed. I graduated with a well paying career out of pure luck that I enjoy software engineering and graduated with no debt thanks to my parents. Even as a somewhat recent college grad with no direct support of my own lifestyle choices from my parents I still don't understand what it is to be normal as I earn 3x what most of my friends from high school make. This can cause a lot of issues because I have since learned to avoid inviting my friends to the more expensive hobbies I enjoy and I feel like I can't talk about them.

Even at 25 and being brought in to will discussions, I still don't know just how much I would need to make to live with the same level of comfort as I expect from myself. I suspect that I would need to earn about $200k/year by the time I have kids to have the same 2 weeks of destination vacations a year and reasonably nice things that my parents were able to provide for me to me. To top it all off I am ambitious and I want to live the lifestyle I grew to see in young adulthood with my parents growing in success which likely requires more than that.