Do you want to be rich or just look rich?
A financed car, an expensive watch, and panic before the next payment. The cost of pretending to be someone you haven't actually become.
You step out of a car you're more afraid of scratching than you are of losing another year of your life. Adjust your watch. Make sure the logo on your clothes is visible. Now you can walk into the restaurant and carefully study the right-hand side of the menu.
Just make sure nobody notices.
Everything you own is expensive. You look like you've got life figured out, free and independent. You've got everything except the right to decide what to do with yourself. Somehow, that still belongs to whoever sends you your paycheck.
I have nothing against expensive things. Like cars? Buy cars. Love watches? Great. I'm not interested in playing some enlightened asshole who's happy with a bowl of rice and inner wealth.
I'm interested in whether you can still afford your purchase after you've made it.
Can you turn down a degrading job? Survive a few months without income? Help someone you love without having to sell all this splendor at half price in a hurry? Or do you now have to put up with even more shit because status got more expensive, and freedom wasn't included in the package?
There are things you own. And there are things that make you get off your ass every morning and go to a job you hate, even though you've wanted to leave for ages.
It's especially funny when you're spending money to impress people you don't even like. Your coworker needs to be fucking blown away. Your ex needs to regret leaving. Your old classmate needs to see who's made it.
He'll look at the photo for three seconds. Then go take a shit.
And you'll keep paying for the next five years.
Incredible trade. Three seconds of someone else's attention for a substantial chunk of your future. I hope he at least hit like.
The problem isn't the loan itself. You can borrow money for different reasons, and treating every bank agreement as a moral failure is stupid. The problem starts when you take on obligations to create an impression your actual life can't make.
You want to look like someone who has options. So you buy something that leaves you with fewer of them.
Then you have to maintain the image. A car like that needs the right clothes. The clothes need the right places. The places need vacation photos from a trip you haven't earned the money for either. The set needs more props, and inside it sits one exhausted motherfucker counting the days until the money arrives, hoping payroll won't be late so he can make the loan payment on time.
Here's a simple, uncomfortable question: if nobody ever finds out about this purchase, do you still want it?
No photo. No key casually dropped on the table. No opportunity to work the price into a conversation. Just you and the thing.
If yes, great. If the desire suddenly deflated, maybe you weren't buying a thing at all. Maybe you were trying to rent other people's respect.
But respect on a monthly payment plan is a shitty arrangement. Miss the next installment, and suddenly it turns out you still don't have an answer when someone asks who you are.
I'm much more impressed by the ability to walk away calmly. From a company. From a bad relationship. From a country that's decided it gets to run your life. The ability to refuse instead of agreeing just because there's a payment due next week.
That ability usually doesn't have a logo. It's hard to show off to a waiter. It might just look like someone in an ordinary T-shirt who's in no hurry to be anywhere.
You have every right to want a beautiful life. But at least check who's getting it: you or the audience.
Because while they see a rich person, you see a bank notification. And somehow, that's what determines how your next month will go.