Trust me!

"Do you rent this, or do you own it?"

That was the strangest question ever.

How could anybody ever ask that question?  And that too about my home where I live?

The only hypothesis I could come up with as an explanation is this: My home and the way I have organized the place somehow came across as way beyond my financial abilities.  If so, to make such a comment on my financial situation?

I was reminded of another comment years ago by a different person.  She, on the other hand, was clearly very appreciative of my home and its location.  "Professors are not supposed to live like this," she said.  She thought that the local paper might want to write about me and my home like how they had featured a local faculty couple, who were also her mentors.

Of course, there are times when I have wondered how some people go on vacations and own fancy cars.  Almost always, they are people with inheritance.

"Trust fund babies," as an old colleague in California used to say.  He once told me that it is fun to ask people whether they have already received their "K-1".  (I think K-1 is what he said.)  When I asked him what K-1 is, he laughed.  If I asked that question then it meant that I am not a trust fund beneficiary, and there was no point wasting time with losers like me ;)  Like us proles getting W-2 statements, apparently the trust fund beneficiaries get a K-1 statement.

Even as a kid, I was aware that there were people with family wealth backing them.  Our neighbor was one of them.  They owned a car. A fridge. And, heck, they even had an Alsatian dog (German Shepherd)!  They lived next door.  The man was about my father's age and worked a similar job. The woman was a stay-at-home wife like my mother.  Yet, materially they were incredibly well off.  Thanks to their family wealth.

Income and wealth are not the same was something that I picked up early on.  All the talk merely on income tax conveniently overlooks the wealth and inheritance that play a huge role in lives. 

You didn't see this political twist coming, eh!