The cost of things.

I've told you that I'm not a rich guy. I'm not hurting for anything, really, but I'm on the lower end of the Middle Class spectrum. At a rough estimate, I've made around half a million dollars in my working life.

My parents would have been considered rather well-off, had either one of them been able to say the same thing at my age (the mid 1980s.).

I have never spent so much as $10,000 on a car, although most (not all) of the cars that I've owned did cost more than that, when new. Currently, all three of my vehicles barely would make that mark.

I have never owned a house that cost me over $100,000. My current house appraises at more than that, as did my last house that I sold for a tad under that. But I've never paid so much. When I was a kid, my parents bought a nice brick 2,000 square foot 3 BR 2 BA on an acre for $35,000. It appraises for $155,500 today, to different owners. (I note that it's had a 700'² addition put on.) 

So when I see a car that brings more than $35,000, it makes me think "that thing better have a bathroom and a pull-out bed in it somewhere, because that kind of money should buy a house." Of course this is silly talk, because that kind of money would by $133,000 worth of house, in today's dollars.

When I look at the Mercedes-Benz new G63 6X6 SUV, I think of that $457,000 price tag, and consider that it's almost equal to the number of dollars that I have been paid in my career in the workforce. Dude. It's just a truck.