Hypothetical question - Which situation would you rather be in?

[Sharad M.]

I have a hypothetical question for you guys. I was discussing this with a friend so I thought I see how members of BP community felt about it.

Assume you were making $500k per year. With $500k income, would you rather be the financially most successful, least successful or middle of the pack among your friends?

What would you guys choose and why?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[Jean Bolger]

What @Account Closed says makes sense from an aspirational standpoint, but the social science studies that have been done show pretty clearly that, statistically, people are happier when they are just a bit wealthier than the people they are surrounded with. Of course, that's statistics, and naturally it doesn't apply in every case. The gang here at BP tend to be "strivers" and would be likely to see their status as a temporary situation (whether that  ended up being the the case or not) 

But then again... it's pretty human to feel that we must be the exception to the rule, no matter what the rule is. Nobody really thinks they are average, do they? For instance, how many people think they are really good drivers, better than most of the others on the road? I bet it's well over half. But that's not statistically possible, is it?

So: if this hypothetical situation was permanent, then yes! I'd want to be the most successful. If it was fluid, I'd want to be at the bottom or middle, because I could probably convince my wealthier friends to fund some deals!