The 1%

A friend recently told me that I was in the 1%. How could this be? It was scary more than flattering. Where were the 99% then? Are they hiding? Am I not sensitive to them? Are they in a different world from me?

My family never really denied ourselves, but we never had that many needs. We paid our bills on time and saved for retirement. We were charitable in our donations. Is that all it takes to be in the 1%?

But if I'm in the 1%, how can I be so far from the billionaires? From their multiple homes and their big art collections and their notable philanthropy and their lives of excess?

I'm happy to be in the middle class, with middle class values, with ambitions tied to those values and not to a dollar measure.