How Much is “Comes From Money”?

A phrase I’ve heard a lot

Medium is filled with stories about those who flaunt what they have, pretend to be something that they may not be, and may in fact be living a leveraged lifestyle with little regard for true wealth.

But what about those who do have it and more than they could ever spend or know what to do with?

Those who “come from money.”

Growing up on the southernmost side of Evanston, where I could see buildings in Chicago behind the homes across the street from us, I did not know any better.

The neighborhood where I grew up was as diverse as diverse could be. Not only about one-third white and one-third Black but the other third was comprised of any and every race and nationality that you could think of. It was among the first areas where Southeast Asians, Middle Easterners, and immigrants from the African continent came to when they were able to scrape together enough dollars to “get out of Chicago.”

Almost none of them came straight from their home countries to Evanston. They put in a few years in the cesspool that is known as Chicago first.

Why this is relevant whatsoever is that before my father began reaping the rewards from his years of writing, our family of five spent many years leading a sort of hand-to-mouth existence. I will never forget the winter when both of their cars were inoperable. Damn, was it hard to get around!

About half of my friends were Black. Not my best friends, mind you, but the kids that I played with most of the time. Three dudes — Johnny, Rodney, and Michael Brown. The story for another day, it still amazes me now that I never even really realized that they were Black. Had you asked me if they were, I would have replied in the affirmative. But I did not view them that way like I would have once high school started.

I had three other close friends in the neighborhood — white guys — one of whom I still get together with from time to time, another who is Jewish like me but whose family moved out of the “hood” when he was ten (he’s a multimillionaire aerospace executive now) and a friend who seriously just took his own life earlier this week. I do not know what to write about that but may seek some solace by writing about it soon.

One phrase that I never once heard about any of the kids in our neighborhood was that they “come from money.”

What instantly transpired once we migrated from junior high to ETHS — Evanston Township High School — was stark and eye-opening.

Again worthy of its own story or possibly a book, the groups were quickly set based on race, attractiveness, athletics, intelligence, personality, interests, and, of course, MONEY 💰.

One of my closest Black friends began kind of ignoring me when we saw each other. He’s a great guy still, I’m sure, but I did not fit in with the super-tough crowd of guys similar to him that he began hanging out with. With the benefit of thirty-four years of hindsight, he would have been better off remaining closer to me. All three of the guys that he began hanging out with became convicted robbers, drug dealers, pimps, etc. I do not know or really care if they are still alive.

One thing that he did do, and I suspect that having been a firefighter in Chicago for decades may be ashamed of today, is sell weed 🌿to me the first three or four times that I bought it.

So even though Evanston is famous for touting its great diversity, the reality of what I witnessed in the late eighties was mostly groups of friends based on race, interests, athletics, attractiveness, and money.

The sports that I loved the most while growing up were always baseball and basketball. Besides being a bench warmer on the “B” teams, I never possessed the skills, strength, and athletic ability to become a part of Evanston’s varsity teams.

So I ran cross-country and track, two sports that did not bring me the thrill of scoring a basket or hitting a home run but were things that I was very good at. Good enough to be the fourth runner on the cross country team that made it to state and the second-best of two varsity one-mile racers as a junior and senior.

I once ran the three-mile cross-country race in under sixteen minutes! My best one-mile time was 4:35 but would have been lower had I not suffered a “career-ending” knee injury while playing soccer.

This leads me to comment on the difference between long-distance runners and other track team members.

Sparing the long explanation, suffice it to say that all of the cross-country guys and long-distance runners were white. All other track team members — sprinters, high jumpers, long jumpers, triple jumpers, hurdlers, etc. — were not.

Of the dozen or so of us distance runners, I was the only one who hailed from the south side of Evanston.

When I first met one of the few guys who I remain friends with today and began hanging out with him a bit, I heard someone say that he “comes from money.”

Never having heard that turn of phrase before, but being a smart kid who took all honors classes, it’s not hard to figure out what it means.

In another related matter, this guy's younger sister was also on the track team and took an obvious liking to me. Both being Irish, I later jokingly referred to her as his “Irish twin,” which I now realize is not a kind remark. But my friend always thought it hilarious.

Sparing another long story, I began dating his sister which led me to drive to their house. I was not invited in the house until later when I became friends with the guy, but it was not hard to notice that theirs was three times the size of ours and within a nine-iron of Lake Michigan.

It was not until later that I came to realize that this million-dollar home was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of this family’s wealth. They owned multiple other homes, traveled extensively, bailed their kids out of all kinds of trouble that would land those less fortunate than them into major jams, thought nothing of purchasing any object, and generally had more capital at their disposal than they could ever spend.

Sparing the third long story, I will break a wee bit of confidentiality and generally share that my friend’s A-hole father was a banker, lawyer, and partner with a group of capitalists called American Invsco. Long before condos were converted into rentals, like they are today, people could make millions by purchasing apartment buildings and converting them to condos.

His father was and is a Grade A butthead, but he was and is richer than God.

I have heard the phrase “comes from money” hundreds of more times from my high school career to today. I even have quite a few (distant) relatives whose hard-working Jewish immigrant parents built up businesses by scrapping and fighting for decades who now “come from money.”

My mother has some cousins who are so successful at business that one of them likely has made hundreds of millions. Furthermore, this wealthiest relative of all has always claimed that he loves his work more than the money.

Perhaps there is a lesson in that?

But one of his sons, who seems to be an A-hole in his own right, claims to be a “self-made entrepreneur” who even bragged about purchasing one of the dumbest things ever conceived of, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, for millions and millions.

My mother’s cousin’s son (what is that to me?) grew up in a north shore mansion on the Lake, a high-rise luxury condo on the Gold Coast (Chicago), a home in Miami Beach, and who knows where else. He never had to go any further than his father’s office for a business loan and guidance in starting his own series of production businesses.

Talk about generational wealth!

This gets to the root titular question.

How much, exactly, is “comes from money”?

Surely coming from a family with a million dollars in net worth doesn’t cut it.

Most of my own friends and family have hit that mark, and between living expenses, educational expenses, taxes, healthcare costs, and the like, they’re not living too large. Comfortable yes, living like a rich person, not so much.

“Coming from money” must mean a heck of a lot more than that!

So how much?

I’m thinking maybe eight figures, although those whose families have north of five mil and make enough off of divvies and whatnot to lead fairly conspicuous lifestyles may be there.

I truly do not know.

“Coming from money” implies that money is not an object and even having five million may not put someone’s family in that category in many places in the country. I’m talking New York, Miami, or LA, not Podunk, Iowa or Timbuktu, Mississippi.

The next time that I hear someone “comes from money,” I aim to ask a few more questions. I know better than most that it is impolite to inquire about exactly how much and what crimes were committed to obtain it.

Through my job, I frequently meet with capitalists who think nothing of investing, ten, twenty, or even forty million into real-estate development projects.

So I know that real estate is one of the main drivers of how people earn so much that their progeny “come from money.”

There are many other ways to get to that realm, mostly involving the exploitation of lower-class workers to gain massive profits. But this is not a rant about that. It is a fact and is not going to change no matter what you, I, or anyone else writes or thinks about it. Much like gravity.

I’m just wondering how much it means when you hear that someone “comes from money” and I’m sticking with at least eight figures, a cool ten mil.

How much do you think?