Signaling your wealth is likely to be socially advantageous, but may also bring with it the expectation that you will spend your money freely, which you would consider wasteful. Is it possible, even, that the status boost you are seeking is associated more with spending money than with having money?
I think you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head with that. Most signals of wealth are about showing how wasteful you can afford to be, rather than how much you can achieve with what you’ve got.
I’m not against all expensive spending habits, because they’re not equally wasteful. I’m curious as to whether there are any obvious spending habits I could adopt which would get me a disproportionate status-bang for my buck. At the moment, for example, I don’t scrimp on formal wear. Any situation in which I’m wearing a suit will be a situation where I want to look like I’m wearing an expensive suit.
Perhaps you could find a different problem that solves this one incidentally—i.e. since spending the money non-wastefully is important to you, you could brainstorm ways to non-wastefully spend your money, and then sort them by how much you can use them to demonstrate high status.
Signaling your wealth is likely to be socially advantageous, but may also bring with it the expectation that you will spend your money freely, which you would consider wasteful. Is it possible, even, that the status boost you are seeking is associated more with spending money than with having money?
I think you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head with that. Most signals of wealth are about showing how wasteful you can afford to be, rather than how much you can achieve with what you’ve got.
I’m not against all expensive spending habits, because they’re not equally wasteful. I’m curious as to whether there are any obvious spending habits I could adopt which would get me a disproportionate status-bang for my buck. At the moment, for example, I don’t scrimp on formal wear. Any situation in which I’m wearing a suit will be a situation where I want to look like I’m wearing an expensive suit.
Perhaps you could find a different problem that solves this one incidentally—i.e. since spending the money non-wastefully is important to you, you could brainstorm ways to non-wastefully spend your money, and then sort them by how much you can use them to demonstrate high status.