My brother-in-law's brother-in-law is a practicing attorney. And I think he's a corporate attorney who makes a substantial amount of money. He and his wife (BIL's sister) own a house at a ski resort. So, my BIL and SIL (DW's sister) are spending this week at the resort. We were invited to the resort to spend some time with them. We had a couple of things going on Saturday morning, so we spent Saturday evening through Monday afternoon with them.

It is a very nice setting, a very nice resort, and a very nice house. The resort is primarily a ski resort, so the heaviest, most desirable use is in the winter. I got the sense that a lot of the owners rent their houses out for a week at a time to cover some of their costs.

The clientele were mostly clearly upper middle class. I've not been surrounded by a group like that in a very long time. In fact, it kind of made me feel the same way I felt when I was in college at Michigan State, where a lot of the folks around me had and spent more money than I did.

I don't want to take anything away from our enjoyable time. We spent at least half of the time away from the resort, at a couple beaches, and a national park.

Saturday evening, we took the chair lifts to the top of one of the ski mountains. There was a solo guitarist playing songs and singing. It was very enjoyable. There was also a bar. It's not like anyone was flaunting anything at all, but most of the people were dressed in much finer clothes than we were, and most of the people were spending quite a lot of money on drinks. At the same time, it looked like there were a few people more from our social strata.

Before I joined the SA community, I would have figured all of those people were "rich". And probably most of them are living within their means. But after having been here in SA, I couldn't help but wonder how man of them are in debt up to their eyeballs.