I grew up poor, made okay money when I started my development career, and now make more money than all of my friends from the business I started 5 years ago.<p>I am by no means rich, but I am comfortable.  I also have a pretty flexible schedule and I bought a nice house a couple of years ago.<p>I&#x27;ve pretty much stopped telling people that I have a business because there is an automatic assumption that I am rich and either should pay more for something or don&#x27;t understand what it&#x27;s like to be poor.<p>I&#x27;ve seen so many friends that barely scrape by, but choose to spend tons of cash every month on booze, weed, entertainment, new electronics, concerts, and all sorts of other non-essentials.<p>I sacrificed all of this for years (I never get the latest and greatest phone and get the cheapest plan from Walmart), in exchange for a comfortable life now.<p>Should I now somehow feel bad about this?  Frankly, I&#x27;m tired of the people that wasted so much of their own money through poor life choices telling me why I should be giving more of the money I earned to pay for their lifestyle.<p>With the attitudes I see online and in the media about anyone that has money, it&#x27;s really not hard to see why the rich seem like they have lost any kind of empathy for the poor...I know I have.