I thought this was an interesting article:
How envy wrecks your finances - MSN Money

Do your rich friends make you feel poor? Not by how they treat you, but by basis of your own comparison? Do you compare your own financial life to friends who are better off than you are?

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What rich friends? I guess we have a couple, but they are not local so they don't really make us feel bad. They are our friends.

I don't really compare finances. I do compare that the dad is a workaholic and does not spend a lot of time with the family. My friend, his wife, gets very sad about that. Meanwhile, my dh spends a lot of time with us. My friend is always commenting on that and how lucky we are.

One of my friends married a doctor. She has a nice huge house (on the flip side I wouldn't want to have to clean it ). She never has to worry about budgets, sales, or coupons. I'm not jealous in the least because she rarely sees him due to his hours. I would rather live as I do, paycheck-to-paycheck, then have a dh I rarely see and doesn't have time to play with the kids.

We don't have rich friends. We all are doing fairly well, none of us being a lot more well off than the others. We don't envy each other, we aren't jealous, we don't talk finance with each other. That's just asking for trouble.

We have lots of wealthy friends. We on the other hand are definately not (monetarily). They don't treat us any diffferent and we don't envy them for what they have. We just appreciate each other for who we are. If they weren't that kind of people, we wouldn't want to hang around with them and I'm sure the reverse in the same.

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We ARE the rich friends.
Our one good friends who did a lot better than us financially moved out of state - big, beautiful house (saw pictures), lots of vacations, 3 kids in 4 years and last year he left her for another woman. So now she's a single mom and definately not rich. Can't believe he did that (he's the doctor). Our one other friend who probably makes more than us have 2 kids, so that probably evens it out. We make less, but we have no kids, so I think that makes our lifestyles pretty similar in terms of spending/saving. Our other friends have tighter money situations, but we never brag and always compliment them on their homes & such. We've been friends for years so I guess it's not an issue for them.

We worked with a group home that dealt with upper class kids - for the most part they were pretty normal kids but I had one, love him to death, but he came from a very wealthy family. We were talking this summer about our car troubles and he told me, "My car was 70,000 miles on it!" Like it was a bad thing. Wow! I wish I had a car with 70,000 miles. He ended up selling it and getting a Range Rover. It is rare that I'm jealous but I have to admit sometimes it's hard not to be as my car is sitting dead in the garage right as we speak!

Well...we have friends that probably make more than we do and friends that probably make less. I can't say it causes any issues though! I love my friends for who they are, not what kind of car they drive or house they live in...we just don't talk about finances with each other, it's just not something we do (or something I would be comfortable talking about actually!). I don't make comparisons and I'm honestly happy when good things happen to my friends. One friend of ours, the Dh made partner in his law firm and they have a big beautiful house and just bought a summer house. I'm happy that things are working out so well for them! I wouldn't think to be jealous, to tell you the truth, but that's me.

We don't have friends, so that solves that problem, lol. We really don't socialize much. I've never really had rich friends. If I did, I must admit I would probably envy them (I'm human).

PS - Doctors make some of the worst husbands. I'm generalizing of course, but they are notorious cheats. They have VERY high divorce rates. My mom worked in a hospital, and just about all the nurses I know say the same thing.

I usedto be a bit envious when I saw/heard about other people dropping $50 for movie tickets and popcorn at the expensive movie theatre a few times a week, or spending a ton on their clothes or kids clothes each week, or eating out most nights, or my closest friend who dropped abot $800 for those little robots that mop and vaccum the floor, while her husband spent an identical ammount on something else. but I've gotten to the point where I can see that maybe we are better ff becase we are saving our money because a lot of these people spending, can't afford to and it goes on credit. Now if I can just get DH to realize the grass isn't always greener, his biggie is vacations and new vehicle envy. For me, I'm still dealing with the days where I'm wanting to buy whatever I want and not worrying about it but I know I can't, but it's gotten easier.

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"And the state of his bathroom -- I'm not one to gossip, but there are things crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life but have in all probability by now evolved their own political systems." Cain describes Abel in in SANDMAN #70