This is a thread to practice holding off on proposing solutions.
Rules:
- Post your dilemma (i.e. problem, question, situation, etc.) as a top-level comment. You can always come back to edit this.
- For the next 24 hours, replies in that thread can discuss only aspects of the problem, no solutions. (If something sounds too much like a solution, it gets downvoted.)
- After the 24 hours have passed from the start of the thread, solutions may be proposed therein.
Note: Timezones for comments are in GMT (e.g. London), so you may need to use this to determine when 24 hours have passed in your local timezone.
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.