How to Get a Supercar in Your 20’s
A Mercedes Maybach ($200,000) just rolled past me. Then a G Wagon ($150,000). Then a Porsche Carrera ($100,000). Then a Lamborghini Aventador ($500,000). Then a Rolls Royce Phantom ($460,000). This was a typical day in South Korea.
I looked into the driver’s seat for each of these cars. All the drivers were in their 20s. How was this possible? These cars that I would gasp at were rolling the streets up and down in Seoul. Was the Korean GDP that good?
No, Korea’s GDP per capita is $35,000 whereas the United States boasts the double of $70,000. Then how are the streets packed with youngsters with supercars?
Korean parents have a culture of saving money to give their kids when they become adults. Once students graduate from college, they can expect hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bank account. This sounds great; what an unbelievably great headstart to life. However, young Koreans quickly find an issue.
The money that parents bequeath their adult children is supposed to contribute to buying a house. In Korea, everything is centered around Seoul, so Seoul’s population density skyrockets every day. There is not enough land to accommodate regular houses, and apartments tower over every street. These apartments become extremely expensive.
The average Seoul apartment is $1M. Keep in mind that the average size of a Korean apartment is also 1250 square feet, a thousand less than the US’s average of 2300 square feet.
So people generally give up their aspirations of buying a house and go for rent instead. So, they have a few hundred thousand dollars in their bank account in cash but can’t find a good way to use it.
So they go buy luxury cars, bags, and watches to almost fake having a high status. The 23-year-old driving that Mercedes over there has probably spent half of their parents’ savings to buy that car and doesn’t own a house of their own yet. There is a great disjunction between the people’s net worth and the luxury items they own.
What this nationwide phenomenon reveals is the desperation to impress others, despite not being close to having the means. If the younger generation would use the generous amount of money that their parents leave them to make investments, the average quality of life would increase very quickly. I’m sure the older generation of parents didn’t save up every penny of their income so that their kids could buy an unattainable car.
