A doctor and entrepreneur has cited the example of a BMW owner who feels “poor” despite earning ₹40 lakh per annum to claim that lifestyle creeps change the reference point of poverty. Dr Sunny Garg, co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Everhope Oncology, shared an Instagram video to say that many successful people feel poor not because they lack money, but because they lack a sense of “enough.”
Dr Garg said that last week, he met a 34-year-old man who lives in a 2BHK in Gurgaon, drives a BMW, earns ₹40 lakh per annum, and yet feels poor.
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“He sat across from me and said, ‘Doctor, I think I’m very poor. I can’t sleep at night’,” the doctor revealed.
Garg said that he did not laugh because the man’s predicament is not unique. It’s a malaise affecting many Indian professionals, yet hardly anyone seems to talk about it.
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“I didn’t laugh, because this isn’t just one man’s story. It’s the story of today’s Indian middle-class professional, and hardly anyone explains it,” the Gurgaon-based doctor said.
He explained that statistically speaking, the 34-year-old falls in the top 1% of the country. However, his reference point of what is poor and what is wealthy has shifted.
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“Statistically, he’s in the top 1% of earners in India. Yet he feels poor. Why?
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“Because his reference point has shifted. Earlier, he compared himself to the neighbour in his village whose son worked as a clerk. Now he compares himself to a 28-year-old on LinkedIn who sold a startup and is sitting on ₹80 crore,” the doctor explained.
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Garg claimed that shifting reference points and lifestyle creeps affect how a person views his net worth.
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“This is modern poverty. Your income has increased, but your expectations have increased tenfold. And the gap keeps widening every year,” he explained.
A post shared by Dr Sunny Garg (@drsunnygarg)
The doctor said he asked the man three questions. First, how many times in the past year had he told himself, “I am enough”? The answer was “never”.
Second, who was he earning all this money for? The man admitted he did not know and was simply trying to keep up because everyone else was moving ahead.
Finally, Garg asked whether there was even one thing in his life that he did not do for money. After a brief pause, the man said no.
According to Garg, these answers revealed the real problem. The 34-year-old was not poor in financial terms, but poor in meaning, connection and stillness.
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“When money becomes the measure of every activity, you stop being a human being and become a machine,” he said, adding that higher incomes alone cannot solve a lack of purpose or identity.
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“Whether you earn ₹40 lakh or ₹4 crore — every six months, ask yourself these three questions,” he advised. “Solving money problems is relatively easy. Solving identity problems is much harder. And 90% of people end up confusing the two.”
