I see a pattern — if you are lower-middle class like me, but compete with the upper-middle class to acquire these hot, favorite, trophy or popular assets, you would feel the strain eventually. Wrong priority.

Possibly a strategic misstep if you can’t easily liquidate it or if you spend a sizeable amount maintaining a white elephant.

Rule_1: I avoid all of these assets.
Rule_2: always check overvaluation relative to alternatives, and check value/price ratio

[w=white elephant, often high maintenance trophy]

— eg: hot growth stocks with near-zero CDY or very high P/E
— [w] eg: big, luxury cars .. are for the rich
— eg: leading cities .. See mansion^commercial rEstate demand]leading cities #defy`gravity. Beside the Beijing home, all my properties fall outside the category. My HDB is not a private property 🙂
[w] NYC co-op has very high maintenance cost according to Chris Ma.

— [w] eg: top U.S. SDXQ homes, usually SFH with slightly higher psf valuation, but much bigger, therefore a white elephant. GRY suffers as a result.

Items below are not tradable “assets” per se, but still related to the same theme

— eg: medical school .. is for the rich, similar to luxury cars
— [w] eg: expensive branded colleges.  See luxury(+special)Edu: unaffordable to 中产华裔
UChicago is my 1st hand experience, and a breach of my Rule_1
— eg: international competition trophies .. takes lots of effort but often don’t mean much to your career.