So this has been covered before (
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/jealousy/) and I'm sure everyone here deals with it in some way, shape, or form. I know the canned-response is to "ignore them" or "be thankful for what you have" but honestly, it's too easy not going with the canned-response and to vent like I'm doing so now LOL! I'll probably get a few face-punches for my venting and ranting but here goes...
A buddy of mine from college just posted on FB that he and his wife bought a new home. It looks super-fancy and there are a number of posts from others congratulating them; many along the lines of "Congrats! Where?" - the second question I'm assuming induced by jealousy.
I think many of his posts are unintentional "troll" posts seeking attention. Most of the time they're negative but this was a positive. I am happy for him to a certain extent but then I almost get annoyed and ask why even post something like this? Then I ask myself if I'd ever post a picture of myself in front of a nice new big house on social media and my intentions of doing so (I still don't know what the answer is hahaha! Maybe if I wanted to make a ton of people super jealous for no good reason, then yeah). And then I wonder things like "how can they afford this?", "how much do they make?", "property taxes must be killer!" (and they are).
I did a bit of sleuthing/stalking and found the address and value of the home on Zillow. It's valued at $1.2 million! This guy is probably on a salary of no more than $80-85k per year. But his wife is a business owner/CFP who I'm guessing makes around $200k, so they're definitely OK to say the least. But I'm sure I wouldn't be seeing these kinds of posts if she wasn't that presumably well-off. I think she previously owned a town home and likely sold it and rolled the funds into the new place.
See, I'm already laying out all the facts without really knowing them. I feel like how I'm reacting now *is* what jealousy does to people!!
Anyway, besides the fact that a $1.2 million dollar property seems inherently anti-mustachian IMHO (but it's all relative right? :)), as well as $20k worth of property taxes, I still find it difficult to come up with the ammo sufficient to combat this jealousy army.
Of course, the easiest solution is just to get myself off Facebook all together!
EDIT: hope my buddy and his wife don't read the MMM forums! If they do and are reading this, I apologize but you just made a ton of us jealous!