you appear to have inherited his innate cheapnessExactly. A lot of his friends are higher up the scale, so he compares to them. He's not rich compared to them, so he's not rich. But to the other 99% of the country? I have ground level interaction with a true sample of this country, even higher than the average, and they are comparatively paupers.
This is a man who used to buy kiln dried, but non-planed wood boards because it was cheaper to spend the time hand planing boards, because he couldn't afford the already planed wood. It's just... Mind boggling.