I’d love questions like that. Not that I have a kid.

One approach is asking her what she thinks, or if she can guess. Can be split into whether she knows why he is so wealthy.

Being concrete should make it pretty clear. You get paid what you get paid. And that’s that.

And that’s a great opportunity to talk about how wealth does not correlate with value or commitment or investment or ethics.

walk around the neighborhood and show the diversity of wealth. maybe go downtown if you can. Explain that wealth can be inherited (given), worked for (earned), and manipulated (invested)

First, understand that to her, inherently, presence and love is being rich to her, then they try to buy her happiness and she doesn’t understand. You are explaining to her about why they are like that, not the other way around. She is asking you because she trusts you. Don’t play their game, let truth happen and ask her how it feels.

Comparing people is unhealthy and the road to depression. It’s easy to imagine something we don’t like about ourselves that we cannot change, no matter how much money we have.

Money breeds resentment and invites corruption. Whenever we introduce money into a relationship, it imperils friendship and creates conflicts of interest. Money cannot buy your love. People who love money are ugly, no matter how good they look.

Some people are born into a family with wealth and different advantages.

Money isn’t everything and many of the ways to acquire a lot of money are cruel and exploit people and the environment.

You are more worried about supporting your family and living a good life than trying to get every dollar like Mr Krabs.

Life isn’t fair. Some people are born into families that already have far more than they need, but most are not. Some people get lucky and their work makes them a lot of money, but that is extremely rare and mostly happens to people who are fine putting themselves before everyone else.

Most people work hard their entire lives and might even do things that just don’t result in being wealthy, like teaching or taking care of children.

I would explain this in 2 parts.

Firstly, if you get a qualification and work most of your life, don’t fuck up by having a kid too early, or having a bad car accident, or getting addicted to something, then you’ll have enough money in your life to be comfortable and to care for the people you care about.

Secondly, if you’re lucky enough to have wealthy parents you don’t have to worry about that.

I also just want to add that I feel you buddy. You’ve been dealt a tough hand but the fact that you’re here asking this indicates that you’ve got game. It’s good to have a step dad with money but it’s better to have a dad that worries about what his kid thinks of him.

I’d be honest. Life is as much (if not more) about luck as it is skill.

There are smart folks out there who have spent their entire lives working hard, probably made decent money, but will never be rich because an opportunity they were equipped to capitalise on just never arrived.

By that same score, there are people who stumble onto or are born into opportunities for wealth that most people will never see by sheer happenstance.

My only impression of him being that he enabled your wife’s cheating, I’d hazard a guess he was born into his opportunity - and while that doesn’t diminish his own efforts, its not a fair comparison to make. Apples to oranges and all that.

Start incorporating “gold digger” into her vocabulary

I’d say “that’s a funny way to address your mom.”

To spend more time with daughter. Earning money that way is a high stress lifestyle of 100+ hour work weeks with creditors, investors, contractors, planners, inspectors, and tenants. Not everyone can function under that pressure long term.

Depends on how smart she is.

To not sabotage things, you can always leave it at a “mix of luck, talent and hard work”. And you’re working hard, and maybe you even have luck, but step dad might have all three.

If she’s smart, you can drop the whole thing on her: first of all, you love her, her mom loves her, her step dad hopefully does too or at least likes her and that has nothing to do with money. Then you can just be transparent on how much you earn, how much time that means in effort, and how much “lots of money” takes to earn. Then you can just do some math, and her step dad’s numbers won’t add up.

It’s a sensitive topic though, you can say your piece, communicate with your ex and the step dad about that she asked and what you said. They might have a different take.

Might even spin it into making her think about what she wants to do in the future.

There are those who a born into money, those who manage to make money (don’t know which is in your situation), then there is the the other 99% of the population.

Sit with her and look at the prices of those units and compare them to the normal wage and ask her to calculate how long someone would have to work to afford the apartment.

Fill a sack with 99 jelly beans and the one that’s been marked a marker.

Ask her to pick one out. If it’s the marked one she gets all of the jelly beans.

If she doesn’t pick the marked one, send all but one of the jelly beans to stepdad.

With 12, she probably knows how the concept of jobs and money work. I’d say there is more to the question. It’s likely a conversation opener regarding wealth, or what’s important in life. I’d just ask some follow questions and see where this is going.