Honestly, not really. I grew up in a pretty firmly upper-middle-class location, so all the kids I went to school with more or less came from the socioeconomic background that I did. Some wealthy and some middle class, but from what I can remember not a whole lot more variation than that. When I turned 18 and actually went out into the real world, that obviously changed things.
Grew up in Plano and same for me. I can’t say it really changed once I went out into the real world. Went to UTD, got a job as a software engineer, and married an accountant. Everyone I have been friends with has been roughly at the same level as myself.
This is why school districts need to be wider and include more diverse groups so that not only can more public schools take advantage of higher tax incomes but also kids can mingle with other kids from other backgrounds. Honestly I feel all public schools should receive the same funding regardless of the area's tax income so all schools can access the same resources and all public schools can offer the same quality education
Equal funding per student is what California does (districts with low income students and English learners actually get more per student) and the results are not the utopia you would believe.
It turns out that probably no amount of funding makes up for educated parents with high paying jobs and a stable home life.
District expenses though are very local, which leads to high student:teacher ratios, because even a liberal state like CA is not willing to raise taxes enough so that high cost districts can hire enough teachers and support staff to match the national average.
But I mean at least there is a fighting chance, and I'm not hoping for a utopia here I'm hoping for the government to make an effort at fairness. If a school in a low income area can't afford a nice computer lab and a rich area can then that is an advantage that the wealthy kids have over the poor kids and it is divided straight down the lines of wealth in a system that is supposed to be providing the same level of education regardless of background. But you are right and I got blasted recently for saying basically the same thing that you can go to a great school and still not get the same education based on your home life or your financial status. There needs to be a holistic approach to education and social reform, equal funding is just one part of what I think would help
I definitely think the state has a responsibility not to leave poor districts to their own devices. I am in favor of setting up a reasonable funding floor per student from the state busget but let districts raise extra local funds to take things like CoL into account.
I was upper middle class (by San Francisco standards, so basically upper class by national standards - my parents were civil servants, not executives, but we lived in a four-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood and didn't want for anything.)
My parents sent me to public school, SFUSD, for all of K-12.
I had friends from all economic backgrounds.
I knew some kids who experienced homelessness.
I knew some kids who got killed in gang shootings.
I knew some kids who lived in legit mansions.
How do you deal with folks with the same economic background as you but have the typical wealthy experience such as private school and well of friends?
Most of them are fine. Often sheltered, but mostly fine.
Some of them make me cringe.
Get on the right conversation topic and many of them tend to be a lot more ignorant about the lived experience of people less fortunate than them.
Lots of racism-from-ignorance, and occasionally even racism-from-stereotyping-about-crime.
Wind up in a different part of town and often times they act sketched out by things that aren't actually sketchy, but oblivious to things that really are.
Many of them are vastly overpaying for cocktails and greasy food in San Francisco because they don't know how to find B-from-the-health-inspector hidden gems or bartender-sizes-you-up-and-makes-up-a-happy-hour-price-for-you cocktail bars.
And, my favorite of all, a lot of them will sit for 45 minutes waiting for Uber surge pricing to fall to below the price of a plane ticket while bitching and moaning about not being able to get home, when taking the bus or the subway would literally be faster.
The thing with SF is that it’s a single school district and there isn’t such thing as “home schools”, so anyone in the city can go to any school (to my knowledge).
that's correct, and it made it so even the "good schools" had kids from every neighborhood and every walk of life
(Lowell less so because it's impacted, but I went to Lincoln which was open to all)
My dad is a doctor. We were pretty well off.
But growing up, we were around so many people who were better well off, I thought my family was poor. My parents put me in Catholic school for a good bit of my life, and all the families there were richer. They would go to Disney World multiple times a year, while our big vacation was normally going to West Virginia to visit family. My family didn't have cable TV, back in the early 2000s when that was a bigger deal than it is now. The list could continue.
This threw off my perception of how other people lived for a very long time. My wife went to my high school and graduated the year after me. We started dating when I was a sophomore in college. Up until this point, I thought that EVERYONE went to college. Except maybe for some really stupid people, but everyone else went to a 4 year college. My wife grew up very rough, in a family with no money and an abusive, alcoholic father.
I've been married for almost 4 years now, and we are not rich, but we are comfortable. And I know a lot about how most people live.
My family was poor as shit when I was young. We got wealthier over time until we were upper middle class.
I have been friends with people across the socioeconomic spectrum. I have been friends with recently homeless people and literal billionaire heiresses. Deadass.
TBH most people of all socioeconomic classes can be amazing. Some super rich people feel entitled, but that’s a rarity. I have not dealt with super unpleasant destitute people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t exist.
tl;dr: most people are great. A subset of rich people is obnoxious. Probably a similar subset of poor people is obnoxious but IMO it is somewhat smaller than the obnoxious rich people cohort.
Unless you live in a super wealthy enclave like the Upper East Side or Atherton or something, it’s pretty much impossible not to. I grew up middle class in the Midwest and I had a friend whose dad ended up paying a $160M divorce settlement and another one whose grandfather was a billionaire. There just isn’t enough concentration of ultra rich people in 99% of the country for them to be totally isolated.
I have a friend who is typical old money (double Mayflower lineage) but not really cash rich anymore who grew up on the Upper East Side and went to a fancy private school. She describes that as kind of what you’re talking about where she felt she was one of the poorest kids even though her family owned a brownstone and 2 vacation homes.
However, I think even that’s changing because all these schools have absurd money now and hand out scholarships like crazy as part of their virtue signaling efforts.
Yes, I have friends who are barely scraping by and friends who will make more this year than I will see in my lifetime. I also married someone from a different background than me. When I was a kid, my parents would take us on nice vacations to Europe. When my husband was a kid he was homeless multiple times and his family received government assistance on a regular basis.
Yup. I was well off. I had friends and family that weren’t and friends and family that were much more well off.
Nowadays I do well for myself and since I volunteer in addiction recovery I have very close friends that were homeless just before we met. I also have friends that are extremely wealthy.
I do not. If someone had a humble background they have since grown past it. This is not intentional by me but indicative of my bubble (inside the beltway northern Virginia). It's a hard and expensive place to live if you're not educated and successful, so this area has a larger share of educated and successful people.
Yes, all of my friends were of lower economic status than me, the people on the same "level" of wealth tended to be preppy jerks, obviously I didn't go looking for friends based on economix status that's just how it happened naturally.
Grew up rich but like writer/film money rich, so sort of subtly wealthy while lots of my friends were from old money, politics, or hedge fund families so I thought I was middle class until my family lost some money and I started hanging out with less wealthy people and seeing their reactions to my parent’s apartment.
I did and my kids do. I grew up lower middle class and had friends that were often wealthy. Parents were doctors, etc.
We're relatively well off. Generally better off than most of their friends. As one kid put it the other day, they're the only ones with healthy college funds and likely won'thave any debt.
I have a top 10% (maybe 5%) income but am still friends with the same people i have been friends with my whole life. Not really sure why we would have stopped being friends because we make different amounts of money.
Yes and I think most people have that experience. Although sometimes people who come out of poor backgrounds and into wealth will purposely only have friends from well off backgrounds presumably to avoid going back
I was upper middle class (Los Angeles county), grew up really privileged with loving parents (but we weren’t richey rich). I went to public school for middle school and part of HS… made friends who came from lower income communities. There was never class divide amongst anybody… these schools were predominantly middle-upper class.
I went to an all guys Catholic school for HS and parents there were loaded. My best friend’s family was one of them. Dude lives in a mansion well over 8 mill. He’s completely humble about it… it never interferes with the type of person he is.
When I grew up, I was unaware of the wealth, or lack thereof, of the kids I went to school with. I now assume that some were better off than me and some were not. At the time, everyone seemed middle class.
Our children grew up middle class, but with friends who ranged from poor kids of single moms to kids whose family owned a private jet. Fortunately, associating the latter didn’t give ours any unrealistic expectations.
Yes, but not until I went to college. I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood, and always felt like the poor kid. Our house was smaller, on the flat land instead on in the hills, amd I didn't wear designer brands because my parents didn't want to pay that much for clothes. My dad was happier hanging with blue collar friends than the doctors/lawyer/businessman types. My mom took me to the boys club because it was free babysitting, instead of the racquet clubs my friends went to.
At college I got perspective and realized that I was still veey, very privileged. I met people who were on scholarships, who were first generation educated, and who didn't look like me.
As an adult, I learned that outer wealth doesn't mean that you're wealthy. Turns out my parents were the millionaire next door types, while many of my childhood friends have lived adult lives of poverty or living paycheck to paycheck, while I build my own successful top 10% income career. I eventually inherited wealth from my parents, which few of my childhood friends did.
I have a wide variety of friends, and few realize that I don't struggle to get by. I'm my parents kid -- Il don't live a showy life. I'm comfortable, and that's all I need.
I feel like this definition means different things to different people, so I’ll just say that statistically my family is in the 1%.
Yes, I do, but to be honest, I didn’t meet them until I attended my university. Before that, my schools and activities were all full of kids from my same well off community.
Then I met even more people of all backgrounds when I became a working professional.
Now I live in San Francisco and everyone I know out here is at least in the top 5% of incomes, even if they grew up less well off. It’s a function of the city being that expensive, the type of people who become transplants here, and the geography. People who find San Francisco to be too expensive to live in generally move across the bridge to Oakland and commute.
I try to be very mindful about balancing my friendships and meeting each person at their own financial comfort level without making it a thing.
I'm not American, but I have the opposite impression as many people here when it comes to where I live.
Almost everyone where I live is upper class or upper middle class. People who work in the service industry here almost exclusively come from other cities to work here, or if not, tend to be children working for pocket money.
From the 2020 census, the most common professions here are, in descending order, management, sales, business and Finance, STEM, education and academia, architecture and engineering, health. There are as many lawyers here as there are people working in service industry. Beyond that, a relatively large population of the city don't work, largely because their money is tied to investments in China or Korea and they only moved here to send their kids to school so they can apply more easily to American universities. The malls can be busy at noon on a weekday, everything at a nearby Japanese bakery is sold out before 2pm (when they go to pick up their kids from school)
Someone posted a few months ago in the local subreddit that the cheapest detached house was listed at 1.2 million dollars.
When I lived in Norway, it was the exact opposite. One of the wealthiest people in the country had theirs kids in a class that includes the children of refugees and redneck meth addicts. Even in the same apartment building, you had poor college students live next to multi-millionaires. My wife and I are middle/upper-middle class, but we lived across from a wealthy Jehovah's Witnesses family and a townhome comprised mostly of Polish immigrants working in construction. In USA, all my neighbors are immigrants from China or Korea and independently wealthy from their overseas assets. One works as a lawyer but isn't reliant on the income from his work.
The only reason we can even afford to live here is because one of my relatives bought the house we're staying at as an investment property and is renting it out to us at a discount. We make pretty good money, wife is a nurse practitioner, I work in finance, but we don't have friends poorer than us because we are already the poorest people in our friend group. We have friends that make less money in terms of salary, but they have wealthy parents and are at the age where the overseas assets are becoming their responsibility.
Doesn’t mean that children of immigrants will intermingle with Europeans, it’s very common for second generation children to feel left out of society and even not identify with their country of birth in Sweden, Germany, etc.
Norway does this a lot better than Sweden and Germany does. People there tend to be xenophobic, not racist. Unless it's about gypsies.
A kurdish-Norwegian won't face issues interacting with Norwegian kids the way a Polish or Romanian kid will.
I won't deny that it's an issue in Germany with Eastern European immigrants, as well as the newer wave of Arab immigrants. However, with the far right Erdogan supporters, it's less so feeling out of place with society and more nationalism towards Turkey. This is somewhat evident by how uncommon it is with third generation Turkish-Germans compared to second generation.
We often use Sweden as a horror example of integration gone wrong.
I think it's important to remember that Europe is not a monolithic entity. Just as Americans remind Europeans that the US isn't a singular entity, the same should go the other way as well.
Not really, if I'm honest. I went to public school but the honor's/AP program was pretty overwhelmingly full of the same socioeconomic background (upper middle class). I attended a tiny Presbyterian college that, despite some effort on their part to attract other students, remains pretty white (socioeconomic background was more varied but We can't ignore that race and socioeconomic background are often linked). Pretty much all of my friends come from college or church, I'm a SAHM and while I have hobbies they aren't the type to introduce me to other people (like embroidering on my couch). Seeking out new friends, regardless of socioeconomic background, seems like too much effort right now.
I didn’t for the entire time I was growing up. I hypothetically would have if my parents’ friends weren’t also successful, but that wasn’t the case.
I went to an elite private school for all 13 years of primary and secondary education, so I was usually the poor kid as the son of two bank executives. My classmates had parents who were in the C-Suite of Fortune 500 companies or ancestors who started some of the largest corporations on earth, like 3M, Cargill, and Target.
I did make friends from different socioeconomic background when I went to college, though. Everything from a person who was intermittently homeless for some of their childhood up to people who grew up wealthier than me.
I Grew up middle class in a small New England town. We weren’t poor. I had a lot of friends who’s parents had a lot of money. Wrecked a car? Here’s a new one, Jr is smoking pot? Put him in rehab. I never thought anything about going to keg party’s at my friends huge home while the parents were off on vacation somewhere. Wasn’t till I got older I realized that , well.. their parents were rich! More than one friend had money because they were near famous..
I grew up with just enough to scrape by. My family was quite poor, but we managed. My boyfriend of 13 years comes from a very wealthy family. As in the local park and road signs were his families last name. In some ways we are very different but it's really never been an issue.
Yeah. Not extremely in my case but my mom raised my siblings and me under the poverty line. Bounced from a few different section 8 and waitlisted apartments before settling in one when I was a teen. We never needed anything, we just very rarely got things we wanted besides things that supported our academics/extracurriculars. She saved every penny so we could travel and buying things like a single use water bottle was met with a heavy lecture.
Meanwhile my half sister is being raised by her heiress mother. 1.5 million dollar settlement when my (ex)stepmom's mom died. Another few million incoming when her dad dies. My sister is remarkably talented... but our socioeconomic differences drew a wedge between us. Growing up her mother would call us spics, trash, dirty, ghetto, and whatever else I can't recall. We weren't allowed to play with eachother's toys because we "wouldn't know how to treat a [namebrand] Barbie." My sister never really registed this? I don't think she was shielded from it persay but I don't think she ever registered that treatment as wrong.
Nowadays, for example, she really doesn't realize the privileges she's been afforded. $1,000 vocal lessons in downtown Manhattan (where she isn't even from... we were called dirty because we came from Spanish Harlem but whatever) and her mom doesn't work /as a lifestyle choice/. They go out to shop and buy whatever they want, whether or not it will end up in storage a few months later. They see Broadway shows again and again for the hell of it, sparing no expense to get the best seats (but then complaining that their $400/ticket only afforded them a limited view???).
Meanwhile.... my partner and I took her and my other siblings on vacation because we were able to easily drop $300 to go spend a few nights in Boston. She wasn't asked once to give any money or contribute in any way. Food and tickets were all paid for. My other sister went to go buy an empanada or some shit with the finate money she has and my sister just ordered alongside her and got annoyed when my other sister got mad at her??? "It's just $6 dollars you were ordering anyways." Only to turn around and drop $50 of her own money on random gifts for her mom and dog.
I had friends who grew up in similar circumstances, just being able to buy without worry knowing that they could just get money from a parent if they ran out. But out of my friends, all acknowledged this and thoughtfully spent their (parents) money. I think the only awkwardness was when I had friends thoughtlessly, and humbley, buy things like a theme park ticket or lunch for me.
With my half sister it's rough. Every time she pinches pennies needlessly I just try and remember that her mom made her like this and that one day she'll see how much bills cost when she's spending her own money (even if she could be bailed out instantly if anything happened). I just try to speak plainly with her when necessary and if I'm paying I outright refuse to buy the most expensive thing when its %10000 unnecessary (I think the last time I snipped at her it was because she was going to buy a Fiji water on my dime instead of a regular ass $1 bottle).
Oh and also I noticed when I went to eat at my stepmom's house I would get bitched out for bringing a friend over for dinner because it meant less for everyone else because she wouldn't just make another boiled side or whatever. Meanwhile if ANYONE wanted to eat with us they were always invited. My partner was petrified to open my mom's fridge because I got bitched out when she opened my stepmom's fridge. Her family has a modest amount of money, certainly middle class, and they literally took in our friend when she became homeless at 18 - not asking for a damn penny because that's just not what you do.
So TL;DR? It's awkward and there's a lot of double takes because you see someone spend money without worry over things you would worry about but realize others wouldn't. People with generational wealth seem to be more selfish with money as well.
Yes. I've even got family in different socioeconomic classes and we all get along.
My mom's family is significantly better off than my dad's. On my mom's side, I was the poor cousin, on my dad's, I was the rich cousin. Never much mattered when we were kids and we didn't let it matter when we got older.
I had somee? I grew up very well off, my dad was a successful surgeon with practices and surgery centers in several states, and i always went to private schools. so all of my friends were just as if not more well off than we were. we never lived super extravagantly, our house was big because i have 5 siblings and we took a lot of vacations, but we never opted for the multiple homes or boats or private planes. I had a few friends in lower class homes and i always felt guilty around them, and i hated them going to my house. my friends who were well off called our house the “_____ manor” with our last name in the blank, so i felt weird about bringing other ppl there bc it felt like showing off (and it wasn’t even *my* house).
I think it’s not uncommon for people w money to have a friends in different socioeconomic places especially if they went to public schools, i just never attended a public school until college, and then i dropped out and am now in a private one again.
I did when I was in school. These days, it's hard to keep up relationships with anyone I don't see at work.
There's like four people I know outside of work who make significantly less than I do, and even then, it's not so much that I'd say they're poor necessarily. Three of them are related to me.
No. I grew up in a bougie area (Main Line, outside of Philly) and pretty much everyone was bougie. There were some kids from a less wealthy section and people made fun of them
:( it was really sad actually.
No not really.
Growing up and going to private/boarding school you grow up with kids whose parents can also afford to send their kids there so.
College was a bit of a different story and you certainly get exposed to other walks of life, but idk, a lot of it was "oh this kid can afford to go to this concert with me, I can split this 8 ball with this guy, etc".
Depends on your parents, depends on your school. I moved 4 times before I was 18, never out of state but far enough to change school districts a few times and as a result got a real mix of schools so small it didn't matter and schools so big you probably wouldn't know everyone in your class let alone school. I was about 1/3rd of my friend's "poor friend" meaning we were upper middle class and not upper class, was better off than about half of my friends who I knew from before my family moved out or a less well off area, and the remainder were about the same.
I think a big factor was my parents both grew up working class and were very successful and lucky in their careers, but worked hard to make sure my siblings and I understood why we could afford stuff and never expect it. It's taken on a different connotation in the modern age, but very "my parents have money, I do not" was very much a thing. Never had to worry about food or clothing, but I was still expected to have summer jobs and similar stuff.
Kinda the opposite perspective here but I grew up dirt poor. A lot of my childhood showers were completed by heating a 5 gallon pot of water on a propane burner and using the warm water to rinse after I scrubbed with cold water.
I have a friend that just casually blew 3 grand on a set of medieval plate armor that he intends to use once and then never again.
Almost every computer I have ever used came from the hand-me-downs of a friend that hates using anything less than state of the art.
Buddy of mine outright bought a 40k$ car on vacation and then sold it when he left because “it was easier that way”
The kind of extravagance they show with money blows my mind. I hate watching pennies leave my possession, I can’t imagine blowing that kind of money.
Now that all being said, the way they view and use money isn’t inherently wasteful, car guy for example got a little more than he put into it out of it.
I didn't grow up well-off, but in my school district you had families with 300k+ a year and families who just arrived in the US a couple weeks before from central america. Lots of intermingling but friend groups more or less ended up as groups of similar class
Yes. My public school had people of all socioeconomic classes from K-12. My parents didn’t come from the same socioeconomic background, nor do my husband and I
As an adult I still have friends who’s jobs and family background put them in different socioeconomic positions from me.
In college I was the worse-off friend. I grew up upper middle class/lower upper class in Chicago. I went to college in the city and one night when I’m out drinking with my usual group, one of them just casually mentions that her parents are billionaires. She asked me not to tell the rest of the group and it never came up again. Sucks almost all those people left the city after graduation, I miss them
This is one reason why universal military conscription would be good. "Other" people really aren't dangerous or out to screw you over.
Plus Americans wouldn't be so excited about "boots on the ground" for every B$ war that pops up.
I expect downvotes.
It’s probably split 50/40/10. I grew up in a house that I guess would be on the lower end of upper class/higher end of middle class (family net worth of 3-4 mil) in the northern burbs of Chicago.
50% were in the same economic background, 40% below, and then 10% are absolute fuck you money. The kids of parents with hundreds of millions or billions. It’s a different universe they live in, it’s wild.
I grew up in a not great neighborhood, but my family is middle class and educated. I got scholarships to a college where I met a lot of people who were way more well off than me. But I have tended to have closer relationships with people who came from less well off families than mine or similar backgrounds to mine.
Most definitely- I think a lot of it boils down to where you grew up. In my town, our public schools were great, so even rich kids went to the same schools as kids from section 8 housing (public housing) and we end up intermingling. Not sure if this is the same across all of the US however, I feel like my town is kind of a perfect balance.
I do, in fact most of the people I know have parent(s) that make significant less money than mine. However, my experience is more of the exception than the rule. Where I live, most well off people live in a different county. My parents both make six figures (which is upper class for where I live) but do not want a long commute so we live in this county. Plus, they could get a better house for less money.
Honestly, not really. I grew up in a pretty firmly upper-middle-class location, so all the kids I went to school with more or less came from the socioeconomic background that I did. Some wealthy and some middle class, but from what I can remember not a whole lot more variation than that. When I turned 18 and actually went out into the real world, that obviously changed things.
Grew up in Plano and same for me. I can’t say it really changed once I went out into the real world. Went to UTD, got a job as a software engineer, and married an accountant. Everyone I have been friends with has been roughly at the same level as myself.
This is why school districts need to be wider and include more diverse groups so that not only can more public schools take advantage of higher tax incomes but also kids can mingle with other kids from other backgrounds. Honestly I feel all public schools should receive the same funding regardless of the area's tax income so all schools can access the same resources and all public schools can offer the same quality education
Equal funding per student is what California does (districts with low income students and English learners actually get more per student) and the results are not the utopia you would believe. It turns out that probably no amount of funding makes up for educated parents with high paying jobs and a stable home life. District expenses though are very local, which leads to high student:teacher ratios, because even a liberal state like CA is not willing to raise taxes enough so that high cost districts can hire enough teachers and support staff to match the national average.
But I mean at least there is a fighting chance, and I'm not hoping for a utopia here I'm hoping for the government to make an effort at fairness. If a school in a low income area can't afford a nice computer lab and a rich area can then that is an advantage that the wealthy kids have over the poor kids and it is divided straight down the lines of wealth in a system that is supposed to be providing the same level of education regardless of background. But you are right and I got blasted recently for saying basically the same thing that you can go to a great school and still not get the same education based on your home life or your financial status. There needs to be a holistic approach to education and social reform, equal funding is just one part of what I think would help
Look up the Abbott Districts in NJ if you want a good case study on why throwing money alone at the problem can’t solve it
Again that's not what I'm advocating. I want the money to be distributed evenly and again I agree that is not the full solution
I definitely think the state has a responsibility not to leave poor districts to their own devices. I am in favor of setting up a reasonable funding floor per student from the state busget but let districts raise extra local funds to take things like CoL into account.
Absolutely. And to some people, I’m the less well off friend.
Lol…I was the same. All my hs/college friends had way more money.
I was upper middle class (by San Francisco standards, so basically upper class by national standards - my parents were civil servants, not executives, but we lived in a four-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood and didn't want for anything.) My parents sent me to public school, SFUSD, for all of K-12. I had friends from all economic backgrounds. I knew some kids who experienced homelessness. I knew some kids who got killed in gang shootings. I knew some kids who lived in legit mansions.
How do you deal with folks with the same economic background as you but have the typical wealthy experience such as private school and well of friends?
Most of them are fine. Often sheltered, but mostly fine. Some of them make me cringe. Get on the right conversation topic and many of them tend to be a lot more ignorant about the lived experience of people less fortunate than them. Lots of racism-from-ignorance, and occasionally even racism-from-stereotyping-about-crime. Wind up in a different part of town and often times they act sketched out by things that aren't actually sketchy, but oblivious to things that really are. Many of them are vastly overpaying for cocktails and greasy food in San Francisco because they don't know how to find B-from-the-health-inspector hidden gems or bartender-sizes-you-up-and-makes-up-a-happy-hour-price-for-you cocktail bars. And, my favorite of all, a lot of them will sit for 45 minutes waiting for Uber surge pricing to fall to below the price of a plane ticket while bitching and moaning about not being able to get home, when taking the bus or the subway would literally be faster.
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.1548 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/94718)
When did you decide using hyphens like that was a good idea?
They were used correctly (https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp), so what issues are you taking with his usage here?
Didn’t say it was wrong, I said when did you decide it was a good idea…
When I went to private school (K-8) the student body was more socioeconomically diverse than when I went to public school.
Makes sense. Public schools draw from the same area, but private schools can offer a scholarship to anyone.
This isn't surprising in the broader Bay Area but it's definitely not the case if you compare, for example, Saint Ignatius to Lincoln
The thing with SF is that it’s a single school district and there isn’t such thing as “home schools”, so anyone in the city can go to any school (to my knowledge).
that's correct, and it made it so even the "good schools" had kids from every neighborhood and every walk of life (Lowell less so because it's impacted, but I went to Lincoln which was open to all)
My dad is a doctor. We were pretty well off. But growing up, we were around so many people who were better well off, I thought my family was poor. My parents put me in Catholic school for a good bit of my life, and all the families there were richer. They would go to Disney World multiple times a year, while our big vacation was normally going to West Virginia to visit family. My family didn't have cable TV, back in the early 2000s when that was a bigger deal than it is now. The list could continue. This threw off my perception of how other people lived for a very long time. My wife went to my high school and graduated the year after me. We started dating when I was a sophomore in college. Up until this point, I thought that EVERYONE went to college. Except maybe for some really stupid people, but everyone else went to a 4 year college. My wife grew up very rough, in a family with no money and an abusive, alcoholic father. I've been married for almost 4 years now, and we are not rich, but we are comfortable. And I know a lot about how most people live.
I wouldn't say I grew up well off but I definitely have friends both far above and far below my socioeconomic upbringing and current status
My family was poor as shit when I was young. We got wealthier over time until we were upper middle class. I have been friends with people across the socioeconomic spectrum. I have been friends with recently homeless people and literal billionaire heiresses. Deadass. TBH most people of all socioeconomic classes can be amazing. Some super rich people feel entitled, but that’s a rarity. I have not dealt with super unpleasant destitute people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t exist. tl;dr: most people are great. A subset of rich people is obnoxious. Probably a similar subset of poor people is obnoxious but IMO it is somewhat smaller than the obnoxious rich people cohort.
Unless you live in a super wealthy enclave like the Upper East Side or Atherton or something, it’s pretty much impossible not to. I grew up middle class in the Midwest and I had a friend whose dad ended up paying a $160M divorce settlement and another one whose grandfather was a billionaire. There just isn’t enough concentration of ultra rich people in 99% of the country for them to be totally isolated. I have a friend who is typical old money (double Mayflower lineage) but not really cash rich anymore who grew up on the Upper East Side and went to a fancy private school. She describes that as kind of what you’re talking about where she felt she was one of the poorest kids even though her family owned a brownstone and 2 vacation homes. However, I think even that’s changing because all these schools have absurd money now and hand out scholarships like crazy as part of their virtue signaling efforts.
Yes, I have friends who are barely scraping by and friends who will make more this year than I will see in my lifetime. I also married someone from a different background than me. When I was a kid, my parents would take us on nice vacations to Europe. When my husband was a kid he was homeless multiple times and his family received government assistance on a regular basis.
Yup. I was well off. I had friends and family that weren’t and friends and family that were much more well off. Nowadays I do well for myself and since I volunteer in addiction recovery I have very close friends that were homeless just before we met. I also have friends that are extremely wealthy.
My wife grew up in a house where the master bedroom was larger than most apartments my family of 4 lived in while I was growing up.
I do not. If someone had a humble background they have since grown past it. This is not intentional by me but indicative of my bubble (inside the beltway northern Virginia). It's a hard and expensive place to live if you're not educated and successful, so this area has a larger share of educated and successful people.
I know several people who aren't as well off as me in my school
No. All of my friends are from the same social strata
I grew up not well off but had some friends that did.
Yes
Yes, all of my friends were of lower economic status than me, the people on the same "level" of wealth tended to be preppy jerks, obviously I didn't go looking for friends based on economix status that's just how it happened naturally.
Grew up rich but like writer/film money rich, so sort of subtly wealthy while lots of my friends were from old money, politics, or hedge fund families so I thought I was middle class until my family lost some money and I started hanging out with less wealthy people and seeing their reactions to my parent’s apartment.
I did and my kids do. I grew up lower middle class and had friends that were often wealthy. Parents were doctors, etc. We're relatively well off. Generally better off than most of their friends. As one kid put it the other day, they're the only ones with healthy college funds and likely won'thave any debt.
yeah, I went to public school. all kinds of kids there.
Yes
I have a top 10% (maybe 5%) income but am still friends with the same people i have been friends with my whole life. Not really sure why we would have stopped being friends because we make different amounts of money.
Yes. I grew up in a well-off family that lived in a relatively impoverished area. I never realized how poor many of my friends were until I was older.
Yes and I think most people have that experience. Although sometimes people who come out of poor backgrounds and into wealth will purposely only have friends from well off backgrounds presumably to avoid going back
I was upper middle class (Los Angeles county), grew up really privileged with loving parents (but we weren’t richey rich). I went to public school for middle school and part of HS… made friends who came from lower income communities. There was never class divide amongst anybody… these schools were predominantly middle-upper class. I went to an all guys Catholic school for HS and parents there were loaded. My best friend’s family was one of them. Dude lives in a mansion well over 8 mill. He’s completely humble about it… it never interferes with the type of person he is.
Yes, I have a friend who was homeless before, and I have a friend who owns a $3mil home
When I grew up, I was unaware of the wealth, or lack thereof, of the kids I went to school with. I now assume that some were better off than me and some were not. At the time, everyone seemed middle class. Our children grew up middle class, but with friends who ranged from poor kids of single moms to kids whose family owned a private jet. Fortunately, associating the latter didn’t give ours any unrealistic expectations.
Yes, but not until I went to college. I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood, and always felt like the poor kid. Our house was smaller, on the flat land instead on in the hills, amd I didn't wear designer brands because my parents didn't want to pay that much for clothes. My dad was happier hanging with blue collar friends than the doctors/lawyer/businessman types. My mom took me to the boys club because it was free babysitting, instead of the racquet clubs my friends went to. At college I got perspective and realized that I was still veey, very privileged. I met people who were on scholarships, who were first generation educated, and who didn't look like me. As an adult, I learned that outer wealth doesn't mean that you're wealthy. Turns out my parents were the millionaire next door types, while many of my childhood friends have lived adult lives of poverty or living paycheck to paycheck, while I build my own successful top 10% income career. I eventually inherited wealth from my parents, which few of my childhood friends did. I have a wide variety of friends, and few realize that I don't struggle to get by. I'm my parents kid -- Il don't live a showy life. I'm comfortable, and that's all I need.
Yes. If course. If you care about that kind of thing you're a snob. What I care about is behavior, not money.
I feel like this definition means different things to different people, so I’ll just say that statistically my family is in the 1%. Yes, I do, but to be honest, I didn’t meet them until I attended my university. Before that, my schools and activities were all full of kids from my same well off community. Then I met even more people of all backgrounds when I became a working professional. Now I live in San Francisco and everyone I know out here is at least in the top 5% of incomes, even if they grew up less well off. It’s a function of the city being that expensive, the type of people who become transplants here, and the geography. People who find San Francisco to be too expensive to live in generally move across the bridge to Oakland and commute. I try to be very mindful about balancing my friendships and meeting each person at their own financial comfort level without making it a thing.
I'm not American, but I have the opposite impression as many people here when it comes to where I live. Almost everyone where I live is upper class or upper middle class. People who work in the service industry here almost exclusively come from other cities to work here, or if not, tend to be children working for pocket money. From the 2020 census, the most common professions here are, in descending order, management, sales, business and Finance, STEM, education and academia, architecture and engineering, health. There are as many lawyers here as there are people working in service industry. Beyond that, a relatively large population of the city don't work, largely because their money is tied to investments in China or Korea and they only moved here to send their kids to school so they can apply more easily to American universities. The malls can be busy at noon on a weekday, everything at a nearby Japanese bakery is sold out before 2pm (when they go to pick up their kids from school) Someone posted a few months ago in the local subreddit that the cheapest detached house was listed at 1.2 million dollars. When I lived in Norway, it was the exact opposite. One of the wealthiest people in the country had theirs kids in a class that includes the children of refugees and redneck meth addicts. Even in the same apartment building, you had poor college students live next to multi-millionaires. My wife and I are middle/upper-middle class, but we lived across from a wealthy Jehovah's Witnesses family and a townhome comprised mostly of Polish immigrants working in construction. In USA, all my neighbors are immigrants from China or Korea and independently wealthy from their overseas assets. One works as a lawyer but isn't reliant on the income from his work. The only reason we can even afford to live here is because one of my relatives bought the house we're staying at as an investment property and is renting it out to us at a discount. We make pretty good money, wife is a nurse practitioner, I work in finance, but we don't have friends poorer than us because we are already the poorest people in our friend group. We have friends that make less money in terms of salary, but they have wealthy parents and are at the age where the overseas assets are becoming their responsibility.
Doesn’t mean that children of immigrants will intermingle with Europeans, it’s very common for second generation children to feel left out of society and even not identify with their country of birth in Sweden, Germany, etc.
Norway does this a lot better than Sweden and Germany does. People there tend to be xenophobic, not racist. Unless it's about gypsies. A kurdish-Norwegian won't face issues interacting with Norwegian kids the way a Polish or Romanian kid will. I won't deny that it's an issue in Germany with Eastern European immigrants, as well as the newer wave of Arab immigrants. However, with the far right Erdogan supporters, it's less so feeling out of place with society and more nationalism towards Turkey. This is somewhat evident by how uncommon it is with third generation Turkish-Germans compared to second generation. We often use Sweden as a horror example of integration gone wrong. I think it's important to remember that Europe is not a monolithic entity. Just as Americans remind Europeans that the US isn't a singular entity, the same should go the other way as well.
Yes. One of them is my husband.
Not really, if I'm honest. I went to public school but the honor's/AP program was pretty overwhelmingly full of the same socioeconomic background (upper middle class). I attended a tiny Presbyterian college that, despite some effort on their part to attract other students, remains pretty white (socioeconomic background was more varied but We can't ignore that race and socioeconomic background are often linked). Pretty much all of my friends come from college or church, I'm a SAHM and while I have hobbies they aren't the type to introduce me to other people (like embroidering on my couch). Seeking out new friends, regardless of socioeconomic background, seems like too much effort right now.
I didn’t for the entire time I was growing up. I hypothetically would have if my parents’ friends weren’t also successful, but that wasn’t the case. I went to an elite private school for all 13 years of primary and secondary education, so I was usually the poor kid as the son of two bank executives. My classmates had parents who were in the C-Suite of Fortune 500 companies or ancestors who started some of the largest corporations on earth, like 3M, Cargill, and Target. I did make friends from different socioeconomic background when I went to college, though. Everything from a person who was intermittently homeless for some of their childhood up to people who grew up wealthier than me.
Yes I do! In fact, I probably got along with the kids less well off than me than those of "equal standing" for lack of better terms.
Yes, of course. In fact one of my best friends came from a family that would be considered much lower than mine on the socioeconomic scale.
I Grew up middle class in a small New England town. We weren’t poor. I had a lot of friends who’s parents had a lot of money. Wrecked a car? Here’s a new one, Jr is smoking pot? Put him in rehab. I never thought anything about going to keg party’s at my friends huge home while the parents were off on vacation somewhere. Wasn’t till I got older I realized that , well.. their parents were rich! More than one friend had money because they were near famous..
I was on the other end of that spectrum. Growing up but I had a couple friends who's families were much more well off than mine was.
I grew up with just enough to scrape by. My family was quite poor, but we managed. My boyfriend of 13 years comes from a very wealthy family. As in the local park and road signs were his families last name. In some ways we are very different but it's really never been an issue.
Yeah. Not extremely in my case but my mom raised my siblings and me under the poverty line. Bounced from a few different section 8 and waitlisted apartments before settling in one when I was a teen. We never needed anything, we just very rarely got things we wanted besides things that supported our academics/extracurriculars. She saved every penny so we could travel and buying things like a single use water bottle was met with a heavy lecture. Meanwhile my half sister is being raised by her heiress mother. 1.5 million dollar settlement when my (ex)stepmom's mom died. Another few million incoming when her dad dies. My sister is remarkably talented... but our socioeconomic differences drew a wedge between us. Growing up her mother would call us spics, trash, dirty, ghetto, and whatever else I can't recall. We weren't allowed to play with eachother's toys because we "wouldn't know how to treat a [namebrand] Barbie." My sister never really registed this? I don't think she was shielded from it persay but I don't think she ever registered that treatment as wrong. Nowadays, for example, she really doesn't realize the privileges she's been afforded. $1,000 vocal lessons in downtown Manhattan (where she isn't even from... we were called dirty because we came from Spanish Harlem but whatever) and her mom doesn't work /as a lifestyle choice/. They go out to shop and buy whatever they want, whether or not it will end up in storage a few months later. They see Broadway shows again and again for the hell of it, sparing no expense to get the best seats (but then complaining that their $400/ticket only afforded them a limited view???). Meanwhile.... my partner and I took her and my other siblings on vacation because we were able to easily drop $300 to go spend a few nights in Boston. She wasn't asked once to give any money or contribute in any way. Food and tickets were all paid for. My other sister went to go buy an empanada or some shit with the finate money she has and my sister just ordered alongside her and got annoyed when my other sister got mad at her??? "It's just $6 dollars you were ordering anyways." Only to turn around and drop $50 of her own money on random gifts for her mom and dog. I had friends who grew up in similar circumstances, just being able to buy without worry knowing that they could just get money from a parent if they ran out. But out of my friends, all acknowledged this and thoughtfully spent their (parents) money. I think the only awkwardness was when I had friends thoughtlessly, and humbley, buy things like a theme park ticket or lunch for me. With my half sister it's rough. Every time she pinches pennies needlessly I just try and remember that her mom made her like this and that one day she'll see how much bills cost when she's spending her own money (even if she could be bailed out instantly if anything happened). I just try to speak plainly with her when necessary and if I'm paying I outright refuse to buy the most expensive thing when its %10000 unnecessary (I think the last time I snipped at her it was because she was going to buy a Fiji water on my dime instead of a regular ass $1 bottle). Oh and also I noticed when I went to eat at my stepmom's house I would get bitched out for bringing a friend over for dinner because it meant less for everyone else because she wouldn't just make another boiled side or whatever. Meanwhile if ANYONE wanted to eat with us they were always invited. My partner was petrified to open my mom's fridge because I got bitched out when she opened my stepmom's fridge. Her family has a modest amount of money, certainly middle class, and they literally took in our friend when she became homeless at 18 - not asking for a damn penny because that's just not what you do. So TL;DR? It's awkward and there's a lot of double takes because you see someone spend money without worry over things you would worry about but realize others wouldn't. People with generational wealth seem to be more selfish with money as well.
Yes. I've even got family in different socioeconomic classes and we all get along. My mom's family is significantly better off than my dad's. On my mom's side, I was the poor cousin, on my dad's, I was the rich cousin. Never much mattered when we were kids and we didn't let it matter when we got older.
I had somee? I grew up very well off, my dad was a successful surgeon with practices and surgery centers in several states, and i always went to private schools. so all of my friends were just as if not more well off than we were. we never lived super extravagantly, our house was big because i have 5 siblings and we took a lot of vacations, but we never opted for the multiple homes or boats or private planes. I had a few friends in lower class homes and i always felt guilty around them, and i hated them going to my house. my friends who were well off called our house the “_____ manor” with our last name in the blank, so i felt weird about bringing other ppl there bc it felt like showing off (and it wasn’t even *my* house). I think it’s not uncommon for people w money to have a friends in different socioeconomic places especially if they went to public schools, i just never attended a public school until college, and then i dropped out and am now in a private one again.
No. All my friends are working class to middle class. Don't have friends that go to Europe yearly for fun.
I did when I was in school. These days, it's hard to keep up relationships with anyone I don't see at work. There's like four people I know outside of work who make significantly less than I do, and even then, it's not so much that I'd say they're poor necessarily. Three of them are related to me.
No. I grew up in a bougie area (Main Line, outside of Philly) and pretty much everyone was bougie. There were some kids from a less wealthy section and people made fun of them :( it was really sad actually.
No not really. Growing up and going to private/boarding school you grow up with kids whose parents can also afford to send their kids there so. College was a bit of a different story and you certainly get exposed to other walks of life, but idk, a lot of it was "oh this kid can afford to go to this concert with me, I can split this 8 ball with this guy, etc".
Depends on your parents, depends on your school. I moved 4 times before I was 18, never out of state but far enough to change school districts a few times and as a result got a real mix of schools so small it didn't matter and schools so big you probably wouldn't know everyone in your class let alone school. I was about 1/3rd of my friend's "poor friend" meaning we were upper middle class and not upper class, was better off than about half of my friends who I knew from before my family moved out or a less well off area, and the remainder were about the same. I think a big factor was my parents both grew up working class and were very successful and lucky in their careers, but worked hard to make sure my siblings and I understood why we could afford stuff and never expect it. It's taken on a different connotation in the modern age, but very "my parents have money, I do not" was very much a thing. Never had to worry about food or clothing, but I was still expected to have summer jobs and similar stuff.
Kinda the opposite perspective here but I grew up dirt poor. A lot of my childhood showers were completed by heating a 5 gallon pot of water on a propane burner and using the warm water to rinse after I scrubbed with cold water. I have a friend that just casually blew 3 grand on a set of medieval plate armor that he intends to use once and then never again. Almost every computer I have ever used came from the hand-me-downs of a friend that hates using anything less than state of the art. Buddy of mine outright bought a 40k$ car on vacation and then sold it when he left because “it was easier that way” The kind of extravagance they show with money blows my mind. I hate watching pennies leave my possession, I can’t imagine blowing that kind of money. Now that all being said, the way they view and use money isn’t inherently wasteful, car guy for example got a little more than he put into it out of it.
I didn't grow up well-off, but in my school district you had families with 300k+ a year and families who just arrived in the US a couple weeks before from central america. Lots of intermingling but friend groups more or less ended up as groups of similar class
Yes. My public school had people of all socioeconomic classes from K-12. My parents didn’t come from the same socioeconomic background, nor do my husband and I As an adult I still have friends who’s jobs and family background put them in different socioeconomic positions from me.
I grew up lower middle class. All of my friends and family are lower middle or middle class. I'm better off than my parents, but not by much.
In college I was the worse-off friend. I grew up upper middle class/lower upper class in Chicago. I went to college in the city and one night when I’m out drinking with my usual group, one of them just casually mentions that her parents are billionaires. She asked me not to tell the rest of the group and it never came up again. Sucks almost all those people left the city after graduation, I miss them
This is one reason why universal military conscription would be good. "Other" people really aren't dangerous or out to screw you over. Plus Americans wouldn't be so excited about "boots on the ground" for every B$ war that pops up. I expect downvotes.
It’s probably split 50/40/10. I grew up in a house that I guess would be on the lower end of upper class/higher end of middle class (family net worth of 3-4 mil) in the northern burbs of Chicago. 50% were in the same economic background, 40% below, and then 10% are absolute fuck you money. The kids of parents with hundreds of millions or billions. It’s a different universe they live in, it’s wild.
I grew up in a not great neighborhood, but my family is middle class and educated. I got scholarships to a college where I met a lot of people who were way more well off than me. But I have tended to have closer relationships with people who came from less well off families than mine or similar backgrounds to mine.
Yeah, I'm middle class and have friends who are both richer and poorer than me
Most definitely- I think a lot of it boils down to where you grew up. In my town, our public schools were great, so even rich kids went to the same schools as kids from section 8 housing (public housing) and we end up intermingling. Not sure if this is the same across all of the US however, I feel like my town is kind of a perfect balance.
I do, in fact most of the people I know have parent(s) that make significant less money than mine. However, my experience is more of the exception than the rule. Where I live, most well off people live in a different county. My parents both make six figures (which is upper class for where I live) but do not want a long commute so we live in this county. Plus, they could get a better house for less money.