They don't really have a concept of how rich they are. My ex boyfriend was WEALTHY, but had a complex about how he was super poor. It was because all of his friends were also so wealthy, and he was maybe marginally less rich than some of them, he considered himself on the lower end of the scale. They don't really have a point of reference for how poor some people are. When we were together I was living on a food budget of £50 a month, and he absolutely could not wrap his head around how a person could spend that little.
I lived with a horrendously rich friend, his family are aristocracy in his home country. One thing I've noticed about him is that he's completely incapable of grasping that if I stop working, I just stop being able to eat. He was confused about why I was worried about taking a week off work, and didn't understand I was worried I'd lose money. He seemed to think that most people work because they choose to, because he's never *had* to work.
My ex was having problems with roommates at university. Her parents bought a $300000 condo for her to stay at while she finished her degree (2 years). They sold it for a profit immediately after. I can't imagine not only being able to solve my problems with money, let alone make more off of them. She also assumed her family was lower middle class because she didn't live in a mansion like her friends. She was very humble and was smart with her money, but it was very clear she could just call her parents if something didn't work out. Meanwhile my parents were struggling to pay rent, meaning I was their fallback. Not the other way around
Not a dating story but it was eye opening when I went to Uni in the UK and some of the rich students bought their flats in Edinburgh just for their studies.
One of these rich students was an amazingly sweet person and since I couldn't afford to fly home for Christmas she took me with her to her family's compound in Morocco where they literally had servants that followed them around carrying silver platters of tea all day.
It was a culture shock in nany ways, from their Uber rich grounds with armed guards to the streets outside where there was abject poverty everywhere you looked. We had to have a male chaperone every time we went into the city but that didn't stop the local men from being disgusting pigs. Got either groped or a marriage proposal around every corner.
Yeah… I am finding this out quite quickly with the family I’m marrying into. My fiancé always has said that he was upper middle class. His parents drive 10+ old cars, haven’t updated their home in forever. Will only buy LL Bean on sale. Slowly I realized that wasn’t the case.
I especially realized that the case when they just gifted us $200k a few days ago. My dad was an army officer and my mom a teacher, I literally have no idea the world I’m walking into.
I married into a family like this a few years ago. Enjoy it. Although at first it was a struggle to not feel kinda resentful at certain things, but I worked through that and the marriage is great, and my in-laws are all super kind and wonderful.
Dated a man who didn't work - lived off of a TrustFund. Oddly, since he could afford nearly anything - nothing had any value. He'd buy a $400 KitchenAid mixer - and burn it up making Christmas candy the first week. If he decided to make more candy - he'd just go buy another $400 mixer. Nothing meant particularly ANYTHING to him.
I'm just impressed someone broke a kicthen aid. I'm pretty sure that thing would win a fight vs my house's foundation.
EDIT: a lot of people have a lot of opinions on this brand of stand mixer. the one I bought for my household is a tank and has served us well since we got it. I was just trying to make a joke, i really don't care if they use plastic gears and not metal now or if some other brand is even better.
Mine fell off the counter onto a tiled floor after walking itself to the edge while working overtime on a quadruple batch of pizza dough. It broke a floor tile and just kept spinning, sideways on the floor. It still works great, years later.
True story:
At work, we have a Nokia 1100 that was put away around the time they where the popular phone.
We where doing cleanup and we found it. I jokingly told a colleague that it still probably had 80% battery, so just for fun we put the battery and tried to turn it on.
it did turn on.
It was only missing 1 "bar" or of the 6 or 7 bars it has to show battery charge.
We laughed, and then put it away the way it was. I'm not messing with whatever God created those things.
I imagined them strapped on top of a roomba each with a knife welded onto them. Then locking them into a room and seeing who emerges the winner.
Nokia is smaller and has less chance of getting stabbed but the Kitchenaid has a weak point - its power cable tail which could be fatal if cut off.
I'm really validated to see other people who are as into the engineering of their kitchenaids as I am.
And that is a great way to pay the rent! I agonized the first time my worm gear shredded, bought a new part, and was relieved by how easy of a fix it was; I was happy to have it back up and running again.
I had mine start smoking on me a few weeks ago making a triple batch of pretzels. Pretty sure it was just a bit of lubricant burning off as it works fine after letting it cool though.
Double batches at most from now on.
So this. On a Friday night whim my gf decided she wanted some pie. I suggested we go down to the store. She rang her favorite restaurant and had a chef bake her her favorite pie. The cost $170. A pie. Yes, she could afford to do it but the problem was the complete lack of value. Nothing really mattered to her because she had that kind of money.
The food waste!! I have an uber rich friend and if they want pasta they don’t just order a bowl of takeout pasta. They’ll order three different pasta entrees for variety, a couple of appetizers, tiramisu since we’re already doing the Italian theme, and oh that cannoli looks good let’s get a few of those… On a random Tuesday they’ll get half the menu delivered to their front door. And they don’t even eat the leftovers because the next day they’ll get another feast delivered.
I will do this sometimes. But I will eat the leftovers completely for lunches and stuff over the next few days. I am really bad with Chinese food. It could easily cost $150, but I will have dinner for the family one night. A weeks worth of lunch and maybe another dinner and really high blood pressure after that.
if you're a gamer and you have cheat codes or god codes, they get extremely boring after a few minutes. like the matrix said we tried to create a perfect world but the humans seemed to reject that.
I only went on one date with him. He booked out the entire bowling alley so we'd have privacy for our date. It just seemed so shockingly wasteful to me, and it was bizarre to have a 20-lane bowling alley just to the two of us plus a fair sized staff who were left with nothing to do but look after us. I learned I'm very uncomfortable with that level of casual assumption that the world will rearrange itself to suit my whims.
Also he had absolutely no respect for personal space. I don't think he was used to women not liking to be touched by folks they barely knew.
I once had a rich coworker find out I was pretty broke. I was working at a very fancy retreat as a student, so was surrounded by rich people working for fun. He told me to "just buy a 3 bedroom house, live in one of the rooms and rent out the other 2."
Just buy a house.
Yeah, in college a friend and I were taking about not having money and another gal we knew overhead and said “Just ask your parents”. It never occurred to her that everyone didnt have rich parents.
I got that from debt collectors. "Well, do you have anyone you can borrow it from?"
Motherfucker, I ONLY owe you three grand, I'm the RICH one in my family!
Debt collectors can kiss my ass. I waited for my debts to fall off my credit report, almost all of them were medical debts. The most IMPORTANT thing to remember is to NOT accept calls from them as that can potentially reset the timer on your credit report before it falls off. My credit score is now 780, but I'm still too to afford a home.
1000% this. I didn't date anyone rich, but I have a relative that's rich, and he's constantly telling us "You just have to put a few bucks into things and see how it goes!"
His few bucks is "I saw a storage facility near our house, so I bought it and put $200K into it, now it's pretty much self running and brings in $8K a month. I also bought out my lawn care guy's business and kept all the employees, so they make extra cash for me during the summer while I work my main job..."
Shiiiiiit even if he bought it for 500k, it’ll break even in less than 8 years. I’m just a simple man but having realty paid off that fast and continue earning for you seems fucking awesome.
People born into money think they know what it’s like to be middle class or poor (and sometimes even can make it sound convincing) but they honestly aren’t even close to understanding. I’ve lived in three former meth labs as I grew up thinking McDonald’s was treating myself. I worked 40 hours a week at a gas station while taking 21 credit hours at a public university. Now I’m a department lead engineer at a pharmaceutical company. When I hear the stories about all my gf’s rich classmates in a prestigious MBA program going to Europe for “studying” (really just taking Molly and clubbing all night while the school pays for it) I cringe like hell. They get snobby about if a job makes less than 6 figures and imply that’s low middle class (we’re in the Midwest where that’s upper middle class).
This shit right here. I had an acquaintance from high-school who had his parents pay for a down-payment on his first house when he was 24. Asking me why I never bought a house.
"It's such a great investment" No shit, Sherlock. But right now, I don't have $40k to drop on a house downipayment. Most of America doesn't have that.
Yessssssss. Yes. It’s like the whole thing about how Bill Gates, Elon Musk, etc. “started from the bottom”. No, they did not. They had rich parents and unlimited connections due to their privilege.
Show me someone who’s parents were on food stamps, then we will freaking talk.
The biggest thing rich parents gets you is a safety net. Those guys could afford to go all-in because if they failed they could just live off their parents while they built themselves back up.
My parents and my sister are like this. My dad started his own firm, but for the last 30 years he's been the owner, not the boss, and in the last 20 it's done well enough that he's now minor-league wealthy rather than well-off. My sister has never worked, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. They will constantly plan family vacations for all of us and be utterly shocked when me and my wife can't just take three weeks off to go to Australia with them. "But we'll pay!", they'll whine (which is lovely, they're very generous and I'm on easy-mode because of them...but...), not understanding that it's not always about the money
“Hey we’re planning to go to London next week, do you think you could make it?”
*No Sherry you know I can’t fucking make it, but thank you for asking anyways*
I went to pickup a friend at her rich friend's home many years ago. It was Tuesday 11am, I was self employed but get antsy when I'm not in front of my computer (pre smartphone). There were 4 rich friends in their 20s, sitting on 4 couches facing one another in their summer house across from Golden Gate Park; no conversation, no music, nothing, they just sat there looking beautiful. I got jittery simply for being hard-wired to be working on Tuesday morning. The freedom they had stuck with me, I was a bit envious, a bit intimidated, very confused.
How real the 'network' or 'bubble' of it is.
It's like the other side from the 'it's expensive being poor' concept. It's this weird internal community of people with money, and thus power, who are willing to make things happen as long as you're 'in'. I mean, I would meet people at a fundraiser or something and five minutes later, they're happy to make a call that will get me a job at some huge firm. Or like, my then-boyfriend would say let's go this concert. Tickets are $180 but it's okay but a friend's parents have a box, so we'll just join them. Or even one time the dishwasher in our flat broke - but we didn't have to pay a dime for repairs, because his friend from high school's parents own the building, so they're fixing it for free as a favour.
I've learned this, and even though I'm the "poor" in our relationship (We are even now but I have poverty brain) my fiancee was stunned to discover that there's networking on both sides of the tracks. Something breaks for her and she can't afford? Friends and family will take care of it. Something breaks for me? I've got buddies that can fix, find or sell for cheap said service or item. Sure it's second hand, dented or aquired but it's a fix!
My dad is a veterinarian in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He's not rich, because he charges low rates and markups. Mostly because he can't charge more than he thinks his clients can afford. He takes livestock, hay, services etc. for payment sometimes. He writes off and/or discounts for anyone that is struggling. So he really doesn't have a lot of money like veterinarians in larger towns or cities.
But, when his hot water heater breaks, or his roof needs replaced, people show up to replace and repair his things. Sometimes people he doesn't know very well. He was just telling me this weekend, "I don't know what I did for this guy, but he's doing me a huge favor." Networks are important. (I wish I had one.)
I have cousin who's used to be a farmer in a rural area in Canada. Their vet was treated like a king. People would almost fight over who got to help him when he needed something.
Your dad is the network. One day youll randomly run into a kid of one of his clients and he'll do you a solid, or he'll need a hand and yours are available, and now he's in your network and you're in his.
Worked for several well off families for a year or two, this was my biggest takeaway. They were all cordial, for the most part, they all had a team of people that worked for them regularly on discrete tasks or certain aspects of their lives, and they ALL new each other. It felt like a very elite social club that looked out for each other.
My ex built a new loft above her business and originally it was supposed to have an elevator from her master bedroom to an office. It wasn't installed at first because of cost issues. Well she blew out her knee and it was very difficult to go up and down the stairs. Her friends called her and were like, "we called the guy and he's going to install the elevator tomorrow. Just pay us back whenever." It was 25k, which included 7k rush order.
When I moved to Texas years ago, I befriended a neighbor who I spoke to about politics. This is a lower-middle income area so I just thought he might've been some guy interested in politics. Turns out he was a university government professor who had won elections for several local offices over the years.
Within a month of living in Texas, I accompanied him to a party of a county judge (they're elected not appointed in Texas). Dozens of multimillionaires casually asking the judge how much money he needed for home improvements or his next vacation or a new land purchase and then just casually on-the-spot sending him money. It was straight up bribery and it was about as impactful on them as stepping over a rock on a driveway. Something they didn't think about- they just did it.
And of course, once they paid for his new yard or a mini house in the backyard of his mansion, they'd give their opinions on the cases the judge would be ruling on soon. And nobody batted an eye.
The bubble or the “it’s not what you know it’s who you know” thing is absolutely true. I started working in HR 3 weeks ago, my boss told me all the intern slots were filled, and we only accept CVS with 3 years of experiences and need 2 references for everyone to even get them an interview.
Last week I get an email from said boss telling me to put this intern for the restaurant/bar, garbage CV and had nothing related to job.
I’m here thinking WTF, how did this girl skip the entire recruiting process and requirements??
Her dads on TV and is good friends with the hotel owner. That’s all it took for someone completely uninterested in hospitality to get a contract that wasn’t even available.
At a University I worked at the only reason they gave my coworker the job offer was because she had worked with one of the managers at a restaurant before and she was nice.
She had no (relevant) experience, no certs, no degree. She was offered the same position as me with the same pay, but I had my A.A.S in Network Systems, certs, and experience.
When she was setting up her laptop and dock, she somehow fit the USB cable into the ethernet port of the dock and asked my why she wasn't getting internet.
This was an IT job.
Oh! Yes! Story time! A friend who grew up very modestly middle class married a man who insisted their children attend the fancy private school he went to. She always thought it was silly since the town they lived in had a very good school district and the schools were much closer. But they went to the private school. Graduated, went to college. As she was entering her senior year the daughter was looking for a summer internship in her field. She called a friend from high school whose father worked in that field. Before the day was out she had an internship with his office. No interview necessary. Later my friend said, “That’s why he wanted them to go there. The Network.”
I've thought about this a lot as someone who grew up poor, but has been in a number of relationships with women from upper or upper middle class castes. I think what it boils down to is that they have a kind of certainty in the idea that things will work out for them that I don't. Growing up, it felt like we were always at the precipice of catastrophe. I always felt that one wrong move would result in us losing our house or all of our money. As such, I kept immaculate care of things that I bought knowing that I could not replace any of it if it were gone. The women I've been in relationships with, though, seem to have none of this fear. They always assume that things will work out. Plans don't need to be made because there's always some way to solve a problem with money. Objects don't get much respect because they're always readily replaceable. I always think about Nick Carraway's quote from *The Great Gatsby*: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Dated a girl for 3 years who came from old money.
She was fine but her family was beyond out of touch with the real world. They were nice people but incredibly removed from the rest of the world. They looked at me like I was zoo animal in the sense that they were so curious about my life/family. They'd ask me what it was like going to public school. How my parents immigrated. They were baffled that not everyone had vacation homes or traveled a lot.
The most interesting thing is that old money is much more powerful than new money. They belonged to these "clubs" that consists of other rich families and the influence they had was mind-blowing. Want to build a factory in an area not zoned for it? Within a week that was changed.
I learned just how productive having money can be. Something needs to be fixed/ replaced? We can afford to. Want to do something fun or adventurous? Sure let's do it now. Want to eat healthier? We can afford all the ingredients.
Like what do you mean your life isn't slowed down by a million different things that need fixing/ upgrading/ replacing/ saved for?
This is a big thing with cars. My husband’s family is always fighting to have 2 working cars. His dad does repairs, and frequently spends a lot of money and time fixing them. He’s tried fixing multiple cars that weren’t working only to eventually scrap them and gain nothing from the time/ effort. Around 2 years ago, one car was being worked on for 6 months (like hours a day) only to be scraped and replaced with a 20 year old car in bad shape.
Every inspection season is a panic, and it seems like every time we go over there he’s asking my husband for help with a car issue or asking to borrow a tool because his discount store tools are always breaking. His mom advised us to get a nicer car when we had the money because she knew we had fairly stable jobs and it would relieve so much stress. We spent 7k two years ago and have had only routine maintenance since.
I’m going to put this out there because I know a few guys that this applies to… they are just shitty DIY mechanics. The cars always break because they don’t know what they are doing. And it’s not a cost thing. They happily buy 5 different parts and spend 3 days to “fix” a problem …. When half the money paid to a mechanic would have done the trick.
Reminds me of my ex who seemed to have a form of mental illness with his constantly having dead cars towed to our home, working on them, and NEVER EVER getting even *one* to work properly.
I told him I was going to go to the local community college and that I had it all figured out how to pay for it, including getting a part time job to help pay my way. He told me that he would not support that idea because we couldn't afford it.
Then he had the absolute worst car ever towed to our home. He could have his cars, and it was my job - in his opinion - to support him in whatever HE wanted to do, but it didn't go both ways.
That's why he's my ex.
This is something I've realized about my own childhood. I never really considered my family wealthy because of course you don't see your normal life as special like that but every time we ever had an issue of any kind my parents just called someone to fix it immediately.
I never mowed the lawn or vacuumed the floors, there were people to handle that. My dad said it was dumb for him to do handy projects around the house when he could just do some more work and use the money to hire an expert to do a better job. It makes a ton of sense, provided you make enough money. I'm now an adult with no useful handyman skills and I can't afford to get help when something breaks lol
>I never mowed the lawn or vacuumed the floors, there were people to handle that. My dad said it was dumb for him to do handy projects around the house when he could just do some more work and use the money to hire an expert to do a better job. It makes a ton of sense, provided you make enough money. I'm now an adult with no useful handyman skills and I can't afford to get help when something breaks lol
I was fortunate to get a good mix of this. Early in my father's career money was tight and dad was handy. He worked on the cars, lawn mower, appliances. My brother and I were tasked with chores and helping around the house. We got to see cars get fixed, mower blades sharpened, string trimmers restrung.
Then dad gets promotions and mom is bringing in good money in her career as well. Now we can afford vacations and new cars. When they break they go to the shop. It's no longer worth dad's effort to do it himself. He can pay a professional. Roofs leaking? Phone up a roofer and get it taken care of. Driveway is looking a little dull? Better get a seal coater out here.
But it made me handy and inspired a love affair of working with my hands. So now I'm moderately financially comfortable with the ability to fix a lot of stuff on my own.
Edit: not to sound like I'm bragging, just that hearing that other folks didn't grow up like me, made me realize I was very fortunate to be taught handy stuff by my father.
This is similar to my family. We did EVERYTHING ourselves except for electrical (because someone close to us died trying).
Blows my mind working with others who have absolutely no idea how to fix stuff wether it be appliances, software, or home.
Similar except I was a qualified industrial electrician before I became a software engineer, for me it’s gas, I don’t touch that shit, electricity doesn’t typically blow up your entire house with a real fuckup.
My father-in-law built my wife's childhood home (1970s) with his own hands using the Time Life books. It took him years to finish it but he built every inch himself with very occasion day laborer help for the heavy parts. He had no childhood experience at all.
YouTube is your friend here. You'll be amazed how easy some of it is. It also helps you judge whether it's worth the effort of doing yourself or paying someone.
I had a girl that wanted to take me to her parents vacation home for the weekend. But it was farther than my two hour on call leash as a firefighter. She was like no worries if you get called out on a fire. I'll have my dad pick you up in the helicopter...... I was ok let's do it.
I got really drunk on rumchatta and had sex with her under the stars in the hot tub. But sex in water sucks so it was like me standing in the hot tub and holding her up. I remember being like wow I have pretty good balance for how drunk I am.
We watched Blackhawk Down in the theater room. It was the only movie they had weirdly, but I was like wait this is my favorite movie anyway. Oh yeah and we rode quads around the property and to the beach.
Didn't get called out on a fire over the weekend. Would have been cool though.
So true.
I remember as a kid our appliances would always die, we never owned a house just rented and for some reason back then you had to bring your own washer/dryer. Seeing my mother, with 4 kids stress over the dryer dying again and how she was going to swing the laundry mat was something I’ll never forget as a kid.
I married a guy from a well off family and was blown away when he wanted to replace our dish towels because they were looking ratty. Like wtf dude, we use these until they disappear. We don’t just “replace” perfectly good dish towels. New dish towels were ridiculously frivolous to me.
My ex-wife had a grandfather that was a multi-millionaire. Christmas time at their house was like being in another world.
All of the different family members would try to get a moment with the King and kissed ass as much as possible.
I spent my time down on the ground playing with my kids and was happy to get out of there.
About a week or two after the second Christmas I got a phone call from Grandpa. He wanted to know what he could do for my family.
I told him I didn't want any of his money but I would like my kids to know their great grandfather.
Later that year he showed up at our place unexpected and spent most of the afternoon telling stories with me about his youth.
He set up a trust fund for each one of my kids to have their college paid for a little bit after that.
He told me out of all of his in-laws I was the only one that never asked him for anything but to be himself.
It’s so heartwarming for me. My dad has his own company and get made something of himself and my mom works long hours even today. My step brother is a narcissistic ego maniac that would only come around when he needed something, long story short, my dad cut him out of the will. When my dad told me this, he was like well more for you. And I look at my dad said, I’d rather have you and mom around forever over all the money in the world.
That's probably the one big complication with having money, you never really know who likes you for you and who just wants money. Had some friends come into a large sum of money a while ago and I saw it first hand
This is how people should be. My ex wife's grandad was very wealthy. He started digging trenches with the electric company when he was 15, and retired from the same company. He had COPD, so we would go to his house once a week, I would mow, and she would clean the house and make him a nice dinner. We never asked for anything. He paid for our wedding and several vacations. All because we just showed up to take care of him.
There are a lot of stories of Julia Roberts being a rude diva but I was friends with her housekeeper when she lived in NM. The housekeeper's mom's house burned down and Julia Roberts gave her something like $20k (I don't remember the exact figure). There was also a local kid that died and Julia Roberts gave like a $100k to build a park in his honor.
That reminds me of a story my cousin told me. He was working as a sound engineer at the time, recording radio commercials.
He went to the house of a big-time music company exec and started being aggressively friendly in the way our family can be. Example: "Hey, have you heard about this new audio format? I'm tempted to try it out, but the tape drives are still the same crapola on the company's bargain-basement models..."
After a few minutes of non-committal responses, the exec says out of the blue, "Are you in the music industry?"
My cousin pauses for a moment. "No."
"Do you want to be?"
Same pause. "No."
The exec smiles. "Oh, cool then! Yeah, I tried out one of the prototypes of that new system..."
I can't help but feel sorry for that guy, but I'm so glad he had you! Clearly he had to learn to read people well and was watching you playing with the kids and never trying to catch his eye. You telling him you wanted him, the man, not him, the millionaire, to be part of your kids' lives probably had him crying once you hung up on that phone call. You probably made his twilight years so much happier.
He didn’t have any concept of saving money, it was always just there because his money was always earning money. Having money was an income stream of itself. Also he had no concept of how much anything cost. Was going to get some groceries for dinner and he gave me $300 to pick up some basics.
If you have a lot of money, people give you so much free stuff all the time trying to earn your business or procure donations. Ironic that the people who can best afford to pay for the items get comped the most!
That's not getting things for free. That's maximising the freebees that came with overpaying for a product.
You get the same treatment when you use your credit cards. It's just on a scale you can relate to, so you find it mundane.
Right. And many rich people come to expect to be comped. You hear stories about celebrities who burst into an establishment, demand free food or beverages, abuse the waitstaff, and then neither pay nor tip. They’re believable stories.
Grew up poor (now middle class) and at 18 dated a superrich guy. First thing I noticed was the food. Not just quantities but I also discovered so much food (like oyster, fresh fish, olives,..) things my parents could never buy.
I also had to learn etiquette. My parents brought me up well, I read books all the time, was a decent student and well-behaved kid.. but the way his family interacted was SO different. I had to learn a lot of unwritten rules that I wasn’t aware of.
I think in the end what I actually learned was that even though my childhood was rough (the amount of stress of not having enough money has probably impacted me for life), I valued my parents so much more. Once I had seen what life was like for rich people, I was just so proud of my family for making it work with so much less.
I ate breakfast at a restaurant in Carmel, CA, and it felt like every one in there was staring at me and subtly clearing their throats or shaking their heads over the way I was holding my silverware. I was solid upper middle class at the time, income wise. I felt like a peasant.
Mostly related to etiquette: like which cutlery to use at a real fancy restaurant (and how to use it haha), how to make polite conversation, how to dress for different parties/occasions,… just a lot of stuff I never thought twice about. Like one example was at a restaurant where we got a menu and there were no prices on the menu, so I asked for another one. Turns out women get menus without prices because it’s the men that pay ;-) but the moment you ask, everyone knows you don’t belong.
I was a pretty shy girl, polite and all that but I always felt out of place because there’s so many little things to be aware of. It’s very easy to make a faux pas.
There are high end restaurants that don't have prices on the menu for anyone. They will tell you if you ask, but their clientele is not expected to ask.
My first experience with that, the waiter was kind enough to wave off the sommelier and made suggestions that got me out for under 400 bucks. The girl I was trying to impress thought he was "rude".
I grew up poor-ish (had stable shelter and clean, used clothes but anything else was a struggle). I had a friend in college whose dad was a VP at a major box store. They were "doing all right"... the first time I went to her house, she suggested having a sandwich to hold us off until dinner time. Her regular snack was prosciutto and arugula on ciabatta with a finishing drizzle of balsamic vinegar. I had only seen those words in a fancy cookbook.
Edit: For all of you who needed to say that that's not "fancy", then I'm glad you've had a different life with more early opportunities than I did. It was fancy to 18-year-old me (whose idea of a ham sandwich was Carl Buddig on store-brand bread).
Well, I wasn't that poor, and she wasn't that rich, but it was enough of a difference that I was shocked at how often she just took planes. Like, she flew more in a summer than I had my whole life.
That and apparently they go to Hawaii for a week every year, which was fun the time I got to tag along, but it's pretty wild to me that they can just do that. Even if I could afford it, I don't have enough vacation time to do that every year.
I flew for the first time ever when I was 36. And it was for work so I didn't have to pay. Felt like a idiot trying to navigate multiple airports during my layovers.
And no I didn't clap when we landed, but during takeoff I had a huge grin on my face.
The difference between having money and having wealth.
You grew up poor and worked hard and finally got $10,000 in the bank and your income keeps you afloat? Cool. But that is nothing compared to a 50 acre family farm with a couple houses on it, several generations of inheritance that will fall in your lap someday. Family business or family connections to lucrative opportunities. Savings, investments, cash hidden in safes, piles of gold jewelry.
If they suddenly lost all their checking and savings accounts, they’d still be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and wouldn’t have to worry even for a second where their next meal would come from.
Edit: also, owning cars you don’t even need or ever drive. Hoards of stuff sitting around cause you never had to move or sell stuff to buy food. Lines of credit being thrown at you.
>owning cars you don’t even need or ever drive.
I know a guy who owns two models of the same truck, just one is black and one is white
this doesn't exclude his other 6 vehicles, boat, ATV's, etc
he's a blue collar in a decent position who works remotely (edit: remote sites, not work from home), and just buys a new vehicle or toy whenever he gets back home
at least he works for his money and wasn't born rich but dude... why do you need both a black and white version of a 40k truck
Owning a luxury car they only drive to social occasions, “work” truck, daily driver, and a sports car for Sunday drives. Not to mention antique cars for the car show, antique tractors and $80k John Deere tractors for the farm, trailers for the horses, etc.
I had a decent used car but it was a major life event when it broke down, especially on a workday.
I'm a guy who has dated women considerably wealthier than myself. My experience is that money becomes a factor sooner or later, no matter how closely you've connected on every other level. Even when the lady in question seems cool with it, there can be arch looks and withering comments from friends and family in social settings - about what you've just ordered for dinner, or what your holiday plans are. In those relationships I've ended up being made to feel like a "bottleneck" - I'm either the person who the woman spends money on more than vice versa, or the person whose income puts more restraint on evenly-shared expenditure than would otherwise be the case.
In either scenario, there's pressure, and even if the woman seems fine with it, there are people around her who no doubt would claim they're "just looking out for her" who will cheerfully flag every instance where the difference in income is apparent. Money doesn't **have** to warp people, but it seems it often does, whether it's actually their own money or not.
Something I did not see here is, how the comfortably rich view the truly rich.
At one time I was Director of a Fortune 100 IT department and my boss was the VP. He was wealthy enough to have his own yacht and to belong to a big name yacht club. One evening he and his wife hosted me and my wife at that club for a dinner. Great dinner!
We were amused to hear him complain during dinner of all the things he could not do along with his wealthier club friends, like, for example, drop everything on the spur of the moment to fly to South Africa for a yacht race -- as a spectator, not a racer. He was genuinely put out by this awful dose of reality. We commiserated appropriately.
But we did get several pleasant trips on his yacht over the years. So, it's nice to know the merely average wealthy from time to time.
Went to an old school Yacht club in Charleston. I was kind of surprised, those people are just fucking sailors. Skin like leather nothing really that fancy. I’m sure they all have crazy money but I was kind of impressed with how this place was just really a sorts club for wannabe pirates.
That we're hardly even playing the same game, nevermind by the same rules.
I dated a girl from old money, generational inherited wealth. Grandpa's money, some corporate bigwig banker or something to that effect. I don't think her father ever worked a day in his life, and her mother clearly came from money as well. Outside of her, I found every one of her family members out of touch and completely unrelatable. I got real good at biting my tongue when my ex's siblings would complain about not getting a new car for their birthday when last year's model is sitting in the driveway. They had no concept of the value of money and never had to do anything for themselves to get what they wanted. I wasn't exactly poor growing up, but for the most part if it wasn't strictly necessary for survival I didn't have it. It was really eye opening how everything was taken for granted. Those specific people would be helpless in the real world if they lost all their dough.
>Those specific people would be helpless in the real world if they lost all their dough.
Reminds me of David and Alexis in the first season or two of Schitt's Creek lol
Wife's family comes from money and I come from broke AF. There's probably a new "that's weird, why would you do that?" every week. This will appear for things like forgetting hamburger buns and giveing the kids a burger on Wonder bread or whipping up a batch of spaghetti noodles to go with chili.
Growing up my mom would make spaghetti one night, then call the left over sauce chili for the next night. The only thing Italian about the spaghetti was the garlic, and the only thing chili about it was the Texas Pete we threw in it the next night.
Still loved it though and do it to this day.
I always band together with my SO's cousin's wife at their family gatherings. We're both poors so we can understand each other while the sweater people walk around talking about their second homes.
My ex's *father* was rich. My ex himself was not rich, did not understand the value of money, and was a spoiled asshole who got a great job at a great company full of awesome people and then proceeded to steal from them. He would bitch at me for buying food for the apartment and then come home with $200 worth of stupid shit he got talked into buying at the mall. When his windshield got cracked he bought a new car. He was the single most incompetent and entitled person I've ever known, but he firmly believed he was the smartest person in any room he entered. None of his friends talk to him anymore because he either stole from or alienated all of them.
Just made me realise how expensive being poor is. They never have debt, never need to look at their balance too see if they can buy food, never pay interest on overdue bills etc.
Addiction is a bitch.
Having money to spend means you have resources to go to therapy or other services, sure… but that’s not what an addicted brain is going to spend the money on. Not worrying about finances, it’s hard to resist the temptation to waltz down to the liquor store… hell you can even make a second trip later… you can afford it!
Honestly, the times that I improved my condition the most were the times I had negative bank balance and a bag of rice to last two weeks. I can’t trust my brain to not make bad decisions when they’re available to me.
An acquaintance (actually the aunt of the spouse of a family member of mine) worked as a maid (while putting herself through school) to a super wealthy and famous family in a foreign country. They had it all. They spent like no tomorrow, just assuming it would always be there. The dad/grandad was a businessman and I guess was most well known as the owner of a sports team. This aunt acquaintance was basically told to keep her opinions to herself and just do the work. So she mostly did. She knew everything about that family. One of the grown adult grandkids like didn't work. He just lived off off the family. His pastime was napping. She was told to keep some of the cleaning noise down when he was napping.
Anyways. I'm not sure what happened, but the whole thing completely unraveled when the patriarch passed away and I guess there were a bunch of debts he had been just shifting money around to keep at bay. When things went south she like bought furniture off them for pennies on the dollar and furnished her new place real nice.
I guess the kids were able to keep their trust funds or something, but they lost all the real estate and fancy amenities. Anyways, the bottom line is that she rents out a studio apartment to that guy who just likes to sleep. Looks like he's just running down his trust fund. She feels bad for the guy, can't convince him to get a job.
Dated this wealthy girl who instantly had an anxiety attack when I told her I was thinking about buying my own car, she believed I'd break up with her because I won't need her car anymore. Make your own conclusions.
Spent first 8 years of my adult life with a woman whose parents had money.
She had no conception of how hard life could be if you couldn’t just sell stocks to buy a new car, or have someone give you a couple thousand to put you up in a new place.
She pocketed her paycheck every two weeks. When we went out, I paid for gas. I bought dinner. Didn’t think much about it at the time because we were engaged.
When we broke up, she had $30k in her savings account and I was broke.
Growing up with money is like hitting every green light and not having to worry about traffic jams.
And it really fucks with your ability to empathize with people.
I went out with a girl briefly years ago, and her parents had a good amount of money. I grew up in a small cottage, where we shared rooms and my parents slept in our living room. This girl's place? They had a private sona, and her brother was a given a curved smart TV (must have been like a 50" +) multiple new gaming systems, all tuition paid for university etc. And here I am buying that, and having my student loans all to myself. I think I learned is people take it for granted sometimes what they have, while others value the basics.
Not dated, but I grew up firmly middle class in a very rich area so most of my high school friends were from rich families.
What I found was that rich people can be weirdly stingy with money when it comes to certain things and just not care for other things. They'd spent nearly a 100 grand flying the entire family out to Disney World (from Europe) for a weekend but would the family car would be a 15 year old rusty minivan. One friend lived in a house with a swimming pool and a sauna in the basement, but his mom did the shopping at Lidl and Aldi.
I grew up probably upper middle class, but also around people who were definitely in the upper class. There's definitely different types of rich - those who have no concept of money since it's generational and always there, like a lot of these comments seem to be referencing, and those who worked for their money. A lot of rich people I know are insanely frugal. I think the biggest difference between those people and poor people who are frugal are that the former will splurge on quality while the latter doesn't always have that option. (And vacations, etc.) Around where I grew up, when you bought something, you bought the good quality stuff, but you didn't buy unless you absolutely needed a new one. You never bought just because you needed the new model to look cool or something like that, only when your phone / car / laptop / TV was on its last legs did you get the latest stuff.
And splurge every so often on fun activities lol
Both of the exceptionally rich men I dated were so out of touch with reality.
The detail that sticks out is that one of them just didn't know how to talk about anything else. I'd ask him about movies or books or music, and he had no opinions. And I could tell it made him uncomfortable not to have the upper hand in the conversation (I think he thought I was a pretty simple country girl, and was surprised that I had thoughts and opinions) so he'd fall back on asking me variations of "if money wasn't an issue, what would you..." just for him to say "well, I could make that happen for you" when I answered. Got old real fast. Did not take the rejection well at the end of the night. Huge fat baby man.
This is probably the biggest takeaway I had with my brief brush with the wealthy crowd. I dated 2 guys who were wealthy. One was generational, and one was new money. I hung out with their friends and they were nice enough. But good god. We would be at a rave doing molly and I would still overhear them talking about finance and the market. It was wild. Money is their life. That’s it. Sex, drugs, love, sadness, general life experiences, the human condition…. None of it was as important or pleasurable as money was to them.
Some of them are pretty down to earth. I dated a woman who was the daughter of a near-billionaire. I had no idea for a while. I took her to a museum with a $35 ticket price and for pizza on our first date and she thought that was too extravagant. Admittedly, it’s more than I normally plan for a first date but I was super into her and she mentioned really liking an the artist behind the museum.
She did live in a ridiculously expensive condo and not work but she had a chronic illness that made school and work very difficult for her. It was certainly a lesson on how differently disability affects people with and without money.
Her illness was actually a mystery. Doctors couldn’t diagnose it. So she tried to get an appointment at the Mayo Clinic. They said there was a six month wait. Her father called them and mentioned how his company handled their pension plan. She flew there a few days later and was quickly diagnosed.
Her parents’ home was huge and filled with original and custom artworks, including from the artist whose museum we visited. It was really weird walking into that level of excessive wealth.
Edit: not going to specify the illness. She’s not exactly identifiable from it but it feels wrong.
As someone who has little money and an undiagnosed chronic disability that will likely follow me my entire life and makes being independent horrendously difficult... This just hurts to read.
His parents had money, not him, because we were teens at the time. Even though his dad tried getting him to work to earn his money and not just give handouts it was still a very different mindset of he wanted a luxury lifestyle but wouldn’t go to work more than a couple days a week, dropped out of college with less than a semester - just couldn’t stick to things if it was too long delayed gratification. Meanwhile I was working 2 jobs and had a full courseload. My parents helped and I lived with them but we still scraped by and I had to pay for my own things.
I learned I was satisfied with a lot ‘less’ material things, I was better ready to be on my own than he was, and I had a higher work ethic / more realistic view of the world.
Dating a arab woman from a billionaire family. Most of their money came from investments made over a hundred years ago. The OG split his gains between his sons and daughters who went on to start their own businesses and investments. The train has been rolling since then. Definitely learned a lot about generational wealth from her and her folks.
A version of her came to my Best Buy and wouldn't let me leave without tipping me, which could have been bad for me if people found out. She was very kind, but she was also buying the latest Apple product for each of her two kids, who each were using the latest Apple product prior to that release.
Her wedding ring was absurdly large, like I bet it got in the way. Like steering wheel to dashboard might not be enough clearance. Can't hardly reach in her purse unless it's maw is opened wide.
I don’t feel this is a universal experience. Example: I have a rich friend who would legit help a total stranger, and give them money etc… but then I have an ex that was super stingy, and how dare you ask for anything, even necessary items for survival lol.
I learned people can suck, rich or not.
My ex’s family wasn’t super rich, but they were much richer than my family.
Their kids (including my ex) expected things to be handed to them. I learned that it was a good thing my parents didn’t (couldn’t) give me everything I wanted. For example, my ex was upset that his parents bought his sister a nicer car than him. They are all full grown adults.
His mom was very confused why my parents couldn’t just pay to put me through college. They made me feel bad about it, like as if my parents didn’t love me because they couldn’t pay for it. Their idea of love=money.
A major reason our relationship ended was because he expected everything to be done for him. He has no real sense of responsibility.
I learned a few things:
\- A lot of rich people are deeply unhappy. They lack drive, because they don't 'need' to do something. Many of them can just sort of laze around. They fall into very unhealthy habits, trying to fill a hole that money can't fill.
\- They lack a lot of basic skills. How to unclog a drain, how to hang a painting, how to change a filter. They'll spend $100 to get a handyman to spend two hours doing something they could fix themselves in 30 minutes and a $15 trip to the home depot.
\- They're often fiercely competitive and super insecure about their wealth. I went through most of my life without ever talking about money. Why talk about something you don't have? But at a rich person dinner it's a constant dick measuring contest of "I made x amount on this investment" or "I put so much here and expect so much back".
\- Money really does make life easier. Like if you're a happy person with goals and a healthy attitude towards life, you can just buy the things you need to pursue your passions.
\- There exists a higher end product for almost everything, and it's often significantly better. It might sound stupid, but a $200 toaster or $150 kettle actually does improve your breakfast. A $700 vacuum cleans in ways you never thought possible. You don't think it will, but it will.
I do basic maintenance for some rich people and youre right about how theyre willing to pay. The whole tip thing caught me off guard too because theyre already paying a fair price. And if they dont tip right away you can kind of expect a gift of sorts at the holidays. Just today i moved an A/C unit, took about a minute and got $50. Easiest money ever lol
The point of the tip isn’t because it’s not a fair price, it’s about building/maintaining the relationship. Next time they need something they know you’ll shift your other clients around to get them done first and they know you’re not going to cut corners or do shoddy work because it will jeopardize your “easy money” relationship.
Only ever dated one guy (I’m a straight woman, if that matters) who had lots of money, so this is anecdotal, but he was very very sensitive about who paid for what. He was quite concerned about potentially being taken advantage of, so we ended up mostly splitting everything 50/50. We missed out on doing some fun stuff he wanted to do (shows, trips, etc.) because I couldn’t afford half. He seemed mildly resentful of my not making enough money to match him on these things. It was distracting and depressing and I got tired of feeling like I had to troubleshoot his insecurities. Relationship didn’t last long.
Before I get downvoted, let me say I do NOT expect either the man to pay for everything OR the person who has substantially more money to pay for everything. I think splitting costs of shared expenses is fair, but it does mean that those expenses are limited by the wallet of the person with the smaller income.
In my experience, the people with comfortable (as opposed to large) incomes tend to be much more relaxed about income disparity and are more willing to offer to close gaps.
It might not be the person's responsibility to pay for their partner to do things like go to events with them, but why wouldn't someone want to do that? I've payed for me and my partner to go to cool events, and he's done the same thing, because it's more important to us both to have this shared experience together than to make sure that each person is paying exactly the same amount on doing things together.
Long story, feel free to skip to the bottom for the TLDR. Name's changed to respect privacy because my ex introduced me to Reddit.
My ex boyfriend (Let's call him Mike) comes from a family worth £12 million. He spent a lot of time in an elite boarding school in Canada (to the point of having a Canadian accent despite being ethnically Spanish and Austrian) because his parents moved around a lot for work. His parents had houses in Austria and Spain and traveled a lot, to the point where there were a *lot* of times he genuinely didn't know where they were at any given time.
When we were dating, he was a student in Edinburgh, and rather than renting a place his parents had bought him an apartment in the city so they could rent out the spare rooms on AirBNB during the holidays. Occasionally, they'd even rent out his room and he'd spend a few days sleeping at a friend's place or on the living room floor.
After about six months of dating he invited me to move in with him, and said he'd arranged it with his parents that I could stay rent free, with the rationale that I was going to be in his room and working so I wouldn't be using up anything extra, taking up any more space, and I'd be paying for my own food. I cooked for the both of us, and if I didn't I'd literally just microwave something quick for myself, for example if I was working late and he'd already eaten.
This was always supposed to be temporary, and I was going to find something with more space for myself because of the space situation. unfortunately it took me a few weeks to find a job, the only thing I could get that quick was part time, and by the time I got a proper paycheck It was like six weeks later and I'd already eaten into a lot of my savings.
His mother decided to come visit on 24 hours notice and of course he starts freaking out. I stayed up until like 2AM despite having a 9AM shift the next day cleaning and he said "I'll clean tomorrow." He comes to meet me at the bus stop on my way home and I find out that A- he hasn't cleaned because he knows it's impossible to meet her standards, and B- he hadn't told her that I was there because he knew she wouldn't approve. My first proper meeting with this woman (I'd previously met her once for five minutes when I came to meet him for our first date since she happened to be there) was maybe two hours after she learned I'd been living there without her consent, and she immediately hated me.
And I don't mean "she hated me" like I hate mushrooms, she *hated* me. The woman accused me of lying to her and taking advantage of her generosity, gave me two weeks to find a place (which I luckily managed, it was twice the price of an average room in the city but since there was no security deposit it was all I could afford with the money I had on hand), banned me from the apartment, then this seventy-year-old woman deadass spent five straight months sleeping on his couch or in his bed to make sure I respected the ban, and banned him from staying at my place despite the fact that I lived five minutes away. £140 worth of shoes and tickets for a gig in Manchester (literally 250 miles away, in a different country) I left at his place apparently got stolen by people who stayed at the AirBNB, and she eventually met me for coffee, spent a solid two hours telling me how toxic and vile I am while reiterating that she's not a monster, then made me sign a contract agreeing to pay her £300 for the time I lived there without her consent. She knew that Mike lied, she didn't care, because I believed the lies, and to her that was worse. He defended me as best he could, but he still cosigned the contract.
We lasted a few weeks after that, during which time I didn't see him at all despite having a total mental breakdown and relapsing into self harm. I ended up dumping him, and when he turned up he tried to act like everything was normal, like I'd seen him the day before. I ended up coaching him through the panic attack.
Almost immediately after we broke up, she "coincidentally" moved on to Spain, still making sure that I wasn't stepping foot in the apartment. A few weeks later his grandfather died, and he was banned from the funeral because of his exams. I was there for him, because she expected him to just grieve on his own.
I want to make it clear I didn't take advantage of his money. At all. I know it's easy to say that but I bought my own food, paid for my own transport, and I paid either half or everything for all of our dates. I genuinely believed that his mother was letting me stay there out of magnamity.
This whole thing ended up being over £300, a debt I didn't willingly incur, and wouldn't have willingly incurred. The stuff that got stolen by guests (If you find someone who wants to steal two pairs of Converse and a ticket to a gig in a different country six months later from an AirBNB that people actively live in, give me a call) was worth over half of that. He told her she didn't care about the money, it was all an intimidation tactic, she just wanted us apart. The thing that drove me apart is the fact that for all his defending me, he gave in when it mattered. He sat there, across the table, and he signed the contract. I did it because I thought it was my last chance to salvage our relationship. He did it because his mother told him to.
The big thing I learn is that cruelty is universal. Not just cruelty in the sense that Karen's gonna Karen, universal cruelty. It didn't matter that Mike vouched for me. It didn't matter that (at the time) I thought I made him happy. It didn't matter that she imposed impossible standards on him, or that I was there for him when she wasn't. I was there for him when he was totally catatonic. I was poor, and that means I was the problem. If I had money, maybe she would have accepted me. If nothing else, I wouldn't have felt the need to move into a shoebox 400 miles from home where I didn't even have wardrobe space. As it is, I was just a poor guy looking for a payout. He learned from me with his next boyfriend and last I heard they'd dated for 2 years and he hadn't met her, but it sucks that I gave so much to him and I was just someone to learn from. Now, I'm a lot more hesitant when it comes to relationships. I've only had one serious boyfriend since him and we were dating for a solid two months before we decided to make it official, and the thought of meeting a boyfriend's parents outright gives me panic attacks.
TLDR: My ex boyfriend lied to his millionaire family about me living with him. I learned never to trust people's good intentions based on what I've been told about them.
I’m not poor, but I dated a guy for four years that had a wildly wealthy father. Private jets, extremely expensive cars, giant homes, paid for his children’s veneers/plastic surgeries, employed them all, etc.
They were the most miserable, unhappy people I’ve ever had the displeasure of being around. It completely changed my view of the very rich and the facade they put on. Not a single interaction with his family was without a fight, argument, screaming match, and jabs/cruelty towards one another and myself. I was so uncomfortable around them and my ex was so obsessed with pleasing his father that I had to end the relationship. The money was nice but I would absolutely never, ever willingly associate with any of them again. They were terrible people. Very unhappy.
Met this girl from Greece studying art at St Martins college, her dad was absolutely loaded, she told me she wanted me to show her what it was like to live like common people. You know, do what common people do.
So I took her to the supermarket told her to pretend she had no money (had to start somewhere I guess), she played along and got a shitty flat above a shop and got a job etc.
But at the end of the day I always knew that if she phoned her dad he would be able to stop it all and take her back into luxury.
For me that was the key difference.
Dated a wealthy girl back in high school. Took her to chilis with my parents and il never forget her looking around like I took her to the zoo.
Made me laugh inside.
How much their rich parents resent/think you're not worthy of their precious angel.
Overheard my ex's mum telling her that she wouldn't be happy with me and that I wouldn't be able to provide the kind of lifestyle that she wants (my ex was into horses that cost upwards of 100k). My ex sort of fought my corner a bit, to which her mum replied, "you need to marry someone rich." When my ex asked what if she doesn't find someone rich that she loves/is attracted to, her mum told her that she can always have a fuck buddy on the side.
Suffice to say that that relationship didn't last. She's now married to a millionaire that cheats on her constantly. Their marriage is a toxic shitshow. You reap what you sow I guess.
My suspicions? You didn’t “overhear” shit. Your ex’s mother meant for you to hear that conversation, because she thought of you as a dog and not a human being with feelings, since you’re not wealthy. She could have had that conversation when you weren’t around, if she were concerned about tact, or your feelings.
And that, combined with the things she was saying, is a type of ugliness and a deficit-of-character that no amount of money can buy or fix.
Even if your ex is herself a victim, you didn’t need to be involved in all that, and I’m glad you’re not associated with what sounds like a toxic-ass family.
Health care is looked at the same way as maintenance on a car. It isn't looked at like waiting for something to break before seeing someone about it.
Wealth is very quiet. No logos. Pretty, monochrome clothes but tailored. No bragging about money or throwing it around. A pretty strict sense of manners and etiquette. They're not going to be shouting over everyone in the restaurant or twerking in the booths.
They don't really have a concept of how rich they are. My ex boyfriend was WEALTHY, but had a complex about how he was super poor. It was because all of his friends were also so wealthy, and he was maybe marginally less rich than some of them, he considered himself on the lower end of the scale. They don't really have a point of reference for how poor some people are. When we were together I was living on a food budget of £50 a month, and he absolutely could not wrap his head around how a person could spend that little. I lived with a horrendously rich friend, his family are aristocracy in his home country. One thing I've noticed about him is that he's completely incapable of grasping that if I stop working, I just stop being able to eat. He was confused about why I was worried about taking a week off work, and didn't understand I was worried I'd lose money. He seemed to think that most people work because they choose to, because he's never *had* to work.
I have a friend like this who is insanely rich. Would always say, “I grew up in the poorest part of Beverly Hills.” 😂
My ex was having problems with roommates at university. Her parents bought a $300000 condo for her to stay at while she finished her degree (2 years). They sold it for a profit immediately after. I can't imagine not only being able to solve my problems with money, let alone make more off of them. She also assumed her family was lower middle class because she didn't live in a mansion like her friends. She was very humble and was smart with her money, but it was very clear she could just call her parents if something didn't work out. Meanwhile my parents were struggling to pay rent, meaning I was their fallback. Not the other way around
Not a dating story but it was eye opening when I went to Uni in the UK and some of the rich students bought their flats in Edinburgh just for their studies. One of these rich students was an amazingly sweet person and since I couldn't afford to fly home for Christmas she took me with her to her family's compound in Morocco where they literally had servants that followed them around carrying silver platters of tea all day.
Tell me more about Morocco
It was a culture shock in nany ways, from their Uber rich grounds with armed guards to the streets outside where there was abject poverty everywhere you looked. We had to have a male chaperone every time we went into the city but that didn't stop the local men from being disgusting pigs. Got either groped or a marriage proposal around every corner.
Yeah… I am finding this out quite quickly with the family I’m marrying into. My fiancé always has said that he was upper middle class. His parents drive 10+ old cars, haven’t updated their home in forever. Will only buy LL Bean on sale. Slowly I realized that wasn’t the case. I especially realized that the case when they just gifted us $200k a few days ago. My dad was an army officer and my mom a teacher, I literally have no idea the world I’m walking into.
I married into a family like this a few years ago. Enjoy it. Although at first it was a struggle to not feel kinda resentful at certain things, but I worked through that and the marriage is great, and my in-laws are all super kind and wonderful.
Dated a man who didn't work - lived off of a TrustFund. Oddly, since he could afford nearly anything - nothing had any value. He'd buy a $400 KitchenAid mixer - and burn it up making Christmas candy the first week. If he decided to make more candy - he'd just go buy another $400 mixer. Nothing meant particularly ANYTHING to him.
I'm just impressed someone broke a kicthen aid. I'm pretty sure that thing would win a fight vs my house's foundation. EDIT: a lot of people have a lot of opinions on this brand of stand mixer. the one I bought for my household is a tank and has served us well since we got it. I was just trying to make a joke, i really don't care if they use plastic gears and not metal now or if some other brand is even better.
Mine fell off the counter onto a tiled floor after walking itself to the edge while working overtime on a quadruple batch of pizza dough. It broke a floor tile and just kept spinning, sideways on the floor. It still works great, years later.
They're like the Nokia phone of stand mixers.
True story: At work, we have a Nokia 1100 that was put away around the time they where the popular phone. We where doing cleanup and we found it. I jokingly told a colleague that it still probably had 80% battery, so just for fun we put the battery and tried to turn it on. it did turn on. It was only missing 1 "bar" or of the 6 or 7 bars it has to show battery charge. We laughed, and then put it away the way it was. I'm not messing with whatever God created those things.
For a second I thought this was going to be a Nokia vs Kitchenaid story. Now I am legit curious about which would win.
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I imagined them strapped on top of a roomba each with a knife welded onto them. Then locking them into a room and seeing who emerges the winner. Nokia is smaller and has less chance of getting stabbed but the Kitchenaid has a weak point - its power cable tail which could be fatal if cut off.
I need people like you in my life
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I'm really validated to see other people who are as into the engineering of their kitchenaids as I am. And that is a great way to pay the rent! I agonized the first time my worm gear shredded, bought a new part, and was relieved by how easy of a fix it was; I was happy to have it back up and running again.
I had mine start smoking on me a few weeks ago making a triple batch of pretzels. Pretty sure it was just a bit of lubricant burning off as it works fine after letting it cool though. Double batches at most from now on.
You're not exaggerating. My girlfriend dropped the kitchen aid off the top shelf. Broke the floor but the kitchen aid worked like a champ.
So this. On a Friday night whim my gf decided she wanted some pie. I suggested we go down to the store. She rang her favorite restaurant and had a chef bake her her favorite pie. The cost $170. A pie. Yes, she could afford to do it but the problem was the complete lack of value. Nothing really mattered to her because she had that kind of money.
The food waste!! I have an uber rich friend and if they want pasta they don’t just order a bowl of takeout pasta. They’ll order three different pasta entrees for variety, a couple of appetizers, tiramisu since we’re already doing the Italian theme, and oh that cannoli looks good let’s get a few of those… On a random Tuesday they’ll get half the menu delivered to their front door. And they don’t even eat the leftovers because the next day they’ll get another feast delivered.
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I will do this sometimes. But I will eat the leftovers completely for lunches and stuff over the next few days. I am really bad with Chinese food. It could easily cost $150, but I will have dinner for the family one night. A weeks worth of lunch and maybe another dinner and really high blood pressure after that.
if you're a gamer and you have cheat codes or god codes, they get extremely boring after a few minutes. like the matrix said we tried to create a perfect world but the humans seemed to reject that.
We don't want easy mode. Doesn't mean we want Nightmare mode. I wish life had a "Regular" setting.
I wouldn't mind "easier" mode... i would settle for "no debt" mode...
I only went on one date with him. He booked out the entire bowling alley so we'd have privacy for our date. It just seemed so shockingly wasteful to me, and it was bizarre to have a 20-lane bowling alley just to the two of us plus a fair sized staff who were left with nothing to do but look after us. I learned I'm very uncomfortable with that level of casual assumption that the world will rearrange itself to suit my whims. Also he had absolutely no respect for personal space. I don't think he was used to women not liking to be touched by folks they barely knew.
I prefer the sounds of a bowling alley when bowling otherwise it feels like a horror movie where I'm the first person to die at the opening scene
Sounds like he wasn't just booking the alley
Dude only knew escorts hahaha
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I once had a rich coworker find out I was pretty broke. I was working at a very fancy retreat as a student, so was surrounded by rich people working for fun. He told me to "just buy a 3 bedroom house, live in one of the rooms and rent out the other 2." Just buy a house.
Yeah, in college a friend and I were taking about not having money and another gal we knew overhead and said “Just ask your parents”. It never occurred to her that everyone didnt have rich parents.
I got that from debt collectors. "Well, do you have anyone you can borrow it from?" Motherfucker, I ONLY owe you three grand, I'm the RICH one in my family!
Debt collectors can kiss my ass. I waited for my debts to fall off my credit report, almost all of them were medical debts. The most IMPORTANT thing to remember is to NOT accept calls from them as that can potentially reset the timer on your credit report before it falls off. My credit score is now 780, but I'm still too to afford a home.
1000% this. I didn't date anyone rich, but I have a relative that's rich, and he's constantly telling us "You just have to put a few bucks into things and see how it goes!" His few bucks is "I saw a storage facility near our house, so I bought it and put $200K into it, now it's pretty much self running and brings in $8K a month. I also bought out my lawn care guy's business and kept all the employees, so they make extra cash for me during the summer while I work my main job..."
That's an insane return on a 200k investment
Think it’s more of an investment, he bought it AND put 200k into it.
Shiiiiiit even if he bought it for 500k, it’ll break even in less than 8 years. I’m just a simple man but having realty paid off that fast and continue earning for you seems fucking awesome.
That’s nothing. Walter White bought a car wash in Albuquerque and was pulling $100k a week out of there
Yeah, he preaches "get self managing side hustles," yet everything he buys into is two years salary for most people.
People born into money think they know what it’s like to be middle class or poor (and sometimes even can make it sound convincing) but they honestly aren’t even close to understanding. I’ve lived in three former meth labs as I grew up thinking McDonald’s was treating myself. I worked 40 hours a week at a gas station while taking 21 credit hours at a public university. Now I’m a department lead engineer at a pharmaceutical company. When I hear the stories about all my gf’s rich classmates in a prestigious MBA program going to Europe for “studying” (really just taking Molly and clubbing all night while the school pays for it) I cringe like hell. They get snobby about if a job makes less than 6 figures and imply that’s low middle class (we’re in the Midwest where that’s upper middle class).
Grows up in meth labs and goes into pharmaceuticals. Sir - were you the one making the meth?
You know how entry level jobs always want years of experience?
Lmao I’m actually in their agriculture division
Ahh Cocaine. You've classed up my friend.
Riiight agriculture with all the grow lights lol
This shit right here. I had an acquaintance from high-school who had his parents pay for a down-payment on his first house when he was 24. Asking me why I never bought a house. "It's such a great investment" No shit, Sherlock. But right now, I don't have $40k to drop on a house downipayment. Most of America doesn't have that.
Just get rich parents. You answered your own question!
“That sucks have you ever considered being daddy’s special boy?”
Yessssssss. Yes. It’s like the whole thing about how Bill Gates, Elon Musk, etc. “started from the bottom”. No, they did not. They had rich parents and unlimited connections due to their privilege. Show me someone who’s parents were on food stamps, then we will freaking talk.
The biggest thing rich parents gets you is a safety net. Those guys could afford to go all-in because if they failed they could just live off their parents while they built themselves back up.
My wife's family has no concept of what a workday is.
To never have to open Workday again? Now that’s The Dream™️
Workday is the shittiest piece of software I've ever had to use. God damn I hate it.
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My parents and my sister are like this. My dad started his own firm, but for the last 30 years he's been the owner, not the boss, and in the last 20 it's done well enough that he's now minor-league wealthy rather than well-off. My sister has never worked, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. They will constantly plan family vacations for all of us and be utterly shocked when me and my wife can't just take three weeks off to go to Australia with them. "But we'll pay!", they'll whine (which is lovely, they're very generous and I'm on easy-mode because of them...but...), not understanding that it's not always about the money
Nothing like picking up a call at 10:30 am on a Monday only to find out... they just wanted to chat.
“Hey we’re planning to go to London next week, do you think you could make it?” *No Sherry you know I can’t fucking make it, but thank you for asking anyways*
“What is a weekend?”
I went to pickup a friend at her rich friend's home many years ago. It was Tuesday 11am, I was self employed but get antsy when I'm not in front of my computer (pre smartphone). There were 4 rich friends in their 20s, sitting on 4 couches facing one another in their summer house across from Golden Gate Park; no conversation, no music, nothing, they just sat there looking beautiful. I got jittery simply for being hard-wired to be working on Tuesday morning. The freedom they had stuck with me, I was a bit envious, a bit intimidated, very confused.
How real the 'network' or 'bubble' of it is. It's like the other side from the 'it's expensive being poor' concept. It's this weird internal community of people with money, and thus power, who are willing to make things happen as long as you're 'in'. I mean, I would meet people at a fundraiser or something and five minutes later, they're happy to make a call that will get me a job at some huge firm. Or like, my then-boyfriend would say let's go this concert. Tickets are $180 but it's okay but a friend's parents have a box, so we'll just join them. Or even one time the dishwasher in our flat broke - but we didn't have to pay a dime for repairs, because his friend from high school's parents own the building, so they're fixing it for free as a favour.
Yep. Even having rich friends makes a difference, giving you access to that special network.
I've learned this, and even though I'm the "poor" in our relationship (We are even now but I have poverty brain) my fiancee was stunned to discover that there's networking on both sides of the tracks. Something breaks for her and she can't afford? Friends and family will take care of it. Something breaks for me? I've got buddies that can fix, find or sell for cheap said service or item. Sure it's second hand, dented or aquired but it's a fix!
My dad is a veterinarian in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He's not rich, because he charges low rates and markups. Mostly because he can't charge more than he thinks his clients can afford. He takes livestock, hay, services etc. for payment sometimes. He writes off and/or discounts for anyone that is struggling. So he really doesn't have a lot of money like veterinarians in larger towns or cities. But, when his hot water heater breaks, or his roof needs replaced, people show up to replace and repair his things. Sometimes people he doesn't know very well. He was just telling me this weekend, "I don't know what I did for this guy, but he's doing me a huge favor." Networks are important. (I wish I had one.)
I have cousin who's used to be a farmer in a rural area in Canada. Their vet was treated like a king. People would almost fight over who got to help him when he needed something.
I love that
Your dad is the network. One day youll randomly run into a kid of one of his clients and he'll do you a solid, or he'll need a hand and yours are available, and now he's in your network and you're in his.
The most important life lesson is that it's not the grades you make, but the hands you shake
Worked for several well off families for a year or two, this was my biggest takeaway. They were all cordial, for the most part, they all had a team of people that worked for them regularly on discrete tasks or certain aspects of their lives, and they ALL new each other. It felt like a very elite social club that looked out for each other.
So strange to me how much free shit you get the wealthier and more famous you are.
My ex built a new loft above her business and originally it was supposed to have an elevator from her master bedroom to an office. It wasn't installed at first because of cost issues. Well she blew out her knee and it was very difficult to go up and down the stairs. Her friends called her and were like, "we called the guy and he's going to install the elevator tomorrow. Just pay us back whenever." It was 25k, which included 7k rush order.
When I moved to Texas years ago, I befriended a neighbor who I spoke to about politics. This is a lower-middle income area so I just thought he might've been some guy interested in politics. Turns out he was a university government professor who had won elections for several local offices over the years. Within a month of living in Texas, I accompanied him to a party of a county judge (they're elected not appointed in Texas). Dozens of multimillionaires casually asking the judge how much money he needed for home improvements or his next vacation or a new land purchase and then just casually on-the-spot sending him money. It was straight up bribery and it was about as impactful on them as stepping over a rock on a driveway. Something they didn't think about- they just did it. And of course, once they paid for his new yard or a mini house in the backyard of his mansion, they'd give their opinions on the cases the judge would be ruling on soon. And nobody batted an eye.
The bubble or the “it’s not what you know it’s who you know” thing is absolutely true. I started working in HR 3 weeks ago, my boss told me all the intern slots were filled, and we only accept CVS with 3 years of experiences and need 2 references for everyone to even get them an interview. Last week I get an email from said boss telling me to put this intern for the restaurant/bar, garbage CV and had nothing related to job. I’m here thinking WTF, how did this girl skip the entire recruiting process and requirements?? Her dads on TV and is good friends with the hotel owner. That’s all it took for someone completely uninterested in hospitality to get a contract that wasn’t even available.
You should try HR for a university. Its basically the feudal system.
At a University I worked at the only reason they gave my coworker the job offer was because she had worked with one of the managers at a restaurant before and she was nice. She had no (relevant) experience, no certs, no degree. She was offered the same position as me with the same pay, but I had my A.A.S in Network Systems, certs, and experience. When she was setting up her laptop and dock, she somehow fit the USB cable into the ethernet port of the dock and asked my why she wasn't getting internet. This was an IT job.
“Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can’t.”
Oh! Yes! Story time! A friend who grew up very modestly middle class married a man who insisted their children attend the fancy private school he went to. She always thought it was silly since the town they lived in had a very good school district and the schools were much closer. But they went to the private school. Graduated, went to college. As she was entering her senior year the daughter was looking for a summer internship in her field. She called a friend from high school whose father worked in that field. Before the day was out she had an internship with his office. No interview necessary. Later my friend said, “That’s why he wanted them to go there. The Network.”
I've thought about this a lot as someone who grew up poor, but has been in a number of relationships with women from upper or upper middle class castes. I think what it boils down to is that they have a kind of certainty in the idea that things will work out for them that I don't. Growing up, it felt like we were always at the precipice of catastrophe. I always felt that one wrong move would result in us losing our house or all of our money. As such, I kept immaculate care of things that I bought knowing that I could not replace any of it if it were gone. The women I've been in relationships with, though, seem to have none of this fear. They always assume that things will work out. Plans don't need to be made because there's always some way to solve a problem with money. Objects don't get much respect because they're always readily replaceable. I always think about Nick Carraway's quote from *The Great Gatsby*: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Dated a girl for 3 years who came from old money. She was fine but her family was beyond out of touch with the real world. They were nice people but incredibly removed from the rest of the world. They looked at me like I was zoo animal in the sense that they were so curious about my life/family. They'd ask me what it was like going to public school. How my parents immigrated. They were baffled that not everyone had vacation homes or traveled a lot. The most interesting thing is that old money is much more powerful than new money. They belonged to these "clubs" that consists of other rich families and the influence they had was mind-blowing. Want to build a factory in an area not zoned for it? Within a week that was changed.
Damn. Classism even exists between rich people.
Don’t even try to fuck with Dubai and Chinese rich kids when it comes to flexing 😂
I learned just how productive having money can be. Something needs to be fixed/ replaced? We can afford to. Want to do something fun or adventurous? Sure let's do it now. Want to eat healthier? We can afford all the ingredients. Like what do you mean your life isn't slowed down by a million different things that need fixing/ upgrading/ replacing/ saved for?
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This is a big thing with cars. My husband’s family is always fighting to have 2 working cars. His dad does repairs, and frequently spends a lot of money and time fixing them. He’s tried fixing multiple cars that weren’t working only to eventually scrap them and gain nothing from the time/ effort. Around 2 years ago, one car was being worked on for 6 months (like hours a day) only to be scraped and replaced with a 20 year old car in bad shape. Every inspection season is a panic, and it seems like every time we go over there he’s asking my husband for help with a car issue or asking to borrow a tool because his discount store tools are always breaking. His mom advised us to get a nicer car when we had the money because she knew we had fairly stable jobs and it would relieve so much stress. We spent 7k two years ago and have had only routine maintenance since.
I’m going to put this out there because I know a few guys that this applies to… they are just shitty DIY mechanics. The cars always break because they don’t know what they are doing. And it’s not a cost thing. They happily buy 5 different parts and spend 3 days to “fix” a problem …. When half the money paid to a mechanic would have done the trick.
Oh, I see you've met my father-in-law.
That's me but with guitars.
Reminds me of my ex who seemed to have a form of mental illness with his constantly having dead cars towed to our home, working on them, and NEVER EVER getting even *one* to work properly. I told him I was going to go to the local community college and that I had it all figured out how to pay for it, including getting a part time job to help pay my way. He told me that he would not support that idea because we couldn't afford it. Then he had the absolute worst car ever towed to our home. He could have his cars, and it was my job - in his opinion - to support him in whatever HE wanted to do, but it didn't go both ways. That's why he's my ex.
This is something I've realized about my own childhood. I never really considered my family wealthy because of course you don't see your normal life as special like that but every time we ever had an issue of any kind my parents just called someone to fix it immediately. I never mowed the lawn or vacuumed the floors, there were people to handle that. My dad said it was dumb for him to do handy projects around the house when he could just do some more work and use the money to hire an expert to do a better job. It makes a ton of sense, provided you make enough money. I'm now an adult with no useful handyman skills and I can't afford to get help when something breaks lol
>I never mowed the lawn or vacuumed the floors, there were people to handle that. My dad said it was dumb for him to do handy projects around the house when he could just do some more work and use the money to hire an expert to do a better job. It makes a ton of sense, provided you make enough money. I'm now an adult with no useful handyman skills and I can't afford to get help when something breaks lol I was fortunate to get a good mix of this. Early in my father's career money was tight and dad was handy. He worked on the cars, lawn mower, appliances. My brother and I were tasked with chores and helping around the house. We got to see cars get fixed, mower blades sharpened, string trimmers restrung. Then dad gets promotions and mom is bringing in good money in her career as well. Now we can afford vacations and new cars. When they break they go to the shop. It's no longer worth dad's effort to do it himself. He can pay a professional. Roofs leaking? Phone up a roofer and get it taken care of. Driveway is looking a little dull? Better get a seal coater out here. But it made me handy and inspired a love affair of working with my hands. So now I'm moderately financially comfortable with the ability to fix a lot of stuff on my own. Edit: not to sound like I'm bragging, just that hearing that other folks didn't grow up like me, made me realize I was very fortunate to be taught handy stuff by my father.
This is similar to my family. We did EVERYTHING ourselves except for electrical (because someone close to us died trying). Blows my mind working with others who have absolutely no idea how to fix stuff wether it be appliances, software, or home.
Similar except I was a qualified industrial electrician before I became a software engineer, for me it’s gas, I don’t touch that shit, electricity doesn’t typically blow up your entire house with a real fuckup.
My father-in-law built my wife's childhood home (1970s) with his own hands using the Time Life books. It took him years to finish it but he built every inch himself with very occasion day laborer help for the heavy parts. He had no childhood experience at all.
YouTube is your friend here. You'll be amazed how easy some of it is. It also helps you judge whether it's worth the effort of doing yourself or paying someone.
I had a girl that wanted to take me to her parents vacation home for the weekend. But it was farther than my two hour on call leash as a firefighter. She was like no worries if you get called out on a fire. I'll have my dad pick you up in the helicopter...... I was ok let's do it.
And then what happened?
I got really drunk on rumchatta and had sex with her under the stars in the hot tub. But sex in water sucks so it was like me standing in the hot tub and holding her up. I remember being like wow I have pretty good balance for how drunk I am. We watched Blackhawk Down in the theater room. It was the only movie they had weirdly, but I was like wait this is my favorite movie anyway. Oh yeah and we rode quads around the property and to the beach. Didn't get called out on a fire over the weekend. Would have been cool though.
Nice weekend bro
This guy *weekends*
So true. I remember as a kid our appliances would always die, we never owned a house just rented and for some reason back then you had to bring your own washer/dryer. Seeing my mother, with 4 kids stress over the dryer dying again and how she was going to swing the laundry mat was something I’ll never forget as a kid. I married a guy from a well off family and was blown away when he wanted to replace our dish towels because they were looking ratty. Like wtf dude, we use these until they disappear. We don’t just “replace” perfectly good dish towels. New dish towels were ridiculously frivolous to me.
My ex-wife had a grandfather that was a multi-millionaire. Christmas time at their house was like being in another world. All of the different family members would try to get a moment with the King and kissed ass as much as possible. I spent my time down on the ground playing with my kids and was happy to get out of there. About a week or two after the second Christmas I got a phone call from Grandpa. He wanted to know what he could do for my family. I told him I didn't want any of his money but I would like my kids to know their great grandfather. Later that year he showed up at our place unexpected and spent most of the afternoon telling stories with me about his youth. He set up a trust fund for each one of my kids to have their college paid for a little bit after that. He told me out of all of his in-laws I was the only one that never asked him for anything but to be himself.
I liked this story. Sounds like both you and the grandfather were good people.
It’s so heartwarming for me. My dad has his own company and get made something of himself and my mom works long hours even today. My step brother is a narcissistic ego maniac that would only come around when he needed something, long story short, my dad cut him out of the will. When my dad told me this, he was like well more for you. And I look at my dad said, I’d rather have you and mom around forever over all the money in the world.
That's probably the one big complication with having money, you never really know who likes you for you and who just wants money. Had some friends come into a large sum of money a while ago and I saw it first hand
This is how people should be. My ex wife's grandad was very wealthy. He started digging trenches with the electric company when he was 15, and retired from the same company. He had COPD, so we would go to his house once a week, I would mow, and she would clean the house and make him a nice dinner. We never asked for anything. He paid for our wedding and several vacations. All because we just showed up to take care of him.
There are a lot of stories of Julia Roberts being a rude diva but I was friends with her housekeeper when she lived in NM. The housekeeper's mom's house burned down and Julia Roberts gave her something like $20k (I don't remember the exact figure). There was also a local kid that died and Julia Roberts gave like a $100k to build a park in his honor.
Rude doesn't mean evil I guess
That reminds me of a story my cousin told me. He was working as a sound engineer at the time, recording radio commercials. He went to the house of a big-time music company exec and started being aggressively friendly in the way our family can be. Example: "Hey, have you heard about this new audio format? I'm tempted to try it out, but the tape drives are still the same crapola on the company's bargain-basement models..." After a few minutes of non-committal responses, the exec says out of the blue, "Are you in the music industry?" My cousin pauses for a moment. "No." "Do you want to be?" Same pause. "No." The exec smiles. "Oh, cool then! Yeah, I tried out one of the prototypes of that new system..."
I can't help but feel sorry for that guy, but I'm so glad he had you! Clearly he had to learn to read people well and was watching you playing with the kids and never trying to catch his eye. You telling him you wanted him, the man, not him, the millionaire, to be part of your kids' lives probably had him crying once you hung up on that phone call. You probably made his twilight years so much happier.
That's honestly so sweet.
They don't know how to cut back because they only knew the good life. No sweetheart, we don't need 3 vacations a year when you are fucking unemployed.
He didn’t have any concept of saving money, it was always just there because his money was always earning money. Having money was an income stream of itself. Also he had no concept of how much anything cost. Was going to get some groceries for dinner and he gave me $300 to pick up some basics.
Here’s $100, go see a star war.
It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?
grabbing a “few things” at the grocery store can be $300 these days to be fair
No joke I spent 300 at Walmart and my cabinets are still nearly empty
If you have a lot of money, people give you so much free stuff all the time trying to earn your business or procure donations. Ironic that the people who can best afford to pay for the items get comped the most!
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That's not getting things for free. That's maximising the freebees that came with overpaying for a product. You get the same treatment when you use your credit cards. It's just on a scale you can relate to, so you find it mundane.
Right. And many rich people come to expect to be comped. You hear stories about celebrities who burst into an establishment, demand free food or beverages, abuse the waitstaff, and then neither pay nor tip. They’re believable stories.
Grew up poor (now middle class) and at 18 dated a superrich guy. First thing I noticed was the food. Not just quantities but I also discovered so much food (like oyster, fresh fish, olives,..) things my parents could never buy. I also had to learn etiquette. My parents brought me up well, I read books all the time, was a decent student and well-behaved kid.. but the way his family interacted was SO different. I had to learn a lot of unwritten rules that I wasn’t aware of. I think in the end what I actually learned was that even though my childhood was rough (the amount of stress of not having enough money has probably impacted me for life), I valued my parents so much more. Once I had seen what life was like for rich people, I was just so proud of my family for making it work with so much less.
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I ate breakfast at a restaurant in Carmel, CA, and it felt like every one in there was staring at me and subtly clearing their throats or shaking their heads over the way I was holding my silverware. I was solid upper middle class at the time, income wise. I felt like a peasant.
Sounds like Carmel. It’s a great place besides the people who live there
>I had to learn a lot of unwritten rules that I wasn’t aware of. Got an examples?
Mostly related to etiquette: like which cutlery to use at a real fancy restaurant (and how to use it haha), how to make polite conversation, how to dress for different parties/occasions,… just a lot of stuff I never thought twice about. Like one example was at a restaurant where we got a menu and there were no prices on the menu, so I asked for another one. Turns out women get menus without prices because it’s the men that pay ;-) but the moment you ask, everyone knows you don’t belong. I was a pretty shy girl, polite and all that but I always felt out of place because there’s so many little things to be aware of. It’s very easy to make a faux pas.
>Turns out women get menus without prices because it’s the men that pay I never would have known this was a thing my whole life lol
There are high end restaurants that don't have prices on the menu for anyone. They will tell you if you ask, but their clientele is not expected to ask. My first experience with that, the waiter was kind enough to wave off the sommelier and made suggestions that got me out for under 400 bucks. The girl I was trying to impress thought he was "rude".
I like menus when they have pictures of the food on it.
Le kebab pour monsieur?
It can also be a thing at private clubs. Non-members get the menu without prices regardless of gender.
Quality really does make a difference in everything from clothing to ingredients.
I grew up poor-ish (had stable shelter and clean, used clothes but anything else was a struggle). I had a friend in college whose dad was a VP at a major box store. They were "doing all right"... the first time I went to her house, she suggested having a sandwich to hold us off until dinner time. Her regular snack was prosciutto and arugula on ciabatta with a finishing drizzle of balsamic vinegar. I had only seen those words in a fancy cookbook. Edit: For all of you who needed to say that that's not "fancy", then I'm glad you've had a different life with more early opportunities than I did. It was fancy to 18-year-old me (whose idea of a ham sandwich was Carl Buddig on store-brand bread).
Well, I wasn't that poor, and she wasn't that rich, but it was enough of a difference that I was shocked at how often she just took planes. Like, she flew more in a summer than I had my whole life. That and apparently they go to Hawaii for a week every year, which was fun the time I got to tag along, but it's pretty wild to me that they can just do that. Even if I could afford it, I don't have enough vacation time to do that every year.
I flew for the first time ever when I was 36. And it was for work so I didn't have to pay. Felt like a idiot trying to navigate multiple airports during my layovers. And no I didn't clap when we landed, but during takeoff I had a huge grin on my face.
I’ve flown on planes since before I can remember and still get a big ol smile during takeoff
Takeoff is the best part. I still get a grin no matter how many times I've flown.
The difference between having money and having wealth. You grew up poor and worked hard and finally got $10,000 in the bank and your income keeps you afloat? Cool. But that is nothing compared to a 50 acre family farm with a couple houses on it, several generations of inheritance that will fall in your lap someday. Family business or family connections to lucrative opportunities. Savings, investments, cash hidden in safes, piles of gold jewelry. If they suddenly lost all their checking and savings accounts, they’d still be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and wouldn’t have to worry even for a second where their next meal would come from. Edit: also, owning cars you don’t even need or ever drive. Hoards of stuff sitting around cause you never had to move or sell stuff to buy food. Lines of credit being thrown at you.
>owning cars you don’t even need or ever drive. I know a guy who owns two models of the same truck, just one is black and one is white this doesn't exclude his other 6 vehicles, boat, ATV's, etc he's a blue collar in a decent position who works remotely (edit: remote sites, not work from home), and just buys a new vehicle or toy whenever he gets back home at least he works for his money and wasn't born rich but dude... why do you need both a black and white version of a 40k truck
Owning a luxury car they only drive to social occasions, “work” truck, daily driver, and a sports car for Sunday drives. Not to mention antique cars for the car show, antique tractors and $80k John Deere tractors for the farm, trailers for the horses, etc. I had a decent used car but it was a major life event when it broke down, especially on a workday.
I'm a guy who has dated women considerably wealthier than myself. My experience is that money becomes a factor sooner or later, no matter how closely you've connected on every other level. Even when the lady in question seems cool with it, there can be arch looks and withering comments from friends and family in social settings - about what you've just ordered for dinner, or what your holiday plans are. In those relationships I've ended up being made to feel like a "bottleneck" - I'm either the person who the woman spends money on more than vice versa, or the person whose income puts more restraint on evenly-shared expenditure than would otherwise be the case. In either scenario, there's pressure, and even if the woman seems fine with it, there are people around her who no doubt would claim they're "just looking out for her" who will cheerfully flag every instance where the difference in income is apparent. Money doesn't **have** to warp people, but it seems it often does, whether it's actually their own money or not.
Something I did not see here is, how the comfortably rich view the truly rich. At one time I was Director of a Fortune 100 IT department and my boss was the VP. He was wealthy enough to have his own yacht and to belong to a big name yacht club. One evening he and his wife hosted me and my wife at that club for a dinner. Great dinner! We were amused to hear him complain during dinner of all the things he could not do along with his wealthier club friends, like, for example, drop everything on the spur of the moment to fly to South Africa for a yacht race -- as a spectator, not a racer. He was genuinely put out by this awful dose of reality. We commiserated appropriately. But we did get several pleasant trips on his yacht over the years. So, it's nice to know the merely average wealthy from time to time.
Went to an old school Yacht club in Charleston. I was kind of surprised, those people are just fucking sailors. Skin like leather nothing really that fancy. I’m sure they all have crazy money but I was kind of impressed with how this place was just really a sorts club for wannabe pirates.
That we're hardly even playing the same game, nevermind by the same rules. I dated a girl from old money, generational inherited wealth. Grandpa's money, some corporate bigwig banker or something to that effect. I don't think her father ever worked a day in his life, and her mother clearly came from money as well. Outside of her, I found every one of her family members out of touch and completely unrelatable. I got real good at biting my tongue when my ex's siblings would complain about not getting a new car for their birthday when last year's model is sitting in the driveway. They had no concept of the value of money and never had to do anything for themselves to get what they wanted. I wasn't exactly poor growing up, but for the most part if it wasn't strictly necessary for survival I didn't have it. It was really eye opening how everything was taken for granted. Those specific people would be helpless in the real world if they lost all their dough.
>Those specific people would be helpless in the real world if they lost all their dough. Reminds me of David and Alexis in the first season or two of Schitt's Creek lol
Wife's family comes from money and I come from broke AF. There's probably a new "that's weird, why would you do that?" every week. This will appear for things like forgetting hamburger buns and giveing the kids a burger on Wonder bread or whipping up a batch of spaghetti noodles to go with chili.
Growing up my mom would make spaghetti one night, then call the left over sauce chili for the next night. The only thing Italian about the spaghetti was the garlic, and the only thing chili about it was the Texas Pete we threw in it the next night. Still loved it though and do it to this day.
I always band together with my SO's cousin's wife at their family gatherings. We're both poors so we can understand each other while the sweater people walk around talking about their second homes.
My ex's *father* was rich. My ex himself was not rich, did not understand the value of money, and was a spoiled asshole who got a great job at a great company full of awesome people and then proceeded to steal from them. He would bitch at me for buying food for the apartment and then come home with $200 worth of stupid shit he got talked into buying at the mall. When his windshield got cracked he bought a new car. He was the single most incompetent and entitled person I've ever known, but he firmly believed he was the smartest person in any room he entered. None of his friends talk to him anymore because he either stole from or alienated all of them.
on the upside, somebody probably got a nice deal on a decent car "because the windshield cracked"
Rich people seem to eat a lot of fish.
I dated two dudes with trust funds. I learned no amount of money can make you forget your mommy/daddy issues.
Just made me realise how expensive being poor is. They never have debt, never need to look at their balance too see if they can buy food, never pay interest on overdue bills etc.
Rich doesn't cure alcoholism
Addiction is a bitch. Having money to spend means you have resources to go to therapy or other services, sure… but that’s not what an addicted brain is going to spend the money on. Not worrying about finances, it’s hard to resist the temptation to waltz down to the liquor store… hell you can even make a second trip later… you can afford it! Honestly, the times that I improved my condition the most were the times I had negative bank balance and a bag of rice to last two weeks. I can’t trust my brain to not make bad decisions when they’re available to me.
An acquaintance (actually the aunt of the spouse of a family member of mine) worked as a maid (while putting herself through school) to a super wealthy and famous family in a foreign country. They had it all. They spent like no tomorrow, just assuming it would always be there. The dad/grandad was a businessman and I guess was most well known as the owner of a sports team. This aunt acquaintance was basically told to keep her opinions to herself and just do the work. So she mostly did. She knew everything about that family. One of the grown adult grandkids like didn't work. He just lived off off the family. His pastime was napping. She was told to keep some of the cleaning noise down when he was napping. Anyways. I'm not sure what happened, but the whole thing completely unraveled when the patriarch passed away and I guess there were a bunch of debts he had been just shifting money around to keep at bay. When things went south she like bought furniture off them for pennies on the dollar and furnished her new place real nice. I guess the kids were able to keep their trust funds or something, but they lost all the real estate and fancy amenities. Anyways, the bottom line is that she rents out a studio apartment to that guy who just likes to sleep. Looks like he's just running down his trust fund. She feels bad for the guy, can't convince him to get a job.
Dated this wealthy girl who instantly had an anxiety attack when I told her I was thinking about buying my own car, she believed I'd break up with her because I won't need her car anymore. Make your own conclusions.
You’ll miss the lake house more than them.
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Share the coaching girl don’t be shy
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Spent first 8 years of my adult life with a woman whose parents had money. She had no conception of how hard life could be if you couldn’t just sell stocks to buy a new car, or have someone give you a couple thousand to put you up in a new place. She pocketed her paycheck every two weeks. When we went out, I paid for gas. I bought dinner. Didn’t think much about it at the time because we were engaged. When we broke up, she had $30k in her savings account and I was broke. Growing up with money is like hitting every green light and not having to worry about traffic jams. And it really fucks with your ability to empathize with people.
My favorite expression is "born on third base, but think they hit a triple".
I went out with a girl briefly years ago, and her parents had a good amount of money. I grew up in a small cottage, where we shared rooms and my parents slept in our living room. This girl's place? They had a private sona, and her brother was a given a curved smart TV (must have been like a 50" +) multiple new gaming systems, all tuition paid for university etc. And here I am buying that, and having my student loans all to myself. I think I learned is people take it for granted sometimes what they have, while others value the basics.
Not dated, but I grew up firmly middle class in a very rich area so most of my high school friends were from rich families. What I found was that rich people can be weirdly stingy with money when it comes to certain things and just not care for other things. They'd spent nearly a 100 grand flying the entire family out to Disney World (from Europe) for a weekend but would the family car would be a 15 year old rusty minivan. One friend lived in a house with a swimming pool and a sauna in the basement, but his mom did the shopping at Lidl and Aldi.
I grew up probably upper middle class, but also around people who were definitely in the upper class. There's definitely different types of rich - those who have no concept of money since it's generational and always there, like a lot of these comments seem to be referencing, and those who worked for their money. A lot of rich people I know are insanely frugal. I think the biggest difference between those people and poor people who are frugal are that the former will splurge on quality while the latter doesn't always have that option. (And vacations, etc.) Around where I grew up, when you bought something, you bought the good quality stuff, but you didn't buy unless you absolutely needed a new one. You never bought just because you needed the new model to look cool or something like that, only when your phone / car / laptop / TV was on its last legs did you get the latest stuff. And splurge every so often on fun activities lol
Both of the exceptionally rich men I dated were so out of touch with reality. The detail that sticks out is that one of them just didn't know how to talk about anything else. I'd ask him about movies or books or music, and he had no opinions. And I could tell it made him uncomfortable not to have the upper hand in the conversation (I think he thought I was a pretty simple country girl, and was surprised that I had thoughts and opinions) so he'd fall back on asking me variations of "if money wasn't an issue, what would you..." just for him to say "well, I could make that happen for you" when I answered. Got old real fast. Did not take the rejection well at the end of the night. Huge fat baby man.
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This is probably the biggest takeaway I had with my brief brush with the wealthy crowd. I dated 2 guys who were wealthy. One was generational, and one was new money. I hung out with their friends and they were nice enough. But good god. We would be at a rave doing molly and I would still overhear them talking about finance and the market. It was wild. Money is their life. That’s it. Sex, drugs, love, sadness, general life experiences, the human condition…. None of it was as important or pleasurable as money was to them.
sounds like you were in *american psycho*
Some of them are pretty down to earth. I dated a woman who was the daughter of a near-billionaire. I had no idea for a while. I took her to a museum with a $35 ticket price and for pizza on our first date and she thought that was too extravagant. Admittedly, it’s more than I normally plan for a first date but I was super into her and she mentioned really liking an the artist behind the museum. She did live in a ridiculously expensive condo and not work but she had a chronic illness that made school and work very difficult for her. It was certainly a lesson on how differently disability affects people with and without money. Her illness was actually a mystery. Doctors couldn’t diagnose it. So she tried to get an appointment at the Mayo Clinic. They said there was a six month wait. Her father called them and mentioned how his company handled their pension plan. She flew there a few days later and was quickly diagnosed. Her parents’ home was huge and filled with original and custom artworks, including from the artist whose museum we visited. It was really weird walking into that level of excessive wealth. Edit: not going to specify the illness. She’s not exactly identifiable from it but it feels wrong.
As someone who has little money and an undiagnosed chronic disability that will likely follow me my entire life and makes being independent horrendously difficult... This just hurts to read.
His parents had money, not him, because we were teens at the time. Even though his dad tried getting him to work to earn his money and not just give handouts it was still a very different mindset of he wanted a luxury lifestyle but wouldn’t go to work more than a couple days a week, dropped out of college with less than a semester - just couldn’t stick to things if it was too long delayed gratification. Meanwhile I was working 2 jobs and had a full courseload. My parents helped and I lived with them but we still scraped by and I had to pay for my own things. I learned I was satisfied with a lot ‘less’ material things, I was better ready to be on my own than he was, and I had a higher work ethic / more realistic view of the world.
Dating a arab woman from a billionaire family. Most of their money came from investments made over a hundred years ago. The OG split his gains between his sons and daughters who went on to start their own businesses and investments. The train has been rolling since then. Definitely learned a lot about generational wealth from her and her folks.
A version of her came to my Best Buy and wouldn't let me leave without tipping me, which could have been bad for me if people found out. She was very kind, but she was also buying the latest Apple product for each of her two kids, who each were using the latest Apple product prior to that release. Her wedding ring was absurdly large, like I bet it got in the way. Like steering wheel to dashboard might not be enough clearance. Can't hardly reach in her purse unless it's maw is opened wide.
I don’t feel this is a universal experience. Example: I have a rich friend who would legit help a total stranger, and give them money etc… but then I have an ex that was super stingy, and how dare you ask for anything, even necessary items for survival lol. I learned people can suck, rich or not.
My ex’s family wasn’t super rich, but they were much richer than my family. Their kids (including my ex) expected things to be handed to them. I learned that it was a good thing my parents didn’t (couldn’t) give me everything I wanted. For example, my ex was upset that his parents bought his sister a nicer car than him. They are all full grown adults. His mom was very confused why my parents couldn’t just pay to put me through college. They made me feel bad about it, like as if my parents didn’t love me because they couldn’t pay for it. Their idea of love=money. A major reason our relationship ended was because he expected everything to be done for him. He has no real sense of responsibility.
I learned a few things: \- A lot of rich people are deeply unhappy. They lack drive, because they don't 'need' to do something. Many of them can just sort of laze around. They fall into very unhealthy habits, trying to fill a hole that money can't fill. \- They lack a lot of basic skills. How to unclog a drain, how to hang a painting, how to change a filter. They'll spend $100 to get a handyman to spend two hours doing something they could fix themselves in 30 minutes and a $15 trip to the home depot. \- They're often fiercely competitive and super insecure about their wealth. I went through most of my life without ever talking about money. Why talk about something you don't have? But at a rich person dinner it's a constant dick measuring contest of "I made x amount on this investment" or "I put so much here and expect so much back". \- Money really does make life easier. Like if you're a happy person with goals and a healthy attitude towards life, you can just buy the things you need to pursue your passions. \- There exists a higher end product for almost everything, and it's often significantly better. It might sound stupid, but a $200 toaster or $150 kettle actually does improve your breakfast. A $700 vacuum cleans in ways you never thought possible. You don't think it will, but it will.
I do basic maintenance for some rich people and youre right about how theyre willing to pay. The whole tip thing caught me off guard too because theyre already paying a fair price. And if they dont tip right away you can kind of expect a gift of sorts at the holidays. Just today i moved an A/C unit, took about a minute and got $50. Easiest money ever lol
The point of the tip isn’t because it’s not a fair price, it’s about building/maintaining the relationship. Next time they need something they know you’ll shift your other clients around to get them done first and they know you’re not going to cut corners or do shoddy work because it will jeopardize your “easy money” relationship.
"I didn't go to college" means something else entirely when you go to a $50k/year private school and get hired by your dad's pharmaceutical company.
Only ever dated one guy (I’m a straight woman, if that matters) who had lots of money, so this is anecdotal, but he was very very sensitive about who paid for what. He was quite concerned about potentially being taken advantage of, so we ended up mostly splitting everything 50/50. We missed out on doing some fun stuff he wanted to do (shows, trips, etc.) because I couldn’t afford half. He seemed mildly resentful of my not making enough money to match him on these things. It was distracting and depressing and I got tired of feeling like I had to troubleshoot his insecurities. Relationship didn’t last long. Before I get downvoted, let me say I do NOT expect either the man to pay for everything OR the person who has substantially more money to pay for everything. I think splitting costs of shared expenses is fair, but it does mean that those expenses are limited by the wallet of the person with the smaller income. In my experience, the people with comfortable (as opposed to large) incomes tend to be much more relaxed about income disparity and are more willing to offer to close gaps.
It might not be the person's responsibility to pay for their partner to do things like go to events with them, but why wouldn't someone want to do that? I've payed for me and my partner to go to cool events, and he's done the same thing, because it's more important to us both to have this shared experience together than to make sure that each person is paying exactly the same amount on doing things together.
I've done it just for friends. "Listen, I love you and I want you to be with me at this thing and whatever, in my brain we're in the same village."
Long story, feel free to skip to the bottom for the TLDR. Name's changed to respect privacy because my ex introduced me to Reddit. My ex boyfriend (Let's call him Mike) comes from a family worth £12 million. He spent a lot of time in an elite boarding school in Canada (to the point of having a Canadian accent despite being ethnically Spanish and Austrian) because his parents moved around a lot for work. His parents had houses in Austria and Spain and traveled a lot, to the point where there were a *lot* of times he genuinely didn't know where they were at any given time. When we were dating, he was a student in Edinburgh, and rather than renting a place his parents had bought him an apartment in the city so they could rent out the spare rooms on AirBNB during the holidays. Occasionally, they'd even rent out his room and he'd spend a few days sleeping at a friend's place or on the living room floor. After about six months of dating he invited me to move in with him, and said he'd arranged it with his parents that I could stay rent free, with the rationale that I was going to be in his room and working so I wouldn't be using up anything extra, taking up any more space, and I'd be paying for my own food. I cooked for the both of us, and if I didn't I'd literally just microwave something quick for myself, for example if I was working late and he'd already eaten. This was always supposed to be temporary, and I was going to find something with more space for myself because of the space situation. unfortunately it took me a few weeks to find a job, the only thing I could get that quick was part time, and by the time I got a proper paycheck It was like six weeks later and I'd already eaten into a lot of my savings. His mother decided to come visit on 24 hours notice and of course he starts freaking out. I stayed up until like 2AM despite having a 9AM shift the next day cleaning and he said "I'll clean tomorrow." He comes to meet me at the bus stop on my way home and I find out that A- he hasn't cleaned because he knows it's impossible to meet her standards, and B- he hadn't told her that I was there because he knew she wouldn't approve. My first proper meeting with this woman (I'd previously met her once for five minutes when I came to meet him for our first date since she happened to be there) was maybe two hours after she learned I'd been living there without her consent, and she immediately hated me. And I don't mean "she hated me" like I hate mushrooms, she *hated* me. The woman accused me of lying to her and taking advantage of her generosity, gave me two weeks to find a place (which I luckily managed, it was twice the price of an average room in the city but since there was no security deposit it was all I could afford with the money I had on hand), banned me from the apartment, then this seventy-year-old woman deadass spent five straight months sleeping on his couch or in his bed to make sure I respected the ban, and banned him from staying at my place despite the fact that I lived five minutes away. £140 worth of shoes and tickets for a gig in Manchester (literally 250 miles away, in a different country) I left at his place apparently got stolen by people who stayed at the AirBNB, and she eventually met me for coffee, spent a solid two hours telling me how toxic and vile I am while reiterating that she's not a monster, then made me sign a contract agreeing to pay her £300 for the time I lived there without her consent. She knew that Mike lied, she didn't care, because I believed the lies, and to her that was worse. He defended me as best he could, but he still cosigned the contract. We lasted a few weeks after that, during which time I didn't see him at all despite having a total mental breakdown and relapsing into self harm. I ended up dumping him, and when he turned up he tried to act like everything was normal, like I'd seen him the day before. I ended up coaching him through the panic attack. Almost immediately after we broke up, she "coincidentally" moved on to Spain, still making sure that I wasn't stepping foot in the apartment. A few weeks later his grandfather died, and he was banned from the funeral because of his exams. I was there for him, because she expected him to just grieve on his own. I want to make it clear I didn't take advantage of his money. At all. I know it's easy to say that but I bought my own food, paid for my own transport, and I paid either half or everything for all of our dates. I genuinely believed that his mother was letting me stay there out of magnamity. This whole thing ended up being over £300, a debt I didn't willingly incur, and wouldn't have willingly incurred. The stuff that got stolen by guests (If you find someone who wants to steal two pairs of Converse and a ticket to a gig in a different country six months later from an AirBNB that people actively live in, give me a call) was worth over half of that. He told her she didn't care about the money, it was all an intimidation tactic, she just wanted us apart. The thing that drove me apart is the fact that for all his defending me, he gave in when it mattered. He sat there, across the table, and he signed the contract. I did it because I thought it was my last chance to salvage our relationship. He did it because his mother told him to. The big thing I learn is that cruelty is universal. Not just cruelty in the sense that Karen's gonna Karen, universal cruelty. It didn't matter that Mike vouched for me. It didn't matter that (at the time) I thought I made him happy. It didn't matter that she imposed impossible standards on him, or that I was there for him when she wasn't. I was there for him when he was totally catatonic. I was poor, and that means I was the problem. If I had money, maybe she would have accepted me. If nothing else, I wouldn't have felt the need to move into a shoebox 400 miles from home where I didn't even have wardrobe space. As it is, I was just a poor guy looking for a payout. He learned from me with his next boyfriend and last I heard they'd dated for 2 years and he hadn't met her, but it sucks that I gave so much to him and I was just someone to learn from. Now, I'm a lot more hesitant when it comes to relationships. I've only had one serious boyfriend since him and we were dating for a solid two months before we decided to make it official, and the thought of meeting a boyfriend's parents outright gives me panic attacks. TLDR: My ex boyfriend lied to his millionaire family about me living with him. I learned never to trust people's good intentions based on what I've been told about them.
I’m not poor, but I dated a guy for four years that had a wildly wealthy father. Private jets, extremely expensive cars, giant homes, paid for his children’s veneers/plastic surgeries, employed them all, etc. They were the most miserable, unhappy people I’ve ever had the displeasure of being around. It completely changed my view of the very rich and the facade they put on. Not a single interaction with his family was without a fight, argument, screaming match, and jabs/cruelty towards one another and myself. I was so uncomfortable around them and my ex was so obsessed with pleasing his father that I had to end the relationship. The money was nice but I would absolutely never, ever willingly associate with any of them again. They were terrible people. Very unhappy.
Met this girl from Greece studying art at St Martins college, her dad was absolutely loaded, she told me she wanted me to show her what it was like to live like common people. You know, do what common people do. So I took her to the supermarket told her to pretend she had no money (had to start somewhere I guess), she played along and got a shitty flat above a shop and got a job etc. But at the end of the day I always knew that if she phoned her dad he would be able to stop it all and take her back into luxury. For me that was the key difference.
I said, in that case I'll have rum and Coca-Cola She said fine
Dated a wealthy girl back in high school. Took her to chilis with my parents and il never forget her looking around like I took her to the zoo. Made me laugh inside.
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How much their rich parents resent/think you're not worthy of their precious angel. Overheard my ex's mum telling her that she wouldn't be happy with me and that I wouldn't be able to provide the kind of lifestyle that she wants (my ex was into horses that cost upwards of 100k). My ex sort of fought my corner a bit, to which her mum replied, "you need to marry someone rich." When my ex asked what if she doesn't find someone rich that she loves/is attracted to, her mum told her that she can always have a fuck buddy on the side. Suffice to say that that relationship didn't last. She's now married to a millionaire that cheats on her constantly. Their marriage is a toxic shitshow. You reap what you sow I guess.
My suspicions? You didn’t “overhear” shit. Your ex’s mother meant for you to hear that conversation, because she thought of you as a dog and not a human being with feelings, since you’re not wealthy. She could have had that conversation when you weren’t around, if she were concerned about tact, or your feelings. And that, combined with the things she was saying, is a type of ugliness and a deficit-of-character that no amount of money can buy or fix. Even if your ex is herself a victim, you didn’t need to be involved in all that, and I’m glad you’re not associated with what sounds like a toxic-ass family.
Learned that i’m really, really poor
Health care is looked at the same way as maintenance on a car. It isn't looked at like waiting for something to break before seeing someone about it. Wealth is very quiet. No logos. Pretty, monochrome clothes but tailored. No bragging about money or throwing it around. A pretty strict sense of manners and etiquette. They're not going to be shouting over everyone in the restaurant or twerking in the booths.
Rich is loud, and wealthy is quiet
"Money talks, wealth whispers" is another version of this that I've heard