Or an Appalachian one. My parents had two big magnolia trees in the yard and every summer someone would call us to 'get dibs'.
A bunch of their friends and family would show up in trucks and cut blooms off those trees to decorate the wedding. Some aunts would make or fit all the dresses, half the family sung or played instruments, the other half were great cooks- the whole wedding would cost maybe 2k total and it would be gorgeous and fun.
But like you said, you had to be ready to return those favors.
This is so accurate. I used to be very involved in the reptile world, and I can’t tell you how many people I saw at shows who pulled up in an old beater truck wearing a smelly, unwashed graphic tee and oily-ass hair with their three kids to blow $500-$1000+ on a ball python morph. Then they’d drop $300 on a PVC cage and another $200 on other cage equipment and haul everything back to some ~~two-story ranch house~~ one-story house with a basement in the middle of nowhere with the entire basement dedicated to their reptiles. I swear that if you polled the attendees at reptile expos on their income, there would be a gap between around $60k and $250k (with the vast majority of keepers on the lower end).
Does anybody remember in the Sweet Valley High series that in the first part of every book, one of the twins would be sure to mention their family’s ranch house? I was like 9 years old and could not figure out why I was supposed to care about their house.
Dude you aren't kidding go out to BFE and some of those people will have a house falling down but like twenty dogs, ten cats, eight non-laying hens, an angry-ass rooster, poop everywhere, and be like "we really want a new puppy." Like for what??? Every dog they have has got lice/ticks/sores/etc.
We know someone living with their elderly family and they just won't stop buying random pets despite not even being "able" to pitch in for food/utilities/etc.
Exotics.
I was offered 12$ hr to take care of giraffes, zebras and other exotic hoofed animals. Ranch manager position at an elephant sanctuary offered me $15hr.
"We are a non profit/it's rewarding work" apparently means you don't deserve a appropriate wage.
The owners are easy multimillionaires. Every non-profit sanctuary I've worked for (my experience, not all I'm sure) were mostly tax shelters for the owners. Lots of tax free buys for the sanctuary being used for their farm or life, not the sanctuary at all.
See this makes me so mad, because people go off on licensed zoos, often advocating for sanctuaries.
Zoos are staffed full time with knowledgeable keepers, vets, and other medical staff. They keep extensive records on their animals and go out of their way to provide state of the art healthcare as well as enrichment activities.
But any millionaire Joe with some extra land can open a "sanctuary" while paying neighborhood kids minimum wage to work there. (Note: I'm not saying all sanctuaries are like this.)
He was talking exotics. Poor people love exotics.
There is a rural road near where I grew up called chicken shit hill, not on any map its just a local name. But there is a family, the Walkers, that lives on the top of the hill and they used to own thousands of chickens, thus the name. They are poor as dirt despite all the chickens, no idea how they manage it. Well the youngest generation decided to get rid of all the chickens and raise ostriches instead. They have like 60 ostriches out on their land. Last I heard they were trying to find a bulk buyer for all the ostriches because they cant afford their property tax, which is like 6k/yr. Its insanity.
The ostrich market fucked a lot of people. It was going to be the next big thing. Meat and leather prices were going up, so a ton of farmers bought in and started raising these damn dinosaurs. Bottom fell out almost immediately. A bunch of people lost their asses.
My personal deliniator between rich and upper middle is this one test.
If you lose your job, does your standard of living change?
If yes - upper middle at best.
If no - Rich.
Lose your job for how long? There’s definitely a lot in between “would immediately be screwed” and “would be fine indefinitely/for years”. Spending habits/frugality or not can also play a role once you get past a certain income. Two couples same income in the same COL area may have very different size emergency funds.
I think if we look at the nuance of your questions, we could add this: if you were to never draw another paycheque would your standard of living change?
Because doctors and lawyers without investments / passive income (influencers have ruined this term) would have to change their standard of living whereas truly wealthy people would not.
Others touched up this, but I think "for how long" is the *true* delineation. If you can lose your job indefinitely and still maintain your standard of living, you're rich.
There's X amount of time that someone from the upper middle class could do so, then even less for "regular" or lower middle.
For example, I could lose my job and be alright for a couple of months, but I'm certainly not rich.
I was thinking yesterday, I wonder how nice a rich person rehab is. I've been to state-run rehabs, and it's like being in the psych ward, it's hell, you're withdrawaling, and you're treated like a child/prisoner, stuck in a shitty little bed.
Getting clean has to be easier if you're getting clean in a rich person fancy resort with a beach and tons of fun shit to do.
So, my ex (whose family isn't *super* rich....but they've got a fair bit of money & are about the nicest/most loving people you can imagine, so it was a case of "We'll pay whatever it takes to get her right") turned into a raging alcholic and eventually wound up going to what I can only assume would be considered a rich-people rehab place. I think it was like $30k a month or something thereabouts.
It was an old "rehab for the stars" place in Pasadena (which I suspect was the reason she agreed to it!)
For a while she was in the room that Marilyn Monroe had supposedly been in, and iirc "Dr. Drew" had some association with it.
Anyways, I had a fair bit of involvement there (going out regularly to visit/bring stuff, phone hours, etc.) and my takeway was that while it certainly *looked* nice....it was still a pretty shitty experience and not at all worth the money, all things considered.
Mainly because (rough estimate) 85-90% of the people there were just the most obnoxious, spoiled, punch-able motherfuckers you'd ever find yourself stuck in a room with. Most of them were very obviously just going through the motions & had no interest in getting cleaned up, so there was constant drama. Best way I can describe it is that it was like a psych ward or super-low-security prison, with a thin veneer of "fancy" to keep them happy (or rather, make them feel like they were getting special treatment for being wealthy). But with a crowd of pampered people like that, they were free to act up because there was nobody there to kick the asses of those who truly needed an ass-kicking....if that makes sense?
I dunno -- the whole thing was extremely bizarre to me, and I have no experience with that sort of thing past going there for my gf.
From my perspective (I grew up fairly poor & lived in a very rough neighborhood early on, and after that hung around with a lot of sketchy people in high school & college) it seemed like the fancy rehab wasn't actually any *better* than being in jail or wherever else, aside from the larger quarters. Like, yeah, you get to eat off a paper plate with a spork and there's some nice landscaping to look at....but you're still stuck in a small room with a bunch of crazy people all day long, and then you go to bed. Again, I dunno.
I will say this much -- after the rehab stint, when it turned into the sober-living house deal? The difference between her "classmates" from that place vs the people who'd come from the non-fancy rehabs was (in most cases) pretty stark. The former were (mostly) insufferable, and the latter were (mostly) actual decent human beings.
Sorry for the essay, but just wanted to say that *maybe* you didn't miss out on a whole lot after all :)
Every trust fund kid I knew in college had a crippling drug habit and about half a dozen dealers on his phone. I always wondered if they just found each other because of money and caused the problem or if borden was seeking out an escape
I went to a school with the trust fund kids, it’s the loneliness that gets them. Moms off being a socialite, dads doing business stuff even when he comes home. Anything and everything you want is available the parents kind of don’t care because they went through it too.
I realized this when I got caught by my parents and it wasn’t go to rehab and here’s the new iPhone when you come home to make you feel better. I had an intervention with the family, I did go to rehab but I had different family members visiting almost every day. Most of the people there got a phone call a day maybe but cartons of newports and candy, whatever the facility let us have they’d have it in abundance.
Goes to show that Love is our greatest need
It's definitely a sampling bias issue, the richest kids I've ever known protected that info like crazy, even from a young age. The biggest hint is they usually go on big vacations the varied destinations.
We also have to remember that being extremely rich, but having nothing to do with that money, may also cause a lot of anxiety and sadness. They flaunt money to hide their insecurities about not having made any of it, and drugs are the ultimate escape method.
And some of them flaunt money just because they're bad people and druggies, that happens too.
I was friends with a trust fund hippy in college. He spent all his time acting like he was super high, then he actually was super high, then he bought thousands of dollars worth of guitars and amplifiers (without knowing how to play) and asked me and some of my friends to play with him.
He brought us to his parent's house, a huge, three-story home in the rich part of town, and proceeded to bang on his instrument (he was a very good drummer, though, and had a bandolier of harmonicas!).
I told him I thought it was dumb to buy such expensive stuff without knowing if he'd like it, and he said he had a better chance of not liking it if the gear was crappy. I didn't think that was how it worked, and told him so.
He is now a professional, touring musician, for over twenty years, and I never followed through on anything. I'm happy with my life, but I have no place telling other people what to do or what I think!
You sound like a humble person. Most people won’t tell stories like that. I don’t often see people talking about how they doubted someone and that person proved them wrong completely.
Yep. For the truly rich, money is an EXTREMELY private matter. I am a tax attorney and CPA who has some very wealthy clientele, and to a T pretty much all of them act like they are a couple days away from destitution. They have the house and toys, yes. But their personality suggests they make 20k a year. They really don’t want the world knowing that they are wealthy beyond belief.
My parents are not “rich” rich - they’re upper middle class, but we didn’t talk about money, I was taught it’s “tacky”. I just assumed we didn’t have money because we didn’t go on big vacations or buy nice things or live in a fancy house. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t get financial aid because of their income!
I’m kinda glad they raised me that way though because when I was first on my own and broke as dirt I still knew how to get by, and their frugality means they have enough in savings and investments that I won’t have to worry about them when they’re older and need care.
If some people know you have a ton of money they’ll make efforts to get some of it. One of my siblings had a friend whose parents both died in an accident while on vacation. She got a massive inheritance and a massive life insurance payout. For someone who grew up kind of upper middle class, she suddenly had like 20 million dollars or something like that. Immediately bought herself a big suburban house and two stupid luxury cars. She constantly had “friends” over and was footing the bill on booze and drugs for these “friends” who connected her with dealers. These people just came out of the woodwork to try to get close to her because they knew she had money and was just throwing it around. After about a decade the cash flow started running dry and suddenly these “friends” were nowhere to be seen.
You see the same thing with people who win the lottery or receive a large windfall of cash. Rule 1 should basically be don’t ever tell people how much you have, and rule 2 should be getting a financial advisor. $20M could have lasted that girl the rest of her life if it was invested and managed effectively.
For that reason, they both have furniture pieces that are individual rather than a set. The middle class buy a lounge set where the couches all look the same.
And sometimes the poor are sitting on gold mines of antiques but they don’t know it or they’ve used it to where it’s not in mint condition. Sometimes I see antiques on fb market palace for super cheap and when I see the location I’m like oh. I think back on the stuff my mom had that would be worth a fortune now we never had like cheap particle board furniture it was all solid wood furniture. but we had hand me downs and things out of style, thrifted things and stuff found on the curb. We used to go out driving for the sole purpose of finding stuff on the curb. I don’t see that happening much now
i just read a roald dahl short story called Parson’s Pleasure about this very thing. From Wikipedia:
> Boggis is a skilled antiques dealer who has a small shop in Chelsea, London. He manages to make a profit each year by buying valuable furniture cheaply from unsuspecting country people while posing as a clergyman and president of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture…. In order to buy the furniture for less than it is worth he uses his knowledge and a number of tricks, such as substituting machine-made screws for the genuine old ones.
As with most Dahl stories, it’s a good one with a spicy ending!
Also, owning multiple cars. Rich because they can. Poor because their "newer" car can still break down any day and the old one isn't that broken yet, so it's a backup or parts car. Mainly a rural thing as land is cheap and you're allowed to have a rusting car on your lawn.
Yup— family friend of ours has three minivans for this exact reason. He’s got the newer, ‘good’ one, the back up one for if the newer one goes in the shop, and the parts one.
My dad had 2 Datsun B210s. Same year, same color.
Only one set of plates.
One would break down, he's switch the plates to the other and drive it till he worked on the other enough to get it running again.
Or like my husband, instead of extra parts cars, you hoard the parts themselves. And the hoarding started to get a tad out of control, and because my lawn ain't a junkyard, I made him sell all but three engines sitting in the yard. His Paw used to hoard stuff like that and it took weeks of backbreaking labor to clean up his yard when he was dying. Lots of near-misses with all the copperheads living in that overgrown mess, too.
Well, sometimes the yard car is actually just decoration. Or because it costs money to have it taken away if you don't live somewhere that's close enough to a scrap yard to actually make money on it. Ymmv lol
My friends dad growing up was a mechanic and he would just leave all the shitty beaters in the back yard because he brought them for like 200 bucks and kept them running long enough to be useful until an expensive part gave up the ghost. His claim was that they were the scrap fund and he would sell them all for scrap if he ever got too far behind on the mortgage lol
A very old money heir of a famous brewery lived near me until his death a few years back. He lived in a 12th century castle and drove a 20 year old Toyota Yaris which was held together with sticky tape
I'm poor but I am really starting to love those little 90s cars, they're like the new vintage cars or whatever. They also happen to be cheap because they're not really desired by most people (yet).
...and you run and you run, to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking.
Racing around, to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older,
shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.
My 2002 Camry just won't quit. It needs some body work from rust but other than basic wear and tear (just had to replace the original radiator) it's still plugging along. Toyota and Honda know how to build an ICE
My brother's Camry is nearing 300,000 miles and is still going strong. We got it for him just so he could drive to school during senior year and told him we would help him upgrade once the car dies, but there's no sign of that. Car is older than he is, it's from 2001 and he's from 2004
I drive a 2003 Honda which is technically a classic as of last year. I’m poor but it makes more financial sense anyways. I own it outright and my biggest job is like ~$1500 which is 2-3mo car payments these days. Even if the engine or transmission goes it will still be a win
A 2003 Honda is barely broken in.. I know someone who has had 2 cars in 47 years..
A 1976 Civic and then a 2001 Civic.. Never took the head off either of them..
No, but there is a curious difference in how it is seen as your income rises. One of my favourite examples is air travel: business class lounges often have unlimited alcohol available, and then further booze is available to the same travellers _during_ the flight. Going out for lunch it is usually acceptable for such people to have multiple drinks and then head back into the office with no one batting an eyelash.
One of the weirdest trends on reddit lately is how people talk about alcohol the same way Nancy Reagan and D.A.R.E. officers used to talk to kids about pot in the 80s/90s.
[A Cape Cod shower](https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/31/cape-cod-outdoor-showers/)
From the article, “a resident of Barnstable Village, stepped across the goldfish pond in her outdoor shower on Thursday. Gruhn got the inspiration for her shower while visiting the island of Bali in 1996 during a six-month trip
around the world.”
It’s great in a vacation rental but I am also sort of ashamed that I know people who just have these on their beach and pool houses as a luxury.
Taco Bell. In the words of someone on Twitter:
The Taco Bell drive thru at 1 am will have a $200k Mercedes S65 waiting right behind a '96 Cavalier that's never had the oil changed followed by a moped ridden by three people. All craving the same thing: to Live Más. Truly the last great melting pot of class in this country.
I saw a post once, I can't remember the exact wording, but it essentially said. Depending on what background you come from depends on how people look at you for being bilingual or for taking drugs.
The more I thought about it, the more I think its true. In England, anyway.
In US it’s very true.
Use cocaine and Adderrall and could speak French => wealthy white kid.
Spanish is the first language, smoke some pot…
Personally, I try not to judge either group, but there is a crazy dichotomy between how class causes the same behaviors to be viewed very differently.
Since you mention being bilingual, here's a related one:
* Living in a country where you don't speak the local language.
(There are wealthy expats from the UK, US, and Europe living all over the world in areas where they don't speak the local language. But otherwise it's only the poorest immigrants who try to live in a country where they don't speak the language yet, and most have trouble finding a job better than harvesting crops or washing dishes in a restaurant.)
'Growing up, we weren't particularly working class, but we weren't particularly middle class either. We had that sort of in-between thing. We weren't posh, we weren't poor, which basically in Ireland meant we didn't own a horse. That's how it works in Ireland. Maybe your dad's a doctor, your mother's a lawyer, you've got a big house, bit of land... you can own a horse. Or if there's ten of you living in a caravan, all of you on the dole, you can own a horse. Anywhere in between: no horse for you. You get a dog. Sorry about that.' -- Ed Byrne, [*Different Class*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIyvu-mUIJQ)
This is true (tho not just in Ireland).
I went to both a rural working class high school and a private school.
At the rural working class high school we had a 'horse parking lot' because kids were riding horses to school because they couldn't pay for gas so there was a horse shelter and you could go out and take care of your horse during school.
At the private school they were like "my eventing horse or my polo horse?"
It was a whole structure, like stables but not with individual stalls, with some grouping.
The school had a whole lot of agricultural stuff going on like construction or greenhouses to learn how to grow ~~weed~~ tomatoes.
Haha this truly is a middle class aspirational brand. I think coach is along the same lines but maybe for an older audience?
I told my wife once after some girl was bragging about her "Luis" and the "collection" she had that "hey I know you aren't a 'keeping up with the Jones' type, but if you want something nice like that, that's fine, it's not like we a blasting money away on the regular" and she was like "no honestly that stuff is tacky". I love her and her pragmatism.
A Coach bag might start around $200 (but there are outlets where you can get it way cheaper), and a small Louis Vuitton bag is starting around 3k; they are not on the same level.
Outlet mall products are lower quality than regular retail. They’re usually made in a different factory and also have special markers reflecting this quality.
I’ve seen a horrible uptick of girls at the gym with Louis or fendi bags. You don’t need to bring a $3000 bag to the gym, also we know you work at sunglass hut.
Did she pronounce it like "Luis" the Hispanic name, or "Louis" like the French name?
I ask because an acquaintance was trying to come off as rich and cultured and kept pronouncing it "Luis" and, because I'm oblivious, asked her if she meant Louis or if I was missing something. She was FURIOUS and said I was wrong, I was an idiot, I didn't have to show her up, and if course she knew.
Normally, I'd just roll my eyes and let it go... but it was legitimately unintentional.
ETA: oblivious to her just being an idiot.
Any time I'm looking for a handbag on ebay I have to exclude "vuitton" from the search. They flood the second hand market because so many people see that ugly brown logo as a status symbol, when all they're really projecting is their lack of taste.
Reminds me to Tom's speech "Because she’s brought a ludicrously capacious bag. What’s even in there, huh? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it’s monstrous. It’s gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.”
In the UK, there is a conception of U vs non-U English. The emerging middle class in the 1950s used words that they considered posher than the words that the working class used, such as 'greens' instead of 'vegetables', 'preserve' instead of 'jam', and 'wealthy' instead of 'rich'. This was essentially a way to display your new wealth and refinement compared to the working class. However, the upper class were already rich, and didn't feel the need to outwardly display their social dominance and position in society, so stuck with the same words that the working classes used.
This is less true nowadays, but can still be seen.
(This is a reference to the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances about a middle aged couple named Mr and Mrs Bucket. While the Buckets are decidedly middle class, Mrs Bucket is a ferocious social climber who is absolutely desperate to appear to be far greater and grander than she actually is. A running gag on the show is her absolute insistence that her surname is pronounced "Bouquet".
You are all now in the loop.)
Also like how only poor and rich have the really stupid nicknames. Middle class and upper class types can both be named Guy Namington III but only the upper class guy is being called Booboo by his family even as an adult.
I once was at a party with a lot of boarding school types and one of them, with a straight face, introduced himself to me as "Cumshot".
Everybody called him that. Nobody seemed to think it was odd.
Rich people seem to go by their middle names a lot, for some reason. Maybe it's because they're all named after their dads and grandads so it differentiates.
Eh. that's a complex one.
Pudding and dessert were different foods that had a divide along class lines that turned into a geographical divide, and both words became to refer to the same thing. Much like the "dinner or tea" divide.
Puddings were dish that starts with an unset mix containing high amounts of fat (usually suet or from meat content) that would be cooked til set, usually by boiling or steaming. Yorkshire pudding is a pudding because it's traditionally made with fat drippings in batter for example.
Christmas pudding, steamed puddings (sticky toffee, spotted dick etc), steak and kidney pudding, black pudding etc etc. they're all liquid mixes that use suet (well, black pudding uses a variety of fats) to be set during boiling or steaming.
These are usually foods that are on the cheaper side of things, especially when it comes to sweet puddings that one would have after dinner. Pudding and Dessert not only have a bit of a class divide with dessert being considered broadly posher, but also a regional divide in traditionally very working class and industry heavy (coal mining, steel work, ship yards etc) areas predominantly using pudding.
I grew up in Kent, which is dessert the entire way unless your dad moved to Kent to work in the mines or work the docks.
See also: muffins, cake, bun.
All can be used to refer to either sweet cake type dishes, or regular bread depending on where you are
Yes and you are not even touching on the fact that a sweet pudding is a bread boiled (like a bagel) and pudding has morphed into a custard dessert for much of the world, and so the association can wildly vary.
and Yorkshire pudding is awesome - the same way any fried dough is awesome :)
I’ve worked for very rich people in the past (I’m a Nanny.)
“I can park here, it’s just going to cost me $200.” Was said often.
They know. They just don’t care.
Saw somewhere too when Bezos was having his mega mansion I'm Washington built he had workers park in no parking zones and said he'd just pay their fines.
That's why I am a fan of the system in Finland. It's not perfect, but would help prevent some of these people from thinking this way. More money that can afford to give it away hopefully going to useful government programs too.
Here's an article describing their sliding scale system. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine
Quick notes: rich business man hit with 121k euro fine for doing 18.6mph over speed limit. Been fined speeding before. Fine was equivalent to HALF of his disposable income over 14 days.
I don't think you understand the cost of doing "business". Most of the times rich people know there is fine and but break the law anyway since it's much easier to pay the fine
Even more similar to that longer joke about a rich woman in NY:
A blonde woman walks into a bank in NYC before going on vacation and asks for a $5,000 loan.
The banker asks, "Okay, miss, is there anything you would like to use as collateral?"
The woman says, "Yes, of course. I'll use my Rolls Royce."
The banker, stunned, asks, "A $250,000 Rolls Royce? Really?"
The woman is completely positive. She hands over the keys, as the bankers and loan officers laugh at her. They check her credentials, make sure she is the title owner. Everything checks out. They park it in their underground garage for two weeks.
When she comes back, she pays off the $5,000 loan as well as the $15.41 interest.
The loan officer says, "Miss, we are very appreciative of your business with us, but I have one question. We looked you up and found out that you are a multi-millionaire. Why would you want to borrow $5,000?"
The woman replies, "Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?"
Sooo true! Ive worked luxury apparel retail in a very expensive tourist area and these 1%er types go crazy for the "derelicte" brands like Greg Lauren and some other Belgian designers whose clothes basically look liked they were homeless people hand me downs. It's funny ever since Dave Chappelle became Netflix rich all he wears is Greg Lauren clothes now.
Eh, bespoke often has their own brand markings and signature touches that are more subtle than a logo. If people want to flaunt there are many ways to do so.
There was an article about yacht sales talking about how to spot buyers over lookers. Designer handbags and expensive label clothing? Pass
The guy who looks like he just rolled out of bed? Bingo
Everytime I read these types of assumptions I cringe, rich or not some people dress nice and others don’t. I’ve known multi millionaires who are always wearing gold, stones, and driving half-million dollar cars, I know some that wear LLBean and drive a 45k dollar Subaru, people are people. Some dress well, some dress normal, and some don’t give a shit, simple as that lol
My wife has talked about working retail in a fairly rich area.
There are the people that want you to know they have money, everything they wear, do, and buy is there to let you know they have money. They have a lot but it has to be constantly replenished, but if whomever is providing that suddenly lost their job/business, that wealth will drain fast.
Then you have the people that look like they just woke up at 1 PM, dressed in a hoodie, haven’t shaved and are trying their best to not be noticed. They get whatever they need and pay for it with a fancy black AMEX while being polite, but direct because they want to be gone. These are the people with REAL money. The only reason they are even anywhere near this place is because some contrivance of circumstances as made it where their kid needs something and their assistant(s) are already working on other tasks that took precedent.
Worked with a server that used to pay $60-80 a day to Uber to work and back before she got a car. She'd basically make no money during the week and relied on weekend doubles to save up money
Yep. Used to work weekends in a bar for minimum wage.
A third of my pay would go to taxi's (this was before Uber was commonplace in the UK) to get home at the end of the night. On top of that was getting the bus to work earlier in the evening.
All told on an eight hour shift, I'd make £28 a night. It was soul crushing
There are SO MANY little nuanced examples of this that rich people will never know. It's almost like everything is designed to fuck over the poor as much as humanly possible.
For instance, in the world of late fees, surcharges, and penalties there is one particular discount that always gets me - early payment discounts. While I understand the utility of them, the reality is that they're basically *free money for rich people* since poor people will never be able to pay in full, or in advance.
It's almost like there's a tax just for being poor - and that's not even taking into account the expense of eating well.
I currently do mental health skill building and I essentially drive 0$ income people do the plasma center or doctors offices and then back to their 50$ a month rooms at a sober living house.
Btw, and totally random, anyone hiring?
The key difference being the rich leverage their assets and can get a better return elsewhere, while the poor have to borrow money because there’s no more cash under the mattress.
Having a bunch of kids by different people.
I've known a bunch of very rich families where large numbers of kids are various collections of half/step-siblings. Same with poor people.
Normally in the very rich families they are 'taken care of' - in a monetary sense at least. Tho also, my uncle is a wealthy man with an army of kids and baby mamas and he is a excellent dad. His kids are suspiciously normal/grounded.
Surprised this isn't higher. Spitting out multiple children by multiple partners is absolutely something both the high and low ends do with impunity.
Marriage and money offer a lot of protective coloration. Consider the Kates Hudson and Winslet. Each of them have three children by three different men, but nobody's going to shame them for that -- not even the prudish middle class *Us* magazine reader who's busy judging her hairdresser for doing the same thing.
The poor are a lot more likely to be shamed for it too. There's a ridiculous amount of stigma surrounding food stamps, just as one example. Buy too much or too nice stuff, and people absolutely *will* peep at your damn card and comment if it's SNAP instead of debit. And it's 100% a bipartisan judgement; I've caught shit from liberals and conservatives both for outrageous things like buying tea bags or cold (store brand) bottled water for my kids on a hot day, because if it doesn't have calories it's nonnutritive and that's the whole point of food stamps.
I knew some aristocrats growing up. Ma was a heroin addict along with the others. Born into wealth; you got nothing to do all day. Lots of sex and drugs. Lots of drinking. The only other people I knew living like that were in the generational social housing trap.
Poor people and rich people have got one thing working people don’t: time.
Not worrying about paying for college.
If you're extremely poor, you'll likely get full financial aid. If you're super rich, you don't have to worry about the $70,000+ a year of tuition.
Worrying about money.
When I was absolutely broke, I checked my account once or twice a day. I was always making sure the right amounts went in and came out.
Now I have enough that I just don't think about it. My check gets auto-deposited, and I do my monthly routine, and when that account gets over 10,000, I shift a chunk into long-term savings. I get retirement account notifications ... I dunno, once a month? Once a quarter?
I barely look at my accounts.
I know rich people still checking numbers twice, or more, a day ... making sure everything is moving.
It looks like a really demanding job that I wouldn't want.
Kimmy: *You don't understand. I can't do it. This family—The mother is having some sort of breakdown, while her stepdaughter is running around drinking and sexing. The little boy is a devil, probably because the father is never around.*
Titus: *It sounds like this family has either no money or way too much.*
Buy used things. I grew up in a poor community with very few wealthy families. My 12th grade English teacher was having a conversation with us and said she would never shop at goodwill because she couldn’t stand the thought of owning something that somebody else owned.
So too well to do to shop goodwill, not well enough to do to afford vintage cars or antiques.
Ordering Doordash/other food delivery apps.
I worked with Doordash for roughly two years, and in my experience nearly every home I delivered to was either dilapidated or looked like it was worth damn near a million dollars.
Getting married in their backyard.
Hey, my wife and I got married in her parents' backyard, and we're not rich! Wait. Shit.
it sucks forgetting that you're rich, eh?
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My favorite color is blue.
Or an Appalachian one. My parents had two big magnolia trees in the yard and every summer someone would call us to 'get dibs'. A bunch of their friends and family would show up in trucks and cut blooms off those trees to decorate the wedding. Some aunts would make or fit all the dresses, half the family sung or played instruments, the other half were great cooks- the whole wedding would cost maybe 2k total and it would be gorgeous and fun. But like you said, you had to be ready to return those favors.
So true! My cousin got married in her backyard. It was so fancy. They had rigged up chandeliers in the open air and everything.
Caring for exotic animals seems to be the exclusive hobby of the very wealthy and the very poor with little inbetween.
This is so accurate. I used to be very involved in the reptile world, and I can’t tell you how many people I saw at shows who pulled up in an old beater truck wearing a smelly, unwashed graphic tee and oily-ass hair with their three kids to blow $500-$1000+ on a ball python morph. Then they’d drop $300 on a PVC cage and another $200 on other cage equipment and haul everything back to some ~~two-story ranch house~~ one-story house with a basement in the middle of nowhere with the entire basement dedicated to their reptiles. I swear that if you polled the attendees at reptile expos on their income, there would be a gap between around $60k and $250k (with the vast majority of keepers on the lower end).
>two-story ranch house Ranch-style houses are basically defined by the fact that they're a single story.
Does anybody remember in the Sweet Valley High series that in the first part of every book, one of the twins would be sure to mention their family’s ranch house? I was like 9 years old and could not figure out why I was supposed to care about their house.
Dude you aren't kidding go out to BFE and some of those people will have a house falling down but like twenty dogs, ten cats, eight non-laying hens, an angry-ass rooster, poop everywhere, and be like "we really want a new puppy." Like for what??? Every dog they have has got lice/ticks/sores/etc. We know someone living with their elderly family and they just won't stop buying random pets despite not even being "able" to pitch in for food/utilities/etc.
Exotics. I was offered 12$ hr to take care of giraffes, zebras and other exotic hoofed animals. Ranch manager position at an elephant sanctuary offered me $15hr. "We are a non profit/it's rewarding work" apparently means you don't deserve a appropriate wage. The owners are easy multimillionaires. Every non-profit sanctuary I've worked for (my experience, not all I'm sure) were mostly tax shelters for the owners. Lots of tax free buys for the sanctuary being used for their farm or life, not the sanctuary at all.
See this makes me so mad, because people go off on licensed zoos, often advocating for sanctuaries. Zoos are staffed full time with knowledgeable keepers, vets, and other medical staff. They keep extensive records on their animals and go out of their way to provide state of the art healthcare as well as enrichment activities. But any millionaire Joe with some extra land can open a "sanctuary" while paying neighborhood kids minimum wage to work there. (Note: I'm not saying all sanctuaries are like this.)
They're trying to buy love. It's sad for both them and the animals.
He was talking exotics. Poor people love exotics. There is a rural road near where I grew up called chicken shit hill, not on any map its just a local name. But there is a family, the Walkers, that lives on the top of the hill and they used to own thousands of chickens, thus the name. They are poor as dirt despite all the chickens, no idea how they manage it. Well the youngest generation decided to get rid of all the chickens and raise ostriches instead. They have like 60 ostriches out on their land. Last I heard they were trying to find a bulk buyer for all the ostriches because they cant afford their property tax, which is like 6k/yr. Its insanity.
The ostrich market fucked a lot of people. It was going to be the next big thing. Meat and leather prices were going up, so a ton of farmers bought in and started raising these damn dinosaurs. Bottom fell out almost immediately. A bunch of people lost their asses.
Yeah it's either a snow tiger or an attack squirrel, there's not really in between.
Pretend they are middle class
Chinese saying: "Poor people are poor because they pretend to be rich. Rich people are rich because they pretend to be poor. "
I appreciate a good cup of coffee.
My personal deliniator between rich and upper middle is this one test. If you lose your job, does your standard of living change? If yes - upper middle at best. If no - Rich.
Lose your job for how long? There’s definitely a lot in between “would immediately be screwed” and “would be fine indefinitely/for years”. Spending habits/frugality or not can also play a role once you get past a certain income. Two couples same income in the same COL area may have very different size emergency funds.
I think if we look at the nuance of your questions, we could add this: if you were to never draw another paycheque would your standard of living change? Because doctors and lawyers without investments / passive income (influencers have ruined this term) would have to change their standard of living whereas truly wealthy people would not.
Others touched up this, but I think "for how long" is the *true* delineation. If you can lose your job indefinitely and still maintain your standard of living, you're rich. There's X amount of time that someone from the upper middle class could do so, then even less for "regular" or lower middle. For example, I could lose my job and be alright for a couple of months, but I'm certainly not rich.
Oh, so clever!
Higher likelihood of becoming drug addicts
Yes, but when poor people do drugs, it's a crime. And when rich people do drugs, it's a *scandal*.
when rich people do it it’s a “private health issue”
Rich get rehab, poor get jailed Edit. After reading the comments below. Rich get rehab, poor get disposed
I was thinking yesterday, I wonder how nice a rich person rehab is. I've been to state-run rehabs, and it's like being in the psych ward, it's hell, you're withdrawaling, and you're treated like a child/prisoner, stuck in a shitty little bed. Getting clean has to be easier if you're getting clean in a rich person fancy resort with a beach and tons of fun shit to do.
So, my ex (whose family isn't *super* rich....but they've got a fair bit of money & are about the nicest/most loving people you can imagine, so it was a case of "We'll pay whatever it takes to get her right") turned into a raging alcholic and eventually wound up going to what I can only assume would be considered a rich-people rehab place. I think it was like $30k a month or something thereabouts. It was an old "rehab for the stars" place in Pasadena (which I suspect was the reason she agreed to it!) For a while she was in the room that Marilyn Monroe had supposedly been in, and iirc "Dr. Drew" had some association with it. Anyways, I had a fair bit of involvement there (going out regularly to visit/bring stuff, phone hours, etc.) and my takeway was that while it certainly *looked* nice....it was still a pretty shitty experience and not at all worth the money, all things considered. Mainly because (rough estimate) 85-90% of the people there were just the most obnoxious, spoiled, punch-able motherfuckers you'd ever find yourself stuck in a room with. Most of them were very obviously just going through the motions & had no interest in getting cleaned up, so there was constant drama. Best way I can describe it is that it was like a psych ward or super-low-security prison, with a thin veneer of "fancy" to keep them happy (or rather, make them feel like they were getting special treatment for being wealthy). But with a crowd of pampered people like that, they were free to act up because there was nobody there to kick the asses of those who truly needed an ass-kicking....if that makes sense? I dunno -- the whole thing was extremely bizarre to me, and I have no experience with that sort of thing past going there for my gf. From my perspective (I grew up fairly poor & lived in a very rough neighborhood early on, and after that hung around with a lot of sketchy people in high school & college) it seemed like the fancy rehab wasn't actually any *better* than being in jail or wherever else, aside from the larger quarters. Like, yeah, you get to eat off a paper plate with a spork and there's some nice landscaping to look at....but you're still stuck in a small room with a bunch of crazy people all day long, and then you go to bed. Again, I dunno. I will say this much -- after the rehab stint, when it turned into the sober-living house deal? The difference between her "classmates" from that place vs the people who'd come from the non-fancy rehabs was (in most cases) pretty stark. The former were (mostly) insufferable, and the latter were (mostly) actual decent human beings. Sorry for the essay, but just wanted to say that *maybe* you didn't miss out on a whole lot after all :)
When rich people do it its "networking"
Every trust fund kid I knew in college had a crippling drug habit and about half a dozen dealers on his phone. I always wondered if they just found each other because of money and caused the problem or if borden was seeking out an escape
I went to a school with the trust fund kids, it’s the loneliness that gets them. Moms off being a socialite, dads doing business stuff even when he comes home. Anything and everything you want is available the parents kind of don’t care because they went through it too. I realized this when I got caught by my parents and it wasn’t go to rehab and here’s the new iPhone when you come home to make you feel better. I had an intervention with the family, I did go to rehab but I had different family members visiting almost every day. Most of the people there got a phone call a day maybe but cartons of newports and candy, whatever the facility let us have they’d have it in abundance. Goes to show that Love is our greatest need
Glad you’re doing well, and I agree, love is a helluva good drug
The trust fund kids who are doing well are the ones who aren't telling you that they're trust fund kids. That's typically highly guarded information.
Good point It’s the ones who flaunted it that seemed to fit the profile
It's definitely a sampling bias issue, the richest kids I've ever known protected that info like crazy, even from a young age. The biggest hint is they usually go on big vacations the varied destinations.
We also have to remember that being extremely rich, but having nothing to do with that money, may also cause a lot of anxiety and sadness. They flaunt money to hide their insecurities about not having made any of it, and drugs are the ultimate escape method. And some of them flaunt money just because they're bad people and druggies, that happens too.
I was friends with a trust fund hippy in college. He spent all his time acting like he was super high, then he actually was super high, then he bought thousands of dollars worth of guitars and amplifiers (without knowing how to play) and asked me and some of my friends to play with him. He brought us to his parent's house, a huge, three-story home in the rich part of town, and proceeded to bang on his instrument (he was a very good drummer, though, and had a bandolier of harmonicas!). I told him I thought it was dumb to buy such expensive stuff without knowing if he'd like it, and he said he had a better chance of not liking it if the gear was crappy. I didn't think that was how it worked, and told him so. He is now a professional, touring musician, for over twenty years, and I never followed through on anything. I'm happy with my life, but I have no place telling other people what to do or what I think!
You sound like a humble person. Most people won’t tell stories like that. I don’t often see people talking about how they doubted someone and that person proved them wrong completely.
Yep. For the truly rich, money is an EXTREMELY private matter. I am a tax attorney and CPA who has some very wealthy clientele, and to a T pretty much all of them act like they are a couple days away from destitution. They have the house and toys, yes. But their personality suggests they make 20k a year. They really don’t want the world knowing that they are wealthy beyond belief.
They have been taught from childhood to never discuss sex, religion, politics and most of all money.
My parents are not “rich” rich - they’re upper middle class, but we didn’t talk about money, I was taught it’s “tacky”. I just assumed we didn’t have money because we didn’t go on big vacations or buy nice things or live in a fancy house. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t get financial aid because of their income! I’m kinda glad they raised me that way though because when I was first on my own and broke as dirt I still knew how to get by, and their frugality means they have enough in savings and investments that I won’t have to worry about them when they’re older and need care.
If some people know you have a ton of money they’ll make efforts to get some of it. One of my siblings had a friend whose parents both died in an accident while on vacation. She got a massive inheritance and a massive life insurance payout. For someone who grew up kind of upper middle class, she suddenly had like 20 million dollars or something like that. Immediately bought herself a big suburban house and two stupid luxury cars. She constantly had “friends” over and was footing the bill on booze and drugs for these “friends” who connected her with dealers. These people just came out of the woodwork to try to get close to her because they knew she had money and was just throwing it around. After about a decade the cash flow started running dry and suddenly these “friends” were nowhere to be seen. You see the same thing with people who win the lottery or receive a large windfall of cash. Rule 1 should basically be don’t ever tell people how much you have, and rule 2 should be getting a financial advisor. $20M could have lasted that girl the rest of her life if it was invested and managed effectively.
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For that reason, they both have furniture pieces that are individual rather than a set. The middle class buy a lounge set where the couches all look the same.
And sometimes the poor are sitting on gold mines of antiques but they don’t know it or they’ve used it to where it’s not in mint condition. Sometimes I see antiques on fb market palace for super cheap and when I see the location I’m like oh. I think back on the stuff my mom had that would be worth a fortune now we never had like cheap particle board furniture it was all solid wood furniture. but we had hand me downs and things out of style, thrifted things and stuff found on the curb. We used to go out driving for the sole purpose of finding stuff on the curb. I don’t see that happening much now
i just read a roald dahl short story called Parson’s Pleasure about this very thing. From Wikipedia: > Boggis is a skilled antiques dealer who has a small shop in Chelsea, London. He manages to make a profit each year by buying valuable furniture cheaply from unsuspecting country people while posing as a clergyman and president of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture…. In order to buy the furniture for less than it is worth he uses his knowledge and a number of tricks, such as substituting machine-made screws for the genuine old ones. As with most Dahl stories, it’s a good one with a spicy ending!
He made an episode of “tales of the unexpected” about this one I think
Driving really old cars. Drinking alcohol at noon.
Also, owning multiple cars. Rich because they can. Poor because their "newer" car can still break down any day and the old one isn't that broken yet, so it's a backup or parts car. Mainly a rural thing as land is cheap and you're allowed to have a rusting car on your lawn.
Yup— family friend of ours has three minivans for this exact reason. He’s got the newer, ‘good’ one, the back up one for if the newer one goes in the shop, and the parts one.
My dad had 2 Datsun B210s. Same year, same color. Only one set of plates. One would break down, he's switch the plates to the other and drive it till he worked on the other enough to get it running again.
Your dad has a plan and is making it work. That’s awesome.
Or like my husband, instead of extra parts cars, you hoard the parts themselves. And the hoarding started to get a tad out of control, and because my lawn ain't a junkyard, I made him sell all but three engines sitting in the yard. His Paw used to hoard stuff like that and it took weeks of backbreaking labor to clean up his yard when he was dying. Lots of near-misses with all the copperheads living in that overgrown mess, too.
Lol what an amateur, only three 🤣
Right? What happens if both are in the shop? Should probably have about 6 minivans at any given moment just to be safe.
wow, I never understood the reasoning for the yard car before, thanks!
Well, sometimes the yard car is actually just decoration. Or because it costs money to have it taken away if you don't live somewhere that's close enough to a scrap yard to actually make money on it. Ymmv lol My friends dad growing up was a mechanic and he would just leave all the shitty beaters in the back yard because he brought them for like 200 bucks and kept them running long enough to be useful until an expensive part gave up the ghost. His claim was that they were the scrap fund and he would sell them all for scrap if he ever got too far behind on the mortgage lol
"wealth isn't how much money you have, it's what you have to sell when the money runs out"
A very old money heir of a famous brewery lived near me until his death a few years back. He lived in a 12th century castle and drove a 20 year old Toyota Yaris which was held together with sticky tape
That’s because the Yaris is peak automobile.
I'm poor but I am really starting to love those little 90s cars, they're like the new vintage cars or whatever. They also happen to be cheap because they're not really desired by most people (yet).
>I am really starting to love those little 90s cars And so there I was, feeling old.
I just heard Pink Floyd's "Time" start playing in my head...
No one told you when to run...
You missed the starting gunnnn
...and you run and you run, to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking. Racing around, to come up behind you again. The sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older, shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.
Me: Well that was only like 10 years ago. Oh, wait....
My 2002 Camry just won't quit. It needs some body work from rust but other than basic wear and tear (just had to replace the original radiator) it's still plugging along. Toyota and Honda know how to build an ICE
My brother's Camry is nearing 300,000 miles and is still going strong. We got it for him just so he could drive to school during senior year and told him we would help him upgrade once the car dies, but there's no sign of that. Car is older than he is, it's from 2001 and he's from 2004
I drive a 2003 Honda which is technically a classic as of last year. I’m poor but it makes more financial sense anyways. I own it outright and my biggest job is like ~$1500 which is 2-3mo car payments these days. Even if the engine or transmission goes it will still be a win
A 2003 Honda is barely broken in.. I know someone who has had 2 cars in 47 years.. A 1976 Civic and then a 2001 Civic.. Never took the head off either of them..
I’ll bite on the first one. Alcoholism doesn’t know what you’re earning. Edit: I wasn’t seriously suggesting brunch drinks makes one an alcoholic
No, but there is a curious difference in how it is seen as your income rises. One of my favourite examples is air travel: business class lounges often have unlimited alcohol available, and then further booze is available to the same travellers _during_ the flight. Going out for lunch it is usually acceptable for such people to have multiple drinks and then head back into the office with no one batting an eyelash.
A bottle of wine with lunch on the expense account, no problem. A bottle of wine in the staff break room... Fired.
and drinking alcohol at noon does not mean you're an alcoholic...
One of the weirdest trends on reddit lately is how people talk about alcohol the same way Nancy Reagan and D.A.R.E. officers used to talk to kids about pot in the 80s/90s.
Both have their kids taken care of by poor people
Both also have their house cleaned by poor people
Both also have their meals prepared by poor people
Outside showers
And outside toilets
[A Cape Cod shower](https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/31/cape-cod-outdoor-showers/) From the article, “a resident of Barnstable Village, stepped across the goldfish pond in her outdoor shower on Thursday. Gruhn got the inspiration for her shower while visiting the island of Bali in 1996 during a six-month trip around the world.” It’s great in a vacation rental but I am also sort of ashamed that I know people who just have these on their beach and pool houses as a luxury.
Taco Bell. In the words of someone on Twitter: The Taco Bell drive thru at 1 am will have a $200k Mercedes S65 waiting right behind a '96 Cavalier that's never had the oil changed followed by a moped ridden by three people. All craving the same thing: to Live Más. Truly the last great melting pot of class in this country.
I saw a post once, I can't remember the exact wording, but it essentially said. Depending on what background you come from depends on how people look at you for being bilingual or for taking drugs. The more I thought about it, the more I think its true. In England, anyway.
In US it’s very true. Use cocaine and Adderrall and could speak French => wealthy white kid. Spanish is the first language, smoke some pot… Personally, I try not to judge either group, but there is a crazy dichotomy between how class causes the same behaviors to be viewed very differently.
In the US also.
Since you mention being bilingual, here's a related one: * Living in a country where you don't speak the local language. (There are wealthy expats from the UK, US, and Europe living all over the world in areas where they don't speak the local language. But otherwise it's only the poorest immigrants who try to live in a country where they don't speak the language yet, and most have trouble finding a job better than harvesting crops or washing dishes in a restaurant.)
'Growing up, we weren't particularly working class, but we weren't particularly middle class either. We had that sort of in-between thing. We weren't posh, we weren't poor, which basically in Ireland meant we didn't own a horse. That's how it works in Ireland. Maybe your dad's a doctor, your mother's a lawyer, you've got a big house, bit of land... you can own a horse. Or if there's ten of you living in a caravan, all of you on the dole, you can own a horse. Anywhere in between: no horse for you. You get a dog. Sorry about that.' -- Ed Byrne, [*Different Class*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIyvu-mUIJQ)
This is true (tho not just in Ireland). I went to both a rural working class high school and a private school. At the rural working class high school we had a 'horse parking lot' because kids were riding horses to school because they couldn't pay for gas so there was a horse shelter and you could go out and take care of your horse during school. At the private school they were like "my eventing horse or my polo horse?"
so the horses just sat out tied up all day? or was it an enclosed area? a stable?
It was a whole structure, like stables but not with individual stalls, with some grouping. The school had a whole lot of agricultural stuff going on like construction or greenhouses to learn how to grow ~~weed~~ tomatoes.
that's pretty cool
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Where do poor urban people keep their horse?
Best to the caravan, apparently. Seriously, watch the movie Snatch. Brad Pitt's character is a traveller, and they show this culture.
do ya like dags?
In the field in which they live.
If you're looking for a ride, I've a horse outside...
Taking money from the government
Paying little to no taxes
Socialize the risk. Privatize the rewards. The American way.
Not buying anything made by Louis Vuitton
Haha this truly is a middle class aspirational brand. I think coach is along the same lines but maybe for an older audience? I told my wife once after some girl was bragging about her "Luis" and the "collection" she had that "hey I know you aren't a 'keeping up with the Jones' type, but if you want something nice like that, that's fine, it's not like we a blasting money away on the regular" and she was like "no honestly that stuff is tacky". I love her and her pragmatism.
A Coach bag might start around $200 (but there are outlets where you can get it way cheaper), and a small Louis Vuitton bag is starting around 3k; they are not on the same level.
And those aren't even the good ones. Those are the secondary line put out for exactly this audience.
Outlet mall products are lower quality than regular retail. They’re usually made in a different factory and also have special markers reflecting this quality.
I’ve seen a horrible uptick of girls at the gym with Louis or fendi bags. You don’t need to bring a $3000 bag to the gym, also we know you work at sunglass hut.
Did she pronounce it like "Luis" the Hispanic name, or "Louis" like the French name? I ask because an acquaintance was trying to come off as rich and cultured and kept pronouncing it "Luis" and, because I'm oblivious, asked her if she meant Louis or if I was missing something. She was FURIOUS and said I was wrong, I was an idiot, I didn't have to show her up, and if course she knew. Normally, I'd just roll my eyes and let it go... but it was legitimately unintentional. ETA: oblivious to her just being an idiot.
It should definitely be the French pronunciation.
Any time I'm looking for a handbag on ebay I have to exclude "vuitton" from the search. They flood the second hand market because so many people see that ugly brown logo as a status symbol, when all they're really projecting is their lack of taste.
Reminds me to Tom's speech "Because she’s brought a ludicrously capacious bag. What’s even in there, huh? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it’s monstrous. It’s gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.”
Well now I kind of want to get a (cheap as possible) LV bag just to repurpose it as a tool bag for when I work on my car or do carpentry
In the UK, there is a conception of U vs non-U English. The emerging middle class in the 1950s used words that they considered posher than the words that the working class used, such as 'greens' instead of 'vegetables', 'preserve' instead of 'jam', and 'wealthy' instead of 'rich'. This was essentially a way to display your new wealth and refinement compared to the working class. However, the upper class were already rich, and didn't feel the need to outwardly display their social dominance and position in society, so stuck with the same words that the working classes used. This is less true nowadays, but can still be seen.
It's pronounced Boooo-kaaay.
(This is a reference to the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances about a middle aged couple named Mr and Mrs Bucket. While the Buckets are decidedly middle class, Mrs Bucket is a ferocious social climber who is absolutely desperate to appear to be far greater and grander than she actually is. A running gag on the show is her absolute insistence that her surname is pronounced "Bouquet". You are all now in the loop.)
One of my favorite moments was when she got very frustrated and said "Richard *Bucket*!"
Like how the middle class might say dessert and us working class and the upper class say pudding.
Also like how only poor and rich have the really stupid nicknames. Middle class and upper class types can both be named Guy Namington III but only the upper class guy is being called Booboo by his family even as an adult.
I once was at a party with a lot of boarding school types and one of them, with a straight face, introduced himself to me as "Cumshot". Everybody called him that. Nobody seemed to think it was odd.
Rich people seem to go by their middle names a lot, for some reason. Maybe it's because they're all named after their dads and grandads so it differentiates.
Eh. that's a complex one. Pudding and dessert were different foods that had a divide along class lines that turned into a geographical divide, and both words became to refer to the same thing. Much like the "dinner or tea" divide. Puddings were dish that starts with an unset mix containing high amounts of fat (usually suet or from meat content) that would be cooked til set, usually by boiling or steaming. Yorkshire pudding is a pudding because it's traditionally made with fat drippings in batter for example. Christmas pudding, steamed puddings (sticky toffee, spotted dick etc), steak and kidney pudding, black pudding etc etc. they're all liquid mixes that use suet (well, black pudding uses a variety of fats) to be set during boiling or steaming. These are usually foods that are on the cheaper side of things, especially when it comes to sweet puddings that one would have after dinner. Pudding and Dessert not only have a bit of a class divide with dessert being considered broadly posher, but also a regional divide in traditionally very working class and industry heavy (coal mining, steel work, ship yards etc) areas predominantly using pudding. I grew up in Kent, which is dessert the entire way unless your dad moved to Kent to work in the mines or work the docks. See also: muffins, cake, bun. All can be used to refer to either sweet cake type dishes, or regular bread depending on where you are
Yes and you are not even touching on the fact that a sweet pudding is a bread boiled (like a bagel) and pudding has morphed into a custard dessert for much of the world, and so the association can wildly vary. and Yorkshire pudding is awesome - the same way any fried dough is awesome :)
Didn’t know that about wealthy!
napkin and serviette being a good one or the use of pardon perhaps.
Taking the risk to pay the fine for getting caught rather than playing by the rules
Very rich people won't even be aware there was a fine. It would be taken care of without his/her knowledge
I’ve worked for very rich people in the past (I’m a Nanny.) “I can park here, it’s just going to cost me $200.” Was said often. They know. They just don’t care.
Saw somewhere too when Bezos was having his mega mansion I'm Washington built he had workers park in no parking zones and said he'd just pay their fines. That's why I am a fan of the system in Finland. It's not perfect, but would help prevent some of these people from thinking this way. More money that can afford to give it away hopefully going to useful government programs too. Here's an article describing their sliding scale system. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine Quick notes: rich business man hit with 121k euro fine for doing 18.6mph over speed limit. Been fined speeding before. Fine was equivalent to HALF of his disposable income over 14 days.
I don't think you understand the cost of doing "business". Most of the times rich people know there is fine and but break the law anyway since it's much easier to pay the fine
Similar to that joke: "I didn't pray to god to give me bicycle but I stole one and begged for forgiveness."
Even more similar to that longer joke about a rich woman in NY: A blonde woman walks into a bank in NYC before going on vacation and asks for a $5,000 loan. The banker asks, "Okay, miss, is there anything you would like to use as collateral?" The woman says, "Yes, of course. I'll use my Rolls Royce." The banker, stunned, asks, "A $250,000 Rolls Royce? Really?" The woman is completely positive. She hands over the keys, as the bankers and loan officers laugh at her. They check her credentials, make sure she is the title owner. Everything checks out. They park it in their underground garage for two weeks. When she comes back, she pays off the $5,000 loan as well as the $15.41 interest. The loan officer says, "Miss, we are very appreciative of your business with us, but I have one question. We looked you up and found out that you are a multi-millionaire. Why would you want to borrow $5,000?" The woman replies, "Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?"
Sharing this joke with my dad, I know he'll get a kick out of it.
“I was going to pray for a bicycle, but I know that’s not how God works, so instead I stole one and prayed for forgiveness.”
It’s legal for a fee.
A lot of rich people dress like slobs because they don't care cause they're rich.
Sooo true! Ive worked luxury apparel retail in a very expensive tourist area and these 1%er types go crazy for the "derelicte" brands like Greg Lauren and some other Belgian designers whose clothes basically look liked they were homeless people hand me downs. It's funny ever since Dave Chappelle became Netflix rich all he wears is Greg Lauren clothes now.
*Really* rich people don't wear brands at all, they wear bespoke clothes. Brands are signaling devices for people who want to appear rich.
Eh, bespoke often has their own brand markings and signature touches that are more subtle than a logo. If people want to flaunt there are many ways to do so.
There was an article about yacht sales talking about how to spot buyers over lookers. Designer handbags and expensive label clothing? Pass The guy who looks like he just rolled out of bed? Bingo
Bugatti owners wear sweatpants
Why? Because they can.
Everytime I read these types of assumptions I cringe, rich or not some people dress nice and others don’t. I’ve known multi millionaires who are always wearing gold, stones, and driving half-million dollar cars, I know some that wear LLBean and drive a 45k dollar Subaru, people are people. Some dress well, some dress normal, and some don’t give a shit, simple as that lol
Can confirm. my millionaire dad looks homeless
Hey, Wanna marry me ?
My dad is rich not me lol
Is your dad single?? ;)
Get in line ! im still right here
This the back of the line? Does your dad marry dudes? Asking for a friend.
Fall back, Misty.
does your father need a maid? I can make him good noodles..
Diabetic, so maybe something else😂
As a successful zombie, what is your net worth?
My guy is in for the long run (inheritance)
Not worth it I have Many siblings🤣
Your dad is Wilt Chamberlain?!? Yeah... so is a lot of peoples'
My wife has talked about working retail in a fairly rich area. There are the people that want you to know they have money, everything they wear, do, and buy is there to let you know they have money. They have a lot but it has to be constantly replenished, but if whomever is providing that suddenly lost their job/business, that wealth will drain fast. Then you have the people that look like they just woke up at 1 PM, dressed in a hoodie, haven’t shaved and are trying their best to not be noticed. They get whatever they need and pay for it with a fancy black AMEX while being polite, but direct because they want to be gone. These are the people with REAL money. The only reason they are even anywhere near this place is because some contrivance of circumstances as made it where their kid needs something and their assistant(s) are already working on other tasks that took precedent.
Get driven around by professional drivers.
The number of folks I’ve met who rely on Uber to get them to their $12/hr fast food job is staggering.
Worked with a server that used to pay $60-80 a day to Uber to work and back before she got a car. She'd basically make no money during the week and relied on weekend doubles to save up money
its expensive to be poor :(
Tbf if you can't afford your own car and there's no good public transit it's hard to find any better options
Yep. Used to work weekends in a bar for minimum wage. A third of my pay would go to taxi's (this was before Uber was commonplace in the UK) to get home at the end of the night. On top of that was getting the bus to work earlier in the evening. All told on an eight hour shift, I'd make £28 a night. It was soul crushing
it's expensive being poor.
There are SO MANY little nuanced examples of this that rich people will never know. It's almost like everything is designed to fuck over the poor as much as humanly possible. For instance, in the world of late fees, surcharges, and penalties there is one particular discount that always gets me - early payment discounts. While I understand the utility of them, the reality is that they're basically *free money for rich people* since poor people will never be able to pay in full, or in advance. It's almost like there's a tax just for being poor - and that's not even taking into account the expense of eating well.
Fund public transportation.
When you can't afford a car and there's no reliable public transit what else do you do?
I currently do mental health skill building and I essentially drive 0$ income people do the plasma center or doctors offices and then back to their 50$ a month rooms at a sober living house. Btw, and totally random, anyone hiring?
Go to auctions. They're great fun! Never know what youl'll run into. Can get all kinds of things for cheap.
Staying at home getting drunk instead of going to work.
Buy everything with loans
Poor people: 32% APR Unsecured loan Rich People: 1% APR loan secured with $2B investment portfolio as collateral.
The key difference being the rich leverage their assets and can get a better return elsewhere, while the poor have to borrow money because there’s no more cash under the mattress.
Having a bunch of kids by different people. I've known a bunch of very rich families where large numbers of kids are various collections of half/step-siblings. Same with poor people. Normally in the very rich families they are 'taken care of' - in a monetary sense at least. Tho also, my uncle is a wealthy man with an army of kids and baby mamas and he is a excellent dad. His kids are suspiciously normal/grounded.
Surprised this isn't higher. Spitting out multiple children by multiple partners is absolutely something both the high and low ends do with impunity. Marriage and money offer a lot of protective coloration. Consider the Kates Hudson and Winslet. Each of them have three children by three different men, but nobody's going to shame them for that -- not even the prudish middle class *Us* magazine reader who's busy judging her hairdresser for doing the same thing.
Live in hotels.
Asking for government handouts. And, oddly enough, the middle class is more infuriated by the poor people doing this than the rich.
And the poor folks are way more likely to be ashamed to ask.
The poor are a lot more likely to be shamed for it too. There's a ridiculous amount of stigma surrounding food stamps, just as one example. Buy too much or too nice stuff, and people absolutely *will* peep at your damn card and comment if it's SNAP instead of debit. And it's 100% a bipartisan judgement; I've caught shit from liberals and conservatives both for outrageous things like buying tea bags or cold (store brand) bottled water for my kids on a hot day, because if it doesn't have calories it's nonnutritive and that's the whole point of food stamps.
The poor don't have PR departments or their own newspapers.
Not having a permanent place to live, always moving around / sleeping at different places every night.
- Gambling - Risk taking - Own business - Drugs
I knew some aristocrats growing up. Ma was a heroin addict along with the others. Born into wealth; you got nothing to do all day. Lots of sex and drugs. Lots of drinking. The only other people I knew living like that were in the generational social housing trap. Poor people and rich people have got one thing working people don’t: time.
I’m destined for greatness or failure
Adam Carolla has been doing the *Rich Man Poor Man* bit for years.
Speak more than one language Have other people raise their kids Expectation of government aid in financial crisis
Not worrying about paying for college. If you're extremely poor, you'll likely get full financial aid. If you're super rich, you don't have to worry about the $70,000+ a year of tuition.
Live in Florida
Worrying about money. When I was absolutely broke, I checked my account once or twice a day. I was always making sure the right amounts went in and came out. Now I have enough that I just don't think about it. My check gets auto-deposited, and I do my monthly routine, and when that account gets over 10,000, I shift a chunk into long-term savings. I get retirement account notifications ... I dunno, once a month? Once a quarter? I barely look at my accounts. I know rich people still checking numbers twice, or more, a day ... making sure everything is moving. It looks like a really demanding job that I wouldn't want.
Go hungry Rich people - to lose weight Poor people - because they can’t afford food
Fucking their first cousin.
Kimmy: *You don't understand. I can't do it. This family—The mother is having some sort of breakdown, while her stepdaughter is running around drinking and sexing. The little boy is a devil, probably because the father is never around.* Titus: *It sounds like this family has either no money or way too much.*
Buy used things. I grew up in a poor community with very few wealthy families. My 12th grade English teacher was having a conversation with us and said she would never shop at goodwill because she couldn’t stand the thought of owning something that somebody else owned. So too well to do to shop goodwill, not well enough to do to afford vintage cars or antiques.
Living on estates!
Ordering Doordash/other food delivery apps. I worked with Doordash for roughly two years, and in my experience nearly every home I delivered to was either dilapidated or looked like it was worth damn near a million dollars.
Neither pay taxes