On Being Rich
So there was this kid in middle school who I had a crush on. His family owned our city’s National League Hockey team. I didn’t like him because he owned a hockey team—I liked him because he had a blonde mushroom cut—but he possessed an appealing devil-may-care-ness that was probably due to the fact that he lived in a world in which people owned hockey teams.
That was his reality. My family owned a Subaru; his owned a hockey team.
In the world of young boys with entire hockey teams at their disposal, I was hilariously, bewilderingly, on the “poor” end of the economic spectrum. Both my parents worked full-time: my dad as a lawyer, my mom as a civil servant. We didn’t have things. My parents prioritized education and family: private schools and rental cottages on the ocean where my relatives could stay. It took me a long time to put together that those things cost money, and that we were ineffably lucky to have them. Not until I got to college—a New England liberal arts college, at that—did I realize my family was rich.
I am afraid to tell people this. I am afraid to tell you this. I regularly break a sweat digging a wide ditch between myself and what I perceive as the “other,” the trust fund, the country club, those who take advantage of their (literal) fortunes. It is hard for me to talk about money. It is hard for most people to talk about money. I think, often, it is the people who have money who are the most reticent to talk about it. I think it is a commonly held belief that people of privilege—and I am, if nothing else, privileged—could not possibly contribute to the discussion. I think acknowledging the ease with which you have passed through life is to wear a sign that says, Please do not take me seriously. And also, I might be a Republican.
Still, I think a lot about money. Example: how have I become the sort of pathological tightwad who measures her almond milk every morning to make sure her roommates aren’t using it? (I don’t actually do this. Except I sort of do.) Can a healthy relationship to money be taught? Are rich people really mean? Are “rich” and “poor” even useful designations? Or are they simply the last socially acceptable words we can use to segregate humans into different boxes?
By the numbers: I work for a literary non-profit in New York City. I make $30,000/year before taxes. I struggle together $970/month for my share of a 3-bedroom apartment, where I live with two adorably, painfully young roommates. Some friends nicknamed me “Chickpea” because once, in an attempt to save money, I ate almost exclusively canned chickpeas for a month. I have a B.A., an M.F.A., and no student loans. There’s an emergencies-only family credit card in my wallet. Its approved uses are “health and safety,” which I have interpreted to mean dental work and the odd, drunk, 3 a.m. cab ride home from Manhattan. I have been a barista, a meat-slicer in a deli, a college post-office assistant. I once bought a $275 questionably low-cut black dress because I was working for free and subsisting on shitty day-old pastries and falling in love with a guy who wasn’t my boyfriend. I left the store shaking so violently that I had to squat down in a puddle of slush and force my head between my knees. The dress picked up a slick sheen of green mold two years later in a dank, fetid, and overpriced basement apartment in D.C., and I washed it in our bathroom sink because I couldn’t afford dry-cleaning and couldn’t bear to throw it out. I don’t have a trust fund, but I do have a house in France that my parents, in a moment of jaw-dropping foolishness, bought when I was in high school. I’ve only visited a few times, because airfare is too expensive, although if I asked my parents to send me, they probably would. There is no way to say “my house in France” without sounding exactly that obnoxious, so I often lie about it, or mumble, even though truthfully it is the most beautiful place in the world, with real vineyards and evening light that could break your heart, and I want to share it with everyone. I abuse my expired student ID for theatre tickets, and buy too many books. I have referred to myself as “poor” or “broke” since I started this piece at least 17 times.
I didn’t earn this, is a thought I have often. There are certain things for which I have worked very hard, but, by and large, I have been dealt the coolest of winning hands. It is the social pariah-ness of wealth I struggle with, the almost frantic need to demonstrate that I have labored (I haven’t). I’m not the only one who feels this. I’ve forced my roots down into the community that criticizes Girls for its only-vaguely apologetic depiction of entitlement, which we’re allowed to do because we ride charming dime-store bicycles and shop at thrift stores. Some of our choices are fueled by necessity: as artists and activists, we can’t afford much more. But we’re all going out of our way to demonstrate just how little we have: If someone compliments our shoes, the reply vacillates between some version of, “Oh, they were a gift,” and “Oh, I got them on super sale, you don’t even know,” a coded way of saying life is hard for me, too. Our lives, at least aesthetically, are predicated upon the idea that we are struggling in some way. At best, we have created a culture that values experiences over goods, relationships over real estate. At worst, we are fetishizing being “poor” without understanding what that truly means.
This is all, of course, just an abstraction to me. I am an interloper in the reality I’ve falsified, one in which I can sometimes convince myself that I’m working without a safety net. It’s not that my financial background makes my life difficult. I don’t mean to say it makes my life difficult. But maybe sometimes it feels difficult, and in those moments, I resent being labeled “rich,” my life being labeled easy. And then I resent myself for resenting.
“Rich,” “poor”—I have used the words so many times that they have now sound like slurs: ugly and inescapably subjective. There are value judgments associated with each: if you’re rich, you’re devoid of compassion, un-self-aware, evil. If you’re poor, you’re uneducated, lacking ambition, a freeloader. While we can’t ignore the fact that they constitute a troubling and growing disparity, what do these words mean, exactly, when some people own whole countries and others can’t afford water? In those terms, how can we even bear to utter them?
As for the afore-mentioned almond milk dilemma: If my relationship to money is unhealthy—and let’s say that it is—how did I end up this way? I was raised to understand that money is tenuous, and that it follows hard work (well, hard work and the luck of being able to pursue a job to which society has assigned financial value). Money came into your life only after you left the house in the morning, before your children were awake, and you had to stay out all day and sometimes all night, and it was there in the weight of their bodies in your arms as you carried your children up the dark stairs, from where they fell asleep while waiting for you—that weight meant work was being done, and you would be rewarded in kind. This narrative has become a sort of social security blanket: My parents worked for what they have. No one can fault them for that.
I have levied shame at my dad over the years for what I perceived as his excess—the tiny, stupid car he bought himself on his 50th, for example. But my dad once took the night shift at a halfway house for teens in downtown Toronto, lived in apartments with shoddy electrics that he haphazardly wired himself, worked his way through law school. My fiercest and purest memories of him are of sitting on my parents’ bed as he unloaded his suitcase after a long business trip, gifting to my brother and me the shampoo bottles from hotel bathrooms with labels in strange languages, or the eye masks from transatlantic flights. Neither of my parents had the luxury, as I do, of following a passion—they chose the careers they did because they offered security, the financial equivalent of wall-to-wall carpeting: boring but sturdy. There was an element of sacrifice in most all of my parents’ decisions, and that sacrifice was made to give me the luxuries I now bemoan. In that context, dismissing my parents’ desire to provide me with comfort—a higher level of comfort than I have earned on my own—seems like a slap in the face.
These issues swirl around me as, at 28, I begin my slow march towards financial independence, which for me primarily means choosing what I will and will not accept: yes to flights home for Christmas, no to rent subsidies. When I imagine my very imaginary children, and try to imagine what I might teach them about what it means to have imaginary money (which might always remain imaginary, considering my “career”) or even what it means to be born into a country in which they are, by simply being, privileged, I wonder if I will rely on the narrative that makes it possible for me to accept the incredible and inessential gifts I have been given: Someone worked hard to give you these things, and they are rare, and fleeting. Now feel guilty. Now get up, and go do something good.
Meghan Nesmith tweets her feelings. She’s also fostering two cats in need of homes. Want one? Photo: Flickr/Meanest Indian
If someone compliments our shoes, the reply vacillates between some version of, “Oh, they were a gift,” and “Oh, I got them on super sale, you don’t even know,” a coded way of saying life is hard for me, too.
So very true. Even on this site, where commenters are very open about their thoughts about money, I’ve seen this (and been guilty of it) on the Monday Check-in posts. “I spent $75 on groceries on Saturday, but there was literally nothing in my fridge!” It’s like we feel the need to justify every penny we spend because we don’t want to appear too “rich.”
This is a little bit familiar to me – my grandparents were/are quite well off, I am …. not at all. It IS a weird, awkward thing, and I think you explain it well here.
I am just more than a little concerned about that “you might be a Republican” thing.
Yeah, that was a weird aside. Everything after it gave no indication of Republicanism.
@Reginal T. Squirge – I don’t think she’s saying she’s a Republican, I think she’s saying that talking about the privilege she’s grown up with sometimes makes people assume that she’s a Republican.
@sockhopbop That’s what I was hoping?
@cherrispryte I read it the way Dr. hopbop did, and it totally didn’t feel weird (except that it was a very concrete bit of political-ness in what otherwise seemed a fairly apolitical piece).
It makes sense because I’ve had that gut reaction when learning that a new acquaintance has money/came from money; my brain says “oh! more likely to be a Republican than s/he was 30 seconds ago.”
I liked this post. It’s hard to draw a line for how far back your ancestors’ hard work is allowed to count. Like, my parents worked really hard and lived poor so it’s ok if I benefit from that but it’s not ok if my great-great grandparents were dirt poor but then made a shedload of money so nobody ever had to work hard after that.
@Reginal T. Squirge As a poor kid with an elite education, I think this has more to do not with whether you can lay claim to tangible assets, but with the kind of cultural capital you’ve acquired as a result of what your family’s had. It’s. It that your GGPs were poor but then weren’t–it’s that certain attitudes and expectations generated by weath have had a longer history in your family and have become less conscious.
@mean terry gross body shamer Cultural capital is why you’re still rich even when you’re broke.
I have a lot of thoughts about class in this country, and how it exists but we like to pretend that it doesn’t, but the main thing I want to say here is the difference between “broke” and “poor.” I think poor is more of a marker of class, while broke can be temporary. The author, making $30K in NYC, is legitimately broke, but still upper class because of her parents.
@Lily Rowan There’s a reason we say “socio-economic class”. It’s not just money that determines it.
@tales Absolutely. Somewhat relatedly, if we were laying out class in the US (which is what I thoughtlessly meant by “this country” above), I would propose an academic class, which could encompass a lot of your underemployed people with advanced degrees.
@Reginal T. Squirge It’s funny because the English version of class is much more realistic than ours.
Also, the phrase you guys want is “social capital” not “cultural capital.”I was wrong, turns out sociology and economics use different words for the same thing!@Lily Rowan How about: Rich, bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, working class. Sorted.
@mean terry gross body shamer “As a poor kid with an elite education, I think this has more to do not with whether you can lay claim to tangible assets, but with the kind of cultural capital you’ve acquired as a result of what your family’s had.”
Absolutely. Even though my husband and I were both from working class backgrounds, I had the advantage of having parents who made sure that they moved to an area with great public schools. My husband’s parents were bastards who didn’t care, so not only did he get a terrible education but he was actually stabbed once at school.
@Lily Rowan I loved your point about “poor” vs. “broke” and just how hard it is to get your mind around class in America. America doesn’t make it easy for us, because we are so wedded, culturally speaking, to the story of the disadvantaged person who works hard and becomes rich (and/or President).
So someone who’s broke, as you define it, can recover and become part of that story. But the person who is poor is stuck. And if they don’t conform to the storyline, it’s their fault. Because, you know, personal responsibility/model minority/free public education/Abraham Lincoln.
Are rich people mean? No, but scholars like Richard Sennett have suggested pretty compellingly that the more resources one has, the less communally-oriented one’s mentality becomes.
@mean terry gross body shamer It’s an interesting chicken and egg question isn’t it? Sociopathic tendencies (combined with luck and cunning) can help make one wealthy, which can lead to isolation, and then a certain amount of paranoia. Or maybe they are traits that tend to co-exist, encourage, and feed off of one another.
Disclaimer: One of my favorite people in the world is a wealthy former boss of mine that volunteers for a community free clinic and speaks out for access to health care for all.
Out of curiosity, when you say “I do have a house in France that my parents, in a moment of jaw-dropping foolishness, bought when I was in high school,” do you mean that literally this house in France is in your name, or do you meant “I have” as “my family has, and I can use it when I want if I clear it in advance with other interested parties?” If the former, girl, get some rental income from it, ain’t no shame in that.
@jfruh That said, if it’s the latter (which is to say that it belongs to her parents), I think she might want to consider why she made that slip. It’s interesting that, in an essay that works so hard to differentiate between what is hers and what is her parents, the author would call something that belongs to her parents her own. That, to me, is what can be so annoying about rich people: the cherry picking. There actually is a word for being able to choose which privileges to accept (the flights home and to the house in France), and which ones to leave on the table. That word is “genteel poverty.”
@jfruh & madrassoup
I was very interested in that part, too. I call it “my dad is the one with the money.” Which could very well be the same thing as genteel poverty.
@madrassoup That sentence pulled me up, too. But the combination of “I have” with “my parents…bought” struck me not as a slip at all, but as a way of provoking in the reader the very response you and l’esprit de l’escalier are recording: how can the child really claim to detach herself from the parent? Where do the rich stand in relation to the Great American Story of the self-made man/woman? And is this even an important question, or just the type of thing that only the congenitally rich person can afford to think about?
In other words, this essay is continually undermining itself in really complex and beautiful ways. Another moment that struck me in that same sentence is the dismissal of the parents’ purchase as “jaw-dropping foolishness.” Later in the essay, Nesmith unfolds how tricky it is for her to judge her parents for wanting and working to give their children a better life.
It’s also striking that she doesn’t seek to minimize how awesome the France house is (unlike the shoes bought on “super sale”). Quite the opposite: “the most beautiful place on earth, with real vineyards and evening light that could break your heart.”
Sorry this is veering off-topic from your specific response, but one the most arresting things about this essay is how it acknowledges that the rich enjoy not just material and social privileges, but also have unique access to experiences of intense beauty.
I certainly grew up comfortably in the upper echelons of the middle class but both of my parents have a strict code of monetary appearance that has definitely been passed down to me. My mother is the product of Germanic farming stock, the kind that keeps a beautiful garden and house but prefers to shop at Farm & Fleet instead of the mall. My father grew up quite poor in a trailer on the outskirts of a wealthy little town, the unfortunate result of my grandfather’s early death. He’s been a successful business owner for the past 30 years but still likes to drive the shittiest car in the lot and much to my mother’s chagrin wears sweatpants with a belt when going into town to get groceries. I don’t shy away from my relative wealth to such an extent but I still am wearing my 1994 Timex watch because the fancy one my father gave me on my 21st is “too showy for every day.”
I get really annoyed when rich people talk about how annoying it is to be rich. Yes, I understand that it can make things weird when people (falsely) assume things about you or friends resent you, but guess what: you’re still rich.
You don’t have to worry about whether or not you can afford to feed yourself this week, or defaulting on your student loans (because you likely don’t have any, or you have very few), or not having nice enough clothes for your job interview (which could cost you said job), and on top of all of that, you get to do mostly everything that you want to do!
I think it’s great that you recognize your privilege, but how about turning that into something other than, “Feel sorry for me because things are weird sometimes!”
@klemay Yes, people that can actually buy food should feel guilty, like, all the time.
“I think it’s great that you recognize your privilege, but how about turning that into something other than, “Feel sorry for me because things are weird sometimes!””
Turning that into what? An example, please?
@navigateher You completely misunderstood me! I’m not saying that people who can afford things should feel guilty… I’m saying they should stop trying to make people feel sorry for them, because life is pretty great.
And if you recognize your privilege, you can say things like “I’m really lucky to be in the position that I’m in, but I recognize that others don’t have it as easy.” Or, even if you are dealing with some guilt: “Sometimes I feel guilty for the privilege I have, but I also recognize that I am lucky to have these advantages in life.” Either way, you should be asking what you can do to work toward a society in which you don’t have to feel guilty because everyone has a fair shot.
Asking people who aren’t burdened with your wealth to feel sorry for you is incredibly insensitive, and not productive in the least. And those of us who aren’t lucky enough to have parents who subsidize our rent are not going to want to hear it.
@klemay But I don’t think she was asking everyone to feel sorry for her, or that she didn’t recognize her privilege? I think she wrote a lot about not flaunting her money around her not so privileged friends, and feelings of not deserving her wealth, too. It’s just a fact that being rich can make things weird for you (although I wouldn’t say I was actually rich growing up, more like well-off I think?), and saying it out loud should not be a shame. This article was about that weirdness. I don’t think talking about negative feelings equals trying to make people feel sorry for you.
Maybe I’m just frustrated because to me, it feels like every time someone talks about this, there are so many people telling “you should be more grateful / stop whining / donate / volunteer / be more sensitive towards people with less money / etc.”, but just because all that wasn’t mentioned right here right this second it doesn’t mean the person is not doing all those things. They’re just not what the particular article was about.
@navigateher
“It’s just a fact that being rich can make things weird for you (although I wouldn’t say I was actually rich growing up, more like well-off I think?), and saying it out loud should not be a shame. ”
That’s the very thing I’m talking about. Saying that you face “shame” for talking about wealth is trying to prove that you suffer just like everyone else… but when you weigh that shame against all the other advantages you have in life, it’s just damn insensitive. It’s like men who complain about women crossing to the other side of the street instead of remaining on the sidewalk with them– sure, it might hurt your feelings, but you still get to be a dude who doesn’t have to worry about getting raped while you walk home.
@klemay And like I said downthread… if you want to exchange that shame/frustration for my shitty wage and a family that can’t afford to help you out, I’d be happy to talk. ;)
@klemay So what’s the income level at which one is allowed to express negative feelings? I might legit just not understand what you’re saying, but it sounds a lot like the good old “at least you have food, stop whining, people who don’t have clothes don’t want to hear about your ‘hardship’” dismissal.
@navigateher It’s not a specific income level, it’s the point at which you have everything you need, most of what you want, and parents who can fill in the rest of the gap.
And that’s not to say you can’t be bummed out because you can’t afford everything you want– that’s a thing we all have in common! But complaining about the “shame” you face because of your money is just insensitive and not productive. (I feel like we’re not understanding each other, because I think I typed this three times already. Hopefully this provides more context?)
@klemay But does expressing her feelings necessarily have to be “productive”, and if yes, is it because she’s wealthy? We all know the struggling and “struggling” people have written about their feelings over and over again here at The Billfold and it has been argued that they should be able to express frustration about not being able to afford a nice apartment or fancy meals without people judging or throwing the “get a better job, stop whining, not constructive” card. Why can’t it work the other way around?
Meanwhile, in the 65 minutes it took to have this conversation, Lloyd Blankfein made more than $2,000.
@navigateher I’m more worried about the “insensitive” part than the “not productive” bit. I do think that if you are a person of privilege (whether that be race, socioeconomic status, gender, etc) expressing an opinion, you do have a responsibility to be sensitive about it… or at the very least, you have to accept that you’re going to be called out for your insensitivity.
@klemay Maybe this is again a sensitivity issue that I don’t understand because we simply don’t have it here. In here, not saying “poor me, it’s so hard to have so much money” in front of your poor friends or wondering which expensive handbag to buy when your friend is wondering if she’ll make rent next month would count as sufficient sensitivity. Another thing we don’t traditionally have: a culture of showing off wealth (there are jokes like “how do you know if someone won a national lottery? They buy a first class ticket to a train”, which just about sums it up.) What we do have though is a freedom to express your views and feelings in a public forum regardless of your socioeconomic status, race, gender, political views, religion, bank balance or choice of beverage.
@navigateher And with that freedom comes the reality that others are going to disagree with you, and call you out when you’re being inappropriate or insensitive. Granted, those people should disagree respectfully, but disagreeing is not the same as taking away someone’s right to expression.
@navigateher Where is this exactly?
@stuffisthings Finland.
@navigateher Yeah, you’re probably not going to get the entire issue then. And I’m really only saying that because I’m jealous.
Your roommates are almost definitely drinking your milk.
Also: “Are “rich” and “poor” even useful designations?” Yes!
@melis Yeah, that and its follow up “Or are they simply the last socially acceptable words we can use to segregate humans into different boxes?” were my main problem with this article. Like, we don’t say “rich” and “poor” because they meaningfully reflect opportunities and oppressions in people’s lives but are rather… what? Is calling someone “rich” just prejudice? That’s incredibly stupid. Incredibly stupid.
@melis Here’s a handy definition: you are rich if you have access to significantly more money/resources than most people in your society. You are poor if you have access to significantly less money/resources than most people in your society, or if you can’t afford the basic necessities of life. Easy!
@stuffisthings you’re way less good at defining terms and social strata than you think you are, bro.
@mean terry gross body shamer Typical bourgeois reaction.
@mean terry gross body shamer No, I think thats that’s quite concise, for the purposes of this dicussion.
@Kevin Knox@facebook S/he is probably referring to upthread where I forgot that in Bourdieu’s original definition “cultural capital” actually includes social capital as a sub-category. I tend to think of cultural capital as things like knowing which fork to use, having a posh accent, or the prestigiousness of one’s university degree, versus, say, daddy’s connections and resources (social capital) or the actual skills and knowledge learned at university (what economists call human capital, I don’t know how Bourdieu would classify it), which tend to more directly affect someone’s economic situation, which is the topic of this blog and what we talk about when we talk about “rich” and “poor.”
Or maybe it was my proposed class definitions above. Either way, I think Lenin’s maxim about “the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital” applies: they “consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.”
I grew up not “poor,” (because while my Mom’s family was solidly working-class, my Dad’s family was educated upper middle-class and had plenty of cultural capital) but certainly money- and food-insecure. In my earliest years we subsisted on one enlisted soldier’s income as my parents struggled to pay off a boatload of debt (for dinner we sometimes had MREs my dad brought home from work). When I was 13 my dad retired from the Army and started making really good money in the private sector. Within a few years we went from “dinner out at McDonalds once a month” to “let’s go to a theme park like it’s NBD.”
I went to a good public high school and a fancy private college (as a first-generation college student, technically– neither of my parents went, though Dad’s siblings all have advanced degrees). Now at 25, I’m making about the same salary my dad made at the end of his military career. He was the sole income earner for a wife and 5 kids; I’m childless and in a two-income household. I’m rich. I suppose the real question now is, what am I going to do about it?
@cuminafterall Be proud of yourself for getting through college and landing a job that pays well… while remembering that you had advantages in life (parents eventually making good money/good high school/fancy private college) that many others don’t. If you can afford to give to charity, do so. If not, enjoy your hard-earned money and don’t write blog posts about how being rich makes you sad. (If being rich does make you sad, let’s work something out. I’d be happy to switch financial portfolios.)
@klemay “don’t write blog posts about how being rich makes you sad”
Maybe it’s just like the millions of whiny woe-is-me blog posts about not being able to afford to eat out because you want to be an artist and not something as degrading as, you know, a barista? Obnoxious, I know.
@navigateher uhh, what blog posts are you talking about? As you yourself said, an example, please?
@klemay Did I sound sad? I’m not. I’m grateful, and slightly surprised. Especially with the economy I graduated into, I expected my young adulthood to be a time of privation, like my parents’ was; it hasn’t been. I’m just stating where I’m at: I’m trying to figure out what to do about money. Which I think a lot of us are.
@navigateher Um, what about those of us who don’t want to be an artist, but who also don’t have an in at a law firm or investment bank? You don’t have to be working as an artist or barista to not be able to make ends meet.
@cuminafterall I was just kidding with you… I think it’s great that you’re trying to be responsible about the ethics surrounding your financial situation!
I find it interesting to think about how economic inequality distorts the lives of wealthy people, and even causes them psychic harm. An extreme example: I was once expressing my admiration for the French Revolution when my girlfriend pointed out that the royal family didn’t choose to be born royalty, any more than the population chose them as their leaders. But nevertheless, they had to go. When inequality gets to such a level and becomes so deeply entrenched, it gets to be pretty bad for the people on top as well the people on the bottom.
@stuffisthings
I really can’t work up any sympathy for those who didn’t “choose” but benefit handsomely from inequality. As they say, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
@City_Dater It’s hard for me as well but I recognize that there’s often not much that individuals can realistically do about their inherited position. The children of billionaires, like the children of aristocrats, can never be normal. No matter what they or their parents do. Even if they give away all their money, no path or calling in life is going to be realistically barred to them (if they later decide giving away every penny was a bad decision, for example, they can always get an easy $1 million advance for a book about their story, or go on a reality show, or call up one of daddy’s old friends for a job at his company). Like the transaction between a beggar and the person giving him a dollar, the whole arrangement chips away at the humanity of everyone involved.
Raymond Chandler once wrote “There ain’t no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.” I’d say there’s no clean way to HAVE a hundred million bucks, if millions of your fellow humans have nothing. But once you’ve got it, giving it away doesn’t make you clean. And it doesn’t clean up the system that allowed you to get it.
In any case, the situation at hand is a person being very humble and self-aware about what sounds like a relatively modest amount of unearned privilege. What would you have HER to do to be part of the solution?
@stuffisthings Heh, I forgot the conclusion to that quote. “Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It’s the system.”
@stuffisthings
No disrespect intended to the writer, but this piece made me think of the people who make $150,000 a year and think they they are part of the 1% top tax bracket.
Her parents worked hard and made a very good living for themselves (though I’m guessing they aren’t in the 1% either); they have been generous with her, but she is now an adult who is earnestly trying to pay her own way on a entry-level non-profit salary, though on some level she knows she can always ask for help from her generous parents, who luckily can still afford to help her. For now. She’s not rich. The kid whose parents own a hockey team is rich.
@City_Dater They own a vacation house in France. That they bought on a wim. And it has VINEYARDS. If that’s not rich, then I don’t know what is.
@City_Dater Also, I think a family making $150,000 a year is at least in the top 5%? It’s not stratospheric rich, like, you still have to keep working, you can’t retire after a few years of $150k, and you’re probably not going to buy a Ferrari, but it’s still rich enough (unless you’re in Manhattan or San Fran, maybe?) that all of the necessities are within your grasp, you can send your kids to expensive colleges, and you can take awesome vacations. So, still rich! IMHO.
@stuffisthings If her dad’s a lawyer (private practice with no student debt) and her mom’s a civil servant, they make way more than 150,000 dollars. Just sayin’. (and the house in France, the free education for her, the free family credit card… forever? etc.) No, no one can help where they’re born, but I found all the tiptoeing “I’m not rich!” business to be really condescending to the “rest of us.” Sort of on the same level as people saying they went to school “outside of Boston,” or “in New Haven” because the rest of us plebes can’t handle hearing the amazingly impressive real names of the colleges they went to. We can handle knowing you have rich parents, it’s ok.
Another billfold commenter (forget who – sorry!) made an interesting comment the other day that talking about finance is one time in particular when you might actually want to hear what privileged people have to say, because presumably, they know something about it (recognizing on the other hand that some people just inherit wealth and for that reason don’t know anything about it). But because of these “weird feelings” so much time is spent equivocating that the message can get lost. Maybe?! Maybe.
I agree with what other people are saying that spending all your time talking about guilt, shame, blah blah blah is not really all that useful! So I guess I kind of felt like this was trying to summarize all those weird feelings at once so that the next article from somebody who grew up rich can just point back to this and get on with whatever else they’re trying to say about money.
No, you aren’t poor.
Being poor is waking up a few times every night to put wood into your wood burning stove because your house does not have heat.
Being poor is sometimes waking up with your toilet frozen over and no running water in your house because you forgot to wake up and feed the heater in the middle of the night.
Being poor is constantly having everyone remind you that you are poor, every day at school. Thanks, all of you geniuses out there- like I didn’t already know!
Being poor and then becoming rich is the best revenge.
@Mary I thought it was when you’re laid in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall?
(Smoking some fags and playing some pool is the best revenge.)
@Mary There are lots of different valid definitions of poor out there, and they don’t all necessarily involve wood burning stoves.
@cherrispryte Yeah I was like, there are poor people in the tropics reading this post, and then looking at their unfrozen toilet, and then realizing that they don’t even have a computer. Or a toilet. So how did they even do that? It must have been a dream!
@stuffisthings “You want to live like common people?” was the first thing that popped into my head when I started reading this.
Can we all agree to eliminate the term “upper middle class” from America, though? Put it on an ice floe.
@deepomega It’s really too bad David Brooks ruined the term “bobo” because that’s what they use in France.
@deepomega Americans, more than any other industrialized nation, misperceive their class status as being lower than it actually is, hence the use/abuse of this term.
@deepomega
I don’t even know what it means, really.
@l’esprit de l’escalier It means “My parents were middle class but not, like, fireman middle class.”
I don’t think the class distinction is based on how much actual money you have or have access to, but more about having some feeling that there is a safety net behind you, and that’s where cultural capital is relevant. I’m a lawyer, and so I have years of education and a certain skill set that makes it possible to participate in a world that is closed off to a lot of other people, and that’s a world where a lot of opportunities live. Your family can give you admission to that world, or you can get it through marriage or probably in other ways (graduating from certain elite institutions, for instance). You can be broke and live in that world, but you’re still breathing rarefied air in there, because a lot of people don’t have anything to fall back on and you, by the very fact of whatever it is that got you in there, do. Now, what kinds of feelings all that entitles you to have/blog about is a question I’m not even going to touch…
I couldn’t possibly count the number of times in my childhood my parents told me we were poor. And I believed it, because my rich cousins traveled all around the world and I had only been on vacation once. Because my friend K lived in a new two-story house and my friend C had every single item in the American Girl Molly doll collection, and I didn’t. But I still got American Girls, albeit with clothes my mom made herself, and my mom still shopped for the things she wanted, and my dad still made sure we were among the first families to have personal computers and a separate CD-ROM reader as soon as they were invented. I had friends whom I was richer than, and I could tell by the oddnesses of their homes or families. Here in California public schools, there was always a clear division between the white kids and the Mexican ones. It wasn’t until late adolescence that I realized my parents had been distorting the truth all along — a realization spurred by my family losing most of the financial footing they’d had during those flush “poor” years of my childhood.
One wonders at what point changes in wealth directly changes one’s class. I felt it when my white parents reached their sixties and instead of talking about retiring, talked about being unemployed. When my mom asked me to move home so I could help pay for the mortgage, and after I got there, my parents asked me for thousand-dollar-plus loans (out of my unemployment) to stave off foreclosure. When my public school line was left behind as we started frequenting our local low-cost health clinic, staffed and patronized almost entirely by Latinos. When I sat in our backyard the other day and suddenly saw the falling down fence, rotted basketball hoop, two rusted chairs, pile of wood from our arbor which collapsed, and laundry lines we’ve been using because the dryer broke.
Downwardly class mobile or just part of the depression? Don’t know. I do know I’m much more aware of my privileges and middle-class-ness than ever, and I’m glad to be, because that’s the only position in which I can do something about it. I think it’s valuable for us to talk about our funny money feelings. To be honest about what we have and what we lack — to speak privilege is the first step to dismantling it. Growing up believing I was poor didn’t help me be a better lower-middle-class person, although it did make the last eight or so years darkly funny. It did help me harbor resentment and judgement and -isms. It did help me feel authentic as a teenage punk and got myself a pink mohawk in 2002.
And my rich cousin has one now, too.
(It’s cultural appropriation either way.)
Sorry if I’m slow but I’m not sure what you are trying to convey with this post or what you want us to gain from it. Are you unsure of your social status? Are you complaining about labels? Do you want pity for having common troubles or praise for having a “funny feeling” about your privilege? OK so didn’t grow up rich compared to the guy with the parents that owned the hockey team but you are definitely privileged and I’m not sure why you have to be ashamed of or embarrassed by it. It’s just a fact of your life. And it doesn’t sound like you are currently poor. You sound broke to me and in need of a budget.
I liked this piece. To me, it didn’t read as asking for sympathy or minimizing the positives of having money. It was more a thoughtful meditation growing up with money and the impact that has.
One of the things I like most about the Billfold is how it features writing on all aspects of money: having it, not having it, losing it, budgeting it. Not every piece has to have a useful takeaway for your life. Sometimes it’s just interesting to get in someone’s head and hear their thoughts on money.
@TheclaAndTheSeals this.
@TheclaAndTheSeals: I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment. I agree completely that this piece was more of a meditation on past experiences and their impact on the author’s present mindset. I also share your love of the Billfold for the same reasons you articulate. Personally, I think this article is awesome because it generated 73 comments over the course of almost 24 hours (no small feat for a new blog). Cheers to the author and Billfold. You certainly found yourself a hot-button topic with this piece!
@TheclaAndTheSeals I liked this as well. It doesn’t read like she’s asking for pity or sympathy. It reads like she recognizes that she has been incredibly privileged. No, being privileged and/or wealthy is not a great burden, but I do think it’s important to have the grace to recognize that being lucky (in inherited wealth or otherwise) is a great thing but no measure of one’s worth. Having grace about what one’s been given (whether it’s parents who valued education, parents who were able to pay for college, a house in France, or anything else) is not the same as crying poor little me over it.
With all the unrest in the world, I don’t think anybody should have a yacht that sleeps more than twelve.
I definitely relate to this. In ’68 my parents got a great deal on a falling down fixer in what was to become a very very wealthy neighborhood during the next decade. I was born in ’71 and lived in that house until I was 17. We weren’t poor by any stretch, but we were nowhere near the income or social strata of our neighbors. I was known as the poor kid at school because our house was about 1/3 the size of any others on our street, my mom made my clothes, we drank powdered milk at home, and my family only had one car and no horses. (I KNOW.)
I’ve never been hungry. I’ve never not had heat. I did actually drop out of high school (mostly because I never fit in and I was bored), but was able to work my way back into college when I was ready to go. (Love the old CA community college system.) My life has been privileged all the way, and I can see that now. But not having anything close to what the people you see every day do have can make you feel pretty wretched, and “poor” relatively speaking.
I talked to my parents about it a few years ago, and they regret buying that house now. They stretched and scrimped so they could live there and my sister and I could go to the “great schools” – which really weren’t, and I didn’t get to experience everything on offer because we couldn’t afford to keep up with what the neighbors could do. If they had bought a place in the totally safe perfectly middle class neighborhood a few miles away, the schools would have been fine, and I would have fit in better socially.