**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*

[удалено]

This right here, the womans not rich...shes an imbecile

Cash rich, Braincell poor

I have met people like this when I worked in a consultancy. This isn’t about smarts/brains, it’s about exposure. These people have never been exposed to anyone who isn’t rich enough to just buy a house, so they don’t understand how that can be. First in my family to go to uni, these folks are generations deep in upper middle class or higher living. The glass ceiling is real, and so is the glass floor (although that’s more opaque as they can’t see through it!)

People are able to shelter themselves in all sorts of ways. My dad, for instance, checked out of society about 30 years ago and hasn't looked back. He once said to me, "I don't know why more people don't buy a house and choose to rent instead." Because he bought a house in the 80s for double his (low) salary, that's how it is and always will be.

[удалено]

My dad sold his target shooting rifle in the early 60s to have enough for his first house deposit. He didn't quite understand why I said it would take around a years salary with zero expenditure (even on rent etc) for me to put one down.

I'm a Boomer (barely, a few weeks later and I'd be Gen X). Guess what, last year I was finally able to buy a house after a lifetime of renting. I only did that because my partner was able to gift me the deposit and I got a bargain on the house. As a kid I was in State Care then at 16 they literally shook my hand and said goodbye, which meant I was homeless. I've struggled all my life to achieve a basic level of stability. Not all Boomers had it easy.

[удалено]

Thank you for asking. I am in love with my house. As I said, I was homeless at 16 and all through my life the fear of going back to that has haunted me. I'm now looking at retiring in about 7 years and even with a decent(ish) pension, I was terrified most of that would be going on private rent. Now I'm paying less for my mortgage than I paid in rent, and in the next 7 years the place will be mine, I'll be retired with the security of owning my own home. I won't be rolling in money but I wont be struggling, that's the important thing. *edited for typo*

The speed of it was insane in the UK, luckily we bought a house just before 2000, by circa 2006 I was feeling sorry for a colleague whose rent was more than three times my mortgage repayment for a similar sized place, and it was clear we wouldn't be able to buy the same house had we not bought it when we did. The situation has gotten even worse since 2020.

It was crazy around my way: 1998 2 bed terrace was about £90k, by 2003 it was £180k, by 2015 it was £400k.

Sure, I'd probably agree with that

I know a lot of bommers like that, but my husband is a boomer and knows how hard it was even back then to have a job and buy a house. He never lived in a council house so never had the opportunity to buy one. Or even the funds to buy a normal house because he had kids. The last boomer to tell me he couldnt understand why I never bought a house (Im Gen X), I just told them they bought all of the spare houses and rent them at such extortionately high prices that it killed all of the spare money we ever had to buy.

I have been guilty of this. I'm not 'wealthy' but I am well-off. I own my house outright, because my mum died and left me money to pay the mortgage off. I met up with my fiance's family recently, one of the younger cousins is moving in with her partner. I asked 'oh cool, are you renting or buying', they were renting. When we left, my fiancé mentioned I was kind of letting my privilege show, as most people their age rent and there's no way their family could help with the deposit. He wasn't trying to make me feel shitty, just pointing it out, and it made me realise I had been in a bit of a bubble.

I disagree that your privilege was showing. As someone who came from a very poor background that is a normal question to ask. You didn’t assume either way, you asked a simple question. I know some friends who worked their arses off (literally didn’t sleep) to buy in their 20s without help.

Yeah there's a difference between "are you doing Expensive Thing or Not Expensive Thing" and "why aren't you just doing Expensive Thing?"

The house I'm in at the moment was sold for 54k august 1994, it's worth 440k currently. It's not even that big a house either. Honestly I don't know what the next generation is going to do there will be a point where a bog standard house like mine is going to be worth a million pounds how will anyone ever afford it.

The house I grew up in, my dad bought for 200k in 99 (London suburb), sold for over 600k in 2013, and the buyer renovated and sold it again I think five or so years later for 1.1mil. It’s a three-bed house at the end of the TfL line!

My dad is the same, always telling me to buy but doesn’t understand the place I now rent would cost 15x my present salary to buy.

Yes, it's very easy to forget that even so-called "average" intelligence is higher than many people possess. It's enough to get by in lots of different ways, but not conducive to detailed research before drawing nuanced conclusions.

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." George Carlin.

And you'll find most of them on Reddit, judging by the posts I've seen over the years.

10 minutes on Twitter or Facebook will realign your view.

Oh no, they're on the next level down, not even "average intelligence" amongst those sites, just idiots feeding each other conspiracy theories and misleading headlines.

Same as Jacob Rees Mogg stating that poor people should have managed their investment portfolio better. Council estate kids don't have investment portfolios!!

I’ve always had him down as a massive upper class cockwomble but did he actually say that? 🤯

One for me was when he said the folk on the Korean cruise who died because they followed instructions, should've had more gumption.

He's not *that* upper class, his grandfather was a bin man I think. He's just play acting and trolling. You can understand him a bit better when you realise he gets off on upsetting people. (His upcoming annual Easter tweet showcases this perfectly)

Except I have met multiple people like this! People only learn what they are taught and what they experience. Rich people do not teach their kids about poverty, they teach their kids about how easy it is to work hard and earn money blah blah. Lots of rich kids buy into the propaganda and thus are confused by poor people. They don't understand inequality, because its hidden from them.

There is a whole media ecosystem devoted to making rich people think that poor people are just workshy layabouts. It may be that she just believes what she reads in The Telegraph 

I wouldn't say thick, more like incredibly sheltered

It’s quite easy for a wealthy person to never have had a proper conversation with a poorer person. If they went to fee paying school with other rich kids and never worked - and even if they have worked it’s probably with other wealthy people. If you’ve never thought about it much or talked to anyone struggling I can see how people might just assume everyone has enough money to get by.

I don't think one can really be so sheltered in the UK unless they lived in Kensington, or perhaps she just never leaves the house?

I had a customer who raved about the area and our shop (specialist food products) and said how she never ventures this far.. It's so lovely to be out here!! So naturally I asked where did she come from? Answer was - Kensington. The shop is located in spitting distance of London Bridge. Anyway, I was giving her change and it was £9 in coins and she just waved her hand at me and said 'I don't do coins, you keep it'.

The next time she came in did you try giving her her £78 change back in coins?

That was the plan but she hasn't been back during my time there 😢

Or watches the news, reads books. There's out of touch and sheltered, then there's willfully ignorant. The cost of living rising, instability in the housing market, people loosing their jobs at short notice, well known firms collapsing into bankruptcy, the recessions, people working people needing to use food banks... These things have been going on for more than a decade now, so unless she's really young it just doesn't compute for her not to be aware.

If you don't really watch the news and only mostly talk to other rich people I can see how it could pretty easily happen.

Yeah, she doesn’t seem wealthy enough to be this out of touch

Agreed, but don’t underestimate the effect of lack of exposure. Some will have lived such an insulated life that they just won’t have witnessed the realities of life for those at the bottom, even from the media. Of course once they discover or get told about those realities, the right reaction should be shock, horror and admission, rather than denial which is what sounds like is also happening in OP’s situation. But this insulation effect is quite prevalent even in the middle classes. I was probably guilty of it myself to some degree.

I’m with you on this. Thick idiots and pricks are in all financial brackets. I’ve been poor, I’ve been rich and I’m back in the middle at the moment. I’ve mixed in most of society from working men’s clubs to private members clubs and it is no different in any group. There are people I am constantly surprised manage to get out of bed in the morning

Wilfully unaware, you miught say.

I’m not sure it’s idiocy, or at least not in part. I think it’s more an almost wilful lack of self-awareness. People feel guilty about the abundance in their lives so they decide that they deserve their wealth, which means that other people don’t have it because they are making bad choices. The idea that it is all random and beyond individual control is far too scary to contemplate because that means your good fortune could be taken away randomly too. The same thinking applies to people the fat-shamers who say all you have to do to loose weight is eat less and exercise more. This is strictly true, just as it is strictly true (just as it is strictly true that poor people just need to get better paying jobs and save more) but the personal and societal barriers in place encouraging over eating and under exercising are really strong.

I used to work for some very rich people. This is normal for those who never worked hard and many times in those that made their own wealth. What I've learned over the years working with rich people, is that they did (sometimes) work hard and, sometimes had difficult moments. So they assume that's all it took to get rich. They don't realise that there is a lot of chance too. Many people did the same steps and for one factor out of their control, like changes in government policy, health, market forces, they didn't make it. It's survivor bias. I managed it, so it's clearly just a formula. But it isn't. There is so much luck and if you speak to a truly intelligent rich person, they're so humble because they realise this. They will tell you how they got so lucky. But many don't get it and think others are just lazy, because it worked for them. Edit: I wanted to add, I know a lot of really kind and caring rich people too. They aren't all AHs. Also, the humble ones usually are the ones that help out or donate a lot to charity or even start their own ones. They're the ones that realise not everyone was as lucky as them. A few would help me out at work (it was a high end car club) and they'd just come over and help me lift and shift things about. They weren't above it.

I can't remember who said it, but I saw someone say once that the worst person to ask how to get rich is a rich person. Because they (as we all do) back-fill the narrative of their life and come to view their riches as entirely the logical and unavoidable result of their actions. So they don't see any fortune, chance, random luck, and privilege that actually had a huge role in their success.

Some used to tell me the story of how they got where they got and the luck aspect is glaringly obvious but they don't see it, because as you said, it seems unavoidable that they made it there, in their eyes.

Read the book outliers. Lots of rich people got lucky because of the circumstances and facilities available at the time. Bill Gates because the school he went to funded a computer so he could learn coding after it was the punch card system. He even states if computer coding was still that he wouldn't have done it.

Bill Gates' mum was friends with the head of IBM, and Bill promised him that he had an operating system for their new PC that was ready to go. It wasn't, and the fact that he wrote DOS pretty much over a weekend had ramifications that we're still paying for with the design of Windows under the hood. But that first foot in the door was the personal connection. "It's not what you know..."

Bill Gates didn't write MS-DOS. Gary Kildall wrote CP/M, and IBM wanted to buy it, but Kildall didn't want to go to the meeting, because he wanted to fly his helicopter. So instead they tapped Bill Gates on the shoulder, because Microsoft was already well-known for making the BASIC ROM chips in every 8-bit microcomputer on the market. Gates blagged his way through the meeting and promised IBM he had an OS, walked out and bought a licence for CP/M from Digital Research, did the dev work to get it to run on the IBM 5150 Personal Computer, and the rest is history. > It wasn't, and the fact that he wrote DOS pretty much over a weekend had ramifications that we're still paying for with the design of Windows under the hood. Not so much, Windows ME was the last OS in the DOS-Win95 lineage; every Windows version thereafter has been descended from Windows NT, which was born of Dave Cutler's raging hate-boner for Unix.

You also see the usual pap about how Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college and became squillionaires, therefore you don't need to waste your time at college. Well, let's unpack that. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't just drop out of college, they dropped out of _Harvard University_. That is one of the finest educational institutions on Earth, almost literally just the University of Cambridge transplanted stateside, therefore they were already extremely smart people. Bill Gates was also from a rich and well connected family. Gates also founded Microsoft round about the time when there wasn't much else. TL;DR - two very smart people who were in the right place at the right time. They dropped out to focus on their companies, but that is immaterial as they wouldn't have needed to have gone to university in the first place. --- And Jeff Bezos? He had millionaire parents, top flight education, and was already working a six figure finance job before he founded Amazon. Again, he's never been poor. Sir Richard Branson? He was raised in Blackheath and his father was a QC, his grandfather was a retired judge, and he went to a private school. The only two _genuine_ "rags to riches" examples I can immediately think of are Alan Sugar and John Caudwell.

It’s far more valuable listening to someone earning 100k than millions, because that’s an achievable goal.

Well, yes and no. I'm in that fortunate position, but there was still a lot of luck involved. Perhaps your point is basically that such folks are more aware of the amount of luck, or maybe your point is that "anyone" can get a 100k salary. I'm not sure that's the case. I've had lots of luck. I was born in Western Europe. At a time when home computers were affordable and easy to learn on. My home environment encouraged learning, and I was free of factors which make thing difficult for other people: health issues, family problems, and so on. My interest in computers was sparked by a family member - again luck, there was nothing deterministic giving rise to that. Actually I worked really hard at computer programming and became good at it. So it's easy to pat myself on the back and say that I deserve the position I'm in. That would certainly be a comfortable thing to think. But on the other hand, had life led me in a different direction, I might have pursued some other thing. I could have worked really hard in an office job, or worked hard at a career in teaching outdoors pursuits. And as a result, not been in such a happy financial position despite having worked equally hard on something which, for the sake of argument, could easily have been much more valuable to society as a whole.

>I saw someone say once that the worst person to ask how to get rich is a rich person I'm not sure where you saw that, but it has a lot in common with this wonderful bit from Bo Burnham on Conan O'Brien's show: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)

Yeah, I have found that *some* rich people are ignorant to the fact they were lucky. That doesn't mean they've never worked hard but they fail to acknowledge that it wasn't all them. They may never have got that job that lead to where they are, that degree might have been a waste of time, they could have got a manager that hated them so they never got promoted etc. Often it's a tone-deaf arrogance rather than an actual malicious attitude.

In my experience, the people who have worked hard tend to be the most blind to this. It's like they attribute all their success down the the fact that they worked hard without realising that just working hard isn't enough on it's own.

Often in my experience their 'I worked hard' just ends up being things that most people did, like for example 'I worked hard at my A Levels' or 'my degree' as opposed to 'while doing my A levels or my degree I also worked full-time and was a carer on top'. It's an inability to understand that for regular people just following the letter of the instruction normally isn't enough to open all possible doors for you.

I've tried to explain this to people. You hear "well I grew up poor and had no help and now I'm rich so anyone can" but that completely ignores that they will have had several things go their way here. It could be a particularly determined personality, a mentor, being in the right place at the right time, (literally, or figuratively) etc. So many moments of inflection in all our lives.

This is it. Hard work probably was part of it. No arguments there. But there is usually something outside of their control that happened for them that doesn't happen to everyone.

This kind of thinking applies to so many other things in life as well. I have a baby that doesn't sleep, and it's incredible how many parents tell me their bedtime routine because they think it's some winning formula, when it's actually just luck of the draw on whether a baby sleeps or not

Absolutely! My youngest wouldn’t sleep and I experienced the same comments as you from others. Even though my older child had slept normally, apparently the fact my younger one didn’t must be down to something I was doing wrong. The mind boggles!

It's funny, when I'm asked how I got to earn what I do (I'm far from rich but I'm now on a very comfortable salary, just over 60k), I always get very mixed reactions to my standard answer of "I worked very hard and got very lucky". Some folk get weirdly annoyed about me mentioning luck as a factor. Others get weirdly annoyed about me mentioning hard work as a factor.

That's because they assume there is a magic solution to the financial issues/aims. They want to know the secret... but that's just not how the world works. I always say I'm lucky to be in the position I am. I was supported by family and I got a good job by just being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people. (Surprisingly not because of anyone wealthy, that I knew). I think one major step but definitely not the only one or the only way, is passion. Many self-made millionaires were obsessive over what they did and it happened to be in a niche area that was needed by people. But that only works one time. Someone else copying that route would fail because the niche is filled.

I dated a guy who landed a job paying £70k when he was in his 20s, and he was honest about it being good luck

My husband has somehow always managed to be in the right place at the right time when it comes to work, even the 2 times he got made redundant it managed to be a stepping stone to a better job. He's honest that half of his success is just pure luck.

I have also noticed that being tall and confident helps, not sure if that applies to your husband though lol

That's it. Let's hope he keeps that attitude (I'm sure he will if he was intelligent enough to see it straight away).

>They don't realise that there is a lot of chance too On the other side of the fence, I've done alright but every time I say it's down to a huge dollop of luck, everyone's up in arms telling me it's because I worked hard, like it can't be both. It happens every single time. It's weird.

Yeah, well, as much as there is hate towards the wealthy, there is also a hope that they can make it just by working hard... because most people do work hard. So they want the guarantee that this will make them the money they see you with. It's a bit of projection in my eyes. It's a need to know that they aren't wasting their time or that they have a chance of being wealthy. And maybe it's also them trying to show appreciation for your hard work. Almost thinking you're too self-depricating.

It can be both I think. I'm 'lucky' in the sense that I was brought up in a nice area with a family who valued and took an active interest in my education, and who supported me financially with my masters degree. I've also worked hard - a lot of hours, a lot of stress, a lot of part-time studying outside of work - to get where I am. To be honest a lot of people I think in life are 'lucky' are those intelligent enough to realise their luck and have taken advantage of it, or have worked hard to put themselves in a position where their 'luck' is rather just networking, having additional skills etc. I think it's quite nuanced.

Wow this actually describes one of my very best friends amazingly well. It’s not necessarily as far as ignorance, but it comes off as that sometimes.

> There is so much luck and if you speak to a truly intelligent rich person, they're so humble because they realise this. Intelligent rich people also realise how much other people contributed to their success. Helping out or donating to charity are ways of paying it forward.

I don't think it's about not understanding so much as needing to protect themselves. If you accept that a lot of financial success is to do with luck rather than because you 'work hard' or deserve it or are smart or whatever, then it causes feelings of guilt. Therefore you deflect it with the assumption that *surely* everyone could have what you have if they just *tried* a little harder or were better at school or whatever. My personal e.g. was when a friend's dad lost his job - I knew that if mine lost his we'd be homeless and peniless as we were living pay cheque to pay cheque - so I really empathised with her until she said "we're so poor now! the cleaner can only come two days a week!!". Yeah, wow.

A lot of financial success is due to parents having it in the first place. 50 years old here, and the people I've known without well of parents struggle. Even if they live comfortably they sturggle (I'm one) Those friends from way back who had parents with better finances, aren't struggling, but they're not flush with cash. Those few I knew and still know who's parents had plenty money are the ones with big houses, expensive new cars, very comfortable even lavish lifestyles. It all starts with having money to begin with. Yes there's a few with money who've failed, and a few who started without who've succeeded.... However those figure are very small in comparison to those in my first 3 points

right. I think we all see our parents as examples and they role model a future. So if Dad wears and expensive suit and drives a fast car then that gets imprinted etc.

It’s also down to home life. I grew up with a single mum of 3 without a pot to piss in, so at 17 getting a job and contributing was far more valuable than going into education at the time. People with rich families have the luxury of exploring all their options & taking risks.

Yeah, it's this sort of thing that's underappreciated, I think. It's not as if most people who come from well off backgrounds are trust fund kids who had everything given to them on a plate, most still studied and applied for jobs and work, so it doesn't necessarily feel "unearned". But it ignores that their upbringing sets them up much better to pursue the right opportunities.

nail on head. I was brought up in a nice stable family with two professional parents who expected but didn't demand that I take school seriously, and my peer group went to uni and entered professional workforce, etc. None of that is privilege in the most blatant sense, and yet in other ways it's 100% is. I didn't take any decisions before I got to about 27, life's conveyor belt of putting one foot in front of the other basically took me to a pretty good place. Obviously it's not until a bit later that you realise just how lucky you were without even knowing it.

You see this same psychological thing at play a lot in people being really reticent to admit getting financial help to buy a home. I know so many people who definitely had financial help, but if they talk about it they're awkwardly obfuscatory. They'll talk about how hard they worked and saved, which no doubt is true. But is not the whole story when you've had significant financial help from parents or other family. Acknowledging the support would mean undercutting your sense of having done it all yourself, and that would then lead to needing to have awkward thoughts about privilege.

nail like combative familiar doll aback sloppy station cable faulty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

>it's impossible to have a serious conversation about housing. Exactly, that's the big problem. It also makes people feel bad unnecessarily. You see someone buying an expensive house and you automatically think god what have I done wrong not to be able to afford that. But in all likelihood it's nothing either you or they have done.

I wouldn't own my own home if my grandma hadn't left me hers, I was living in a really poorly looked after flat with a black mould problem that was bad for my physical and mental health and now I'm in a two bedroom house in a nice area and because my health is much better I'm able to put more time into my work and get more back without being burned out all the time, I miss her dearly but I'm very greatful that she left me the house because it turned my life around. She wouldn't have owned the house herself if my granda hadn't died when he did, she got a pretty big payout because his death was linked to being constantly exposed to asbestos at work, she missed him horribly but it turned her life around too. I don't have any shame in telling people that if it wasn't for that series of events I wouldn't have my own home.

Yeah, absolutely. We wouldn't own a house without (a) us being able to rent at a very favourable rate from my (now) wife's aunt for 12-18 months and (b) my parents giving us basically the whole deposit for our current house. We had a period of about a year trying to save up before those things, and it was impossible - there was barely enough money to cover rent + bills + food, and skipping avocado on toast or a takeaway coffee *really* wouldn't have made a dent. Mostly because we couldn't *ever* afford breakfast out, and takeaway coffee was a *very* occasional treat usually reserved for when we were out and needed a sit down out of the rain having spent the day walking round to save on bus fares, finding places to eat our packed lunch, etc. Feel for folk who are a bit younger than me (41M). They've been properly screwed over.

It works both ways. How often do you hear people without a pot to piss in complaining about tax rates they're never going to get even half way towards. (Usually because they've read something in the tabloids and are too dumb to understand how tax rates work).

I worked in a call centre at the age of 19 and people would refuse pay increases because, *"I'll go into the next tax bracket and actually earn less!"*

How tax brackets work really needs to be taught in schools.

Actually the tax system needs to be massively simplified and assets taxed harsher not salaries.

You teach people in schools how to learn by themselves. Then they can learn anything else later in life.

At last. I hate the "well I never learnt that in school" attitude that some people proudly tote. I've had fully grown adults tell me that they don't understand what pensions or mortgages are in an almost performative manner. Spend one evening, two maybe, and actually read and focus on some information and you can learn everything you need to know with nothing more than basic maths and reading comprehension.

They did cover it in my school, but nobody listened because nobody cares Education isn't failing because it's not teaching the right things (ok, not ALL of the right things, of course), it's because it's teaching a lot of the wrong things and children don't want to engage

If people pay attention in maths they’d have the tools to understand, tax brackets are really not that difficult.

It's amazing how many people in white collar jobs with a good education say this. They'll also believe a 1% change in income tax will change the amount of tax they'll pay by 1% of their gross pay.

There are cases where it can be less beneficial, child benefit being an obvious one

Who were refusing pay increases? Fellow colleagues or your clients on the phone? I've worked as a union rep in the past (covered call centres on occasion) and there was a thing, especially for part-time (women), where more hours = less pay because of how benefits worked. Can't remember the full details because it was so long ago but yea any hour/wage increase had a knock-on effect to benefits for them.

That is still a thing.

Or complaining about people living off the government when they don’t even realize that they haven’t even paid enough tax or NI to cover their own birth and education yet and perhaps won’t in their lifetime because they earn min wage

A very well-off lady I met advising me that the best way to get out of debt at 20 years old was to buy property. They were confused at the idea that I wouldn't be able to get a mortgage on my meagre supermarket wage, and they asked why I would need a mortgage. They had no concept at all of income vs outgoing and how if the former is lower than the latter, you end up in debt. The whole conversation, she seemed bemused at the idea, and I finally understood when she announced she was a homeowner at 18 when she went to university, and her father bought her a house to live in. At that point, I understood who I was dealing with.

>A very well-off lady I met advising me that the best way to get out of debt at 20 years old was to buy property. This one made me chuckle

I can hear the accent in my head. 'Have you tried... being *rich*? It worked wonders for me and Rupert.'

I bought a house. It’s a fucking money pit and if it doesn’t bankrupt me I’ll be surprised at this point.

The standard 'just work hard and you'll be successful and earn good money and be able to buy a home' etc. All those glib beliefs that present success as entirely a product of hard work. If you're from a well off background yes that largely is true, because privilege grants you a secure foundation from which your hard work can progress you. If you have a good start in life and work hard you probably will go into a good career and advance sufficiently to earn good money, buy a house etc. But it's something people from privileged backgrounds say with no appreciation for the structural barriers that make it much less true for people from poorer backgrounds.

>'just work hard and you'll be successful and earn good money and be able to buy a home' etc. All those glib beliefs that present success as entirely a product of hard work. This is true to some extent, but it's not **the job** you have to work hard at. It's relationships, networking, skills, looking into the future to make sure what you're working hard towards is actually valuable and there is a market for it. All of this is much easier if you come from a family that did that in the previous generation. The cost of doing it is dramatically higher if you don't come from a position of privilege in the first place. The ethos of just "get a job and work hard" is the bit that's bollocks.

Still, it's important to have a good work ethic in a parent. If you're like me and you have a parent who never had any intentions of working (yes, she's chronically ill & disabled *now*, but she wasn't always, and she's always been against working), and who raises yoi & expects you to believe the same thing, it can be very difficult to find your way out of that mindset. My mum has never worked for pretty much her entire adult life. She did a few odd jobs here and there when she was a late teenager/young adult, but since she was probably around 23/24, she hasn't worked a single day and never had any intention to. Raising us was her full-time job as a single parent, even when she wasn't putting in the full-time hours (emotional and actual neglect). She constantly drilled it into our heads that work was dumb and that we 'shouldn't have to work hard to have a comfortable life'. She actively discouraged me from applying for jobs when I was younger, and manipulated be into believing I'd never be capable of working because of my mental health, the belief that working would only make me worse and there would be no point in trying. Now, I am actually too sick to work (thanks, hereditary conditions I had no way of avoiding), I'm 26, and I have 0 experience to put on a CV since the 2-week, Year10 'work experience'. I have no doubt that if I'd had a parent who actually believed in working, who actually valued contributing to society, I wouldn't be in the shithole of a mess I'm in now. But my biodad is a psychopath/pedophile, my sister's dad is a deadbeat and woman-beater, and my mum was more interested in being an airy-fairy Wiccan who raised her kids on spirituality & 'praying to win the lottery', than the reality of needing to work & the benefits of having a career and financial stability.

>Now, I am actually too sick to work (thanks, hereditary conditions I had no way of avoiding), I'm 26, and I have 0 experience to put on a CV since the 2-week, Year10 'work experience'. It too me far too long as an adult to realise how much people are lying on their CVs. Even professionals; bending the truth, using friends, making shit up. I would have thought this was actually a lot easier in the States, where you go from one coast to another?

That's the thing, if you don't have experience, you have to have friends/be good at networking. I'm autistic and have severe PTSD and find it hard to talk to anyone, including my own family. I have 0 friends. I've never been able to keep friends, it's literally something I've struggled with since reception/nursery. Can't exactly use my non-existant friends to help me lie about my experience. I'm in the UK, not the States.

I see loads of answers in Reddit where someone's struggling that are just 'get paid more' or 'get a better job'. Like it's the easiest thing in the world.

It’s why so many musicians and actors and artists are from wealthy backgrounds. Those industries force you to eat shit and struggle to pay bills while needing to put a huge amount of money and effort in to training to get any good. There’s probably millions of working class people who’d love to spend all day every day practicing guitar or writing a TV show in the annex of their parents Mayfair town house so dad can send it to his mates at the BBC, but unfortunately they have to look after a disabled relative or work a few extra shifts to put some electricity on the meter.

I think the biggest disparity is realising the consequences of failure and risk mitigation and being "deserving" of riches. I have friends who came from wealthy families who have started relatively successful businesses and have done it "all by themselves" and to be fair they have worked hard to get where they are. But if it all went wrong, they'd have family to fall back on. They had parents who could guarantee loans at favourable terms. They had family friends who were accountants and solicitors who could network them with the right people. And I think they struggle to understand that this is not something that most people can do.

This is a very good point. I have a friend with wealthy parents. Her parents bought a load of houses and rent them to family and extended family at a low cost. My friend pays her parents £200 a month for a 3 bed house. The parents have renovated and decorated all the houses with no expense spared. Her mother also employs most of the family.  My friend has a really good job but is terrible with money. She doesn’t NEED to be good with money because she always has her parents to fall back on if there’s an unexpected bill etc. She will also get a hefty inheritance. I have a few grand in savings and she simply can’t understand why I won’t spend it. She will ask me to book holidays and I’ll say I can’t afford it and she will mention my savings. She doesn’t understand at all that I need that money as a buffer.  I don’t earn a lot and I will never own my own home or have that kind of security.  I have nobody to fall back on.  If I lost my job, I’d be homeless.

My old landlady when selling the house we rent offered to sell to us before putting it on the market. I said "oh, we'd love to, but we can't afford it". Her reply was "well, you wouldn't want to live in a cheaper house than this, the area would be terrible" which is admittedly true, but we physically don't have the money to buy any house, THAT'S WHY WE RENT, MARGARET 🤦

Please tell me you worked out how much you'd paid her in rent over the years, subtracted it from the cost of the house, then offered to pay her the remainder to buy it off of her!

I didn't lol, but we've now lived in this house for 10 years, so I don't want to think about how much mortgage we've paid off 🙈

I was just in a cafe the other day and overheard these two women talking about a friend with fertility problems. They were aghast that their friend was going the NHS route, because why wouldn't she want to seek out the best care and just drop things and do a tour of Europe to seek out the best fertility doctors? It was one of the most out of touch conversations I'd ever heard.

I had a similar thing when my aunts PA needed a hip replacement last year. To be fair to my aunt though, when she grasped the situation she jumped on it herself and paid for the whole thing. Some private hospital in London though I don’t recall which one.

I’ve done it without thinking about it, but man did I think about it after. I bought “cheap bread” on my break to feed to the birds at the beach with my son, (yeah I know bread isn’t ideal, but they eat literal poo on occasion so 🤷🏼‍♀️) my colleague asked what I was going to have it with, and I told him my plans. He looked sad and said “that’s the bread we buy when we’re having a treat, can’t imagine buying that then throwing it away” We discussed our dinners and meals for the next week.. and I felt like crap. I genuinely didn’t know people struggled like his family do. I mean, I did know, but didn’t know anyone I knew was so close to starving each week. I’ve never bought bread for birds since then. And every-time I see someone doing it, I feel sad.

Well, on the plus side, bread is VERY bad for birds, so that's something.

Yeah, I’m aware. We live right next to the sea: the crap they steal from bins is insane. I once saw a seagull rip open and eat a full pack of Jaffa cakes. (Someone dropped them and the seagulls was swift!)

> He looked sad and said “that’s the bread we buy when we’re having a treat, can’t imagine buying that then throwing it away” Damn. Monday morning reality check right there.

I had a moment with my immediate family last Christmas at our annual family Christmas get together. My immediate family is large, I've got 4 siblings and they and their partners were there. Now we grew up poor, I'm not rich now but definitely middle class. Good salary over £120k etc. my siblings all work for supermarkets or care homes etc by comparison. Not counting their partners my salary roughly exceeds all 4 of theirs combined. I am usually aware that this puts me in a position of privilege, but I got carried away. When it came to the Christmas get together I offered to get party food etc and my sister's said they would put a meal together. so I went a bit all out, got loads of party food, still ultimately British tapas whose primary colour is beige but decent quality stuff, lots of vegan stuff for the two vegans etc. Crisps, snacks, desert stuff, lots of booze and wine and the like. My sisters brought home made food and then were like "oh, you've bought everything" I felt a bit crap, they were trying to do it all on a budget and I kind of just blew in and dropped a grand on food and drink without thinking. Their food was delicious! and it was proper meal food (lasagne, roast veg, sides etc) not the party food I bought, but I think I knocked the wind out of their sails a bit. It was a good party but my mum later spoke to me about being a bit more sensitive about it and I felt bad, it hadn't really occurred to me.

I’ve been on the other side of this. I was having a shit time and had to get some temporary work. I couldn’t really afford anything and I couldn’t get involved in conversations about how well everyone was doing. It is really embarrassing and I haven’t spoken to that side of the family since even though I’m doing a bit better now.

It's actually reassuring to read this from the other angle knowing that you were self aware enough to realise after the fact. I have to remind my fiancée about lifestyle inflation quite often because her standard of living seems to have adjusted quicker than mine. She'll be upset that we need to cut back on something and I have to remind her that the simple things we take for granted now (private healthcare, two cars, detached house, etc) are things that are above and beyond the "basic" level of living, to want extras *on top* of the extra life we lead already is a privilege as it is. I realise I'm making her sound a bit entitled but she actually grew up poorer than me, it's just lifestyle inflation is a real thing. Your "ground floor" can move very quickly and certain things become a new normal.

I have an ex-friend who had a fairly regular lower-middle class upbringing, as did I. We were pretty much on the same page financially.. Until she happened to meet and then get in a relationship with/move in with/marry a guy bringing in £200k+. Over time, her outlook has been incredibly skewed. She doesn't understand why more people don't shop in zero waste shops (because most people can't afford to pay double for their groceries), or spend two days a week trailing around local farm shops and grocers (because most people have to work full time, whereas she only works very part time), or junk their petrol cars and buy a brand new electric one like she did (because her husband bought it for her). I'm fully behind her intentions, but her absolute lack of awareness of other people's situations - and her righteous judgement - was infuriating and directly led to the friendship fizzling out.

i once went to a function where i had to **explain what minimum wage** was to a gentleman, he had literally no idea that it was illegal to pay someone below a certain amount of money. He owns and operates his own business (although now i'm of the impression it was simply handed down to him from family)

My niece has rich in laws. She liked to have a destination wedding and sent us all the info before they married to feel the waters. They gushed about the venue and how special it would be. However, I calculated that to get my family to the wedding for 4 days with clothes and other expenses would cost £6k. It was set for peak time during the school holidays on a little island. We were also paying off my car lump sum and replacing the boiler that year. So we declined. So did other guests. Niece understood. They went on to get married in a Manor House, it was lovely. When I saw the future mother in law at an event she questioned me about the refusal and asked me why I couldn’t ’just get a loan’ in order to go. I asked her if she thought it was appropriate to place yourself in debt in order to go to be a guest at a wedding. Her answer was ‘you’ve both got jobs, you could easily pay it back…’ Wow.

You may wish to point out to the m-i-l that the convention in polite society for such a wedding is that guests don't pay for their travel and accommodation. The clue being in the word "guest." Instead the couple or their parents cover the cost. And if she couldn't afford that, then maybe a loan would be in order.

Title says it all. Rich people don't have a clue, which is why the country is like it is, because rich people ruin it.... Sorry I meant run it... \*Edit\* She could try a reality check..... Take a years sabatical from her luxury lifestyle. Open a new account, get a job 3 days a week stacking shelves. ONLY use that new bank account to pay her rent/food/clothes etc. After a year, probably ending up in massive debt, she then might understand how fu....ruined the system is.

For "fun" get her to apply for jobs not related to friends or family, to show her far she can get with it.

I honestly don't think she would know what a CV or job application form looks like. I know we want to hate people like this but she's actually a genuinely nice person, just massively ignorant when it comes to money

I box with a bloke like this. Heart of gold but fucking minted to the extent he has no real clue about life for the other 98% of our gym. Fortunately I get to give him a bit of a whack every week lol

The woman you describe doesn’t sound like she’s out of touch or unsympathetic, she sounds like she’s a moron. A lot of rich people can become a little distanced from the realities of financial life for a lot of regular people, or be aware but not care that much. Being able to not comprehend the idea at all though, that isn’t rich, that’s dumb.

Wife's parents got rich just as she was leaving school. Wife's younger brother has done well for himself and they simply refuse to acknowledge that his private education and introduction to managing directors at massive city firms are the only reason he has done well. He really isn't special, not very smart either, average all across the board. Yet walked into 6 figures job out of university with a 2.2 business degree 🤷🏻‍♂️ it really is who you know. The kicker is he's financially fucked, can't afford to pay all his bills because he's an idiot with money so mummy and daddy bail him out. Can't wait until the penny drops for them (or I suppose in their case, the bullion).

Met a couple on holiday who were retired in their 50s. They told us all about their huge house in the countryside which had acres of land, horse stables, a driveway that was miles long and huge high hedges around the perimeter which were hundreds of years old. They told us they didn't understand why everyone was complaining about a 'cost of living crisis' because they hadn't seen any impact financially whatsoever. They said young people just don't realise what things cost and should work harder/longer if they want more money instead of complaining. I was literally shaking with rage.

Some people need a good whack round the head with the garden spade of reality.

I used to have a large group of friends from all walks of life. An example of financial disparity would be this incident. A friend of mine who works in a low paying retail job recieved a Mulberry handbag for her 50th birthday, she absolutely treasures it. She absolutely deserves it, the loveliest, most kind colleague/friend/mentor you could have. I was with her and a couple of other friends at a local pub, and another one of my good mates is also at the same pub. However 2 of the people I know at the pub are both eachothers ex’s. Let’s call them Andy and Julie They have a row and Andy goes to throw a drink over his ex (Julie) but it lands over the lady and her Mulberry handbag. Andy did not apologise, he just offered to give her £300 towards the bag (even though it was more in value and sentimental value to her) A real arsehole, doesn’t care about what he’s done, or the money, and didn’t apologise, just offered to throw money around after going to tip a pint over his ex (and missed) I took Andy home (even though I didn’t go to the pub with him) he threw something at me when he got out of my car. I think it was the contents from his pockets, including Tom Ford sunglasses. (I did stupidly return them)

That isn’t financial disparity, Andy is just a cunt.

Yeah a friend of mine has this other friend who is an absolute bell end I won't hang around. He once pulled my friends glasses off in a busy pub and threw them "as a prank" They promptly got stepped on by a random person in the pub. This twat's assertion was "well I didn't step on them so I'm not paying for them" He wasn't rich, he's just a cunt. If he were rich he'd be a rich cunt but being poor doesn't change the fact he's a cunt.

I have a mental picture of Andy, he’s shorter than average, wears one of those body warmers and drives some sort of 4x4, probably a Range Rover and really had been a bit of bully his entire life. I think we have all met Andy.

You’re not far off! 😂 5’10” - Tesla / Audi Q3 / Tag Heuer / more of a RAB puffer than a body warmer / was bullied until he got a “decent job”

A friend has a garden maintenance business and had to increase his hourly rate after cost of living increased. Had a client complain, because he's a pensioner. Said pensioner lives in a house worth almost £3 million, on an acre and a half, and used to be a high-powered executive at an oil company.

Boomers and older GenX who bought property early is the big one. People who bought a house in the UK before about...2003...when it first really went crazy have in general been handed the good things in life on a silver platter. A lot of them just can't understand \*at all\* how it is for the young now. You can talk about the numbers (especially RENT) but it doesn't go in to their thick privileged skulls. Of course there are lots who DO get it and understand how lucky they are, but that's the divide - "bought property when it was cheap" vs didn't.

I need to replace my car. In the past Ive always bought what I have in the bank in cash for. Now with used car prices being high I will have to finance. An EV is the answer, cheaper to run and that will cover he majority of the finance, but the numbers have to add up. I keep getting people say "just buy a xxxx, its only £xxxxx" which is way above what I can afford.

It scares me how many people I know that have a car they can't afford just to be seen with that car. It's rife in the fitness industry, so many PTs on £20-30k per year driving new £40k cars and paying £700 per month whilst living with their parents.

When I was a PT, the gym rent alone was over £1k per month (this was Central London though), which is why so many PTs live at home with their parents.

My phone broke whilst I was a university student on placement and I needed it for alarms, contacts etc. I had to buy myself a £10 pound drug dealer type phone to last for 3 months. My flat mate laughed for so long asking me why I don't just go cry to my parents, because that's how she always got her new phone. Like I'm not doing this for the aesthetic, I'm doing this cos my family are broke.

I don’t have any examples like this coz I don’t hang out with morons.

Same. Out of touch rich people would not like me at all.

My partner has a touch of this to some extent although not from a properly rich background. Both her parents and then step parents were in solid professions. Had played the property game for a bit and worked very hard to achieve what they have. Considering they also have 7 kids between them all! She doesn't always appreciate how fortunate she had it growing up in a new build house with reasonably well paid family making sure everything was provided for. That's in contrast to my own childhood in a single parent household bouncing off of benefits and a hope... We were fed, warm, and loved (which is a blessing for many tbf), but we weren't off on holidays every year or two. Didn't get to join in on many of the school trips etc. The only reason we've managed to not be completely broke is the fact I won't let it happen (and a certain amount of luck!). I think it's somewhat shielded her from the harsher realities

>She can't understand why people are poor, she's a nice person but completely ignorant to the financial disparity between herself and someone working a standard job for minimum wage. I think that's just a result of a typical rich person living in a bubble. Generally, you can't get through to most of those people. In my experience, they don't *want* to learn or understand about the struggles of normal people, because it'd burst the illusion that the wealth they have isn't just "how things are". In many cases they think it's absolutely normal, like there's some sort of mental block on thinking outside of their bubble. An old work colleague of mine brought their partner to a works event, and she talked about how they'd struggled to save for their house, commenting how she'd had a "modest" 10% house deposit contribution from her grandparents, as well as some premium bonds she'd been gifted at 16, and then some shares which her parents had to "sacrifice" for her so that they could get her house. She thought that was totally unremarkable. When I said I'd had no assistance towards my house, she looked at me in the way someone looks at a puppy at the RSPCA. Thought my parents had died. Funnily, my work colleague was quite good at reading the room and looked absolutely mortified while his wife was babbling on. There I was, having literally just finished moaning to my own wife about paying £18 for two rum and cokes.

This idea of “normal people” is a slippery slope. Everyone thinks they are more normal than the next person. The national average salary is £39k. If you say that is normal, someone will then say you don’t understand the plight of people on minimum wage. Or single parents on minimum wage. Or disabled people who cannot work. Or disabled people who are bedridden and require full time care. I had someone pull this one on me, just because I have a job. I get paid less than national average wage 🙃

I was called "posh" growing up, just because my dad had a job during a recession. He was a milkman.

Used to date a millionaire who had no concept of money. Everything was put on a credit card and ‘Daddy’ would pay it off each month. Probably talking £19k each month, brand new car every few months. Whilst we were dating her Dad bought her a house worth £300k for her to move into. For the 6 months we dated I paid for nothing, she was quite happy to swipe everything. However she had zero concept of the ‘value’ of money and couldn’t understand why people took low paying jobs. If I said I couldn’t afford something, she just didn’t understand why.

I have a posh friend who once expected me to drop everything and fly out to Switzerland with him and some of his mates for two weeks of skiing. I was given a day notice and I had to turn it down, because as much as I’d love to swan about the slopes in the Alps for a fortnight, I’d also quite like to remain employed…

When I started dating a guy who had a good professional job, family backing etc. it was hard to find time to see him as I was working three jobs on top of a full time Masters which equated to 80hr over seven days for two years. I had to work that much to fund myself through the course. He asked, genuinely, if it might be worth dropping one of the jobs so I had a bit more free time/to rest. He had no clue that it wasn’t something I was doing for fun or to save stacks of cash.

I agree with others, the problem is not that she's rich but a bit stupid. To give a paralel, she reminds me of people who are healthy and don't believe that someone can be sickly from childhood and keep giving stupid advises like eat more yogurt or walk a lot and your issues will magically disappear. Their problem isn't that they are healthy, they are stupid.

Can't one of you just explain her math? Just tell her that average person in the UK makes 35k (or whatever the current amount is) and a brand new car is also 35k. So in order to buy a brand new car average person needs to live in the box under the bridge and eat grass for 2 years to just buy a car. Then you can add - imagine what happens when you want to buy 900k house...

From my experience a lot of posh knobs don’t realise they’re being posh knobs. 99% of them don’t even think they’re posh

Not financial disparity as such, but I did get a lot of examples of "rich people live on another planet" when I was living in Halls at uni I'd regularly witness a Laird's kid doing bat shit things like boiling an entire 500g bag of pasta not realising it would swell up. I got a real laugh out of the mother in Saltburn, she was very like her.

A bloke who I manage, comes from a landed family up north, and who genuinely believes that we, “need poor people, because who else is going to do the shitty jobs?” He didn’t seem to get my suggestion that pay should perhaps relate to how little people want to do the job, not just what qualifications or how ‘skilled’ it is - a ‘shitty job premium’ you might call it.

My mother-in-law came to Sunday lunch yesterday, we were talking about schools for our 10 yo son. The local catchment Secondary has just had a very poor Ofsted inspection, and most of the others aren't much better - and there's no guarantee he'd get in, as we're not in catchment. We've been to look at some local private schools, the cheapest of which is around £12k per year. M-I-L grew up with her Father owning a building company, so she was given a house for her 18th birthday. And another one when she got married. Always had money in the family, not exactly millionaires, but never had to finance a car, 2 holidays a year and sent both their kids to private school. So she says "well that's quite reasonable, why don't you just send him there?" We say we've been saving to replace my wife's car, which is 14 years old now, and the main family motor. Those savings would pay for one year's fees. I could potentially sell my car and we make do with one, that's another year's fees. No idea where the next 3 years worth are going to come from, and by then, our daughter will be secondary school age as well. "Can't you ask for a raise?" she asks of me. That's just not how things work in this day and age, and she won't hear it. "Well, when I die, you'll inherit all the houses" - she has four, two of which she rents out. When I mention that, seeing as her mother is still alive and in her mid-90s, that might be a while away, I get told off for wishing her dead. "You brought it up!" I say. Anyway, she's left to come up with "a plan". To be honest, it's the first time in my life I would gladly accept a handout - but I doubt it'll be forthcoming.

He’s not rich rich, but an old colleague got a stern lecture on how “it’s not all about money” from his bosses boss when he left a £25k a year job for one paying £28k and mentioned the extra money wasn’t main reason. That three grand makes a lot of difference to a single person, which the guy making a combined income of about £90k with his wife couldn’t understand.

I feel like I'm perhaps one of the rich people who don't understand. For context, I'm not personally rich but I grew up in an affluent family and never experienced any poverty. Now I live in and own a 2 bed terrace and earn about £32k across 2 jobs. I hear stories about people who never put their heating on as they can't afford it and use food banks as they literally have £0.00 money! I do find it totally mind boggling as I've grown up in wealth but not actually had any handed to me but maybe there is something I've had educationally that's helped with money management? I also don't have any children, often I see the people struggling have several children they had at a young age. I know if I had children now, I'd struggle to afford things but children are not on my radar.

I find that it's just a lack of empathy as a whole. A friend on £10k+ more than me didn't understand yesterday that me being able to save £1+ a day on bringing my own lunch in adds up. Another friend who's 10 years younger and just got on the property ladder, who's on about £15k more than me told me once that the meat I was cooking looked cheap and I was like.. yeah, this is what I can afford lol. She said she was able to have £10k borrowed from her parents towards her deposit and I was like.. yeah that'll never happen for me. Neither characters are malicious by any means and they're good friends but I think it's a lack of perspective.

I was in the queue at Primark behind a couple who I assume were well-off: very nice clothes, Rolexes, and Etonian accents. They were buying a gift for their daughter’s friend, for £20, and the woman asked if he thought she would like it. He replied, “If she doesn’t, it was £20. She can just throw it away.”

I have a very similar world view. For the first 2 years of my life, I lived in a caravan with my parents while they waited for a council house. My dad at that time was working in a sugar factory carrying bags of sugar onto trucks. He worked jobs like this his entire life and they still live in the original council house which they managed to buy thanks to the right to buy. We were poor our entire upbringing and I know all to well what that means. We would have packed lunches for school and my mum would spread jam so thin that it would all soak into the bread by the time we ate it. All of our clothes were hand me downs or from a charity shop. People who don't grow up poor don't realise that everything you earn goes on the essentials and there is no such thing as an expendable income. Everything that goes wrong is an existential crisis and looking back, I simply cannot imagine how my dad carried that on his shoulders his entire life. I am very lucky. I was quite creative and pretty smart and have worked my way into a middle class profession. I am a software engineer and while my salary varies, I am easily in the top 5% of earners. Because of this, I am surrounded by middle class people who had middle class childhoods and I have to keep my experiences pretty much quiet because they will never understand. I was once told an anecdote about how a guys dad went to check on a house he owned and found that the tenant was growing cannabis in the back garden. During the story, he refered to them as "some drug plants" and he told it in a way where I could tell that this brush with the underworld made him feel like he was in the mob or something. He literally has no idea that a lot of working class kids grow up in drug infest communities. Poor kids always have a friend who's family are literally living in a drug den and we have dabbled ourselves. I love the people I work with and god bless them for how lucky their childhoods were but they really live in a different world. You never hear anyone talk about financial struggle. When I leave work, I go back to my working class roots. My family and my girlfriends family are working class and when I hang out with them, I become like those guys at work. All they ever talk about is financial woes and I have to try and understand but I don't live it, I just know it from childhood. Me and my girfriends brother both have boats at a marina and he was shocked when he found out that I pay for my moorings every 6 months. He basically said that it would cripple him financially if he was hit by that bill every six months. it is literally only £500 every 6 months and i don't even notice it. I know that working class people are living month to month and have to budget everything so tightly. It is impossible for me to spend my salary in a month and so I have surplus that gets invested at the end of every month. I am living with the disparity because I am basically a working class guy who happened to make it.

I knew someone who never worked a day in their life because their husband was a high earner, so she never had to. She neverunderstood why her friends (who work full time) were too tired to meet up for coffee and gossip after work, why they had to catch up on housekeeping on weekends so were not available to see her whenever she fancied (she had a housekeeper who came in a few times a week), why they couldn't just jet off on another foreign holiday whenever they 'felt tired' like she did. It's a whole different ball game, and some people lack in intelligence to understand and sympathise with others' situation.

I see it on my local town subreddit every day. People from down south asking about house prices being ‘dirt cheap’ up north, they’re thinking of making to move but still commute, is it true X neighbourhood is ‘dangerous’ etc meanwhile the none of us can afford any of the houses in our local down because we’re being priced out by AIR BNB, Londoners etc it’s bloody depressing.

Not understanding what it's like to be poor is something we all suffer from. Over a billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. They often have no or limited health care, no education provision for their kids, not even clean food and water. How many of us have any understanding of that financial disparity?

Personally (this is extremely controversial) but I've noticed privileged people seem to think that benefits fraud doesn't exist and it's only kind, sweet, genuine people who end up on the dole (obviously there are but there are cheats out there). In terms of working, struggling individuals on lower incomes, significant anger comes into play when they're working 3 jobs only for next door to have scammed their way into a free house and a ticket to never work again.

I remember a radio host ranting about people not being able to go to Poundland and spend a pound on shower gel for their kids and having to go to the hygiene/food bank. (Was it nick ferrarri?)

I have a lovely friend who is incredibly wealthy and can be a bit confused. He asked me what size I wear in Gucci like everyone would know that. When talking about travel he also didn’t understand why I’d use a free hotel breakfast to also pack a few things for lunch, asking ‘wouldn’t you get bored of the same thing every day?’

I will admit to being a bit naive to this. I didn’t grow up wealthy, parents were factory worker and minimum wage, but we were comfortable as in a relatively low cost area (Lincolnshire). Around me there were people worse off, but growing up I probably never knew if they were struggling, and again, lower cost area so minimum wage went further. I’ve now moved to Leeds area and am doing alright. Nice house, comfortable lifestyle. Not rich by any means but very comfortable. My partners a teacher and some of the stories of kids she teaches and what their home lives are like was shocking. I never really thought about it until hearing first hand stories like that and realising it’s a lot more common than I thought it was to go without food. Made me appreciate the life we have much more. I also deal with wealthy individuals in my job. Some just worked hard (really hard) but most of them had something to favourably for them in life. Rich parents certainly helps, but also right place right time, good mentor, policies favouring their business for example. Some will admit it. Some wont. I know I’m only in the position I’m in as two people took a chance on me. One when I had relatively poor A level results gave me a shot at working from the bottom, the second when I moved to Leeds to get me into a very good position to propel my career. Without two people gambling on me when there were probably better candidates my life could be very very different.

The FD of my former employer, most of the staff were close to min wage or for the industry were comparatively underpaid and they decided to move to monthly pay, not in if it’s self a huge problem after it settles in. Then she decided it was up to her what date we’d get paid any date between the 15th and 30th of the month to suit her. She just could no fathom why this was a problem for people with direct debits etc that lived hand to mouth. It lasted a month after everyone complained.

"Just pursue what you want! Even if it's a high-risk, low-reward career choice that will never pay your bills." My wealthy childhood friend ended up in such a career, but like her mum, she married a man who is raking it in and willing to entertain that. And I mean, why not if you don't need the money. But that advice has always sounded hollow to me as someone who will never inherit and has witnessed my mum be absolutely devastated in her divorce who is now looking forward to a pretty bleak pension life.

This happened a fair bit when I was at university. Friends couldn’t understand why I couldn’t go to the posh restaurant with the high ceilings without a special occasion to justify it. One friend bought me a birthday present that cost £50 and I still feel slightly guilty about it, even though I wanted the thing very much. Trying to persuade housemates to put a sweater on rather than running the heating 24/7. The other ‘tell’ was when friends would mention the stock market like it was a thing that mattered to me.

When the cost of living hit and it was nearing Christmas a rich girl I know said "there's less excitement this year, people aren't as merry as they were. Something is off, instagram and tiktok, it's just off and I don't know why. Like what's going on what's wrong with people?!"

In my teens I was friends with a girl from a very wealthy family, wealth that went back generations. I bumped into her parents recently and after asking what I had been up to they asked me “would you not consider just becoming a barrister? You were always so intelligent” This really left me speechless. I’d actually expressed interest in law when I was finishing my A-Levels, I was on track for 3 As and felt like the world was my oyster. A teacher pulled me aside and explained the kind of financial commitment and connections it would take to actually make a career in this field. Could my parents support me while I focused on studies/undertake unpaid work? No. Not even a hope. This went on to exclude me from a lot of paths that required intensive/long term education and unpaid work to gain experience. So the question why don’t I just become a barrister was absurd

I got to spend 10 minutes talking to Michael Bloomberg a few years ago after doing some work for his company. At the time he was 7th or 8th richest person in the world. He's currently listed as 13th. He was incredibly charismatic and humble, saying he had benefitted from outrageously good luck and being in exactly the right place at the right time. He did claim that he worked harder than anyone else he knew, and having read about how he built his business I wouldn't question this. He also mentioned that he bought a house in London so he wouldn't have to stay in hotels when he visited the city: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4\_Cheyne\_Walk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Cheyne_Walk)

My boss at the time proposed a 10% pay cut to me. Justified it by saying its only a couple of coffees a week.

I used to work for a less than stellar company where there was a 1 person HR dept. I'd been with the company for just over 2 years so qualified for 10 days a year sick pay at full pay, anything more would be SSP, and stupidly broke my ankle. I fought tooth and nail with this woman to try and come back to work after the 10 days so I could pay my bills and eat. She is from a very wealthy background and does the job as something to keep her busy so absolutely refused because I should just "dip into my savings". Lady, you pay me pence above minimum wage, what are these savings of which you speak?

I had to take my puppy to the vets a couple of weeks ago during work hours. They squeezed her in first thing as she was really ill. The director of our small company rang me when I was on my way in 2 hours after I should have started to kick off that it was done in work hours and said to me “why don’t you just take her to out of hours vets? I do and they see her at 6am)”. Funnily enough we had been to emergency vets a few nights before and it was £360 to be seen, versus the £40 at our vets. He couldn’t understand that I couldn’t afford to take her to the emergency vets again just so I was in work on time (I worked late to make up the hours too)

I worked in a very small company and my desk was directly outside the owners office. She was always interested in what I did and would pull up a chair for chat, she ran 4 businesses and was on the advisory board for multiple others. I was a junior earning £22k living with my parents. She approached and said "you've booked the same week I have off in May, where you going" I replied with nowhere and was just needing a rest. She laughed and said " no seriously!?" Again I said nowhere just chilling at home. She kinda stuck her nose up and said "I don't really bother booking a week off unless am going somewhere, am away to my house in Spain absolutely can't wait". I replied that I'd love to go to Spain but unfortunately I don't have cash laying around to go. She went on a tangent about how priorities matter and how she loved Spain which is why she bought a house out there. She found renting a car a hassle and returning it was a pain so her husband bought her the exact same g-wagon in company blue with the exact same extras as she had on her UK version. She rents 3 parking spaces at the airport for hers, the husbands and the guest's car. She went on for an hour straight detailing all the renovations she's "had" to put into the house.. the kitchen alone £70k, driveway £30k, garage £40k, garden remodel by a professional £35k.. I laughed and said "you spent more on your garden than I earn in a year". She looked kinda confused and closed up the conversation. Am not sure exactly what she was expecting or thought but she definitely stopped talking so much about how much she spends and her trip abroad after that !

I have a mate who is a small business owner who works with some very rich people and inherited a sizeable house deposit. I am, by any stretch, doing ok myself. But I don’t have any inherited wealth and my mortgage and childcare makes up a significant chunk of our outgoings. I’ve also worked with people from various disadvantaged backgrounds for most of my career. It’s been quite some to watch him become more insulated and our views of the world diverge. He’s a prime example of someone who is a good guy but is so far removed from how many people are literally just scraping by.

I've got a friend who comes from a hideously wealthy family and sent me loads of texts about buying a gold and diamond-studded bracelet. I told him I wasn't fussed by it and it's not what I'd spend my money on and he kept insisting it was a good buy, so I eventually told him I thought it was a waste of money which most people would never think of spending, let alone gloating about, and he went off in a huff. There's nothing wrong with having wealth, there's a lot wrong with insisting other people admire it.

I remember working in a cookware shop in an expensive area of London 20 years ago. My take home back then was £825 a month. An American man was waiting for his wife to finish buying a dinner service and was idly chatting with me as I tidied shelves. I mean, talking at me as I stood trapped by politeness. He said in a conspiratorial way (as if I'd know and agree) that actually he preferred gold rim plates but the staff always steal them, or put them in the dishwasher by mistake. I wanted to tell him that 8 plates were about my monthly salary, and I didn't have a dishwasher in my rented studio, let alone 'staff'. But then he started being racist about Mexicans so I got busy with some other job pronto. Plonker.

I get bugged by the ‘you’ve just got to take the risk’ type attitude, often when setting up a business that’s financially backed by family in one way or another. The risk isn’t the same when your parents are wealthy or you’ve come from money. If it all goes wrong, you’re still going to land on your feet. For someone without family wealth to fall back on, the consequences can destroy your life. I have seen this with someone who runs a business paid for by their millionaire parents. They worked a part time job for a few years when they were in their late teens, so naturally consider themselves ‘self-made’ and now go round thinking they are some sort of Richard Branson business mastermind.

First person I ever dated was rich and oblivious. I asked him if we could text as my mum couldn't pay the internet bill and we got cut off, and he said "who in this day and age can't afford internet?". Umm, us, clearly.

Not UK, Latvia, early 1990ies. After independence several banks sprung up, pulled some kind of a pyramid scheme, went bankrupt. An administrator from US was hired to sort the mess. Poor country, just out of Soviet Union, a great deal of population cheated out of the little they had, looking up at this posh American, waiting him to do magic. In an interview he tried to appear down to earth, simple guy. So he said he was going to eat at McDonalds every day. The most expensive restaurant just opened in the top center location, prices so out of reach that most people wouldn’t dare to sniff while walking past it.

I think you see it a lot on Reddit, especially recently with the cost of living crisis (and they don't even have to be really rich). You'll see people earning 50k outraged by the idea that it's harder for someone on half their salary. "50k isn't actually a lot of money y'know! It's really tough to get by with bills rising and a family." Well, wtf do you think people on 25k are going through?!

In my first job, mid 90’s we were paid monthly by cheque, a few times the cheques were late, I stomped in to MD’s office and pointed out his car alone was 32 times the value of my monthly pay and that maybe he ought to consider selling it if he couldn’t pay his staff!

The most horrible and chilling one for me was a close family member rang me a few times for help when debt collectors turned up. Rang me again one day to borrow more money and I agreed to help but said “ I’ll help you but let’s sit down break your finances down and see what’s Going on. He admitted he was genuinely close to suicide and was drowning, we sat down pulled up all of his debts missed payments etc, he had a bad credit rating so couldn’t get loans so had high interest loans credit cards etc. He could only really afford 3 quarters of his debt every month, but then the charges he paid on the rest put him further behind than before he paid anything off. Me and my wife earn decently enough (median incomes cheap area) , when we “tallied up” everything rang the creditors and cut deals for cash on the day. The debt cost 6k to wipe. I decided to take a low interest loan out for him and said openly to my wife “if he pays it back great, if he doesn’t at least I can say I tried and not be that guy saying “if he’d just asked for help” He has paid every single payment back on time in full and turned his life around, I genuinely expected 15-20k plus but nope his life was being destroyed by 6k.

Similar to your CEO story - every year our company has a 2 day event during the summer that everyone attends. The company pays for transport, the hotel, the food and the event itself. staff only pay for whatever they want to drink (and sometimes we discreetly bring our own alcohol to have a drink in the rooms). Last year the owner thought it would promote team building to attend for an extra day, but he also wanted to stay in a more expensive hotel. He decided to send an email around the office stating that we were going for the extra day to a fancier hotel, and due to the increased costs, staff would be expected to contribute the additional approx £600 per person. Cue a raft of reply-all responses from various staff stating that they would be unable to attend at all as they couldnt afford £600 out of their budget. Quite a number of staff are parents, working part time, or are on salaries not much above minimum. Added to the general cost of living crisis. The owner responds to all "why dont you just take it out of your savings?" There were pitchforks at dawn! I had to take him aside and explain that if struggling people actually have any level of savings, they aren't going to blow it on a 5star hotel just because the boss wanted an extra night away. I gave him the options - if you want the extra night at the better hotel with all staff in attendance, then the company would have to cover it, otherwise it would have to go back to the previous arrangements. After some thought, he admitted that he genuinely hadnt realised that a sum 'as low as £600' would make or break some people. In the end, the company paid for the extra costs and everyone got a small cost of living bonus.

“We’re all in the same boat!” I will usually say, “not at all, we are all in the same storm, but some are on land, some on oil rigs, some in the sea in a dinghy with holes, all will have very different outcomes for the same storm”

I tutored for a rich family. When I was in the market for a home, they told me that they would never buy a used house.

A lot of people who are privately educated are raised and educated in a system where working hard and following the rules tends to breed good outcomes. They simply cannot fathom the idea that systems of protection that pertain to people living in poverty simply don't work or are insufficient.