To think most rich people don’t understand how the rest of us live?

Yes, but I think thats equally true of everyone. I most probably have absolutely no idea of what it means to live as a disabled person, or a homeless person. All you can try and do is keep your empathy and try to 'get it' and keep reminding yourself that theres so much more to life than your own narrow experience of it.

I can't judge them for their world view based on their life experience 🤷‍♀️

Growing up, I didn't realise people didn't eat supernoodles for dinner every night and I was genuinely mindblown when as a teen i experienced "homecooked" food like pasta bake from a jar. I had no idea people ate like that because it wanlsnt my norm. I thought it was so exciting and posh!

I'm perversely embarrassed that my kid will grow up thinking that everyone lives in a nice house and eats soughdough as their usual bread and whilst I talk to her about other people having different experiences, I hope that noone judges her from my efforts to do my best, just as I hope noone judges me for what I thought was normal growing up.

All you can do is share your experience and hope that it opens someones world view.

Either way, i choose to see life as it not being about them, it's about being me and my choice to accept that others see things differently and not be oversensitive to others world views.

I'm in this position, my son is very fortunate & would never be able to understand my upbringing (very poor, Council House, parents on benefits etc) but in some way's why would he when he's known nothing but a nice clean home, being able to put the heating on whenever needed, a fridge full of food, holidays, a car, a telephone etc. We should however be proud that we've been able to get out of poverty & create a nice life for our next generation, but it's a tricky balance to not spoil them too much x

On one forum a landlord posted that if Rachel Thieves imposes NI on his earnings he will simply pass it on to his tenants. I asked him "Who are they supposed to pass it on to? They are already paying their own NI and your mortgage. So you are content to allow them to pay what should be your personal taxes as well" His attitude was if they objected they could go buy a house of their own. I see this kind of attitude from a lot of landlords. They speak as though its a hierarchical social relationship rather than a mutually beneficial business arrangement. Im the lord of the manner your the dirty rascal sort of thing.

Angela Raynor? Can't say her life experiences (and choices) made her a good politician

Personally I think the requirement for politicians should be they have worked in a meaningful job full stop - e.g. not just PR or career politician / unions etc. Most people do by definition start out by working in a minimum wage job. It's when it's your whole life that it's a nightmare.

This post is woefully simplistic. There are stupid assumptions made by all sorts of people of all sorts of educational levels / wealth. As much as I object to dumb rich people advice, I also object to the idea that only working class people can ever really know how it 'really is', or are the only ones with morals as is often floated about here.

The most intolerant person I know when it comes to judging people in straightened circumstances is my DH. Born and brought up in a violent very working class family, on one of the worst estates in the country, and went to one of the worst schools (since shut down). He describes half the people he went to school with as lazy nogooders and if he could do well so should they have.

I put my hands up to this.

One example springs to mind immediately:

I remember learning on Mumsnet that people want to be paid quickly rather than a few days/weeks after doing a task. It made no sense to me and would never have occured to me had I not read lots of people complaining about it.

In my mind as long as the money arrives eventually what difference does it make? Why not just save a little for a few weeks so you have a buffer, then you won't stress about the timing of payments? And not waste your energy getting angry at people like me who take a few days/weeks to pay while the task works its way up our to-do list. I wouldn't worry at all about a delayed payment (as long as it does eventually arrive) so why would anyone else?

I KNOW from reading Mumsnet that people hate this and therefore I do try to pay promptly. But I still have to consciously remind myself every time

.

The one thing I don’t have sympathy for is private schools- that’s very much a choice , rarely a total necessity - I also feel some of life’s choices can be easier if on your own - yes there’s often less money in the pot but you don’t have to go along with someone else’s lifestyle expectations - it can be difficult if at some point you are in a long relationship and somehow aren’t really now on the same page with how to prioritise what money you have /don’t have . Lifestyle creep with some is a big thing - I have this situation and so does a friend of mine.

I think baity stories and posts online don't help. People see stories about "single mum not working going on holiday abroad and buys all new furniture regularly" and it makes them assume benefits give people enough to live in the way people with decent wages do, and that anyone not managing that must just be overspending.

I know right? Why work at all if you can just sponge off the government for the same if not better lifestyle.🙄

Not necessarily, and no, those on lower incomes do not have the same costs also. Higher earners pay 40%+ income tax, often have high student debts to pay off if having spent longer in education, and will receive zero handouts from the government. Any mortgage fluctuations can be higher too so the cushion you think is there is actually much smaller than you think it is and in fact the cushion to lower income households is often more reliable when hard times hit than it is with higher earners.

Agree with this.

I would imagine they live in a significantly nicer house in a significanlty nicer area than people on much lower incomes who also have to buy food, pay for fuel, (my gas and elec now account for 15% of my income) water (up by 55% where I am this year), council tax (as a single person in a Band A house I pay more than if I was part of a couple sharing the council tax in a Band D). Less well off people do pay income tax and have child care costs too. I have never known anyone who earns £100K but I am sure their life is financially better than someone on the median UK salary of approx £37k.

But those on lower incomes have those costs as well. You don’t have to earn 100k to have a mortgage but you do have a bigger cushion.

I refer you (and everyone else) to Terry Pratchett's "Boots Theory Of Socio-Economic Unfairness":

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

Who's 'We'?

I actually do know what it's like to live in a care home, my mum has Alzheimer's. I can tell you that it's shit and I wouldn't be so inconsiderate as to go in her care home and tell all the residents how lovely it is for me to have complete freedom and that I can wipe my own backside. Sometimes you have to read the room and these rich people often don't.

I can understand, I’ve been dirt poor.

Well, that isn't going to improve with the VAT I'm afraid.
Dd has luckily found her tribe at her private school, but they aren't all super rich and often have had to make sacrifices for school. Sure, not the kind of sacrifices someone with no GCSE's who can't get a job and is living on UC might have to make but the majority aren't families who own islands or have off shore accounts. We are probably the poorest because I am a single parent with no family but I know people at the local grammar who are far richer, yet make all the jokes about the local private schools. The grammar has 0.5% FSM.

I think Mumsnet is quite middle class, with not many low income members, so in some ways the ignorance to how others manage is understandable.

I think there is a general non understanding on here that some people can't save, can't have an ' emergency fund' of cash in the house, can't over pay their mortgage and can't ' top up their pensions'.

These are all things that get regularly mentioned on here.

The big driver I see on here and in real life that creates the gap between ' struggling' and ' comfortable' is inheritance. Chuck in a £100k slice of a house sale from a deceased parent, and suddenly everything looks different.

It may not be enough to buy a mansion and stop working, but it could pay a mortgage off, which for my family would free up £750 per month. Suddenly you've got the ability to go on holiday and have savings, and have the lifestyle that most mumsnetters think everyone has.

Many of the comments on here indicate that people who are also comfortably off don't understand poverty either. If you are earning £100k+ and still feel poor its because you have made choices on where and how to live. Where you shop, holiday, what car you drive etc. Being poor is not having choices and that's a massive difference. I thank my privilege all the time the fact that I can choose whether to do house repairs or go on a nice holiday. What makes me so sad is how that lack of choice affect the next generation. Crap school often equals crap outcome. Lack of parental time and money equals less opportunity and so the cycle continues. We live in a massively unequal society.

Rich is quite a subjective term, but i do see a lot of people who propose solutions that involve an expense. I always think if the problem is no money, then a solution that costs money is unlikely to be a winner.

Then they cant figure why someone might not have that money up front, even if it would save money long term. Or why they cant just get a better job aa if the only factor in getting a better job is wanting one.

I don't think the school matters in that regards. Teaching a child to be grateful for what they have is always going to come from fundamentals learned from home rather than school although there's plenty of room for overlap.

On the other hand, there are choices that people make - their un-compromisables, that also cause trouble.

My sister refuses to rent anything but a house, within walking distance of her kids school and her job. Also she refused to look any further than our home town for that job, and once she had an office job, she refused to work evenings or weekends. She gets by, but with nothing spare after rent and bills.

I chased every opportunity after I left school, moved counties or countries with nothing but a suitcase and lived out of my car a few times (when I had a car), and now I have a well paid and flexible job - with the downside being in order to cover school runs, I often work evenings and weekends. My kids and I have lived in everything from tiny flats to multi-level detached houses, we've had everything from air-con to open fires for cold/heat, and walked a couple of miles to school or to shop in more than one place - and now have a long car commute instead.

I've definitely seen a lack of flexibility of thought causing the lack of money in my family. So I don't think that it's always money that's the issue, but sometimes people are set in their ways and unable to compromise other areas of their life and that has a knock-on effect.

Have any of the people on here complaining that politicians "aren't like normal people" ever bothered to stand for election?