Rich mums who don't like spending, at all.

[blarbed2]

This is just a chatty observation. Has anyone experienced having friends who are rich (like millionaires) but who are really, really tight with money? I'm not rich by the way, just have a middily income family and happen to live in a well-off area where some people are loaded.

I just find it quite strange. I have a couple of friends who are really down-to-earth, and you would never guess how rich they are. One, for example, lives in a house worth about 2 million, and they are in the middle of massive renovations. However, for years she has always been scraping around for second-hand stuff and her kids wear clothes until they are sizes too small. When we go out on day trips, I can tell she's reluctant to do ice-creams, rides, parking costs, etc.

I admire being frugal - I am myself. But although our lifestyle is modest we have the cash to enjoy ourselves a bit now and then in small ways (posting on the back of a playdate, day-trip today that has been a bit eye-brow raising when it comes to money attitudes).

I love the way giving your kids an ice cream at the beach = filling them with shit, making them fat or leads to them not eating their dinner thus disrupting their routine. 😆

Has she always had money? when I was growing up my family were on benefits, lived in a council house and I was on free school meals. When I got my first job I was on minimum wage and when I had my first child was on a very low income. We got by but I have to be very very frugal and often remember scrambling around for pennies to buy milk, doing my shopping in 4 different shops to get the best price etc.

Over time I’ve been back to uni, retrained and worked my way up and now own my own home and earn £50k. I have a reasonable disposable income but old habits die hard and I often find it very difficult to spend money without feeling like I’m ‘wasting’ it. I buy most of my clothes and DD’s second hand or in supermarkets and am always looking out for discount codes, free days out etc. Might she be similar?

My mum and stepdad have a lot of money. She's been retired many years now, but when he was still working, he made about £200k with a bonus on top, which was maybe another £100k. Collectively, they get about £8,000 a month in pension now. It's mind-blowing to me. (She had a good salary when I was growing up, but nothing crazy, we scraped by most months thanks to credit cards, we definitely weren't rich. She was a single parent).

They are mortgage free in a normal house with a normal car. When she travels to see me (they don't live in the UK), she will search for weeks to get the best flight deal, almost never flying direct. She'll have two changes of planes to save £300. It boggles the mind. She could afford to fly first class every time. She's just weird and obsessive about it.

@fingersfy

I love the way giving your kids an ice cream at the beach = filling them with shit, making them fat or leads to them not eating their dinner thus disrupting their routine. 😆

FGS this is so MN!!!!! The point is TIMING. Is that so hard to understand? Seriously? Talk about taking what you want from a post without actually reading the whole thing...

I'm perfectly happy for my dcs have ice creams, cake etc on a day out, just not immediately before dinner. So far so normal. The point I was making I have friends who consistently want to buy them right at the end of the day, pretty much as we're packing up to go home, and I probably look a bit po faced about it, hence they are probably on here bitching that I'm one of those insanely rich mothers who is so incredibly tight they resent prising open their purse to scrabble together the necessary coppers to pay for it. Nope. Not tight, just not up for resultant evening hassle. My dcs are young though, very much not applicable to older dcs who are distinctly gannet like and can eat pretty much anything anytime with no ill effects.

No my point was only on MNs will an ice cream make you fat, ruin dinner & bedtime.

Honestly have a Magnum & relax!

@fingersfy

No my point was only on MNs will an ice cream make you fat, ruin dinner & bedtime.

Honestly have a Magnum & relax!

I would... but... it'd make me fat, ruin my dinner, and keep me awake... so, well, no can do.

Plus the COST?! A magnum FFS???? Branded?

It's fine, I will buy you one & I don't mind if you don't return the favour 😜

I’ve just had a supermarket own brand mini milk and I can barely get me shoes on now. That’ll learn me.

@jasminoide

I'm not loaded but even if I was I'd still see the value of money. I hate buying from an ice cream van when I can get a multipack from the supermarket for the same price. What really gets on my wick is my friend who calls me tight and laughs at the above example, but will spend £100+ on a day out (attraction, ice creams, chicken nuggets in the restaurant and souvenir) but then cries poverty and needs loans to pay basic bills.

Yes you are very sensible

Selective spending

I'm a take a packed lunch type of mum

I think frugality is a personality trait rather than anything to do with your actual wealth. I wouldn't say the same about largesse. You can be very spendy and poor, or very spendy and rich..

There is a huge amount of moral judgement around spending (bad, usually) and saving (good, usually), and around generosity and tightness.

Personally, I loathe financial tightness and control, and find it usually goes hand in hand with emotional tightness and control, and a transactional way of thinking about everything including social relationships. So that's my moral judgement.

Complete minefield. If you find yourself questioning this person's motives, though, OP, then maybe they aren't for you nor you for them? Maybe you're just a bit irreconcilable..

I think frugality is a personality trait rather than anything to do with your actual wealth. I wouldn't say the same about largesse. You can be very spendy and poor, or very spendy and rich..

The problem is the spendy poor one is spending someone else's cash, and heading for bankruptcy!

DM came from a wealthy family but her father gambled the lot away. She has therefore always been really tight about cash. I remember crying in the kitchen as a 12 year old as I had broken a test tube at school and needed 20p to pay for a new one and she had gone ballistic about it. DP are rolling in it and have been for as long as I can remember..................

I can be a bit puritanical sometimes - ie will usually look for something secondhand before buying it new - certainly wasn't going to waste money on new baby clothes etc when they are outgrown so fast and my kids were always the ones in uniform way too big at school. At other times I'm keen to allow them to buy what they want as I never could.

I no longer work "officially", but my DH brings in just shy of £1m per annum (after tax) but topped up with some additional income of mine, it brings it to just over the full £1m...

Half of that goes straight to our investments & savings, then the rest is all lifestyle expenses, (which we break up into wants and needs).

Household takes half of what's left = £250k (mortgage, running costs & groceries etc)

Then £125k to all other must pay, reacuring costs (like school fees, memberships & subscriptions, cars, allowances etc)

£62.5k to discretionary spending and £62.5k to 4 overseas holidays throughout the year and 4 weekends away...

As you can see, we're very conservative and live way below our means, we could spend a lot more, (better house/more fun etc) but we just choose to be simple & wait for the proof of growth.

We're in a very fortunate position indeed, that's not taken for granted, but our goal is to sustain such an income standard passively (which we should be able to, after a decade or so), hence the rather heavy investment...

Hope this helps and the openness is appreciated xx

P.S. For those wondering, he's in finance, I was in law :)

Not the point of the thread, but where are you getting coffee for £2? It's never less than £4.50 here!

They do not want for money at all, but my friend is really odd about money. Every time we meet up I’ve tried to buy a round of coffee for the two of us thinking it would be nice for us to take turns, but she is always really against this I suspect because she is worried that somehow she might end up paying for a more expensive drink that she’s not benefiting from.

I’m a bit reluctant to let someone buy me a coffee, not because I’m tight and worried about spending more on them, quite the opposite - I’m worried I’ll forget to repay the favour! I don’t want to have to keep a mental list of who paid last time. I’d actually be happy to buy both coffees all the time or just each buy our own. I do go along with the taking turns thing as I can see it’s sociable but I’m always paranoid that I’ve forgotten it’s my turn.

If there was something like a wedding to attend then children would be well turned out. But generally they are just out growing and messing things up. There is never any point in spending much on clothing that will be worn for sometimes just a couple of months because of growth spurts.

There is a cost benefit analysis to everything some are just more conscious than others. Something could be a pound or a thousand pounds affording it to me is irrelevant it’s the actual pleasure versus cost.

@mummy2benny oh man, I hear you. I’m forever waiting for proof of growth whilst spraying £65k per year on holidays.

Let’s hope our risky gambles pay off eh?? Got to be in it to win it!

@Aalvarino old thread from years ago but I agree with your old comment about control and money going hand in hand with emotional tightness and control