The casual things that wealthy people take for granted

[KaleQueen]

Inspired by a thread that’s gone totally off topic….where someone suggested a £400 watch was cheap.

What’s the most casual (even accidental) brag you’ve ever heard a wealthy person say?

I can start as I know someone who celebrated a big birthday recently and is an absolutely lovely person but during their party (in the wonderful house) they said “oh! Here comes the string quartet. I had completely forgotten about them!”

^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5174898-to-feel-slightly-suspicious-of-dp?page=35&reply=138771616^

To you!

Oh god , some throwaway comments once in a chat group I was on about a particular interest ( we did all meet in real life at some point a while ago )
one comment “ oh just get your husband to buy you the flight ticket to the USA
for Christmas if you want to go “ 🙄
And casually arranging to meet in a city that’s far from me and no way did I have the funds for the travel and accommodation etc .

It's a perception of what you think is wealthy. Before we had DC people called us wealthy (not in a nice way) because we travelled overseas every year. (We're in Aus so this is expensive). Truth was we scrimped & saved as it was a priority. Definitely not wealthy!

A friend had genuinely wealthy in laws. Gave them a house, paid their bills, just opened her mouth and ye shall receive. Never worked a day. They kept asking if we'd tried X fancy new restaurant & not understanding why we didn't take multiple child free holidays a year, just eat out if cba cooking, or why I didn't 'just buy' things I want etc. I know she considered us boring. Anyway, she's left her DH & the money has stopped. She's renting, now unable to afford any holiday & is having to do what normal people do - work, cook & budget. Isn't adjusting well, understandably. It really shows the attitude difference to life between being a have & have not.

It's all relative! If you're loaded, it's cheap. If you're skint, it's expensive!

I bought it on Fleur of england. They sell bra up to £400. It’s beautiful. Lots of designer bra cost that much. Brodelle, coco de mer and some agent provocateur.

I certainly don't think that 400 pounds is cheap for a watch.

Ae you living in a bubble!

I do hope it gives you amazing tits for that price!!

I know. Its only a one time thing for me aswell. Just to treat myself. Feeling so sexy in that bra though. Lol. Most of my bra from rigby and peller. Its expensive too but not £200 and usually i wait for discount.

Wealth is relative. Someone on 40k is wealthy compared to someone on 20k.
IMO it’s not having to think about when you are next paid. I am lucky that I can buy concert tickets, go for nice dinner etc without having to check my bank balance. To me that’s wealth but I am not rich. £400 for a watch? Nope unless it was an Apple one but it would need to last at least 5 years.

In this world it is though?

You edited your post after I quoted you.

£400 is not expensive to you.
£400 is expensive to many people.

I don’t know if you are purposely missing my point. I am well aware that much more expensive watches exist, that’s irrelevant. You seem to be unwilling to see that just because you think £400 is a cheap watch, the majority of people don’t.

@KaleQueen what’s entitled about it? She paid for the ticket so entirety up to her whether she goes or not?

£400? I could buy a watch for that 😅

Why is ‘new money’ more likely to be crass? New money just means they’ve actually had to work hard to achieve it and is more impressive than generational wealth. I’ve found privileged ‘old money’ people are far more likely to be really rude and lack manners, and make it very clear when they think someone is beneath them. I never get why mumsnet sees old money as so superior.

if you’re awareexpensive watches exist then it’s very relevant. You’re almost trying to pretend they don’t…

We had organised for DS and his friends to do a local outdoor activity for his birthday recently but the forecast was for torrential rain. The provider was still offering it but it would have been a miserable experience so we just booked something else instead. I still can't quite believe I was that extravagant/reckless and I did have some conversations with the parents of invitees in which I felt really awkward as they thought I would have had to get a refund to be able to do this and were curious to know how I'd managed to persuade them to do that as they are notoriously bad at offering refunds.
Having grown up without much money, I still feel remarkably lucky when I can replace white goods or sports boots for the DC or get a new tyre without really thinking about it. Now that DC1 is a teen, the biggest luxury is being able to buy her the right thing sometimes even though it is £££ and a remarkably similar but not quite the same item is only £.

Being on holiday somewhere not liking the weather there so flying somewhere else on a whim.

Having staff to do all your drudge - laundry / cooking / house work.

That’s properly rich.

When I worked in Offshore banking, one of my clients was a lovely lady in her 60s. She told me she was taking inventory of her finances for her will and could I look to see if she had any accounts she may have forgotten about (when accounts hadn't been active for many years, they went dormant, so we had to search through the archives) I found 2 of them - one had 30k in and the other 50k. She had completely forgotten about them! Those were just her low risk accounts too and with our bank. These clients had a tendency to spread their money around various banks so goodness knows how much more forgotten money she had.

Another, a lovely young South African guy, worked for Goldman Sachs, asked if I could cancel or at least recall a rent cheque for him as he was negotiation with the landlord. It was too late and he just shrugged it off like "oh well" - it was for 5k, and he just shrugged it off like it was no big deal. I was dumbfounded!

How?

I can’t afford a £1000 car. But I’m not calling it expensive….it would be a pretty reasonable CHEAP car.

I can’t even afford a £400 watch but even if I couldn’t I wouldn’t really want one. I still think an expensive watch is an expensive watch…like perhaps a Rolex

What you are saying doesn't make sense though

You can't say that a 400 pound watch is cheap, simply because a 40,000 pound watch exists.

There are always going to be more expensive items out there in the world.

The vast majority of people would buy a watch just to tell the time and would probably spend up to fifty pounds on it.

There is no way that I would spend 400 pounds on a watch.

To be fair, with the cost of parking in some places now I do the same. You’ll pay £24/£30 to park in Brighton for the day, but a parking ticket is only £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 14 days. And you don’t always get a ticket. So far I’ve saved money by just paying the parking tickets when I get them 😂

Slightly related, but different.

This is a story that my DH related to me. He was born abroad and has an adopted sister, I don't really know the entire circumstances around the adoption.

My DH tells me that shortly after she joined the family (she would have been about 11 or 12 years old at the time and he was about 13) he remembers going out for a meal at quite a nice restaurant.

When it came to dessert his father asked what she would like. Apparently, she was embarrassed but admitted that her family had not really gone to restaurants but when they had eaten out, they couldn't afford to go to the sort of place that would have dessert.

Then, according to my DH, his father ordered every single dessert on the menu for her to try. Not expecting her to eat all of it, or even much of it, or even to sample all of it. I think it was more of a statement by way of saying something like "Don't worry, you won't want for anything"

They were maybe, in their country, sort of upper middle class so, not rich, but his father was always very generous and thoughtful of others.

Some wealthy people do live in a bubble. And they don't seem to even aware that people don't live like them.

I remember there was a famous thread on here, where a woman was asked by her colleague where she "summered" every year.

Her colleague then went on to say that he thought that everyone had a summer house in the UK

I did. It's a myth that only the wealthy have horses. Plenty of us at the other end doing it on a shoestring and going without to make it happen.

Wait until you see the £300k horsebox your friend will probably buy next...

(I bought a NF pony 8 years ago and he was 6k - can't imagine what you'd get for 400 quid!)

A very sweet but barely trained, large native breed, with a long term skin condition needing management, a short term lameness needing a few weeks box rest to cure and a slight case of insanity. Heaps of fun.

If you think £400 is an expensive watch I’d love to know what you think a £40,000 watch is??

Something I'd sell to raise a 50% deposit on a flat.