People think I’m rich from a rich family… but I’m not!

[rambutann]

I have this strange thing where people I meet or even friends have the impression that I come from a wealthy family. I honestly have no airs and graces, and have friends from a wide array of backgrounds. I speak and dress reasonably well. I don’t ski. I didn’t go to boarding school. But I did go to Cambridge.

My parents are lower-middle class, both teachers. One went to Oxford and boarding school, the other the child of factory workers.

But people just assume I’ve had an easy life and my parents are wealthy which is how I live where I live or have the job I do. But it’s far from it.

Does anyone else get judged for coming from a rich family even though they had a run of the mill upbringing?!

You're!!! Bloody autocorrect.

What's bad about people thinking that you're a higher social class than you are? I want people to think I'm as upper-crust as possible! 🤭It's a compliment. It means that people think you sound well-spoken, that you're educated, intelligent, well-dressed, that you look nice, sound nice, smell nice! It's a good thing! And if you didn't have a very good background, it's a real triumph!

You might not be rich but you are posh. Two generations of Oxbridge. And boarding school!

We can muster two generations of university (only just, thanks dad) but before that it was mills and mines and no university. And we're solidly middle class.

One of your parents went to Boarding school then Oxford. Whether your parents had money or not, they clearly came from money.

You've answered your own qn OP.. you have an RP accent and went to Cambridge. Very different to how most people are.

😅

My friend’s son apparently called me the posh one!

His father is a GP, his uncle is an Oxbridge educated billionaire.

It’s because I don’t have a local accent and am shit with kids so tend to ask him about studying Macbeth and educational stuff.

I have the opposite. I have south Asian parents. People assume I am from a working class background. An Immigrant who can’t speak English proper, like. My grandfather was a judge, my father has a phd from Cambridge. I read English at Oxford. So yeah, I can speak English thanks. I find prejudice of all sorts quite interesting.

I can relate: Everybody thinks I'm royalty and related to the Windsors after I mastered the swivel wrist wave the late queen used to do. Often when I'm saying goodbye, people curtsey and bow.

It's also been said that I drink like Princess Margaret too...

You’re well educated at one of the world’s top university establishments. It might be that.

There are some really rich places in 'the North' (e.g. Hale Barns, Manchester, has an average property sale price over £1million) and some really poor places in 'the South' ... but somehow for some people having a southern accent equates with 'posh'.

I have the same. Raised in a single parent household, in a seemingly 'wealthy' area but we were actually pretty poor and in a rented flat in the rough end of town. But....weirdly, I had private elocution lessons!

My accent's very RP, so when asked where I'm from originally as I'm not local sounding, it's often then followed up with comments assuming I must have gone to the well known private school!

Teachers are a funny one. Some I would class as lower middle, some middle middle. I think it depends on their family of origin, current family and lifestyle. I would class them as similar to nurses, small business owners, clerical managers, financial advisors, graphic designers, tech etc.
Doctors, lawyers, accountants more solidly middle middle.

Received pronunciation.

Could be the fact you think a teacher (a middle-middle-class profession) who went to boarding school (an upper class indicator) and Oxford (another upper or upper-middle class indicator) is lower-middle class.

I think teachers are from a rather wider spectrum, in my experience - are you parroting some outdated “A B C D” social classification theory?

Do you really care how rich people think you are?

All the most widely used classifications class teachers as middle-middle and doctors and lawyers as upper-middle. There are objective measures.

Not outdated at all - take a look at the social mobility foundation which has information about the most current ways of measuring class background.

You might not see yourself as middle class.. but you are.. on the 'basic' definition.

The middle class is a social group of people who are well-educated but not extremely wealthy or poor.

Your education and income make you middle class. You are a not working in a manual occupation, e.g. in a trade or in a factory.
.

People are picking up on the fact that you are solidly middle class. If they make inferences beyond that about your wealth then blame a thousand years of the English class system!

ETA - you don’t say whether you were state or privately educated. Go on… Some of the smartest people I know didn’t board but did go to day schools.

RP - right posh?

IMO it's the Cambridge thing. You've had a privileged education that taught you to speak your opinions with confidence. I'm in the same boat. It's not the money, it's the sense of assurance. You need to love yourself more and not worry what people think - feel as confident as you sound.

The North/South thing is so bizarre for
me. I have the opposite assumptions made about me to the OP. I grew up in Didsbury, Manchester and both my parents are surgeons. I went to a private all girls school. I now live and work in London. My retired parents recently moved down and sold our 4 bed family home in Manchester for £1.5m.

I’m obviously very privileged but everyone at work assumes I’m from a working class background because I’m from Manchester and have a slight Northern accent (I don’t have a Manchester accent but I say words like bath and glass the Northern way).

Throughout my life, people I’ve met from the South who are from a middle or lower-middle class background have assumed that I’m from a less privileged background than them. Yet everyone I knew growing up in Manchester was from the same background as me!

I’ve always just let people make their assumptions as it’s an awkward thing to correct.

OP you are not lower middle class! I’m a teacher married to a tradesman (who earns substantially more than I do) and consider us in that grey area between working and middle class. I am part of the first generation in my family to be university educated and none of my husbands are. We earn a half decent wage but it’s all relative. I can’t afford luxuries but I can cover my bills.