Inverted Snobbery

[stbeaker]

I have noticed that MN has started to berate anybody who can afford to do or buy anything nice. See the recent 18k holiday thread with people calling the op grotesque.

Surely MN should be for all. For the rich, for the poor, and for everybody in the middle.

Now obviously if you are commenting on threads about people asking for advice who have a weekly shopping budget of £50 about how you shop in Selfridges food hall then you are an insensitive div.

But if you start a specific thread about a luxury holiday or what designer bag to get - then you should be allowed to do so without being labelled grotesque or having COL thrown at you.

I’ve honestly never thought about it. First class plane tickets are so far off my radar, they just don’t register. Like lots of other things!

You seem really aggressive towards me and the other poster who also said they had no idea someone could / would spend £18k on a holiday. Is it really so astonishing to you that we might think this way?

Every now and then I’ve seen posters saying they’ve only ever paid 2k for their two week all inclusive for family of six and that it was really nice

Firstly apologies if I came across aggressive. That was never my intention.

I find it astonishing you didn’t think 18k on a holiday was possible? I mean what did you think was the most a family of four could spend? Genuine question.

Unless you've never booked holidays, I also find it hard to believe you can't imagine they might cost that much. If you have ever tried to book a holiday, it would not be unusual to come across flights and accommodation outside your price range. Like searching for hotels in X location for X dates - if you don't put filters on straigh away, you will see also luxury options costing thousands per night. You may not check them in detail, but you will notice they exist.

This whole sorry situation could be solved if all the richer people gave all their money to the poorer people and then the poorer people who were the rich people would know what it was like to hear the rich people going on about being rich and then the rich people who were the poor people could go on a nice holiday to get away from them going on about how poor they are. I will send my bank details to anyone wishing to do a bank transfer so we can start to clear up this whole sorry situation once and for all.

To be fair to @cocoloco23 - I grew up with no holidays and when I became an adult really struggled with learning how to price/compare and decide what was worth spending money on or not. I imagine if you're not going through that process anyway it's easy to imagine holidays don't cost all that much, or to take a 'sticker price' and assume there won't be a heap of costs on top.

The rich people who were the poor people should also remember to tell the now poor people that if they complain they have a bad case of SOUR GRAPES and if they just had the right attitude and stopped compalining about their lot then they could be the rich people instead of the poor people

Chav isn't about money or wealth though, it's different, it's about taste.

But more importantly does anyone know HOW MUCH a plane fare to Sydney costs?????? And what abouty business class? Have you even considered that?

But how much do you think it costs to stay in the Penthouse at the Ritz/Savoy etc?

I also think think it’s interesting to find out about things out of your price range. We as a family love Disney - and usually stay at one of the mid level resorts or if we are out of season one of the lesser priced deluxe resorts.

I would love to stay at The Grand Floridian - but as my husband reminds me every trip - 40k for two weeks in Disney is out of our budget!

But if there was a thread on the grand Floridian I would have a tonne of questions and be super interested - even though it’s a Disney hotel we could never consider.

I know - the mind truly boggles.

That’s a bit rude.

You can spend £2k on an economy long haul return now to somewhere like Thailand or Vietnam.

So you could conceivably spend almost half of that £18k budget on flights before you’ve done anything else, just flying in economy.

@stbeaker tbh I think if people don’t go abroad they probably would lose touch with the price of things. The cost of hotels floors me every time I look, and I travel relatively often!

Is the answer two shillinga and six pence?

Thank you. I get that it’s hard to convey tone online.

I think I (and others) are coming at it from the angle of: 18k is a lot of money. It’s a big part of my / the average UK salary. If I had 18k to spend, I’d spend it on something that lasted longer than a holiday.

That’s not to say people SHOULDN’T spend 18k on a holiday, it’s just that it would never occur to me to do so, because the money is gone after a couple of weeks and you have nothing to show for it.

Whereas you’re thinking about it logically, in terms of what 1st class flights, 5* accommodation, 14 nights of lovely restaurants, etc cost. When you break it down like this and add it back up, of course I can see how you’d get to 18k, especially if you have children.

I think my astonishment was about spending what (to me) is a huge amount of money (relatively speaking) on something so transient. I know people spend millions on houses, for example - but you might live in that for 30 years. It’s an investment - with luck, you’ll sell it for more than you bought it.

Whereas it didn’t occur to me that people would spend £££ on a holiday because it doesn’t last. Same as someone who might spend 10k on a bottle of wine. To me, those are just nice experiences that are soon gone.

I might spend 2 weeks reading a book. Would I spend 18k on a book? Obviously not. But it’s given me some escapism and relaxation over a 2-week period, so why not?

I’m genuinely not having a go or trying to say what anyone should spend money on. Just that this amount of money on a holiday is difficult to comprehend.

I don’t think it’s envy or anything. If I won the lottery, I still don’t think I’d spend 18k on holidays. Anymore than I’d spend 50k on a car.

I don’t know if this makes sense - I’m sort
of thinking ‘out loud’. It’s about the value we put on things, isn’t it? And what we consider to be investments. For me, it’s property.

Everyone has different priorities. None of us are right or wrong!

If you struggle financially to feed your kids and keep a roof over their heads (amongst other frightening circumstances of deprivation) then you're unlikely to know the first thing about 300 million pound yachts, or even 18K holidays. But according to you, that also makes people in poverty "simple".

The very worst kind of privileged: what they lack in social conscience, they more than make up for in vulgarity.

I think your bottle of wine example is a good one - and sort of makes my point.

I would never dream of spending 10k on a bottle of wine - or even 5% of that. But I know they exist.

I want a Grand Floridian thread now! 😂 In the same boat - love Disney, but it's the cheap hotel or an offsite villa for us. That being said, I'm grateful we can do it and I certainly don't begrudge those staying at the nicer hotels (though one day I might book a single night at the Animal Kingdom Lodge for the fun of it).

I am the very definition of “new money”. Both my parents grew up in council houses, my DH grew up in care. Our life now (through our own hard work and a lot of luck) is so very different and yes, £18k on a holiday is not considered an extravagance for us. But I can remember so very well when it would have been absolutely unthinkable. And I can understand why a lot of people think it is.
And @somethingfifty we are flying home from Sydney, via Sri Lanka, Business Class. It’s £5k each.

Speaking as someone who can’t afford a week in a tent let alone an 18k excursion, it’s not that we are dumb and aren’t aware of wealth and privilege, or that if the roles were reversed we’d want people to hate us, it’s that we’d love those who are lucky to be that privileged to be a bit more mindful of that privilege. Please. Thank you. Doffing my cap.

I mean someone on here made a thread saying they had no money and were having holidays to Spain and Greece because they were so broke.

Tried telling them that if they were really broke they wouldn't be going on holiday anywhere. Maybe someone would consider that inverse snobbery or a race to the bottom ? But some people just need a reality check.

I don't actually care if someone wants to show off their 18k holiday though good for them as long as they don't moan that they have no money at the same time

I know 60 million pound apartments in London exist. I’m not in that world, nobody I know is in that world, and it’s not something I will ever be in a position to purchase. But I still know they exist - because I read, and watch the news, and see newspapers, and websites.

I think a lot of people are feeling the pinch at the moment so are sensitive about money. £18k is nearly my entire year's take home pay so spending that amount on something frivolous like a holiday just rubs me up the wrong way. I wouldn't attack the poster, I'd just sigh and move on. But it does sting a bit. I didn't see the thread itself so I don't know what the tone was, but a lot of more comfortably off people can be a bit tone deaf when it comes to money.