What's the most privileged/off the mark post/response you've read?

[waywardways]

I've name changed for this, just in case anyone does an AS and accuses me of getting DM fodder.

Me and the DC had to flee our home several years ago and we were moved into a tiny 2 bed flat temporarily. I made a thread at the time, saying me and 3dc had had a traumatic move and were very overcrowded and asked for advice on how to store our daily stuff in an efficient way.
Several posters replied helpfully, linking shelving units/freestanding storage, but one poster replied along the lines of:

"Your DH must be high up in the army and you have to rough it in officers housing until your 5 bed detached home is ready".

Another poster quoted the above with "This was my immediate thought too! It's so hard OP, but we've all been there".

I found this both amusing and perplexing because a) I would never have assumed the above and b) it was so far off the mark.

There was another thread very recently about food guidelines where the lack of awareness and privilege was quite frightening!

I remember seeing a clip of I think it was Roman Kemp talking (to his Dad maybe the Spandu Ballet chap?) about cooking a meal and realising he didn’t have an onion so paid about £8 to have one onion delivered.

now that’s privileged.

apologies to Roman if it wasn’t him but I think it was.

How's your day going
All right till you spoke to me..cheerio.

A horse owner once said to me, with a completely straight face, that she didn't know why people thought horse owners were wealthy. 'We're all poor because the horses cost so much.' 🙄

There are also the threads telling women to leave their alcoholic husbands because he goes out twice a year with friends and has five pints.

Horse owners often start out comfortable (or even wealthy) and end up poor though. It's like standing in the rain and tearing up £50 notes while being trodden on.

I love watching some of the facebook horse themes were people say 'There's my Caribbean holiday' and the camera pans to a muddy thoroughbred snoozing in a field.

This resonates with me. I passed my test years ago when you picked a driving instructor out the phone book, had 20 lessons and then booked a test straight away. BOSH.

Having funded 2 DCs through driving lessons which cost the equivalent of a small mortgage after ringing around 30 or so different instructors for availability and then having to wait 6 months to get a test…absolutely farcical.

The woman on a £250k household income form one salary, complaining they don't feel rich after saving £2500( each month, and having £500 pocket money each month, and after that and school fees and cars and mortgage and bills they only have around £2000 left for everything else boo hoo

Privilege takes many forms and not just financial. For eg i find a lot of posters assume new parents have a full nuclear family around them. Husband away ? Get your mum or sister to move in! Or Christmas always involves a huge happy nuclear family dying to pitch in. It can be very depressing to read if you dont have that support or worse , gives the impression you cant have a family without support at your fingertips

"Yes, I do earn a huge salary, but once I've paid for all of my lovely expensive hobbies, topped up my golden pension pots, squirreled away lots of it into savings and invested the rest into appreciating assets, there's not actually very much left in my purse... so I know what it's like for you, relying on yellow-sticker items and feeling the pinch, as I'm basically the same."

It's the same kind of thinking that you sometimes hear from BTL landlords, when they don't end up clearing a huge amount of profit each month, and sometimes even have to make up a small monthly shortfall themselves; so they wail that it's not a way to wealth at all and they're actually making a small loss... well, apart from the little matter of owning another house worth hundreds of thousands or more outright after 25 years with very little effort or investment from yourself!

If it flies, floats, or fucks it's cheaper to lease than to buy!

For similar reasons, I get annoyed with MPs banging on about hard-working or struggling families. Not everybody has a family. Nor is everyone who dies necessarily a 'loved one'.

Anybody moaning about being asset rich (e.g. a couple of properties abroad, a flat in London and a massive SUV) but cash poor should come to me for advice. I have a simple solution to their problem.

Yep! If you have a property you can sell it, even if you have to sell it for less than you bought it for. No such thing as guaranteed returns on an investment.

Reminds me when I recklessly suggested a babysitting circle at dd’s play school. I was stared at with incredulity, “Why don’t you ask your mum to babysit?” “Because that would involve a seance,” I replied, but it went over their head.

But they all expect fantastic service from committed, engaged and experienced staff and complain bitterly when they perceive that doesn't happen.
Can't have it all ways, either these jobs and the services they deliver are important, and therefore worthy of respect, or they're not - in which case what are they moaning for? 🤣

These sort of people sound almost as odious as the ones who go on and on about living wages, workers' rights and so on, then think nothing of going to the hand car wash staffed entirely by Afghan boat people...

Or indeed the ones who go on and on about boat people, and then take their Range Rover to the Afghan hand car wash...

It's a different privilege to assume everyone has the option to pay into a pension, In my, almost completely freelance, industry most companies have set up workplace pensions to kick in after 3 months. The practical reason is that a lot of contracts are shorter than that so it gets too clunky for people to have endless pension pots worth pence. The less kind reason is that it saves them from paying out for three months. People can opt in from day one but not everyone realises they can request that.
And then on a purely financial reason, there are lots of people who can't afford to pay into one at all because it's plan ahead for a more comfortable retirement or afford to pay your rent now.

They announced they would recruit 6,500 new teachers and pump money into the SEND budget. Not sure how thats going

Not about privilege but a tone deaf one I remember on here a long time ago.

poster started a thread in relationships about practical things to do preparing to leave an abusive relationship.

things like selling bits on music magipie/eBay, asking for cash back at the supermarket. All ways of squirrelling funds that wouldn’t be noticed by the abuser.

1st poster pops up saying ‘get a job and leave’. It was just so breathtakingly misplaced. I think about that a lot. What was she hoping for? Everyone to put down their CDs and apply for a new job and a rental agreement?

@doggostepping I can’t stand the “just get another job” or “why aren’t you also working” replies

Oh the irony!

Can you actually lease a horse? Make monthly payments and then hand it back after three years; or have it repossessed if you fail to keep up with the payments? Seems kind of cruel for a living creature.

I think the axiom is more accurately "if it flies, floats or fucks, rent it" but the sentiment is the same. And you can certainly rent a horse, as I discovered when working at a private mental health provider that wanted to offer equine therapy in central London.

I had lease in my mind because I was talking to someone this morning complaining about the cost of maintaining his boat.

yes, horses are always up for lease. Either part time lease with a financial contribution or a full time lease where someone doesn't want to sell for emotional reasons but cannot keep the horse any longer.

Just to add. Way back in about 1992 I had a major accident where i broke my neck and spine at a show jumping competition. I leased my horse to a riding school for a 3 year contract. I did not want to sell him as i adored him. But knew I could not (walk for a year/ ride ever again) and so could not keep him.

The entire riding school had mostly leased horses from owners who did not want to sell.

It's really common. (Anyway, for me it ended sadly as the school went bust and the owner did a flit along with about 8 of her best horses, including mine. She had leased the livery as well and literally did a nightime flit. )