Middle Class/Upper middle class most frugal with money (in a good way!)

[Montana7]

Out of our friends with dc the same age as ours the most middle class & upper middle seem to be the most frugal & love a bargain.. Many are very high earners yet dc wear second hand clothes, uniforms, the families are very good with food & pride themselves on zero waste... Have great holidays think safaris, multiple ski trips pre covid but always prided themselves on getting the best deals... I think its bloody brilliant & after realising how much disposable cash DH & I fritter away especially around Christmas I aspire to be more frugal... Aibu to suggest the mc/umc appreciate the value of money more or is it just the ones we know...

Easy to be frugal when it’s a choice

My husband and I are frugal as fuck, second hand uniforms all the way. High six fig salary. We don’t buy brands even in our weekly shop. But it’s easy when it’s a choice! When you’re skint you feel the need to treat yourself more because your life is so genuinely stressful. Been there too

And 'frugal' means careful, it doesn't mean poor.

You can be poor but not frugal. You can be rich but frugal. Just because you've completely run out of money doesn't make you a frugal person, it makes you are person who literally can't spend any more money if they wanted to, because they don't have it.

If you gave them some, watching what they then spent it on would determine whether they are frugal or not.

@CallMeNutribullet

The level of sneering at the plebs here is hilarious.

It's depressing. MN at its worst tbh.

But every thread about class seems to predictably go this way.

I also appreciate we are lucky enough to have these choices now. We have been in the situation historically where paying rent/bills/food was the ONLY option. There was no spare money for anything else. But the thread did ask about whether people who have money spend it frugally. My answer is in our case, no, not consciously, just have the choice to prioritize differently perhaps.

The problem with buying 2nd hand because its seen as a virtue by the middle and upper classes means that charity shops have on average upped their prices, this has priced a lot of the genuinely needy out, so its all well the 'virtuous' making a stand on fast fashion but without Primark a lot of families would be in a worse situation
Good, they are making more money. Charity shops either sell second hand label clothes at a reduced price that everyone is after. They also sell second hand supermarket stuff that no-one wants. There is plenty for those in true need, but rich or poor, people are after the labels.

I can tell from looking at people who in my area has money from the clothes and haircuts. Yes a jumper may have a hole in it. But you can still tell it is an expensive jumper and not from ASDA
This made me smile. I'm not mega rich but very comfortable. I buy clothes regularly at Asda. I wonder what you'd make of me!

@NdujaWannaDance

How patronising. Bit hard to splurge when you literally have nothing.

Not patronising at all. What is patronising is to paint all poor people as saints who never make bad financial decisions and have skewed priorities.

Some people are just terrible with money and that includes some poor people.

Plenty of people manage to splurge on things when they have very little money to splurge, which is why payday loans and Klarna do so well.

Are you telling me if I went and spoke to every person crying about their rent arrears I wouldn't find anyone with a recent expensive fake tan, tattoo, a set of acrylic nails, or a gambling habit?

I'm not saying all people who are very hard up deserve to be.

I'm saying that some people who are quite hard up make their own life worse by prioritising the wrong things.

Don't forget the big screen tv, weekly takeaways and fags

@vivainsomnia nothing. But plenty on here is talking about wearing £300 boots and a holey jumper. No one would mistake them for not having money.

@araiwa

You're not being frugal if you keep horses ffs

😂

@CallMeNutribullet

The level of sneering at the plebs here is hilarious.

Yes it makes me want to join Class War! This is what many "comfortable" people really think of us. And actually I knew this already.

Easier to be frugal if you're not hungry or at risk of homelessness

My grandma used to collect the egg money years and years ago. She said it was always the "middle/Upper Classes" who she had problems getting money out of. The poor people who had nothing/not much would always try to give her something if not all of it.

I doubt much has changed

Some people are well off because they are tight-fisted.

hth

Charity shops like Oxfam move stock around to where they know it will sell best - so the Oxfam shop in a more upmarket area gets the designer label stuff, not the one in the poor area.

I recently worked for an aristocratic family, at their enormous country house. The silk carpets and feather-stuffed furniture were indeed threadbare, and the crockery was old and chipped. They didn't even have a TV, and it looked like they hadn't decorated in 100 years, very frugal.

I came back to my extravagant rented 1-bed flat, turned on my 60" tv, sat in the living I just wasted £50 on repainting because I was bored of the previous colour, and felt very ashamed of myself indeed.

I'm not upper middle class, probably lower middle class although on a very tight income, but I will say that buying nice stuff second hand is nice but harder when you're in a fix. E.g. kids school shoes broke recently. While normally I try and plan ahead and look around for second hand decent long wearing ones, I had to buy worse ones for more money because I didn't expect the shoes to break and hadn't had a chance to plan.

So. When I am a bit better off I spend time on Ebay and buy e.g. a decent winter coat second hand for the kids (two years big so it gets a lot of wear, than handed down!), but when I'm on a tight budget I can't make those kind of speculative purchases, and sometime find I HAVE to spend more when something is actually needed. And on a lesser quality item. So buying second hand isn't exactly just frugal, it's more a nice way to save money when you have a bit of extra money to spare. You can't guarantee the charity shop has your child's size of school shoes at the very moment their shoe sole unexpectedly falls off!

Listen up plebeians! If you didn't spend your money on spray tans and tattoos, you too could have a couple of horses and send frogmella to boarding school!

@didihearthatright123456

My grandma used to collect the egg money years and years ago. She said it was always the "middle/Upper Classes" who she had problems getting money out of. The poor people who had nothing/not much would always try to give her something if not all of it.

I doubt much has changed

It is why when I was a cleaner I insisted on cash from well off people. Not because I want to cheat on my taxes as so many people claim on threads here. But because they always "forget" to transfer the money. Whereas if the cash wasn't there, I just walked and didn't do the clean.

You're not being frugal if you keep horses ffs

The OP clearly says 'frugal in every other way'
But I guess you like to deliberately miss the point.

It sounds like they prioritise and spend on what they find important, and scrimp on what they don't. I don't know if that's a trait of a particular class or classes but I think it's a sensible one.

We had little money when I was a kid but I remember things at Christmas like my mum buying dates, nuts etc that people would have a token nibble at and then the rest would end up thrown away. She'd just say, 'I don't know why I buy them but you just do at Christmas, don't you?'

Frogmella 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Don't forget the big screen tv, weekly takeaways and fags

I have no issue with big screens. As TVs got thinner and lighter it's easier for them to be bigger and the price of TVs has gone down over the years, even big ones. It's not 1958 and we don't all have to huddle around a TV with a screen the size of an A4 piece of paper.

But excessive takeaways and cigarettes, yes absolutely I will judge if you can't pay your rent or your gas bill.

But plenty on here is talking about wearing £300 boots and a holey jumper. No one would mistake them for not having money
But why define anyone and whether they have money or not based on what they wear?

I can as much wear expensive clothing one day (outdoor clothes because I'm out a lot in the rain, wind and cold) and be in jeans, trainers and jumper from Asda the next.

I'm still the same person, one who was counting every penny one day and now not having to ever look at my account balance to make a purchase.

Great posts from CSJobseeker and others.

It also struck me that the poster who listed her spending priorities (insurance, horses, pensions) and non-priorities (everyday clothes, 'general groceries') - clearly intending to demonstrate her wisdom and forethought with money and her middle-class values - could be spending some of that money on fairly produced food and clothes, so is literally profiting at others' expense. If we want to make society more sustainable all round, it occurs to me that some of these extremely selfish MC 'priorities' are going to have to change.

@Peregrina

Charity shops like Oxfam move stock around to where they know it will sell best - so the Oxfam shop in a more upmarket area gets the designer label stuff, not the one in the poor area.

I have noticed this everywhere too.

@Peregrina

Charity shops like Oxfam move stock around to where they know it will sell best - so the Oxfam shop in a more upmarket area gets the designer label stuff, not the one in the poor area.

Which means if poor people want to be "frugal" by buying good quality second hand clothes, they have to pay out for a bus fare first.

Listen up plebeians! If you didn't spend your money on spray tans and tattoos, you too could have a couple of horses and send frogmella to boarding school!

Don't be silly, of course you couldn't.

You might be able to pay your rent though.