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...

What an interesting thread! I have worked the checkout/ customer service all my life. We are talking decades of supermarket/ off licence/ corner shop/ massive department stores/ luxury fashion and wholesalers from Asia (ridiculously low prices).
Guys, I am sorry to break it to you, but poor people spend more. After years at the checkout, you get to meet the families and people recognize you/ become friendly. Rich or poor has nothing to do with money. It has to do with your attitude to money. “Richer” people would pay cash for only what they need. They never have their nails “done” but are always impeccable. They always wear the same clothes and come shopping maybe twice a year for what I would call “fancy” clothes. They never take out. They never hold a coffee shop cup. They never have extensions. They talked to me about staying home and watching YouTube videos on how to improve their skills. Not 1,2 or 3 people. 20 years of work worth of people. “Poor” people (those talking to me about their struggle) ALL had : tans, nails, hair, bags and bags of shopping. They go out, eat out, drink, smoke, buy gadgets that will break in a month, and think they save by buying cheap everything else. I mean the Starbucks ALONE for a year would cover a mini family break in Paris, nice airbnb included. Sorry, this is not an opinion or how I wish things were. It’s facts.

Well maybe, but a lot of things is about looks too. They can look scruffy but not care because they have they power of ££ behind them.

RoyalFamilyFan
What’s race got to do with it?

@Skinnymimi

What an interesting thread! I have worked the checkout/ customer service all my life. We are talking decades of supermarket/ off licence/ corner shop/ massive department stores/ luxury fashion and wholesalers from Asia (ridiculously low prices). Guys, I am sorry to break it to you, but poor people spend more. After years at the checkout, you get to meet the families and people recognize you/ become friendly. Rich or poor has nothing to do with money. It has to do with your attitude to money. “Richer” people would pay cash for only what they need. They never have their nails “done” but are always impeccable. They always wear the same clothes and come shopping maybe twice a year for what I would call “fancy” clothes. They never take out. They never hold a coffee shop cup. They never have extensions. They talked to me about staying home and watching YouTube videos on how to improve their skills. Not 1,2 or 3 people. 20 years of work worth of people. “Poor” people (those talking to me about their struggle) ALL had : tans, nails, hair, bags and bags of shopping. They go out, eat out, drink, smoke, buy gadgets that will break in a month, and think they save by buying cheap everything else. I mean the Starbucks ALONE for a year would cover a mini family break in Paris, nice airbnb included. Sorry, this is not an opinion or how I wish things were. It’s facts.

So many questions!!!

Do they actually tell you their income/what their house is worth in order for you to class them as rich or poor?!?!

Don't you think they may be making stuff up about them staying home to work on self improvement?!?!

What gadgets do 'poor people' buy that break within a month?!?! I can't think of a single thing that falls into this category.

@Skinnymimi my parents eat out all the time. They are multi millionaires.

But they do pay cash for everything (except when they get discounts on their credit card, but they pay it back in full every month as do I). They don't drink or get coffee or smoke. They only buy essential tech like laptops. They do like buying quality clothes. My dad has a different shirt for everyday of the week but no more than that, you can tell the day of the week from looking at whether he has his 'Monday' shirt on. I would say rich people don't have extensions cos they can afford to just buy a bigger house if they genuinely need more rooms, that's what my dad did, he bought a house and tore it down to make a perfect three generation home. But my dad does drive a BMW.

It helps to look at it in terms of sets (in the statistical sense, not ‘London set’/‘Essex set’/whatever). There will be various sets within the classes. The generalities discussed here will apply very strongly to specific sets, depending on what elements one might be looking at.

One can’t be completely specific, of course, and there are always exceptions, but generalities do apply. There isn’t any need to get all riled up about it, especially when people are discussing it without necessarily applying value judgements.

There are usually shades of truth to every perspective, but some perspectives will be more correct more often.

[quote onlychildhamster]@vivainsomnia I agree with you, I have been to boomcycle which is an expensive spinning studio. Each class is £20. I was there on classpass - it's a £35 monthly membership that allows you to take some classes in boutique exercise studios all over London;often they have discounts on the expensive classes. I talked to a guy on the same class, he never even heard of class pass and he paid for each class a la carte. He went to 1 class everyday, often 2. He also went to soul cycle which charged even more (rishi sunak and his wife also go to soul cycle). I calculated that he was spending minimum £600 per month, probably closer to a thousand. He was extremely fit so it looked like a well established routine. There is probably a limit one can use a credit card when it comes to such an expensive routine. I usually don't say this but I think he was probably more well off than most.[/quote]
Classpass is extremely bad for gyms in terms of running their business. I've read all sorts of complaints, even to the extent of gyms being on the verge of having to close down through loss of money. Classpass may be the cheaper choice but it's not an ethical one. It's destroying businesses.

www.vice.com/en/article/xgqgaw/classpass-is-squeezing-studios-to-the-point-of-death

www.vice.com/en/article/akwnng/classpass-said-angry-studios-are-a-vocal-minorityhere-are-35-more-of-them

I'm curious to the repeated references to old carpets /furniture as a sign of someone who is getting their priorities wrong/cash strapped...

We have old carpets and furniture and could easily afford to replace them but haven't because

• they still do the job
• I know reducing consumption is key in tackling climate change
• I would rather read a good book than trawl furniture shops
• a lot of the furniture is antique and has been the family for generations
• we are planning a big build in a couple of years to turn our 5 bed into a 7 bed house with a new ground floor layout, so it makes no sense to replace the carpets right now.

From family I know it is generally similar reasons, having a shiny "show home" look is just not something we are interested in.

As a society most people judge..
If you have Money/status it counts. You can get away with dressing like Helena Bonham Carter and living in nice area and being treated nicely and called eccentric etc

If you dressed like Helena with no money/status and lived in a poor area you would be treated negatively and be called some unkind words.

Money brings options and security. Many people will never have that luxury.

We live in an unfair society but we all already know that.

I never heard anyone in real life say that they'd like to earn a high six figure income so that they can drive an old banger, look like a scarecrow, buy the cheapest food, go camping for their main holiday, cut their own hair, have tatty furniture etc.
Funny that.

@tectonicplates don't worry, I don't use classpass anymore. I used it during the pandemic as I was paranoid that lockdowns would mean that I would end up paying for nothing for a gym membership (my puregym continued charging me so I cancelled it). I found classpass quite limiting actually, there were barely any slots at my local spinning studio but lots in central london which doesn't really work with my schedule as I wfh in the london suburbs...

My very upper class friends dont dress down, they were very expensive designer clothes and send their DC to top boarding schools. However they cycle everywhere ( live in london) dont buy expensive wines as they know whats good and can buy cheaper. Thats about it. They go abroad for the cost of a flight because they have access to a family owned villa. So apart from cycling they are not frugal at all.... they would suggest they live life on the edge with their three DC at boarding school (eton and cheltenham ladies) but thats because they are waiting on the large inheritance

'wear' not were

I think you can be frugal without being mean.

We all spend our money on different things

I always bring lunch to work and I wouldn't buy a takeaway drink very often

My furniture is mainly old or inherited from family members as I would only replace if needed

@Enzbear

I never heard anyone in real life say that they'd like to earn a high six figure income so that they can drive an old banger, look like a scarecrow, buy the cheapest food, go camping for their main holiday, cut their own hair, have tatty furniture etc. Funny that.

Tbf, we go camping as main holiday because we enjoy it much more than flying with kids.

@WhatWouldKalindaDo

I think you are definitely unreasonable to say that the middle class or upper middle class appreciate the value of money more. I am in a skilled but low paid job, and there have been months where I have been down to my last pound, trying to work out the best use for that pound, because after that I had nothing.

You learn the appreciation of money when you have nothing. It's also easier to be frugal when you actually have money.

Lastly, class doesn't equal high income.

It's definitely easier to be frugal when you have money. Being poor is expensive. As the late great Terry Pratchett wrote in Men at Arms:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

I think OP what is a factor is a lot of ‘many’ (but by no means all) ‘MC/UC’ people (and I know many who fit your description) value different things— they aren’t less frugal in many cases but place more value on posh, showy, frequent holidays or living in a very nice area or private education or horses etc than they do on food or clothes or a constantly warm house . This still takes a lot of cash though, so they juggle what they have in different ways to someone who has different priorities— it doesn’t mean they are frugal because they are smart, many are frugal because they are busy paying out on these other ‘priorities’ and only have the same amount of surplus cash as many who would think they are average/good earners.

I am guilty of this shopping in Lidl paid for our skiing holidays when the children were little ( £20pw X 52 = £1,040). No take away coffees, lunch from home so we could go away in the Summer.

@IntermittentParps Yes that's true, though it depends on where you go...in some countries you can get a cheap skiing package holiday that costs but much more than a holiday in Benidorm. One is seen as posh, the other not (though I realise a holiday in itself is a privilege). I'd say it's more about perception rather than cost.

@onlychildhamster
@Camomila
Yes, in my country too McDonald's was expensive relative to local wages. When we went, my mum could only afford to buy me a small bag of fries. I had a friend whose mum could buy her the whole Happy Meal with a burger or chicken nuggets. It seemed like such an extravagance, as those foods weren't widely available in our country at the time. We could only afford street food and home cooked food made from scratch with ingredients like lentils and beans (bought raw), home grown vegetables and things like fresh cherries or watermelon for desert. All really boring and low class in my mind, as those things were cheap and plentiful. But considered middle class in the UK.

Anyway, not to hijack the thread. Regarding frugality...people are often a lot less frugal than they think they are. We know a family who pride themselves on being "frugal" and "not materialistic" because their children wear second hand clothes, don't get bought gadgets and their house is furnished with stuff rescued from skips. Yes, but they have multiple buy to let properties and a boat! That's not being frugal and it definitely is materialistic, it's just that they're choosing to spend their money on property and a boat rather than clothes//furniture/gadgets. They were also the tightest people we know...refused to buy raffle tickets for £1 because they "already support their chosen charities", hardly ever did repairs in their BTLs and would send their teenage DCs out to mow the tenants' laws then demand they give the DCs pocket money in return (the tenants hadn't asked for the lawn mowing).

@mewkins heya! They kind of do! People open up a lot to the ones they see almost everyday! They tell me about their lives! The kids are so proud to say it’s their birthday! Some people actually come to say goodbye when they move house etc. The “poor people will load a trolley with the cheapest party food and buy for 30£ of plastic toys for the kids. Toys that break after a month which I know because they come back for it. “Rich “ people take the fanciest cake and a juice fruit. Maybe one magazine for the birthday child. 9 times out of 10, the luxury cake is cheaper than all the snacks.

@araiwa

I'm very frugal apart from my yacht and aeroplane which I use at the weekends

'Never spend on anything that floats or flies'

There is often an investment attitude to spending, so that would include paying for a decent education or property. Boats, cars and planes devalue, so don't waste your cash on those.

Poor” people (those talking to me about their struggle) ALL had : tans, nails, hair, bags and bags of shopping. They go out, eat out, drink, smoke, buy gadgets that will break in a month, and think they save by buying cheap everything else. I mean the Starbucks ALONE for a year would cover a mini family break in Paris, nice airbnb included. Sorry, this is not an opinion or how I wish things were. It’s facts.
Well I don't have fake nails (I bite them), never used fake tan (naturally pasty), my hair has been cut once since lockdown began, isn't coloured (used to do it at home) and never had extensions, I've never smoked. The bags and bags of shopping well its hard to comment without knowing what type of shop but most of my kids presents this year came from charity shops so I could buy Melissa and Doug etc. I'm sure your description covers lots of people in those brackets but the minute you start proclaiming "all" and "every" you just sound ignorant. Maybe there's some unconscious bias in who you'd talk to. Perhaps you'd just see me - late 30s, plump, plain and think I wasn't very interesting to talk to

I moved to a new area recently and bought a small end of terrace in a naice area. The children go to a public but horribly middle class school. I'm sure the other parents judge me for living in a small house but what they don't know is I still own a large farmhouse in another part of the country. But yes, people are so judgey!

@Ninkanink

It’s much easier and more palatable to be frugal when it’s a choice. It’s also much easier and more palatable when you already have everything you need and an abundance more. Frugality in the little things feels really good when you can comfortably afford to pay for the big things.

Agree with this

Picking up a bargain when you know you could pay full price if necessary is totally different from worrying if you can buy that item at all

@SleepingStandingUp I am sure that you are the one example away from the rule. We all are. I actually judge people on one thing : their vibe. If you smile at me, chances we will get along just fine!