Middle & upper class more money savvy than most?

[Southerngal5]

DC in very mc school with very affluent parents... The talk non stop is about energy bills, bragging about getting free toys on Facebook groups (but they sell their stuff😉) their dc wear second hand clothes... Is this just my area? Forgot to mention they gave an obsession with Aldi & Lidl...

:You don't make money by spending it" is what I grew up hearing!

Exactly! It's only recently I've become aware that the frugality was such a thing.. The same families would have multiple hols, regular trips to the theatre etc it's just general to day living that they seem to penny pinch where as I would be a fritterer.. Explains a lot really as we rarely can afford to on hols😩

The children talk about energy bills? or is this parents at school gate?

Its easier to save money when you have money.

@Mundra

The children talk about energy bills? or is this parents at school gate?

The parents! Talking about switching providers etc!

As @Aroundtheworldin80moves says. If your money comes in and has to go straight out again on the necessities, it's much harder to become 'savvy' about it. And often people getting by on the bare minimum are spending so much time surviving they don't have the headspace to think about things they could do to cut costs and they may lack resources to allow them to take advantage of things like freecycle, eg a vehicle so they can pick things up, or being able to afford the petrol for non-essential journeys.

Fritterers spend an awful lot of money on nothing. I'm working class, married to middle class husband and he buys very little. But what he does buy is the best quality he can afford, with a view of buying to last. He can't abide waste.

Another one agreeing with @Aroundtheworldin80moves If you have plenty of money it is far easier to organise how you spend it. If you are constantly counting every penny you have far fewer choices. For example, sometimes buying bulk or multi buy may be cheaper, but if you can't afford the extra expense at the time you may have to buy individual or smaller packets etc.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

Its easier to save money when you have money.

Dad ? Is that you

Hmm. Not sure. You see so many threads on here of "income dropping to 50k/40k how can I cope?" Or "Can we live on 30k" etc....

It seems many people would really struggle to budget as well as those on a low income have to out of necessity. As you say they may get a kick from a free toy or second hand clothes - but still spending thousands on holidays/education/building work etc.

@Southerngal5

Exactly! It's only recently I've become aware that the frugality was such a thing.. The same families would have multiple hols, regular trips to the theatre etc it's just general to day living that they seem to penny pinch where as I would be a fritterer.. Explains a lot really as we rarely can afford to on hols😩

You need to take a leaf from their book.

I don't think it's a class thing, and you can't objectively pigeonhole most people into a 'class', which isn't always related to disposable income anyway.

Some people do the things you mention, others like to buy new, buy more expensive brands and replace things more often. That's the same for all types of people, and many less affluent people are well experienced in Aldi, Lidl, second hand toys and a general make do and mend attitude too, often due to necessity.

I think "comfortable" are much happier to talk about being frugal, to see it as a bit of a game almost. A far different thing when you've got no choice.

I think too some qell off people like to think poorer people are just "frittering" or cant spend money wisely or its because of cigarettes/sky tv they cant buy a house or other "reasoning" that makes people feel better about not facing social inequality or poverty issues.

Crinkly exactly. My well off father loves finding free parking spaces to save paying for parking. Or driving for petrol thats a penny cheaper... however he shops in waitrose and buys good wine/clothes/etc...

"Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves" as the old saying goes.
Free been down a bit of a rabbit hole recently watching and reading interviews with sixties and seventies musicians. It's not escaped my notice that the ones who hung onto their money and managed not to get completely ripped off by dodgy managers and accountants etc are the "grammar school boys" types. The more working class kids who made it big tended to spend the money as soon as its came in enjoying themselves and didn't read the small print on contacts.
Money literacy gets passed down through families (usually, DS3 seems rather resistant to being trained in this way!)

My problem is little luxuries eg I like going for a coffee with said mums to the local Costa maybe once a week or fortnight... A coffee date was mentioned this morning & then the chief (& probably the most well to do) suggested as the morning were getting brighter & warmer we should bring flasks of tea/coffee to the park & one or two of us could russle up some scones... Other mums enthusiastically agreed & of course said how overpriced costa was anyways....

@OneRingToRuleThemAll

Fritterers spend an awful lot of money on nothing. I'm working class, married to middle class husband and he buys very little. But what he does buy is the best quality he can afford, with a view of buying to last. He can't abide waste.

I would agree. We were brought up in a household where furniture was often from auctions, very good quality antiques that last more than a lifetime. Anything bought new what researched and was expected to last years. I bought expensive sofas which were classic shade and made in uk. Twenty years on I am about to order new loose covers for them. I’d done my research and chose a manufacturer that kept their patterns for decades so customers didn’t need to replace perfectly sound furniture. We live in a home not a style statement. I think you would refer to it as tasteful rather than fashionable. We are the same with clothing. My DF was a big fan of a bargain and although I can waste money it doesn’t feel natural. We are not tight with food, again there’s no point in buying cheap but not enjoying it. Also we buy things like cars outright, never buy brand new and keep them for 3-5 years, sometimes longer if they are reliable and not costing much to maintain.

@Southerngal5

Exactly! It's only recently I've become aware that the frugality was such a thing.. The same families would have multiple hols, regular trips to the theatre etc it's just general to day living that they seem to penny pinch where as I would be a fritterer.. Explains a lot really as we rarely can afford to on hols😩

That's an example of 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'.

If you exclude the very poor because they can't even afford the basics and the very rich because they can generally buy what they want and not run out of money before they run out of wants, most of us are in the middle and can afford to splurge in some areas if we are careful in others.

There's probably a factor of two/three difference between shopping carefully in Aldi/Lidl for a largely vegetarian seasonal diet compared with a lot of your shopping being what looks nice in Waitrose, and that alone could be a saving of thousands of pounds a year.

Children grow out of clothes very fast and often have far too many clothes, so it makes sense to buy these second hand and sell the excess.

Increasing energy bills will probably be the prompt a lot of us need to be more mindful of usage, for the environment, so we're not doing wasteful things like turning the heating up before putting a jumper on, or using a tumble dryer when the weather's good and we have outdoor space to line dry.

Lots of other examples like that, and if you're more careful in these areas, you'll have more money left for the things that matter to you, such as holidays.

I think it's a business type of mindset, which anyone can have for cutting costs. There probably is a trend now, to show off frugality, there are websites on this. I think if a person is working long hours in a low paid job, they won't have time for a lot of mental arithmetic and bargain hunting. Budgeting and frugality do take quite a bit of time and energy to do. Second hand shopping is pot luck and you can actually still spend quite a lot if done regularly. So frugality is easier for the middles and uppers.

I know plenty of well off people who aren’t like this at all and fritter away lots of money on stuff, and probably also have significant debt despite their larger incomes.

And also less well off people who are very frugal and careful, sometimes because they want to be, sometimes out of necessity. But I also some of the types of people you mention.

I’m not sure it’s class related.

I’m not sure about class but you’ve kind of described what I’m like! Frugal day to day but then nice hols (not massive foreign trips but activity type holidays with the kids)

I think wealthy families are judged very different for being ‘thrifty’ than poorer families. There’s more likely to be assumptions made about thenooorer families not being able to properly provide for their dc if they dress then in second hand clothes and get their presents off eBay or whatever.

We are very careful not to 'waste' money. I don't think it's about class, and previous posters have said it's easier to save money when you have money.

^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.^

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

Italic fail!!!