lighthearted, are you middle class?

[mrziggycoco]

How do you define classes, personally, and are what class are you?

I read a book once that said if you are a professional (in one of the professions; teaching/doctor/engineer/surgeon/lawyer) you are middle class.

Similarly if you are a blue collar worker (you have a uniform for work) this makes you working class.

I wonder if being socially housed makes one automatically working class?

Thoughts? Just for fun.

@Laiste you can pay for an agent to manage the property for you which cuts down on profits but you may not have a choice if you are overseas/faraway. Maybe what you mean is professional landlords who actually have a portfolio. But yes that is still work, my dad is a full time professional landlord with a portfolio of 14 offices and 1 retail spaces. He says it's a lot of work to keep the tenants happy but necessary as he managed to retain them even when everyone was WFH during the pandemic..He could outsource it though which is not the case for most conventional job but chooses not to.

But a landlord who owns hundreds of properties is a far cry from the waiter who was my landlord, I rented a room in an ex council flat in my university days in Camden. He acquired the property through right to buy. The former might be middle class, the latter is a very lucky man!

As a PP pointed out upthread, a large and thriving middle class is a definite sign of a healthy economy and society. Some of it is financial status, but it also involves education and cultural expectations and aspirations. Ambition also comes into it.

Gosh people are very determined not to be middle class.

If class is actually a thing, it’s a bit ‘interesting’ that people fight tooth and nail to insist they are working class. Is it that their now success is all the sweeter because of their perceived ‘tougher’ start?

Maybe we need a new class called wealthy working class who have everything and more than middle class.

@mudgetastic - So you move from working to middle class on retirement?

I think your class is defined more during working age.

I guess where your retirement income is coming from matters. If it's a state pension then obvs you're not suddenly middle class just because you're not working.

However is someone got to 65 and sold all of their buy to lets, for eg, and had millions in the bank, able to fund themselves independently right through their old age then yes, i guess that retiree would become middle class ..

@oldwhyno and @mrziggycoco are spot on.

Upper class by birth but opted out of the lifestyle, it isn't for me.
I now live in Glastonbury, have a fairly bohemian lifestyle, work for the NHS and live in a small house.
I can't stand the upper class lifestyle and people, I'm more down to earth and have friends from all classes of society.
Glastonbury is a great leveller.
I'm pretty much the black sheep, always have been,

For a while, after retirement, my dad was a landlord too. They were properties which weren't bought as buy to let, but became his own when older members of the family died. He was mortgage free and the income from the house/s would have seen him through a long retirement had he lived longer.

So perhaps he slipped into middle class for a couple of years?

If he were here on this thread he would probably have been keen to say that for some people 'working class' is a welcome state of mind, no matter how much money you end up with.

sorry, that last post was to @desiringonlychild2022

www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm

I am officially middle class

I am absolutely 100% middle class and have no shame admitting it. Probably because I am not British.

I work for my money. None is inherited. I do not have a car and wear M and S and Uniqlo mostly.But I do go to the theatre a lot.

I’ve always seen myself as working class, I remember as a teen one of my friends insisted I was middle class as my elder brother had seen a ballet 😳. Pointed out my brother was trying to impress his much older girlfriend and watching a ballet would have been torture for him.

I still see myself as working class, but ironically see my children as very middle-class as they have privileges and opportunities I didn’t have but am able to give them.

I think I'm middle class because John Lewis is my favourite shop of all times. (Or maybe that's just middle age.)

I think there is the 1%, the ultra high net worth individuals, millionaires and the rest of us. The rest of us are a mixture of comfortable, just managing and poor. I would argue comfortable is the closest to middle class (in economic definition).

Those who can't afford to buy their homes (and are not renting by choice) by retirement age and are on low incomes as determined by Joseph Rowntree foundation, choose between eating and heating, can't afford food etc are poor. Ditto for those on minimum wage and below.

Those who can afford some normal luxuries (eating out in mid range restaurants regularly, holiday, odd cup of coffee) in addition to mortgage and bills and can afford to save for retirement, own a house/flat with the same number of bedrooms as the number of people in their home (or are just 1 bedroom short), don't need to watch every penny- just managing/average

Those who can afford nice car, multiple expensive holidays and private school, private healthcare, home that is deemed to be expensive in its location and most likely in premium location i.e. weybridge, Hampstead, Richmond, primrose hill, hale barns etc- above average good incomes, comfortable, high flying professional class, some inherited wealth.

Many people would fall somewhere between average and comfortable, and I guess may consider themselves comfortable even if they live in a flat/house in a regular suburb cos they have the nice car and the holidays and the private healthcare through work.

The millionaires- detached house in premium location, 6 figure salaries that start with 3-5 etc etc etc, more than 1 million in assets excluding primary home.

The wealthy- ultra high net worth individual-30 million in investable assets.

The top 1%- billionaires..

Yes, I think so anyway.

On my mother's side, GDM was the child of a Jewish immigrant who married a middle class Englishman. She was raised MC. My GDF was raised by adoptive MC parents, and was adopted from a WC family. Both grandparents and my mother have MC attitudes/hobbies/etc - but I think most crucially is wealth passed down. For example my DM was a skint single parent, but was able to buy a house due to inheritance from her GDM. That will then be passed down to me, and then my children and so on.

My father is absolutely working class but I didn't grow up with him so have very little input from his life and upbringing etc.

People who have wealth absolutely can be working class though - my MIL is, but the difference is that it's self-made wealth rather than historical.

Nobody categorised class better than Jilly Cooper, even tho her book is now rather old-fashioned.
I grew up lower-middle, which is very distinctive, aspirational and a bit "try hard". It was also mortifying to me as a teenager! I'm sure I would fall generally into middle class now, due to our types of work, income, interests etc but perhaps a bit harder to narrow down precisely. And there's nothing wrong with being middle class - in its various forms, it must cover the majority of UK citizens.

Rather a moot point as most on here have no ideal that "class" has absolutely nothing to do with money.

@Thereisnolight

A surgeon is a doctor

Trivia 1: This used not to be true, which is why surgeons are apparently called Mr, Ms etc rather than Dr in a British hospital setting. (I've read that reverse snobbery is setting in, and senior doctors who aren't surgeons are now being called Mr, Ms etc so they can feel as important as the surgeons.)

Trivia 2: In another thread where someone was complaining about people with Phds calling themselves doctors, I had to point that those people are real "doctors", and medical doctors are (academically) only honorary "doctors".

I did once read somewhere on the internet a story about an American surgeon of the current era who was not a doctor. Think it was a forum post so it may be bollocks, but there was something about some state law that allowed a non-doctor with a particular background to practise as some kind of surgeon.

I grew up in a single parent household, council housing and Mum on income support. We always read books because cycling to the library was a free activity!

I'm now university educated and work in a public sector role, own a detached house and have 2 cars and once youngest is not costing me extortionate nursery fees we'll have money for a holiday.

My roots are the class below working class but now I would probably fall into middle class bracket.

I don't mind the idea of being middle class but it seems odd. I think some people are very unsympathetic to the fact that it can be difficult to disconnect from a part of your identity. I think this is especially true for WC people that may have felt 'beneath' or lesser than MC people while growing up.

I don't know if it's true for others but I've definitely been made fun of by WC family and friends for coming across MC at times because of hobbies and interests etc. It's all in good fun mind you!

Also, seeing how different my DH and his siblings' upbringings were compared to my own make it very difficult to entirely identify with either class.

When eating my Coco Pops, I hold my fork in my left hand and my knife in my right - this means I am middle class.

@Santaslittlemelter

Gosh people are very determined not to be middle class.

If class is actually a thing, it’s a bit ‘interesting’ that people fight tooth and nail to insist they are working class. Is it that their now success is all the sweeter because of their perceived ‘tougher’ start?

Maybe we need a new class called wealthy working class who have everything and more than middle class.

Yes, I think the habit of people in middle class professions, with economic security, who own their own homes, referring to themselves as working class, is uniquely British. Most people around the world in such a position would definitely be happy to consider themselves middle class. I think that because of the class system here, and the whole working class hero narrative, many people want a humble origins story. Which is understandable I guess, though I don't personally think there's anything wrong at all with being middle class, and it's a pity it's often almost used as a bit of an insult, which I don't understand. I think most sociologists would definitely define people with degrees, who work in the professions as middle class. But, maybe people can self-define to some extent? Personally, I'm totally confused by the class system, and have no idea what class I am?! I've had both middle class and working class influences in my life and background. I think in conversation I may come across as middle class, but I don't have a career (yet) and am self employed, and live an alternative life, so feel a bit classless. I'm as poor as a church mouse though! I'm still renting, and so definitely don't live a middle class life in that sense. I've had a few mental health struggles throughout my life, and that's held me back and prevented me from achieving the things I may otherwise have done. I think it's very complicated nowadays...

My background is working class east London. All worked in factories etc.

I work in a creative industry and our household income is now 70K. However, we will never inherit (family all council house and no savings), we are unlikely to ever own a house, we pay through the nose to pay off other peoples mortgages by renting. The price of everything rocketing though has pushed us to the edge and we are now having to penny pinch quite a bit. Its depressing to be honest, I fought so hard to get myself into a well paid career and yet here we are, counting the pennies at Lidl, cant afford to run a car or take a holiday.

So I guess no matter what, I cant escape being working class given my family backround and the position it set me up as. Money stays within money.

@SynchOrSwim

Has anyone read the Harry Wallop book on class?

So... nobody?

Belle, you put very well what I feel too. I have middle-class trappings these days, and mix with a lot of people brought up middle-class. I can also just 'tell' who those people are and agree it’s a vibe, not necessarily describable but unmistakeable.
For me it's something about easy confidence/social ease; a certain feeling that their chat/opinions/presence are worthy of attention (I don't mean that as a criticism' I quite envy it).

I'm WC because I was born and brought up in a WC household. I have a degree and work in a professional role, and am comfortably off, but i have a regional accent, and certain habits and values from my upbringing that would not be typically found in what i would define as a MC person. Had I married a wealthy 'solidly MC' professional, I would still be WC as i am a person in my own right. Although its likely our children would have been MC.
As it is, my DCs father and current DP are both (well off) WC trade, so despite the relative financial privilege of their upbringing, my DC also consider themselves WC.