‘Are you rich?’

[Merryoldgoat]

I am NOT rich but my DH and I are comfortable. We live in a 3 bed end of terrace (it’s a bit bigger than average - certainly not massive).

We’ve had a few play dates now for DS9 and a few kids have said we have a big house but I think the layout is deceptive so I understand that. Just today one has asked ‘are you rich?’

I said ‘no’ but they kept saying we must be. Eventually I successfully changed the subject.

I felt really odd about it for a few reasons.

1. My house is not at ALL ostentatious - I have ripped carpet on the stairs, peeling paint (I’m redecorating slowly) and the house was a mess so it seemed like a strange thing to say.
2. I grew up in poverty - I used to think things like this sometimes as a child but wouldn’t have asked it so it was an odd question to me.
3. I’m worried he’ll tell classmates this and that there’ll be some repercussions for my son.

I don’t know why I’m posting. It’s left me feeling a bit odd.

We have got the opposite before as we have a 2 bed up 2 rooms downstairs, no hallway, straight into front room.

I live in an affluent village so most of dd's friends live in houses at least double the size of ours

Ps DH and I have pots of money (income 250k plus) but DS thinks other people are rich when they have a lot of technology out - games consoles, more than one tv, tablets etc as we just have one tv and crap old phones. It's just that we choose not to spend on those.

It is all relevant though, isn't it. I have carers coming in for help with elderly Aunt . One lady is on her own either 5 kids . I regularly offer her good quality clothes my kids no longer need and bits of extra stuff like kitchen things or bedding I want to clear out . I was shocked when she said that her kids love when she comes with things from the rich lady's house.
Reality is , although house is big , it is mortgaged quite high due to poor financial decisions by my STBXH. I worry every month about paying the bills.

I remember being asked if my parents were rich because they sent me to private school. No, they made loads of sacrifices to afford to send me there. Other families on the housing estate where I grew up in the 80s chose to spend their income on exotic holidays and flash cars whereas my parents took us away in their 1960s caravan and drove old vehicles.

You've been parroting that sanctimonious twaddle for 30 odd years haven't you? 😆

Maybe it's time to pause and think about, really think about it..

Well said. No one in the area I grew up in was spending money on "flash cars" either. That's kind of what it means to live in a deprived area.

If you're skint, no amount of careful budgeting is going to magically make private school fees affordable.

The fact that that poster is spouting shite like this speaks volumes about the quality of that private school education.

A lot of terrace houses are bigger than average but usually cheaper or the same to buy than a small modern detached. A 9 year old will just see lots of rooms and stuff like that, you sound comfortable OP probably like a lot of the country is.

DD had a friend over once who said similar. We’re not rich (we’re on UC to top up income due to other DCs SEN), but we live in a house with a garden, DCs have their own bedroom, the house is quite big, though cheap rent for the area and in poor repair if you look closely enough… DDs friend lives in a small flat, no garden. They’re not poor either, I know mum, but they’re not on the income we are. Kids notice specific things, as PPs say, for this one it was the garden that did it, bless her!

DN asked me if we are rich (we're not) because I brought out a home made cake on a cake stand and gave people plates and cake forks to eat it with 😁

@Merryoldgoat kids says what they think, until they learn otherwise. They also repeat the words they hear from their parent. Treat it as a learning moment. A good response may have been "No, not rich, and actually it's rude to ask that question".

Fwiw, we used to get "Your telly is tiny!' and "Why do you have such a small Christmas tree?" but there were never any "repercussions". I used it as an opportunity to tell my kids not to comment on other people's homes.

Just thinking..................if my Mum and Dad had sacrificed our one week bi-annual stay in a caravan in Prestatyn (v.exotic), my Sisters and I could have gone to Oxbridge.

The selfish bastards!

Who knows why a 9 year old asks theses questions. We had a play date who went home and told his parents we were 'very posh' - we aren't at all as his Mum well knew so dug further. Apparently it was because we had a downstairs toilet and they didn't. We both had a good laugh about it.

Agree with PP that you are overthinking it.

Well said, @JockTamsonsBairns. I detest this narrative that if poor parents didn’t spend their money on frivolities, they too could send their children to private school (to end up as a condescending adult..)

At 9 children are just starting to realise that not everyone has the same lifestyle as they do.

"Are you rich" really just means you have a bigger house than we do. Surely you have some awareness of where your DC's classmates live and the sort of houses they live in and know that your house is bigger and you might have more disposable income than their household?

"Rich" is subjective. The vast majority of people don't think they are "rich" but being able to spend without thinking about it in a lot of cases, is "rich" even if it doesn't feel like it to you! Plus people tend to spend to their means so if you have lots of income but it's already allocated (for example, you've spent it on private school fees as per PP) you might feel poor, but that's hardly the case.

I wouldn't give it a second thought, kids have the weirdest ideas of what wealth means. When I was a kid (1990s) I thought anyone with Sky TV was rich.

My DD thinks anyone who lives in a house is rich. We live in a (v expensive ☹️) apartment in a private development. Her schoolfriend lives in a council house. She thinks her friend is richer than us, I'm certainly not correcting her, she probably talks about how rich they must be when she goes over.

Everyone is rich to someone. A person living in the UK on minimum wage would seem comfortable to a subsistence farmer.

Its all relative and worrying about it will drive you mad.

I was the "rich" kid at my school ( not particularly rich but better off than a lot of my friends) it was fine, no one cared

You frequently see Mumsnetters stating they have a £80k annual household income but falling over themselves to state they aren't 'rich'.

I was in my forties when I first visited this forum, and it wasn't until then that I realised there where people in the world for whom "rich" meant high income. To me it means wealth. One can have an 80K income and a net worth of zero, or even be in debt. Though I suppose I can see some logic, in that you wouldn't describe someone with an 80K income as poor, even if they had a negative net worth.

I would describe someone as "comfortable" if they have enough money to live the rest of their life at an average level, without having to work for a living. If they can afford a Bentley and multiple homes they are well-off. If one of their servants drives an expensive car, they are rich. (I went to school with someone whose parents bought a Mercedes for their live-in housekeeper to drive. Although the father did work for living, as an executive in a large company.)

I get the thing about once having been truly poor/ have lived in poverty in childhood, you never really shake off the feeling, nor (for me) the fear of going back there.
When my eldest went to secondary he realised we now live in a "posh" bit of town as other kids told him, it threw me a bit, too. Like I was somehow letting my childhood self down, which is just irrational.

I remember being asked if my parents were rich because they sent me to private school. No, they made loads of sacrifices to afford to send me there. Other families on the housing estate where I grew up in the 80s chose to spend their income on exotic holidays and flash cars whereas my parents took us away in their 1960s caravan and drove old vehicles.

Most people on the housing estate I grew up on chose to spend their income on just about feeding and clothing their families and possibly running a cheap family car. Holidays if you were lucky were a week in a boarding house in Blackpool or similar. The 'rich' might have had a week package holiday to Majorca. Maybe with all these sacrifices they could have afforded to send their children to private school for a week or two per year.

So little understanding about how most people live day to day is one reason I am very glad I didn't have my children privately educated and explains a lot about why Boris and his cronies are so out of touch with the majority of the population .

My son and his friend used to talk a lot about whether one of them was richer than the other. I think his mate's family spent a lot on what we viewed as disposables, luxuries- clothes, take aways, cars...

We were longer term, reducing our mortgage etc.

Obviously DS couldn't see that, and felt poor in comparison with his mate. We talked a lot about values, making choices etc.

He's a happy young man now, able to live within his means and so on.

In comparison to their homes you probably are rich really. But you are over thinking it and being weird about what a child said. Just ignore it.

what a bizarre post, even by this madhouse’s standards

9 year olds have less experience of the world than those older than them.

If your house is bigger or fancier than their own then you will be "rich" in comparison within their limited experience.

It's not any more complicated than that.

Your over thinking this by miles.

DC compliment and say weird things they'll never repeat again.

My DS friend saw his plush collection and said "Oh my your parents must really love you" I stepped in immediately to tell him the amount of things you have doesn't measure love.

My Dsis lives in a 5 bedroom converted country house decorated to a very high standard, my DC call it "the mansion" and they're miserable when they come back to our little humble home.