Looking wealthy or being wealthy?

[Animallover87]

AIBU to think there's a difference between looking wealthy and being wealthy?

I think understanding the difference, between being wealthy and looking wealthy, is key to changing your financial situation. Our culture today almost encourages looking wealthy as being the ultimate aspirational target.

With beautiful Instaperfect homes, 2 shiny new cars, amazing garden makeovers, £1200 phones, and £200 trainers being shoved down our throats, many people desperately want a piece of that. Reality TV and social media encourage us to have that perfect lifestyle and it can be really difficult to avoid the trap of looking wealthy.

But while some can afford this lifestyle, many of these "Joneses" simply cannot. They might look wealthy, however, they are anything but. Many of them are up to their eyeballs in debt, are continually spending more than they earn, and constantly worrying about how they can afford to pay their bills.

Have you ever felt the pressure to spend to keep up with others? Or are you able to resist the spending but feel jealous of others?

It shows patience and self-control. Both are virtues. Goes with the saying, “a fool and their money are soon parted”.

I think wearing tatty clothes & depriving yourself unnecessarily is miserly.

Some really odd comments on here. Some folks being quite scathing and just coming across as bitter when describing their lifestyles and others declaring themselves Wealthy when they are far from it.

Thank goodness you’re around to put them right then, eh? Good on you for letting that poster know she was laughably incorrect to put herself in the wealthy bracket. Someone needed to do it.

Please can we add ‘disabusing those who think some lowly sum or status symbol qualifies as wealth/class of their embarrassing notions’ to the bingo for these threads?

Along with the flood of posters eager to share how, yes, they are wealthy but classy or know someone who is. (My favourite story along these lines was a friend of a friend of a poster who had so much money and was so resolutely unflashy he let his kids draw all over the upholstery of his Rolls. Now, that’s real class!)

Haven't read the full thread... But while some wealthy people wear worn clothing that was originally expensive, there is also a type that is well off, wears worn clothing, but never buys expensive brands. The reason they have plenty of money is that they hardly ever spend it! Maybe these are the neuveaux riche. 😁

That's an extreme exaggeration. Dirty, dog hair covered and moth eaten cashmere?! Where did you imagine that from?

Have you not been on Mumsnet before @HardRock . That is literally the standard description of these secretly wealthy people.

And yes I know the type of people they mean. But my view is most of these are asset rich but cash poor. Although a few are wealthy but just awful misers.

@HardRock my friend who buys cheap carpet isn’t wealthy but she gets bored so buys cheap stuff and then changes it.
I’m not wealthy but I try to buy good quality even if I have to wait. I’ve always done that and I think it pays in the end.
I was making the point that wealthy people may have better quality in the first place and then keep it longer.
I have a friend who can dress her house on a shoestring and it looks like a magazine shoot. That’s the skill I would love.

Love that image of "genuinely" wealthy people driving old battered cars and wearing understated clothes, which may have holes in! And also of course they all have lovely manners and are discreet unlike the noveau riche, who flaunt it all on insta.

That is more like people whose families used to be wealthy but now can barely hang on to their houses.

I have seen a lot of wealthy people but only known one really well. He was a friend and former colleague of my father (an ex-schoolteacher) who had started an investment firm and became a self-made millionaire. He had it all — huge house on a lake with a private beach, Cadillac, beautiful young wife, traveled to meetings by helicopter, etc. And yes, very nice and expensive clothes, shoes, watches… And he was a generous man... the last time I ever saw him I was turning 12 and it was my birthday; he asked me what gift I'd wanted that i hadn't received... I said jeans and he whipped out his wallet and gave me £60 and told me to buy myself some jeans from him.

I told him I would buy the jeans after I lost a bit of weight and he said that was fine. I didn't want to waste £60 jeans (bear in mind this was 1980!) on my fat ass!

A few years later his company went bust and he shot himself.

RIP J— I promise I will buy those jeans one day. ❤

I don't really notice what others do or look like or whatever but if I was asked directly 'what would you say about your neighbours who have a posh car in drive' I would think it was all on credit to be honest so I don't get the 'look posh' thing

I suppose I'm classed as wealthy but you'd not know.

I drive a sturdy economical car, have an android phone, wear the same clothes for years etc. I don't care about brands but I do care about quality.

It honestly never occurs to me to care about what anyone thinks of me. I think I enjoy the fact I don't look wealthy, so I'm not a target/people have expectations.

Surely much of this also comes down to what you choose to spend your money on and where you are in life?
I have friends 10 years older than me but our kids are the same age.
They are mortgage free, continually claim no money but eat out every week at a lovely restaurant and are planning on paying fully for their children at university.

To me, the eating out and university signals they are doing well because I can't do that whilst also paying for the things that are important to me...and they are the same, they think I'm doing well (my salary is more than theirs combined)... The reality is we both are, we just choose to spend our money differently and are at different places in our lives.

Wealth brings you the ability to choose how to spend money that isn't destined for bills, that is a luxury in itself that many don't have and are made to feel less than - it's all bollocks, anyone here who can pay their bills and out food on the table with anything left over should consider themselves wealthy

Age and lifestage matters. I spent money on expensive costs and bags before kids. Now I’m wearing them a decade later and wouldn’t dream of spending the same now I’m paying out £££ for nursery. I’m arguably much better off than I was then but the things I spend my money on have changed.

I don't look wealthy and don't have any 'spare' money either
If I had more money I would look like I did for sure haha

It would be interesting to hear about wealthy people who look scruffy, not in old expensive clothes that have become scruffy in time.

But old H&M leggings, bad haircuts etc.

Are you out there?

Most moderately wealthy people I know (working in the City and via private school) aren’t massively flash.
They aren’t scruffy or polished they are just average. You wouldn’t look at them and say they are particularly wealthy because if they do have markers of wealth they are subtle. It will be things like the schools their DC go to, the holidays, the rental properties (a significant number of people I’ve worked with have more than one property). Having a good car is no longer an indicator nor is designer clothing. Tailored clothing on the other hand is but objectively how many of us would really know the difference. Would you be able to pick out a bespoke pair of John Lobb shoes from a shop bought ready to wear?
Wealthy people may spend a lot on their clothes but it won’t necessarily be obvious.

This is all very hypothetical.

The wealthy people I know dress average… their wealth is evident through solid things like their house and lifestyle, such as holidays and hobbies they do.

The amount of people I know who are wealthy but have no actual money is more than the people I know who look like they have money but are not, having spent it all in trying to look like they have money

Go to Wetherspoons with my FIL, he is always pointing out scruffy looking blokes, shuffling about in freebie t-shirts, holey primark joggers held up with string and battered old work boots and saying "see him over there, that's Geoff the Brick/Pete Mackeral/Sweepy Neville, he's a millionaire you know, lives in a ten bedroom mansion/drives a solid gold Bentley/has a yacht and a house in the Caribbean, never bought a round of drinks in his life!"

I suppose this is about the "illusion" of wealth through debt and actual wealth.

Yes some people can appear wealthy by taking on massive amounts of debt and paddling furiously under water to pay it off while looking like they are living the life of Riley on the surface.

Part of this is due to societies perception of debt changing. In the past debt was looked on as a very bad thing and something that you took on either to enable yourself to work or to buy a house.

Nowadays things are different and people are encouraged to take out large amounts of debt, because banks and financials benefit from it.

It works great up to a point. You pay a percentage of your income to effectively be able to bring spending forwards and buy the things you would normally have to save for now. You can out compete people who aren't willing to borrow as much money for things like houses.

The point where it all goes wrong is when/if you lose your job and/or the cost of money goes up. Then you can find yourself losing everything.

You can ask yourself the question should the spendthrifts who continuously borrowed to gain advantage be bailed out at the expense of the prudent who decided it was not safe or desirable to engage in endless borrowing and whether encouraging that sort of behaviour is good or bad for society. There is a question.

Worked with a guy (rumoured to have inherited millions from the his parents’ business) whose shirts were so threadbare that they were worn at the nipples!

This is more about class than wealth. It’s not classy to be flashy.

That isn't being tight, it's a fashion statement.

Trust me it wasn’t a fashion statement!

Okay so now we are classing a £60k salary as ‘wealthy’??