to think people who grew up with money haven't a clue sometimes??

[Herroyal]

I work in a profession which is traditionally full of MC or monied people. I'm from a regional,WC, scholarship background - grew up on an estate. Cos of the regional accent my 'class' isn't recognisable to most English people.

Anyway. Chatting with a colleague who's just been ski-ing, and it came up that I've never been skiing. He was properly - what NEVER? what about as a kid? What about with school? You MUST have been. I jokingly said 'not many mountains where I'm from' and he said, but that's why you go to the Alps, silly.
So I told him not only did I not going ski-ing as a child I'd also never went abroad til I was an adult. His response? Did you family have a place in the UK then? Is that where you summered? He had an eccentric uncle who insisted only only going to the hse in Cornwall etc
He then told me it was practically child neglect that we weren't taking our kids skiing now. EVERYBODY skis.

And this was the week after I told one girl at work I needed to try to pop to Argos at lunchtime, wasn't sure if I could get there and back though in time for a meeting. Her suggestion was to open an account at the Harvey Nichols and pop there ( it's closer) that where's she gets all her household stuff. An account?
Yes, just like at Argos. Turns out that she thought Argos let you put things on 'account' and pay at the end of the month. She'd never used one, been in one. Had no idea what a catalogue shop was. It's another world...

I didn't ski for the first time until I was about 33. I hated it, but I grew up sailing every weekend. Sailing was on our doorstep, but there weren't any mountains locally. So we sailed. Apparently it's just as posh, as long as you sail your own boat.

It doesn't make sense... Have you any idea what the traffic in Central London is like? The first few years I lived in Central London, for a surprisingly long time I used to be like this girl and Uber or minicab everywhere until my now DH helped me realise the tube was not only at least a tenth of the cost, it was also twice or thrice as fast!

Ok so I had a fairly privileged upbringing. The 2nd example I can understand but the 1st example I can't at all, as it's always in the news and online how people can't afford to go abroad. Be careful, I think some people will be low key acting disingenuous to make you feel bad and rub in their class status.

YANBU. We’ve got (very dear, lovely) friends who had a house bought for them by his DF. When we were struggling to get a deposit together he asked didn’t our parents have thirty grand or so 😂

Another friend at University “I can’t believe you’re from DORSET and you don’t SAIL” in absolutely scandalised tones. No, I don’t, because it’s very expensive. Nor do I ski or ride.

Also the whole child neglect, silly thing is literally how a certain subset of my former classmates talk smugly among themselves... It's just blowing hot air between themselves, to feel above the hoi polloi.

Maybe we're talking about different times. My experience was very normal when I was growing up. We were by no means the poorest people we knew, so I wasn't some kind of statistical outlier. And my room mate didn't come from a council estate. Her parents had a large family to support and couldn't contribute enough to her living expenses.
I only mentioned them because people were raising eyebrows about OP's veracity.

My parents are fairly wealthy and we summered in caravans at Skeggy and Butlin's and had a lovely time 😄

‘grew up so middle class that my sister had no idea people actually lived in ‘houses like on Coronation Street’ until she went to university in Manchester!’

That made me laugh. My mate once had a boyfriend whose parents were embarrassed/
confused that he had a ‘middle class’ job because people would think he had to work. His job was as a barrister. He became QC at an impressive age. Works in civil rights.
also has a massive trust fund from family money.

You are saying that a guy you knew was baffled that your “holiday” was a trip to another relative’s council house in the UK. Well, that would have been a pretty shocking holiday for me and I grew up working class! Working class people can go and do go on holiday’

This very much depends WHERE and WHEN you grew up MC. Until the age of 12 we didn’t spend an overnight anywhere on hols. And that wasn’t uncommon where we were.
Then when we did we did go see family in another part of the U.K. and stayed at their ( council) house - amazing trip BTW.

It’s completely different now, luckily. There far more budget options for families than when I was a kid.

I’m in my late 30s. EasyJet and Ryanair were pretty established by my teen years. We did teletext holidays before that. We went abroad, as did many working class people I knew. Maybe you and @DahliaMacNamara are older? Honestly, to me, you are describing something from a novel.

Maybe in the 1970s people were treating themselves to a pack of biscuits but it would not have been considered normal.

I’m sorry but again this anecdote makes no sense and I literally don’t believe it. Nobody thinks that a QC “has to work” and is a “middle class job”. It’s almost impossible to become a QC without ridiculous connections, unless you are in a very undesirable area. Honestly, this is pure fantasy.

I think a lot of posh people around you are teasing you.

I am genuinely asking: are you a very matter of fact person who struggles to sense humour? Possibly ASD?

You are not in the legal industry so I can tell you for a start that your legal anecdotes are false, false, false.

I think you're the one on the wind-up, @MarieRoseMarie . The biscuits really weren't germane to the example. Our student life was in all likelihood wildly privileged compared to yours, twenty years later. You can't grasp that things change, and that your personal reality isn't universal? Isn't the difference in perceived norms the entire point of this thread?

I grew up very working class (lived in a homeless hostel for part of my life) and due to some good luck (grammar school and scholarship to Uni) my kids are now middle-class (they go private school). Everyday I literally cannot believe middle class people and how they have no actual clue what it is like to be poor and deprived. Most of them are so sheltered it is untrue.

I fear I am setting my children up to be like this, but I just wanted them to not have the same struggles I had growing up. Unfortunately for me I still present very working class. I have a strong East London accent, I say Hatich, I drop my t's all the time! So people judge me instantly until they hear I have a PhD, or what my job is, or that I am putting 4 children though private school. Then they totally change towards me. Makes me sad really.

'Nobody thinks that a QC “has to work” and is a “middle class job”.

Well, his 'old money' parents considered being a lawyer as unnecessary. The dad had some 'role' in the family business but had retired from that really young, mum didn't work - she was also from wealth - sister 'ran' and art gallery - ie swanned about while other people did the work but we got into lots of events so that was handy, and at least one sibling was an 'explorer' of some kind doing extreme sports.
None of them needed any kind of regular job, and they considered my mate, the boyfriend, with suspicion as some kind of gold digger - which was hilarious to me because he was and is one of my 'poshest' friends and deffo not a gold digger of any kind.

'I fear I am setting my children up to be like this, but I just wanted them to not have the same struggles I had growing up'

Sometimes when talking to my kids - in an attempt to keep them grounded - I feel like I'm in that Monty Python sketch with the rich, once poor, Yorkshire blokes going ' When I say house it were only a hole in the ground...' ' We were evicted from our hole in the ground and had to go and live in a lake!'

But same. I don't want them to have the struggles my parents did trying to keep a roof over our heads when we were little.

Similar situation here. Our friends (whose house was bought for them and they pay a nominal rent to parents) were shocked that my parents wouldn't help financially. Kept saying that it's a parents' duty to provide for their children and they would never be so selfish. Despite me saying over and over again, louder and louder, that my parents DO NOT HAVE money with which to help. It was just an alien concept.

Similarly, DH and I were in a situation where we needed £20k. Friends (different from previous) asked why this was such a drama and couldn't we just take it from our savings. When we explained we didn't have £20k in savings they were shocked and their immediate response was that we must be really irresponsible with money and had somehow frittered away our savings. They couldn't get their heads around the fact that the money never existed in the first place. It was a realisation point for me that some of my friends had more money in a savings pot at birth than I'm ever likely to have in my life, despite now being in a well paid job.

I'm from a mc background and both my parents were professionals. I never went skiing growing up and both my parents were very frugal. I never got designer clothes or shoes. People have different priorities.

'I'm from a mc background and both my parents were professionals. I never went skiing growing up and both my parents were very frugal. I never got designer clothes or shoes. People have different priorities'

Sure. Of course. I suppose 'grew up with money' is subjective, isn't it. I know lots of parents at my kids school who would say they aren't well off, though objectively they really are as they'd be in the highest 2% or so of earners. Plus many have family money, or parents who gave them a house deposit etc. But they don't feel well off, and there's at least 2 or 3 who would prefer to send their kids private but it would be a stretch.

I have a mate who' parents were tight as when he was growing up, though they did send him to private school, and paid for Uni so he had no debt, and they did give him money for his wedding, and they did give him a house deposit. But tight according to him as they didn't splash out on holidays or go ski-ing as a family when he was a child, and hated turning the heat on in their massive ramshackle house. When they died he and his sibs inherited over £500k each.
So I suppose he has benefited, and I can see why he might have preferred to be warmer at home rather than inherit a load of money as an adult, which he doesn't really need.
My WC parents would have sold the clothes off their backs to keep our house and us warm. Different priorities,

'What sort of work do you do op? I’m guessing law or banking.'

Too outing but it does bring me into contact with a lot of very wealthy people across industries, so yes to banking, law but also arts, philanthropy, TV etc

I think a lot of very comfortably off people don't realy understand that people from lower income backgrounds have zero safety net. There is no inheritance expected down the line the line, no parental help with university costs or house deposits, no childhood savings. Just ourselves and our ability to earn money - that is it.

In a previous job i was responsible for training graduate on the financal choices vunerable and low income people make. They were often from very comfortable midde class backgrounds. The number of times I heard "well I undersand what it is like as I had to budget with very little money at university" 🙄

I got very used to controlling my resting bitch face.

No I think the point is that this thread started off about very rich people not understanding that everyone doesn’t ski and have now become the four Yorkshiremen arguing over who lived in the smallest cardboard box.

You seem pretty out of touch yourself with your weird stereotypical view of the working class. most working class people wouldn’t recognise themselves in your description.

You're making yourself sound very close-minded and ridiculous to those of us with a few more years on the clock, @MarieRoseMarie . I won't be engaging any further as it's derailing the thread.

So his father worked in business, his sister worked in an art gallery and his brother worked abroad and somehow all this work is NOT middle class but working as a QC is middle class.

Yeah, sure. Even though posh people were clamouring to the front of the line to make sure their kids are the ones getting pupillages and 1 in 7 senior judges went to one of five public schools, you’re right.

www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/social-mobility-at-the-bar

I’m guessing you didn’t attend Oxbridge then. I just hope no working class people are reading these posts and actually allowing them to deter them from entering these professions.

My god, lots of posh people don’t even have any money. They have the name, the house and the connections but they need to work. The idea that (men in) posh old money families in the UK don’t need to work or look down on men working is just laughably untrue.