To think people with money would never understand

[Canfeelamozzieflyingaround]

I live in an affluent area, we have a nice, but average house, I’m from a middle class background (I think!) but one parent from a working class background, all very down to earth.
I have a good job, degree educated, but it’s not a well paying job. In the holidays I supplement by doing some childcare/babysitting. I often babysit for wealthy people. Just being in their homes and everything about the way they are and the things they have is so different.
They would have no idea, for example that we live basically month to month and these little nights working for them pay some small bills or afford a small treat for my dc…to them it would be nothing.
Even the things they fill their fridges with and the sun creams and toiletries used (not snooping! Some on tbe coffee table, on the toilet etc)
I don’t know..I always feel less of an adult when I leave and wonder why my life didn’t go like this and theirs did

OP, I feel your pain. My partner and I both work public sector - I teach and she works for social services. I am degree educated and it is annoying seeing peers making twice or triple my salary. We also live month to month at the moment and I work temp jobs on the side in the holidays.

However, we live in a nice house in a good area and have a mortgage rather than renting. We have our health and we have a strong marriage. We have lots of lovely friends and family. No, we aren’t jetting off to the Maldives but we can afford to go out for dinner or treat ourselves every now and again. We both like our jobs most of the time!

There’s more to life than money and people richer than you still have problems like you. Try not to compare - I’ve stopped comparing and feel much happier.

If you and you husband are teachers surely you can make good money tutoring?

£30 - £40 an hour

It depends. Some high earners work their way up, going from barely having two pennies to rub together to raking it in. I spent a year and a half unemployed and living with family. A small latte from Costa was an extravagance I rarely allowed myself. I'm now in a decent paid job but I've never forgot how that period of time felt.

I agree that people who are born into a wealthy family don't have a bloody clue how some people are forced live.

@crispyeyebrows I didn’t ask my own parents for money (they don’t give me money) it was the parent I was working for-for my pay

@Bellyblueboy He’s not a teacher

I think it actually depends. Me and my husband are quite high earners so we can have nice things around but I grew up in a different country and was quite poor, so I remember how in my student years I had one pair of shoes, couldn’t even comprehend someone I knew spending my whole monthly budget on a Yves Saint Laurent make up palette and I spent hours in the homewares section of local equivalent of Waitrose checking out mugs and plates as something unattainable.
so I know what it is to live like that (and it is absolutely the reason i chosen lucrative career with long hours and a lot of pressure, I REALLY don’t want to live like that again if I can help it - thankfully I had opportunities and luck and of course not everyone does).
not that it’s helpful to you, but don’t assume automatically they look down on you for instance
Maybe they’ve been there too

I live in the north of England. I was a teacher married to an accountant. I don't recognise most of that.

Re your example- yes people may not realise that you need money now. So preempt this by saying: sorry it is often important to me to be paid on the day because I may have a bill to pay the next day, so next time please make sure you have cash as bank transfer isn’t convenient

or something along these lines, so they don’t assume they can continue to do it (it is easy to forget to get the cash out)

re jobs: you could consider re-training?

Agree!

I often think this too. Most of the parents of children I teach are of a similar education level to me, but they are so much more comfortable financially. I look across the table at parents evening and wonder if that could have been me, if I’d made different choices in life.

But that’s the thing isn’t it. We chose a profession that isn’t well paid for the hours, or well regarded by others. Made our own beds and all that!

Well that seems mighty odd as my DC studied in the north for PGCE and got a huge bursary (since reduced) to study MFL. Maths also received a huge bursary, and there are teaching jobs left unfilled.

I think it's just too big a generalisation, OP. I'm sure plenty of people with money are out of touch, but I'd wager a fair proportion aren't that clueless.

I do get the feeling of the unfairness of it all. I am a chartered accountant and remember starting out in my training contract on minimum wage - very standard in my part of the UK, as compared with 25k+ for trainees elsewhere in the country. The boss would routinely have me pay various expenses (catering for client meetings etc) upfront and claim back the expense, reimbursed alongside wages. Often when this happened later in the month I'd have to borrow money from my now DH as I simply didn't have enough to cover it. A manager did flag this once but it fell on deaf ears with our boss as the notion of not having savings was completely foreign to him.

Then you needed to voice that and say you really needed to transfer that night or for them to go and get cash for you. They can't know if you don't say.

I think it's safe to assume that they are aware that you're working for them for the extra cash. I doubt they think that you're there for fun.

Plenty of them will understand either because they also had a stage like yours or because they realise people are as well off as they are financially. I hope I have always been very sensitive to those kinds of issues.

I grew up in poverty and am the DD of an immigrant, I remember being hungry as a kid. I’m a good example of social mobility and have managed to retire early and am very comfortable financially. I certainly know what it’s like to be really poor.

There a huge numbers of vacancies for maths teachers. Anyone who couldn’t get one must have been a pretty poor teacher.

Obviously companies pay tax snd the better off pay more income tax. They are needed to pay for services and that includes wages. If you take away successful people, you get less money for the government. The country needs them.

I really wanted to earn well. I didn’t like working for people who earned way more than me snd I had to write their letters for them. So I decided to do something about it. Train, apply for promotion and get it. If you want a life that’s on the basic salary grade with no responsibility, you cannot expect to earn as much as others.

This hit a chord with me, because it's exactly what happened to me. I always wanted to be a teacher when I was in school. Some people, including my careers teacher, said to me that with my grades I should aim for something that would have a higher paying job, but for some reason I really was determined I wanted to be a teacher.

I vaguely knew that I wouldn't earn less than other jobs, but I didn't realise exactly the full extent of how much less, or realise fully what that would mean in terms of lifestyle - the type of house I'd live in, the type of holidays I could take etc. That's really something that needs to be stressed in careers education, it's not just about a job you will like, it's about being able to live the lifestyle you want.

Now, over twenty years later, I'm at a stage where I'm having to exclude myself from meeting a core group of friends (who admittedly all are in quite well paying professions) at times as I just can't afford to keep up with them and cover my own costs as well (and that's despite earning relatively well for a teacher, and doing tuition on the side). I'm now trying to look at options to retrain to try and increase my earning potential, but it's not exactly easy when you're almost 40!.

In the U.K.? Not Portugal where the OP lives

@Playingintheshadow

Yeah he completed the course and even did a school direct. All the jobs were temporary. They only offered kids of other teachers jobs. It really depends on where you are. Also this was only about 5 years ago. Teaching was like a closed shop. The covering letter example for job applications were "my x is a teacher so I understand the pressure of the job" " I was born for this role as I grew up in a house of teachers" etc.

The teaching profession do not want to fill the jobs as it fits the narrative. Most teachers are left wing and they are holding the govement to ransom (just before the boris election). My brother also lost a temp job to a music teacher they were making redundant. Thats why the standard of education has dropped. Music teacher teaching year 11 maths!!

@TizerorFizz

He has a 1st class from Warwick in maths.... The problem is I live in a poor area of Cheshire and all the teachers come from stoke. Liverpool and Manchester to teach here as it is nicer than inner city and they have experience so any jobs rarely go to a NQT. My brother got zero jobs in Cheshire. He had a few in Wales but that's hard because they are welsh speakers and he isn't. Stoke was where most the jobs were but they had issues with funding and made like music and drama teachers teach maths to fill the vacancies and cut cost. Unfortunately lots of people on here struggle with less densly populate industrial English town life. They are in populated, upmarket areas and mainly in the south.

So yeah before you accuse my brother of being a shit teacher. Listen up...

@Riddlesinthedark

Yes same... but I started on 2.30 an hr as an apprentice doing AAT first.

People on here struggle to accept that teacher starting on 30k in parts of the UK is a good wage. Plus it rises each year as well. They all think the private sector pays big bucks and we are living a life of luxury whilst they chose to do a "caring" profession so are punished for it. Its ridiculous.

The op is abroad but also cannot accept being a teacher is not a bad paid job where ever you are. Lots if people earn less and survive. It's all about perspective that people seem to be lacking.

@ilovesooty

Maybe a generational thing. I left school in 2012. My brother trained in around 2017 and worked till about 2019 in temp roles. It is much harder now for people staring out than the generation before who left school in say 2005 when the country was booming!

My boss at one of my jobs was 15 years older than me and had a music degree. She wasnt even a qualified accountant and was the boss!!! Those days are over...

I know quite a few people who've found themselves in the OP's position.

They are women who had a comfortable, fairly middle-class upbringing and got a degree. They were encouraged all the way to follow their interests. They chose a low-paid white-collar career based on personal preference, sometimes with a view to "helping others."

It's like nobody ever explained to them that there are very real life consequences to having a low income. Maybe there was some background assumption that a high earning spouse would make up the difference? Anyway, they feel they have a basic right to the middle-class standard of living that they grew up with, along with a right to their career of choice.

I think people who grew up without much money are more likely to accept that, if they want a comfortable lifestyle, they may need to pick a career that earns more money but is less rewarding in other ways.

Im the same OP, when I moved to london and started nannying here my mind was blown away! Do you live in london by any chance? The wealth here is like no other, not normal to see this kind of money flaunted in other parts of the world. Think about it though, most of these people came from money, inherited houses and married rich. Would you really want everything handed to you? The private school culture, the never knowing what it’s like to live in the real world? Be grateful for your health and your children and the fact you own a house. You are rich on the inside. Also, do you go on Bubble for sits? It’s next day pay all done through the app so no back and forth with parents.

Many (not all) high earners are in jobs doing pretty bad things to the world.

🤔So all these complaints about the ops payment taking days to go through, whilst in the UK payments are normally instant, so who do you think makes that possible? Do you think infrastructure like that just automatically appears from fresh air? Do you not take advantage of these financial services along with a lot of other banking services, usually for free? Or do you hypocritically think these services are “bad” but still use them anyway 🙄