Who is the richest person in your family and why?

[ByFluentPombear]

Just being nosy! Who is the richest person in your family and how did they get there? Did they inherit wealth, build a business, work their way up in a high-paying career, or something else?

Do they live noticeably different from the rest of the family, or are they quite low-key about it?

No judgement - just curious about the different paths to financial success!

My dad, through shewd investments and then my mum for marrying him

BIL was . His Mum died at around 60 from cancer and she had a lot of death in service etc after a good career. His Dad completely neglected himself after she died and followed a couple of years later and he had a paid for house in an expensive area as well as good life insurance and some other investments. BIL was an only one.
I say WAS not IS because SIL (his wife) hasn't worked since graduating uni 30 years ago and he hasn't got a very well paid job, plus they bought outright an absolute money pit of a house.
My brother always seems to have lots of money, flash cars and holidays etc but knowing him its on credit

Name changed for this as I know people hate property speculators generally.

I am the richest person in my family. We made approx £800k in 9 years, buying and selling houses (no renos or renting out, literally just living in them for a few years before selling) in an area with huge growth. We've been able to buy our current home for £700k outright in what we hope will be the next big growth area in our region. Property speculation is a lot of luck but also a lot of risk and hard work to pay massive mortgages we could barely afford. But it's all paid off for us. I know comparatively to a lot of society there are people so much richer, but we are comfortable and don't have to worry at all, and that's always felt like the goal to me. It's more than enough and more than I could ever have dreamed of 10 years ago when we didn't even own our first house.

In terms of lifestyle we don't have DC which has definitely been a huge factor (as in, we haven't always had to look for the perfect family home and could afford to take something less than perfect for us purely for the capital gains). We don't really go out, maybe dinner or lunch out once a month but that's it. We don't drink, we don't spend money on material stuff much. All our money now goes to holidays, we have 2 a year so not outrageous I don't think.

Editted to be fully transparent - we don't live in the UK, the country we live in has no capital gains tax or stamp duty which has also massively helped

My aunt.

Widow of my uncle who started in an ordinary job in retail and then working for a company developing and distributing the product in a new way. He and his business partner (who arrived as a refugee) built a huge successful company. Which then bought several international similar companies, and so on. They also founded a big charitable foundation, They sold the company for a huge sum, and continued to work, Directors of Boards etc.

Lives fairly normally in an expensive but not blingy house. Not flashy. Has tasteful nice clothes. Art works.

In my immediate family: my sibling who went into sensible employment , married a woman who was clever and capable and very numerate and had big well paid jobs in senior leadership in corporates and the local authorities. Got a couple of big redundancy pay offs, big lump sum, very good pension. Retired this year and have done adventurous bespoke travels at massive cost. But otherwise, live in a nice house (all refurb done physically by Db) don’t have a cleaner, grow food in the garden

Me. I am 51 currently. I work in software development in the US. My end of year 2024 earnings were $259,000 (US) which includes the value of stock the company gives us, yearly salary and bonus. I've been with this company for 27.5 years. I didn't start to make this level of income until sometime in the last 7-8 years. I work a LOT of hours during certain parts of the year. I'm very burnt out and have three years left until my planned retirement.

My husband (55 yo) works in manufacturing at $85,000 a year. We are empty nesters. We didn't really start to buckle down on saving for retirement until a few years ago. Being in the US, we dont have pensions but will have social security that we will take when we are 67. We have a little over a million in our retirement accounts. Our house and land are worth about $800,000. We have $180,000 in savings. And I have some stock awards that have not vested yet.

We have both always been pretty frugal and DIY but we have really buckled down in the last year to get our outgoing as low as possible so we can throw more money into our retirement accounts and savings. After retirement, health insurance and taxes are taken out of our paychecks, we bring home $78,000 a year.

My degree is in accounting and I just have a bachelor's. My job at the software company is to interpret and convert tax forms and instructions into programming code (basically). The company taught us the basic programming skills we needed and I took a couple of classes to fill in the rest. My husband never finished school (US high school dropout) but is a master tool and die maker.

I don't really know. Nor do I particularly care.

I know BIL would like to think they are (very snooty about us they are).
My sis should be, but I think they rather overspend from some of the things that have been said recently.
We might be since I got my new job, but if we are it's not by any significant amount.

My nephew. He's a quant for a hedge fund and runs the NYC branch. Much to the astonishment of the rest of the family, none of whom are remotely business minded. Lovely lad.

That'll be me.

Although my Daddy helped, quite a lot, if I'm honest (which, of course, I am not 😅😂🤣)

Sorry if this is a bit vague, but I don't want to be too specific. It is all legal and above-board!! One of my relatives left school with CSEs, went to work in a manual job, he and a colleague became familiar with the industry in which they worked. In their early 20s they saw an opportunity, sank all their savings into a one-off venture that was successful, they went on repeating this, formed a small company, worked their backsides off and almost 50 years later are both now semi-retired, with loadsamoney!!! He and his family live in a huge Edwardian mansion, with a big garden, a collection of classic cars, and go on lots of lovely holidays. Don't grudge him a penny, he's a lovely bloke and has worked really hard for what he's got.

Immediate family, my brother who is a snr partner in a US law firm. No idea what he earns but guessing it's 500k pa plus silly bonuses etc. He's super low key. Big difference I notice is that he just stopped taking public transport a few years ago and just ubers everywhere in his home city.

Extended family my bro in law has a hugely successful web company. Similarly they're very modest.

We're all from pretty humble backgrounds, expect they're grateful and take nothing for granted.

My parents

They where the first in the family to buy their council house

They never took out credit,never did anything 'fun' (in their eyes a waste of money)didn't buy tat,did bits of the house up when they had the money (our house was falling apart at the seams) and knew how to invest wisely

Their siblings didn't buy their houses,spent loads on crap,(my aunt would decorate the whole house every 5-6 months,buying new furniture and tat) lived off their credit cards,made a lot of bad investments and over stretched themselves

My parents are now millionares and the rest of the family are jealous of it

I was badly bullied at school because other kids familes where like my parents siblings and they heard jealous talk from their parents

Think it’s me. State educated and Oxbridge PhD, no family wealth. First in family to go to university. Bimbled along in a ‘normal’ scientific career for years, then moved to business development with an uncapped bonus. Now make 300-500K a year and am about to make £1M on stock options. My efforts brought the company over £25M in business.
Planning what to do with the money is challenging, for one thing not raising suspicions from narcissistic in laws who would go out of their way to ‘punish’ any signs of obvious wealth. They even google the costs of our holidays and there is always some nastiness created when we get back!

My 27yo son. He's on over £100k a year, and still lives like a student!🤣

Doesn't sound a lot compared to some of the figures on this thread, but from our perspective, he's loaded!

@iliketobereasonable wow! Well done you, and jeez - just why wouldn't they be pleased for you? I find that unfathomable. Generally what's struck me in this thread is how happy people are for their siblings or friends that they've done well. It's really nice.

My family is generally one that has 'done well' through education and subsequent jobs (doctors, engineers, management). Me and my sister are the richest though, because on top of having done that, we inherited very well from our parents, who worked exceptionally hard and brilliantly, having built a business up from nothing which employed (when they died) more than a thousand people. The business and jobs still exist. They're just not owned by our family any more. I don't consider it my wealth though - it is now my family's wealth. My children work in 'good' jobs, which would never make them wealthy but which they enjoy.

@skippy67 - 100k is a great start at 27!

That's horrendous, you must be so brave, your poor children too knowing their dad did that to their mum. Where did the payout come from out of curiosity?

My husband. Good job and inherited wealth. My family isn’t wealthy.

My Dad. He had a high paying job, was happy to make risky investments. The majority of wealth came from property as he sold a house on the edge of London for 6 x what he bought it for!

He has a big house, expensive car and goes on lots of nice holidays but I don’t think you can tell otherwise.

Why come on to a thread to post that then?

This question has made me realise that I'm the least wealthy person in my family, either nuclear family or extended family!

Me. Built a business, sold it. Built another and sold that now on number 3

Sorry for your loss x

On my side and DH side no one has ever been wealthy, been highly educated or had a high level job. Ever.

All those people in generations gone by, no one has ever recieved a penny of inheritence that I'm aware of and I've done a lot of geneology on both sides. Its all been labouring type jobs and rented homes or once the welfare state came in, council housing and benefits.

Current parents between us live in deprived areas but managed to get on property ladder in late 90's into things like ex council properties, but theres been lots of debt, remortgaging and a two bankrupcies too.

None of them have much cash at all, living paycheck to paycheck and still paying mortgages in their 60's. Likely the small property value will be used for care fees.

So unlikely us adults in or 30s and 40s will ever recieve a penny either, we havent so far as no money or assets to gift to any of us.

And same for existing kids of the families, they wont get any grandparent inheritence to boost them onto property ladder etc.

Its a world of haves and have nots and will likely become more stark during the great wealth transfer.

We live paycheck to paycheck, no holidays, no luxuries, old car. Not entitled to benefits as just above the threshold. Remortgaged onto longer terms a couple of times to run until we are 70 to lower monthly cost while kids young...so keep costs low by buying myself things like asda multipack of underwear when older knickers start fraying!

I used to be an ambitious person and thought Id start a business and have a different life. But a serious health issue some years back and groundhog day stress, my brain has given up creative thoughts and i just get through each day with an acceptance i will never experience financial freedom. Im not clever and not special, if i was i'd have done something by now and im accepting of that.

Not sure what the future will look like for families like ours, I'm sure there's plenty who will be in our position. Not sure what else we can cut but will likely have to find something as cost of living increases. Weve came close to using food banks, but managed to avoid it. That might change for us if cost of living gets worse...

I don’t actually know who is the richest in my family as everyone is quite private.

It’ll either be the person who is an author or the person who is high up in the “gaming” / tech world but I had no idea which it is.

I am the least wealthy (I think) - except for the very young ones. And that’s quite funny as I have the job that sounds very “posh” and who did had the best academic results (sort of).

I am too, don’t worry!

My dad

he says its down to immigrant mentality - he worked very very long hours

and he thinks we should do the same no silver spoon for his children