To wonder why “new money” is so frowned upon in the UK?

[Namechanged2026]

Dh and I are what you would describe as ‘new money’. We both had very working class childhoods but have since earnt very well. We live in a big modern house, drive new cars (financed as it’s silly to put so much money into a depreciating asset - it works out cheaper to finance if you want a new car every 4 years) and enjoy a few abroad holidays per year (yes, we do like Dubai for the guarantee of weather, relatively short flight and quality of resorts (although we’re definitely not flashy Instagram types😂)). Our children go to private school and have had experiences that me and DH could only have dreamed of as kids.

We worked hard, got lucky and enjoy a lifestyle that we can afford. We don’t dress in tacky designer clothes (although we do have a few designer bags, belts, shoes between us), nor are we ‘flashy’.

But why is there so much snobbery towards this in the UK? Many people on super low incomes would talk about my situation negatively in a way that would suggest they would rather chose a lifestyle with a modest income and fewer luxuries because it’s almost embarrassing to want more than this. I see working class people use the phrase “money talks, wealth whispers” in reference to anything that looks like it might have been very obviously expensive. What do these people think that they would do if they all of a sudden had a super high income… just remain as they are as “money talks”?! Of course not. Yet they see no problem with the “old school” kind of wealth (country estates, kids at boarding school, muddy wellies etc etc).

It’s only in the UK that I think this attitude exists. In other countries it seems like such a positive thing to aim for a high flying career, to admit to wanting to earn as much money as possible, to discuss wanting to travel lavishly and experience lots of things. It’s actively encouraged. However in the UK, I think there is an attitude of mocking these kind of attitudes and suggesting people are shallow for aiming for this. I remember being at uni and telling a family friend that I wanted to buy a house in X area when I was older, only to be met with “is round here (a council estate) not good enough for you then?”.

It is defo odd to see some who live in country mansions passed down the family tree complaining about 'displays of wealth'. I mean you don't usually see Lord Blitherly of Lyttle Piddlington selling up and moving to a one bedroom flat in Croydon lol.

I don't really care about logos. I will spend the best part of £200 on work boots though despite the fact my employer provides cheap ones for free.

"New money" isn't frowned upon. It's the "look at me" self obsessed spending to attract attention that IS frowned upon, which usually comes with "new money".

Someone with new money who just lived a "normal" but decent lifestyle who WASN'T self obsessed and wasn't always displaying acts of obscene spending wouldn't be frowned upon!

I'm not sure that the old money types live very 'normal' lives per se though.

Well, what's 'normal' is pretty subjective, though. If you've grown up in a gently crumbling Elizabethan manor house with faithful retainers, stables, a priest hole and a home farm, lots of money until the fairly recent past when your parents, who were Lloyds Names, lost a lot of money, and had to flog the Rembrandt sketch and the better stuff your 18thc ancestors brought back from the Grand Tour, socialise and are educated with people in roughly the same social bracket, then that's your normal.

I just don't like the things you do. Dubai, shiny cars, LV handbags, modern box houses, it actually saddens me when we are looking to buy or move to see how many beautiful period properties have been gutted and made entirely soulless and shiny, please no more marble and spot lights... I also grew up working class, I also am now financially comfortable. I just prefer a house with history and character, a handbag I don't mind putting on the floor, a car that gets me around but isn't massive and it doesn't matter if it's not immaculate. I like low key holidays to culturally interesting places. I'm not jealous of you, I could have the things you have, I just don't like them.

Unlike UAE and USA, I think Scandinavia and the Netherlands are very much about not being flashy or better than anyone else, it is not about not having money but being part of the group, see laws of Jante, Norwegian concept of lagom, Dutch " be normal"
They do not care about you being rich so long as you pay your taxes, in some of these countries everyone's tax returns are public so you can see how much Joe and Anne Bloggs at No.7 earnt last year

maybe older money is more concerned with building intergenerational wealth and therefore buying appreciating rather than depriciating assets or at least only using a small part of wealth on depreciating items

Dubai isn't devoid of culture. Old Dubai is there, lots of culture.

Those few rebuilt windtowers in Bastakiya, or whatever it got rebranded as? is the hilariously tokenistic Sheikh Mo Centre for Cultural Understanding still running? The souk with its Made in China 'Arab' coffeepots and oud? Or those back alleys in Karama where people used to buy fake designer bags? Do they still?

Ok I’ll bite.

I don’t think anyone has any problem with someone earning loads.

The criticism or snobbery or whatever you like to call it is more about how the money is spent.

“Old money” stereotypically spends money on property, private education, other kinds of education such as ski lessons or cultural trips, nannies, antiques and financial investments. Things that will hold their value and/or will benefit the next generation(s).

“New money” stereotypically spends money on things they will enjoy right now but won’t hold value either in terms of resale or kids’ education. New cars, new build houses, new expensive clothes, beauty treatments, 5* resort holidays. Unless you have a career as a celeb or influencer, these things are not investments that will repay, they are money gone.

(I agree if you want a new car every 4 years then finance is the way to go. The point is more that old money doesn’t care about having a new car).

The “new money” type of spending is seen as a little bit short sighted because it’s on things that won’t last rather than helping future generations. Also it’s perceived as a bit show offy and wasteful (if the old car still works, why get a new one).

Note I have said stereotypically. Of course there are plenty of exceptions in both directions.

No, but this touches on another aspect of "vulgar" wealth display.

One of the key features of "Lord Blitherly's" set up is that it is most likely very much an old property, purchased with a view to longevity and inheritance - and this is likely true of much of the furniture and other chattels therein. This is the polar opposite of the car being changed every 4 years that OP alludes to. That sort of short-term consumerism is a kind of marker of new money. The economics of it don't really feature in that analysis, and is why you do see creaky old Land Rovers grinding their way up tree-lined driveways. It is seen as a mark of class to hang on to things, value them, and make them part of the family. At that point they stop being a display item and become part of the fabric of their life. It's a different way of looking at things.

@Wirtschaft , it’s a watch I wear it most of the time. What else are you supposed to do with a watch?

Some countries have a caste system where you LITERALLY can’t move out of your class. At least in the U.K. it’s perfectly possible to go up or down if you want to.

Aren't you scared you'd get robbed for it?

Well, yes and no. Lord Blitherly's country pile may well have been the vulgar bling of its day in the 1700s, when his ancestor, the first Lord Blitherly, was considered to be a vulgar and over the top when he demolished the medieval manor house on the same site, shipped home a load of souvenirs from his Grand Tour, moved an entire village because it ruined his view, and hired Capability Brown to design him a park and pleasure gardens.

The family may well have downgraded considerably since its heyday, sold the town house, sold off most of the land and the paintings, and be running a wedding business out of most of the main house, and in fact be comparatively cash-poor, but there will almost certainly be funds for the children to go to the usual schools their parents and grandparents went to and all the really important things etc. So that the kids will be using their granddad's old trunk and tuck box at prep school, because there's not a lot of cash to splurge on unnecessary new stuff, but also because that's a tribal marker, as distinct from the nouveau Russian oligarch's son with his blingy luggage which will get him laughed at by those in the know. The visiting parents on speech day won't look as glamorous as the oligarch parents, but the library is named after the third Lord Blitherly.

So new money becomes old money. The only difference is that time has taken away its vulgarity.

@Wirtschaft , I do have a cheap dress watch I sometimes swap it for if I was going into London or on most holidays. My husband bought it for me nearly 33 years ago, it was a different world then, I wouldn’t choose to have one now for that reason but I do have it and I enjoy it, to my mind at least it’s a practical but pretty item of jewellery.

A more extreme system of social stratification elsewhere doesn't mean that the UK is a social mobility utopia.

I based my statements on my own observations - such as the friend whose family members have always mocked her for
getting a degree, my spouse who's never been forgiven for moving to London - as well as the old money/new money debate expressed very clearly elsewhere on this thread and even old school tie/what kind of university did you attend snobbery on the flip side.

But there's also plenty of data available on relative social mobility compared to similar countries, and on declining social mobility in the UK in recent decades.

Yes but you can't change class in the UK.

You can acquire wealth, as in the ops situation, but class never changes.

So lord sugar is still "working class"?

I still see him as working class.

Seriously? 😦

A working class billionaire. He's actually the epitome of knuckling down, putting graft in and achieving something

Yes - seriously. A working class billionaire.

I don't see him as posh or upper class at all. He flashes his cash but he's still working class to me.

Yes. He's the child of an East End tailor who started out selling electronics of the back of a van, was enormously successful and was given a life peerage -- he's not a hereditary peer. He's one of what Dorothy L Sayers calls the 'pickles peers' in the Peter Wimsey books, the wealthy businessmen (and women too after 1958) who started being given peerages from the late 19thc onward as the honours system started adjusting to industrial capitalism.

Well, I imagine he'd identify as WC, if asked.