Upper class habits to stay rich

[publicsectorlife]

What habits do the upper class have to stay wealthy? What would they never buy that they would consider a waste of money?

Our household income is very good. But yet we seem to be haemorrhaging money with high mortgage, commuting and childcare costs.

But yet our friends with generational wealth (ie small mortgage) seem to be living such a different lifestyle with about 6 holidays a year.

We can’t do much about having no inherited wealth but I think we must be missing a trick.

@zipadeedodah that doesn’t answer the question of whether posh people have linen bedding, which I doubt.

Hargreaves Lansdown is where we've got my son's junior ISA and I manage this for him, we discuss shares and I do it for him. Though I never discuss how much etc. Then at 18 it becomes his. Which is why we only put £75 a month, but still it's growing nicely these past 10 years.

Bed linen used to be made of linen as it's washable. The term generally just means bedding now. Very side note - 'body linen' meant underwear, having to be washable because it was worn next to the skin (including men's shirts), and is the origin of the term 'dirty linen basket' which I still say even though I haven't got any actual linen ... 🤗 As you were.

The previous poster was talking about bedding though. I’ve never heard of bedding lasting 25-30 years (mind you, that’s nearly my whole life, so maybe I just haven’t lived long enough haha). I’ll see how the family members whom I donated my expensive bedding to get on in 25 years’ time!

It doesn’t keep up with inflation for 18 years.. nope sorry it still makes no sense to remove investments and sit on cash.

But you’re not always removing investments. Lots of trusts have cash generating assets!

I went to school with a girl whose mother was from old money but had fallen out of favour with her family as she married a foreign poor man (who became a surgeon). They lived in a fairly MC area in a 4 bed detached house but lived like absolute paupers and I thought they were very poor. The mother had gone to some European secretarial school but had never worked. Christmas in their house was miserable, it was the stereotypical MN tangerine, a handful of nuts and a book from the charity shop. My friend never came to school on non uniform days as her clothes were all hand me downs that her mother had repaired (I now know these were very good quality expensive clothing, but terribly unfashionable when you are 15). Their house looked like a junk shop.
Her DM was very eccentric and was very passionate about a newty/salamander type thing and would visit rivers around the country looking for them. I don't recall them ever going on holiday, but they would visit their DF who worked around the country, but they'd drive and sleep overnight in the car (an absolute banger) to save money on a b&b.
They had a property portfolio in the SE "because we don't have any money!" which they rented out and the DM would do all the painting/decorating herself to save money.
It was a very dysfunctional family, the children all thought they were so poor because they never had any disposable income (everything was saved to buy more property) and they are all very low contact with their parents. My friend was given £60k towards her first London home after graduating though.

I am chuckling slightly at the bedding debate. I work with UHNWIs and they are as different as every poster on MN. However, what I do know for absolutely certain is that you you have to be very wealthy to stay wealthy!!!! I have worked with some self-made people too but to my mind they are not what I would call "Upper Class". If this thread is supposed to be about the actual upper classes, who are Aristos, then it is slightly laughable to think that they are fretting over whether their sheets are linen or cotton, because the housekeeper will be ordering them.

They work so hard at staying wealthy and keeping the money in the family that small matters like bed sheets are not on their radars. They all run their affairs like businesses and have the best financial advisors. In most cases their affairs are businesses, often multiple different ones to ensure that if one bit is not doing so well, other areas can carry the load for a while. Of course they are all setting up bare trusts & JISAs for children and grand-children, starting their pensions from birth and so on, but those are just tiny, tiny bits of a far bigger picture.

If they don't, it all goes tits up very quickly. Just look at what happened to the Wolseley's back in the noughties. Made some bad business decisions and lost the estate their family had been on for nearly 1000 years. Same for the Montagus of Manchester and the Cardigans.

Which sensibly you’d invest. The trust would run a tax pool and allocate out income as needed. The trusts also tend to lend money, at zero interest.

In reality it’s very few trusts set up in the last 30 ’years are worth the debate as the relevant property tax rules hammered new trusts.

I'm still using bed linen that my DM got as a wedding present 47 years ago. It would have been mid range back then, probably akin to Debenhams, rather than very expensive stuff.

I recently watched some old episodes of Save Our Country House type programmes. Individuals who are titled and have inherited the home their ancestors have lived in since the 1600s type of thing. They have no money to upkeep the house, let alone repair leaking roofs and crumbling walls. They all look as if they've inherited old clothes too and the houses look less than hygienic, to be diplomatic.

@verybighouseinthecountry there are definitely some like that, but I don't work with them! 😂

Please do an AMA, I'm single and would love to have a stately home like to meet interesting people, I need to know how to better my chances.

Yep - that’s my experience too - ‘most’ old money doesn’t fret about threads in carpets, rattling windows, 12 year old Volvo’s, past their best clothes or fashion, or a kitchen from 1997 - recently acquired wealth in younger people- does!

Yes they were very averse to getting rid of anything old/broken too, they saw incredible value/use in everything.

@verybighouseinthecountry it is a short reply! If you want to get in with aristos, you either have to be one or be very rich. There are exceptions of course, Kate Middleton (as was) being one, but they are few and far between. Occasionally, I come across someone I think must be a 'non-U' and then discover that they are the great grand-daughter of the late Queen Mother etc.

Haven’t rtft however most wealthy people I know are careful with money. Driving used car to the ground, not eating takeaways but good quality food. Not buying new clothes all the time but buying more expensive timeless wear. But I do notice money is spent on quality holidays

I think it’s a different and often weird mentality - a very elderly never married, no kids uncle of my husbands ( 89) is loaded, think millionaire level, he’s quite posh, reads Telegraph and is an absolute miser - been abroad twice in his life, never eats out, rents a totally grotty very cheap studio flat in a grim town, lives for months with a broken oven, has no TV and yet is on the phone to hargreaves and lands down multiple times a month - personally I think what a total waste of a life, but hey he’s rich!!

@MargoLivebetter Kate’s family are pretty wealthy though so do comply with your rule. She went to one of the top private schools for girls.

I like posh people.

Trust funds that they don't mention. They may have been helped a lot to buy their first home, so they got a huge head start that way. Big inheritances. Family and friends who have properties abroad so they spend less on holidays. Grandparents that pay for holidays and private school fees. No university debt. Lots of connections that help with getting good jobs in the first place. All these, "legs up," help a lot.

As I am sure everyone else has said, you need to have more rhan 1 inheritance source. Don't juat rely on good old dad dying and leaving you the inherited wealth in the will. You need grandparents from both sides of the family to be wealthy, plus a stinking rich childless aunt or uncle (the more the merrier) plus wealthy godparents. Choose these for the kids too.

Then maximise spending nothing on outgoings.

There are some great podcasts on this topic. Whilst having a country estate and a family trust fund certainly offers a cushion, there are defined habits/attitudes that old money have that help them stay rich. They don't like spending money on stuff, keep clothes and furniture for generations and have no desire to flash the cash by buying status items. There's a thread in the holiday board about buying new clothes every year for the family and one poster said she always does as she 'curates' a coordinated look for the whole family so they fit in to the (luxury) resort and it looks good for photos. This is a prime example of the train of thought of new money.
I read a book recently where the author had attended Eton on a bursary and he was very shocked to discover that some of his classmates were very old, famous money as they were wearing threadbare clothes and he had assumed that they were the poorest students. Many of them hadn't left the UK either, which he associated with poverty, not knowing that they had country estates around the UK.

I used to go to a textile recycling place round the back of Brick Lane during the Sunday market when I was a student. In the year or two after the Berlin Wall fell, there was a sudden influx of GDR-era and older bedlinen, as East Germans chucked out their old stuff in favour of buying western goods. This was all very well-made, solid cotton or linen sheets and duvet covers, some with amazing embroidered monograms. We were young and skint, and I basically kitted out my linen cupboard with this stuff, most of which is still in use today. Occasionally the middle of sheets or the top of a duvet cover has needed patching, but most of it will see us out, and the quality is a joy.

The other thing to look out for in terms of high-quality durable bedlinen is vintage French Métis, which is a heavy cotton-linen mix, that is also incredibly durable - I have some of that too.

In contrast, the 200 thread-count expensive flat sheets from John Lewis that my MIL gave me a while back wore through in less than 10 years. I have patched them, but the quality is nowhere near the vintage stuff.

I guess the wider point, beyond my mild obsession with vintage textiles, is that if you can furnish your house with your ancestors' Georgian furniture and antique silver cutlery etc, then firstly you don't have to shell out for new stuff when you set up home, and secondly you don't have to pay to replace it, as it will never wear out, unlike anything you buy from Ikea or Dunelm.

Pretty much as per Alan Clarke's withering comment about Michael Heseltine being a middle-class arriviste because of being 'the kind of person who buys his own furniture'.