Rich House Poor House Oct 2019.

[ListenLinda]

Is anyone else watching?
I’m finding this episode quite interesting as our weekly budget is very similar to the Ross family, yet I don’t feel like we struggle and can have some treats.
What I would do with £1200 a week though 😂

I feel absolutely claustrophobic just looking at the poor mum's flat and all that stuff that's in it.

Is the rich mum really “properly” rich if she is renting a £7m house? Seemed more like a well provided for divorcee to me...

I wonder if they're running out of families

Just catching up. I think the rich mums statement about if you don’t work you don’t have self respect was a bit off.

Totally ignorant of other peoples circumstances.

Now, anyone wanna bung me 400 quid so I can have a vitamin IV in my arm?

Seeing as I'm very charitable I'll throw in £80 for the hand stand class too

If I was inclined to be purchasing vitamin IVs then I would be put off Gita's place. She came across as very spoilt, immature and judgemental.

@cardoncoffee thanks! 🤣🤣

@cardamon so sorry I got your name wrong.

running out of families

That must be true because the programme makers wrote to us asking us to be the “rich family”. We bought quite a big house a few years back so I presume they trawl public records?

We’re not rich though and to make us look that way would require a hell of a lot of editing, so we said then that they’re clearly scraping the barrel.

Based on this series, we were right!

I imagine they're inundated with poor families, it's basically a holiday with cash

The last poor dad said they didn't have any control over the cash. This series does seem to have changed direction slighty, last night they weren't able to buy their own food, they had to have a typical shop of what that family got. Geeta was quite disrespectful about the Jamaican jerk seasoning I thought.

Just watched this week’s episode, thought it was better than last week's. I liked the tried-and-tested “how the other half live” format – the rich women not knowing how to shop, cook or clean etc. The poor family appalled at the price of everything – mind you, so was I - £400 for a saline drip with some added vitamins – I guess it proves there’s one born every minute

I saw no mention of any dads. Geeta looked like she could have been enjoying the fruits of a generous divorce settlement in addition to having her own business, but Andrea looked like she’s not getting much from the girls’ father(s).

Lovely to see Andrea & her girls enjoying their day in Brighton! And I’m so glad she used some of the money to buy a laptop for her studying – sensible woman!

And lovely to see Geeta & Harriet using their last £40 to buy vouchers for Andrea’s girls, rather than Geeta getting her nails done.

Poverty of aspiration came through too - Andrea didn't know about the boxing classes, she had a vague idea about retraining somehow, but by the end of the week she was looking at online GCSEs and had spoken to her local college. I guess that was made possible by the laptop though.

Panem interesting that you've been approached!

I did a bit of googling and Geeta's husband was a multi-millionaire property developer but went bankrupt and they divorced shortly after. After the split she became homeless with her 3 dc and live-in nanny and had to sofa surf and that is how her business started. She comes across worse in interviews, she's all 'I am soooo amazing, I find it so hard to employ people as I want them to be better than me, but I can't find anyone better so here I am..'
She also diagnosed her child as being allergic to his vaccines and got very cross because the doctors didn't agree with her, so she deregistered the whole family 12 years ago and has never seen a doctor since. She has no nutritional qualifications whatsoever but 'heals' people with her advice It's interesting that out of the many services that her business offers she doesn't have more than 2 reviews per product.

I felt like I couldn't relate to this episode at all

I couldn't relate to the rich people

And I couldn't understand why there were 2 women instead of a family ie at least one parent and at least one kid?! Isn't that supposed to be the point of the programme?! You're supposed to realise the struggles you'd have as a family not as to adults who can really rely on themselves

It was an odd set up

That's all very interesting about Geeta. Those two women were typical Chelsea women; nervous of other parts of London, obsessed with their 'health' and happy to pay loads of money for faddy nonsense. Geeta clearly came from a middle class background and had no business criticising someone from a very different set of circumstances.
I hope the poor mum finds something she'd like to do; she's got a long slog ahead of her if she decides to train as a teacher.

I know what you mean purpleme12 Geeta did have 3 daughters, but they were "away on holiday" - I wondered if she'd done something like refuse for her daughters to be included at the last minute, and the programme let her take her friend instead? Weird anyway to have two adults instead of a family. The other rich woman Harriet pointed out that they actually had been given too much money, because there were only 2 of them as opposed to the 4 in the poor family that the money had to provide for.

Manic I think Andrea used to be a healthcare assistant and now wanted to retrain as a teaching assistant. But you're right, with no qualifications that'll be hard.

When I lived in south London I hated it when the bus would terminate early in Stockwell as I didn't feel safe waiting for the bus there after dark. So I did relate with them not feeling safe walking round looking for a bar(even though they had a camera crew).
Though as they did the food shop in Brixton I didn't understand why they couldn't go for a drink in Brixton or Clapham.

I wonder if the Chelsea house is rented by Geeta's company.

I did like the no nonsense dismissal of the preprepared food delivery and handstand class.
If Geeta planned on the show being an ad for her company i can't see it was a good one.

Agree with all on the clutter, without all the crap the poor house would have been a lot easier to live in.

I've got to admit when I saw Terri ann on RHPH I rolled my eyes . Shes all over facebook and I see her all the time driving around bentley in her tacky RR haha. I personally think she came across fake and as though everything was about her and where shes come from? The story about her being on her phone during labour I've heard thousands of times from her own account. Lots of rich families in doncaster shame this family put themselves forward although I'm not surprised they did, they love the attention. Love anne and her family and wish them all the best

Observer24 I thought she came across really quite well. She seemed almost excited to be going back to a tight budget as she had been there, done that.

I would imagine they put themselves forward to promote their business.

Does anyone know how they calculated the weekly spending money?

The spending money is supposed to be disposable income, so I don't know then why £180 is considered poor.

When I watch these programs then I always get the impression that rich middle class people are extremely naive to the world, it’s almost as if they have no common sense, the poor families always have street smarts and intelligence, it’s not just in tv actually either, I have said before I find middle class people to have not a clue about things that you would consider ‘common sense’, it’s like they live in a bubble, they’re very green as well.

I guess I was thinking about things like the cleaner... do they have to pay that out of the cash they’ve been given? Also what about savings and investments? Surely the ‘rich’ families are actually saving a chunk not spending it all

The spending money is supposed to be disposable income, so I don't know then why £180 is considered poor.
Because I’d not really disposable it’s to cover food, clothes including school uniforms, shoes, birthdays, Christmas, school trips, random money for school, replacing washing machine etc bus fares/petrol.

*its not