What was your perception of "wealth" as a kid?

[DaveNV]

I saw this on social media this morning, and it got me to thinking...

For me, "wealth" was families taking vacations that didn't involve sleeping in a tent or on a relative's couch.

What things do you remember using to measure who was wealthy and who wasn't?

Dave

 

[Ralph Sir Edward]

Having an allowance. . .

OTOH - no transportation, no stores nearby, no way to do mail order (everything required a payment by check - which I didn't have access to.)

At least my parents sprung for cheap paperback books by SBS at school. (My "vacations" were trips in those books.)

 

[Jodyv]

My family lived in a nice area of a very small, rural community. When I was about 12, I asked my dad, (who was a maintenance worker at an elementary school) If we were in the Upper Class. He burst out laughing and said that we would be lucky if we were considered to be the upper portion of the Lower Class!!

 

[Iggyearl]

I took up golf at 16. The local public course was fine, but some of the kids in high school got to play the country club. I thought that being a member of a country club was a sign of wealth. One day my dad got a written invitation to apply for membership in the country club. I went to bed praying he would respond. Nope - never happened. I realized later that we couldn't afford it.

 

[beejaybee]

Being able to vacation in Florida!

 

[Ty1on]

Living in a house you weren't waiting to get evicted from.

 

[geist1223]

Flying to foreign countries to vacation. Flying itself to me was not a sign of wealth as I started flying when I was 6.

 

[slip]

I never gave that any thought when I was a kid or even now really. My father gave me a few kernels of wisdom that I remember to this day. One was never worry about what other people have or do. You can't control it and you'll never know the whole story anyway.

He was a smart man for someone who only graduated from high school. He had opportunities to move up the corporate latter in his working years but he stopped advancing when the next job would take too much time away from our family.

I remember when I was a kid. He was with a group of people and someone asked what they would do with a million dollars and everyone answered what they would stayed what they would save and spend it on. My dad said he wouldn't want it. He said it would just cause a bunch of problems he didn't want to deal with. No one thought he was serious but he was. He was just a simple man that knew what he wanted out of life.

While I am not as smart as him, I see myself in him more and more everyday.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Having an allowance. . .

Yes. I would add -

Having a pair of sneakers as well as a pair of leather shoes. Also having a pair of new shoes that were only one size too large.

 

[hjsweet2002]

I grew up dirt financially poor. Constantly moving. Constant Bill collector calls, surplus food hand me down or rummage sale clothes, camping out back in a tent.

However, wealth was the love closeness of our family. Can't put a price on that wealth

 

[Luanne]

Like @slip I never thought about it as a kid. While I would have like to have been able to buy all of the clothes I wanted, we were comfortable, took vacations (road trips) every year, and really didn't want for anything. I would have like to have had a swimming pool in our backyard, but I never thought we didn't have one because we couldn't afford it, but more because my parents didn't want the upkeep of one.

 

[Ty1on]

I never gave that any thought when I was a kid or even now really. My father gave me a few kernels of wisdom that I remember to this day. One was never worry about what other people have or do. You can't control it and you'll never know the whole story anyway.

He was a smart man for someone who only graduated from high school. He had opportunities to move up the corporate latter in his working years but he stopped advancing when the next job would take too much time away from our family.

I remember when I was a kid. He was with a group of people and someone asked what they would do with a million dollars and everyone answered what they would stayed what they would save and spend it on. My dad said he wouldn't want it. He said it would just cause a bunch of problems he didn't want to deal with. No one thought he was serious but he was. He was just a simple man that knew what he wanted out of life.

While I am not as smart as him, I see myself in him more and more everyday.

I've given a lot of thought lately that when people are dreaming of financial wealth, they really aren't dreaming of financial wealth. They are dreaming of being able to have the influence and the perceived public adoration that comes with being wealthy. I think lottery winners find that the money doesn't bring them influence and adoration at all. It brings family, friends, and strangers that want a piece of it through begging, borrowing, or stealing. The fact is that those who have the wealthy lifestyle we glamorize are there because of their ability to influence others and inspire adoration. When we dreamers seek to be like them, we are chasing the wrong target when we think a windfall of a million dollars or two hundred million dollars will give us that.

Of course, I am perfectly willing to test that theory.

 

[klpca]

I saw this on social media this morning, and it got me to thinking...

View attachment 39505

For me, "wealth" was families taking vacations that didn't involve sleeping in a tent or on a relative's couch.

What things do you remember using to measure who was wealthy and who wasn't?

Dave

For me it was just a vacation. We never went anywhere when I was a kid. I thought that was only something in the movies or books.

 

[vacationtime1]

Having two bathrooms in your house.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

However, wealth was the love closeness of our family. Can't put a price on that wealth

Totally. There was never a shortage of love in our household.

Never, ever, for even one moment did I ever question whether I was loved. Even when I was angry with my parents about something because I thought they wrong or badly informed, never did I doubt that there actions were done out of love and concern.

 

[CanuckTravlr]

Scrooge McDuck!!!

 

[Glynda]

I didn't think about it when I was little but as a teen I was embarrassed to wear home made clothes. I yearned to own a pair of Capezio flats to wear to school like other girls instead of the saddle oxfords my mother made me wear. And I thought being rich would be having a washer and dryer instead of having to go to the laundry mat.

 

[DaveNV]

Maybe another way to think about it is "What did you perceive wealthy families did?" or "How did wealthy families live differently from yours?"

My story is similar to many of you - I grew up in a family where hand-me-down clothes were how we lived. (Thank goodness I had an older brother, and not just my older sister. ) Food was basic, life was blue collar, there were daily chores, and occasionally there might be an allowance. No lack of love or food on the table. It was never that. But because we lived such a basic life, the idea of taking a vacation to go someplace like Disneyland, or (wonder of wonders) Hawaii? That was unthinkable because it just didn't happen. I remember when I was in junior high school and a classmate came back after Christmas vacation all tanned. He said his family went to Hawaii for Christmas. I was thunderstruck. Who does that??? We got a new pair of shoes and a winter coat every year right before school started. In a really well-to-do year we got a new lunch pail. Otherwise, it was paper sack lunches. Rich kids got hot lunch. We didn't. But it was how we lived. No shame, no guilt - just life at our house.

Dave

 

[bnoble]

For me, "wealth" was families taking vacations that didn't involve sleeping in a tent or on a relative's couch.

If you came back from Spring Break in grade school with a tan, that was Real Money

 

[Ty1on]

For me it was just a vacation. We never went anywhere when I was a kid. I thought that was only something in the movies or books.

I remember one actual "vacation" after I was 10 and was thrust into a different socioeconomic class, a weekend trip to Disneyland from Vegas. There were also a few crosscountry drives to the family farm in Oklahoma from Vegas for 2 to 3 week stays. My grandmother LOVED to take us to JC Penney to clothes shop for us. Whatever she bought was my wardrobe for the next year, pretty much.

There are three things I want to give my daughter that I never had:

1: Sincere interest in her, what makes her tick, and especially interest and encouragement in her education.
2: A stable home, where we aren't bouncing around to different apartments or delusional attempts to buy houses and then staying with others when the house inevitably forecloses.
3: Experiences. Tennis lessons, horseback lessons and trail rides, vacations to new places, going to see movies WITH HER instead of dropping her off at the theatre and picking her up.

One of the three things is free. The second is simply a matter of being responsible with money in a gambling town, something my mother and degenerate stepfather lacked. The third would be the first luxury I'd have to abandon if our financial situation changes, but while I can, I'm doing what I can so that she doesn't feel "less than" when she goes back to school in August and compares summer vacay notes with her peers. When I was her age, I had seen Texas, Oklahoma, and Vegas. And SoCal for a weekend. She's been to Russia 3 times, Disneyland 4 times, Disney World once, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, The Big Island, and next month will go on a school trip to DC, something my parents would never have agreed to pay for even if they had the money. And all this with middle class parents.

The point of this rambling post was yeah, I thought vacationing was for the rich. Only now do I understand that it's more a matter of prioritizing where a family spends its limited resources. I didn't vacation when I was single, or even when I was married before our daughter was born. My wife would take vacations to visit fam in Russia, which is little different from my crosscountry trips to the farm and not really a vacation. I didn't want to spend money vacationing because I didn't see the point of the expense. My daughter has changed my perspective. It's a financial challenge, but I sincerely think it will influence who my daughter becomes, and most importantly, will make her a very expensive date!

 

[Luanne]

Growing up I never got the idea that there were people I knew, or that lived around us, that had more wealth than we did. Everyone lived about the same kind of lives. I remember when our neighbors took a trip (by boat) to Hawaii. That was so exciting that my sister and I got out of school that day in order to see them off. How fun was that! But again, I didn't think it was because they were wealthier than we were.

But heck, what do I know. My mother grew up in Beverly Hills.

 

[LisaH]

Growing up in China in the 60-70s, we were poor just like everyone. I didn't know what wealth meant. My wish was to be able to eat sausages and drink coffee every day.
Coming to US in the 80s, I wished that one day, I could walk into Macy's and buy whatever I wanted. At the time I could only afford to shop in K-mart.

 

[elaine]

I didn't think about it much. I went to an affluent HS in FL, but lived in the older (cheaper) very middle class side of town (which has now become trendy with mid-century homes). Some friends had 2nd homes at the beach. I had friends ranging from kids whose parents were Drs., the owner of TV station to one working at Sears. For many friends, I had no idea what their parents did or their wealth status. We didn't spend much $ even if we had it (which I have no idea). We got college paid for. I know realize that's a very nice head start in life for parents to give their kids. When I went to college, people talked about "who" someone's parent "was" or what they did. It seemed weird to me.
I still buy furniture off of Ebay Marketplace or Nextdoor. When I proudly told some neighbors that I just got a great sofa for $400, I later realized that maybe they thought I couldn't afford to buy new furniture?

 

[DaveNV]

I still buy furniture off of Ebay Marketplace or Nextdoor. When I proudly told some neighbors that I just got a great sofa for $400, I later realized that maybe they thought I couldn't afford to buy new furniture?

I know people who insist on sharing intimate details of how they got this or that item for so cheap. (Not talking about you, @elaine. ) Those people brag up how cheaply they got "it", whatever it was. I've always thought, "Well good, let's move on." But then they talk about the next item, and the one after that. And it's very annoying to me that everything in their lives seems to have a price tag attached. I know a guy in Washington who gets on my last nerve with his constant financial oneupsmanship. If it's not how he got it for so cheap, it's how he scored it for free! He begs people to give him things, even though he works full time, and lives in a paid-off home that was inherited from his partner's parents. When he shares things on social media, he always has to state what he paid for something, or tag his friends and mention how he got it for free from them. It rankles me to the quick.

Dave

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Rich kids got hot lunch.

Yep. Hot lunch in the school cafeteria was ten cents. A half-pint milk carton was a penny. So we took a sack lunch to school. Jelly sandwich and a piece of fruit when in season. Occasionally a home-made cookie.

After two of my older siblings moved out, things weren't quite so tight. So then twice a year we could pick one week to have school hot lunch. My sister and I would track the menus for the upcoming week to pick a week that had at least three meals that were what we liked. We looked for weeks that had fish sticks, spaghetti, sloppy Joe's, or Salisbury steak.