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Before my parents divorced, we lived in a nice 4 bedroom house with a pool. We always had everything we needed/wanted and more. Eventually my mother thought there was more to life than being a housewife so she decided she wanted a divorce. After divorce, my father and I bounced around renting and at times I slept on a couch. Sad when you are in High School and when asked your address, you don't know how to respond. Saying "the couch in my dad's, girlfriend's, parent's house" does not constitute as a mailing address. It was this new girlfriend who took us from solid middle/upper class to poor. I found out later in life that he was spending close to 500 a day to 'impress' her. Once that well was dried up, she left and we had nothing. We ended up living in some ratty apartment complex until I eventually joined the military. Good riddance to that.
When I realized our house was worth $130k but my father worked as a senior software engineer for companies since the 80s. That being said, in the spectrum of things, it's decidedly middle to upper middle class. We never had luxuries and he never takes vacations, but he has highly funded retirement accounts, to my knowledge anyways.
I am straching my head to understand what that even means.
assuming a median wage of 50K (nowadays)X30 students, that is 1.500MM in today's market.
and this cannot be in a high cost area as everybody else' income is higher.
It was Manalapan nj late 1980's. An upper - middle Class suburb of NYC. At the time, I had little concept of what that meant but today I believe he wasn't exaggerating.
Well, depends on how old they are now? Are they teenagers already? If so and they are okay with it, they will be later on.
If they aren't teenagers yet and in puberty, there may come the time where they want cooler clothes to fit in. I would grant those wishes to a certain degree. Teenage years are important.
I would have rather had less vacations but better clothes. I have been bullied for being ugly. Nice clothes would have helped me have a less horrible time in school. I sort of understand my parents point but they partially ruined my life. Teenage years form your character, and I feel damaged. I do not like looking back and I hardly remember all the vacations we went to. I do, however, remember the bullying in school for having ridiculous clothes and ugly hair.
High school was brutal. You couldn't pay me enough to do it again with the brain I had at the time. We went on some nice vacations. I had some nice clothing. I got a job and payed for them. I wasn't good enough for the "rich" girls. I wasn't a cheerleader. I wasn't involved in sports. The chess club guys were all in love with me.
When I moved to Cairo with my parents when I was 12.
It was the first time that I realized how different my life was from other people. My family, for the first time, had a house keeper, a driver, and a cook. Our driver had a boy about my age. Hanging out with him opened my eyes to how enormous the gulf between our lives were. It was the first time I saw people begging for money on the street. I used to sit in my room and cry thinking about how unfair the world was and how I, a dumb teenager who did absolutely nothing to deserve my relative wealth, had so much more than, literally, millions of people around me.
I found out we were not rich around age 7 when I visited some classmates whose parents WERE rich.
My father frequently was stressed out about "the bills" as he said while I was growing up.
I learned that we were not poor, either when I was around the same age and spent the night with a friend of mine who was poor.
We always had ample food, clothing, and never had to worry about if we were going to have a place to live. We always had medical care.
The majority of the furniture in the house and most of our clothing was from the secondhand store but it was fun for my mom & I (and later my sister) to try and hunt out the best bargains. Even though I can afford them now, I still don't spend a lot of money on clothing and to this day enjoy bargain hunting at rummage sales and second hand shops I just don't get spending tons of $$$ on clothing. So many other places to put disposable income IMO.
We never really went on a true vacation--our annual summer vacation was to visit my paternal grandmother in Iowa. I did enjoy seeing her and it was nice to travel. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little envious of the wealthy and middle class kids who were able to go on trips overseas and different places all of the time.
I was aware of my family's socioeconomic class from an early age but didn't know at age 7 that the name for it was "working class"
I forgot what grade, but I was filling in an application for something (don't remember what) and it asked for my parents' income. It was $30,000 combined in the early to mid '90s. That's when I knew we didn't have a lot of money.
I don't even know how I knew that a combined $30K wasn't that much, unless I had something else to compare it to.
I found out I was rich after my parents divorced when I was 6 and I was henceforth sent to a posh boarding school in Gstaadt , Switzerland , where my best friend was a Vanderbuilt boy.
Then I found out I was poor when I turned 21, when , after having enrolled in University for a BA in Liberal Arts, my grandparents told me they were broke and couldn't finance my studies anymore , and I had to look for some job with my Liberal arts diploma...
It took us longer to buy a post-WWII car than some in the neighborhood, but we weren't the last ones either. That led me to suspect that we were middle class. Then the same thing happened with TV sets. We weren't the first to get one, but we weren't the last either. Colonel Mustard with the Wrench in the Library.
In high school, when we went to play in the town where all the doctors lived, and everyone was driving a better car than the one the “richest” family in our town drove. Then I went off to a top university and that’s when I really knew.
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I just don't get spending tons of $$$ on clothing. So many other places to put disposable income IMO.
