My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
My older brother is a Tony Award winning producer and I took a trip to NYC ten years ago. His business partner is a former schoolteacher who became friends with a celebrity and got rich producing her stage plays.
Before going to NYC, I called them up and told them “Hey, I’m going to go see the Yankees while I’m there. There are $15 tickets in the outfield. Wanna go?” It was Jeter’s last year and I wanted to see him play live at Yankee Stadium. Their response was “Don’t worry, we’ll handle it.”
Handling it meant lunch at the stadium club, with Peyton Manning and a bunch of celebrities in the dining room and lobster piled higher than my head, literally. The most luxurious lunch I’ve had in my life. Then we rode the escalator down to our seats, through a tunnel lined with every free candy you can think of on both sides, to the second row behind the Yankee dugout, with our own dedicated server, who kept bringing us wonderful drinks. (TEN FEET AWAY FROM DEREK JETER) Then, in the third inning, another surprise: someone taps me on my shoulder holding one of the bases from batting practice, which my brother’s business partner purchased and had framed for me with my ticket and a photo.
That was too overwhelming. I couldn’t help but cry.
We went for another meal in the 7th inning. The food was still fresh and amazing.
The Yankees lost that day, but it’s okay.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
That’s hilarious, that you had to pretend you were dying of cancer for such extravagance to make sense in your life.
I think you misread what I wrote.
Growing up poor, and eventually working my way into a tech job dealt me a long stream of culture shocks. Just socialising with people earning over 100k is wild. The vacations, hobbies, and even anecdotes, are all so different than what I imagined. I feel I betray my roots a thousand times a day.
I know this is just basic working class petit bourgeois stuff (that I’m part of), but the carefree attitude is so alien to me. I can’t imagine feeling so entitled to luxury.
Im not so sure 100k will give folks super vacations and hobbies anymore. I mean if it just crests it.
I’ve never actually been on a vacation, so maybe my view of what constitutes luxury isn’t the norm… Yeah without context I get that 100k+ is just a really good livable income.
So I suppose it depends how long they’ve had it and if they have generational wealth. Like I’ve earned 100k but I’m the only one in my family to do so, so I spend most of it working down debt, and supporting family.
I get that there are richer people. But of my personal experience, it seems like people that don’t have that kind of reverse inheritance of poor roots get to live such carefree lives.
While still being working class ofc
Im single income with a wife with many medical issues. Im currently unemployed and Im trying to figure out how low I can take. 80k and we have to draw from savings. A bit over 2k a month medical costs, 2k for housing, 2k for everything else every month. Then figured out taxes on that. so I net it. Im also getting older with not enough retirement savings. Granted its way cheaper for one person who is healthy. I can’t imagine if we had kids how bad this would be. Certainly would easily make 100k inadequate. now granted two people making 60k is one person makeing 120k.
I feel like those who end up in your position end up one of two ways.
You know that you don’t have a safety net, so you don’t spend money more than you need to. Also, since it sounds like you support your family significantly, a lot of money that would go to vacations instead goes to them.
For others, money was an on/off switch; you either have it or you don’t. These kinds of people will spend at or above their means because they can and there aren’t any hard limits due to a lot of credit options.
Yup, I feel that. My “new” car purchase this year was a used 2015 Nissan leaf that was like 6k. It baffles me how my colleagues budget their money. A rivian?? Son, that’s the cost of a new roof.
Son, that’s the cost of a new roof.
Depending on their circumstances, they might already have the new roof too. Or more likely they bought the vehicle with a minimal down payment and stretched the loan across 80 months.
Yep, I have no idea how people are able to afford stuff like that! Some of our friends have these crazy hobbies and go out to eat all the time, multiple cruises a year, etc. Meanwhile a ‘date night’ for us is Chipotle and DVDs of whatever show we are watching that we borrowed from the Library. That is the only way we can afford our modest one side of a duplex. And I feel like I make ok money but I guess everyone we know just makes so much more, or we are just very strict with our budgeting and credit usage.
Likewise, I grew up on a council estate in the north of England. Worked my way up to a good education and eventually created a $250k consulting business in London.
My experience of six figure earners in London was that many were also “new”, their parents had been working class, which I suppose points to some social mobility and meritocracy left in Britain.
For others it was totally normal. Not that they were from money, but in the more mundane sense that they’d grown up in London, they and all their friends had gotten tutor support by parents who both worked and for whom looking at the job opportunities on offer in London, a six figure salary was a realistic prospect after working some years. This is probably the category I aspire for my kids to be in
Then there are the kids from money. Not unpleasant people, Britain doesn’t quite have that competitiveness in the same way. Bragging about income is still crass. But they did seem genuinely clueless of the grief they’d been spared because bank of mum+dad bunged them a loan of 500k when they bought their first place, which they then paid back fairly effortlessly.
The most unpleasant people I ever dealt with were rich people from other countries. Maybe because in Britain money doesn’t buy you class or respect.
Also grew up poor. I know exactly how you feel. I don’t have a partner and kids to take care of and I make good money in tech. I’ve shoved enough back to retire early (theoretically, I guess we’ll see) and now I’m out here with no car payment, a mostly paid off mortgage, and I’m spending too much on hobbies.
It’s still wild to me.
A friend invited me on vacation with her family. They are very wealthy compared to me. It was clear up front that lodging and meals were covered by them, but I was hazy on everything else. It stressed me out so bad.
Do I want to go with them to do some Expensive Activity? Of course, but am I paying for it? Can I afford it? Even if I can, do I want to spend my limited money on that? Do they see me as a freeloader? How are these other not-rich friends navigating this because no one ever seems to talk about money? Fortunately, my friend saw my stress and had a discrete conversation with me where we set some guidelines.
A few of us were invited out to dinner by our boss in my first corporate job. I ordered the cheapest sandwich on the menu because I had no idea if he was paying for me, and this wasn’t the sort of restaurant I could go to except for anniversaries. Everybody else got steaks and stuff, and the boss did pay. My chicken sandwich was good too, but I’ll never forget my anxiety looking at the prices on the menu!
I stayed a few nights at the St. Regis in NYC in the presidential suite. Pretty ridiculous, 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, private butler, full kitchen and dining room, use of a Bentley, 3,430 sq ft. (318 sqm) bigger than any house I ever lived in.
Through my old job I got to do lots of stupid shit, fly private internationally, use someone’s beach house for a week on their own island, etc.
While aspects of it were fun, I always felt like an outsider, and the waste really bothered me. I’m someone who bicycles or walks to the farmers market with a courier bag.
I was dating a person who worked in the nonprofit space. They organized a gala focused on education for black students, and I was invited as their +1. It was a super fancy black tie event - something that is far outside of my norm or comfort zone. I met the creator of Abbott Elementary, and she was an amazing person. She even invited me to her birthday party (I didn’t go).
Some of the tax firms my wife has worked for have hosted extravagant Christmas parties in mountain-top restaurants in Banff and the like. We get to pretend we’re fancy people and order the most expensive menu items for a night.
One of the events that comes to mind was a “open” conference at a university that “actively encouraged” “low class” participation. (They didn’t say this).
What I mean by that is that it happened during normal work hours and you had to send an email to sign up, but they did allow you to come.
Over the course of the event it became clear that it was a joint PR thing for the sponsors and the university to appear to be “doing something about [issue]”, so they had 2 talks, an audience participation thing, where it was very clear that the thing needed most was more funding for people and work material and tools (think PPE, it wasn’t that or that critical). …and a panel discussion between [company] and [5 politicians] that in absolutely no way addressed the issues that were brought up in the audience participation part.
There was very nice, expensive catering.
Pretty surreal experience and something that solidified my belief that some very important parts of our society are utterly broken beyond repair.
Funnily enough, a similar thing. When I was 20 I had a small business, but registered to the business register just like any other. I got invited by email to attend the opening of the new lodge in the stadium (because they were trying to sell me private seats passes I definitely couldn’t afford). Shook hands with the players and everything.
My parents liked to travel and eat out when we were young. If traveling, it meant we ate with them. I frequently remember eating at very fancy places wearing my little dresses and patent leather shoes and feeling very out of place. But mostly because I was a kid.
Also maybe the one time we flew first class at 14? Oooo they had ice cream!! In real bowls!!! And nice pillows!!!
I worked at a financial company which had an office in London, I am an IT guy and was asked to go to the London office a few times.
Two of those times I got to stay at The Langham.
It is a far more luxurious hotel than I have ever stayed at before.
Flew half-way across the country on a private plane for a business meeting.
The mayor used to know my name. Hollered at me at Mardi Gras!
Went to a party at the woman’s house who owns a vast chunk of downtown. Got to see the Mardi Gras parade from above.
I was an active duty surgical tech in the US military; promoted fairly quickly and ranked up to Staff Sergeant at about 3 years. Shortly after taking that rank, we had a perfect storm of deployments, a retirement, a medical separation, etc that left me as the highest ranking enlisted in the surgery unit, which made me (a still-kinda-newby-surgical-tech) taking the responsibilities of basically a charge nurse. Chief among these was attending morning morning briefs with the top dogs of the hospital (high ranking officers) and giving report. Fortunately I knew where to access the OR’s metrics, so my report was always just a summary of our case load, average times, etc.
This lasted only about a week until we got a new Master Sergeant and Tech Sergeant. Apparently I got some pretty high praise from those top dogs for stepping up (not like I had a choice) and doing a decent job – but that was PURE luck lol. I only did well because things went relatively smoothly on their own. If there was an emergency or something I would have had no fucking clue what to do; and all the junior enlisted seemed to just know that I wouldn’t have been able to do shit for them during that time, so everyone kept the smaller fires to themselves during that time.
It was a weird time.
Saved up for a few years to go to a 5 star hotel resort (thank you COVID!) and when we finally went, goodness gracious was the experience so wildly different from a 3 or 4 star hotel. Felt completely out of place there right from our arrival.
We arrived as backpackers and walk to main gate where the gatekeeper was. He was shocked and stammered “You… you walked here?”. We were quite naive in thinking everybody did since there was foot path, but upon looking back, it was not paved or anything. Nearly every visitor had their own car and there was a shuttle to get you between the bungalows. We also got a welcome cocktail and complementary snacks on some tours. We found out that we didn’t even have to carry our own luggage anywhere and of course there was dry-cleaning but it was at max 20$ / item.
A great experience, but we’ll need another few years to save up for a similar experience.
Never anything like that but my brother in law got tickets to a major league game close enough to see the umpires calls which is a big deal for me.
A girl I dated was friends with the daughter of one of Microsoft’s founders and we got invited to their house to watch Seafair. I think it’s be safe to call in a small mansion right on the water with a dock. The kitchen was as big as my whole apartment. The technology was a bit dated but must’ve been state of the art when it was built. Switches for automated everything. On the water we had front row seats to the Blue Angels. They are incredibly loud up close.
The guy was super down to earth. Had a good conversation where he showed genuine interest in me and what I did. 9.9/10, the hot tub was broken
