How wealthy was your family?
 

Describe your lifestyle during your formative years. Did you live in a mansion, with servants, and summer on the riviera? Did you live in a row home in an urban setting, attend public school, and vacation was running through illegally opened fire hydrants? Or was it somewhere between?

My father was a teacher, before teachers made good money. When I was 30, I made more than he did, at 60. We lived in a twin (semi-detatched) home. My siblings and I went through public school, private school was out of the question, and my parents could only pay for my first year of college. Our vacations were camping trips to the Jersey shore. My parents could supply me with what I needed, but not a whole lot more.

I always thought we were "poor." Almost all my friends had more stuff than me. Everything I wore was second hand. We drank powdered milk and didn't eat much meat back when it was a financial thing not a health thing. But in hindsight, I realize my parents were scrimping and saving. They seem well off to me now, and my old friends' parents seem stuck in a lower income lifestyle with a bunch of stupid toys. Big screen tvs in a dump of a house, etc.

Ugh. Powd...:vomitblu: ...dered milk, and lotsa pasta and casseroles.

well-to-do California WASPs. Well educated--Both parents graduated from college in the 1930s. Brought up in what is now known as Silicon Valley (before the "silicon" got there) in Atherton, Hillsborough, Palo Alto, some of the richest real estate in the country. Dad was a construction company exec (think--freeways--California); mom in later years did commercial real estate managment. They invested heavily in Mexico and lost a lot of money in the 70s when the Mexican peso was devalued.

Not "yacht on the Riviera" rich, but--Country club; private schools; new Cadillacs or Lincolns every 2 years; live-in housekeepers; second home in Mexico; dress for dinner every evening with the good china and silverware.

My entire adult life I don't think I've ever even owned a dining room table.

Lower middle class all the way. I'm actually much better off than my folks were, and I'm still lower middle class, in the grand scheme of things. We struggle from paycheck to paycheck, but we have an awful lot of amenities and luxuries that my folks never would have even been realistically able to obtain.

When I was very young, five, six, seven years old, we actually had very little to eat many times, our lights got turned off a lot and we had constant threatening phone calls (back then, bill collectors would call and actually threaten you verbally - there really were no laws that dealt with how such things had to be handled). We lost one house to foreclosure. My father wasn't terribly keen on the 9-5 gig, so he was always flitting from one "big time opportunity" to the other, looking for the big score, and bringing home marginal money, when he got any at all. We were pretty reliant on my mom's folks when things got real bad, and I'm sure the financial BS was largely responsible for my parents' divorce when I was 10.

Things weren't a lot better when my mom married my stepdad. They both worked full time, so he wasn't afraid of steady work, but he was a totally insufferable asshole (we called him "Rick the Prick"), so despite the fact that we were more stable financially (although still firmly lower middle class-no new cars, no flashy stuff of any kind), it was still a crappy life for my mom.

Of course, as a kid, you are pretty self involved and oblivious, so I'm sure things were much, much worse than I was ever aware.

how 'bout you, Spexxvet? Since it's your question. And was there a particular reason you want to know?

[threasdjack] interesting that you bring class into it, Elspode. How would you view the dividing lines between the classes? Are class and wealth the same thing, or just related? What do you call the class below "middle class" here? Is that also the "working class" as in the UK, or does working have a more positive overtone here? [/threadjack]

Post #2

American ideas of class are so different than in the UK; I'm not even sure the ideas translate. "Class" and "working class" don't have the same connotations.

Elspode says "lower middle class"; I would say "upper middle class" for me. Such a wide spectrum. Class here is much more based on wealth, but they are not precisely the same thing.

oh, yeah. but do you think that has real bearing on our current lives? I've lived all my life as an adult from paycheck to paycheck. Funny, my parents neglected to give me any sort of financial education. They simply expected me to be supported by a husband.

Too bad.

We've been discussing "how much is enough?", "are you happy with your income?", etc., and I was wondering if there was a correlation between your experience with your parent's level of wealth and your perception as an adult. For instance, if you were raised privelaged, would you need more, as an adult, to feel that you have enough, and would you be more likely to be content with your current income? Just curious.

Grandparents of old money and upper crust (Yale - Skull & Bones) on Mom's side, 1st generation to go to college gets a Master's on Dad's side. And then Dad died when I was 3, Mom went into a sort of depression-era money tightness to protect us when her family did not really help out. I didn't know what it was at the time, but it felt like scratching for every last dime as she worked at making and selling artistic crafts. It's not exactly a high-paying situation, the craft world. This background of seeing rich and poor and having respect for the everyday art of the lower classes, made me a well-rounded child ready to examine the world, and I thank Mom for it.

For the first 5 years of my life, it was essentially just my mom and I. She eked out a living for us, with my grandparents assisting. There were a few times when we were two steps from the curb. My parents divorced before I was 2...my father was a piece of shit then as he is now.

My mom married my stepdad shortly before I turned 6, and had my brother just before I turned 7. We were essentially lower middle class...my mom was awful with money and my stepdad let her handle the bills. They declared bankruptcy twice growing up. My brother and I went to Catholic school, and there were a couple of times when we almost got thrown out for being late on the bills.

My parents are generally better with their money now. They have a nice small house and two newer cars and seem to be able to make ends meet with money to put in savings. I had hoped not to make the mistakes they did, but essentially wound up following in their footsteps, filing for bankruptcy almost 3 years ago.

I dunno...being laid up due to my heart condition 2 years ago really put a lot of things in perspective for me, and I've been trying valiantly to put into practice what I learned from my (and others') missteps. I'm winning the battle, though it's tough. But that's alright, because I'm ornery by nature. :)

No, I don't think so necessarily, at least for me. You also have to take into account subsequent life experiences. For instance--time spent living in third world countries, military service, being on one's own--I think that your upbringing is just one factor.