30 Times Rich People Made Such Out-Of-Touch Comments, They Got Shamed Online
Interview
According to the World Inequality Report, the poorest 50% of the population own just 2% of total wealth, with an average purchasing power parity (PPP) of $4,100 per adult. By contrast, the middle 40% of the population own 22% of total wealth (PPP of $57,300 per adult), and the top 10% own 76% of total wealth (PPP of $771,300 per adult).
So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that when Reddit user Yiga_Blade_Master asked everyone else on the platform to share the most out-of-touch things they have ever heard, many people recalled the words of the rich — if you zoom out, it's as if some of us live in a different world.
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Co-worker: "You'll be able to buy a home once you get your inheritance"
Me: "I won't have an inheritance, my family isn't well off"
Co-worker: "Of course you have an inheritance. Everyone's parents leave them an inheritance. I'm sure they're just keeping it a secret from you to surprise you."
Said to me by my co-worker who's parents are both doctors, while my mom had recently been laid off and my dad was too sick to work.
man this is just so sad, I just want to give everyone a hug and give them the money they need.
Sitting with a coworker in our lunchroom. She is venting about having to work two jobs, and not being able to afford all her bills, and in general how exhausted she is. One look at her and you could tell she was at a breaking point.
One of the bosses replies with "I can relate, I had to spend Saturday taking my sailboat in and Sunday closing up the cottage for the winter, nothing but work..."
That was the quietest the lunchroom had ever gotten.
We got in touch with Yiga_Blade_Master, and the Redditor agreed to have a chat with us about their now-viral post.
"I got the idea for it randomly," they told Bored Panda.
"I was just scrolling through r/AskReddit and noticed that none of the questions at the time were all that intriguing, so I spent around 15 minutes trying to think of something that was actually interesting."
At an old job, i had a breakdown because i had not been paid in six weeks and literally was unable to eat and was walking to work because i could not afford gas. boss found me crying and told me i was being “petty” for wanting my money and asked me “why don’t you just live off of your savings?”. i was a 21 year old recent college grad who wasn’t getting my paychecks, what savings???
Theft of wages is a serious crime. OP could sue him into the ground. That's what I'd do. If your curious, the BBB has resources for this situation.
I've had a boss try explaining to me that raises wouldn't improve employee morale because most of the staff don't actually care what they're paid and are more interested in rewards like a pizza party.
I asked who her landlord was that allows rent to be paid in pizza parties.
This is a misunderstanding of the research. It says very clearly that once a person's needs have been met, *then* an extra £1000 isn't going to make that much difference. But the person's NEEDS must be met first! Once their needs have been met, then new equipment, better facilities, an extra holiday, etc will be more attractive than a bit more money.
A potential client talking about their work in an equatorial country: "We're just about at the point where we can start charging the locals for water, which is very exciting."
I declined the job.
wow that is so disgusting. We give 5 kL free here to all families.
Regarding the responses received, Yiga_Blade_Master spotted a prevalent theme.
"I've noticed that a lot of the replies have been business-related," they said, alluding to all the stories about bosses being unable to empathize with their employees' financial struggles, potential partners openly bragging about exploiting their clients, and other corporate shills.
I’m a public defender. This happened to my colleague and not me, but I was there. A client (who the court deemed indigent in order to get a public defender) was in court for failing to pay a fine. Her lawyer (my coworker) explained to the judge that the client was out of work and did not have the money. The judge told her just to go to the ATM upstairs. Like… this b***h couldn’t understand people not having money. Or she thought that ATMs just gave anyone money. No idea. Local gossip says that her daddy bought her her seat on the bench when she finally passed the bar after failing it at least 3 times.
I once wanted to gift a friend a gig ticket. She was a young mum at the time and she didn't have any spare cash to spend on herself or to go out and do anything fun. She was very hesitant to take it and it was 100% my idea.
My other friend who was in her 30s at the time;
"I think she's manipulating you, I just don't believe she can't afford a ticket! I mean there's ALWAYS money!"
This woman had never lived away from her parents and was from a relatively wealthy background.
She also said; "People who haven't got money really only have themselves to blame for not managing their finances better"
Had to have a chat with her about how not everyone comes from the same background and some people go to bed hungry daily.
Ok, I get that she's oblivious...but that second to last line...she's playing with fire.
When I was interning at a museum early in my career, my husband and I were house-hunting and put an offer on our home. One of the interns I worked with came from a very very rich family (think old money oil baron type). He didn't have to work, he just enjoyed learning history and traveling around to different internships for fun. He asked me what steps I needed to take to buy the house and I mentioned our mortgage paperwork. He sneered and looked at me like I was the dumbest person alive and said, "don't mess with a mortgage, just buy it outright! It will save you money in interest!". OK dude, as a 25 year old supporting myself, I am just going to pull $400,000 out of my a*s.
There was a manager that would carry in two very large designer bags each day. You would never see the same bag twice a week. At an appreciation lunch for a side project, she complimented our group for doing so much that year on such a small budget. She said, "The monthly budget for this project is what I spend on shoes each month. I know that sounds like a joke, but no, it's actually almost exactly my shoe budget.". Yeah, the monthly budget for that project was also almost exactly my take home pay.
Interestingly, researchers have long observed that high-power individuals tend to be less sensitive to the emotions of others — they are less willing to consider others’ perspectives. They are less able to accurately infer others’ emotions.
We know this in part because of a series of experiments led by Michael Kraus, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in which subjects were asked to look at pictures of faces and indicate which emotions were being expressed. The results showed that the more privileged the judges were in terms of income, occupational prestige, and material wealth, the less able they were to accurately identify emotions in pictures.
Lolll gotta love when kids do stuff like that.
I worked at a deli in college and had a high school-aged coworker. She was so sweet but genuinely didn’t understand why I never had money… because, according to her, I could “just use a credit card!” When my coworkers and I tried explaining that you have to pay those back, she dug her heels in even deeper and insisted she’d never had to pay them back so that must not be true.
She was super quiet the rest of the shift and never brought it up again. I can only assume she asked her dad later that night. Hopefully he uh, illuminated some things for her.
The sad part is that I’ve heard similar stories from other folks working with (privileged) teens. Through limited fault of their own, sometimes they really don’t get it.
I'm sorry, I get growing up privileged might leave certain holes in life skills and common sense but how on Earth can anyone not know that credit cards aren't just free money? Why or how would anyone be poor, homeless, hungry? Have they never watched a single thing on TV or online that contradicted this? Ffs!
I had an old boss that grew up very wealthy. During the pandemic, when everyone was working from home, we had a lot of employees mentally struggling because they lived in small apartments and didn’t have the room nor ability to have a good office set up, and were in general going stir crazy. My boss, on the other hand, moved out of his apartment into *one of* his parent’s large homes on a lake so he’d have more space while being stuck at home.
He said “I don’t know what you’re all complaining about. If you want a bigger place to live, just move. I did and it was easy. It’s not as hard as you think.”.
“If your wife wants a Range Rover, why don’t you just buy her one?” I just stared at homie and said “Man, we operate in different worlds”.
Well, they definitely are a car for only the rich now. In the UK they are essentially un-insurable due to the gameboy level security on them, you'll be looking at annual quotes of around £15,000+ for insurance. These levels haven't been seen since the joyriders/ram raiders of the late 80's/90's nicking Ford Sierra Cosworths & Escort Cosworths. Jeremy Clarkson got rid of his Escort Cossie due to the £17K annual cost of insuring it. Just madness.
I bought my first condo (one bedroom, pretty small, in a city) in my early 30's. My uncle made a comment about how *he* bought his first place - a house! with multiple bedrooms *and* bathrooms! - a year after he graduated college, and how mind-blowing he found it that my generation was so behind compared to his.
Ridiculous enough when you consider inflation + the average salary at the time (1982 vs. 2022), but even more ridiculous once my grandma told me that she and my grandfather gifted him the money for the down payment.
That bias also manifested itself in simulated job interviews. During a role-play, subjects were asked to estimate the emotions of the experimenter, who had acted out a range of moods, including amusement, anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, happiness, jealousy, surprise, and worry. Again, upper-class study participants had a harder time reading the emotions of strangers. And it wasn’t that they didn’t pay attention, either; they were simply less in tune with their fellow human beings.
I was doing a low paid social service internship and a rich kid joined our team because he wasn’t allowed to access his trust fund unless he did a year of community service. We were all fresh out of college in s****y apartments and our boss encouraged us to apply for food stamps since we all qualified. Rich kid who was new to town turned to me and asked where I hire my housekeeper. I thought he was joking but he was serious. Pointed out I have never had one in my life and certainly cannot afford one on our wages. He asked how I keep my house clean without a housekeeper.
"You won't be happier at work if we pay you more, but we need to figure out why workplace happiness is so low" coming from a guy that made 10x what I did, and was born into old money.
My inlaw grandparents when we we negotiating to buy our house.
Note:they are retired and her grandfather was a new York lawyer.
GP: "they are asking 400? Just offer them 200k cash they'll take it"
We informed them we don't have 200k in cash.
My ex was a doctor. He worked very hard for a long time to get there and was paid accordingly. He worked with (but was not their boss or employer) several medical assistants - most of these women were $15 an hour employees, where he made at least 10x that. They worked together all day and were super close, still are as far as I know. During this time we built a new house. The MAs would joke about us having a party sometime, but my ex was uncomfortable with the idea because we weren’t really party people but mainly because our house was pretty over the top - very large and expensive, and he didn’t feel comfortable highlighting the drastic difference in pay, when none of them really knew what he made. He would often take them out for dinner and drinks and would always cover the tabs, he would call in lunch for everyone, etc but he felt like our house was almost embarrassing when some of them were raising 3 and 4 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment. Again, he didn’t control their pay, they were all employees of a clinic. Anyway, I was telling one of my friends about how awkward and embarrassed he felt about it and how he wasn’t sure what to do - My friend then said “He really should host a party for them! If they see your house it might inspire them to work harder and make more money!” It was almost a caricature of a republican talking point.
At least your ex was able to recognise the difference and be appropriately generous and sensitive re: difference in pay.
If there's one takeaway that the author of the Reddit post walked away from the discussion with, it's that affluent individuals have problems grasping the realities of the common folk.
"It's kinda hard for rich people to understand how life would be without the vast amount of money."
I was working as an architect for a practice with HNWI clients. I was making small talk with one of them (both of us in the mid 30s, him born into one of the richest families in England). I was saying how the flat me and my husband were renting was being sold so we were looking for another flat to rent, but everything is very expensive. He then said something along the lines of: ' I don't understand why you don't buy a house. That way you will not have to pay rent every month and you will have much more space than in a flat'.
Talking to a boomer in-law, and he was complaining how he started out earning less than $2.00 an hour "flipping burgers" as a teenager back in the 60s, and got a pay raise a year or so later to over $2.00. I pulled up an inflation calculator and pointed out that he started off making the modern day equivalent of over $18.56 an hour.... And the got a raise to nearly $20 a year later. He waved his hand dismissively and said "I don't believe in that inflation c**p". .
Ask him to explain why then things are more expensive than they were in "his day"
“If your student loan payments are so high, why don’t you just ask your parents to pay them off?”.
I went to a really rich catholic high school. I got in on merit. In my grade 10 math class it was the classic case of “put D kid next to A kid and hope A kid pulls them up”. During a work period I heard this exchange.
“I’m so mad at my dad” “What did he do?” “He got me the wrong car for my birthday!”
I wish I was kidding. It sounded so cliche and from a movie I thought that they were making it up to see if I was eavesdropping. I don’t think she had her licence by the time we graduated.
My brother pulled that s**t on my dad when we were kids - we were not rich though. He got a better car out of it regardless. Sometimes entitlement just works.
My coworker, fresh out of school, was really confused why so many people took public transportation to commute into the city.
Turns out her parents paid for a personal driver for her and that's how she got to work and back. Not an Uber, a car service. She had no idea what it cost, probably never thought about it, just figured everyone else preferred the subway/bus to having a personal driver.
About 20 years ago my boss sat us all down and talked about an investment that he thought we would be good for us. I don't remember what it was. The thing I remember is him saying "you can put that spare $100 each week into the investment". Crickets chirping. Meeting ended. Nobody had a spare $100 a week. I was living hand to mouth myself and I did the payroll so I knew what everybody else was earning.
Another one back in the late 80's early 90's bosses wife worked in the office too. She commented one day that a certain shop had lovely blouses there were only $100. Lol. that was a third of my weekly pay. I suspect the comment came because we didn't wear lovely blouses because we could not afford them.
Dude went to school with couldn't understand why I couldn't afford the exact present he wanted, during his month of "we're not friends and more so im going to sit next to you and pout" I had said I discovered my mom had been alternating between having her pills one month, and mostly noodles/hotdogs in the house, or not having her pills, and a fridge with various kinds of meat and some vegetables to make more than just noodles. Kid goes: "well if you're poor then your mom should make more money that way you can quit whining". Teacher got fired for sending him to the office when his mom threatened to sue the school over it.
I had a customer at work (where we make barely above minimum wage) tell me to not bother buying a second house and it’s more hassle than it’s worth.
I’m sorry mate but I can’t actually afford to buy a first house never mind anything else. They are lovely people but have too much money and no idea.
When I told my dentist I was not looking forward to having braces as an adult in my late 20s he suggested I just take a 6 month vacation. As if that was something most people in their late 20s can do at the drop of a hat. The cost of braces themselves isn't cheap, and I'm saving every spare cent in the hopes of maybe one day being able to buy a home, but sure why dont I just quit my job and head to Cabo? I'm sure I'd have a great time and it would be worth blowing my life savings and having to restart my career to avoid being seen in braces.
Dentists should just shut the hell up about any money related conversation topics. I've literally got broken teeth and I'm in pain pretty regularly because the estimate for removing them/getting crowns or even just the surgery to remove them is almost 15-20K. It's unfathomable to some people that you can't just come up with that. Oh, sure, they'll let you get on a payment plan where you'll be paying it off for 5 years at an interest rate of 30% apy. And that's WITH my dental insurance, which covers literally 1 cleaning every year and 1 filling, but I'm required to have it because I live in a state where you are required to have insurance or you are penalized. So I pay 15 dollars a week for insurance I don't even use with the option of going into debt for services no one could afford reasonably.
Made a new friend and he asked if I went on annual holidays as a child. I explained that we could never afford to go abroad but every few years we would take a trip somewhere within the country.
He said he had a similar experience, his family went to Croatia every year but they could only afford it because they didn't have to worry about paying for accommodation because his parents owned a house over there.
I was also shopping for a wheelchair at the time and struggling to find one I could afford. He said I should get an electric one because it would suit my needs better. I explained that there was no way I could afford it because they were upwards of a grand. He didn't understand, kept asking me when I was getting an electric wheelchair, and when I said I couldn't afford one he would just say "But they are so worth the money!".
I get the impressions his friend is not wheelchair bound and probably knows nothing about wheelchairs.
My ex-girlfriend and I were celebrating our 5th anniversary and one of our birthdays at a fine-dining restaurant. Degustation for $250 per person. We sat down and there's quite a bit of time between each course, and we got chatting with an older couple sitting across from us.
The wife explained to us "we're trying somewhere cheaper tonight, and the experience isn't too bad! I wouldn't do it again, but it's nice to know that there are less expensive options so everyone can enjoy the experience every now and then."
Like b***h, if this is cheap wtf is the expensive experience like?!.
'Why would you want to have roommates?' was said to me once. I almost lost it.
Because I like living with mentally ill strangers and their bf/gf who they moved in without asking.
I am a consultant. Once I had the opportunity to have a meeting with someone who was the head of a massive family business, she was a billionaire. We were discussing selling candy in large amounts on the internet and a couple of us were discussing pricing.
She said out of nowhere "well, people buy bananas on the internet right? What does a bunch of bananas cost? $25? It'll be fine."
And then she went back to her phone and never said another word.
Became friends when I was very young with a prestigious lawyer. Came home on leave and we met for drinks. He decided to take me to a pvt club. While there he ordered us both drinks for 3-5 rounds. In the middle of telling a story he gets a call and steps out. After a few minutes he text. He told me he had to run to run back to the office and that he would get me next time. I ask for the bill nervously as there was no price next to the drinks he ordered. He became very surprised when he had to come back to pay. He couldn’t fathom that a private in the army couldn’t pay a 4300 dollar bar tab.
3 to 5 rounds for two people is 6 to 10 drinks, right? Neglecting tips and tax, that works out to $430 to $716 per drink. How is that possible? Did every drink contain liquid gold?
I work in automotive repair.
I had a woman come in a few years ago who said her windshield wipers weren’t working. This was directly after a snow storm. I’ve been around the block enough times to already have an idea: she tried to run the wipers to clear a foot of snow and ice instead of brushing most of it off and freeing the blades first. That overloads the wiper motor, or some part and breaks something, or just tears the rubber on the blade itself.
So we check it out, yep… the wiper linkage came apart, that connects the electric motor that moves everything to the actual arms that wipe, and keeps them in sync.
I told her the situation and she was exasperated. She asked how this happened and how to avoid it… I was like well you really gotta brush the snow off and make sure the blades aren’t frozen to the glass before you turn them on.
She honestly looked at me, made an “ugggh” sound, and said, “Like… with my hands??” I said yes, or a brush or something. She said, “god damn it, this is something the help should really be taking care of, I shouldn’t have to deal with this b******t.”
Then while we fixed the wiper linkage, she was outside yelling at someone on her cell phone.
I will remember this event for the rest of my life.
Will probably get lost in the sauce- but worked at a small family owned pizza place. The owner would routinely be late with our checks. When he stsrted having marital problems, it got really bad. (like supposed to be paid on Friday, not getting our checks until Tuesday). During one of these occurrences, where employees kept calling him, and he finally showed up, he said to me "You know my son asked why everyone kept calling. He said they know they're going to get paid, why do they care when you drop off the checks?" And he thought that was so smart. I was shocked. We all made minimum wage. We all lived paycheck to paycheck.
I have been free from living paycheck to paycheck for years - but whenever i think about it... it still feels like coming up up for air after being underwater a little too long. People around me saying - 'Its payday on Friday, finally I can...' , Yeah, I remember 'holding out till Friday' and maybe writing checks for essentials the day before!
Many years ago, I was living in Philadelphia. I had a very nice colleague at the office, a young woman from a very privileged family. She’d lived all her life downtown (at least when she wasn’t summering in Bar Harbor or spending weekends at their place in Bryn Mawr).
One weekend, we were going to meet for lunch. We spoke on the phone and I said I‘d see her soon. I was out in West Philadelphia, so I grabbed the subway and got off a block from her apartment.
”You got here so quickly!”
”Yes—I took the subway.”
”Now, don’t tease me; there’s no subway here; we’re not in New York…”
I had to walk her over one block, show her the stop, and even go down to the ticket level, at the subway one block from the place she’d lived for 30 years. I probably could have just told her I’d teleported….
fun fact: the pis is from Prague "Narodní Třída" - "national boulevard" stop, also, there is Bagete boulevard too...
Had a friend group that lasted about a decade, two of us were low-income (I was lower middle-class, the other was in borderline poverty) and the others came from extremely wealthy families. One day we were talking about income and I mentioned that anyone who made above 100k was rich in my eyes, and one friend laughed at me and said yeah but all of us here make over 100k. I had to stop in stare in absolute shock. My family collectively barely made half of that. I realized then how much privilege she had that she was completely unaware of and just assumed that everyone else had the same luxuries that she did.
I worked as a landscaper for a client who spent $175,000 on our services every year. He was remodeling part of his house for shits n giggs and it was estimated to cost about $2 million to renovate. He talked to me about how easy young people have it these days because we all have cars, TVs, and cell phones. He was lamenting how “no one wants to work anymore” and how young people just expect everything these days. I was happy to get a brief moment to explain to him how the basic necessities (housing, food, healthcare, education) are becoming unattainable for people, especially in large west coast cities, despite TVs and phones being cheap these days.
I was making about $65k at a corporate job, and was chatting with one of the C-suite executives one day. I mentioned that there was a specific property that I was day dreaming about buying - until I found out it was listed at $1.3M. She told me I should just “go for it! Money isn’t everything!”
I was so floored I didn’t even try to explain to her why that was entirely financially infeasible.
A woman talking to her friend about how she won't date a guy with an android phone, I know its a meme but hearing it on a public bus in my city I couldn't believe it.
F*****g delusional little piggie banks they are for Apple.
The CEO of my last job won the lottery, a lot of money. She is already rich while rest of the people in the office struggle to pay rent. She was complaining everyday how stressful it was to win money and how she hopes it never happens again while having her big winning check on the wall in her office. She came to me with a purse with holes in it “ a gift for you! I don’t want it any longer but I’m sure you do”. She meant her trash was good enough for me. I told her to gtfo and I left my job that day.
“I pay you enough that your wife shouldn’t have to work.” I was making, in 2016, the same as what he made in 1983. I showed him an inflation calculator that said the $50k he made in ‘83, was the equivalent of $117k in ‘16.
I dated the daugther of a (non-Russian) oligarch for 2 years.
Oh boy she was very smart and studying at a top university, but totally oblivious how her family became so rich.
Like "friends" of her father would always gift them ridiculous stuff like $250k horses and when his kids would get married they got set up with real estate worth millions as wedding gifts.
After I pointed out that these are obviously low key bribes she just thought for 2 seconds and then went "oh..."
But well, she grew up behind the high walls of guarded mansions. Had a driver that transfered her to school etc.
Just different world.
I was visiting a friend in LA. I lived in Oklahoma City at the time. Her roommate asked “What’s it like being around civilization?” I laughed and realized she was serious. She thought Oklahoma was like in the old western movies. Astonished that we too have Whole Foods and sky scrapers.
I then learned that many people who live on either coast see “flyover” country this way. Lots of assumptions about middle America that are so out of touch.
I had a boss try to give me a hard time for taking most of my vacations as a day or two here and there, on a Saturday. They can't force me to take my vacation as a lump sum but apparently their accountant was complaining at the extra work. I explained I was using it to visit family on birthdays and such. She tried to say "well wouldn't it be nicer to take a week at a time? That way you can actually fly somewhere warm!" I just stared at her and said "...the vacation pay just reimburses me for the wages lost. How am I going to pay for the flight, the hotel and literally anything else? You pay me minimum wage." She just stared at me in shock and eventually dropped it.
She and the other boss, that exact same day, had been discussing getting a SECOND cottage each in front of the rest of us peasants.
In Poland you are entilted to 26 days of paid holidays, but you have to take at least one holiday for 14 calendar days straight.
Years ago, I got a job as a waitress in a new "fine dining" restaurant opening in my town soon. (Find dining is in quotes, because it was envisioned to be fancy food and service but without the hoity-toity parts like dress codes because it was also a college town with a big "townie" population). Prior to opening, we did a number of trainings on proper service (how to set tables, proper wine service... stuff like that... and stuff I'd not learned as a server at a busy 24 hour diner in a college town).
I was in my early 20s, as was the majority of the staff. I asked a question about the wine service protocol, and a girl training with me scoffed and said, "Ugh, haven't you ever gone out for dinner with your family?" and then looked at all the other folks training with us like she'd just put me in my place.
I was halfway through, "Not to anywhere fancier than an Outback or Olive Garden because my family couldn't afford it... damn..." when the manager stepped in and schooled her that not everyone can afford fine dining and that me asking for clarification on something I hadn't had the chance to experience was legit. And everyone else looked at her like, "what a snob..."
She still eye rolled at me. At then got mad later when I performed better and got the good shifts, lol. She didn't last long.
My boss's wife is the child of a millionaire who married an "heir to the throne" of a multi-million dollar a year organization where I was working for $10 an hour.
**Her**: "You - where are you planning on taking your honeymoon when you get married?"
**Me**: "I dunno, a week on the beach or maybe a quiet cabin in the mountains."
**Her**: "Pfff. No one will ever marry you if you refuse to take them to Hawaii for a honeymoon!".
My supervisor, immediately after letting me go, suggested that I would be so much happier now that I didn't have to commute every morning, and that I should take a few months off going on fun trips! She really thought I worked for fun. If I hadn't still been living at home, I would have been unable to pay rent starting next month. I found out later on that she was a trust fund baby and her brother (executor) forced her to work in order to collect her trust payments or whatever they're called, because she was such a spoiled brat when she started collecting from the trust.
A friend of mine tried to deny that his family was wealthy the first time he brought me over to his house - a two-story, five bed, three bath house, with a garage that could hold three cars and a rather sizeable RV, which sat on the shore of a small artificial lake that it had its own boat dock on.
I very bluntly had to tell him that while I was in no way judging him for it, it was a tad difficult to take him downplaying his family's wealth seriously when standing in a garage that could comfortably fit half of my family's entire house.
I had a friend in high school that lived in a mansion and the only reason he went to the public high school was because he wanted to have "real" friends. I felt pity for him; despite having every material good he wanted, he was so lonely. And all the years I knew him, I never met his parents - the butler, his personal maid, the family chef, the driver, etc., yes, but how sad for him to not feel loved and cared about. His preference was to do homework at my house, in my tiny room or in the living room, and to eat whatever my mom attempted to make for dinner, (she was not a good cook). .
Had a friend who was veryyyyyy insistent on the idea that all debt is bad debt and thus should be avoided. I would always try to counter argue that what if someone were in need of a car to get to work and make more money, but due to a lack of transportation, they didn’t yet have that money to pay for the car. They always would insist that if you are in debt you weren’t working hard enough or you should have saved more. Same friend always is complaining about how tiring their job is, even when its <20 hours a week. (Don’t get me wrong, that can be tiring, but what happened to this save money mentality?) Always been upset that they never changed their mind
Edit: Also remember them saying to just have your parents take you to work when they can. News flash, not everybody comes from a background where parents are involved or have enough time to help out.
All debt IS bad debt, imo. The problem is that it's very hard to function in the developed world without it.
My boss cut all our hours in half in order to gain the covid supplemental payments then bragged that he didnt make a loss. (You were supposed to be making a loss to be eligible for the supplemental payment.) (We are an essential service) We all lost half our wage a week for him to do this. I, as a manager still had to do my full job in less hours. When he brought it up very casually because hes so out of touch with us who need our wage to survive, i very flatly let him know i was literally losing my hair due to the financial stress. ‘Really!?’ ‘Yes. I work hard to ensure i have a job but this was completely out of my control. Theres nothing I can do. I cant get a second job in this climate. It was very stressful’
A lot of companies that abused the COVID Payment Schemes in the UK were hunted down for it later. No better than War Profiteers these scumbags!
I used to work in a cafeteria of a tech building. I was chatting with one of the lowest level staff about how bank cards had come out with tap option. He and I were both avoiding getting it added to our banking plans because the limit was $100 and we were worried about how easy it would be for someone to empty our accounts before we even knew our cards were missing.
We were both making minimum wage, living paycheck to paycheck and every penny was essential.
The CEO heard us talking and asked what about and I said "oh just about the new tap option and how the daily limit is $100 so we don't want it for fear that someone could steal our money!" And this guy laughed and said "it's only $100! That's nothing!" And HIS employee just looked annoyed and stayed quiet but *I* was not his employee so I said "$100 is more than either of us makes in a full day's work and would be a huge loss, even if the bank was able to get us our money back within a week we would have to go without something, most likely food." And he looked at both of us and had the decency to look ashamed before he paid for his lunch and walked away.
He tipped a bit better after that, but I doubt his low level employees saw an extra penny! My friend who worked there didn't last even a whole year! Then he found a job that would pay him a livable wage for his education and skill set and left for greener pastures. There was A LOT of employee turnover at that company! And just generally a lot of out of touch high level staff that didn't treat us peasants very well.
I don’t know about *heard*, but I can share the most out of touch thing I saw.
Years and years ago I worked for a digital marketing company that was very much in that awkward teenage stage of wanting to act like a startup but getting a little too big for that. The CEO was a nice guy, very tech bro-y but seemed committed.
One day I was working late and saw a piece of paper in the office cafeteria. Said CEO had been on honeymoon recently. Now remember this was startup culture. Lots of hustle, work as late as you need to get things done but here’s this cool ping pong table—that kind of vibe.
This piece of paper was a bill. For his honeymoon trip. His honeymoon was a safari to Africa. *It cost more than my entirely yearly salary.*
I remember being totally stunned. I had no idea he was so deeply out of touch with his employees that he was going on 5-figure African freaking safaris while encouraging all of us to put in unpaid overtime. I remember hovering there for a while, wondering if I should try and take a pic to post anonymously or something.
Ended up just leaving it. I was one of the only people left in the building and scared of retaliation. It was gone in the morning.
I’ve never forgotten it. All the c-suite b******t about us being a team and a family was MUCH funnier after that.
I was talking to a very rich client about houses, and she said: how can someone have only one bathroom in their house? I’m constantly explaining to her what it’s like to be middle class.
I had just gotten my first teaching job fresh out of university - moved cities, rented an apartment on my own, and student loan payments were coming up. A mistake was made and I didn’t get paid for the first few weeks. I approached the principal to ask if she knew who I could contact to get it fixed. Her response: “Oh well, think of it as forced savings.” I had no savings. Rent was due. She knew I had just moved. I remember thinking, wtf?, but I didn’t say anything. At the time, I didn’t want her to think I was rude.
"Are you serious!?" is a perfectly acceptable go to in such circumstances?
I went to high school with a girl who once said “Did you know some people don’t have dishwashers?”
There’s a good excuse for that now, we’re ecological, not poor. Gas lighting myself.
A friend of mine had a new girlfriend i was meeting for the first time. My friend is really rich, but this girl.. she casually started talking about how she was flying out to NYC that weekend on a private plane with her mom to go shopping. Just a regular weekend flying from Atl to NYC on the private jet to buy some shoes.
I really couldn’t live like that, yeah I’d like the money but to hopefully do better things with it, like helpful things.
My aunt was complaining about how she’s had to start clipping and painting her own toenails to save money and may have to sell one of her three luxury cars or her motorcycle because “times are tough” I was on food stamps at the time, and my car was broken down and we couldn’t afford repairs. She knew all of this and still acted like we were in the same situation as each other. I just stopped talking to her all together. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since and that was 10 years ago.
I used to work in a QA department with two teams, each 7 people. At this company, it was HEAVILY encouraged to work through lunch (you’d be docked an hour pay even as a salaried employee if you left) so we did. This was among other insanely overbearing rules. Anyway.
One day, investors are visiting to check out our company. Our HR is giving them a tour, this happens to be during our lunch. When giving his speech about the lab, in front of all of us, he goes, “while we’re out for lunch sitting down at a restaurant, enjoying our meals, these guys are in here testing 24/7.” I was literally in shock. My coworker and I just stared at each other in horror.
My manager was telling me about something that happens to your toilet when you don’t use it for awhile and said “you know when you’re on vacation for longer than a week?” And I just looked at her and said no. I think she realized that someone getting paid as little as me has never been privileged enough for long of a vacation by the look on my face.
Owner of the restaurant told a coworker she didn’t have to go furniture shopping when she moved, just come over and look through her stuff as she was moving soon. Coworker awkwardly went and looked, didn’t see anything she liked but she needed lamps so said she would take two. Asked coworker how much she wanted to pay for them, coworker asked how much she wanted to charge (she was thinking $20-$50). Owner looked her dead in the face and said $600. 💀
Forgot to add- her daddy bought her the restaurant.
My ex-friend was bragging about using their covid stimulus check to buy a cartier love bracelet during the height of covid. this is a person who lives on the upper east side in manhattan, has never kept a real job and has 100% of their bills paid for by their parents.
meanwhile, my industry was completely shut down with covid and i’m still climbing out of the debt i accumulated to try to get by almost 4 years later.
when i saw them write that s**t online, i quote retweeted them verbally EVISCERATING them and then i blocked them and haven’t spoken to them since.
My friend was thinking of switching careers. “I’m happy to take a pay cut, as long as I can still afford to rent a three-bedroom,” she said. She lives in San Francisco. The extra two rooms were for her home office and her cats. “I’d even be fine taking something that paid as low as $125k for a while until something better opens up.”.
I dream of having a 3 bedroom just so my kids don't have to share a room.
Bunch of head office folks came into work one day to do a presentation on customer service and they wanted to talk about how the Ritz Carlton does exceptional customer service. One of them looked out across this room full of minimum wage workers and asked “who here has stayed at a Ritz Carlton?”.
My boss asked me to put together a recruitment package for a prospective out-of-town employee and to include rental units. I asked if a salary had been determined, because that would obviously impact the listings I included and he said, “well, the average rent is what, $800 a month?” I was actually speechless.
Context: that is insanely low rent across much of the US. In many cities, it wouldn't even pay for a room.
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Yeah, you can rent a cardboard box in my city for that amount. 1 bedrooms start at $2,000 a month and go up from there. It's like that in most major US cities.
Tried explaining to my boss that my long haul truck driving husband slept in his truck. He kept asking about hotels he might sleep at when he's traveling cross country. I'm like no, he has a bed...in the cab...this went on for a bit before he realized.
I was working as a tour guide at a museum and a visitor asked if I had visited a remote location we had an exhibit about. I said I hadn’t but would love to someday. He recommended I “take a sabbatical” to make the trip.
I think I was making $17/hr at the time and they wouldn’t even give me full time hours, let alone a sabbatical.
It was from my husband. He used to think most people do a gap year where they travel if they have been to uni. He was shocked when my parents laughed at him when he asked what countries my mum went to on her gap year as she did uni. He grew up a lot wealthier than me.
A friend of mine (who really isn't a bad guy, just a bit sheltered), once talked to me about how he is very good with money. Bro gets gifted tens of thousands of euros every year by his relatives as birthday gifts etc.
"I just don't spend much". Dude almost makes above average earnings just from bday presents, and lives in a house owned by his parents, who pay all of his bills.
Someone i shared a house with in college, who was either not-yet or barely 21, complained about her peer not being educated in wine, that there is “no excuse”
i asked her what she was up to once, she was flipping through Vogue and she answered “shopping” so i guess she was rich rich.
Being educated in wine doesn't nessessarily need lots of money. We used to hold a wine tastings were everyone bought a cheap bottle (something 6-9€) and googled a bit about it to teach the others. Then we drank from cheap Ikea wine glasses and pretended to find all the different taste aspects out of them. My basis of choosing my wine was mostly pretty bottle.
I was a teacher making $35k before taxes, and one of my students' parents was a stay-at-home wife whose husband made over a million dollars a year as an energy company CEO. She came in one afternoon and told me about how stressed she was over renovating their home's 3,000 sf BASEMENT...a basement that was 3x as large as my entire home. In my effort to connect with her, I told her I was so sorry and that I was also dealing with some stress, having to replace all the exterior plumbing of my house. I added that I was grateful that my tax return would cover most of it. Her response: "Oh honey, be glad you even GET a tax return. We haven't gotten ANYTHING back for 20 years!" All I could say was "Well that's one way to look at it.".
I was visiting my aunt. she and her husband both had very good jobs. she kept her bills pinned to a bulletin board so she would remember to pay them. I says to her "Auntie, your car payments alone are more than we make in an entire month and we are supporting 2 kids on it". She looked at me stunned with her mouth open- "How do your kids LIVE?".
My ex genuinely said “Even if you earn £125,000. That’s not really a lot of money and can’t get you far”.
Oddly, the idea of making 125k doesn't thrill me with the prospect of being able to buy better things, it thrills me with the prospect of buying more tools, to better fix the things I already have.
Knew a guy sophomore year of college. He grew up in the hills outside of San Francisco. Like the boogie boogie part of it. His family had the cyber truck on pre-order the day it dropped.
When we went out to eat one day he asks "So who's paying this time?" My friends and I all stared at him like wtf? He went on to explain him and his friends would take turns paying the bill whenever they went out cause it was practically every night. He talked about his friends doing coke in HS at all the parties their parents let them throw.
On another occasion we were out and about and passed by a trailer park. He he started asking questions about it and the rest of us were confused. Turns out he thought trailer parks were just in movies. He was shocked anyone actually lived there.
On multiple occasions he tried to convince us we grew up rich (we didn't) and we always argued back he knows nothing.
He was just in school for the experience. Ended up getting a 0.0 GPA because he never showed up to classes. He stayed in the area, bought a 4 bedroom house, rented it to 6 friends having them stay 2 to a room. He disappeared to go traveling and turns out one of the roommates opened one of the bills for the house and he was overcharging each person by at least $200. They ofc got mad and wanted to break the lease. He threatened to sue anyone that did.
Never saw him again but definitely the most oblivious person I ever met.
Cousin married a guy who made quote a bit of dough. Their daughter was turning 16, and she was telling my other cousin (i.e. her sister) that they were deciding what expensive car to buy the girl. Her sister suggested they get her a modestly-priced used car isn't of a new, expensive car. She said, straight-faced: "We're not ANIMALS!", as if buying their daughter a used car would make them so. Overall, she was known to be very vain. Years later, her husband divorced her because she cheated on him, and she couldn't afford to move into her own place, so she moved in with her sister and sister's husband.
If buying an used the car as a present means you are an animal, I don't even want to imagine what would that make most people. I would probably fall into category of some sort of single-cell organism.
My rich dad (I grew up with my poor mom) was appalled that I didn't even consider to pay for every person at my wedding to have their own Uber/Taxi to insure they get home safely. It was a dry wedding in my mother in laws backyard.
I was working in a grocery store years ago as a cashier. I rang up some organic fruit that was a really good price. I said something to the customer about the price being nearly the same as the regular fruit, she said “really? I never look at the prices”.
The new Prime Minister, a former caretaker CEO who owns 7 homes, including a $5m beach house, said that a weekly grocery bill for a family is about $60.
I guess that might be what your weekly grocery bill is if you eat every meal at a restaurant.
One of his MPs said that every now and again he likes to take the shopping list off his wife and go to the supermarket for a reminder of how the everyday people live. .
My coworker saying affordable and deed restricted housing is worse than communist housing. She is the accountant and knows we get paid s**t and that is all we can afford. She also married only for money and is constantly saying she needs to get divorced. I've heard her say that for 5 years now.
I just rolled my eyes and bit my tongue at the housing stuff because she is just not worth arguing with anymore.
Dave’s Ramsey advice when buying a home. 20% down on a 15 year fixed mortgage conventional home loan. no more than 20% of your monthly take home pay.
I guess I’ll live in a shoe box with my belanciaga sneakers I got on affirm, my avocado toast that I also got on affirm and $14 dollar latte and guess what? I also got that on affirm.
Yeah, Dave Ramsey is a good starting point for the basics, but even 15 years ago he felt a little out of touch with reality of poverty. I remember him saying ",downgrade your car to what you can afford, work multiple jobs if you have to, and put anything you can towards your debt until it's paid off." And that's great advice for a narrow range of listeners, but doesn't acknowledge that a lot of people are already working multiple jobs, have no car, share a home with other families, and still struggle for food, let alone paying off debt.
Literally just said this elsewhere. Someone at work asked, "Every house has, what, three to five bedrooms?"
I couldn't say anything but I could not stop my eyes from rolling.
It’s a fairly small example but I was in 8th grade and talking about levels of wealth or lack thereof with a couple friends. My family didn’t have money growing up, but we’re never poverty level or anything. One friend I guess didn’t want to be seen as affluent and said his family is actually poor because they have a mortgage on their house.
Friend at the pub the other day (who’s from a really wealthy family and had a house bought for her outright in a pretty central area of London, and is in a high paying job) was complaining about the costs of being a homeowner when you need to do repairs, telling the group it’s honestly not worth it to own a house.
“Just buy a broken down home and fix it up! It’s easy. Your dad and I did that”
Hahah so buy a home I can’t live in and also pay the insane house payment and the costs of the renovation? Mmmk boomer.
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I can't help thinking it's not just being ouf of touch. It's being stupid and ignorant on purpose. Don't they hear the news? Don't they go to ordinary places at least once in a while? Don't they watch movies and series which depict normal people's lives? Some would object it's also the way they were raised: indeed, stupid parents probably turned them into useless scrubs who know nothing about life but still, they could be a little curious about the world they live in...no?
I wonder how these people can be so out of touch. I'm not rich or poor, but I still have an idea as to what each wealth bracket can afford. I mean, do these people not go online or watch the news? Or do they simply not care to learn outside their bubble?
I think they are just bad people, lacking basic empathy and compassion.
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"Higher taxes for the wealthy?" Right...they find ways out of paying what they're supposed to NOW...
I had to explain to my (fairly wealthy) father last night that there is such a thing as poverty, and that it is not somebody's fault if they can't afford food... God I wanted to punch him...
I remember an old client not having an overdraft on a business account simply because he thought he needed to use it. My old boss would look down on me because I would have a curry or a McDonalds whilst he wouldn't set foot in such places and would happily go to Michelin restaurants instead. He couldn't understand why i would eat such food to the point of being rude about it, I remember getting annoyed and saying "But if they halved the size, gave it a poncey name, stuck a bit of parsley on top and trebled the price you'd soon be lining up with you toff-nosed mates?" - He never remarked about it again.
A lot of these people sound like my father. He had the audacity to lecture me about having to earn my own way through college (after lying to me my entire life that he would help me pay for a college degree and reneging on it when the time came to fulfill that promise, and instead paying for my sister's college and said sister's boyfriend to fail out of firefighting school), going on and on about how that's what HE did; came to find out Granddad paid for his entire college education.
At university I make a friend who had grown up on an estate with nannies and staff her whole life. She was in catered halls and I had self catering. She visited me in my halls one day and we were all cooking. She pointed to some chicken and said "What's that?!“ and I said it's chicken. She is amazed that raw food is different from cooked food. She just assumed that all raw food is exactly the same except cold. She had no clue there are processes involved in making food and was fascinated to see a raw egg. At least she was not in any way entitled about it, but it was really crazy to see it in action. Apparently she didn't grow up with a TV, the family were very outdoorsy and she was always on a horse or something, so she just never saw unprepared food.
This reminds me of 'Born Rich', a documentary by the heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune which exposes his wealthy friends. Crazy stuff.
I can't help thinking it's not just being ouf of touch. It's being stupid and ignorant on purpose. Don't they hear the news? Don't they go to ordinary places at least once in a while? Don't they watch movies and series which depict normal people's lives? Some would object it's also the way they were raised: indeed, stupid parents probably turned them into useless scrubs who know nothing about life but still, they could be a little curious about the world they live in...no?
I wonder how these people can be so out of touch. I'm not rich or poor, but I still have an idea as to what each wealth bracket can afford. I mean, do these people not go online or watch the news? Or do they simply not care to learn outside their bubble?
I think they are just bad people, lacking basic empathy and compassion.
Load More Replies... "Higher taxes for the wealthy?" Right...they find ways out of paying what they're supposed to NOW...
I had to explain to my (fairly wealthy) father last night that there is such a thing as poverty, and that it is not somebody's fault if they can't afford food... God I wanted to punch him...
I remember an old client not having an overdraft on a business account simply because he thought he needed to use it. My old boss would look down on me because I would have a curry or a McDonalds whilst he wouldn't set foot in such places and would happily go to Michelin restaurants instead. He couldn't understand why i would eat such food to the point of being rude about it, I remember getting annoyed and saying "But if they halved the size, gave it a poncey name, stuck a bit of parsley on top and trebled the price you'd soon be lining up with you toff-nosed mates?" - He never remarked about it again.
A lot of these people sound like my father. He had the audacity to lecture me about having to earn my own way through college (after lying to me my entire life that he would help me pay for a college degree and reneging on it when the time came to fulfill that promise, and instead paying for my sister's college and said sister's boyfriend to fail out of firefighting school), going on and on about how that's what HE did; came to find out Granddad paid for his entire college education.
At university I make a friend who had grown up on an estate with nannies and staff her whole life. She was in catered halls and I had self catering. She visited me in my halls one day and we were all cooking. She pointed to some chicken and said "What's that?!“ and I said it's chicken. She is amazed that raw food is different from cooked food. She just assumed that all raw food is exactly the same except cold. She had no clue there are processes involved in making food and was fascinated to see a raw egg. At least she was not in any way entitled about it, but it was really crazy to see it in action. Apparently she didn't grow up with a TV, the family were very outdoorsy and she was always on a horse or something, so she just never saw unprepared food.
This reminds me of 'Born Rich', a documentary by the heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune which exposes his wealthy friends. Crazy stuff.
