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Every now and then, we all face struggles—some big, some small. But depending on your circumstances, what feels like a serious issue to you might look very different to someone else.
Recently, one Redditor asked upper middle class users to share the kinds of problems they deal with but can’t really complain about without sounding out of touch. The replies ranged from eye-roll-worthy to downright funny. Scroll down to check them out and see which ones you’d put at the top of the list.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Once upon a time I worked at a toy store. One day a woman came in upset and asked for help picking out Barbie cars. Turns out she had given her child a deluxe Barbie Dreamhouse for their birthday and a Barbie-sized SUV car and the Barbie SUV was too tall for the Barbie Dreamhouse garage.
Anyway, Barbie got a convertible.
momofmills:
I bet you Ken's Mojo DoJo Casa House wouldn't have that problem.
RELATED:
#2
Not a middle class problem but I'm 6'2" and found myself standing at a concert behind someone who must have been 6'5" and my first thought was "I don't think I'm allowed to complain about this".
PHX_Architraz:
6' 5" person here, sorry about that.
I will pay my penance tomorrow when I have to cram myself into a Southwest Airlines stearage compartment tomorrow for work.
Fellfromthemoon 2 months ago
Ok, I'll bite. What on Earth is so outrageously bougie in this post to get included?
#3
My laundry room is laid out such that the dryer and washer can't be side by side, but rather have to be placed perpendicular to each other on either side of a water heater in the corner. The door of the front load washer can't be reversed so it's always sort of in the way when transferring clothes. Also, it makes the area around the water heater all but inaccessible without moving the dryer several inches to the left. It haunts my soul and makes me secretly wish for the demise of my washer so I can get an old school top loader. Please, pray for me.
WandererOfInterwebs:
Lmao wait I have one like this: my washer and dryer kept texting me while I was on holiday and I had to forward the messages to my friends staying at my apartment. “The dryer has asked that you run the clean drum cycle”
Uncle Panda 2 months ago
Stacked washers and dryers have been available for decades. I had a house with no laundry area but a closet I didn't really need. Better than driving your dirty clothes around town!
#4
My mom brought in an interior designer for all of the renovations she's doing to our childhood home and I hate the interior designer's taste.
Leody:
A good interior designer doesn’t have a taste. They help you find your taste and bring it all together…
Num10ck:
To be fair thats a tough gig. no matter what they came up with it wouldnt align with your childhood memories and meaning.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
So the problem might be your mother, not the interior designer. She decided to do this... why? Kinda guessing she decided without consulting you, too. In itself, this isn't especially a rich person's problem. Families even below the poverty line can have trouble listening to each other. Or caring about what they hear.
#5
I was telling my mom about how my westbound flight to Australia would mean I’d lose my Duolingo streak if I didn’t take action to fix it (like changing my time zone before boarding the plane), and she ( very rightfully ) laughed in my face about it.
Super__Mom:
I lost my NYT Connections streak flying home from Thailand so I can commiserate.
DennyS (denzoren) 2 months ago
Nah, I feel this one. That would hurt me too and I'm not upper-middle class lol
#6
I'm teaching my kids to ski but they didn't seem too into it so I'll probably just go on my annual ski trip alone this year.
TrippleDubb:
Had a tiny boat, kids seemed to like fishing so we bought a bigger boat, kids hate fishing now we wish we still had the smaller boat.
#7
I thought once I had enough money, you could just pay people to make problems go away.
Now I'm like, "holy f**k I paid $700 to have my gutters cleaned and this is the quality I get?!".
first_best_fox:
This is funny to me because we are in an enviable position to be able to pay people for things like gutter cleaning and landscaping and home repairs/upgrades. And I get grumpy about having the make calls and schedule people and arrange my day to be available (even though I work from home) when they all come and do the things I don't want to do myself.
#8
I need to replace the aging dock at my lake house.
Yuklan6502:
I hear ya... I often can't remember if the tools I need are at my house, or the cabin. We've started buying 2 of everything instead of trying to keep track. I'm actually driving there and back today because we forgot something we only have 1 of, so that's 3 hours of driving, but hopefully only a couple minutes of searching!
We rebuilt our fixed and floating docks around 10 years ago, and are keeping our fingers crossed that the next rebuild will be the kids' problem!
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
Why is replacing a dock some kind of big deal if you're rich? You hire people and they do the job and you pay them. If you have a lake house (or palace, or yacht) you ought to have learned this little life hack years ago.
#9
I no longer enjoy traveling to the Bahamas because I’ve traveled there so frequently lol.
gingerwheezy:
Me planning my last vacation "Ugh. I can't go to Nassau AGAIN." I almost slapped myself.
#10
I have a shelf of over 100 board games, and it’s completely out of space. I’m starting to have a few games sitting on top of the shelf, and that doesn’t look as tidy.
T_Henson:
My husband is pushing 700 games. We have one whole room lined with shelves of games and they’re spilling into the basement now. ☹️
#11
I once heard someone say, in all seriousness, "It's so hard to buy art".
So they did complain about it and they did sound out of touch.
Math_refresher:
Here's my current art-related complaint: The painting I ordered from Germany didn't ship immediately so now I'll have to pay 15% more for it to cover the tariff.
Child of the Stars 2 months ago
I'm low-income and have the same problem with art. I have a good friend who is a locally famous artist, and I would LOVE to have some of her pieces. Unfortunately, they range from $300-1200 each; even the prints range from $50-150, and that's still out of my discretionary income range 😕
#12
When I heat my outdoor, in-ground pool too long and it feels like a bath.
Frosty_Helicopter730:
Maybe this is the wrong take-away, but that sounds so delightful, I got a shiver.
One of the most relaxing things I ever experienced was going to a pre-natal aquatic exercise class. It was in a heated therapy pool and all us pregnant people with November due dates showed up really early to grab a pool noodle and have a cozy, warm float before class. It was 18 years ago and I still think about it! 😂
#13
Our house is 200 ft too close to the school for them to be picked up by the bus. Normally, I wouldn't even complain, but with my wife's stage 4 cancer, anything I don't have to do, no matter how small, is a huge simplification in my life.
#14
I am not upper middle class, but travel is my main discretionary spending. I save each year to take a week long trip to Europe. This year, I have to go to Germany for a wedding, so that's my first world problem. My annual European vacation has a firm destination instead of me picking where I want to go.
SierraSeaWitch:
Somewhat similar, I live on the East Coast of the USA and my mother is in a yuppie mountain town on the West Coast of the USA and she always pressured me to use all my PTO to stay at her place and snowboard. Like, I don’t want to spend all my time at my mom’s fancy house doing fancy winter sports!
I’ve been better with boundaries and this ain’t actually a problem, but she does still bring it up a lot and I have to repeat “that sounds great, but Husband and I have other plans for that PTO…”
#15
The ice rink closest to my house has inconvenient ice times, so I have to drive to a different rink 25 minutes away for my kids to figure skate.
bonkers799:
I started to learn to play hockey this year as an adult. With that meant learning how to skate. I never would have guessed how inconsistent the public schedule at an ice rink is. Took me two times driving a half an hour to a rink just to find out the usual skate that day wasnt happening. Once summer came and all the rinks started shutting down some of their rinks all hell broke loose. Such a roll of the dice.
I understand why its like that (i think?) but it was a hell of a shell shock to me when everything else has pretty standard times from week to week.
Rick Murray 2 months ago
Do you live in Canada or something? Two rinks so close. My closest rink that looks any good is 83km away, maybe an hour and a quarter by car? There's one closer (about 60km) but it is small and has weird times when it is actually open.
#16
My mom likes to book cruises and gets great deals because she gambles in the casinos on the ships. She pays my way to go with her about once a year, and I pick up incidentals.
I got divorced awhile back and didn’t change my name because I wanted the same name as my kids while they were in school. Now my youngest is a senior in high school and I wanted to change back to my maiden name, but I can’t because for the last ten years, I’ve always had a cruise planned and now I’m having trouble finding the right time to change my name because I need to do it in between cruise bookings.
20 years ago, I dreamed of having these types of stupid problems.
Tynebeaner:
I had a similar problem where I earned a flight credit in June, changed my name in July, got a RealID in August in case my passport change wasn’t quick, went to buy flights for October, and couldn’t use my flight credit because it was in my previous name. Fortunately a verrrrry long phone call with the airline fixed it, but so inconvenient.
#17
The local tire place we like didn't have the performance tires for my wife's EV in stock so we've had to wait three days for them to get shipped in.
financiallyanal:
This is one consideration for me when I select tires... I prefer tires that are more common and easier to get a hold of in case something happens on a road trip and I need a new tire. In a pinch, I want to be able to get a replacement tire same day even if I have to go somewhere pricier than my preferred Costco. (They ship them in, bypassing local distributors, and that takes time) Michelin CC2s are becoming pretty common and are really capable in all seasons, so I've been happy enough, but they are definitely not "performance" considering that's what you mentioned...
#18
My fiancée and I are having a destination wedding in Scotland. The dollar losing value has increased costs for us by about 6% since we first started our planning. When it’s all said and done it will probably be a couple thousand that just gets eaten up due to exchange rates.
Not really something I can complain about to anyone without sounding very out of touch. 🤦♂️.
Bob Brooce 2 months ago
You're worried about the cost because of exchange rates? Maybe you could go someplace else with a different exchange rate that also offers the bonus of using the metric system. That way you can lose a bunch of weight by switching to kilos.
#19
I get confused about which condiments are left over at which residences because we have more than one house.
bdfortin:
Reminds me of a conversation I overheard a few years ago: “… and because of all the rain the basement on my north property got flooded so I had to pay someone to move the stuff into my west property.“ “Oh my goodness, are you alright?”
#20
My coworkers complain about the taxes on their beach house being too much to the technicians making 1/3 of what they make.
allthegodsaregone:
My CEO used to email out family vacation pictures to all staff. He would bring the extended family, so clearly expensive. Half the staff made within $1 of minimum wage. Talk about out of touch.
#21
Pretty much every day to day inconvenience we encounter in the Western world?
The bagel shop was out of garlic bagels this morning.
s7o0a0p:
One time when I was on vacation in Montréal, Fairmount Bagel only had All-Dressed bagels…at 7:30am. Oh woe was me lol
#22
My garage only holds two cars.
WeldAE:
My garage theoretically holds 3 cars but I have a nice workshop in one of the bays and my driveway only holds 2 cars without blocking any of the garages with cars in it. So max 4 cars and I have 5x drivers.
No one understands my problems.
Rick Murray 2 months ago
I don't have a garage, I have a hangar. I guess I'd fit maybe 12 cars in there. It was intended for a combine, a tractor, and something else (probably tractor attachments). Now it's just the place where I park so I can go in through the back of the house on rainy days without getting rained on. It's also a good place to pop a deck chair to sit and watch the thunderstorm raging through.
#23
My boyfriend and I order out too much. We aren’t upper middle but def an out of touch issue.
iamdperk:
I stop on my way home from work, to have 2-3 craft beers and dinner - often $30-45... Not really upper middle class, either, but could be doing considerably better if I was more disciplined about stuff.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
You know what? You're gonna have to figure out some way to deal with that. Or not.
#24
My recycle trash can is full of Amazon boxes and I have more in the garage I need to throw away.
CarmenDeeJay:
I use them under my mulch in my vegetable garden. It blocks weeds and feeds my garden.
#25
We have five bedrooms but three kids and the spare is used as an office, so when family visits (which is often) we don't have a guest room. We want a bigger house but we're locked into such a low mortgage rate that we're trapped in our five-bedroom, three-car-garage home.
EatMorePieDrinkMore:
We are a year out from empty nest and you will pry my 2.35% interest rate out of my cold dead hands.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
Call me crazy, but show me where it's written that they have to stay with you. Put them up in a hotel like the rest of the world does.
#26
Every year on my birthday we plan to take my parent’s boat out to the other side of the island and every year the weather is bad and we can’t.
Crazy_old_maurice_17:
What kind of island is it? Does it have sandy beaches?
OP:
Barrier island, and yes sandy beaches!
#27
Yard work. Love the land but wouldn’t get so much if we move again.
Rick Murray 2 months ago
If you don't have to deal with an HOA, let a bit go wild and say you're doing your part for the birds and bees. That's my excuse, and the bees and butterflies (and weird spiky caterpillars) appreciate it.
#28
My housekeeper only coming once per week.
BrittleBonesJones:
I hate how my housekeeper makes my bed. She does a beautiful job, but she folds the sheets at the top, and I prefer them to be tucked shorter and unfolded. (It feels really good to get this off my chest.)
#29
My Mercedes Benz windows are too tinted - so I can’t drive it safely at night.
barkley8:
I recently got a new Audi with tinted windows and I just can't get used to it. I love the car apart from that though.
captainwondyful:
My Mom drives a Mercedes. I tell her every day it is junk. Zero cup holders, no space inside. I hate that car.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
You all sound kinda dumb. I cannot believe that cars of that quality haven't resolved these issues. SOMEBODY should have pointed out the tinted-windows situation by now. Good grief. As for cup holders, can't you hire somebody to ride with you and hold your cup for you?
#30
An old coworker of mine was complaining about having to clean and cover her pool in preparation for winter… right after I had been talking about the hole in our roof we couldn’t afford to have fixed.
#31
I own my house outright at 35. Was able to buy it with cash.
That's only because my dad died and I was able to sell my childhood home. And I didn't want my childhood home because it was 100 years old and I was exhausted from the stress of handling stuff for my dad when he got sick and everything was broken in the house. So I sold it and bought a townhouse that requires little upkeep.
I'm grateful that I don't have a mortgage. But I'd rather have my dad alive and healthy. I miss him every day.
#32
My wife and I chose to live 45min outside our city in order to have the country home and land that we wanted, but our work and the best daycare in the state are 45min away. We also have a sub 3% interest rate and bought our house for way less than it’s now worth.
We can’t bring it up because people are like “well move” but then we have to explain all the perks of our house and property.
#33
I'm having a hard time choosing which Disneyland hotel to stay in this year. (Paris, I live in Europe).
#34
Here’s my middle class problem from my lower class paycheck life: my tiny one bedroom city apartment doesn’t have enough room for my absolute hoard of craft supplies.
#35
After awhile, it's basically like The Sims after you upgrade every single possible item and, unless you want a yacht or 10 room mansion, you essentially beat the game and there's nothing left to do.
#36
Sometimes I have to shuffle my cars to get to the one I need.
#37
I regret asking for the black Land Cruiser for graduation and wish I’d asked for the white.
#38
My company eliminated my business travel this year, so there’s a good chance that I won’t hit airline status.
I have too much furniture in my 2100 sq ft townhouse.
#40
Work wants me to travel to India in November for about 10 days and I can't be arsed. Partly because I've already been to India as part of a holiday earlier this year and I would be flying to India 3 days after I return from an 11 day holiday to Mexico.
But I wouldn't want to go anyway, even if those things weren't the case. because tbh work travel for me isn't glamorous and it's gruelling. I'm not an exec or any s**t like that, I go to inspect factories, and my company flies me on the cheapest s****y economy flights. It's not a holiday. But I was complaining about going and someone I was complaining to got upset because they said "I'd love to go to India and you're going for free so it's insensitive to complain...".
Rick Murray 2 months ago (edited)
You don't "go to India" when you're on a work assignment. You go on some crappy flight, not of your choosing, probably get stuck in some sort of motel, also not of your choosing, then you go and do whatever it is you're there for, and unless it's a long complicated thing, you'll be out of there prompt-like. It's like saying you've been to England if all you really saw was the Premier Inn next to Heathrow. That's not a holiday...
#41
Anything that has to do with home ownership.
PastaOnAPlate:
I'm buying my first home soon and taking out a mortgage is incredibly anxiety inducing and scary but I feel like i can't talk to any of my non-homeowner friends about it.
#42
No oil change places can do my car's oil because it takes specialty foreign tools :(.
KaiserFortinbras:
What kind of car is it?
OP:
Both my mercedes e450 and my BMW 430i coupes had this issue.
Rick Murray 2 months ago
You know, there's a part of me that thinks "specialty foreign tools" is a strange way of writing "a metric spanner". ;)
#43
I own a second home in a coastal town (though not on the water itself). I live there in the summer and I rent it in the offseason. The quality of tenant has drastically decreased over the last few years, so I decided not to rent it out this year.
Also, I drive an older Mercedes Benz E-class. It doesn't have any USB-C ports, and it doesn't have enough USB-A ports.
#44
I can't stand how lonely and unwalkable my neighborhood is. It's the kind of neighborhood where everyone has 3 stories in their houses, multiple cars parked in the driveway, everyone has a yard with blooming flowers and there are so many trees everywhere. You can hear so much wildlife at all times. My mom has a few gardens about with fresh veggies and it's the kind of place where people leave their car doors unlocked. It's a very nice middle class suburban neighborhood. But I can't f*****g walk anywhere. It'd be nice to have like 1 coffee shop within walking distance or a public park with a swing set that I don't have to drive 10-15 mins for.
#45
I am not even slightly upper middle class (I'm trash from a trash family who is currently punching above his weight), but I have too many motorcycles, and it means I have to take a different one to work each day.
Unless I drive my truck, which I also have to do.
I have to administer which vehicle to drive to make sure they all stay charged and get used.
#47
With my current savings route I'm projected to retire right at 65. I want to retire at 50.
#49
In my exercise class today, I had to start on the treadmills, when I ALWAYS start on the rowers.
#50
At 34, I inherited my parents 401ks/IRAs after they died but cannot touch the money until I'm retirement age due to dumb tax laws.
Editing to add: **cannot touch the money unless I want to get screwed at tax time. I have both a lawyer and a financial advisor, who is handling it all. I am aware I have to take the money out within a certain time frame. The rules are also different because my parents died before they were retirement age and had not yet touched the money.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
Suck it up. You'll be glad to have that money when you retire, buddyroe.
#51
I have a backlog of 27 Lego sets and my husband has 13. We need to build some to make room for new sets.
#52
I spent THOUSANDS setting up a veggie garden. I mean, I'm getting veggies but man those are some expensive tomatoes 😂.
#53
I have to work, not because I need the money but because I need the health insurance.
#54
I don't know if I should buy a new car in cash and put a 30% down payment for a house and still have some emergency fund left or buy a house in cash finance a car and have no emergency fund left.
#55
I have a hard time finding what I want to watch amongst all the streaming platforms
I don’t have a problem paying for them either, I just waste so much time switching between apps and searching .
#57
Not upper middle class but middle class. My job is boring and I do nothing half the time.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
Nobody has ever faced this situation before, so it must be impossible to resolve.
#58
Finding a good, trustworthy and reasonably priced cleaning person. And before people come for me I'm talking $30-40 an hour per person as reasonable for a house where 2 people live who keep things relatively tidy just dont like to vacuum do the once a month cleaning stuff cause we both work all day.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
You don't like to vacuum and clean once a month? And you both work ALL DAY? This sounds like something nobody on earth has ever experienced. My heart goes out to you.
#59
I was going to be on unemployment for a year and hang with my youngest and then I got offered a good job. I know a lot of people are struggling to get back to work, but man I just wanted to hang with my girl and go to the zoo after my last employer wrongfully terminated me after applying for FMLA. Work is dumb. I won’t think of the 9-5 on my deathbed. I get to wfh three days out of the week, but the commute is an hour and a half.
I just want to chill with my girls and raise them.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
I admire your passion for living like a kid and also wanting to raise your kids. Not sure you can do both. Tough choice.
#60
We have a guy who scoops the poop in our backyard twice a week. The guy only showed up once last week because of Labor Day, and my husband stepped in poop this morning. It's a hard life we have.
#62
I got a call from the Rolex dealer to buy a Datejust, but I couldn’t get it in time, because I went straight from my Ibiza vacation to my Sardinia vacation.
#63
My dad just complained about how he just wants to go to a restaurant and no one will go with him. My dad and my cousin get along so well because my dad just wants to go out to eat and my cousin just wants someone to pay for him to go out to eat.
#65
Wanting all my clothes to be made of good quality fabrics, i .e., being made with fabrics like wool, silk, cashmere, linen.
Erla Zwingle 2 months ago
Cashmere's a stretch, but even us poor people wear clothes made of wool, linen, and even silk. Maybe you didn't know that.
#66
We didn't get enough fresh snow on our 6 week ski vacation in the Austrian Alps last season :(.
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Marija Barcan 2 months ago
I had a kid complaing how unfair COVID was because his trip to Disneyland was cancelled, he had gone 5 times already in the past 4 years, he was 9. Zero sympathy from me.
Marija Barcan 2 months ago
I had a kid complaing how unfair COVID was because his trip to Disneyland was cancelled, he had gone 5 times already in the past 4 years, he was 9. Zero sympathy from me.
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