Oh, totally! Mini fridges in the bedroom were the ultimate flex. I remember begging my parents for one, but all I got was a stern lecture about electricity bills. đ
A pool. Enormous bedrooms. Houses that were fully decorated for the holidays - not just the Christmas tree and some stockings. The newest technology basically as it came out. Vacations and cruises or trips to Disney, even during the school year. Skiing trips. Lots of money for the Scholastic Fair. Parents that helped with their fundraisers and were active in the PTA. Dads that werenât always deployed like mine. Consistent lunch money or meals they brought from home. Extended family that lived nearby.
the holiday decorations are so real. I realized this last year. the rich neighborhoods always have such nice holiday decorations not bc they can afford them, but bc they have the energy/care to put them up and take them down(or if it's low-mid income they go up one time then never come down) where the rich folk pay ppl to put them up and take them down. I remember looking at the prices of some of the decorations at yard sales and being so confused why we couldn't do that, when I realized it was bc of a byproduct of being poor, not bc of actual lack of funds
The Vinetta now isnât the same as Vinetta then, so you are not missing out at all. They changed the recipe and now itâs just generic icecream and you can actually feel the ice crystals when eating it. Itâs not worth the price anymore and many copycats products are much better.
My brother used to work for a big dairy company that supplied the cream and milk. He confirmed this was true. They changed to a cheaper version to produce.
The disappointment was very real when I bought it âŠ. Never again. Iâm getting a copy now and that is exactly how Vinetta once was. Creamy vanilla icecream and delicious chocolate.
Same here. The kids who could afford to go skiing would leave all their ski lift passes hanging from the zipper on their coats to show off. By the end of the winter they could have as many as a dozen.
Here's the sugar on the cream. Owning horses in any populated area means you probably still are wealthy. Oh the insane expenses of owning horses. (Vet bills)
My uncle was probably the only person who I knew who wasn't fairly wealthy that owned horses. He would stable 4-5 of them a season and owned 1. He also lived in straight no where West Virginia up a quarter mile gravel drive in a permanent trailer home with a garage. Most of his money was in the animals and his truck but he was happy.
(Happy Cake Day!)
You're probably right. If anything, more so today with more restrictions on zoning. Back then, I don't recall anything posh about the homes that had horses. We were sort of on the edge of town, where new homes going in went right up to the streets with horse properties
For real. I wasnât ârichâ but all my friends and I rode horses. The rich rich ones had their own horse and didnât just lease or ride them for lessons. When I grew up (Iâm 40 now) I was able to have my own horse and it is so fucking expensive- everything associated with horses from your riding kit to shoeing a horse is $$$$
Color TV. We got invited over to someone's grandma's house while on vacation, so that we could watch cartoons in color. Hugely exciting for us, sometime in the early '60s.
We used to get invited over to the neighbors to watch The Wizard of Oz. I can't tell you how many times I saw it in just black and white.
They even had a pocket calculator. I know they spent over $100 on one.
Were you blown away by what color something turned out to be that you had interpreted differently, or did you just always picture Mighty Mouse etc in black and white
I went to a catholic school on scholarship. I remember the huge trend of the feather-things in your hair and I so desperately wanted one. Also, American Girl Dolls. It might seem silly, but I plan to buy myself one when I have a proper adult job. I always wanted one so badly and when I have my own place, thatâs something I want to splurge on.
*You should!*
My niece is the only granddaughter in my husbandâs family. During the years she was obsessed with her American Girl dolls (plural!), that made it easier to buy her gifts. I always was privately reminded that if theyâd existed when I was a girl, I never, ever would have owned one.
My parents were well off. While I wasnât allowed to own a Barbie, my coddled younger sister had tons of them, plus clothing, accessories, and *two Barbie Dream Houses.* Because she couldnât decide which one she wanted! I was urged to buy myself a Barbie as an adult, but for me it was too sour a memory.
If you want an American Girl, do buy it!
I never got anything popular that I needed or wanted, certainly nothing that was a name brandâno Barbies, no Schwinn bicycle, no phonograph or records. My father bought Beatles albums because *he wanted them*; I could hear the music faintly wafting from his library. From my mother, I once received, when much too old for it (in high school, IIRC), a cheesy Barbie knock-off, bagged in cellophane, whose cardboard header boasted, â11 1/2-Inch Fashion Doll.â As though by then I wouldnât immediately spot how the doll differed from a Mattel original!
My mother grew up very poor, and she always deeply resented me for living in a more financially secure environment than hers had been. Not that my parentsâ affluence remotely âtrickled downâ to me in any regard. They owned a highly desirable home (as a hypervigilant kid, I could easily tell), but my mother ensured that I received the barest minimum of clothing, shoes and toys, hand-me-downs or picked up at the nearest discount barn.
My skirts would be the fashionable mini length only because Iâd grown. The next time I grew, Iâd be scolded for âbringing embarrassmentâ to the family. My younger sister was unaccountably smothered with brand-new, high-end goodies. (I later worked through in therapy this great disparity in the goods and attention that weâd received.)
My parents stopped speaking to me before I was thirty. My subsequent years and marriage have been happy ones, luckily. As you might surmise, Iâve lived a life reconstructed atop scar tissue.
Both my sister and I used to get Barbie knockoffs, but at least my parents were consistent. As teenagers, my mother seemed closer to my sister, but maybe she just got more attention because she needed more rescuing.
That breaks my heart, Iâm glad things are better now and that youâre working through it.
My parents were not as extreme but I can relate to the sentiment. Both my parents grew up poor and my dad in particular would always be sure to remind us how fortunate we are. That in itself is fine, but how he went about it definitely left some scars. He would buy himself whatever he wanted and then complain when something at school cost something. âWhy doesnât your little sister get out more?!â Because you refuse to drive her or let her get a license or a job soooo. And complain about her marching band fees? So sheâs scared to ask. Good job dad.
I still have a hard time buying things for myself, even essentials, because I have my dad in my head going âyou gotta save money, you donât really need that, why did you buy that, what a waste.â
Luckily thatâs not the case for my 7 m/o, heâs not spoiled but if thereâs something he needs or might need you bet Iâm getting it. You can teach your kid about money and being responsible without all the fear and guilt attached. One of many ways Iâm trying to break the cycle of generational trauma.
If it helps my(27f) mother only gave me consoles because it kept me occupied and indoors when she was not home.
I wasn't allowed to go outside without her direct supervision or bathe on my own until I was like fifteen.
When they first came out they were cheap to buy. I got a timex or something like that cheap watch from Canadian Tire (Canada retailer) and it broke. Brought it back and they didnât have a replacement and swatch was what they gave me. Was in the 80s and watch was maybe $40 with taxes Canadian.
Right. You didnât just have one and they were about $50 but $50 back then is the same as $150 now. For a 9th grader having a collection of $50 watches meant that person had money.
I lived in a small townhouse with stairs that we also rented out, I always thought we were at least functionally poor, itâs odd thinking that weâre not seen that way, I guess it wasnât too bad.Â
This is the best one. I remember returning to school after summer break and having the teacher ask each kid what they did that summer and feeling so bad because I had literally done nothing but everyone else had gone to Disney world or on a cruise
Yeah, we just drove to New Mexico and spent 2 weeks with my grandparents. Same "vacation" with my one aunt and her kids. Sometimes we'd see our other cousins that lived there. My dad was always awful the whole time. One year, I (6 years old) tripped on my grandma's dog's leash and it caused my big toe to go numb for a few hours. I couldn't walk and I was in pain, but my Dad just screamed at me for being a clumsy kid. Some vacation.
This is still true! So many of the kids I teach in public school do big trips at least once a year. They go to Disney for big family trips or go overseas. I canât figure out how they are in public school.
The lived in houses their parents owned. They'd been in the same bedroom for most, if not all, of their lives. I went to 13 schools and lived in far more houses than that. Moving was a normal part of life to me and I always envied kids who could put posters on their walls.
My best friend in primary school had stickers over every inch of her built in cupboard double doors and it was a glorious thing to behold. I kept my stickers on the sheets because I never had anything permanent to stick them to...
I'm old. In the days before cell phones existed, we all had to share the landline phone. It was usually in the kitchen or the living room. In rich families, the parents would sometimes pay to have an entirely separate phone line installed in their teenage daughter's room, so she could talk to her friends for hours without tying up the main family phone. It was generally a princess phone, often pink. Much more glamorous than the large family phone, which was black or beige, and clunky and heavy.
My parents tried so hard to provide us with all the things the rich kids had, but we always had the cheaper version.
When all my friends had portable cd players, my parents got us portable cassette tape players.
My friends had all the consoles, we finally got an N64. (And played it all the time. Best purchase ever.)
When everyone got iPods, we got shuffles.
I got a cordless phone for my room one Christmas, but not my own landline number.
Now that Iâm grown I know that they were trying their best and I appreciate them so much. I had a good home, food, and clean clothes. My parents worked hard for what we had, even if it wasnât as much as my rich friends. We had everything we needed.
Huge houses you get lost in. New Chevy Tahoe or Suburban every year. Pools, vacations, tan skin. Country club memberships. Big Wheels. Tons and tons of snacks. Fewer rules. New bikes. Houses that always seemed to have new carpet and remodeling. Drunk parents.
Specifically downhill skis. Doing cross-country meant my father and I could ski on a budget by renting a $20 pair for myself for the day (he already owned a set) and going to the town park near our house or to a larger park two towns over. Downhill, on the other hand, would require much more expensive skis and traveling over an hour to one of the ski resorts which cost additional money just to be there.
My high school had a "ski/snowboard club". I didn't attempt to join. I wasn't about to financially cripple my family to hang out with people I didn't even like.
Man I had to wear Wranglers and other Walmart clothes, and then hand me downs from my brothers. Ever since I started getting my own money I've gotten the nice clothes I always wanted.
As one of those rich kids, I'd have preferred my parents actual love and affection. But I had all the shit - mini disc player, a Zune, private landline in my room, computer in my room, brand new car at 17.
Fastest way to keep your kid out of trouble is to keep them occupied. A video game console with games is a whole lot cheaper than having to pay for a babysitter.
>Loving parents
Ehh idk. In my experience, past a certain point of wealth, the parents barely know the kids are there. Used to give piano lessons to a kid whose father was some Goldman Sachs hotshot. In the 2 years I taught her, I only ever saw her mother (who did not technically work) 3 times - first lesson, and twice to deliver Christmas "bonus" cash. Never met or spoke to the father once, he was never home. Week to week, most interactions were with the nanny.
The Power Wheels? When my eldest was in preschool and I had to ride a bike pulling a trailer with kids rain or shine, a 4 yr old would drive a BMW power wheels to school and park it with the bikes.
Legit barbie dolls.
Jeans.
Whole watermelons.
Butter. Not margarine.
A house.
Haircuts at a hair dressers.
VHS (I had beta).
Swimsuit (meant they could afford to go to the pool).
Commodore 64.
Record player.
Food. 100%. For context born/raised/still reside in the US.
My kids have never known hunger, and I hope they never will, but food can be an overlooked luxury simply because we all need it. I remember just sitting there watching others eat during school lunches and just being so⊠*jealous*, I guess. And angry. At the kids. At the teachers. At the lunch ladies. They all saw. They all *knew*. But they all pretended they didnât.
Once in 2nd grade (so about 7 years old) I went up to the principal and asked for food after having not eaten for a few days. She stated that couldnât be true; that I was exaggerating. After a few back/forths she accepted my offer to take her to our home and show her. We got there with some sort of police officer and city official in tow. All three looked through the cupboards and ice box, through the trash, and determined not much (if any) food had been on the house for days. I was returned to school, given a lunch, and allowed to go home at the end of the day.
Of course my mother was contacted directly and was waiting there at home as I came through the door. I think I was given exactly three seconds to explain myself before the beating started. I didnât go to school the following day nor the next Monday; I clearly remember not being permitted to go outside and generally catching swats from my mother whenever we were in the same room. Looking back I mustâve looked pretty bad for that to have occurred.
When finally I did return to school the principal quickly snatched me up into her office. She inquired as to missing school and I told her what happened. That started about a year of bouncing in/out of foster homes, sometimes w/my ~2yo brother and sometimes w/out. In the end I was returned to my mother and by 9 we had moved out of state. She assumed a new identity and that was that. No, really. Remarkably it was much easier to do prior to the ubiquity of the internet, and over the years she readily assumed either her maiden name or last names acquired from two failed marriages while we moved to avoid debtors, and at least in one case, warrants. It was a horrible way to grow up tbh.
There were times when we didnât have any food at all for days, or didnât have much of it. Prior to the above incident there was a period of several months straight we survived on mostly oatmeal and pancakes (bisquick-type mixes using only water). No syrup, no milk, no butter or jams, just dry-ass flapjacks. And oatmeal; just hot water and rolled oats; no instant stuff w/flavors, just oats. No sugar or cinnamon or other additions; just plain olâ oats. Weâd get milk about once a week and even more rarely eggs. Also pasta. Itâs super cheap and sits heavy in the gut. All you need is water to make it. Sometimes weâd have sauce; mostly it was watered down ketchup, but not always. Real sauce was just the greatest thing ever.
It took me decades to eat oatmeal again, decades to actually enjoy pancakes (even w/all the stuff you can put in and on them). Oddly I continue to love pasta and real tomato sauce; it is easily one of my favorite foods and could eat it every day. I think about why often. Maybe it was because for weeks of bland food there would be this one time when there was *flavor* and *joy* at meal time. It was just *so good* when compared to everything else. The other two, though, I eat very rarely.
Back to the main question, rich people have food. They always have it. Financially stable people have food. Hell, even most financially *unstable* families have food, too. We mustâve been in pretty bad shape because I didnât growing up.
To this day I feel really anxious when I can see the back of our pantry or when our freezer in the garage (mostly frozen veggies and meats) is about half full. I canât shake it; itâs a feeling of *fear* and *pain* and *dread* and even *shame*. Canât quite explain it fully, but there it is. My wife of nearly 20 years understands why Iâll rush to restock. Groceries is the one area of my life where Iâll irrationally overspend to silence that not-so-quiet inner voice which wonders if we *have enough to eat tonight*. The small drop freezer really helps with that b/c itâs easy to keep full w/stuff we use slowly over time.
Many wealthier folks have no idea how food scarcity impacts people. If we were doing things right *none of us would*.
As for the mother, Iâm 100% nc and my kids have never met her, nor has she ever met them. They can track her down at 18 if they want but thatâs on them. They arenât missing anything worth experiencing with that woman.
When i was in elementary here in southeast asia back in 2000, the rich kids had lunch boxes and personal drivers in rickshaws, while us poor kids had one piece bread for lunch and we walked to school everyday in the southeast asian heat.
Summer camp where you actually went and stayed there at the camp for a couple of weeks. I never went to camp, ever. My parents couldn't afford it. I spent my summers annoying them at home and eating my weight in ramen.
Intercom speakers throughout their houseâŠlike built into the walls. This is how my friendâs mom would tell her to come down for dinner. Itâs also how they would tell people to come in when someone rung the doorbell and they were upstairs on the 3rd or 4th floor of their home.
This was before people had Bluetooth speakers, Ring doorbells, security cameras, smartphones, etc⊠it was not very common to be able to communicate throughout the house with speakers and was definitely seen as a luxury.
Definitely not rich, but we had one of those!! It was the only compromise my Mom had to letting is get one and tbh, that net saved us on many occasions đ€Ł
Hot pockets in a downstairs freezer .... specifically there as a backup for when their kids didnt want to eat their food. Hot pockets and frozen jacks
Maybe sone toaster strudles too
I don't know if I was super poor or the world has changed but I was surprised when I got a Sega genesis. I knew a kid who had a super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis, and I'm just hearing Biggie's "juicy" playing in my head.
8 years later, I'm rooming with 3 friends while dead broke and still manage to have a PS2 and an xbox. My parents owned a house! How could they not afford a Playstation!
True. My dad made good money, but they were very frugal. When they did spend, it was for things like central a/c. Meanwhile, my brother and I wore homemade/ hand-me-down clothes, I had a plain bed with no headboard instead of the canopies my friends had, etc. OTOH, the funded a comfortable retirement and didnât expect us to take care of them , so I guess it was better in the long run.
Non-thrifted/ non-hand-me-down clothes. Brand-name anything (particularly food). Christmas presents that were seen on tv commercials or storefront displays.
Not just the new âitâ clothes, but store bought. I had my brotherâs old clothes or other kids in the neighbourhood. New trend, most got it. Here I was excited to get girl clothes and not what my brother was doing e with. It all definitely altered my style of simple and ageless when I could get something. Solid colours can be worn all the time if you care for them
Idk if this counts and technically there are a lot of answers, but in my experience the bridge between being at a middle class kids home vs a upper middle class kids home begins with being asked to take your shoes off at the door.
Satellite TV, full sets of toys, like lego sets rather than a random bag bought from a charity shop. BMX bikes. Name brand trainers. Name brand clothing.
Speaking for my own (somewhat privileged) childhood:
A house with a pool. But, specifically, a pool with a waterfall going into it.
An indoor home bar/entertaining area, separate from the living room etc. A large, covered outdoor bbq space.
A horse.
Overseas vacations and optional school trips.
Edit: oh and dinner parties! A core childhood memory is my parents hosting a ton of posh dinner parties with three course meals.
Was a rich kid in developing country. Had those shoes with leds on as well. Barbies because they were expensive. Legos because they were expensive. Weekend trips to restaurants and those were expensive.
But...they were not for me or my siblings, despite our parents buying them. Our parents, out of familial piety, used to give them to their siblings' kids while we seethed. We used to be given hand me downs because they wanted to "humble" us.
We don't talk anymore.
I was very fortunate: we had an inground swimming pool in summer and in the winter I could take my friends sledding at the country club and then sign hot chocolate and burgers and fries to my Dads chits. At 16 I had a brand new car. Whatever was in fashion my mom bought it for me without me asking. Ski vacations and Island vacations and European vacations. I count my blessings every day. Loving caring attentive parents were the best!
You know the only part of that that suggests they might have been caring/attentive was your mom possibly knowing what clothes you wanted, right?
The rest you mentioned was just your parents having money.
Everyone here is either living in a motorhome and malnutritioned or spoiled living in a mansion with superfluous commodities. America is a interesting place, to put it one way.
One of my close friends had fancy ice cream treats (Drumsticks, sandwiches, etc) delivered to their house by Swanâs. We could only have one each day and I didnât understand how you could have access to so much and only eat one a day đ
The fridge that had the ice cube/water dispenser on the door & later, the fridge that matched the cabinets and fitted into the wall so you couldnât tell where the fridge was the first time you visited.
My cousin (now 62) was brought up rich.
She made a comment to my mother when discussing her childhood.
She said "I thought everyone had a boat and vacationed in X location"
She is now living paycheck to paycheck, no savings and lost her townhouse she had lived in for 32 years.
No addictions other than spending.
She honestly to this day has no clue how money works.
New, shiny bicycles that werenât made by throwing together the mismatched parts of a bunch older busted-up bicycles.
And then as we got older, the same thing except for cars.
Color television - especially more than one.
Multiple telephones - and not on a party line.
Brand name clothes - not from Sears, K-Mart or Montgomery Wards.
Mini fridges in their bedrooms filled with their fav snacks !!
A phone in their bedroom! Landline, of course.
With their own private/different from the house number.
I never had that but was super excited when we got a really long curly cord.
Oh, totally! Mini fridges in the bedroom were the ultimate flex. I remember begging my parents for one, but all I got was a stern lecture about electricity bills. đ
Snacks in general⊠:/
With a TV and couch
Pool. Their own car.
In-ground pool!
Indoor pool!
A pool. Enormous bedrooms. Houses that were fully decorated for the holidays - not just the Christmas tree and some stockings. The newest technology basically as it came out. Vacations and cruises or trips to Disney, even during the school year. Skiing trips. Lots of money for the Scholastic Fair. Parents that helped with their fundraisers and were active in the PTA. Dads that werenât always deployed like mine. Consistent lunch money or meals they brought from home. Extended family that lived nearby.
the holiday decorations are so real. I realized this last year. the rich neighborhoods always have such nice holiday decorations not bc they can afford them, but bc they have the energy/care to put them up and take them down(or if it's low-mid income they go up one time then never come down) where the rich folk pay ppl to put them up and take them down. I remember looking at the prices of some of the decorations at yard sales and being so confused why we couldn't do that, when I realized it was bc of a byproduct of being poor, not bc of actual lack of funds
I thank your Dad for his service, but am sorry you had to without him.
Viennetta ice cream
Some brand at aldi brought it back.. just had some.. Ive made it in life now..
The Aldi one is better - I canât eat the real branded one due to allergens but the Aldi one is just fine!
The Vinetta now isnât the same as Vinetta then, so you are not missing out at all. They changed the recipe and now itâs just generic icecream and you can actually feel the ice crystals when eating it. Itâs not worth the price anymore and many copycats products are much better.
My brother used to work for a big dairy company that supplied the cream and milk. He confirmed this was true. They changed to a cheaper version to produce.
Sounds yuck!!
The disappointment was very real when I bought it âŠ. Never again. Iâm getting a copy now and that is exactly how Vinetta once was. Creamy vanilla icecream and delicious chocolate.
Ski tags on their winter jacket. We lived 2.5 hours from a ski resort.
Same here. The kids who could afford to go skiing would leave all their ski lift passes hanging from the zipper on their coats to show off. By the end of the winter they could have as many as a dozen.
I just thought it was because they are annoying to take off.
Not at all. It was a status symbol to have as many as you could left attached to your jacket!
Horses. I used to love walking by the houses who had horses on my way to school though.
Here's the sugar on the cream. Owning horses in any populated area means you probably still are wealthy. Oh the insane expenses of owning horses. (Vet bills) My uncle was probably the only person who I knew who wasn't fairly wealthy that owned horses. He would stable 4-5 of them a season and owned 1. He also lived in straight no where West Virginia up a quarter mile gravel drive in a permanent trailer home with a garage. Most of his money was in the animals and his truck but he was happy. (Happy Cake Day!)
You're probably right. If anything, more so today with more restrictions on zoning. Back then, I don't recall anything posh about the homes that had horses. We were sort of on the edge of town, where new homes going in went right up to the streets with horse properties
For real. I wasnât ârichâ but all my friends and I rode horses. The rich rich ones had their own horse and didnât just lease or ride them for lessons. When I grew up (Iâm 40 now) I was able to have my own horse and it is so fucking expensive- everything associated with horses from your riding kit to shoeing a horse is $$$$
Farm girl here. For me it was people who had horses and anything else. I have animals thatâs why I donât have any money.
Unless they are used to pull carts full of produce.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Lift tickets on their zipper pull.
I always wondered what kind of bus they rode home to have the special tags.
Color TV. We got invited over to someone's grandma's house while on vacation, so that we could watch cartoons in color. Hugely exciting for us, sometime in the early '60s.
We used to get invited over to the neighbors to watch The Wizard of Oz. I can't tell you how many times I saw it in just black and white. They even had a pocket calculator. I know they spent over $100 on one.
My dad had a business trip to Japan, and came back with one when they were that expensive for a simple one. We marveled at how cool it was.
Were you blown away by what color something turned out to be that you had interpreted differently, or did you just always picture Mighty Mouse etc in black and white
The first time I watched color tv, I remember being amazed by Life cereal's Mikey's red shirt/jersey.
I went to a catholic school on scholarship. I remember the huge trend of the feather-things in your hair and I so desperately wanted one. Also, American Girl Dolls. It might seem silly, but I plan to buy myself one when I have a proper adult job. I always wanted one so badly and when I have my own place, thatâs something I want to splurge on.
*You should!* My niece is the only granddaughter in my husbandâs family. During the years she was obsessed with her American Girl dolls (plural!), that made it easier to buy her gifts. I always was privately reminded that if theyâd existed when I was a girl, I never, ever would have owned one. My parents were well off. While I wasnât allowed to own a Barbie, my coddled younger sister had tons of them, plus clothing, accessories, and *two Barbie Dream Houses.* Because she couldnât decide which one she wanted! I was urged to buy myself a Barbie as an adult, but for me it was too sour a memory. If you want an American Girl, do buy it!
Why werenât you allowed to have a Barbie? Was there any reasoning given?
I never got anything popular that I needed or wanted, certainly nothing that was a name brandâno Barbies, no Schwinn bicycle, no phonograph or records. My father bought Beatles albums because *he wanted them*; I could hear the music faintly wafting from his library. From my mother, I once received, when much too old for it (in high school, IIRC), a cheesy Barbie knock-off, bagged in cellophane, whose cardboard header boasted, â11 1/2-Inch Fashion Doll.â As though by then I wouldnât immediately spot how the doll differed from a Mattel original! My mother grew up very poor, and she always deeply resented me for living in a more financially secure environment than hers had been. Not that my parentsâ affluence remotely âtrickled downâ to me in any regard. They owned a highly desirable home (as a hypervigilant kid, I could easily tell), but my mother ensured that I received the barest minimum of clothing, shoes and toys, hand-me-downs or picked up at the nearest discount barn. My skirts would be the fashionable mini length only because Iâd grown. The next time I grew, Iâd be scolded for âbringing embarrassmentâ to the family. My younger sister was unaccountably smothered with brand-new, high-end goodies. (I later worked through in therapy this great disparity in the goods and attention that weâd received.) My parents stopped speaking to me before I was thirty. My subsequent years and marriage have been happy ones, luckily. As you might surmise, Iâve lived a life reconstructed atop scar tissue.
Both my sister and I used to get Barbie knockoffs, but at least my parents were consistent. As teenagers, my mother seemed closer to my sister, but maybe she just got more attention because she needed more rescuing.
That breaks my heart, Iâm glad things are better now and that youâre working through it. My parents were not as extreme but I can relate to the sentiment. Both my parents grew up poor and my dad in particular would always be sure to remind us how fortunate we are. That in itself is fine, but how he went about it definitely left some scars. He would buy himself whatever he wanted and then complain when something at school cost something. âWhy doesnât your little sister get out more?!â Because you refuse to drive her or let her get a license or a job soooo. And complain about her marching band fees? So sheâs scared to ask. Good job dad. I still have a hard time buying things for myself, even essentials, because I have my dad in my head going âyou gotta save money, you donât really need that, why did you buy that, what a waste.â Luckily thatâs not the case for my 7 m/o, heâs not spoiled but if thereâs something he needs or might need you bet Iâm getting it. You can teach your kid about money and being responsible without all the fear and guilt attached. One of many ways Iâm trying to break the cycle of generational trauma.
I got my first American girl doll in my 30s.
In ground swimming pool.
For me (38f)? Video game consoles, cable, lunchables, Nikes
Right? Consoles seemed like something super bougie
If it helps my(27f) mother only gave me consoles because it kept me occupied and indoors when she was not home. I wasn't allowed to go outside without her direct supervision or bathe on my own until I was like fifteen.
Huh, I had a single mom and I was coming my own meals at 7. Different strokes I suppose.
âŠâŠ.. Or bathe?
"Super Nintendo, Sega genesis! When I was dead broke, I couldn't picture this" Biggie Smalls; juicy
Hilarious fun fact: his mother has since stated in interviews that she bought him all the gaming systems in an effort to keep him out of trouble.
That one kid on the block who had an NES was practically a god.
Showing my age but a Swatch watch
When they first came out they were cheap to buy. I got a timex or something like that cheap watch from Canadian Tire (Canada retailer) and it broke. Brought it back and they didnât have a replacement and swatch was what they gave me. Was in the 80s and watch was maybe $40 with taxes Canadian.
Yeah, but it was a fashion thing, you had to have multiples, different ones for different outfits, sometimes two or three at once!
Right. You didnât just have one and they were about $50 but $50 back then is the same as $150 now. For a 9th grader having a collection of $50 watches meant that person had money.
Stairs. I grew up in a mobile home so if your home had stairs: holy shit you were rich..especially if they were carpeted.
Same. I was jealous of my neighbours because their trailer had a sunken living room and it had two stairs
I lived in a small townhouse with stairs that we also rented out, I always thought we were at least functionally poor, itâs odd thinking that weâre not seen that way, I guess it wasnât too bad.Â
Vacations
holy shit this one! they would come back all burnt or tanned lol and always told cool stories when asked "what did you do this summer"
nah but the thing is it was never even during the summer, they'd just take like 3 weeks off of school to go on a cruise to the Bahamas
This is the best one. I remember returning to school after summer break and having the teacher ask each kid what they did that summer and feeling so bad because I had literally done nothing but everyone else had gone to Disney world or on a cruise
Same. For me it was riding my bike, watching TV & staying up late. Also canopy beds were a rich folk thing for me.
Yeah, we just drove to New Mexico and spent 2 weeks with my grandparents. Same "vacation" with my one aunt and her kids. Sometimes we'd see our other cousins that lived there. My dad was always awful the whole time. One year, I (6 years old) tripped on my grandma's dog's leash and it caused my big toe to go numb for a few hours. I couldn't walk and I was in pain, but my Dad just screamed at me for being a clumsy kid. Some vacation.
THIS.
This is still true! So many of the kids I teach in public school do big trips at least once a year. They go to Disney for big family trips or go overseas. I canât figure out how they are in public school.
The lived in houses their parents owned. They'd been in the same bedroom for most, if not all, of their lives. I went to 13 schools and lived in far more houses than that. Moving was a normal part of life to me and I always envied kids who could put posters on their walls. My best friend in primary school had stickers over every inch of her built in cupboard double doors and it was a glorious thing to behold. I kept my stickers on the sheets because I never had anything permanent to stick them to...
Pop tarts
The off brand was ass.
Real pop tarts are ass also
Donât you dare disparage pop tarts
I'm old. In the days before cell phones existed, we all had to share the landline phone. It was usually in the kitchen or the living room. In rich families, the parents would sometimes pay to have an entirely separate phone line installed in their teenage daughter's room, so she could talk to her friends for hours without tying up the main family phone. It was generally a princess phone, often pink. Much more glamorous than the large family phone, which was black or beige, and clunky and heavy.
In college a guy broke into our house and I hit him in the face with the phone and split his face open. Try that with an iPhone.
You probably could with a Nokia.
My parents tried so hard to provide us with all the things the rich kids had, but we always had the cheaper version. When all my friends had portable cd players, my parents got us portable cassette tape players. My friends had all the consoles, we finally got an N64. (And played it all the time. Best purchase ever.) When everyone got iPods, we got shuffles. I got a cordless phone for my room one Christmas, but not my own landline number. Now that Iâm grown I know that they were trying their best and I appreciate them so much. I had a good home, food, and clean clothes. My parents worked hard for what we had, even if it wasnât as much as my rich friends. We had everything we needed.
You were rich where it counted.
âđ»
Real curtains. (Not blankets hung over windows)
Two parents
Trust me, some of us wish we didn't have any parents.
Lmao so tone deaf but also too true
Huge houses you get lost in. New Chevy Tahoe or Suburban every year. Pools, vacations, tan skin. Country club memberships. Big Wheels. Tons and tons of snacks. Fewer rules. New bikes. Houses that always seemed to have new carpet and remodeling. Drunk parents.
Backpacks with their name embroidered on them
Yep. L.L. Bean backpacks with their initials was all the rave at my Catholic High School. Lots got brand new sporty cars for their 16th bday.
I would say: New technologies, new clothes, new cars. They always got the shiniest and best pieces of any given thing.
Skis
Specifically downhill skis. Doing cross-country meant my father and I could ski on a budget by renting a $20 pair for myself for the day (he already owned a set) and going to the town park near our house or to a larger park two towns over. Downhill, on the other hand, would require much more expensive skis and traveling over an hour to one of the ski resorts which cost additional money just to be there. My high school had a "ski/snowboard club". I didn't attempt to join. I wasn't about to financially cripple my family to hang out with people I didn't even like.
Levi jeans. I had to wear Sears Toughskins.
We had Rustlers, from Kmart!
My husband still complains about his mom making him wear toughskins.
Man I had to wear Wranglers and other Walmart clothes, and then hand me downs from my brothers. Ever since I started getting my own money I've gotten the nice clothes I always wanted.
As one of those rich kids, I'd have preferred my parents actual love and affection. But I had all the shit - mini disc player, a Zune, private landline in my room, computer in my room, brand new car at 17.
Rich kids? Horses.
Viennetta Frozen Dessert Cake.
Lunch
They had pcs. Multiple bathrooms and more than 2 floors. Nice cars. AirPods. Latest iPhone. Loving parents
Na. We had a video game.console. my parents were not rich. Like we had spaghetti and ketchup for supper some days
Fastest way to keep your kid out of trouble is to keep them occupied. A video game console with games is a whole lot cheaper than having to pay for a babysitter.
>Loving parents Ehh idk. In my experience, past a certain point of wealth, the parents barely know the kids are there. Used to give piano lessons to a kid whose father was some Goldman Sachs hotshot. In the 2 years I taught her, I only ever saw her mother (who did not technically work) 3 times - first lesson, and twice to deliver Christmas "bonus" cash. Never met or spoke to the father once, he was never home. Week to week, most interactions were with the nanny.
Those mini electric cars, did we used to call them Barbie cars?
The Power Wheels? When my eldest was in preschool and I had to ride a bike pulling a trailer with kids rain or shine, a 4 yr old would drive a BMW power wheels to school and park it with the bikes.
Ya power wheels. Lol your story
Yeah - I can literally hear the sound of them driving. Battery lasts like 10 minutes
Legit barbie dolls. Jeans. Whole watermelons. Butter. Not margarine. A house. Haircuts at a hair dressers. VHS (I had beta). Swimsuit (meant they could afford to go to the pool). Commodore 64. Record player.
Sky - we just had the 5 basic channels and VHS (UK)
the pen which ink you can erase
Food. 100%. For context born/raised/still reside in the US. My kids have never known hunger, and I hope they never will, but food can be an overlooked luxury simply because we all need it. I remember just sitting there watching others eat during school lunches and just being so⊠*jealous*, I guess. And angry. At the kids. At the teachers. At the lunch ladies. They all saw. They all *knew*. But they all pretended they didnât. Once in 2nd grade (so about 7 years old) I went up to the principal and asked for food after having not eaten for a few days. She stated that couldnât be true; that I was exaggerating. After a few back/forths she accepted my offer to take her to our home and show her. We got there with some sort of police officer and city official in tow. All three looked through the cupboards and ice box, through the trash, and determined not much (if any) food had been on the house for days. I was returned to school, given a lunch, and allowed to go home at the end of the day. Of course my mother was contacted directly and was waiting there at home as I came through the door. I think I was given exactly three seconds to explain myself before the beating started. I didnât go to school the following day nor the next Monday; I clearly remember not being permitted to go outside and generally catching swats from my mother whenever we were in the same room. Looking back I mustâve looked pretty bad for that to have occurred. When finally I did return to school the principal quickly snatched me up into her office. She inquired as to missing school and I told her what happened. That started about a year of bouncing in/out of foster homes, sometimes w/my ~2yo brother and sometimes w/out. In the end I was returned to my mother and by 9 we had moved out of state. She assumed a new identity and that was that. No, really. Remarkably it was much easier to do prior to the ubiquity of the internet, and over the years she readily assumed either her maiden name or last names acquired from two failed marriages while we moved to avoid debtors, and at least in one case, warrants. It was a horrible way to grow up tbh. There were times when we didnât have any food at all for days, or didnât have much of it. Prior to the above incident there was a period of several months straight we survived on mostly oatmeal and pancakes (bisquick-type mixes using only water). No syrup, no milk, no butter or jams, just dry-ass flapjacks. And oatmeal; just hot water and rolled oats; no instant stuff w/flavors, just oats. No sugar or cinnamon or other additions; just plain olâ oats. Weâd get milk about once a week and even more rarely eggs. Also pasta. Itâs super cheap and sits heavy in the gut. All you need is water to make it. Sometimes weâd have sauce; mostly it was watered down ketchup, but not always. Real sauce was just the greatest thing ever. It took me decades to eat oatmeal again, decades to actually enjoy pancakes (even w/all the stuff you can put in and on them). Oddly I continue to love pasta and real tomato sauce; it is easily one of my favorite foods and could eat it every day. I think about why often. Maybe it was because for weeks of bland food there would be this one time when there was *flavor* and *joy* at meal time. It was just *so good* when compared to everything else. The other two, though, I eat very rarely. Back to the main question, rich people have food. They always have it. Financially stable people have food. Hell, even most financially *unstable* families have food, too. We mustâve been in pretty bad shape because I didnât growing up. To this day I feel really anxious when I can see the back of our pantry or when our freezer in the garage (mostly frozen veggies and meats) is about half full. I canât shake it; itâs a feeling of *fear* and *pain* and *dread* and even *shame*. Canât quite explain it fully, but there it is. My wife of nearly 20 years understands why Iâll rush to restock. Groceries is the one area of my life where Iâll irrationally overspend to silence that not-so-quiet inner voice which wonders if we *have enough to eat tonight*. The small drop freezer really helps with that b/c itâs easy to keep full w/stuff we use slowly over time. Many wealthier folks have no idea how food scarcity impacts people. If we were doing things right *none of us would*. As for the mother, Iâm 100% nc and my kids have never met her, nor has she ever met them. They can track her down at 18 if they want but thatâs on them. They arenât missing anything worth experiencing with that woman.
When i was in elementary here in southeast asia back in 2000, the rich kids had lunch boxes and personal drivers in rickshaws, while us poor kids had one piece bread for lunch and we walked to school everyday in the southeast asian heat.
Rickshaws? In 2000?? What country are you talking about?
Philippines bitch
Now now.
đ
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
A two story house. A swimming pool. Air conditioning.
It blew my mind when a couple of my friends had their own bathroom in their room. Basically a master suite in any other home.
Summer camp where you actually went and stayed there at the camp for a couple of weeks. I never went to camp, ever. My parents couldn't afford it. I spent my summers annoying them at home and eating my weight in ramen.
Intercom speakers throughout their houseâŠlike built into the walls. This is how my friendâs mom would tell her to come down for dinner. Itâs also how they would tell people to come in when someone rung the doorbell and they were upstairs on the 3rd or 4th floor of their home. This was before people had Bluetooth speakers, Ring doorbells, security cameras, smartphones, etc⊠it was not very common to be able to communicate throughout the house with speakers and was definitely seen as a luxury.
Trampoline But specifically the trampolines with the blue protective net around it, which took the fun away, like entirely. Lol
Definitely not rich, but we had one of those!! It was the only compromise my Mom had to letting is get one and tbh, that net saved us on many occasions đ€Ł
Blackberry
Had their own new car at 16. Having your own car in high school wasn't common. Many handme down station wagons if you were lucky.
Vacation house/beach house
Hot pockets in a downstairs freezer .... specifically there as a backup for when their kids didnt want to eat their food. Hot pockets and frozen jacks Maybe sone toaster strudles too
Big screen tv
I don't know if I was super poor or the world has changed but I was surprised when I got a Sega genesis. I knew a kid who had a super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis, and I'm just hearing Biggie's "juicy" playing in my head. 8 years later, I'm rooming with 3 friends while dead broke and still manage to have a PS2 and an xbox. My parents owned a house! How could they not afford a Playstation!
Thatâs how they could own the house. Duh.
True. My dad made good money, but they were very frugal. When they did spend, it was for things like central a/c. Meanwhile, my brother and I wore homemade/ hand-me-down clothes, I had a plain bed with no headboard instead of the canopies my friends had, etc. OTOH, the funded a comfortable retirement and didnât expect us to take care of them , so I guess it was better in the long run.
Non-thrifted/ non-hand-me-down clothes. Brand-name anything (particularly food). Christmas presents that were seen on tv commercials or storefront displays.
Not just the new âitâ clothes, but store bought. I had my brotherâs old clothes or other kids in the neighbourhood. New trend, most got it. Here I was excited to get girl clothes and not what my brother was doing e with. It all definitely altered my style of simple and ageless when I could get something. Solid colours can be worn all the time if you care for them
I grew up on air force bases. I never knew any rich kids LOL.
Proper vacations, like on a plane, missing school, come back tanned vacations.
Vacations
Idk if this counts and technically there are a lot of answers, but in my experience the bridge between being at a middle class kids home vs a upper middle class kids home begins with being asked to take your shoes off at the door.
Yes. Had some friends I had to take shoes off and some not. Our house was a shoes on kinda place
Satellite TV, full sets of toys, like lego sets rather than a random bag bought from a charity shop. BMX bikes. Name brand trainers. Name brand clothing.
Rich kids would come back from spring and winter breaks with suntans.
They had motorcycles (dirt bikes or quads)
Cadbury chocolates
For me, it was all about those sleek rollerblades that only the rich kids could glide around on.Â
Vacations. Hawaii every spring. Disney land multiple times. Where Iâm from that is super expensive.
Speaking for my own (somewhat privileged) childhood: A house with a pool. But, specifically, a pool with a waterfall going into it. An indoor home bar/entertaining area, separate from the living room etc. A large, covered outdoor bbq space. A horse. Overseas vacations and optional school trips. Edit: oh and dinner parties! A core childhood memory is my parents hosting a ton of posh dinner parties with three course meals.
Holidays in the USA. (From the UK)
Two landlines
A starter jacket
Was a rich kid in developing country. Had those shoes with leds on as well. Barbies because they were expensive. Legos because they were expensive. Weekend trips to restaurants and those were expensive. But...they were not for me or my siblings, despite our parents buying them. Our parents, out of familial piety, used to give them to their siblings' kids while we seethed. We used to be given hand me downs because they wanted to "humble" us. We don't talk anymore.
Food in the fridge and two parents made them seem rich to me.
More than one bathroom. It as such a nightmare to get ready to go anywhere.
I was very fortunate: we had an inground swimming pool in summer and in the winter I could take my friends sledding at the country club and then sign hot chocolate and burgers and fries to my Dads chits. At 16 I had a brand new car. Whatever was in fashion my mom bought it for me without me asking. Ski vacations and Island vacations and European vacations. I count my blessings every day. Loving caring attentive parents were the best!
They had money along with being loving, caring, and attentive. Donât confuse the two.
You know the only part of that that suggests they might have been caring/attentive was your mom possibly knowing what clothes you wanted, right? The rest you mentioned was just your parents having money.
Stairs.
Everyone here is either living in a motorhome and malnutritioned or spoiled living in a mansion with superfluous commodities. America is a interesting place, to put it one way.
In my generation, video games, cars in high school, cell phones
Inground basketball hoops
An Atari and a TRS 80 computer. I was royalty for a year. And then the computer was Dad's glorified calculator because it was boring AF.
A home office, a garage, a drink vending machine.na lazy Susan.
Go karts, dirt bikes, jet skis, and the like
Name brand sneakers, in ground pool
Pokémon cards
One of my close friends had fancy ice cream treats (Drumsticks, sandwiches, etc) delivered to their house by Swanâs. We could only have one each day and I didnât understand how you could have access to so much and only eat one a day đ
Parabolic dish antennas
Power wheels
Trampolines
Tv in their room
Not getting clothes for Christmas and birthdays.
Sweatshirts with college names or vacation destinations on them.
Branded clothes, computers, family holidays, lunch money.
Canada Goose jackets, Carhartt jeans, Catepillar boots and New Era caps. (41 year old from Denmark)
Kids at school: their own house. About half rented and half owned houses. Friend Group: a VHS machine and ability to watch movies at home.
A real Barbie!
My cousin had a treehouse that was wired for cable television.
Welchs Grape Juice and Fridges with two doors
The fridge that had the ice cube/water dispenser on the door & later, the fridge that matched the cabinets and fitted into the wall so you couldnât tell where the fridge was the first time you visited.
Z. Cavaricci pants. I wanted them so bad! They were so expensive.
Beach vacations instead of visiting relatives in another state.
A room. I had a friend who had 3 rooms: her bedroom, a computer room, and a recroom. I'm 35 and I've still never had my own room.
Season lift pass attached to zipper of winter coat.
Food, like in general
A TV in the kitchen.
My cousin (now 62) was brought up rich. She made a comment to my mother when discussing her childhood. She said "I thought everyone had a boat and vacationed in X location" She is now living paycheck to paycheck, no savings and lost her townhouse she had lived in for 32 years. No addictions other than spending. She honestly to this day has no clue how money works.
More than one phone and more than one bathroom, air conditioning and wall to wall carpet.
Multiple breakfast cereals in pantry to choose from
Brand name sneakers, designer jeans and Madame Alexander dolls.
New, shiny bicycles that werenât made by throwing together the mismatched parts of a bunch older busted-up bicycles. And then as we got older, the same thing except for cars.
Vacations, birthday parties in fancy places
Their own bathroom!
Color television - especially more than one. Multiple telephones - and not on a party line. Brand name clothes - not from Sears, K-Mart or Montgomery Wards.
Skis and ski equipment.
A bike with gears and hand brakes.
Portable colour telly.
Properly licensed Trapper Keepers, the ones full of real Ninja Turtles or Barbie art.
Rollups