Imagine how charming it is when someone asks you how much you paid for your child. (We adopted both our children.)
Favorite answer? “Oh, they were free. We just paid shipping and handling.”
Thanks, I need to hear that on occasion. I actually do give my family substantial financial support in the form of big checks as Christmas and Mothers Day gifts but they always fish for more.
and ** Elret**'s response as well.
I would tend to agree with you some of the time; but there are those times when you know that it is a question about comparison. For instance your children are about the same size, and yours is crawling up the stairs while their child is stepping up them (Or one is more adept at digging in the sandbox.) and the parent leads with an age question. Then there is no doubt it is a comparison question rather than one of curiosity. It is easy to tell the difference.
Acceptable questions to start a conversation:
- I love that outfit on your kid. Where did you get it?
- How do you have so much energy to chase your kid around?
Unacceptable questions:
- What’s wrong with your kid?
- Are you the nanny?
- How old is your kid?
- Aren’t you too old to have kids?
I once had a bf who put a price on everything. If I complimented him on his shirt, he had to tell me how much he paid for it. If he was recommending a restaurant, he told me the range of prices. If he was reading a book, he had to tell me how he got it at a sale price.
This is the main reason why the relationship was shorter than it might have been.
I guess this is the benefit of not having anything nice. No one asks you these types of questions!
Someone once asked about my salary and I just said “underpaid”. She didn’t needle me further…I figure she realized how nosy the question was based on my response.
What I encounter are people who talk about how much they make without actually saying how much they make. Like, I have a coworker who often talks about how little she is paid. She will spend hours talking about how her finances and her pay don’t match up, how her skillset is not being appropriately compensated, how it’s not fair that so-and-so is making more than she is, etc. But she will not actually come out and say how much she makes because she (I’m guessing) realizes that she probably makes more than whomever she’s kvetching to. Which is just dumb.
My feeling is that if you don’t want to fully disclose, you shouldn’t even skirt around the edges of a topic.
I have no problem saying how much something costs if I got it for a steal. For instance, I usually go clothes shopping at thrift stores. Sometimes someone will compliment me on something and I’ll say, “Thanks! I got it for a dollar, can you believe it?” I haven’t done this in awhile because no one at work goes shopping at thrift stores, but when I was in grad school that was all I was about. Bragging about my cheap clothes!
My favorite is when, after I respond somewhat coldly to their original inquiry, they come back and ask me for an approximate “range” as if this is somehow less intrusive than an actual number. My answer: “about halfway between none of your damn business and none of your f–king business.” Nobody has ever made a third attempt.
How much for this zombie?
Since my mother passed away (my father had already died), a few people have actually asked me about my inheritance! I was literally speechless, and for me that’s extremely rare.
Oh, I like that. I hate it when people ignore my attempts to politely steer them away from something I’m obviously not interested in discussing.
“Zombies! Going cheap! Half off!” 
I think it was Miss Manners who had the correct answer for that - “I can’t imagine why you would possibly ask me something like that.”
Thinking this is rude is completely preposterous.
Asking about a car or a house price is often because one is in a similar market and looking to get a feel for the actual prices on the ground, as opposed to the often inflated sticker price.
Asking about the price of consumer goods is often a shorthand for “wow, that’s neat–I wonder if it’s something I’d want. If only there were a quick way of finding out how much it costs without having to schlep to the store–oh, I know, a person who obviously bought one and enjoys using it is right here, maybe they’ll have something good to say about it’s overall value as a purchase.”
It’s just money, for pete’s sake.
And frankly, the taboo against ever discussing salary information ever is effectively a conspiracy to unequalize/drive down wages by making it harder to compare wages with other people in your field and related fields. Thank god for sites like salary.com so we can dodge this ridiculous taboo and get more information for negotiating.
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Asking about the specifics of bills, inheritances, or personal accounts is, naturally, over the line. It’s one of the few pieces of information here that isn’t A) publicly available and B) conveys no benefit from being conveyed.
I find that only rarely (with close friends/family) is this the case.
Most of the time when people ask me this it is because they want to tell me how they got it cheaper/what a waste of money it is.
But YMMV.
My experience is almost literally 100% the opposite.
To me, it sounds as if some people are putting the “offense” in front of the “insult”. But I’ve been exposed to enough of those insulting people to understand where that’s coming from.
Even then, if someone asks the price of something that isn’t obviously personal (wedding ring, etc.), I will give it to them. If they then have the audacity to imply that I paid too much, etc., I’ll just smile and make a mental note to avoid that person in the future.
I realize this doesn’t provide much satisfaction for people in large cities, but in a small community, it’s almost fun to watch that type of person alienate each member of the community to the point of only being able to see the backside of others.
Just a final bit of advice. If you move to a small southern community (yes, I know a lot would consider it hell itself), ask anyone what they paid for (almost) anything. Then just smile and say “that sounds great” no matter what you might otherwise think. You’ll be fine.