Some years ago there was a thread asking the question, any wealthy Dopers?. Responses to that thread were rather, uh, subdued. After much discussion about the definition of wealth, and many noble platitudes about how one is truly wealthy if they have health and friends yada yada yada, no one actually admitted to the fact that they were rollin’ in it, so to speak.
Fast forward to last week. I’m watching The Simple Life on Fox. (For those who don’t know, it’s a reality show where two wealthy, dim-witted L.A. heiresses (Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie) are made to live on an Arkansas farm. Wacky hijinks ensue.) Paris and Nicole are at the local Wal-Mart:) and an employee asks “Hey aren’t you that rich girl?” Paris hems and haws and finally sheepishly says something like “Yeah I guess you say I’m rich.” She’s worth about $300 million, so I’d say she’s pretty damned rich.
Now, I’ll grant that asking someone directly about their financial situation is pretty rude. However, in the context of the show I don’t see what Paris was so embarrassed about. She was, after all, the rich girl sent to a poor town so that TV cameras might document the results. And in the context of the SDMB, where anonymity is part of the allure, I don’t see why admitting you’re rich became such an elusive thing.
So, is it somehow shameful or braggadocious for a wealthy person to admit their wealth when asked?
[aside]
How is it that Lionel Richie’s daughter is white? Granted, Lionel is light-skinned, but even if Nicole’s mama is white surely Nicole would look mixed. I guess I don’t understand genetics very well…
[/aside]
People with money don’t like to talk about it for fear of offending those who don’t have as much or to appear like they’re bragging about it. Also, in some cases (such as Paris Hilton’s) they did little to nothing to aquire it, so it’s a bit of an embarassment. (I’m surprised she has the tact to grasp this.)
It’s my understanding that Nicole Ritchie is adopted.
I see you point, voguevixen. However, I don’t see what the BFD is if you’re asked about your wealth. I mean, there’s humility and then there’s honesty, and I don’t see how the latter betrays the former.
How is it in poor taste? I just figure wealthy people don’t like to admit to it because they’re on the vastly outnumbered side in the class war. Not a matter of taste, just strategy. If you’re poor, bitch about it. I figure people at the extremes of both wealth and poverty are unlikely to be here, but I’ll bet we’ve got a fair number of people who need government assistance to get by, and a fair number of people who could quit work and still live quite well, which is my personal definition of wealth.
(And by quite well, I don’t mean the conservative position that anybody who isn’t starving is living well. I mean, "maintain the lifestyle of someone working at a good-paying job.)
I think it is both a matter of taste and strategy. Certainly, it’s tacky to talk about one’s wealth, but it can also be a bad idea in other ways. Ever noticed how many of those lottery winners’ lives fall apart after they win?
Do you want people to assume that you can pay for everything all the time? Do you want less than honest people to swarm on you like flies? Do you want people to take or break your stuff regularly and then blow it off with “well, you can afford it!”
There’s a lot of people looking for things that aren’t theirs. Who wants to paint a bullseye on their head?
I would suspect the sudden wealth combined with knowing a lot of people who would do the above has at least something to do with the downfall of some lottery winners.
Hell, in the past, I had enough problems with people like that when I was a young, single Programmer who (allegedly, but not in fact) “made a lot of money”. They’d expect me to pay their way, lend them money, be careless with my stuff, etc. Because I “could afford it”. No ex-friends, I can’t.
I don’t think it’s modesty or strategy so much as it is differences in perception. People tend not to see themselves as rich, usually.
I have a friend who makes $40K a year, in a place with fantastically low cost of living. She lives in a really nice apartment complex with all the amenities, has absolutely no debt, buys anything she wants or thinks her parents or cat would enjoy having, and has about $35K in the bank. She thinks she’s “getting by”, but she just doesn’t understand why her coworkers who support families on less money and live paycheck to paycheck think she’s well-off.
There was a study someplace a few years ago on how people describe their financial situations, and the range of people describing themselves as “middle-class” was staggeringly huge. People in half-million dollar houses with a couple of Beamers parked outside and vacation homes in the country were willing to amplify that to “upper middle-class.” They’re not being modest or strategic, it’s just how they perceive their situation.
There is some disdain among people who just get by for people who are comfortable, IME. Now I don’t know if it’s jealousy or something more class-conscious or whatever, but I know that it’s not always enjoyable to be singled out as the rich one.
“Rich” has immediate connotations of spoiled, not knowing the value of money and undeserved comfort.
I was brought up to believe that one’s money is a subject one Simply Doesn’t Discuss.
Not only the wealthy: you don’t tell someone at a party, “Yeah, I only make 15 grand a year and I can barely buy cat food for the kids–how much moola do you haul in?”
If that’s $15k/year USD, how can you afford to go to a party? Let’s see, you’d have to get someone to watch the kids for free, make sure you had proper attire, find a way to get there and back (and possibly get the kids to a babysitter’s place), perhaps even bring something for someone, which costs money, and so on and so forth. The barriers to party attendance would be terribly daunting.
To me, someone admitting their wealth sounds like a schoolyard taunt – “I’m successful and you’re not, so nyah nyah nyah!” Then again, I could be having major misperceptions.
I think that it is mainly just wanting to be normal. Almost everybody wants to be normal and being rich is unusual. Some people will take pride in it and some people will just want to fit in.
And of course you might not want people asking you for money.
:: snort :: In my social circle, you wear your regular clothes, bring the kids along if you have any, and bring a six-pack of beer for your host. Total cost, $6 or so. Not very daunting.
(Apologies if you were joking – sometimes I don’t pick up on sarcasm very well on the boards.)
I guess it depends on where you are whether it’s acceptable to talk about your wealth/status/privilege or lack thereof.
In my wealthy private school, it was unnecessary to actually state you were wealthy because you had to be to get in so people assumed you were until proven otherwise (I must admit, this is all seen from my rather jaded scholarship-student perspective). It became immediately obvious who had and who didn’t have when things like the formal (prom to north-americans) came around - some spend over a thousand on a dress, a couple of hundred on shoes, not to mention hair, makeup, limo to get there…
Others had a total budget of less than what the social queens spent on shoes, or didn’t actually attend at all because the tickets were $90 each.
Some got expensive cars on their 17th birthdays. Others rode the train every day.
This relates to the OP as follows:
While some of these people were stuck up little snobs, most were actually quite nice, if sheltered, people, who hadn’t really encountered many people outside of their social circle, where everyone had money.
They were genuinely surprised when people would say that they couldn’t come to Event X because it was too expensive.
I guess that kind of social interaction created some kind of insight into their good fortune, perhaps leading to some kind of guilt? shrugs I don’t know.
I have a good friend who looks plain “white”, as does her sister. Everyone, including me, is very surprised to find that their dad is east Indian. Not particularly light, either, a regular Indian-looking guy, unmixed.
Um no. Normal people don’t worry about “class wars” and other such bullshit.
First of all, it’s in poor taste to talk about how much money you have or make. It makes people uncomfortable. If a person has more money, there’s jealous. Less money, there’s guilt. People make assumptions based on money.
Second, people with money don’t want other people mooching off them. Coming around asking for money, expecting them to pick up the tab, etc.
Sometimes we sip shitty wine.
Everything is relative I guess
A few weeks ago a friend of mine set up a wine tasting fund raiser party in Manhattan. We aren’t wealthy or anything (except for a few of our friends who are investment bankers and traders) but we all make decent livings (well I’m not working but that’s neither here nor there). To some middle America family from “The Simple Life” we probably seem wealthy, talking about shore houses, what car so and so bought and reminiscing about wild college cocktail parties. Most of us consider ourselves pretty poor compared to the Trumps and Hiltons and Bloombergs of the world.
For people who are in an environment where there is a wide range of incomes and financial situations from super rich to broke, the general rule is to not talk about how much you make.
I agree it’s just in poor taste, even if someone asks you if you are wealthy. I also happen to dislike it when someone asks me how many carats my diamond is :eek: - I think that rather rude as well, so I generally avoid answering.