Are people like me middle class?

moggylover

diable wrote: »

Net worth 25 years salary?

Still middle class at best, because you can only be "born" to be upper class. You can't marry to "become" upper class, only to have "married into the upper classes" and you most definitely cannot buy yourself in: even if you think you have "they" won't think so;)

moggylover

diable wrote: »

I like nice restaurants and ballet.........

So do I, and the opera as well, but I also like pubs with loud rock music, motor bikes and fish and chips wrapped in newspaper:D

I am determined to defy classification! I am not a number, nor a stereotype;):D

bendix

I know I'm working class because despite earning a good salary and having decent savings behind me, I still prefer Spaghetti Bolognese out of a can than the real thing.

moggylover

bendix wrote: »

Up until 30 years ago, class largely determined by material wealth. Today it's largely shaped by attitudes, worldview and what you choose to spend your money on.

Most of the new middle class are poorer than the new working class. They will be teachers, public sector middle management, lecturers. But their world view will be vastly different. They will by books, instead of the Sun. They will spend a huge amount of their small income on a week in Provence or City Breaks to Budapest, instead of a week in Marbella.

Many of the working class - epitomised by Loadasamoney - likely have good money, particularly if they are semi-skilled, yet use it differently, think differently etc etc.

Class definitions are not what they used to be. Maggie changed that world for ever.

I honestly don't believe that is true even of 40 or 50 years ago tbh. I look back at the people I knew in my childhood and often those that were middle class had little money, and did not even always own their own home it was really just about standards, and the difference between professionals and the waged, not the amounts of money.

Being upper class has not been about having loads of money for generations now (if indeed it ever was) as many of the "best" families have been as poor as church mice for as long or longer than they were rich:). Furthermore, it is more about blood line than wealth, so you could be the "poor relation" but closely related, and still be "upper class" by birth. I don't honestly think that has changed in centuries:)

moggylover

bendix wrote: »

I know I'm working class because despite earning a good salary and having decent savings behind me, I still prefer Spaghetti Bolognese out of a can than the real thing.

Eeeew! That just shows a complete lack of taste in food:D

Eskimo12345

There seem to be a lot of posts questioning the way I spend my money. I know people who spend a grand to go on holiday every year - I choose not to and spend it on other things instead. A number of people suggest I should buy less toys and save more. I have thought about this many times and it does make sense. However, I work very hard for a living and I like to enjoy my money and spend it in ways that make me happy. I make sacrifices in other areas - I rarely go to the pub or go out to dinner and I make sandwiches for work every day. A quick calculation based on lunch at £4 and two trips to the pub a week at £20 a time, that's around three grand a year I save - more than enough for a few suits and another alarm clock

I bought the car because the quality is (in my opinion) streets ahead of most others in the same class, and it's rear wheel drive. Is it more expensive? Yes, very much so. Is it worth it? To someone who isn't passionate about cars, no, not at all. No way. For me, it was worth every penny. I drove a friends brand new focus the other day and it was, in my opinion, and judging it on my standards, god awful. I couldn't live with it as everything, the interior trim quality, the brake feel, the throttle calibration, everything made me wince. However, OTR price is a third of what my car was. Is my car, three times the price of the focus, three times better? No. Is it twice as good? No. However I feel the extra quality justifies the cost for what I want. There is no other car on the market that meets all I ask of a car and I am happy to pay the premium for something which I enjoy every single day.

I will try to illustrate this with an analogy: Is a £40 bottle of aftershave twenty times better than £2 can of body spray?

It was an interesting point someone made earlier about a £1200 watch. I have no interest in watches, my phone does the job remarkably well. But if someone likes their watches, and they can afford to spend that much on one, then I have no problem with it. I have a friend who spends a grand a month on flying helicopters, and although I wouldn't do it, I have no problem with him doing that as it makes him happy.

Loughton_Monkey

'Class' is meaningless these days.

This is because our concept of it dates back to very old times in which people's destimy was 99.9% controlled by birth. In other words you 'were who you were' when born, and there was no 'social mobility'. A Lord's children tended not to become poor, and a surf could never become rich....

These days it's totally different.

1. You can be born in a 'penniless' council house family. You can (a) retire on benefits, (b) early retire with penty of money, or (c) become as wealthy as Alan Sugar.

2. You can be born of 'landed gentry' and end up penniless, an alcoholic, a drug addict, or just an idle !!!!!!.

3. Irrespective of background, if you have money, you can spend it (a) In Ladbrokes, down the pub, and on a mobile home in Benidorm, or (b) Luxuriating in the Oberoi Hotel Bali, eating breakfast at the Ritz, and High Tea at Fortnum & Mason.

4. Irrespective of the above, you can talk and behave like an Essex !!!!!!, with the manners of a sewer rat, or speak like Prince Charles, have refined manners, and always know which knife and fork to use....

So how can you determine 'Class' from any of the above symptoms?

Beats me!

the.ciscokid

Eskimo12345 wrote: »

I grew up in a modest house with my two siblings and my folks. My old man worked full time all his life, office based on the same wage as shop floor folks. My old dear took a part time job when I was 16. The telly in the lounge was only replaced by my grandparents hand-me-downs when they got a new one as we couldn't afford to buy one; all our winter coats were presents from my grandfolks, who also worked all their lives. I worked part time to put myself through uni and only relied on the folks to feed & home me during the holidays.

Now, at 29, I have a good job and earned around £37k in the last 12 months. Last year I bought a three year old m sport beemer for 12k in cash. I live on my own in a large apartment in the middle of town, with a massive telly and £5k's worth of home cinema gear in the lounge. My alarm clock was £300, and I'm currently saving £500 a month towards a house. Nothing I've bought was ever on credit as it didn't take my degree in physics to work out that saving up for something is cheaper than buying it on credit.

Personally I reckon that due to my income and resultant lifestyle, I'm middle class. To be honest, compared to what my folks had I feel like I'm loaded beyond my wildest dreams. I buy new suits for fun. However my older mates at work reckon middle class means that mummy & daddy had so much money that you don't have to work, and so I'm still working class.

Whadya reckon, am I middle class? Or if you think I am still plain old working class, do I have a chance of making my (future) kids middle class by continuing to advance my career so I earn enough to buy their education etc so they will be?

You cannot "buy" class in my opinion, so for me the money aspect is pretty much irrelevant.

"Nouveau riche" is probably the terminology that suits this description of yourself best.

the_flying_pig

People are floundering a little bit with this question because there’s been no agreement over a definition of ‘MC’.


I quite like the word as it’s used in the US, as in to refer to people with incomes that are fairly close to [but quite often slightly above] the median… so maybe in the
UK that might be something like a salary in the mid twenties to mid thirties of thousands of pounds per year.


I very much dislike it as it’s used in the UK, with very vague connotations of a very different word such as ‘bourgeois’…


One word will often be a bit vague anyway. Each of the following tells you really quite a lot about someone:


(1) Secondary education, especially whether it was state or private;


(2) Higher education – did they have any? Of what type?


(3) How much money do they earn?


(4) What’s the value of the assets that they own?


(5) See question (3) but for their parents;


(6) See question (4) but for their parents;


(7) You could arguably repeat the above even for grandparents;


(8) Probably something about their tastes & behaviour;



One word can’t possibly tell you anything very meaningful about most people.


For me, if I were to use the word ‘middle class’ with its traditional UK connotations, higher education and income would be the two most important determinants of whether someone was middle class or not:

(i) I’d tend to view anyone who’d been to a fairly good university as ‘middle class’ unless they had a very low paid job; and

(ii) For someone who been to university at all to qualify as being middle class I’d tend to set the bar pretty high [what follows has a fairly ‘young’ bias – people born much more than 40-odd years ago tended to go to university far less, changing the picture quite a bit] … Certainly, for example, a completely uneducated tradesman who earned a packet through doing that wouldn’t qualify … I’d probably expect both of the following two conditions to be satisfied:

(a) high household income – probably close to double the national average or more; and

(b) capable of reading, writing, and speaking very well (e.g. to A level standard).

Loanranger

"Now, at 29, I have a good job and earned around £37k in the last 12 months. Last year I bought a three year old m sport beemer for 12k in cash. I live on my own in a large apartment in the middle of town, with a massive telly and £5k's worth of home cinema gear in the lounge. My alarm clock was £300, and I'm currently saving £500 a month towards a house. Nothing I've bought was ever on credit as it didn't take my degree in physics to work out that saving up for something is cheaper than buying it on credit."

Second hand car, a flat in a town centre, massive TV and home cinema adds up to being working class. 37K pa is hardly rich so nouveau riche doesn't apply.
Eskimo, if you need to brag on this forum about your recently acquired stuff then that's another indicator of being working class.

Are you a member of a professional body? That might help in your quest to be middle class.