Downward social mobility - anyone worries about it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your child a boy or a girl? My teenager is a boy and I'm pretty sure his plan right now is to marry a woman that is ambitious. He's good looking so he probably has that luxury.

Impressive, Still in NW DC, so many stay at home moms who just gave up their careers.

I fight this thought every day when I drive into work exhausted, but I do it to show my kids if I am able, then I should work. Recently my 15 year old daughter told me she talked about me in her women's history class, how she is proud of her mom for juggling helping her succeed and her demanding job. That's priceless.

[Anonymous]

"Do not ask your children to strive" by William Martin

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Do not ask your children to strive" by William Martin

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Do not ask your children to strive" by William Martin

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing!

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you give to your DC's the best education in the world and they still can't succeed, an inheritance isn't going to make any difference (unless you have Elon Musk money).

Hmm... but being born into relative wealth and connections has been shown to be a major contributor to retaining class status (class in this context meaning same income bracket and general social circle). If you sense your kid isn't making those connections themselves, then you certainly can step in and try to help them. This is what families have been doing for ever.

One of my kids as an asocial form of high-functioning autism. He's smart, but cannot make small talk or network to save his life. I'm not quite sure where he's going to end up, but I certainly hope our money will keep him from poverty.

I don’t think a lot of you understand that young people don’t necessarily want their parents lifestyle, income level, and especially social circle. You should be hoping they make connections that suit them, not someone striving to be in a social circle like mom’s (this sounds horribly depressing).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone needs to be wealthy to be happy.

Right? The happiest couple I know is a firefighter instructor and an elementary school teacher.

And they probably grew up middle class with working blue collard parents.
They don’t know what they are missing

Tend to agree with this. I grew up genuinely middle class (not DCUM middle class) in a poor neighborhood. My parents still live in that poor neighborhood. There is nothing worth aiming for there. There is nothing redeeming about downward mobility.

If you lived in a poor neighborhood, how is that middle class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone needs to be wealthy to be happy.

Right? The happiest couple I know is a firefighter instructor and an elementary school teacher.

And they probably grew up middle class with working blue collard parents.
They don’t know what they are missing

As someone who grew up middle class and married into a wealthy family, I just want to say, they’re not missing anything. Wealth does not equal happiness. It can often open up a whole new world of insecurity, isolation, and misery.

Personally, we’ve raised our kids to be content with way, way less than we’re technically capable of giving them. And they are happy kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone needs to be wealthy to be happy.

Right? The happiest couple I know is a firefighter instructor and an elementary school teacher.

And they probably grew up middle class with working blue collard parents.
They don’t know what they are missing

Tend to agree with this. I grew up genuinely middle class (not DCUM middle class) in a poor neighborhood. My parents still live in that poor neighborhood. There is nothing worth aiming for there. There is nothing redeeming about downward mobility.

If you lived in a poor neighborhood, how is that middle class?

Because we had more money than most of the people around us? Not to say that we had a lot but many of them were on a fixed income or reliant on government benefits of some sort. There were a few other families like us. Most of those moved further out to a vinyl village which was safer but hardly desirable either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know nearly a dozen young people who have opted not to have kids because they feel they can’t afford them.

All of these young people grew up in nice homes with two loving parents, great schools, travel, etc. Despite having good educations and jobs, the cost of housing plus kids is just too much.

Only one of my kids is old enough to really worry about such things, and they’ve opted to not come back to the dc metro area after college because it’s too expensive.

None of my adult children came back to the DC area because of the cost of living and the awful traffic. And I don't blame them. They're thriving where they are and are happier being in an area with nicer people. I'm moving out west next year and I cannot wait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you give to your DC's the best education in the world and they still can't succeed, an inheritance isn't going to make any difference (unless you have Elon Musk money).

Hmm... but being born into relative wealth and connections has been shown to be a major contributor to retaining class status (class in this context meaning same income bracket and general social circle). If you sense your kid isn't making those connections themselves, then you certainly can step in and try to help them. This is what families have been doing for ever.

One of my kids as an asocial form of high-functioning autism. He's smart, but cannot make small talk or network to save his life. I'm not quite sure where he's going to end up, but I certainly hope our money will keep him from poverty.

I don’t think a lot of you understand that young people don’t necessarily want their parents lifestyle, income level, and especially social circle. You should be hoping they make connections that suit them, not someone striving to be in a social circle like mom’s (this sounds horribly depressing).

They may not want the same things, true. But they struggle mightily with reduced lifestyle/spending power when it hits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do you care if your kids have a downward trajectory - especially if they themselves don’t particularly care? It happens all the time. Family fortunes go up, and down.

+1
My family has been in the US since the Revolution. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the family’s fortunes since then. For some reason, wealthy people today seem to think that family fortunes stay intact over generations.

No, but it’s a lot easier to structure intergenerational wealth to help preserve it today than it was in the past. And the amount of financial education you can instill in your kids is much greater.

why would you think that?? the edwardians who had money had inherited that wealth from the 16th century and it was all lost in a period of 20-30 years. the world has become more unstable now than it was before ww1, not less and while a lot of brits pulled through the 1930s and 40's.. by the 50s their great homes that had been in their families for 400, 600 years sometime longer were schools, hospitals and housing estates. its absolutely not certain that americans or just white people in general will be able to hold onto their wealth in a rapidly decolonizing world. I know several landed and titled people and their holdings have only recently grown to anything like what they were before and with this new extreme inequality and rebellion against oligarchy.. it might all get taxed away again. And you cant just run and hide in thailand-- haven't you read Empire of the Sun?? I say decolonizing b/c the structures that allowed the exploitation of resources are being adequately challenged and changed now.. it hadnt really happened before. if there was one thing I learned from my jewish neighbors- its that the good times are never certain and you have to have back up plans and resilience in your back pocket.

Tell me you’re unfamiliar with trusts without telling me you’re unfamiliar with trusts.

Trusts exist because the law
allows them to exist. Laws can be changed. Mandami and the proposed billionaires tax in California show that socialism is on the rise and progressives are willing to tax (take) money that the government previously did not touch. We’re entering into a populist era in which making the rich pay “ their fair share” is a very popular position. Nothing is guaranteed in this life.

And that’s a good thing! We should not have billionaires! That’s a flaw of our society. I would love for my kids and future grandkids to be comfortable, but not like that. Teaching them the importance of thrift, savings and investing, and also, hard work and not taking things for granted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your child a boy or a girl? My teenager is a boy and I'm pretty sure his plan right now is to marry a woman that is ambitious. He's good looking so he probably has that luxury.

let us know how this works out please. i am not sure if that's what an ambitious woman would want. most of the ambitious succesful women i know want the same in a mate. we moved past wanting the good looking guys after high school.

Yea - I know several ambitious woman + unambitious SAHD pairings, and in absolutely every single case, the guy has serious family money.

I see the opposite a lot - ambitious, gold digger men who marry women who are not particularly ambitious but have rich parents. One man managed to snag royally, another an oil heiress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is your child a boy or a girl? My teenager is a boy and I'm pretty sure his plan right now is to marry a woman that is ambitious. He's good looking so he probably has that luxury.

Females who are ambitious only want ambitious males.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Young people have had to hustle since the beginning of time.

I don't know of any young people having to compete with the global elite.

The young people I know are working 2-3 jobs to complete their college educations. They are doing well now and buying houses.

I’m sorry, but this is completely tone-deaf.

1. Families are forced to fight for real K–12 education, not a dumbed-down curriculum, from the moment kids enter school.
2. Our kids then have to compete with international students for limited opportunities. How do you tell them, institutions prefer international students because of WHAT?
3. And even after that, they still face diminishing chances in the corporate America, which favors cheaper labor or just ships jobs overseas.

If you can’t see what Gen Z and our kids are up against, then you’re part of the problem.

We were shipping jobs overseas. Now we are encouraged to keep management jobs here and use AI. It’s basically like when the computer came - everyone said the jobs would go away. They didn’t - they shifted. Sure we don’t have personal secretaries anymore - those would be personal secretaries have shifted into management, tech, educators, and higher better paying jobs. Those type of jobs don’t exist for them in the 70s - job growth not loss

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you give to your DC's the best education in the world and they still can't succeed, an inheritance isn't going to make any difference (unless you have Elon Musk money).

Hmm... but being born into relative wealth and connections has been shown to be a major contributor to retaining class status (class in this context meaning same income bracket and general social circle). If you sense your kid isn't making those connections themselves, then you certainly can step in and try to help them. This is what families have been doing for ever.

One of my kids as an asocial form of high-functioning autism. He's smart, but cannot make small talk or network to save his life. I'm not quite sure where he's going to end up, but I certainly hope our money will keep him from poverty.

I don’t think a lot of you understand that young people don’t necessarily want their parents lifestyle, income level, and especially social circle. You should be hoping they make connections that suit them, not someone striving to be in a social circle like mom’s (this sounds horribly depressing).

They may not want the same things, true. But they struggle mightily with reduced lifestyle/spending power when it hits.

I totally struggled with this. Married after my PhD and DH wanted me to stay home and had kids right away. He was a researcher at NASA, so not exactly poor. But I’m from a more UMC background and was used to having more disposable income. Nine months later I got a really good job at a top corporate company (over 100k starting 25 years ago). I also pushed DH to leave NASA and enter the corporate world. We made a ton more money had kids and later in our careers had to fight multiple rounds of layoffs. Corporate companies really try to push out older people who are grandfathered in with pensions and 401k. Point is - kids WILL want the life they grew up with eventually. It’s uncomfortable to live anything else. FWIW my brother married into extreme wealth and is uncomfortable with many elements of his wife’s family due to their wealth - I think he would prefer her to be UMC like him - completely different mindset