Wealthy Southerners

[Anonymous]

Who do y'all think makes all the money on bourbon?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First off I need it to be clear that this is a post I spores out of harmless curiosity and not meant to create division. Second, if you plan to post in this thread simply to create an argument ("why do you care about money?" etc) I will not respond and I encourage others not to as well. I want to keep this thread on-topic and as civil as possible.

Ok! Now here is my question: what do southerners mean when they talk about their wealth, generally? I am an undergraduate from New York and have visited some of my old high school friends at southern schools this year: namely SMU, W&L and UT Austin. I saw a lot of preppy Greeks in luxury cars and many seemed to come from families with land and country club membership. However I'm uncertain what "wealthy" is in the South and obviously I'd never be rude enough to ask. In Manhattan the prep school I went to had kids with hundreds of millions or even billions. (I'm not one of them - upper middle class kid on scholarships and financial aid). So I tend to consider that "rich". I do wonder if these rich southerners I see are more in the $200,000-a-year range with a $400,000 house. Of course I'd never dream of asking anyone in real life! But I'm curious so I'd appreciate hearing from southerners here who can speak candidly since its anonymous.

Thank you!

I'm European and married an American with family from the South, although he grew up in the town of CC. His family is from Alabama, very old money. From my (limited) experience, they mean millions and millions, started from an original slave owner. 400K? No, they have 3MM vacation houses on Lake Martin. I went to an Ivy so I know a couple of billionaire kids and IMO the southern ones are snobbier and more exclusive. They also give a ton of money to politicians and they are hard core conservative. They have amazing furniture and table manners and throw great parties. They are also incredibly racists. The kids go to UVA and Princeton, then law school or big name consulting. All have guns and most of them are unlocked - DC1, then 8 years old, found a rifle in the laundry room. The women are very tall and blonde and skinny.

[Anonymous]

Did I read this correctly? Is this a college kid posting on a parenting forum? With 10 pages of discussion???
Please do not engage or indulge this CHILD!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in Dallas, and I can promise you that there are a shitload of extremely wealthy individuals here.

I miss Dallas! It's so much more glamorous than DC wealth.

OP, if you want to see a glimpse into Dallas wealth, watch the old, original version of Dallas (from the 90s). Should give you an idea of what you are dealing with.

If anything, it has only gotten more ostentatious and wealthy since then.

I WANT TO MOVE TO THE BIG D!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did I read this correctly? Is this a college kid posting on a parenting forum? With 10 pages of discussion???
Please do not engage or indulge this CHILD!

NP. I definitely posted on here pretty young (7 years ago). I was around 21.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to Forbes, 37 billionaires live in Texas. Micheal Dell leads the list at 17+ billion. That doesn't count the poor nine-figure folks. The fracking boom has been led by hundreds of independent oil companies. Texas is awash in serious money.

I went to one of the schools you mentioned. I had sorority sisters who shopped for their clothes at Paris fashion week. Yes, it is "new" money, but there LOTS of it.

Update: the most recent Forbes report shows 41 billionaires in Texas, led by one of the Waltons, at $30 plus billion.

The Walton’s reside in Arkansas and well worth over 200 billion dollars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

You are ignorant. The South was totally impoverished after the war and it continued until after the Depression. You need to read a book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD has received admission to some Southern schools that have these types of demographics, and reading this thread is a little disheartening. But it will be good for her to learn discernment and how to tolerate all kinds of people while still being herself, if anything. We're still waiting on scholarship and financial aid info to decide on where we'll send her.

Does anyone know if SMU has changed since this thread was started?

There are still rich people at SMU, but the majority of students are a normal mix, especially outside the Greek system. SMU gives good merit scholarships, which has drawn a lot of kids who need them. We have a DS there and the experience has been great.

[Anonymous]

Ask them if they have a family office. If they have a family office, they’re legit loaded. You can’t tell anything from cars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I come from old southern money. Cotton on my daddy's side. Lumber on my mother's. My parents have a beautiful home, but certainly nothing enormous. My mother drives a nice but not flashy car. My daddy has a truck. They travel quite a bit and give a ton of money to their church. Families in the south with old money don't talk about it. Ever. Everyone knows we have money because of our name. It would never, ever be the topic of conversation. If you met my parents in D.C. you would have no idea they had money. That's just the way they are.

The majority of students at Ole Miss- you know, the college dcum loves to put down - have more money than you could possibly imagine. Especially the ones from the Delta. Rich kids in Mississippi have no interest in going to an Ivy no matter how great their SATs and grades. They go to Ole Miss.

No one who knows me in Fairfax has any idea how wealthy my family is. I was raised never to discuss money...except on an anonymous internet board

Wow, very interesting. Do you think you could give us a ballpark figure of what kind of net worth your family has? Or what kind of net worth the "more money than you could imagine" Ole Miss folks have? Because I find it hard to imagine anyone in Mississippi having more than, say, $10 M...just because there doesn't seem to be a very healthy economy in that state and everything is so cheap. But I'm open to hearing otherwise!

I believe her. I've been through the Delta and the wealth there would shock you to your core. There is no in between. You're either filthy rich or extremely poor. Mississippi is always portrayed as the poverty state. Not so. There are pockets of wealth like you have never seen.

People in the South never discuss money. Not even with family. It's considered bad manners. Most of the wealthy there never flaunt that wealth either. Farmer Brown may be wearing overalls and driving an old pickup but that pocket is full and the only bank in town stays running because of his money.

This makes me laugh. They never discuss wealth but they live their racist history all day long. Been there, done that…puke

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Civil War did a number on the social classes. You've got some families that made their money in the late 19th century, and others who always had a Name (capital letter deliberate.) As PP's have pointed out most of the wealthy planters went bust after the War.

Basically it's the same thing as Downton Abbey, you had the titled class that wasn't always the monied class, and there was always a little bit of tension between the two.

There was also the good ol' boy class (lawyers, doctors, ministers, etc.) who were suitable for socializing to some extent but not marriage, the redneck class (the blue-collar types who didn't drink it away), and the white trash class.

Blacks had their more or less parallel system what with the high yellow folks, Jack and Jill, and other organizations where you had to be both colored and wealthy to join.

Of course today this has all blurred a bit (both within and between the races*), and plenty of planters figured out how to keep the estate together and helped themselves into both the titled and monied classes. Of course, you get grandkids that blow through the family fortune, grandkids that figured out how to buy in what's become the inner and outer suburbs of Atlanta and other growing cities, etc.

(*) The caveat that things like Ferguson Blue Gang aka Police Department make it all too clear to Blacks the challenges they continue to face, although now you get enough incidents of injustice against individual Whites but nothing like the Ferguson Blue Gang.

Please read this closely. This is someone typing on a keyboard in 2031/2022 talking about blacks with their parallel system. They have to be joking, right? I have family in the south: they are not!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

You are ignorant. The South was totally impoverished after the war and it continued until after the Depression. You need to read a book.

This. My family had a lot of land but not much money from after the civil war till about the sixties when practicing in law reaped some profits.

The land was from the native Americans, but that happened all over this country not just the south

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did I read this correctly? Is this a college kid posting on a parenting forum? With 10 pages of discussion???
Please do not engage or indulge this CHILD!

NP. I definitely posted on here pretty young (7 years ago). I was around 21.

Good for her! I think the more viewpoints/wider backgrounds the better. I’ve seen high school kids post on DCUM and thought it was great. I’d rather have young posters engaging in discourse than adults whose main focus is to tear others down (which doesn’t strike me as particularly mature behavior). I also welcome people who have never been parents, and who live outside the DC area. To me, this diversity keeps DCUM discussions vibrant.

This has been a surprisingly interesting discussion, and I’m glad OP started it. It exposed me to new information and perspectives I wouldn’t have thought to investigate otherwise.

[Anonymous]

I’m from Savannah and the old money is in the hundreds of millions range, the new money is in the tens of millions, and the comfortable are $500-$1M/annually with no substantially growing wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Less taxes, regulation and oversight = more wealth. Try it sometime, yanks.

More potholes, crappy schools, no decent public infrastructure. Oh, yeah, exposed powerlines, open drainage in upscale areas. Actually, by East coast standards the wealthy areas look poor and falling apart. Sigh, that's why everyone belongs to private clubs.... public spaces suck lemons.