If you grew up LMC/poor and now UMC/rich, do you have the same friends?

[Anonymous]

If you want to pay for your friends to vacation with you, do it! They will appreciate it! Just be respectful, don't attach strings to the offer, and make sure that they still get to have the vacation they want (ie, just because you pay for lodging/airfare, you don't get to dictate the schedule for every day of the vacation).

I grew up UMC and am still UMC, but not rich. My best friend grew up solidly middle class and is now rich. We went on a girls' weekend recently - she booked and paid for the (fancy resort) hotel rooms, it was lovely, and I appreciated it. I treated her to dinner a couple of times.

[Anonymous]

OP my husband and I have the same situation. We just like our old friends. The wealthy people we’ve met in DC are a little to into country club and showing off. When you come from my background, it’s a little distasteful. That being said, I seem to click better with “old money” which means inherited wealth but not so much that they are annoying, and good educational background.

[Anonymous]

We have a couple sets of extremely wealthy friends who like to vacation with us. We are UMC and are ok with occasionally spending 5-7k for a week’s vacation (extraordinarily lavish compared to the road trip/motel 6 vacations I grew up with) but they often stay at villas that are more like 20-30k per week. The couple times we’ve joined them we pay for travel and several meals and they cover the rental and the rest. We definitely appreciate their generosity. Occasionally we’ll go to events in other cities and they’ll stay at a boutique hotel or a Four Seasons while we’re at a Hilton or Embassy Suites. It’s definitely interesting to see up close how very wealthy people live!

[Anonymous]

We are much like you, started out MC now fairly wealthy. Sadly we have lost a few of our original friends. I think nor matter what you try, the large disparity in $$ is always a culprit. In order to "assimilate" with older friends, we don't propose activities that are out of their price range. In the few instances when we have offered to pay for a vacation, the other party were actually offended. Large disparity in wealth most definately causes a rift from our experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would plan things that your friends can comfortably afford. The type of travel that you can now pay for might not be on the list.

+1 this takes the awkwardness off the table. I have a college friend who is always making snippy remarks a out our different financial decisions. She would accept it if I payed for a trip. It would be fun. She would be passive aggressively resentful. And I'm not sure I want to introduce that into our relationship, so I don't offer. I do think about it every year or so and always come back to the same answer. Just do things within her budget, be grateful for what I have, humble, and sensitive.

[Anonymous]

Yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would plan things that your friends can comfortably afford. The type of travel that you can now pay for might not be on the list.

+1 this takes the awkwardness off the table. I have a college friend who is always making snippy remarks a out our different financial decisions. She would accept it if I payed for a trip. It would be fun. She would be passive aggressively resentful. And I'm not sure I want to introduce that into our relationship, so I don't offer. I do think about it every year or so and always come back to the same answer. Just do things within her budget, be grateful for what I have, humble, and sensitive.

I decided to not push spring break on the friends who can’t comfortably pay for the peak spring break prices.

I’m not sure how to handle the girls trip.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely. All of my friends go back more than 20 years. I feel new bonds cant be built older we get.

[Anonymous]

You can always get the anecdotal experience that you want to hear, but pragmatically, most people do cleavage on income lines. In the first place, it's unusual to have the same friends from childhood into adulthood, and self-made people are the people who tend to travel the furthest from their childhood origins so they're less likely to retain childhood friends. Money changes people. It always does. It's not inherently a bad thing, it is just what it is. You live in different areas, you take up different expenditures, develop different tastes and expectations, and that has great implications on your friendships and social network.

I'm in my early 40s and I've already seen a fair amount of separation by incomes as people's careers took different trajectories in their 30s. In our 20s we were united in being broke grad students or starting out at first jobs with loans. By late 30s the doctors and lawyers and finance gurus are in a fairly different place, economically, than the social workers and teachers. The houses are much more expensive, people can afford or even contemplate the prospects of private schools, cars are nicer, travel is nicer, and the day to day affluenza is significantly different. Your friendships dwindle to a phone call every now and then. You get to the point when you pick up the phone and then stop and hang up without dialing because it starts to be a bit embarrassing to suggest going out to dinner when you know they can't probably afford it. It happens, and it's just the way it is.

[Anonymous]

No, I moved from my childhood city and my oldest friends are now from grad school and doing well like me with a few exceptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP most of the newly wealthy people I know stick closer than ever to their old friends. There is a level of trust they can only find with the people who knew them before they had a lot of money.

OP who suggested the trip? How much have you talked about it so far? Will they feel bad if you try to pay for anything? Is the trip a one-time thing, or do you want to travel together regularly?

x1000000

The "new" "friends" tend to want handouts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can always get the anecdotal experience that you want to hear, but pragmatically, most people do cleavage on income lines. In the first place, it's unusual to have the same friends from childhood into adulthood, and self-made people are the people who tend to travel the furthest from their childhood origins so they're less likely to retain childhood friends. Money changes people. It always does. It's not inherently a bad thing, it is just what it is. You live in different areas, you take up different expenditures, develop different tastes and expectations, and that has great implications on your friendships and social network.

I'm in my early 40s and I've already seen a fair amount of separation by incomes as people's careers took different trajectories in their 30s. In our 20s we were united in being broke grad students or starting out at first jobs with loans. By late 30s the doctors and lawyers and finance gurus are in a fairly different place, economically, than the social workers and teachers. The houses are much more expensive, people can afford or even contemplate the prospects of private schools, cars are nicer, travel is nicer, and the day to day affluenza is significantly different. Your friendships dwindle to a phone call every now and then. You get to the point when you pick up the phone and then stop and hang up without dialing because it starts to be a bit embarrassing to suggest going out to dinner when you know they can't probably afford it. It happens, and it's just the way it is.

WTAF? Why not invite them over for dinner? Or slum it at an old haunt?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely. All of my friends go back more than 20 years. I feel new bonds cant be built older we get.

+1

People's motivations are different when you get older. Too many people in unhappy marriages. Rather spend time with people who came up at the same time, in the same place. We all have our struggles. Struggles with people you grew up with are different - not better or worse, but familiar - like your family of choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would plan things that your friends can comfortably afford. The type of travel that you can now pay for might not be on the list.

+1 this takes the awkwardness off the table. I have a college friend who is always making snippy remarks a out our different financial decisions. She would accept it if I payed for a trip. It would be fun. She would be passive aggressively resentful. And I'm not sure I want to introduce that into our relationship, so I don't offer. I do think about it every year or so and always come back to the same answer. Just do things within her budget, be grateful for what I have, humble, and sensitive.

+1

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up poor. My parents were poor immigrants. Dh is also a child of poor immigrants. We both studied hard, worked hard and now have a seven figure income and live in an affluent neighborhood. Many of our close friends are from when we were younger and starting out. They are all professionals but we earn more than all our friends.

While we socialize with new people, I personally like our old friends much better. I don’t know if it is just harder to make good friends when you get older or I just feel comfortable with people with less money.

If you grew up poor and now have money, do you hang out with the same friends?

Do you just pay for everything for your friends who have less money?

I like to travel. This is where I’m seeing the biggest discrepancy in lifestyle. Some old friends can’t or won’t book a trip when flight prices are too high (>$500). I would like to go on this trip with them. Should we just offer to pay for the whole thing? We have close friends who were in our wedding. We want to go away with them and they can’t go because flights will cost $4000 for their family. I think they wanted to spend $2000 or less on flights. Same with hotel. I strongly prefer to stay somewhere nicer. Should we just pay for the whole trip?

It's not about paying for them...Why not do something else with them? Why are you being "bratty" about it?

Insisting on taking a trip they cannot afford and insisting on staying somewhere "nicer".


We are a family of four. We have some friends who have more money than us and some that have less than us. With some we travel with others we go out to restaurants or day trips and others we have them over to our home for dinner.

I think you are a terrible "friend".