Are you friends with people outside of your socioeconomic status?

[Anonymous]

I went to a top SLAC and my college friends run the gamut. One married a guy that didn’t go to college until they met in his mid twenties and they live in a small townhouse in Gaithersburg. Some friends were i bankers who married hedge fund husbands living large in nyc. Sometimes it can be awkward but it’s better to not talk about finances. Strangely, i feel most comfortable talking about finances with newer friends that are parents of my kids’ friends. We are in very similar financial situations which is nice.

[Anonymous]

I love interesting and kind people. The amount of money made is irrelevant. We are wealthy (wealthier than most people realize) and we have friends and family from all different socioeconomic statuses. I would be really sad if our close friends didn’t want to be our friends just because we have more money than them. They are fun, wonderful to be with, and have unique life stories. I learn a lot from them.
Maybe it’s because I grew up without money but I don’t judge a person by how much they make.

[Anonymous]

In their day my great grand parents on my mother's side of the family were the equivalent off BILLIONAIRES today.

So yes I am friends/relatives with people who could buy anything they want in cash.

I however do not consider myself wealthy at all.

[Anonymous]

Nope!
Almost all of my friends are UMC. I would be friends with anyone, though, they just need to be fun and make me laugh

[Anonymous]

Not really. There was a period when you could say I had a socio-economically diverse set of friends but that was due to different occupations rather than cultural factors. But when we grew out of our 20s into our 30s people really did start pigeonholing into their socio-economic niches. I'm UMC, just about all family and friends are UMC, the few people I knew who were genuinely rich and the few who were of lower incomes have drifted away. Inevitable, I suppose. But at the same time there's no real regrets either.

[Anonymous]

Who doesn't like rich friends? They buy designer bags for me and take me on vacations. This is just a bonus to the fact that they are kind, sweet, funny people who happen to have the time and resources to cultivate friendship. I'm lower to middle class but I love my Uber rich friends. I also love my poor artist friends. We don't have lots of money but we have lots of cultural capital.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not really. There was a period when you could say I had a socio-economically diverse set of friends but that was due to different occupations rather than cultural factors. But when we grew out of our 20s into our 30s people really did start pigeonholing into their socio-economic niches. I'm UMC, just about all family and friends are UMC, the few people I knew who were genuinely rich and the few who were of lower incomes have drifted away. Inevitable, I suppose. But at the same time there's no real regrets either.

When DC and NYC were middle income and lower income both cities were so much more fun than they are today.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Even within my immediate family, my siblings run the gamut from middle class to multimillionaire elite. Our extended family is mostly working class.

Friend-wise, I am mostly friends with other UMC and some wealthy. I'm also friends with some upwardly mobile working class (eg, hot nannies that end up marrying rich). I find that WC people with exposure to rich people are better candidates for friendship bc they understand we're all just people. WC problems revolve around money, so they can get trapped into the idea that people with money don't have problems, and that empathy gap doesn't allow for friendship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love interesting and kind people. The amount of money made is irrelevant. We are wealthy (wealthier than most people realize) and we have friends and family from all different socioeconomic statuses. I would be really sad if our close friends didn’t want to be our friends just because we have more money than them. They are fun, wonderful to be with, and have unique life stories. I learn a lot from them.
Maybe it’s because I grew up without money but I don’t judge a person by how much they make.

+1

I judge a person by how much of a people person they are. If they know how to get along, we're fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love interesting and kind people. The amount of money made is irrelevant. We are wealthy (wealthier than most people realize) and we have friends and family from all different socioeconomic statuses. I would be really sad if our close friends didn’t want to be our friends just because we have more money than them. They are fun, wonderful to be with, and have unique life stories. I learn a lot from them.
Maybe it’s because I grew up without money but I don’t judge a person by how much they make.

This is nice to read. We live in a small house in a lower to middle income neighborhood, and I am sometimes embarrassed to reciprocate playdates when people whose homes I've been to--and know how nice they are--come over. I don't want to *not* reciprocate, but I am definitely nervous when they come over with their kids. I feel that I must keep my modest house extra clean and neat, so that other parents feel better once they get inside.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a lower middle class kid (working class on the edge of poor) I was able to work the system well enough to sneak into the best universities in the US. I note this here, not as boasting, but affirming to you that, I have been to the place where the Nobel laureates live, and I was not impressed. I went to the places where prestige, privilege, and power reside.

I didn't like it. Something was seriously amiss, that educated people could function within the institutions of higher learning, while holding lower ethics, while acting "as if' the fictitious world on the inside were enough to deny the abuses of power outside. The systems of domination and control are maintained by the very people who claim freedom of thought and action. The system is maintained, not with sticks, but with the carrots of social and monetary capital.

The modern capitalist nation-state is maintained by a grand Faustian bargain, from the inside of the doctrinal system, and by violence of the physical variety for those on the outside.

I started out, as a child, on the outside. I manipulated my way into the inside, and I have ostracized myself back outside.

Outside is the only honorable place to be.

It has been my good fortune to meet my brothers and sisters on the outside, inside the universal community of cooperation, compassion and dignity.

Well said. Completely agree.