Upper middle class people- why don’t you want your kids to live a life of leisure?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UMC kids are not rich. Rich kids can be lazy. The reason you are upper middle class is because you do not have generational wealth.

DH is a specialized surgeon and earns ~$1.5m. I always tell our kids they have to work hard because we are UMC. We can provide them a good childhood and pay for their college and education but they have to work to support themselves and provide a good life for their future families.

We will be able to pay for college, grad school, wedding and a down payment on their house. Maybe their kids’ educations. They will not be trust fund babies who can afford not to work.

🙄🙄🙄

I believe it. If you do t want your kids to have to work a day in their lives, you need to be able to give them 10-20 million in their twenties.

WHY would you want your kids to not to have to work??? That seems like a recipe for complete disaster.

What do you think "life of leisure" is? I'm just answering the OP's question.

Some people mentioned "following their bliss" and "being a teacher" but those things don't go together imho. Teaching is actually an extremely hard job and you get zero thanks from anyone for doing it. Maybe the kids, if you're lucky.

[Anonymous]

Because I don’t want lazy, entitled kids. But they don’t have to be miserable and work 20 hours a day either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up lower middle class. Poor at times when I was very young. Things got better when my father got his college degree at age 40.

While I don't want my son to have to work super-hard, the reality is it's much easier to find a professional job that has health insurance and retirement options than something like a blue collar job or something in the gig economy. And to me, having health care coverage and retirement are the two ways to build and protect accumulated wealth. There are blue collar workers living the same life as me. Some with better houses and cars. But without the safety net, they risk losing much more than I do.

Having said that, I am accumulating wealth and I do plan to give as much of it as possible to my son so he doesn't have to work so hard. He'd love to be something like a paramedic (good choice, has both those safety nets) or mechanic (depends where he works).

This is why we should all focus on rebuilding the middle class. We focus too much on increasing safety nets for the poor and even further enriching the wealthy. And the middle class seems forgotten. To me, that's like cutting the middle rungs out of the ladder out of poverty. My family certainly depended on a robust middle class economy with all its opportunities.

You can't be serious. The middle class is truly the most delusional of them all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Type A and ambitious people tend to have ambitious kids with good work ethic. It’s not that the kids need to necessarily work as hard as their parents, it’s that they are naturally disposed to it because their parents have taught them how to work hard. Also many kids follow a similar path to their parents because that’s where they have mentors and connections.

This isn't true. It's truly a luck of the draw.

Look at all the upper middle class parent struggling with heroin addicted children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up lower middle class. Poor at times when I was very young. Things got better when my father got his college degree at age 40.

While I don't want my son to have to work super-hard, the reality is it's much easier to find a professional job that has health insurance and retirement options than something like a blue collar job or something in the gig economy. And to me, having health care coverage and retirement are the two ways to build and protect accumulated wealth. There are blue collar workers living the same life as me. Some with better houses and cars. But without the safety net, they risk losing much more than I do.

Having said that, I am accumulating wealth and I do plan to give as much of it as possible to my son so he doesn't have to work so hard. He'd love to be something like a paramedic (good choice, has both those safety nets) or mechanic (depends where he works).

This is why we should all focus on rebuilding the middle class. We focus too much on increasing safety nets for the poor and even further enriching the wealthy. And the middle class seems forgotten. To me, that's like cutting the middle rungs out of the ladder out of poverty. My family certainly depended on a robust middle class economy with all its opportunities.

You can't be serious. The middle class is truly the most delusional of them all.

if you read the rest of what they wrote, they're right. Healthy countries need a robust middle class (not 300k hhi UMC, actual middle class). Moving to an economy with in increasingly large LMC at the expense of previously solid middle class jobs and an increasingly better compensated UMC (but not necessarily larger) and UC is not a good sign if you want a functioning society

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up lower middle class. Poor at times when I was very young. Things got better when my father got his college degree at age 40.

While I don't want my son to have to work super-hard, the reality is it's much easier to find a professional job that has health insurance and retirement options than something like a blue collar job or something in the gig economy. And to me, having health care coverage and retirement are the two ways to build and protect accumulated wealth. There are blue collar workers living the same life as me. Some with better houses and cars. But without the safety net, they risk losing much more than I do.

Having said that, I am accumulating wealth and I do plan to give as much of it as possible to my son so he doesn't have to work so hard. He'd love to be something like a paramedic (good choice, has both those safety nets) or mechanic (depends where he works).

This is why we should all focus on rebuilding the middle class. We focus too much on increasing safety nets for the poor and even further enriching the wealthy. And the middle class seems forgotten. To me, that's like cutting the middle rungs out of the ladder out of poverty. My family certainly depended on a robust middle class economy with all its opportunities.

You can't be serious. The middle class is truly the most delusional of them all.

80% of people think they’re middle class (which I suppose isn’t wrong, maybe middle class is the 10th to 90th percentile incomes).

[Anonymous]

DH and I were MC people who through some lucky breaks and education are now among the top 5%. However, top 5% in DC is actually not that much richer. It is probably a MC lifestyle in DMV. Our mentality remains that of an MC person, in that, we value a lot of intangible things more than we value material things. That has prevented us from being rich or UMC and instead we are just DMV MC. Now, the truth is that we will be providing for my kids college education. Perhaps pay for their modest weddings, certainly their first cars, maybe the down payment for their condos. But most of all we will be there to ensure that my grandkids are looked after so that my kids can carry on with their career and not have to choose to become a SAH parent like I did.

Personally, I don't think of my choosing to being a SAHM a sacrifice because it has yielded two happy and well adjusted, high performing kids and I did not miss out on the short time the kids are with us. So no regrets. But I do have a very clear-eye understanding now about what hidden opportunities and paths are available for rich kids that DH and I did not have growing up, although we were able to provide some of it to our own kids when we had a good HHI. Our big contribution will be in the way of providing childcare. Our kids are going to be very much like what we are. In that, they will also want a good standard of living, they will be financially savvy and they will also want their children to be well looked after and excel at school.

At this point, a life of leisure is not a life where you do not have a job or a task. For us, a life of leisure is having impeccable and trustworthy help in raising your family, having time to look after your health, be able to pay for kids education and enrichment, not be a financial burden on anyone in your old age, be able to afford a home, college tuition, nanny, health care, retirement.

In our opinion an educated and informed SAHP or grandparent(s) who can provide (or supervise) childcare, counselling and direction to kids and grandkids remains a secret weapon for the advancement of the careers, earning potentials and peace of mind of the whole family. YMMV.

A life of leisure for us is having a strong support network that helps all generations, provides safety, security and options and helps in creating and preserving wealth for greater good of the family rather than one individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Incomes are so bifurcated now. It’s difficult to find a career with normal hours that pays enough to afford the UMC lifestyle. Yes, you may ultimately land a well-paying job with good hours, but getting there requires big sacrifices earlier on. Long gone are the days when kids could graduate from any college into a 40 hr/week career with a pension.

Best comment in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well yeah, UMC kids go into finance and VC and such which is much more chill than medicine. Only immigrants and LMC go into medicine.

cite? I used to work in an administrative role at a medical school, just for a year and a half, and I saw the opposite. in fact one of the big efforts when I was there was to get more income diversity because it was almost overwhelmingly kids from well-off backgrounds at our school. And I did a little research as I was contributing to some of these efforts and that seemed to be pretty consistent across medical schools.

UMC have money to put their kids through med school or other high priced schools plus UMC kids can focus solely on school work and residency without having to get another job to support themselves.

Scholarships don’t cover everything


Kids from UMC have all the advantages, tutors from k-12, higher test scores, less stress from home life… money




Black and brown kids are don’t have these privileges

Wow. There are more poor white children than poor black and brown children. You do realize that there are PLENTY of poor and lower middle class white children who don't have these privileges either?!

I'm sure you're a liberal saying dumb stuff like this. SMH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my medical school class, many of the kids had parents of high incomes (lawyers, doctors, engineers) end yet they embarked on an unrelenting career path with crazy hours. Same with my husbands law school class- some many children of big law partners going into big law. Why? Why would you want your kids to suffer like you did? I’d never want my kids to go through the abusive medical training- I did it so she wouldn’t need to. Not understand why a parent would want these careers for their kids.

For the status AND $$. Why is this hard for you and anyone else to figure out? Law is a nasty, soul sucking work but
pays well. Medicine is rough and dirty work but pays well, recession proof employment, and status of being the Doc.
There is no other reason to pursue these professions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well yeah, UMC kids go into finance and VC and such which is much more chill than medicine. Only immigrants and LMC go into medicine.

cite? I used to work in an administrative role at a medical school, just for a year and a half, and I saw the opposite. in fact one of the big efforts when I was there was to get more income diversity because it was almost overwhelmingly kids from well-off backgrounds at our school. And I did a little research as I was contributing to some of these efforts and that seemed to be pretty consistent across medical schools.

UMC have money to put their kids through med school or other high priced schools plus UMC kids can focus solely on school work and residency without having to get another job to support themselves.

Scholarships don’t cover everything


Kids from UMC have all the advantages, tutors from k-12, higher test scores, less stress from home life… money




Black and brown kids are don’t have these privileges

Wow. There are more poor white children than poor black and brown children. You do realize that there are PLENTY of poor and lower middle class white children who don't have these privileges either?!

I'm sure you're a liberal saying dumb stuff like this. SMH.

Yeah no. In absolute numbers maybe, but white children have a way lower poverty rate than black and brown children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my medical school class, many of the kids had parents of high incomes (lawyers, doctors, engineers) end yet they embarked on an unrelenting career path with crazy hours. Same with my husbands law school class- some many children of big law partners going into big law. Why? Why would you want your kids to suffer like you did? I’d never want my kids to go through the abusive medical training- I did it so she wouldn’t need to. Not understand why a parent would want these careers for their kids.

For the status AND $$. Why is this hard for you and anyone else to figure out? Law is a nasty, soul sucking work but
pays well. Medicine is rough and dirty work but pays well, recession proof employment, and status of being the Doc.
There is no other reason to pursue these professions.

Law is t14 or bust in 2021. Frankly I’m surprised to see it listed next to medicine. However full rides are more common for law school.

[Anonymous]

OP here so it sounds like most of you are pushing your kids into long hour/ high stress careers? Will you be disappointed if they decide to be artists?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well yeah, UMC kids go into finance and VC and such which is much more chill than medicine. Only immigrants and LMC go into medicine.

cite? I used to work in an administrative role at a medical school, just for a year and a half, and I saw the opposite. in fact one of the big efforts when I was there was to get more income diversity because it was almost overwhelmingly kids from well-off backgrounds at our school. And I did a little research as I was contributing to some of these efforts and that seemed to be pretty consistent across medical schools.

UMC have money to put their kids through med school or other high priced schools plus UMC kids can focus solely on school work and residency without having to get another job to support themselves.

Scholarships don’t cover everything


Kids from UMC have all the advantages, tutors from k-12, higher test scores, less stress from home life… money




Black and brown kids are don’t have these privileges

Wow. There are more poor white children than poor black and brown children. You do realize that there are PLENTY of poor and lower middle class white children who don't have these privileges either?!

I'm sure you're a liberal saying dumb stuff like this. SMH.

Yeah no. In absolute numbers maybe, but white children have a way lower poverty rate than black and brown children.

+1. pP pulled that “alternative fact” out of her fake book of white victimhood

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here so it sounds like most of you are pushing your kids into long hour/ high stress careers? Will you be disappointed if they decide to be artists?

OP-as others have pointed out, we push our kids because we want them to have a better life than we had ourselves. Careers are uncertain and being UMC does not imply a huge transfer of generational wealth. If my kid wanted to be an artist, I would be somewhat concerned because other than teaching art, most artists struggle to make a living. But I think most of us just want our kids to be happy so if they truly want to be the next Picasso, I would help buy the paint.