My grandmother went from being unbelievably wealthy/powerful to being middle/upper-middle class. She had never cooked or turned on a stove before in her entire life (always had maids), never cleaned anything, never drove (always had a driver), never went outside the gates of her home without bodyguards, never had to push her own childrens' strollers(round-the-clock live-in nannies), never paid bills (always had a personal assistant), to having to do those things. It was a really hard transition.

Anonymous wrote:This is probably a far smaller "fall" than OP was thinking, but I grew up here in D, in a nice single family home in AU Park. We could afford private school, vacations, summer camp, etc.

Fast forward 20 years and my wife and I are definitely priced out of any of that. We own a house, but east of the river was all we could afford. We don't want kids but there is no way we could afford them even if we did, and forget about private school. We had to skip our (usually fairly modest) vacation this year because we don't have the money for it.

Is it disappointing that I can't have what I had growing up? Is it annoying when my relatives make ignorant comments about my lifestyle thinking that we still live in a city where a $100K HHI can let you live west of the park? Absolutely, but that's life. I don't feel entitled to anything simply because my parents had it. It's like that old line on the Cosby Show: "Your mother and I are rich, you have nothing."

Maybe one day I'll work my way up to that, maybe not, but my life is my life and the responsibility for what I have falls only on me, as does the responsibility for being happy with what I do have.

Yeah, we don't live the way my parents did (who had some inherited money but weren't so good at careers - I posted above) but I don't give a rat's ass. We have stronger and more successful careers and are paying our own way. And we live like boho yuppies - an expression from the 80s I think?. I love living in DC. I don't care that the furniture we bought is IKEA (interspersed with the inherited antiques) and that we have a crappy little house and that we hear gunshots now and then in the neighborhood. I have friendly neighbors and I have access to the entire city and all the great things it offers. I welcome the judgment of my relatives if they care to do that. My parents have passed away and they might be scandalized by how we live - but I just don't care.

Parents came from wealthy families and we grew up upper middle class. Sister and I went to good colleges and my brother decided to drop out and become a boat mechanic. Later when he had problems with high blood pressure, he had to quit working on boats (too hot) but he went on to nursing school and was a nurse for several years.

I always thought he was a smart guy who was doing what he wanted to do and respected him for it. In fact, my parents weren't too good at the career thing themselves (too much dabbling in different fields and relying on inherited money) and so when my brother went to diesel mechanic school and then graduated and got a job doing that, I really looked at that as an inspiration when I myself was struggling in graduate school. And when he couldn't be a mechanic anymore, he reinvented himself and became a nurse! Really impressive.

But....I think he always regretted not finishing college when he was young and he felt that he had not lived up to his potential. But that may have been a factor of his alcoholism that killed him at a fairly young age. It also was a factor in two divorces and him giving up parental rights to his children (huge mistake). So it's hard to separate that devastating impact of alcoholism on his sense of self from the fact that he didn't take a traditional upper middle class path.

But the alcoholism thing wasn't related to the class issues as far as I can tell. We have lots of alcoholics in the family of all class backgrounds.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs, where you can live a really nice quality of life (beautiful new home, great vacations, etc) without a huge income.

Now that I live in DC, I see so many friends who grew up UMC (with their dad working as a federal government attorney and their mom as a SAHM!) Now, it takes two incomes to get something even approaching the lifestyle they had growing up.

DC is so expensive! I like living here (and we have good HHI), but it does make me cringe to see so many people eeking by, when they could be living large elsewhere. There are a lot of other good places to live in the US.

I love the way people are always like, "Just move! You could be living so much better elsewhere!" without regard for the fact that a lot of people live in DC, not because they love the high COLA, but because their industry is based here and moving would require switching industries, passing another bar, getting re-licensed, etc. My job exists around major urban centers - there is no market for what I do in Minneapolis (nor do I want to freeze my tail off, if I did, I'd have moved to Canada long ago). Nearly everyone I know in my field who's moved away from DC, NY, Chicago, etc. has gone somewhere that there were one to three employers in the field, and when they got laid off, finding another job, even one not as lucrative, was very difficult. At least two are now doing remote consulting work for DC-based companies - for decent pay, but having to pay your own taxes and benefits.

And it's eking (from eke, not eek). Eek what the fainthearted say when they see a rodent.

Fair enough. But I do believe that several studies have shown that DC residents pay a larger share of their income for housing than do people in other cities. It's just a bummer, and people are missing out on having a nice house. My DH and I are also kind of "stuck" in DC, but I will encourage my kids to take into account, when choosing a career, how mobile that career might be. (For example, my brother is a doctor, and like most people in health care, can choose where to live.)

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs, where you can live a really nice quality of life (beautiful new home, great vacations, etc) without a huge income.

Now that I live in DC, I see so many friends who grew up UMC (with their dad working as a federal government attorney and their mom as a SAHM!) Now, it takes two incomes to get something even approaching the lifestyle they had growing up.

DC is so expensive! I like living here (and we have good HHI), but it does make me cringe to see so many people eeking by, when they could be living large elsewhere. There are a lot of other good places to live in the US.

I love the way people are always like, "Just move! You could be living so much better elsewhere!" without regard for the fact that a lot of people live in DC, not because they love the high COLA, but because their industry is based here and moving would require switching industries, passing another bar, getting re-licensed, etc. My job exists around major urban centers - there is no market for what I do in Minneapolis (nor do I want to freeze my tail off, if I did, I'd have moved to Canada long ago). Nearly everyone I know in my field who's moved away from DC, NY, Chicago, etc. has gone somewhere that there were one to three employers in the field, and when they got laid off, finding another job, even one not as lucrative, was very difficult. At least two are now doing remote consulting work for DC-based companies - for decent pay, but having to pay your own taxes and benefits.

And it's eking (from eke, not eek). Eek what the fainthearted say when they see a rodent.

I grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs, where you can live a really nice quality of life (beautiful new home, great vacations, etc) without a huge income.

Now that I live in DC, I see so many friends who grew up UMC (with their dad working as a federal government attorney and their mom as a SAHM!) Now, it takes two incomes to get something even approaching the lifestyle they had growing up.

DC is so expensive! I like living here (and we have good HHI), but it does make me cringe to see so many people eeking by, when they could be living large elsewhere. There are a lot of other good places to live in the US.

I recall listening to an audio book recently (Great Courses -- Money Management Skills by Professor Michael Finke), and I recall the author saying that being downwardly mobile is to be avoided at all costs because it usually does make people less happy. I thought I read (elsewhere) that this is what is causing many white middle-aged males to be depressed (at least more than normal).

My DH and I are better off than we were as kids, but we still live a frugal lifestyle. We could spend more, but we don't because we don't want our kids to get used to a really nice lifestyle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tanking your credit because of compulsive spending and refusing to go to counseling sounds like it's worth looking into a divorce. I'm sorry PP.

We have kids.

NP: Even still. Separate yourself from this crazy behavior. He may have some mental health issues, how knows, but refusing to get any help at all means it's worth consulting with a divorce lawyer, at the very least.

This is probably a far smaller "fall" than OP was thinking, but I grew up here in D, in a nice single family home in AU Park. We could afford private school, vacations, summer camp, etc.

Fast forward 20 years and my wife and I are definitely priced out of any of that. We own a house, but east of the river was all we could afford. We don't want kids but there is no way we could afford them even if we did, and forget about private school. We had to skip our (usually fairly modest) vacation this year because we don't have the money for it.

Is it disappointing that I can't have what I had growing up? Is it annoying when my relatives make ignorant comments about my lifestyle thinking that we still live in a city where a $100K HHI can let you live west of the park? Absolutely, but that's life. I don't feel entitled to anything simply because my parents had it. It's like that old line on the Cosby Show: "Your mother and I are rich, you have nothing."

Maybe one day I'll work my way up to that, maybe not, but my life is my life and the responsibility for what I have falls only on me, as does the responsibility for being happy with what I do have.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tanking your credit because of compulsive spending and refusing to go to counseling sounds like it's worth looking into a divorce. I'm sorry PP.

We have kids.

And your kids deserve to be financially secure. They are a reason to seriously consider your other options, not an excuse to stay in a bad situation. He is endangering their future with his reckless spending and debt hole he won't stop digging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in a very stable UMC family (grandparents were UMC, parents were UMC, I went to law school and was on my way to being UMC).

Then I bought into the "love is blind" crap and married someone who grew up poor, but through loans and scholarships put himself through law school, and secured a good job (not big law, but decent six figure income).

He has horrible, ingrained financial habits, that despite our high combined income (we make about the same amount of money), are tanking us financially.

I feel so stupid and ashamed.

Like what? Why don't you do 100% of the money management?

Because he won't let me. He took out credit cards in both of our names without telling me, and ran up about $40k in debt. I found out about them in April when I checked my credit report. He borrowed $50k against his 401k without telling me. He withheld his taxes as if he was head of household with three exemptions, and I didn't find out until I went to do our taxes. If there is money in the account, he spends it.

I have created a scorched earth budget to pay off the cc debt by the end of the year (I used savings to cover the tax bill), but I am afraid that when I pay them off, he will run them up again.

He will not discuss this with me, and he will not go to counseling. It is a nightmare.

This is not a money management problem, or a class problem, this is an honesty problem.

Agreed. And I would second a credit freeze and two card him into counseling

My husband had LMC roots and he's excellent at managing money.

I might go so far as to legally divorce him -- stay in the relationship, if you must, but someone who will not admit a problem, sneaks around to incur more debt, can't control spending, and won't seek help is going to take you down with him. I am also married to someone who grew up poor and had pretty much zero in the money management skills when we first got together (he says if you never have money, you never learn how to handle anything over what you need to survive), but he's a smart guy and learned quickly. He manages his portion of our yours-mine-and-ours arrangement differently (not necessarily worse) than I handle the mine and ours portions, but he's not a liability.

PP here. I did not mean to insinuate that as a rule, poor or LMC people cannot handle money. The man I married cannot handle money, and because I grew up never worrying about money, I didn't see the early warning signs. I was really naive.

I do appreciate everyone's advice though. I will look into a credit freeze. He flat out refuses counseling. I have asked repeatedly.

Oh, certainly didn't interpret your comments at LMC not being able to handle money! I do think that, when you don't grow up with it, there is a steeper learning curve than kids who get a fun-money stock account as a tween, though. My LMC spouse would completely agree with you that his financial knowledge was lacking and that he saw a lot of people in his poor community get a lump sum like an insurance/workers' comp settlement payment or something and blow through the whole thing in short order because they had no money management skills. Not universal, but not as ingrained from a young age as it is with UMC.

Good luck with whatever you decide. I'm so sorry you're in this situation. That's really tough.

Anonymous wrote:Tanking your credit because of compulsive spending and refusing to go to counseling sounds like it's worth looking into a divorce. I'm sorry PP.

We have kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in a very stable UMC family (grandparents were UMC, parents were UMC, I went to law school and was on my way to being UMC).

Then I bought into the "love is blind" crap and married someone who grew up poor, but through loans and scholarships put himself through law school, and secured a good job (not big law, but decent six figure income).

He has horrible, ingrained financial habits, that despite our high combined income (we make about the same amount of money), are tanking us financially.

I feel so stupid and ashamed.

Like what? Why don't you do 100% of the money management?

Because he won't let me. He took out credit cards in both of our names without telling me, and ran up about $40k in debt. I found out about them in April when I checked my credit report. He borrowed $50k against his 401k without telling me. He withheld his taxes as if he was head of household with three exemptions, and I didn't find out until I went to do our taxes. If there is money in the account, he spends it.

I have created a scorched earth budget to pay off the cc debt by the end of the year (I used savings to cover the tax bill), but I am afraid that when I pay them off, he will run them up again.

He will not discuss this with me, and he will not go to counseling. It is a nightmare.

This is not a money management problem, or a class problem, this is an honesty problem.

Agreed. And I would second a credit freeze and two card him into counseling

My husband had LMC roots and he's excellent at managing money.

I might go so far as to legally divorce him -- stay in the relationship, if you must, but someone who will not admit a problem, sneaks around to incur more debt, can't control spending, and won't seek help is going to take you down with him. I am also married to someone who grew up poor and had pretty much zero in the money management skills when we first got together (he says if you never have money, you never learn how to handle anything over what you need to survive), but he's a smart guy and learned quickly. He manages his portion of our yours-mine-and-ours arrangement differently (not necessarily worse) than I handle the mine and ours portions, but he's not a liability.

PP here. I did not mean to insinuate that as a rule, poor or LMC people cannot handle money. The man I married cannot handle money, and because I grew up never worrying about money, I didn't see the early warning signs. I was really naive.

I do appreciate everyone's advice though. I will look into a credit freeze. He flat out refuses counseling. I have asked repeatedly.

NP here and I would go straight for divorce for this. Honestly, if my husband ever cheated on me, I might consider working it out, but if you f*ck with my ability to support myself and our children, I'm out. Quick.

Anonymous wrote:I'm in that situation. My father was a surgeon in a small rural town. Growing up I had private school, extracurriculars, vacations to Vaillancourt and to europe. But my parents also really modeled living within your means, saving and not carying any kind of consumer debt.

Fast forward to now I work in education in my husband works in IT. We have a combined household income of around 120k. We''re pretty good at managing our money. I don't see myself as being poor or broke (I'm sure by DCUM standards I am). We live a pretty frugal life, splurge on some things and save on others.

I would say that my parents are pretty proud of me. I know that they had hoped I would become a lawyer but I think I would absolutely miserable doing that. Im.happy that I have a job that I love doing.

I love reading this! I hope my children find the same happiness and contentment you have!

Tanking your credit because of compulsive spending and refusing to go to counseling sounds like it's worth looking into a divorce. I'm sorry PP.