[user104658]

Originally Posted by AnnieK

Up till the age of 11 we seemed loaded. I went to primary school in a rough area where most people were on benefits and had loads of kids but we were the typical 2.4 kid family, mum and dad worked, had a mortgage, we had a car, went on holidays (always in the UK but the best holidays), we went to Alton Towers and Blackpool at least once a year etc etc and I thought we were proper rich.

Then, I got a scholarship at a Grammar School and realised just how not rich we were. Some of the kids I went to school with were obscenely well off.

This sounds like my 9 year old; she has absolutely no concept of the fact that we aren't "rich folks" because she always has nice new clothes, we go on holiday a lot, always have the new games console / ridiculously expensive gaming PCs etc. (not that I inherited any tendencies from my dad ) ... but then she doesn't understand at all why we can't just send her to the local private highschool that some of her friends will be going to after primary, and that £18,000-a-year school fees are ... not within our price range ... when it's not an issue for some of her friends.

(thankfully) our own household income has tripled or more since my eldest was born and is still increasing year-on-year somehow, and touch wood. She doesn't believe me when I tell her that I was pushing her in her buggy 2 miles to town, in the rain, with holes in my shoes when she was 1 . Though I think everyone should be poor for a little while... I'll never forget not being able to run a car, or the blood-chilling panic of getting a measly £80 gas bill on the mat. That was enough to send me into a full on panic and now (****ing shamefully to be honest) we're in a position to have spent £80 on Starbucks in the space of 10 days . So I guess maybe I learned nothing from having no money as I clearly go through it like water now . Err...