Well-off people have been sharing their privileged wake-up calls – 17 belated realisations of the wealthy

Comparing yourself to others is never a good idea, but sometimes it can result in wake up calls that perhaps you should have realised a long time ago.

This certainly seems to be the case with people who replied to a question set by Reddit user stoicjewel. Intrigued by people’s blindspots when it comes to their financial situation, they posed this question to the hive mind of r/AskReddit…

‘People who grew up with wealth, what was your “I’m privileged” wake up call?’

Here are the top answers from rich people who put down the caviar for five seconds to leave a reply …

1.

‘Realizing how having my college tuition covered by parents put me so much farther ahead than everyone else in the long term.’
-fattychalupa

2.

‘When I was a kid my best friend came to our house for the first time he kept saying “wow”.
He was really impressed that we had 2 TV’s, it embarrassed me enough that I didn’t tell him we had 4.’
-Underwater_Karma

3.

‘I took my friend to my parent’s cabin and he said “wow this is nicer than my house”’
-flpacsnr

4.

‘My parents are wealthy, but I grew up in a place where many of my peers parents were super duper crazy wealthy, so I had a really skewed understanding of wealth.

It was really eye opening for me when I went to college. I didn’t have to take out student loans, my parents were able to just pay for it, but I had friends who even with financial aid had to work their butts off year round to cover the cost of school. I realized pretty quickly just how privileged I was and that I did in fact grow up with wealth.’
-LilAsshole666

5.

‘We wanted to try the new rail transit system. Our friend’s driver dropped us off at one station, so we could get tickets and ride the train. When we got to the next station, we got off and proceeded to find our friend’s driver, who was waiting there to pick us up and take us home.’
-fluffymcflufffluff

6.

‘When I was confused about people on Maury complaining their spouse was at “the club,” and I couldn’t figure out what type of country club would let people like that through the front security gate.’
-Popular_Course3885

7.

‘Every summer, I went to 8 weeks of overnight camp, or some other cool summer program (30 day bus tour across western U.S., 3 weeks in Australia). I had no idea what those cost at the time!’
-blipsman

8.

‘At this point I already knew I was very well-off, but after I had gotten laid off for the first time a few years ago I took a break for about a month before diving into a job search. I was at the self-checkout at the grocery store next to a woman paying with food stamps. I had recently gotten $100,000 from my grandmother’s inheritance and it hit me “I’m unemployed, not even trying to find a job, and I just got a boatload of money because somebody else died. And she’s the one people think is the freeloader”.’
-RamblinWreckGT

9.

‘I was gonna say I realized how privileged I was when I spent a summer with my great grandmother in a small village in rural Hungary – no indoor running water, the only phone was at the church, and everyone came out to touch the rental car we drove there in. This was in the late 1980s.

But after reading some of the comments on here, I feel poor again, lol.’
-GoodGrrl98