Are you from a well-to-do family?

TheBiz

Financially stable is the word I'd use, no pulling power, no influence just my dad working long hard hours at a job he was lucky to get with no degree and my mother having a tough upbringing, work is her nature.

I noticed we had a bit more money than others because we had a holiday home, but then again the other Irish in the estate were all teachers. One of the locals asked if my father was a surgeon. I was kind of shocked why he'd assume that. Apparently the majority of the locals who own homes in the estate were medical professionals, closer to the beach there are business owners, politicians and army generals.
We felt relatively middle class, middle of the road in comparison so to find out our neighbours we're doctors came as a shock.
That's when I realised by most people's standards we're comfortable but I never felt rich because me and my siblings were never led to believe that anything was free. You had to work smart and hard to get anywhere in life.

Hugo Stiglitz

Fairly normal family, albeit on the poorer side years back. We never went without food or clothes, but stuff like lots of expensive toys and consoles weren't really available.

DM addict

I don't know that I ever would have classed my upbringing as "well-to-do", but we were certainly financially comfortable. Less so when I was a kid, but my Mum didn't have to go back to work after my little brother was born, we had foreign holidays and went to private school.

Don't think we ever had "pull" in the community, or anything like that. Possibly that's more to do with growing up in a large-ish UK city.

Teyla Emmagan

Well to do people don't hire bouncy castles.

Teyla Emmagan

Why at 7am in the morning am I trying to annoy people?

Bouncy castles are still super naff though.

FizzleSticks

This post has been deleted.

Sam Kade

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

There is no absolute figure. Its probably more about how much money passes through the family than what they have

Static funds and property only help to a point

I have plenty money passing through, only problem it doesn't want to stay very long.

Olishi4

No I didn't come from a well to do family but we never really did without.

For some reason though, I don't know but people think I'm posh I always, from when I was a little girl, had comments about being posh. Sometimes negative ones where someone referred to me as a yuppie which I'm not at all and sometimes just joking things like on a hens night they had these badges with names and I'd be assigned "posh tottie". Even the other night someone made a comment.

I don't think I have any specific feature that looks posh and I speak in a fairly neutral accent. It's not a strong Dublin accent or a D4 accent. Not sure what it could be, mannerisms or posture or something.

lawred2

My folks were from land owning farming backgrounds but neither would inherit so ultimately started out in life with little.. Pretty much everything went to elder siblings. That's 'the way it was(is) done' apparently.

However what they did have going for them is that their Dads would have had 'local' influence so Dad ended up working in the bank and Mom with the civil service.

However Dad was a traditionalist (and maybe a bit of misogynist) and ultimately my Mum left the workforce after getting married. That was what I would consider stupid. But today's norms didn't apply I suppose.

My Dad always wanted to work for himself. He didn't enjoy the bank. So he subsequently left that but his attempts at striking out on his own have had mixed success including a period of effective bankruptcy where the family home was lost. And there is now no family home. My parents are in rented accommodation for the last 20 years nearly. Just a litany of bad decisions and even worse outcomes.

Had Dad stayed with the bank and Mum with the civil service; they would be laughing now as opposed to where they are.

One thing they made sure of however was that the three of us made it through 3rd level education. So can't fault them for that.

So yeah I suppose; we came from a reasonably 'well to do' background but I don't think it worked out too well for my folks. It's not always a golden ticket. You have to make the most of it too.

lawred2

Olishi4 wrote: »

No I didn't come from a well to do family but we never really did without.

For some reason though, I don't know but people think I'm posh I always, from when I was a little girl, had comments about being posh. Sometimes negative ones where someone referred to me as a yuppie which I'm not at all and sometimes just joking things like on a hens night they had these badges with names and I'd be assigned "posh tottie". Even the other night someone made a comment.

I don't think I have any specific feature that looks posh and I speak in a fairly neutral accent. It's not a strong Dublin accent or a D4 accent. Not sure what it could be, mannerisms or posture or something.

I used to read a lot (A LOT) as a child so I suppose I had an advanced enough vocabulary..

I remember some lads would sneer at me for using 'big words' and call me posh... I genuinely wasn't trying to do anything but have a conversation.

They would actually make me feel embarrassed.

No-marks

Zubeneschamali

I come from what I consider a well-to-do family - father with a steady job, house in the suburbs, food, clothes. All of the kids finished school and University and all of us got work soon afterwards.

But no-one had an ounce of pull or influence. I certainly had advantages growing up, but not that kind.

Bored_lad

Bored_lad wrote: »

Come on it's 2016 like Ireland's never really had a class system so let's not try and create them...............

Not really true, anyone who can afford to send their sprogs to fee charging secondary school is well to do imo.

Relative to all who have lived throughout human history, yes, I grew up in utter luxury.

Vladimir Putin

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

The well-to-do family is a peculiar concept in Irish society and your actions will be judged by others taking into consideration on whether you're from a well-to-do family or not. No doubt the British are to blame for foisting this concept upon us with their elaborate class system they have back home.

Being from one also yields certain benefits. If you land up to the only manufactuerer of bouncy castles in the county looking to purchase a few bouncy castles for a bouncy castle rental business you're setting up you'll be given credit and discounts, where as yer man from the terrace who tries to buy a bouncy castle will probably be told to f*ck off. Likewise if you land up to the local FG TD for a favour or the priest for some indulgences the door is always open and you'll quickly be able to get things done.

If you have anything to offer you'll be on the preferred suppliers list for the local school, the GAA club, the church and the council. Even the local shops will be trying to buy stuff off you. Lads from well-to-do familes will have a horde of girlies chasing after them for the road frontage they're about to inherit, their contacts and political clout.

Have you leveraged the benefits of being from a well-to-do family, or know anyone who has? Perhaps maybe you have brought shame to one, or know a tale of someone from a well-to-do family who went rogue.

Anonymous poll so you can own up in peace

I don't know about being the preferred supplier of any of those bodies it's all about being the cheapest now in this country. If being well off is going on lots of family holidays & eating out all the time then yes i come from a very wealthy family and because of that extravagance i was beaten down @ school by all & sundry including the teacher's so left @ 14 with nothing went to work @ my dad's company where i spent too long realising he was twice as cracked as all the begrudgers so left him went off married the wrong woman just after the recession hit. My parents were separated well before then & my father basically closed down the business & borrowed against all his property to stop my mother from gaining anything in the divorce which was 10 years coming thanks to the corrupt Irish legal system. By that time he didn't have a bob on paper and was busy travelling the world with his eastern european girlfriend who loved spending his money. The whole time all this was going on i was in a foreign country working a normal job because there was none @ home. My mother ended up with very little and my father's health was failing i too separated from my wife & was in no better shape but held on in there & worked hard & saved. My father since died this year & had many friends @ his funeral all of which thought he was a very wealthy man and looked @ me like I'd won the lotto. After everything he left nothing but the friends who thought he was wealthy which is ironic as he never really was as he kept living the extravagant lifestyle that millionaires in this country are too mean to live i guess that's how they have & maintain there millions greed & meanness. I regularly get asked are you a wealthy man now just yesterday my uncle asked & i had too explain the lack of wealth yes it is very hard to change the minds of the begrudgers but well worth it as i do believe the post is completely wrong to suggest that coming from a well to do family gives you some advantage on the contrary i think it puts you @ a total disadvantage as the jealousy of the begrudgers will always put you down. As i well remember now when i queried a price one day in a well known supplier & was rebuffed with shur your owld lad's rotten with money. My father did himself no favours in life or business by living the life of extravagance just fulfilled his own selfish appetites & be damned the begrudgers & the family shur they'll be grand huh. I'm working a job now & have nothing to show for all the talk of wealth but an old badly built house. Never forget talk is cheap & so are people that speak of wealth.

I really don't care about how wealthy someone is, but it is nice to see a person further themselves through education or sheer hard graft.

I also disagree that wealth entitles a person to special favours in Irish society, generally speaking. Compared to the UK, we are a relatively equal society without harsh class divisions, especially in rural Ireland.

Class structures are more entrenched in urban centres, but even then, I think we all like to see people from poor backgrounds 'get on' in life.

I'm always far more impressed when I meet professionals and graduates from poor areas of Dublin than when I meet some Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell , 6th generation banker of Bank of Ireland.

It says a lot about a person when they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and it's always a shame when professionals of modest beginnings are so diffident about their backgrounds, and even worse, turn their back on their origins.

mariaalice

Would come from what my mother would refer to as a respectable family, I suspect the op comes from a rural area.

A respectable family is difficult concept to describe it has nothing to do with money and more to do with behaviour and doing your best for you family, being from a respectable family means having standing in the community.

We would have been well off enough growing up but the big thing for my mother was being discreet with anything you had and if you helped anyone out you did it on the quite and never said anything.

Wibbs

I suppose, kinda yeah. I came from it and didn't so to speak. My father's side had lotsa cash with large land holdings. "Old Dublin family" type. My mother's were less well off by comparison, but her family were well above the average given her grandparents were taking foreign holidays way before the package holiday came along(France in 1900, Rome in 09 sorta thing). Both sides of the family privately schooled, more third level graduates than not. My father's side would have had more influence, but by the time I came along the majority of their cash and cache had dissipated. That can happen quite rapidly. A couple of dissolute heirs can blow through the lot in double quick time. Inheritance taxes and squabbles can kill things too. And as lawred2 noted in the landowning/farming game it's generally the eldest gets it, the rest are adrift. Growing up I knew one family who went from fabulous wealth(for Ireland pre tiger stuff) to council houses in not much more than a generation.

Wibbs

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Class structures are more entrenched in urban centres,

Aye and never mind that in Ireland and especially Dublin vanishingly few would have not come from modest means themselves not so long ago.

Dyr

bad_doctor wrote: »

you didnt get lucky with property , you made good decisions

I know a few lads my age who were in the army, what worked for them was that they made a wedge of money out of tours and what not while they were still young and then bought a house way before the boom which then skyrocketed in value as Dublin built up around them.

Dyr

lawred2 wrote: »

My folks were from land owning farming backgrounds but neither would inherit so ultimately started out in life with little.. Pretty much everything went to elder siblings. That's 'the way it was(is) done' apparently.

However what they did have going for them is that their Dads would have had 'local' influence so Dad ended up working in the bank and Mom with the civil service.

However Dad was a traditionalist (and maybe a bit of misogynist) and ultimately my Mum left the workforce after getting married. That was what I would consider stupid. But today's norms didn't apply I suppose.

Probably not your old man, back in the day women had to leave the civil service when they were married/had kids

It was fairly misogynistic but it had a practical element. Families only need one bread winner back then so it was freeing up a public sector job for a younger person/couple.

Vladimir Putin

Wibbs wrote: »

I suppose, kinda yeah. I came from it and didn't so to speak. My father's side had lotsa cash with large land holdings. "Old Dublin family" type. My mother's were less well off by comparison, but her family were well above the average given her grandparents were taking foreign holidays way before the package holiday came along(France in 1900, Rome in 09 sorta thing). Both sides of the family privately schooled, more third level graduates than not. My father's side would have had more influence, but by the time I came along the majority of their cash and cache had dissipated. That can happen quite rapidly. A couple of dissolute heirs can blow through the lot in double quick time. Inheritance taxes and squabbles can kill things too. And as lawred2 noted in the landowning/farming game it's generally the eldest gets it, the rest are adrift. Growing up I knew one family who went from fabulous wealth(for Ireland pre tiger stuff) to council houses in not much more than a generation.

Very true i was born a millionaire as people like to tell me but before i could inherit the lot was squandered. The only wealthy people i know of are the ones that live like they've nothing & never enjoy a bob of it that's how there rich & stay that way. Get busy living or get busy dying your choice ( thanks fity cent lol ðŸ˜)

PistolsAtDawn

Stealthfins wrote: »

Most so called " well to do people"
have only the light in the fridge,no food or drink's...
They drive fancy cars wear fancy clothes,and powder their nose....

They constantly live on the poverty lion,only wishing for the tiger to come back.
And usually spend a few hours with the quack...

I call them ligers or liars.

Strange bunch living on a wild animals.

Also, would 'Tigers' be more appropriate than 'ligers'? Just a thought

Walter H Price

We were hardly Millionaires , but were very comfy always had a few good foreign holidays a year , trips over to the UK for football or shopping , 4 bed semi D in a nice estate in the North County and 2 new cars. had the option to go to private school but turned it down , my sister went to one though.

Never wanted for anything that's the main thing.

Corkgirl18

FizzleSticks wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I definitely wouldn't make that generalisation and call all those struggling families dysfunctional. We definitely deal with a fair amount of dysfunctional families but there are families not at all affected by this but seriously struggle to look after their kids due to poverty. Many of these parents send their kids to school early so they can avail of Breakfast Club. Some have had their water turned off. Each situation has to be treated totally separately.

TheBiz

I get called posh often enough actually. I'm not excessively well off, nor am I from D4. But My mother is English, so I picked up certain things (or should I say 'fings') I also love reading, not just novels but articles and basically all pieces of literature, age appropriate or not, so I use big words.
My friends will introduce me as 'the posh lad' or say something like 'he's loaded!' I'm not, I just have a large vocabulary and a nice upbringing.

CruelCoin

Aurum wrote: »

This comic is a great, succinct illustration of that privilege.

Two years ago, i worked a 50 hour week, commuted 6 hours to college, 9 hours in college, 12-15 hours assignments and revision. No free-time, very little time to give to my partner, 5 hours sleep a night. Came out best of class, beating everyone, including the full-timers who had no daytime job (daytimers were comprised entirely of of social recipients).

The idea posed in the cartoon that bad grades automatically follow having to study on top of work is simply nonsense.

The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you're made of, not the circumstances.

CruelCoin

TheBiz wrote: »

I get called posh often enough actually. I'm not excessively well off, nor am I from D4. But My mother is English, so I picked up certain things (or should I say 'fings') I also love reading, not just novels but articles and basically all pieces of literature, age appropriate or not, so I use big words.

I know the feeling.
I live in an area where "bejorah me jaysus, he's the 7th son of a 7th son and he has the cure of the tooth" is accepted wisdom.
My entire family is painted as posh ****s for working, going to college and not having a culchie accent.

steddyeddy

CruelCoin wrote: »

Two years ago, i worked a 50 hour week, commuted 6 hours to college, 9 hours in college, 12-15 hours assignments and revision. No free-time, very little time to give to my partner, 5 hours sleep a night. Came out best of class, beating everyone, including the full-timers who had no daytime job.

The idea posed in the cartoon that bad grades automatically follow having to study on top of work is simply nonsense.

The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you're made of, not the circumstances.

Ah it's both dude. I'd say support at home helps a lot too.

mariaalice

CruelCoin wrote: »

Two years ago, i worked a 50 hour week, commuted 6 hours to college, 9 hours in college, 12-15 hours assignments and revision. No free-time, very little time to give to my partner, 5 hours sleep a night. Came out best of class, beating everyone, including the full-timers who had no daytime job.

The idea posed in the cartoon that bad grades automatically follow having to study on top of work is simply nonsense.

The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you're made of, not the circumstances.

But it is easier to do well if you are supported and if your choices are not always framed by not having money. I am delighted for you doing so well but you cant extrapolate from that to everyone in the same situation, but you are right in the sense that some people user the excuse of their background for why they didn't do well.

eviltwin

CruelCoin wrote: »

Two years ago, i worked a 50 hour week, commuted 6 hours to college, 9 hours in college, 12-15 hours assignments and revision. No free-time, very little time to give to my partner, 5 hours sleep a night. Came out best of class, beating everyone, including the full-timers who had no daytime job (daytimers were comprised entirely of of social recipients).

The idea posed in the cartoon that bad grades automatically follow having to study on top of work is simply nonsense.

The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you're made of, not the circumstances.

It's not saying that at all. Just that if you have all the time and money at your disposal to focus on your studies you have an advantage.