40 Bizarre Things Wealthy People Thought Were Totally Normal

Rich is relative. I grew up in a trailer park, so definitely not well off. Made a new friend one day and invited him over for dinner.

Kid was blown away by the size of the hamburgers we were eating. And you could have another one if you wanted. Just typical 1/3lb or so patties.

We were poor, but they were "rationing serving sizes" poor. We had HVAC, they didn't even have window units. We didn't have holes in our floors/ceilings, it rained inside and out at their place.

Edit: Thank you all for the replies. This sort of blew up while I was finishing up my day.

That kid was always welcome at our house, as was the next neighbor kid that moved into the same place a couple years later and any other friends I made. Stay for dinner or stay the night. My folks were good people, and presumably far more aware than I was at the time of how different our little life was compared to that of our neighbors. And that's really the thing... it wasn't like we lived in a better part of town, went to different schools or anything like that. The difference *was* my parents. I had two of them, and the both pulled 40+ hour weeks. That was it. They could afford to buy a new trailer and just rent the lot. They paid for daycare in the summer so they could put in the hours. My friends had stay-at-home moms or single parent homes, not bad people (save for a few), just spread too thin. We had two reliable cars, they were lucky to have one that ran. We were "poor" due to the cost of living... they were Poor due to the cost of *life*.

I'm thankful for the experience. I never thought of life as being hard growing up. I was always surrounded by those who had it harder, and they were always welcome in our home.

This isn’t a great response because I didn’t grow up rich, but rather very poor. I feel like I should share though. I met my first best friend in grade six, when she brought me to her home I was flabbergasted. They had a vacuum that plugged into their walls, they could even vacuum downstairs with it. She had a trampoline and Xbox- I begged each time to play with both. She had a small alcove with a mini fridge that was full with ICE pop and different sodas, that was cool. I remember thinking I should take more than one because I wouldn’t get another chance. When they invited me over for dinner her mom always made me take extra because I was nervous to ask for seconds. I couldn’t believe the amount of food in the house, and we all would have a huge glass of milk with dinner. Milk was always a treat and being able to drink as much as I wanted was so overwhelming. I just remember being astounded by everything- and three years later they adopted me.

I'm not super rich, but things really hit home when I was with a friend and his mother started to panic because she couldn't afford milk for her toddler son (my friends little brother). I was just walking around with $40 in my pocket for no real reason so I gave her $20. She was embarrassed to be taking money from a 13 year old, but swallowed her pride for the sake of her children.

I knew my friend wasn't as well off, but it never fully hit me what that meant before then. To me, being poor just meant someone couldn't afford nice things. What it meant to struggle with basic necessities like milk never really struck me before then.

Not rich - but in high school, there was this one kid who wore the same shoes from sophomore to senior year. I kept telling him to buy a new pair, but he would claim that they were broken in and he didn't want to waste money on uncomfortable ones.

I decided to do that thing where the class would surprise him with a new pair of Vans for his birthday. But when I asked our classmates to chip in, they all said they didn't have any money to spare. That didn't make sense because most of them had after-school jobs - that's when I found out I was the only kid in class who wasn't working to help support their own family.

EDIT: I ended up getting him the shoes on my own.

I was 8 or 9 and we were on a family trip for one of my sisters tournaments. We were driving through a somewhat run down neighborhood of multi family homes and trash in the streets. I remember distinctly my sister and her friend saying how gross everything was and laughing about it. My dad, the sweetest most soft spoken mid western country boy ever, piped up and almost yelled “Hey! This is how most people live. You need to understand what you have!” Everyone in the car just sat there in silence and he drove on. We grew up upper middle class. I am a pediatric dentist now and will always accept Medicaid largely because of this moment when I was a kid.

When I started talking in school about the pros and cons of Disney World vs Disney Land, and people were like "YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION?! LUCKYY".

When my dad bought me a house to live in rent free, no mortgage. And realising that most people dont holiday in the algarve twice a year.

My house is now a hostel/safe space for anyone I'm friends with/close to who needs a place to stay.

Conversely, I remember a summer where me and my mom lived in a car and I thought it was the coolest thing.

Turns out we were just homeless.

Meanwhile in university there was a guy who didn’t understand why we didn’t all have our own condos right by the school. He also never understood why we didn’t have money to go to Mexico on reading break and would just tell us to ask for a bigger allowance from our trust.

He learnt to just stop talking after someone fed him a left hook when he made a comment about how stupid we are for taking out student loans and not just paying tuition upfront.

When I realized Americans don’t have health care coverage through taxes. I was like “bling bling I’m rich b***h”.

The first time I went to my best friend's house. His circumstances were the exact opposite. His parents tried their best, but his dad often didn't have much work during the winter, and his mom didn't work outside of the home. They had 6 kids, and usually had things like pancakes for dinner. I'm in an upper class part of DC, with every toy and electronic imaginable, and he had none. It was a good lesson for me to learn, but it was a shame that it was at the expense of a person I loved so very much.

Two times come to mind. I didn't grow up stupid rich but definitely well off. My grandpa is a successful doctor and was able to build his "empire" and live a very good life. As I've gotten older and things have changed my lifestyle has certainly shifted towards myself being more self reliant. I was dating this girl and we drove past my grandpas giant house he used to own (still in the family but he's moved) and she asks me to slow down. She was in love with this house and told me she'd always dreamed of living there as a kid and her parents telling her she'd never be able to live in a house like that.

Another time was when my best friend tripped into the whole "I f*****g love you guys" rant one time when he was drunk. He slowly worked his way through our friend group talking about why we were important to him and when he got to me he mentioned how when we were younger he'd try to not be home around dinner time so that his mom wouldn't have to worry about feeding both him and his sister and that my family and I always took care of him and made him feel at home. This is something that never crossed my mind in the 20 something years we've been friends from him practically living at my home for an entire summer or the weeks he'd stay over during the school years when we were in high school. I never gave it any second thought and just wanted my friend to be around whenever he could be.

In terms of raw cash flow, my parents were never rich, they were just teachers. However, they were international teachers so I got to see and do things many people have on their bucket list by the time I was 18. I definitely had a very privileged upbringing, if not a rich one. I was kinda aware of it, but it never really hit home till my first year living back in the States, where people just... didn't know about so much of the world.

I wouldn't call my family rich by US standards, but upper middle class, so rich by world population standards. My dad grew up super poor though, so he made sure we understood how lucky we were. But to be honest I didn't REALLY understand until my teenage years when he took me to Costa Rica to visit where my older brother had lived for a couple years. We didn't go to the beach or touristy spots, and I got a much better idea of what poverty can look like. It made me really appreciate the luck I had being born into the family I was born into. I try to keep it in mind as I go through life, and hope my kids learn not to take their luck for granted either. It's a pet peeve of mine when people are born into wealth and act like their own wealth is 100% from their hard work. Sure they may work hard, but never discount how much easier they had it than others born into poverty. I worked to pay for my undergraduate degree, but if I hadn't been able to one semester, my parents could have bailed me out. I don't know if they would have, but knowing they could have made it substantially less stressful.

So this happened young. My dad worked in IT. International company, bunch of business trips to like every major country in the world and every major developing country.
He got fired/company filed for bankruptcy.
This happened whilst I was 8. Suddenly the only income we had was from my mum, working in the public sector for the state, helping mentally ill people. We went from expensive toys, Nutella for breakfast and expensive lunch items to buying birthday presents at basically dollar stores and hoping for hand me downs so that I could get clothes that fit me. Whenever we had a school trip, we had to save up 2 years in advance and ask relatives for help paying for those school trips, maybe not see relatives that lived far away for birthdays and other important things.
My dad only got a job after 9 years of looking.
My teen years consisted of hand me down clothes, worrying about social events and lunch. I still haven't grown out of the mentality despite my dad having a well paying job now. It's crazy what the 2008 crisis did.

Edit: I also realise that my comment is affected by me not having things I loved available, which is why I mentioned food and toys. We also lost a things my parents cared about, house, car etc, but I didn't care about that. I cared about not being able to get baby bell cheese with me for lunch, so.
Also, I live in Denmark, so some of these things might not seem expensive to Americans, but they're luxury in Denmark and usually not affordable to working class. Just to put things into perspective.

I grew up middle-class. When I was in 5th grade I spent the night with a girlfriend. In the morning I remember asking what was for breakfast, and I remember seeing my friends face. I then realized the kitchen was literally empty. The dad came in and gave us a small package of those small white donuts from the gas station- 4 in the package. I felt so embarrassed that I asked. We had a great day hanging out, but I learned what poverty was that day.

The first time I met other kids who didn't have domestic household staff. I remember not understanding why they didn't have people to maintain their household.

I did not grow up rich. But my husband did.

His sister once said "I didn't know everyone didn't live in big houses until I went off to college." Apparently she led a VERY sheltered life.

I was talking to a friend about going to the town's public beach and they were saying how horribly crowded it gets in summer, and I suddenly realized (I was well into my 20s) that I had never had to go to a public beach because I always had at least two private family beaches to go to, one with cabanas, outdoor showers and space for cooking. I always had taken it for granted.

I remember as a kid having nothing in the fridge and nada in the Kitchen to eat. Doorbell rang and opened it, no one was there but a bag of groceries someone left for us. That was the moment I realized we were poor. Not rich story, but it hit me regardless.

More upper-middle class. Since I started using Reddit, especially reading askreddit posts, I've been realising more and more every day how fortunate I am.