When You Were a Kid How did you Recognize Kids Whose Folks "had money?"

When you were a kid what was a sign that a kid you knew came from a family that "had money?"

 

Shoes in my case.

 

I was the opposite.
Oh well. We are all happy now. X

 

when i was a kid, i never had reason to know or wish to.
people were just people and money wasn't even that much of a concept in my head, if you mean by kid like less then 5 or 6.
after that, if they had something you thought was cool and then found out your parents couldn't afford it.
but mostly the kids my age i went to school with, their parents were in about the same income range as mine.
parents who worked for the railroad or the power company or the highway department, because that was pretty much the only reason they lived there, in very small towns, along major corridors, but otherwise mostly rural, as in wilderness rural, not agricultural, because we were up in the densely forested mountains, not down in the agricultural valleys.

 

A phone at home, a car and a Colour TV ..... yes really!

 

well we always had a phone, but they never had a car until the year i graduated highschool,
and mom hated color tv, she concidered it too complicated for her, and she was the only one in the house who cared about television anyway.

 

All of them went to the same elementary school that I went to, but only one was in my grade. I knew them because they had swimming pools and took fancy vacations somewhere other than Florida.

 

Always the latest video gaming machines. Always quality, new clothes. Always the first ones to buy cars as soon as they were old enough to drive and earn a license. And in today's reality, they usually have smart phones with the highest price tags on 'em (usually have pictures of apples on the case).

Having access to those video gaming machines was nice. I was lucky to know some kids who showed me the ways of Nintendo and Sega long before I was able to afford my own equipment. Pays to have rich friends sometimes.

 

They had broadband while we had dialup

 

On the surface we appeared to be just like everyone else in the neighborhood, a nice house, two cars, all the kids were well feed, well clothed, we all had bikes, and every other toy a kid could want.

The difference was those same neighbors all had summer homes on cape cod, or a second lakeside home in New Hampshire or Maine, and each year went on exotic vacations to Europe or Hawaii, whereas
we’d be lucky to take a family vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida.

I had a wonderful childhood and have no complaints, but that's what separated us from the rich kids.

 

Really nice house, I knew a kid that had a horse. One of the other things which is kind of amusing now is the ability to play games over the internet. I remember when I first saw that thinking that their computer must have been Super Powerful.

 

He always got what he had asked for as birthday ,Christmas presents etc..

 

I remember in the late 70's and early 80's, a lad I went to school with, you could tell his family had money, not only did they have a video recorder but they also owned a microwave! A VHS video recorder was about a grand at the time, and a microwave was about £800, very few people had one never mind both!
I remember as a kid you did well if you got say £20 spent on you, now kids get hundred, look at the price of a Playstation for example.

 

I wonder if the silver spoon in my mouth gave it away? lol

 

My father died in 1957 when I was 9 years old, he was over 70. Although we owned our house and my mother was a civil servant, she had to be careful with the money.
She did not think that I needed money in order to be happy, so if I wanted to listen to music, she told me to sit at the piano and make some for myself. She also hated those television contraptions which she called lunatics lanterns. She never owned one until the day that she died in 2,000 aged 97. She also insisted that walking was healthy, so never gave me money for the bus. However, by being careful, we could afford to travel all over Europe once a year. We stayed in farmhouses and I still remember some of the wonderful people that we came across in Austria.
Needless to say, when I wanted a radio in my room, I had to make one and "the nutty professor" soon became my name among my friends.

Jane, as one of 14 siblings in a remote part of Ireland had a similar upbringing. All the children spent their spare time playing at the rubbish tip.
She liked watching television, but only one person in the village owned one. After dark, the children sat watching hers through a gap in her curtains. The moment that she heard a sound from outside, a bucket of water came flying out of her bedroom window.

How things have changed and in my opinion not for the better,

 

Janes dad had an old Morris minor that had more holes in the bottom than Fred Flintstones car. Although he never used his wellingtons to propel it, on more than one occasion he used then to help slow the car down on the long hill leading into the local town when they were collecting the groceries. The local Garda (police in the UK), just laughed.

 

My "dad" was a banker (and an asshole) , "mom"took off when i was about 4 and I "grew up" in my grammas house that was built by my my great grand parents in 1916. Always had shelter, good clothing and money when I needed it, although money did not mean too much to me.As an adult, I've had money, and been voluntarily homeless-( lived in vans and cars) but didn't have to. Always very easy to get jobs for myself whenever needed and settled into roofing when I learned I could work piecework, make an ass pocket full a'money and then quit for a time and re-enter the workforce easily. (late 60s- and thereafter until--CHILDREN!) I think I would have been one that others would have looked at as having money--big house--nice clothing--top of the line whatevers when needed. Mind you, I was surrounded by plenty of folks fleeing the dust bowl and the depression in the 40s--50s. Small town of a few thousand with many farmers, large and small. The ostentatious of them drove Cadillacs flaunted their wealth around town. Those were the ones I looked upon as being rich. And that type is the same and is STILL very, very rich to this day.
I think that having whatever I needed when young and seeing what most others didn't have , shaped my outlook on money and politics too.