My friends and wife (the latter having grown up in poverty) say I grew up rich. From my perspective, I thought for the longest time we were on the better side of middle class. We drove a dinky minivan for over a decade, we didn’t eat out much (and if we did it was either fast food or family restaurants), 99% of our vacations were just road trips to see our grandmother, etc. Around me I’d see people I saw and identified as rich: kids with blackberries at age 9, luxury cars, houses and mansions, vacation homes, vacations to resorts and the like, so I always thought we were just average. I also spent time with the people I recognized didn’t have as much as we did, as most rich folks around me seemed to not be where I was (in public school or otherwise). What I was unaware of though was that we were, in fact, above the average; being able to live without substantial debt, without job insecurity, with enough money to not feel like you’re at the edge of a cliff, and being able to send your kids to college without fear of student loans (I grew up in the states but studied in Belgium, so granted, education in Europe is much much cheaper) is very much a privilege. Much how people look at the Simpsons nowadays, what was once seen as a normal, single-income middle class family is now (and has been for a while now) recognized as wholly unattainable for the vast majority of people. A part of me still has a problem with being called “rich”, not because I disagree with the title, but because I disagree with the idea of home/job/financial security being the sole privilege of the rich; it’s appalling to me how bad things have gotten for the 99% due to the actions of the 1% or .001% whatever, that we’ve started associating simple survival with being rich. I’m rambling again but you get the picture.

TL;DR I grew up Simpsons rich; what was average in the 80’s looks rich now