I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been born into money or acquired vast amounts of wealth. At least not yet, haha. I’m working on it (wink, wink). But, what I find a little annoying is when rich people give the less fortunate useless advice .
Some of the things I’ve heard from wealthy folks have been pretty out of touch. So when I stumbled upon a Reddit thread that asked, “Poor people of Reddit, what’s the most comically out of touch ‘advice’ you’ve been given by someone wealthier?” I was all ears. Let’s check it out.
RELATED STORIES
This Mom To Mom Advice
“A mom to my mom, a single mother with three kids: ‘you should just stop working if you are so stressed about it.”‘
Oh, yeah, like that’s an actual option for everyone? Most moms work because they have to and not because they love it. Get it?
This Real Estate Advice
“That I need to buy several apartments and rent them out. Unfortunately, he did not tell me where to get money to buy several apartments.”
Don’t you love it when people say that? Hey, I would be happy to do that if I had some spare money lying around, haha. But buying even one apartment in this economy is out of the question.
This Begging Tip
“I remember when I was at high school and I mentioned to someone that I’d like a gaming PC but couldn’t afford it, he said ‘can you not just ask your parents for the money?’ I said no because there was nothing left over after bills and groceries. ‘Yeah, but if you ask realllllyyyyy nicely, couldn’t they give you the money?’ Like what goddamn money? The money for the food we eat? The money for our electricity bill? Sure, no doubt my family is happy to suffer just so I can have a piece of tech I don’t need.”
Can you believe this entitlement?
This Solid Advice
“‘If you think gas is too expensive, just buy an electric car.’ If I’m unable to pay $50 for a tank of gas, I’m certainly not going to be able to buy a new car, whether it’s electric or not.”
OMG! I’m totally shaking my head at that.
This Credit Card Scam
“‘Just put it on a credit card.’ A friend told me after I told her I couldn’t afford to fly to Mexico with her for spring break. I told her I’d still have to pay it off and she looked at me with the most confused look on her face. Absolutely no understanding that someone was paying off her credit card each month. I explained it to her and could not get her to understand that credit cards needed to be paid back. Was really kind of a breaking point in our friendship.”
Wow, just wow!
This Out-Of-Touch Response
“Not quite on-prompt, but I used to do workforce planning for a big retail organization whose executives were generally very wealthy and had not personally worked retail a day in their lives.
That meant I set staffing targets for the company / created compensation plans and goals, and so on and so forth.”
“Our base compensation was very good (75th/80th percentile in the market, around $22 in base pay at the time), and leading up to a holiday I suggested that we might need to overcome some reticence to work; in addition to the 2.5x time we were offering (for holiday/overtime pay for the additional shift), I suggested we provide an additional 0.5x incentive pay… amounting to 3x pay to work the holiday in question (New Year’s Day, if I remember correctly).”
“Out-of-touch executive: ‘Who would work New Year’s Day for $66 an hour?’ … Who would work New Year’s Day for an extra $500? Lots of people … $500 is a lot of money to a lot of people, lady.”
Yikes!
This Country Club Invite
“I had a friend who comes from family money invite me golfing at his private country club in Los Angeles. While we were golfing he casually said, ‘you should apply to become a member here, they’re trying to get younger members.’ I don’t know what it costs to be a member of that club but his locker was right next to Adam Sandler’s. I have a feeling the annual dues would be more than my entire income. I told him I would think about it.”
Must be nice, huh?
This Nice Dream
“I don’t understand why your generation rents, just buy a house?”
Um, we rent because we have to. If I could afford to buy a house, I would get one in a heartbeat. Do you think renting is fun? I hate to see my money go down the drain like that, but I have no other way.
This Dumfounded Comment
“Why don’t you get a bigger apartment? I could never live like this.”
“Yeah, thanks, I didn’t live with three other people on 14.5 square meters because I loved the coziness.”
Haha! This goes right there with the earlier comment.
This Parenting Advice
“Being a working parent is easy. Just get a nanny.”
Do these people realize that nannies cost money? And money doesn’t grow on trees? As I said before, most moms work because they have to and not because it’s some kind of luxury.
This Travel Tip
“You should take six months off from working and go backpacking across Europe.”
Haha! Yes, I would love to do that. But how am I going to survive for six months without a job? And who’s going to pay my rent too? Huh?
This Lovely Thought
“I was talking to a co-worker and telling them I’m not sure if I could ever buy a house. His response was, ‘Well you never know what could happen. I didn’t think I could either, and then my parents bought me a house. It could happen for you too.’”
Where do I sign up?
This Networking Advice
“You should go out more in the right places, that’s how you build a network for later in life.
B****, I can barely afford pasta and 1 single drink with friends each week.”
If you had a dollar for every time somebody rich said that — I would be rich too!!!
This Bright Idea
“Back when I was poor, a friend of mine invited me out to a pricey restaurant. When I pointed out that I don’t have the money, he recommend I panhandle outside. He was serious.”
OMG, what? Can you believe the nerve of some people?
This Newsflash
“Back when I was making $9.50 an hour my stepmom was constantly on my case over the fact that I had furnished my apartment with a bunch of cheap, mostly thrift-store furniture. She was insistent that I needed to drop thousands of dollars on good-quality, top-of-the-line furniture both because it would last longer and if I ever had to have my colleagues over for dinner they’d be far more impressed with my furnishings.”
“I had to sit her down with my budget to show her that, even living as frugally as possible, I usually had about $50 left over at the end of each month and asked her where I was supposed to get the furniture budget from that. She stared at the numbers in mute astonishment for about a minute before declaring ‘well, you’re just going to have to figure something out.’
Um, okay!
This Backhanded Advice
“I got a small inheritance from my grandmother, and my dad INSISTED that I needed to use it as the down payment for a house. “You’re a fool if you don’t invest that money in a house for yourself and your kids.” I’d run the math over and over and didn’t think I could really afford it—we were stretching it thin in our apartment, and not only was the mortgage payment (including taxes and insurance) going to be more, but I knew our utilities would go up as well and there’d be repairs and such down the line. But every time I tried to talk to dad about it, he said ‘just do it; you can’t miss this opportunity, and we’ll figure the rest out .'”
“So I bought the most affordable house I could find near decent schools, and for a few months things went well… and then the maintenance costs started catching up, kinda like I thought they would. So the next time I talked to Dad, he asked how things were, and I said ‘Well, it’s been fine, but now it’s summertime and our utility bills are high and I’m struggling to make ends meet. I could use some help figuring this out.’ And that SOB, from the comfort of his million-dollar home on a golf course, said ‘Well, Sasstoreth, maybe you need to think about whether you can really afford that house.'”
Like that makes a lot of sense now.
This Interesting Idea
“‘Move to a cheaper state.’ They say it as if it’s like changing deodorant brands.”
Yeah, sure. I’m going to just pick everything up and move away where I don’t know anybody, don’t have a job, and somehow make it work. That’s for this brilliant advice.
And This Genius Advice
“Never buy a ‘used house.'”
Oh, okay. Certainly, everybody has money to buy a brand-new home. Spoken like a truly rich person, huh? It must be nice to always own everything that’s shiny and new. Am I right? If somebody said that to me, I would just roll my eyes.
Wow! Can you believe all of this?
If you’re going to give somebody advice, why not try putting yourself in their shoes? That’s the only way you’ll really know where they’re coming from, okay? Otherwise, you sound like an entitled, spoiled brat. That’s all. And I, for one, don’t need advice from people like that. What do you think about that?
