Our class clown became a pastor. Was granted a parsonage and now lives in a big house two blocks from me. Has a loving family and is still funny as hell.

The super nerd is still a super nerd. Assistant professor at CUNY. He has a wife and a son now. The kid is becoming more of a jock, though. Apparently, got his mother’s side of the genes. He bitches about that every time we hang out.

The braces chick turned out to be one of the coolest people I know. We went to the same university. We became friends on the first day we hung out in college. She now lives in Amsterdam with her husband. No kids. No braces. They insisted I stay in their apartment when I was there. Amsterdam would have never been that much fun had I not stayed with them.

The head cheerleader also went to the same university I did. Now, a divorce attorney in Boston and a great friend. Not married.

The artist is a graphic designer for a jewelry company.

The musician is still a musician. Working on the dream of becoming a household name.

The math genius won 200k in a lottery, quit his job, and traveled the world. He is the one who used to say he would never buy a lottery ticket.

The social justice warrior is still fighting the good fight. Got arrested twice. Got into a bout with minor depression after how Occupy Wall Street turned out.

The dealer went to college for eight years! He finally graduated two years ago. And we partied...hard! Even the divorce lawyer showed up. I guess people need a break from all the divorcing.

The popular girl went to Marymount. Works for a well-known publisher. Single mother. Has a cool kid and a dog.

The basketball star went to a Division 2 school in California. Now works for an insurance company there.

The baseball star went to Rutgers. Now a corporate pilot.

The metalhead is still a metalhead. Has a weird thing for motorcycles. Kind of a dick, but turned out okay, all things considered. Answering this question at the moment.

The crackhead died in an apartment fire. For real.

The boy sitting next to me was a rich kid in primary school. I hated him. He called me poor because I couldn’t afford Nike Air shoes. He walk in groupies or groups of entourage because he could drive everyone to cool places with his driver. Even the teachers enjoyed his cheekiness. His dad was a rich man owning most of the tyre retail shops back in the lates 80’s.

He did a lot of terrible immoral stuff in school. Set fire up in some classrooms. Lit up dollars to proof to folks he was rich. He bullied less privalage kids. He graffiti walls and blame others for it. At later stage I found out he bought exams papers so he could pass.

His parents were millionaires back in the 80s. They were. They were busy expanding their business and no time for him. They gave him a personal maid and driver.

One day he made fun of my shoes one last time and I fought back. He mates manage to hold be down and he threw a huge punch at me. I stood up, didn’t back down. I knew I wouldn’t win the fight but I stood up and gave him the final stare with blood dripping down my face.

He never bullied me any more after. We were 11 then.

When I was 17, I found out he got into a car accident where he was flung out the car and survived. Coma for about six months and did wake up after. He wasn’t normal after. Now he is left disabled unable to walk properly and lost his speech ability.

I feel bad for him. I was glad my parents had time for me and gave me principals in life I can pass on to my kids.

Saw one recently.

The guy was a real condescending dick when we were in school.

He always had some snide shitty remark to make to us less popular kids.

He always made a point to try to humiliate me in front of the class.

He went on with his cadre of assholes to high school, prom court royalty. Then off to who knows where.

Now 37 years later I’m in Lowes shopping for stuff to make projects with the grandkids and I ask one of the employees, “On what aisle I can find the wood glue?”.

I immediately recognized him. I’m not sure if he recognized me.

He made a snide condescending remark about reading the signs above each aisle. (The glue aisle was on the other side of the store from where I was)

I walked off wondering who he knew to land a job helping customers with that kind of awful personality.

There was this kid named Zach whose dad had to have been worth at least 100 million dollars, and that’s a conservative estimate. They lived in a 4 story mansion in the fanciest part of town, and his dad drove a Rolls-Royce. They had like 5 cars though, that was just the nicest. When Zach turned 16, he got a brand new Maserati Granturismo, this was 2007. The car was worth like 130k at the time. Keep in mind, I went to a really fancy private school where everybody was rich. I was there on financial aid. Everybody else got new mid-level Audis, BMWs and Mercedes, and some even got Porsches. People were really wealthy. I was kind of friends with Zach, and I got to ride in the Rolls-Royce a few times. I had a 1983 Honda Civic. It taught me a lot, but that’s another story. Zach drove me around in the Maserati pretty often, and one day it was really rainy, and he got in an accident. Nobody was hurt, but the car was wrecked. So, his parents apparently got the idea that he had now graduated from his first car, and they bought him a new Ferrari California. Absolutely ridiculous. He wrecked that after a couple years, and probably got something new and better, I didn’t keep up with him much after that because he was kind of an ass.

A girl in my class, let’s call her Nora. She was Muslim, so she celebrated eid. Eid is similar to Christmas, except instead of presents you get money. Kids and teens usually make up to a thousand- two thousand dollars. But nope. Not her. Her family was rich as hell, everything she wore HAD to be Gucci, Chanel. She was a sweet gal, just really naive and was used to getting what she wanted. Every time she went shopping, her parents gave her ten thousand. TEN thousand. In EID, she visited someone who was pretty famous- a relative of hers. She complained about how her elder sister got FIFTY. F*CKING THOUSAND. And she only got “thirty thousand”. And that was from that relative alone.

The boarding school I attended was a prestigious international boarding school hidden deep in the British countryside. With fees putting the school in the top 10 most expensive boarding schools in the United Kingdom, you can imagine the type of people that attended. Let me give you some interesting examples of those who attended:

Rich Arabs/Russians/Chinese

These were the guys who would struggle deciding what supercar to ask for their 21st birthday. With many owning their own penthouses and townhouses in Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Chelsea, at the age of <20. They’d dress head-to-toe in Brioni, Christian Louboutin and Tom Ford. I once sold a can of Cola and two packets of Walkers/Lays crisps to a Russian boarder who paid £25 just to emphasise his wealth in front of his onlooking room mates. In my first year at the same college, I remember a boarder whose father ran the one of the largest bank in Hong Kong was repeatedly told off by staff for revving his Ferrari California too loud in the student car park.

English Heritage Wealth

As well as the international students, many students had families who lived in London and around the UK. Often refraining from portraying their wealth, I often found these guys to be more selective of who they befriended due to the tradition of protected social circles. A student in my IT class drove a Volkswagen Polo and wore a highly affordable TM Lewis suit, with only a few students knowing that his family owned one of the largest yachts harboured in St Tropez.

The richest kids

Off the top of my head, these were the most wealthy individuals I knew at my school:

1. A British boarder who really lived below his means considering his dad was worth £2.3 billion pounds and part-owned one of the largest real-estate companies in the UK. His father visited the school only once and of course he had a personal assistant with him at the time.
2. A Russian boarder whose father had close connections in the Russian government. He had a penthouse in Paris and was provided a weekly allowance of £10,000 by his parents.
3. A Chinese boarder whose family owned one of the largest property companies in Hong Kong.

To end on, here’s a funny yet very true story:

There was a Chinese student who everyone thought couldn’t be any more further from being wealthy. He’d buy second-hand clothing from charity stores, his iPhone was at least 6-years old and he never wore any designer clothes whatsoever. On the last day of term, we were all sat on the coach heading for the airport for international students to fly home for the holidays. The coach always stopped at 2 separate airport terminals - the first stop was the terminal heading for Asia, the second stop was the terminal heading for Europe. Before we even got to the first stop, the coach took a short detour to a separate terminal entrance homing the extra large hangers for privately owned jets. The Chinese boy got up, said good bye to his friend and stepped off the coach. He is the richest person I’ve ever met at my boarding college.

Amongst the many wealthy individuals who often portray their wealth, you’ll rarely come across the seemingly poor yet ultra, ultra 0.001% rich.

Popular, straight-A girl who was unanimously voted “Most Likely To Succeed” got accepted to MIT and there was no doubt that she would excel there.

She didn’t.

College and HS are two different worlds. In college, you are expected to think critically for yourself rather than how to simply pass tests like in HS. She had a nervous breakdown when she didn’t get top grades for the first time in her life and burned out.

Popular, super jock (and bully) gets scholarship to Big 10 university and plays on the football team. At our 20th reunion, people ask why he wasn’t there, like he was at the 10 year. I tell them: He’s busy in Arizona, and can’t get away.

They assume that he’s too busy with a successful business. But what I don’t tell them is that he can’t leave Arizona because he’s serving time for DUI, possession and the third strike: kiddie porn.

I felt sorry for the girl, but I still laugh to this day over the “Big Man On Campus”.

I think it had to have been my girlfriend. The more I think about this the more convinced I am that this must be so.

Her dad was the town doctor. Now, it wasn’t much of a town, only about 2500 people, but as a doctor he should have done pretty well. Except he did not care if you paid.

Yeah. You heard that right. He did not take Medicare, Medicaid, or insurance. You came in, saw him, he sent you a bill. You paid, or you didn’t pay, he didn’t care. You got treated the same no matter what. And he had his own lab, and in-house X-ray setup.

How can this be?

Well….. it turned out he also owned two ranches, one in the Texas Panhandle and one in New Mexico. The one in New Mexico, in Lincoln County (salute, Billy the Kid!) was over 2,000 acres. He declined to say how big the one close to Amarillo was other than “bigger” (with a big smile).

And oil leases… In Texas, unless you had land on an original Spanish or Mexican land grant, you didn’t own the mineral rights, but if anyone acquired license to the rights from the state, they had to put their wells somewhere. Those surface leases? Super lucrative. Over five hundred of those.

Which put him in “the oil business”, and eventually led to him being a partner in an exploration and production company which operated several hundred wells. Times a couple thousand barrels a day, times about $20 a barrel back then.

He was one of the most humble and least ostentatious people I’ve ever known in my life (his daughter, not so much) and it’s really hard to know how rich he really was.

But no one in town even came close. So she’d be the richest kid in school.

In my experience, yes. People liked them. People gave them chances, and second chances. Job interviews were aced, charisma carried many a student loan or grant application, there were no shortages of character witnesses willing to step forward on their behalf, people were willing to invest in their ventures and patronize their businesses, and if one or two happened to fall on hard times, the entire community would come together to help them.

Contrast the unpopular kids, whose reputations eventually caused them to leave town for climes less willing to throw them under the bus for their place in the social hierarchy. Some then succeeded in other places and some failed. Few of them ever returned home.

One of the biggest lies that kids are told as children is “Real life isn’t a popularity contest.” Yes it is. While your social position in high school doesn’t automatically determine your destiny and it is perfectly possible to wash your hands of the whole thing, it can give you either a powerful boost or a crippling handicap.

Caveat: this applies only to the people at the top or the bottom of the social food chain. The top ten percent and the bottom ten percent, to pull random statistical numbers out of thin air for the sake of argument. For the remaining majority who fell somewhere in the middle, their high school social position had little to no effect at all after graduation.

* The athlete: Went on to play on ice hockey on A juniors Finnish national team, but instead chose to become a F-18 pilot. Retired as Lieutenant Colonel. Has three children. Cousin of the athletess.

* The jerk jock: Failed to make career in ice hockey. Got in troubles with law. Has worked as an electrics fitter.

* The bully: Got in serious troubles with the law. Has served in prison. Divorced, two kids.

* The athletess: Did swimming on national level. Joined the military, made it to officer. Later went to university and works in academia.

* The alpha b!tch: Became a hairdresser. Divorced, three kids.

* The beauty queen: Went to College of Economics. Married, three children. Works as CEO in a local company.

* The brainy guy: Went to study technology. Has doctor’s degree in applied sciences. Married the athletess’s university course mate.

* The brainy girl: Was the athletess’s teammate. Went to study medicine. Is today a doctor in her hometown. Mother of two.

* The petrolhead: Owns and manages a service station.

* The religious girl: Married early, became a nurse. Mother of three.

* The quiet girl: Best friend of the religious girl. Became a teacher in her old school. Not married.

* The quiet boy: Went to study theology. Works as priest. Married, two children.

* The twins: One of them bought a fast car. Slid off a motorway in the night with serious overspeed, with fatal results. The other took over family laundry business.

* The nerdy guy: Works as system administrator in a large corporation. Plays keyboards in a band.

* The Goth girl: Went to study English in university, works as a translator in the national television.

* The artistic girl: Became an architect. Not married.

As a child, I thought I was the smartest kid in my school… I may have been right as I tested very high on aptitude tests, and the school I went to was very small.

Middle school, was the first time in my life I met someone who was noticeably more intelligent than I was. It annoyed me, but we quickly became good friends.

Hanging out with him was a lot of fun, we basically schemed ways of causing trouble, but we rarely put our plans into action. When we did, the results were quite “disastrous”. Looking back on it, reaping havoc (or devising ways to do so) may have been one of the ways we demonstrated (to ourselves) how smart we were compared to the people around us. He was on another level though, he barely tired at anything academic, but was always at the top of every class. I gave the same type of effort in my studies, but I was near the bottom in every class other than Math and any math related science (since it required little memory work).

The teachers were always on my case about how if I exerted myself academically, I could be like my friend. Oh the irony. The kid spent next to no time or effort studying.

We ended up going to the same high school. In 11th grade he dropped out. When I asked him “why”, he said that “the whole system is idiotic”.

I met him a year after I graduated from College (with a degree in Physics… I needed to study something that did not require much memory work! Needless to say, in my upper level Physics classes, I realized that - compared to the average Physics nerd - I was not that smart…).

We tried to talk about life, but he was not at all coherent. He was addicted to drugs.

I have no idea where the guy is now.

I really wish he made good decisions as a youth. Who knows, maybe he’s recovered now and working in some top secret government research job. But chances are that he’s probably still addicted to drugs and might even be homeless… or not even alive.

Intelligence is no guarantee that one will do well in life.

I am not a rich kid at school. Im just upper middle class. I didn’t think much of it but when I was at school and I was hanging out with my so called “friends” (they are middle class) they would always exclude me in conversation and not invite me to hang out just because I was so called “rich” only because I could afford an “iphone” and my transportation to school is by car.

When we would talk about something and I wanted to say something they would say “you wouldn’t understand this, not everyone is rich” bitch? We were talking about music? anyways it’s not fun. I never said I was rich or anything. And I came off like that, I didn’t know. I just wear what my mother buys me and I go my car because my parents job is on the same way to school.

I currently attend a elite all boys Private High School in NY State (Not NYC) and I am not rich but many of my friends are. Here are some examples of what’s it is like. The Student Parking lot is full of BMW’s, Audi’s, Land Rover’s, Jeep Wranglers, Lincoln’s, Cadillac’s, Jaguar’s, and 80$k Pickup Trucks. (If You buy a 90,000$ Land Rover for your 16 year old son, you are crazy) These vehicles are all no older than 2 years. When the parents show up they are driving Lamborghinis, Tesla’s, BMW’s, Range Rover’s, etc. Many of my friends get the latest iPhone the day it comes out. They preorder the PS5. When you go to their house they live in 3 story mansions, with immaculate landscaping and many other amenities. Vacations to the Caribbean or Bora Bora are regular for many. Most have second homes in the South. It is crazy how rich some of these kids and their parents are. There are also people like me. I am upper middle class. I live in a 2 Story Larger home. I drive a 2020 Volkswagen Atlas (I paid for part of it myself). I go on 1–3 vacations a year. I have a iPhone XS, a iPad, and a MacBook (Only because my school provided it) and I have a PS4. My parents have a small cottage on a lake about a hour away. My Dad is a contractor and my Mom is a financial Advisor. We are not rich and I’m glad we aren’t because Rich people do actually have hard lives and many are friends with them just for their money. I have a part time Job and pay for a lot of what I own my self (Car insurance, gas, some clothes, etc) because it makes me feel accomplished and independent. The only reason I am able to attend this very expensive school (20,000$ per year) is because I got a full scholarship into it. I am very grateful for the things I do have because I know many people don’t have them. So this is what it is like attending a School with Wealthy Kids. (Not everyone is rich, some are middles class like me and there are a few poorer kids but the rich kids stand out the most).

Ah the joys of small town living. You literally hear about people without even trying.

My school had a popular “clique” more than just one person, all of them from the “rich” side of town. As in, in the 1980’s their homes were in the $300k price range and they drove expensive sport cars to school rich.

One got a full ride to Harvard, and flunked out.

One married her high school boyfriend, and then they each separately won the “$1000 a week for life” scratch off lotto.

Two overdosed and died.

A couple died drunk driving.

One ended up in prison for something.

One moved out of the area and seems to be moving up the social ladder constantly.

One married some guy and they became that creepy swingers couple.

No one at my middle school was insanely rich or anything, but there was this one girl who is a close friend of mine even now.

I’ll call her C. C’s dad was the CEO of a successful company. They lived in a rich neighborhood (with guards and gates), and their house was big and a two-story.

C and her sister were definitely not brats at all, but they did have a bunch of Gucci and Chanel items, as well as a lot of money stored in a safe from their parnets. C would also always buy a ton of junk food from the snack shop at break and lunch. I also remember a time where she hid her apple watch on her wrist in the mornings at school.

C wasn’t snobbish at all. She would regularly buy food for her friends, and she never bragged about being upper-class at all.

Plus, C always liked to buy virtual currency for the games she played (Roblox, Minecraft, etc).

I worked during high school. Last two years I was working around 40 hours a week going to school 1/2 days. I weighed around 120lbs.5′11″. I was not a jock. Fast forward to our 40th reunion. Guess who was doing most of the setup work, carrying heavy stuff and being asked to do muscle stuff? Me. I then weighed 150lbs and had been doing construction work for a while. Most of the jocks were over weight, and crippled. But being a small school, 67 in my grad class, we knew each other. The judge and the guy that just got out of prison talked like the old friends they were. The cop that questioned the legality of my white lightning still grabbed a pint canning jar of it and was last seen drinking it. We were able to get the same band we had in high school, play for the reunion. Well, the same lead guy anyway. So the skinny guy stayed somewhat in shape, the jocks got old and fat, the “hot” girl was now a grandmother, and looked the part, and we all are looking forward to our 50th.

Edit. This month we had our 50th reunion. Smaller crowd as we lost a few. 67 in our class and had 83 show up. Including 6 teachers! (And none of those were in urns!) More of the same as the 40th. Just a big bunch of old friends getting together. Income did not matter. The ones with big money played well with the guy that spent some time homeless with a drug problem. 2 had TBIs, Traumatic Brain Injuries, they received as much respect as the doctor. The band agreed to play for free, but that did not stand. We passed the hat and they made more that night than they had in many years I think. One person had a stroke and had to go to ER, another was having some heart issues and forgot his nitro pills. Well guess what? We still share drugs. This time it wasn’t good blonds hash our Merchant Marine friend brough back, it was Nitro pills. Say what you want about small towns, but I am glad I stayed in one.

There were two of them. During my freshman year of college, I made the acquaintance of two rich kids who had been roommates at their fancy private school (Phillips Exeter Academy, IIRC) and then stayed roommates at college. Higher education for them was just an excuse to party and consume lots of alcohol and drugs.

One time I was with them when they wanted to visit some coeds in a female-only dorm (showing my age here) that didn’t allow visitors after a certain hour of the night. One of the rich boys got very angry, and yelled, “You can’t keep us out, we’re the crème de la f***ing crème!” I nearly fell over laughing.

During the summer break, the slightly less obnoxious rich kid went on vacation to Morocco. While there, he purchased a large amount of high-quality hashish, and oops! got caught trying to smuggle it out of the country. Last I heard, he was looking at a long stretch in a Moroccan prison. Wonder if his family money bought him his freedom.

I knew it was my stepfather's money and my sister and I'd get kicked out as soon as he could maneuver it but all the kids at school were so impressed and of course I seemed so down to earth because I knew it was an illusion. Not Rich. Really. That only made me seem cooler.

We had live-in help and I loved them all. They came and went, I hated that but my stepfather treated them badly and I think they were bigots. My sister and I realized that when discussing especially our mom and it was understandable in the ignorance our grandparents grew up in but our mother just wasn't very nice. She looked the other way too many times when he was in one of his tirades.

We had a couple who lived in a horrible room (my parents had money and room enough to make conditions better for the staff). The new couple were Mac and Esther. They became my closest allies and hated my stepfather. Thank God my parents took many vacations.

Maccie was a huge black man and we would taunt him(14-year-old white teenagers) and he would chase us and give us “horsebites” on the back of our thighs. Man, those things hurt and sweet Esther saying in her singsong voice, “don't hurt them babies, Mac.” He would play risqué stand-up comedien albums for us. I knew about Redd Fox years before he got a show.

He would chauffeur-drive us to school and even do the whole “performance” with his hat on and open the door and we'd all tumble out and jump all over him and give him hugs and kisses and he'd be saying,” y’all get off me now! Stop or I'll give you some ‘a dis! “ and he'd make horse sounds and flex and unflex his horse bite hands. The kids at school would stand open-mouthed on the sidewalk.

He was my best friend and my partner in crime and I would tell my parents that there was a slumber party somewhere and could Mac take us (and pick up some other girls)? So Mac would take us to this very cool teen club that had live music and he never told and neither did we! Come to find out that while we silly little dreamers were boy-hunting we weren't listening to the music. Apparently Lovin’ Spoonful played there, The Association, Tommy James and the Shondelles, the list goes on and on.

Well, one day I came home from school and my mom had driven them back to Chicago and I had a tantrum that even scared The Master of Tantrums. So my parents at least got their phone number and address and they were amazed at my crying and lamenting call to them and how much I could love these people.

I wrote to them for many years and of course it faded out. At least they knew a few rich little white bread teenagers weren't complete jerks. That matters to me very much.

Quora wants a “CREDENTIAL.” All I got is a letter from Esther. Wanna see it? Come on over and I'll show you my G. D. CREDENTIAL. CREDENTIAL THIS, QUORA. I love sitting here til all hours writing crap for a site run by Androids.

Yup. I'm pissed.

I went to a few high schools 2 of them fit the category. One of them was public and the other one was private.

Public School

The average price of a house in the neighbourhood this school was covering was about 1.8 million. About 90% of the kids in the school came from millionaire households.

The school parking lot was a combination of hand-me-down luxury cars ( BMW, Jaguars, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.) and brand-new jeeps. We actually had so many new jeeps a lot of other schools would call our parking lot a jeep dealership.

The school was a great experince. The teachers were really good and made sure everyone got really good grades. There were huge parties every weekend( I had better parties in high school than collage). A lot of drugs which was the bad part. Our school exceled at sports. No school could even come close to us. The average public school football team had no more than 2 couches. We had 10.

Private School

This school had one of the most beautiful settings I have ever seen. The school had 100+ year old rustic building. One side of the school had a view of a lake and the rest was surround by forest.

The class sizes were limit to 8 kids. The teacher would always be willing to spend extra time with you if you needed it. The class average use to be around a 80. This school also had a little bit of drug problem too.

TL;DR I had a clean slate.

The moment I got in the car after graduation, it hit me. Everything I had done up to that point no longer mattered. Years of work and sacrifice were gone, only to be represented by a piece of paper. All that was left were the memories and skills I learned along the way. I went from decorated graduate to just another person in the time it took to walk across the stage. Honestly, it was terrifying and freeing at the same time. No longer bound by chains of keeping up my reputation as a perfectionist and overachiever, I could finally relax (until college started a few months later).

Most famous person from my High School class? There were less than 200 of us that graduated that year, there are preachers, doctors, lawyers, an opera singer, two reality TV show contestants Survivor Cindy Hall and her twin sister Mindy Hall who was on a dating a rock star reality tv show. But the most famous, that would be my Mason County High School 1992 classmate Heather French. She was Miss Kentucky in 2000 and Miss America 2000. She was and is one of the kindest best people I’ve ever met. She was in many beauty pageants in the high school years and we’d joke around with her and call her Miss America, I don’t know if any of us other than Heather herself actually believed she’d win that title. But she was determined and she achieved her dream. She is a smart compassionate person I can’t remember anyone she didn’t treat with respect and compassion. She’s married to a Doctor and former Lt. Governor of Kentucky Steve Henry. Heather French Henry as she’s known today has worked for charitable organizations and a passion is helping homeless veterans, her dads a USMC Vietnam vet and he and her mother are just great people. Heather is beautiful, smart and kind, and she’s the most famous person I graduated from high school with.

I attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London from the age of 6 right up until my graduation. Over the years, the school has educated the children not only of French expat families, but also of international dignitaries, celebrities, and even royalty. Yes, there were some kids from tremendously wealthy families there (N.B. I was not one of them! There were a lot of us common folk as well). And you know what? No one gave two shits.

Money was never discussed, wealth was kept discreetly camouflaged behind the same baggy shirts and Dr Martens Boots everybody else was wearing (well, this was the 1990s). The only inkling I would get that a fellow pupil's family was loaded was when being invited around to their house, which might just be a ten-room apartment within farting distance of Harrods. I would feel sorry for my friend for not having a proper house with a garden to play in, like I did 2,000 miles away on the far outer edge of Greater London.

I only found out quite how wealthy some of my classmates' parents were by accident, long after I had left the school. I remember aged 14 asking a classmate what her parents did for a living, to which she replied, “They own a shop that sells wool and stuff.” For years, I imagined a tiny little haberdashery shop full of dusty knitting needles and balls of yarn. Then one day I came across my classmate's name in an article in an upmarket fashion magazine. The article was all about her parents, a married fashion and homewares designer duo whose pieces regularly appeared in the pages of Vogue, et. al., and which retailed for hundreds of pounds even then, 20-odd years ago. It turned out that the dingy haberdasher's was, in fact, a flash designer emporium in London's swanky Notting Hill!

So, no, the rich kids at my high school were not the most popular. The extroverted kids and those who were good at sports were the most popular. Money never came into it.

The Lycee Charles de Gaulle circa 2013, looking much the same as it did during all my years there (photo credit: French Morning).

I was not the “rich kid” at school. My school was a good mix of middle class. Many of my close friends (including myself) were part of the upper middle class, but didn’t really care to show it. There was a girl who I had heard from a different friend was very rich. Let’s call her Sophie.

I only ever had one class with her, so I never got the chance to know her well, but she seemed pretty rude to anyone who wasn’t popular. She herself wasn’t terribly popular either. But she was friends with many of the popular girls. I later learned from overhearing people say things about her that some people were only friends with her because of her money, so they could get benefits from her. I felt a little bad for her, but at the same time, she seems completely oblivious to that.

My parents aren’t quite billionaires but they’re so close that the difference doesn’t really matter— They know all the same people, attend the same parties, have the same number of houses, cars, boats, planes, and travel wherever and whenever they want (Vacations might be around $80k). So in terms of lifestyle, they live the same as most billionaires.

As for ‘what it’s like’? I’m in college. I don’t get to travel that often, I get a “modest” allowance ($800/month) to cover all my expenses. They pay my rent which is $1100. So essentially $2k month. Maybe a bit more considering car, health, and other insurances.

I have a trust in my name that I could technically access but there’s no point. I don’t, contrary to popular belief, have free access to my family’s money. If I ask for things I will usually get them (within reason). Obviously I couldn’t ask to drop out of school and travel the world for a year, but like a week in Mexico over Winter Break is fine. Family vacations are rare, but when they happen we take our jet.

I don’t really have to worry about emergencies. I know that if I’m ever in a tough situation my family will help me out, but A) I’d have to ask and B) I don’t like to ask.

They pay my tuition in full ($70,000/yr) and for flights when I come back home.

Essentially, my expenses get covered: tuition, rent, gas, phone, car, medical, sometimes clothes, flights, haircuts, etc, but I don’t get ‘spending money’ or unfettered access to their finances.

It’s nice to not have to worry about those little things but honestly I think the biggest advantages are probably the connections. For example, if I wanted to meet Andrew Yang or Nikki Haley or the CEO of IBM, I could. I could get free owner’s box tickets and tours of sporting events like football (American), football (European), and F1. The advice is great too. Especially because if I’m told to do something by my parents I don’t have to trouble myself over affordability because they’ll pay for whatever it is if I take their recommendations. I’ve also been taught a lot about investing and smart financial decisions.

Outside of pure financials, all of my friends at school come from middle-class or working-class families. I don’t particularly care where they come from (though it’s hard to plan group vacations or living arrangements) and I prefer not to broadcast the amount of money family has. After a few years my friends found out that we have a jet and I don’t love it but they’ll tease me about it, or if I complain about anything, it’s their go-to. One of my friends grossly misunderstands though, thinking that I’m flying out every weekend and buying luxury clothing despite my attempts to rectify her thoughts.

Keep in mind that this is coming from a college student that is neck-deep in classes. I’m taking 18–22 credit hours every 10 weeks so I don’t have time to do “rich people stuff”. My brother on the other hand, is out of school and has been traveling Europe for over 2 months. In fact, he met up with my parents in Rome. So maybe when I’m out of school and have a job, I will be traveling more, but I kind of doubt it.

I don’t live in an incredibly nice apartment, I don’t drive an outrageous car like a Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, etc, and I get enough from my parents to get by with a bit of budgeting.

Hope that answers enough. I’m assuming that I’m not the typical ‘billionaire’s kid’, but I have no way of knowing because I don’t know any others. Don’t get me wrong I would not complain if I was allowed to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, but that’s not how my family is.

It’s bizarre. I grew up with a mother who was the heiress of dynastic wealth and a father from rural India. My mother wanted to shield us from the pressure and public scrutiny while my father wanted to raise us with modest, midwestern values. For a while, it worked. As a kid, I just thought that some folks lived in big houses - others lived in smaller ones. Some people had a pool - others didn’t. Some people went to Africa or Australia for the summer - others went to day camp at the YMCA. Some people met the President and attended the Emmies - others had big BBQs in their backyard for the Super Bowl. I didn’t assign any meaning to these differences as a kid. I figured ‘different strokes for different folks’ - and we’re all having fun.

As I got older, my perspective grew broader. I began noting the differences with which I was treated. I overheard what others said behind my back. I discovered folks knew more about my family than I did. I realized the ‘lifestyle differences’ that I figured were a matter of preference were a matter of privilege. The layers of socioeconomic reality began peeling away. And it never stopped. So I left.

In college, I loved playing the redneck. I didn’t want anyone to know. Eventually, I’d confide in someone - they would tell everyone - and again, I was “one of those”.

After college was totally different. I worked a variety of low paying jobs while living a very nice life. I kept my cards close - but gay twenty something’s sniff for money like it’s their job. I was either too good at keeping my wealth a secret or too bad at it - but at the end of the day, it was a good boyfriend bullshit filter. I learned who was after money as soon as they said “hello”.

I also learned how to determine real friendship and companionship. How to treasure those who saw me for me. How to see me for me.