"Thought We Were Dirt Poor": People Reveal The Moment It Hit Them They Were Actually Rich

I'll play this game. My dad recently sold his company for good money. He worked his way up from bottom to owning. I am in no way set for life on that sale...he is (I don't expect to be). I realised I had a wealthy dad when I sold my first house to move closer to home, he recently sold company and offered to buy out mortgage. So currently my bank is bank of dad. He still expects full money but no interest. I realise how special I am

When I visited a friend in kindergarten who claimed to have a great selection of Batman action figures. They were all from happy meals (still sick though).

When I discovered that my father would give his used stuff to those needing it more than he did. Rich doesn't necessarily mean money; I'd rather think about how rich you can become by doing what's good for another person without expecting anything in return.

It's something I adapt into my life.

When it all ended. My parents were not millionaires but well off. My father worked in finance. I remember christmas's were you couldn't see the floor for presents. Then my father changed, his personal dealings went south, started to borrow, then steal, steal from my mother and money from grandparents, even forgery, it then turned violent when my mother discovered it all. In the space of a few months, we went from spoilt to asking the neighbors for work. The experience overall change us for the better and I look back and I don't miss our wealth. I just look in distain at how much of a brat I was.

Yachting around every weekend to different islands in the North East after school let out on Friday. Would have been awesome if I wasn't always seasick.

When I was 14 it clicked. My brother 2 years older than me crashed his $45k Silverado he'd had for 3 months by then and dad bought him another one the next weekend.

Then I went to college for 6 years and got 2 masters degrees,and had my own off campus apartment. Graduated without a single cent of student debt.

Edit: context.

Paternal Grandpa had his own mining company that produced copper, nickel, iron, and cobalt.

Paternal Grandma came from family that had oil money.

Father was architect. Who sold his firm to a competitor in early 2000.

Maternal Grandpa was a military physicist.

Maternal grandma was a Chemist.

Mother was a Chemist.

Brother did 2 tours with the Army corps of engineers due to post 911 fervor. Then became a Civil Engineer.
He married a dentist.

I'm Material scientist, I married a pharmacist.

When I moved away to go to college. I had always dreamed of escaping suburbia and the nuclear family. I never realized how privileged I was to have fresh paved roads, low noise pollution, street lamps, light police presence, pets, access to nature, double pane windows, and a thousand other perks not appreciated until lost.

(Also, in elementary school, I went on a field trip to SF. I saw homeless people for the first time in Civic Center Plaza. In my hometown there were no homeless, or if there were they were kept out of sight)

I’m currently still a teenager and living with my parents, but I noticed pretty young that my family had a lot more than most other families. My family isn’t super rich or anything but we’re well off and live a comfortable lifestyle and can afford some nice luxuries. The biggest wake up call I had tho was about 4 years ago when my parents decided that they wanted to live on the lake and we moved into our current house and bought a boat soon after. They bought this house for over twice the amount our old house sold for. I always knew we had money but I didn’t realize we had that much. I believe that we crossed into millionaire territory about 5 years ago, which makes sense how they were able to afford the house. I hope to do as well as my parents have someday, they both came from poor families and rough family relationships so it’s nice to appreciate how far they’ve come and that they built this wealth from the ground up. I try to be a grateful as I can be because I know they’re trying their best to make sure I can have access to things they couldn’t as kids. They love this house, it’s their dream home, and it makes me happy to see them making their dreams a reality. It’s motivated me to start learning and saving money as a teen so that I can hopefully become successful like them. I’m not one for over the top fancy things, but one thing I’ve always wanted since I was a kid is a really nice car. That’s my one super luxury thing that I want to be able to have one day, my dream car is a Lamborghini Urus, and one day I’m going to have it. Sorry for rambling on so much, this got off topic lmao.

Both my parents came from super humble backgrounds. My dad was youngest of 7 in a military family. My mom was oldest of 4 and grew up in a trailer park with her dad being a trucker.

My dad got into investment banking and my mom became a lawyer and both of them did really well. But they always "hid" it and would always give money to family. Like they drove older cars that weren't as nice and we had a decently nice house, but not one that would make you think we were rich.

When I was 16 my dad decided "f**k it, time to enjoy the money I worked for" and we moved into a wayyyyyyyyy bigger house and replaced all of our cars with Mercedes and he bought a porsche. Definitely a weird thing to to experience at 16. I thought we were like barely above average middle class. I'd see nice cars and be like "dad I bet that guy's a millionaire" and he'd be like "we are too." And I always thought he was joking. Now that I'm older I realize that a million really isn't that much, and he definitely wasn't joking.

My father was giving me twice as money as I earn. He called it early inheritance. I am a well-paid software developer. Felt really weird to me.

My 3rd grade teacher (1980's) asked the class what we would do with a million dollars, and I remember thinking, well I have about a million in my trust fund.... so I answered what was to me very obvious: invest it conservatively and live within my means.

Not sure if they were exactly rich but we had a second land line dedicated for our dial up internet.

Not even a year ago when my mom told me how much her business makes every year. I'm 24. She started this business from scratch while taking care of two kids as a single mom, so you can't really blame me for thinking she was still struggling to make it work.

My family is working in banking since 5 generations and I knew that my great grandfather was a sucess man, founder of a major european Bank and minister. But my parents were living without showing any sign of overwealthness and were humble in there speach regarding money. Even if I was in a private school (not a really expensive one but one well located) , I assumed i was average (even a bit below ) in wealth comparaison with my friends and classmates.

When I was 12 year old, we moved not far from our home to a new place. And I realised that nobody in my school were living in a 200 squaremeters flat with a view on the eiffel tower at every window.

When the 2008 recession had absolutely no effect on us and we still had tons of music lessons and other expensive hobbies and still went on vacations.

Also when my parents bought me a horse. Not a pony, a full sized American Saddlebred (though I was a horseback rider and still was up until I was in college). We still have him too :)

My mom used to never let me have friends over as a kid.

In 6th grade, my Dad convinced her to let me have a party at the house. My friends kept saying that I lived in a castle.

That’s when it kind of hit me that the 6 bedroom McMansion I lived in was ridiculously extravagant and my parents were rich.

Not stupid rich but my mom owned two very popular Asian restaurants growing up. Our house was a good size but I remember her having hand carved Thai tables imported over for like 10 thousand dollars. I just figured everyone lived comfortably.

Thinking back, even when I was like 9-13, I'd ask for like 5 bucks to go to the arcades, I'd always be handed a $100 bill.

I always knew my family had money. However, the moment I realized we were wealthy was when I started a new school in Europe. Many of the students had parents who had high level positions with international companies and their companies would pay the tuition for their kids. Well, my dad happens to have his own business. Everyone in the town knew about it because of the location of it.

Anyway, during lunch on one of my first days of school all the kids were talking about what their parents did for a living. I spoke up and told everyone that my dad owned the business everyone knew about.

At first I didn't think anything of it, but over the course of my first few months of class kids started bullying me for having money. It was really petty stuff like, "you're lying about your dad," or a girl once showed up in the 6th grade with a louis vuitton bag that was her mom's and was waving it in front of me telling me that's what money looked like and I was just "a dumb Jewish dyke" I cried and when I went home and that was the moment I realized that my family had money.

When a kid in my class (who as it happened didn’t live that far away from us) bragged the day after Halloween that he and his friends had gone trick-or-treating on our street “where all the rich people live”.

I had always known we were well-off, but would not have described us as rich because a) we didn’t have live-in staff b) our property was not fenced off and c) my parents always drove themselves. I.e., we didn’t live like Richie Rich.

Dad owned a financial advisory company. never knew i was rich because since he was so financially literate, he just invested alot and didnt splurge. when we moved into a new house i accidentally found the paper for the house listing and saw that the house we were moving into was a million dollars.