34 Rich People Who Were So Wildly Out Of Touch, Their Friends And Family Took To The Internet To Complain About Them
Times are tough, and horrible comments from rich people who don't seem to get that make them even tougher. So recently, when Reddit user Yiga_Blade_Master asked, "What is the most out of touch thing you have ever heard? And how did you respond to it?" I was ready to rage-read. Here are some from family and friends of rich people:
1."I became friends when I was very young with a prestigious lawyer. Came home on leave and we met for drinks. He decided to take me to a private club. While there, he ordered us both drinks for three to five rounds. In the middle of telling a story, he got a call and stepped out. After a few minutes, he texted and told me he had to run back to the office and that he would get me next time. I ask for the bill nervously as there was no price next to the drinks he ordered. He became very surprised when he had to come back to pay. He couldn’t fathom that a private in the Army couldn’t pay a $4,300 bar tab."
2."'If your wife wants a Range Rover, why don’t you just buy her one?' I just stared at him and said, 'Man, we operate in different worlds.'”
3."I had a friend group that lasted about a decade. Two of us were low-income (I was lower middle-class, the other was in borderline poverty), and the others came from extremely wealthy families. One day we were talking about income, and I mentioned that anyone who made above 100k was rich in my eyes, and one friend laughed at me and said, 'Yeah but all of us here make over 100k.' I had to stop and stare in absolute shock. My family collectively barely made half of that. I realized then how much privilege she had that she was completely unaware of and just assumed that everyone else had the same luxuries that she did."
4."I knew a guy sophomore year of college. He grew up in the hills outside of San Francisco. Like the bougie, bougie part of it. His family had the cyber truck on pre-order the day it dropped. When we went out to eat one day, he asked, 'So who's paying this time?' My friends and I all stared at him like, wtf? He went on to explain he and his friends would take turns paying the bill whenever they went out 'cause it was practically every night. He talked about his friends doing coke in HS at all the parties their parents let them throw."
"On another occasion we were out and about and passed by a trailer park. He started asking questions about it, and the rest of us were confused. Turns out he thought trailer parks were just in movies. He was shocked anyone actually lived there.
On multiple occasions he tried to convince us we grew up rich (we didn't), and we always argued back he knows nothing.
He was just in school for the experience. Ended up getting a 0.0 GPA because he never showed up to classes. He stayed in the area, bought a four-bedroom house and rented it to six friends, having them stay two to a room. He disappeared to go traveling, and turns out one of the roommates opened one of the bills for the house, and he was overcharging each person by at least $200. They, of course, got mad and wanted to break the lease. He threatened to sue anyone that did.
Never saw him again but definitely the most oblivious person I ever met."
5.“If your student loan payments are so high, why don’t you just ask your parents to pay them off?”
6."My ex-friend was bragging about using their COVID stimulus check to buy a Cartier love bracelet during the height of COVID. This is a person who lives on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, has never kept a real job, and has 100% of their bills paid for by their parents. Meanwhile, my industry was completely shut down during COVID, and I’m still climbing out of the debt I accumulated to try to get by almost four years later. When I saw them write that shit online, I quote retweeted them verbally EVISCERATING them, and then I blocked them and haven’t spoken to them since."
7."Dude I went to school with couldn't understand why I couldn't afford the exact present he wanted. ... I told him I'd discovered my mom had been alternating between having her pills one month, and mostly noodles/hotdogs in the house, or not having her pills, and a fridge with various kinds of meat and some vegetables to make more than just noodles. Kid goes: 'Well, if you're poor, then your mom should make more money that way you can quit whining.' Our teacher got fired for sending him to the office after his mom threatened to sue the school over it."
8."I went to high school with a girl who once said, 'Did you know some people don’t have dishwashers?'”
9."My friend was thinking of switching careers. She said, 'I’m happy to take a pay cut, as long as I can still afford to rent a three-bedroom.' She lives in San Francisco. The extra two rooms were for her home office and her cats. She also said, 'I’d even be fine taking something that paid as low as $125k for a while until something better opens up.'”
10."Friend at the pub the other day (who’s from a really wealthy family and had a house bought for her outright in a pretty central area of London, and is in a high paying job) was complaining about the costs of being a homeowner when you need to do repairs, telling the group, 'it’s honestly not worth it to own a house.'"
11."I went to a really rich Catholic high school. I got in on merit. In my grade 10 math class, it was the classic case of 'put D kid next to A kid and hope A kid pulls them up.' During a work period, I heard this exchange: 'I’m so mad at my dad.' 'What did he do?' 'He got me the wrong car for my birthday!'"
"I wish I was kidding. It sounded so cliché and from a movie I thought that they were making it up to see if I was eavesdropping. I don’t think she even got her license by the time we graduated."
12."My husband...used to think most people do a gap year where they travel if they have been to uni. He was shocked when my parents laughed at him when he asked what countries my mum went to on her gap year as she did uni. He grew up a lot wealthier than me."
13."A friend of mine had a new girlfriend I was meeting for the first time. My friend is really rich, but this girl...she casually started talking about how she was flying out to NYC that weekend on a private plane with her mom to go shopping. Just a regular weekend flying from Atlanta to NYC on the private jet to buy some shoes."
14.“'Why would you want to have roommates?' was said to me once. I almost lost it."
"Closely related — 'unpopular opinion — I prefer living alone.' People who say this REALLY believe everyone prefers several roommates and endless living compromises and limited bathroom access. Baffling."
15."I was visiting my aunt. She and her husband both had very good jobs. She kept her bills pinned to a bulletin board so she would remember to pay them. I said to her, 'Auntie, your car payments alone are more than we make in an entire month, and we are supporting two kids on it.' She looked at me stunned with her mouth open and asked, 'How do your kids LIVE?'"
16."I was talking to a boomer-in-law, and he was complaining how he started out earning less than $2.00 an hour 'flipping burgers' as a teenager back in the '60s, and got a pay raise a year or so later to over $2.00. I pulled up an inflation calculator and pointed out that he started off making the modern day equivalent of over $18.56 an hour...and then got a raise to nearly $20 a year later. He waved his hand dismissively and said, 'I don't believe in that inflation crap.'"
17."I made a new friend, and he asked if I went on annual holidays as a child. I explained that we could never afford to go abroad, but every few years, we would take a trip somewhere within the country. He said he had a similar experience — his family went to Croatia every year, but they could only afford it because they didn't have to worry about paying for accommodation because his parents owned a house over there."
"I was also shopping for a wheelchair at the time and struggling to find one I could afford. He said I should get an electric one because it would suit my needs better. I explained that there was no way I could afford it because they were upwards of a grand. He didn't understand, kept asking me when I was getting an electric wheelchair, and when I said I couldn't afford one, he would just say, 'But they are so worth the money!'"
18."I have a couple of relatives who are relatively well-off. My cousins would ask why my family didn't do stuff their families did (vacations, buying expensive stuff, etc.), and I'd be like, 'Dude, my dinner last night was a mustard sandwich, and my Christmas gifts last year were from a charity.'"
19."A friend of mine (who really isn't a bad guy, just a bit sheltered) once talked to me about how he is very good with money. Bro gets gifted tens of thousands of euros every year by his relatives as birthday gifts, etc. He claims, 'I just don't spend much.' Dude almost makes above average earnings just from birthday presents, and lives in a house owned by his parents, who pay all of his bills."
20."I once wanted to gift a friend a gig ticket. She was a young mom at the time, and she didn't have any spare cash to spend on herself or to go out and do anything fun. She was very hesitant to take it, and it was 100% my idea. My other friend (who was in her 30s at the time) said, 'I think she's manipulating you, I just don't believe she can't afford a ticket! I mean, there's ALWAYS money!'"
"This woman had never lived away from her parents and was from a relatively wealthy background. She also said, 'People who haven't got money really only have themselves to blame for not managing their finances better.' I had to have a chat with her about how not everyone comes from the same background and some people go to bed hungry daily."
21."I bought my first condo (one bedroom, pretty small) in a city in my early 30s. My uncle made a comment about how he bought his first place (a house with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms) a year after he graduated college, and how mind-blowing he found it that my generation was so behind compared to his. Ridiculous enough when you consider inflation and the average salary at the time (1982 vs. 2022), but even more ridiculous once my grandma told me that she and my grandfather gifted him the money for the down payment."
22."My aunt was complaining about how she’s had to start clipping and painting her own toenails to save money and may have to sell one of her three luxury cars or her motorcycle because 'times are tough.' I was on food stamps at the time, and my car was broken down, and we couldn’t afford repairs. She knew all of this and still acted like we were in the same situation as each other."
"I just stopped talking to her altogether. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since, and that was 10 years ago."
23."My in-law grandparents when we were negotiating to buy our house... (Note: They are retired, and her grandfather was a New York lawyer.) Grandpa: 'They are asking 400? Just offer them 200k cash; they'll take it.' We informed them we don't have 200k in cash."
24."It’s a fairly small example, but I was in eighth grade and talking about levels of wealth or lack thereof with a couple friends. My family didn’t have money growing up, but we were never poverty level or anything. One friend I guess didn’t want to be seen as affluent, and said his family is actually poor because they have a mortgage on their house."
25."My cousin married a guy who made quite a bit of dough. Their daughter was turning 16, and she was telling my other cousin (i.e. her sister) that they were deciding what expensive car to buy the girl. Her sister suggested they get her a modestly-priced used car instead of a new, expensive car. She said, straight-faced: 'We're not ANIMALS!' as if buying their daughter a used car would make them so."
"Overall, she was known to be very vain. Years later, her husband divorced her because she cheated on him, and she couldn't afford to move into her own place, so she moved in with her sister and sister's husband."
26."My ex was a doctor. He worked very hard for a long time to get there and was paid accordingly. He worked with (but was not their boss or employer) several medical assistants — most of these people were $15-an-hour employees, where he made at least 10x that. They worked together all day and were super close (still are as far as I know). During this time we built a new house. The MAs would joke about us having a party sometime, but my ex was uncomfortable with the idea because we weren’t really party people but mainly because our house was pretty over the top. It was very large and expensive, and he didn’t feel comfortable highlighting the drastic difference in pay, when none of them really knew what he made."
"He would often take them out for dinner and drinks and would always cover the tabs, he would call in lunch for everyone, etc., but he felt like our house was almost embarrassing when some of them were raising three or four kids in a two-bedroom apartment. Again, he didn’t control their pay, they were all employees of a clinic.
Anyway, I was telling one of my friends about how awkward and embarrassed he felt about it and how he wasn’t sure what to do — my friend then said, 'He really should host a party for them! If they see your house, it might inspire them to work harder and make more money!' It was almost a caricature of a Republican talking point."
27."I had a friend who was veryyyyyy insistent on the idea that all debt is bad debt and thus should be avoided. I would always try to counter argue that what if someone were in need of a car to get to work and make more money, but due to a lack of transportation, they didn’t yet have that money to pay for the car. They always would insist that if you are in debt, you weren’t working hard enough or you should have saved more."
"Same friend always is complaining about how tiring their job is, even when it's under 20 hours a week. (Don’t get me wrong, that can be tiring, but what happened to this save money mentality?)"
28."My ex genuinely said, 'Even if you earn £125,000. That’s not really a lot of money and can’t get you far.'"
29."'Just buy a broken down home and fix it up! It’s easy. Your dad and I did that.' Haha, so buy a home I can’t live in and also pay the wild house payment and the costs of the renovation? Mmmk boomer."
30."My rich dad (I grew up with my poor mom) was appalled that I didn't even consider to pay for every person at my wedding to have their own Uber/Taxi to ensure they get home safely. It was a dry wedding in my mother-in-law's backyard."
31."Someone I shared a house with in college (who was either not yet or barely 21) complained about her peer not being educated in wine, saying that there is 'no excuse.' I asked her what she was up to once, she was flipping through Vogue, and she answered, 'Shopping,' so I guess she was rich rich."
32."A friend of mine tried to deny that his family was wealthy the first time he brought me over to his house — a two-story, five-bed, three-bath house, with a garage that could hold three cars and a rather sizable RV, which sat on the shore of a small artificial lake that had its own boat dock. I very bluntly had to tell him that while I was in no way judging him for it, it was a tad difficult to take him downplaying his family's wealth seriously when standing in a garage that could comfortably fit half of my family's entire house."
Finally, we'll end on two that weren't exactly friends, but were too awful not to include.
33."My ex-girlfriend and I were celebrating our fifth anniversary and one of our birthdays at a fine-dining restaurant...($250 per person). We sat down, and there's quite a bit of time between each course, and we got chatting with an older couple sitting across from us. The wife explained to us: 'We're trying somewhere cheaper tonight, and the experience isn't too bad! I wouldn't do it again, but it's nice to know that there are less expensive options so everyone can enjoy the experience every now and then.' Like...if this is cheap, wtf is the expensive experience like?!"
34."When I told my dentist I was not looking forward to having braces as an adult in my late 20s, he suggested I just take a six-month vacation. As if that was something most people in their late 20s can do at the drop of a hat. The cost of braces themselves isn't cheap, and I'm saving every spare cent in the hopes of maybe one day being able to buy a home, but sure, why don't I just quit my job and head to Cabo? I'm sure I'd have a great time and it would be worth blowing my life savings and having to restart my career to avoid being seen in braces."
Do you have any rich relatives, in-laws, partners, exes, or friends? Tell us the wild things they've said in the comments below, and you could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
