"I Remember I Really Wanted One Of Those": Older Adults Are Recalling The Home Item That Indicated A Family Was Filthy Rich
If you grew up in a household where money was scarce, you may have noticed when another family was wealthy just because they had certain things in their house. So when Reddit user TrickySeagrass asked in the r/AskOldPeople: "Growing up, what product or item was a definite indicator that a family had money?" so many people provided their own experiences into the mix. Here's what they said below:
1."Not only did you have cable, you had HBO."
"I remember that, too! And the people that had a whole satellite dish!"
2."An in-ground swimming pool."
"I thought my friend was fancy with her above-ground pool 🙃"
3."Two cars. Anything other than the basic metal swing set in the yard. A fridge with ice. A wet bar. Then you were so rich. Braces. Kids with their own rooms who didn't share with a sibling."
4."Color TV. Poorer folks still had black and white TVs."
"That's my answer, too. I was a teenager in the late '60s, and most of us had black and white TVs still in our nice middle-class suburb. Color TVs were something special."
5."The two-car garage was a sign of wealth to many of us. One house in town had a three-car garage! They must be super rich!"
6."Whole house air conditioning."
"This. We had the window unit in my parents' bedroom (where the color TV also lived.) On the hot nights, we all sat in there watching the various druck that '70s TV had to offer (Sha Na Na and all the various variety hours helmed by a celebrity of the day)."
7."I grew up in a very working-class area. Anybody who had a second story on their house or even a basement was considered ahead."
8."Giving away almost my exact age, but if you had the OG Atari system versus ColecoVision? Yeah, y'all had money! Any variety of PCs, from Apple to Commodore to Tandy, was also a tell. And if your mom lovingly stored the one and only Texas Instruments calculator for each kid because that shit was expensive and it was GONNA last for generations, you were from a poor but aspirational family."
9."A suntan coming back from Christmas break. It meant a midwinter vacation to Florida before air travel was cheap."
10."Mid-'80s: My friend's dad picked me up to go to the mall, and they just got a car phone. My family was living off of government cheese and nearly everything I wore was from a second-hand store. I was so jealous."
11."Country Club membership."
"We had our high school swim team dinner at a country club because one of the kid's parents were members. I remember asking the woman at the front desk, 'How do you join? What does it cost?' just because I was curious, and she replied in a haughty voice, 'You can't just join. You have to be sponsored in.' Well, la dee da!"
12."A dishwasher was a big deal. We finally got a 'portable' one in 1973. It took two of us boys to drag it to the kitchen sink so mom could hook it up to the faucet. It also blocked the door to the garage when it was in use, but Mom loved it!"
"I remember I really wanted one of those, but my mother told me I was the only dishwasher we needed. Thanks, Ma!"
13."Disneyland vacation."
14."For me, it was a really weird food thing: they had the individual packages of flavored oatmeal. It truly blew my mind as a kid. Our oatmeal was cooked in a pot and generally made the morning very lackluster — but, ironically, we did have all of the typical sweet cereals as well. I thought oatmeal was swank AF."
15."I saw the title and thought, 'Vienetta at Christmas.' I didn’t half misjudge this thread."
16."Kids that got more than two gifts from their parents for Christmas, and one of the gifts was clothes."
17.And finally, "In grade school, the kids who had the box of 64 crayons with a sharpener."
Older adults, was there a product or item that indicated a family had money? Tell us what it was and why in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
