Can you achieve financial freedom on a working-class income, or if you come from a working-class background?
Does working-class financial freedom look the same as other forms of FIRE?
What even is ‘working class’ anyway?
What’s in a name?
I don’t know about you, but I struggle with the term working class.
What does it mean? Who qualifies?
Is my flat cap flat enough?
Is my collar too faded to be properly blue?
Currently the most widely accepted way of defining class is through socioeconomic background.
Look back at your parents’ occupations when you were 14. Were they employed in manual or service jobs? Did they work as drivers or machine operators or cleaners? Were they long-term unemployed?
If so, then you probably fit the standard definition of working class.
Work and class
When I was a kid my dad drove a bus. Meanwhile my mother stayed home and took on odd jobs – like cleaning and childminding – to make ends meet.
We had no money for extras, or even for things that most people would consider essential. If we needed anything that had to be bought new – like school shoes – we would get creative. We’d set up a table at a jumble sale and sell our old clothes. Or we’d make something from the odds and ends of furniture found in skips to drum up a bit of extra cash.
A lot of my early memories are of playing in a blanket fort under a trestle table in a church hall.
Before anyone takes out the tiny violins, I should add that I had a great time. My dad drove a bus! And I got to rummage in skips!
Yes, foreign holidays and restaurant meals are great – but have you ever experienced the thrill of finding a complete Victorian marble fireplace abandoned in a back lane? You don’t know what you’re missing.
I was working class, firmly and unarguably. So were my parents, my grandparents, and their grandparents – as far up the family tree as the eye could see. There was no such thing as inheritance, because nobody owned anything or earned more than they needed.
And that was fine. It certainly cut down on the family feuds at funerals.
We practised what is apparently now called loud budgeting. In other words, we were upfront about how much we had – or not. If somebody invited us somewhere, we’d check how much it was going to cost and cheerfully say no if we couldn’t afford it.
Nobody had a problem with that. Everyone had their own challenges.
Working class hero
I was working class, and happy to be so.
But then my parents did something bold. They stepped out of their box – or more accurately, they pushed me out of it.
When I was ten they sent me to sit the entrance exam at a private girls’ school.
To my surprise, I got in. And I didn’t just get in! I won a scholarship.
Because we were broke, I also qualified for a government assisted place – a scheme meant to improve social mobility by funding places for poor kids at elite private schools.
Between the two funding pots we didn’t have to pay a penny in school fees. Which was just as well, because we could barely afford the uniform.
So off I went to my fancy new school, loaded down like a Buckaroo mule with my cookery basket, hockey stick, and enormous schoolbag. Every morning I lumbered at top speed through the council estate so that I wouldn’t get beaten up.
It didn’t go well – unsurprisingly.
The girls at my new school kept asking me where I stabled my pony and how often my family went skiing. Nothing in my life so far had prepared me for such questions. I’d spent the previous summer making a hammock out of a collapsed bit of fence by the old railway line. I had a side hustle charging 20p to walk people’s dogs so that I could buy a mix-up at the corner shop.
I quickly learned not to mention my life at all.
The trick, I found, was to watch and imitate the other kids.
Classification
Studying the other kids taught me a lot about people’s awareness of money – and about what happens to families when they lose their money.
Let’s just say that private schools are not very charitable in those instances.
I could write a whole Rich Dad, Poor Dad-style book about the effect of private school on my perception of wealth. It certainly shaped my ideas of working-class financial freedom.
Imitating the other kids kept me out of trouble, but it also messed with my own perception of class.
Was I still working class? I was just as poor as I’d always been. My parents were still working manual jobs. I was still running through the council estate every day.
Nothing had changed. But people at home had started to treat me differently.
By the time I was 14 I was in a full-blown identity crisis, neither fish nor fowl. I had an accent that careered unpredictably from regional to posh.
In the evenings I routinely scouted the back lanes for change that people had dropped, while at lunchtime I sat next to a kid whose dad was on the board of Northern Rock. (Sadly I was not aware of the irony at the time.)
Class and hard work
My response to being a perpetual outsider was to double down at school. I decided that since I was there anyway, I was going to get the most from it that I possibly could.
I worked hard, and then even harder. Not having a social life was pretty handy in that respect.
It didn’t go unchallenged. Random Barbour-clad parents would stop me in the street to find out my latest test scores and interrogate me about who my private tutors were. But in the end I came out of that school with a set of results that made people blink in astonishment.
(Did you know that the kid who gets the highest A-Level result in the country gets sent a special certificate? I can show you if you like…)
However I also came out with a sense of detachment from all class-based norms and customs. It wasn’t easy for me to connect to any of them. And that has stayed with me.
I still don’t ski, or ride horses, or drink martinis at the country club. I have no intention of doing so.
But I also don’t want to buy a round at the pub or go on holiday to Benidorm with the girls or take out payday loans.
I became classless.
And then into that void floated the idea of financial freedom, working-class style.
I realised that I was going to have to develop my own goals and shape the life that I wanted. And that it was going to be different to anything I’d encountered in any social class.
At work on class
Since then, I’ve run into plenty of FIRE people online who have similar ideals and aspirations.
But I’ve never come across the exact mix of lifestyle, saving, and spending that I’ve developed, or that I aim for. I’m still trying to imagine for myself a life that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere except in my own head.
So am I working class, or middle class, or upper middle class, or an ‘emergent service worker’ – or am I something else now?
I shop at fleamarkets. I take public transport everywhere. Frequently I buy the food with the yellow discount stickers. I have never darkened the doorway of a Waitrose.
But…
I am highly (possibly over-) educated. I have far more money in savings than anybody I know.
Also I take part in activities that apparently are well and truly ‘elite’ (according to the BBC’s slightly bizarre class calculator).
FIRE exit
I’ve come to the conclusion that I am indeed something else. I think of it as escape class.
Escape class is characterised by a gleeful and anarchic form of strategic frugality.
I will happily dispense with frippery while accumulating money in tax shelters. I’ll teach my kid about investing while sending him to community college. I will build up a vast private library of rare books while living next door to an HMO with a permanent guard of vest-clad lurkers.
Then eventually I will get to escape the rat race, and all the restrictive social rules that come with our social roles.
I may not fit into narrow definitions of working class anymore, and I don’t entirely fit the FIRE model that is floating around these days.
But one thing that’s stuck with me from my working class upbringing is the idea that the System is the Enemy and must be Beaten.
I was never quite sure what that meant, and I’m still not. But I take comfort in the fact that whatever the System is, I’m well on my way to beating it.
Do you feel like you want some financial freedom in your life, but you’re not sure where you fit in? Then please do join me in escape class.
I can budge up – and there’s plenty of room for more.
A lovely narrative, and I feel for you in some of the alienation!
A story I suspect a lot of us can relate to.
The BBC ‘Class calculator’ thingy is funny. I know socially someone with almost every occupation on their list – perhaps a function of living in a village where you tend to know everyone of working age, and having had children at the only school in quite a wide area.
Thanks so much for this. I’m a bit the same – although not quite as extreme as you! Going to a posh uni pulled me from one world to the other and going between worlds was tricky.
Like you I don’t know what I am now (a big stash, but I’d never buy a new coat! At one point I think I was earning in 5/6 weeks what my Mum would earn in a year… I like the idea of defining your own space!
An “independent” class?
The link to BBC class calculator – brilliant!
I had the “family lost money so you’ve got to move from private to public school”* experience for the final two years of primary school, and it was fine. Might have been a motivator in aiming for a well paid profession
*Using dictionary definitions of public and private, not the weird British twist of meaning
Enjoyed reading that and I wish you well.
I’ve been trying to beat the system most of my adult life. Others might say I’m middle class which I hate because it’s so damn boring. And I feel little shame in “adjusting” where it expedient these days.
But class isn’t self assessed really as it’s defined by what others think of you and where you fit. It’s very much an old world thing and I certainly believe it holds areas of the economy back (I speak of the UK). It’s inefficient for sure. Eg. We all know people who should never have been given “the job” but we all know why.
Finances, financial matters and financial thinking is only part of the game here. There are other dimensions. But if you’ll excuse the gender specificity I’m reminded of what Bernard Shaw said that
“it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him”.
You got me. Definitely “working class” parents and upbringing, never flew as close to the sun as you did Squirrel, the Northern town lost all it’s industry in the eighties where I grew up, and I have a savers mentality and a terrible aversion to debt.
I never liked the term working class. Somehow, in my mind, it implied that people in this class did all the work whilst other classes did it by choice or not at all. I never comfortably adopted the title even though my trade is perhaps in that category.
Thanks for the article, I enjoyed it very much.
By the way, the Beeb has me as “elite” :-0
JimJim
I vote for reshooting the Cleese/Barker/Corbett sketch from the Frost Report with Squirrel additionally representing our collective as Escape Class.
I loved reading about your class struggles and background. So much resonated with me as a successful NE based women from a relatively modest background who went to private school on an assisted place.
I’d add one further layer which is accent. I’ve found that my accent (which is relatively ‘posh’ having gone to private school) confounds people who expect me to speak with a Geordie accent and frequently ask me where I am from originally (how rude!)
I have a similar feeling of not being easily classified as I am not Geordie enough for those up North, but when working in London, Southerners can generally tell I’m from up North and consider me ‘other’.
“I was going to have to develop my own goals and shape the life that I wanted.”
You chose Freeeeedommmm!!!!!
I loved this piece but I hate the notion of class so much. What a terrible idea to judge people on how much money their family earns, or their accent, or where they live, or their school, or their bloody shoes.
And what a terrible consequence it is that we all get hung up on that BS to the point where some feel like they have to change their accents to make progress, or ski in the right resorts, or buy the right frickin’ car or jacket.
If someone judges me on those criteria then I don’t want to be in their gang.
Firstly, well done on that special certificate! 🙂
“I routinely scouted the back lanes for change that people had dropped”
This brought back memories – me and the siblings routinely did this, so we could scrape enough for the £1 to hire a video from the video store!
I hear you – I’m not working class (though that’s what my parents started off as) but I don’t feel that I’m wealthy enough to be middle class either. I’m something in between probably.
Trying to beat the system is a worthy goal, if it means doing things your way and not letting the system beat you!
And that BBC thing is hilariously wrong as it says my group match is Elite… I mean, I put down that I enjoyed going to the gym and playing video games and I don’t know any CEOs!!
I enjoyed that very much. It feels very familiar. Escape class – love it.
My grandparents were definitely working class. My parents less so. I went to the local state grammar school – there was a hint of what you describe there but it wasn’t until I went to university and then to work in the City that the glaring differences really hit me.
The BBC calculator judges me to be elite too. I’m pretty frugal except with the things that are important to me – food being one, so I am guilty of irregular trips to Waitrose, interspersed with regular shopping in LIDL.
An interesting story Squirrel. I have the same sort of original background. Both parents clearly working class, and most of my extended family as well. I did have an uncle who worked in an insurance office, had married into a much wealthier family, and was prone to giving himself airs (much to the amusement of his siblings). Money was very tight and the lack very obvious.
I got into a grammar school and generally had a great time. It was a meritocratic sort of institution, so although there were many from a wealthy background, there were plenty from a similar background to me.
It did change me, and I lost the cockney accent that my brother and sister retain, but I rarely felt completely out of place. Too many nice people there.
The bigger problem was back home where many locals mocked my gradually shifting was of speaking. I used to be active in local scout and youth groups, but increasingly felt an outsider. This culminated in a bust-up with one of my chief tormentors, and when a youth worker suggested that we should settle it in the boxing ring “like men”, I realised this world was no longer for me. The sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion cut me free of my childhood background and pursuits.
So when I moved on to university (first to do so in my extended family), I felt quite at home. Still tight on money compared to most of my peers, but I had been working weekends and holidays since the age of about 11, so I had ways of getting a little extra cash.
But as you say, those early experiences never leave you. I am still pretty frugal. I find it difficult to spend on ‘luxuries’ for myself. I can do it for spouse and children, but everytime I buy something I want (and have probably agonised over for months), I still feel massively guilty.
So what am I? Classless feels about right (in the socioeconomic sense, although many friends would argue I am classless in the other sense as well). Middle-class (BBC app says ‘established middle-class’)? Working-class? Depends which end of the telescope you look down. To the landed gentry/trustfund kiddies (and yes there are still plenty of those around), I am irretrievably working-class because I did , and still do, work for hire. To those friends from my childhood I still have, middle-class/professional class, even though some of them earn more than I ever did.
I was curiously pleased to be described by Theresa May as a “citizen of nowhere”. I thought that was a compliment. Someone who has transcended the petty categories of nationality and class.
I spent most of my life with a nagging sense that there was a ‘system’ out there and it did not want me to succeed. But gradually I relaxed. I have lost both the cultural cringe and the reflexive anger against the ‘upper’ classes. I have found that most people have something interesting to say if you give them a chance, whether professor or bus-driver. I have also learned that an arsehole is an arsehole no matter what their background, education or wealth.
Have I been absorbed into the system? An example that something useful can be made from the poorest raw materials. Don’t know and don’t care.
I loved reading this. I had a similar journey: working class parents, a chance to go to a private school, joined the Army to get out of the back streets of Blackpool, ended up as an officer, now in a white-collar job. I’m left with a mindset and an accent, and a feeling I don’t fit people’s expectations (on both sides of the tracks). What seeing people with money taught me as its an asset to manage and build, not just spend.
Excellent piece, thanks for that. Interesting as it is on Monevator to hear from the 1% its also refreshing to have a broader range of experience represented.
Quite a lot there resonates with me (except the special A level certificate!). My family were not traditional working class but had a low income and didn’t own a house. I was also at grammar school so there was a wide range of backgrounds represented, children of doctors, academics, factory workers, shop workers. I don’t recall it as ever being an issue but I do remember getting a lift with a very middle class friend’s mum , who in the space of 10 minutes demonstrated a whole approach to life that was a long way from what I had been exposed to. My children also went to a grammar, one time my eldest had a geography class where they found out where they lived on Google Earth, which was just new (not sure that would be ok now…). ‘And you should see some of the houses..’ was his comment when he came back to our modest terrace.
Class is a very strange concept anyway, members of my family who went straight into the trades have always earned more than me in my professional job. And as employees, not even running their own companies.
According to the BBC I’m also one of the Elite, even though I’m in the second lowest category for income and house value, perhaps we’re all part of the Elite now.
And on accent, I remember reading about a contemporary who got into Cambridge with his educated grammar school regional manner of speaking and being told by a girl in purest RP, without apparent irony, ‘oh you have an accent’.
On the BBC calculator point, I’d note it appears to have been published in 2013 — and it seems to use 2011 data — so the questions that ask for concrete numbers like house prices and salaries are surely massively out of date now, considering all the ructions and inflation in-between. 🙂
My wife’s 90 year old grandmother thought I was very non-U but we still joke that I got the good silverware when I visited, which wasn’t very often as she unfortunately passed away not long after we started dating. My wife’s grandfathers on both sides were ex-RAF, her parents in the arts, whereas my Australian roots very working class, a fisherman and a carpenter for grandfathers, a fitter for a father.
I sometimes feel we’re holding on to our Zone 2 London mid-terrace life by the skin of our teeth. Skinny FIRE is theoretically possible, but we both don’t want to leave London.
I don’t feel part of any class in England and don’t envy our friends ski trips and summers in Cornwall. A beach holiday back in my home town of Perth every 2-3 years works for me.
Work my SIPP. Work my job. Find small joys in family life. Don’t feel I need to beat the system. Pinch myself and ride my extraordinary luck.
I remember taking the BBC test when it came out, while living in London – it placed me squarely in the middle of precariat. I must have passed established middle class some time one the way, now landing in elite territory.
As an outsider to UK, class is a very odd concept. On one hand, UK is famous for being a classist society in a mostly egalitarian Europe. Other immigrant friends I knew took pronunciation classes to hide their accents; in some places, this could be the difference between getting a job or not (and those were all highly skilled professionals with 10+ years of experience). I seriously considered this, opted not to – perhaps not as much out of pride of my place of origin as out of laziness. Also, I was doing well enough for myself, and the few extra posh fintech places where I did feel like the accent could matter – I didn’t want to work there anyway.
And then there’s the other side – being immersed in the very class conscious London society made me see the divisions at home too. My partner’s family drinks vodka for every celebration – my own would drink wine (for a very long time, home-made, from allotment trees) or home-made fruit liqueur. Same poor communist-era upbringing, different familiar memories or sentiments. I used to think that my home country had no class divisions, and formally, it hasn’t, not for over 100 years. The old grandeur of familial estates has no impact on current wealth, having been ground down by 44 years of communism. And yet. And yet. People still pretend and play to different social norms.
I took skiing lessons as a kid (on 3-rd hand skis, on a hill in my home town). My parents rode horses (as a side-gig, for someone rich keeping them who had no idea how to care for them). One big advantage we got was the built-in assumption of going to university – not if, but where. Free higher education makes it easier.
And in UK, at times I had people very confused, when we talked about horses and they apparently coded me for someone very, very different.
“It’s very much an old world thing”: I take it that you haven’t spent much time in Australia or the USA, then?
Interesting read . I’ve often felt outside whatever class system there is.
Firmly upper middle class upbringing private school but my dad was an outlier of his family who are all definitely working class. My grandfather passed when he was 17 and he became the breadwinner supporting a family of 6 and his mum
Majority of my actual friends were at the local state school and all of my close friends are from Oswestry and very working class roots though most have done quite well. mywife is also from a working class cornish family . I get on with them better than I do my own family
I also came out as elite .
far more at home at a five finger death punch gig than the opera!
People have to operate in the only environment they currently know……
My aspirational parents were a meat inspector and a secretary who managed to send their 2 boys to private schools-a primary (prep) and a secondary
One became a veterinarian (me) and one a fast jet RAF pilot- so jumped a social class?
Still don’t know how they did it!
My 3 kids went to the local comprehensive-one a GP,one a DeputyHead Master in a secondary school and one a Prison Governor -social class maintained?
Parental input seems to be the crucial factor
I am interested to see how my 8 grandchildren do-all educated at the local comprehensives
So far one at medical school (4th year) and two at Uni doing Chemical Engineering degrees( 2nd year)…….
Were my parents (the great grandparents) sacrifices which of course I and my brother never noticed at the time worth it?
I like to think they would have thought it was!
xxd09
To all you elite people I say ‘but surely nobody believes the Beeb these days?’
Anyway I liked this: “Went to … elite universities” I’m so old that in my day we just called them universities. Those of us who were generous of spirit might even have classified Imperial College as a university.
Are you sure about those special A level certificates as I don’t remember getting one?
I’m two generations away from English aristocracy on one side and Welsh working class on the other.
As for systems and class and all that, I get the feeling it’s on the wane a bit. There’s the old saying ‘ there’s no such thing as good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. I think a lot of issues with class may now fall into that category, to a certain extent.
Hope everyone adjusted for inflation then with that calculator and used their 2013 selves for the answers.
One thing I would like to do is just throw it out there that skiing is a superb sport, absolutely sensational way to spend your time. Mountains can be magical! Cutting a line in fresh powder is hard to beat..
@Rhino
“Cutting a line in fresh powder is hard to beat..”
As someone who either fell asleep or started talking like a fool after even a small spliff, I’ve never felt tempted. But hey, everyone to their own.
Haha yes, I’m in danger of getting into the soup for going off topic here but I think there’s a sub class of sports that are all about the feeling of compression you get trying to go round a corner, skiing, wavesailing, foiling, mountain biking, kitesurfing, surfing. Carving is the term that gets bandied about. Absolutely addicted to the sensation.
Great post, thank you for sharing
I do love reading other people’s stories of social alienation – we’re all outsiders somewhere!
@Business Girl – a pleasure to meet another Posh Geordie Lass! We’re a special sub-class, I reckon. Stottie Class, maybe?
@TA – it is awful to judge people on things like that. And at the moment I’m watching it from the other end, as my son is absorbing a hatred of anything ‘posh’ from his (fairly rough) comprehensive school. ‘Posh’ seems to include books, ‘smart clothes’ (ie anything not a tracksuit), long words, and a whole bunch of other things. I can’t keep up!
@weenie – I remember trying to scrape enough to hire videos! Usually something with spaceships, in my case.
@PC – TI has been trying to convince me to soften my stance on Waitrose. Apparently there are Bargains to be had. But I live in a Waitrose desert – not a single shop for hundred miles!
@Rhino – I’ll take your word for it on the skiing. I’m enormously uncoordinated myself, and would no doubt find a way to fall off the mountain!
“and I don’t entirely fit the FIRE model that is floating around these days” – what is the FIRE model that is floating around these days? Not sure I have a clue any more..