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..
Great article and very relatable. I read the book “Willing Slaves” many years ago and recently picked up the book “Chavs”. Both allude to the struggle people have from the working class and growing up in our current matrix of control.
It is a huge advantage to understand the system of control we have in place. Fiat money supply is constantly inflated and measures of inflation constantly understated. That has huge implications for the value of money and how to make sure you don’t fall behind.
I did not attend private school and wonder if this is ever taught? The curriculum now is meant to teach finance but what type? Is it save 10% type and all will be fine by the time you are 68 type? You are being paid interest above inflation, aren’t you?
The Elite control system is that the masses do not understand money and investing. The You Tuber “Damian Talks” in his post “Average UK Savings by Age” Showed how little investment actually goes on and how few people have ISA’s and share accounts.
Another fallacy is property in the UK in my opinion. Every asset has a price and that should be bought at a fair price. The fallacy that things always go up in price – is justified by normalcy bias. (The 4% rule even has normalcy bias because it is based on data from fairly recent history.) Encouraging people into an overvalued asset especially one with so much leverage benefits who exactly?
Does the education system help first time buyers understand all of the costs and risks associated with a property? Does it educate profit and growth? Does it encourage entrepreneurship? Does it educate real world skills such as finance, interpersonal skills, project planning and personal psychology etc.?
My personal opinion is that we have a huge hole in the education system and it is by design. Sites like Monevator do a fantastic job of financial education yet when people find it and understand it is it too late?
Working class rant over?
@Squirrel – Yes, it cuts both ways. I’ve often had to be reminded that inverse snobbery is (almost) as bad as snobbery. Stottie class – Does that mean let them eat stottie? 😉
@Fremantle – love this: “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.”
Great read, it resonated a lot with me!
@contender – ‘It is a huge advantage to understand the system of control we have in place. Fiat money supply is constantly inflated and measures of inflation constantly understated. That has huge implications for the value of money and how to make sure you don’t fall behind. ‘
I need a bit of help in this department, I don’t think I understand the difference between ‘debasement of currency’ and inflation.
Intuitively, I would have thought that having a measure of inflation would cover the problem of understanding if you are keeping up, in real terms, with net worth, income etc. I accept that RPI, CPI might be wrong, and personal inflation is all but impossible to calculate – but in principle just adjusting for inflation should be enough? Or do I need to consider ‘debasement of currency’ as well, almost as an additive component of depreciation?
I can look up inflation figures easily enough and see them ranging from say 0 to double digits over time and do necessary adjustments in spreadsheets to get ‘real’ numbers, but then I hear of people talking of ‘debasement of currency’ running at a long-term average of 8% and wondering what, if anything, I need to adjust based on that information?
Excellent article, Squirrel! I can’t see the class system ever really ending- everyone has some conscious or unconscious baggage from their background and in the UK it often is tied in with our class system. I’m middle class by profession (medicine), but don’t ski, sail, play golf etc by upbringing/background.
You know it’s not a healthy system when if you hear the phrase “…../……./class” the middle word will be working/middle/upper, but the first word is usually “dreadfully”!
Windy
@Rhino – I also struggle with this. Are we just saying that many people don’t understand inflation and think that putting money in a savings account is “getting free money”? There is some truth to that, but I wouldn’t say this fact is hidden from view by shady elites intent on keeping us poor.
In fact, over the last couple of years, inflation has become an absolutely central feature of public discourse. We’ve had countless strikes asking for pay rises precisely because of inflation (for instance). If this is a hidden tool of control then it hasn’t been very well hidden.
What keeps people from investing, in my view, is two things. One is that there’s a desire by many people (especially those working in finance) to make investing sound overly complicated. The second is an abundance of caution from people like Martin Lewis when it comes to investing advice due to the possibility that people might lose money – it’s a lot easier to point people in the direction of the cheapest phone contract than it is to recommend something that could go wrong.
In reality, most people would benefit from just being told to put their money in a cheap index fund and leave it there, but these two factors tend to inhibit the wider public from receiving that message, whereas a cheap savings rate will be happily plastered all over the media.
A reminder in the news today that whatever we think about the merits of enduring class structures, the wider world continues with its prejudices:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jan/17/working-class-accents-crime-uk-stereotypes
Of course we saw plenty of the flip-side of this in UK politics over the past few years.
These things persist, sadly, even if we individually strive to opt out of them.
Superb piece of social commentary and FI journey rolled into one @Squirrel. We’re all outsiders, I suppose. Identify has a plasticity or malleability to it.
The images of the English class system with its absurd and archaic hierarchies and Public schools (i.e. Private schools, ‘go figure’ that linguistic non sequitur, as they say in the US) are seared into my mind’s eye from Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 film “If”, with Malcolm McDowell. So it’s interesting to have the perceptive perspectives of an outsider to the world of the (in truth) anxious elites and the sharp shouldered middle classes looking to join them, or at least to try to gain a measure of protection from them.
Great read, thanks.
OOI:
a) do you know why your parents sent you “to sit the entrance exam at a private girls’ school”; and
b) do you have any siblings?
Mongrel class. And i can associate myself with it very well (though not as successfully based on my A-level economics fail!). Best of both worlds in my opinion, as you get to experience all angles and if you’re savvy enough you cobble together the more desirable bits and you fit into most situations pretty well.
Lovely post, thank you.
@Old_Eyes,
“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.”
So much wisdom in those two sentences. However, some people are born arseholes but others have the potential which they eventually realise!
We are all different; combinations of genetic inheritance and totality of experience.
Biology explains us.
@GOP – I believe the phrase is ‘Some are born arseholes, some achieve arseholeness, and some have arseholes thrust upon them.’
@Rhino – Genius!
Great article, Squirrel.
I’m not sure if I’m a little late to post a response but here we go:
I would like to propose an alternate classification of the class society, one that ignores how the media has continued to divide us in order to distract us.
If you, you children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren etc etc, would ever need to exchange their time in return for money in order the survive, then you and your family are working class.
In other words:
Family net worth £50 million, not including the value of the main family property = not working class / elite / whatever term you wish to be labelled
Family net worth > let’s say £1 billion = actual elite who view those below them as nothings
I think it’s important to try to spread a message similar to the above, otherwise we as a society will continue to squabble over whatever we’re fed to squabble over, when instead we need to focus on the rampant wealth inequality and attempt to start a movement that does something about it to initiate change, before it all collapses entirely.
As a side note, very long time reader but first time posting. Thank you for all of the articles that helped me understand and control my finances. I appreciate the effort.
The talk of laughing at people for having the wrong shoes reminds me of one of the Rest Is History podcasts in which they talked about a contributory factor to the First World War as potentially being the fact members of the British aristocracy used to laugh at the Kaiser for have the wrong shoes when boating, and he hated them for it. Slightly tongue in cheek no doubt but ripples on a lake and all that.
I’m clearly one of Rhino’s arseholes, since I find it hard to agree with the OP’s idea that they are part of an “escape class” or that they are “beating the system”. Their ability to continue to live in the way they currently do is totally dependent on the system. Their position is sustained by the system they say they want to beat. Any “escape” they perceive is an illusion.
Take their frugality. It’s supported by a system that redistributes wealth. Wealth that is created primarily by a debt-consumption economy. It doesn’t work if people start being frugal. The govt spends over £1.2 trillion/annum, or £30k/adult. The OP stated on a prior piece that they don’t even pay tax right now and have never earned more than £38k/annum (despite a PhD etc). So, they are clearly persistent net takers from the system. Yet, they own their own house and have financial assets.
If the system had collapsed or was just less generous, and they had been required to pay for govt services such as education for their child, for the NHS, social support etc, what would their asset base look like? Probably in the red. So no system = no assets.
Moreover, how much do they think their assets would be worth if the system collapses? Property rights aren’t part of any natural order. Yet again their perceived escape is totally conditional on the system continuing to exist. I think they need to be very grateful for the system, not try to beat it.
Continuing to love these Squirrel posts 😀 Who didn’t punch the air at the A level certificate line?
I’m a different entry route into escape class. My main (solid middle class) breadwinner parent was financially controlled by their dad, and watching the consequences of that during my childhood made me determined not to get economically trapped by anyone. Fortunately, I had major support with that goal from my trapped parent, who also wanted to escape and take me with them.
It made me allergic to any class signifiers that actually cost money – I’ll join in with the fun free ones though!
@ZX #46: But haven’t you just unwittingly made the argument for Communism there? If everyone acts according to their own self interests then then ‘system’ collapses. Therefore, an iron hand (fist?) of the State is needed to override individual interests and notions of individual and property rights (bourgeois legal formalism, and social constructs, as Communists would disdainfully put it) in order to ensure an optimal outcome in aggregate. Those who try to give less than they can to the system, and to take out more than they strictly need (the implicit expansion of ‘to each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’) get punished (as Lenin put it, if you don’t work, you don’t eat). Contrastingly capitalism and the profit motive necessarily involves extraction of more than your inputs, fairly or otherwise (whatever fair means).
@ZX – I could be completely wrong but I didn’t read the post as a critique of the State. I don’t think the ‘system’ the OP is referring to is the one you have in mind. I would guess that Squirrel may have in mind informal social sorting mechanisms designed to ensure niches are filled by the “right people”. Or to put it another way, to ensure the correct “cultural fit”. I took the “escape class” to mean an escape from the psychological shackles of a class-hierarchal world view. A synonym for the classless society really. No idea if I’m on the right lines but that’s my read.
This post truly resonated with me. Bravo
@DH. It’s not an argument for communism. It’s an argument for voting Reform!
We’re talking here about an individual who is down to “two days a week at work” and so “not paying tax”. Yet, this is enough for them to continue to accumulate wealth such that in 10 years they can stop working entirely (albeit based on a super-leanFIRE).
Are they really saving whilst paying no tax just due to frugality? Perhaps (as TA alludes to) this feat requires one to escape from the psychological shackles of a class-hierarchal world view (umm). Being a simple guy, however, I think it just sounds like exploiting the system. I’m not convinced the great majority of us plebs are going to be keen to pay tax to support a PhD superintelligence to spend most of their time at leisure.
Now I’m sure there is a lot more going on. There is some allusion to a child with disability so there many be many very good reasons for all of this. Nonetheless, at a headline level, it comes across as a great case study for those who want to strip away the state. It also helps explains why UK productivity is on the floor!
“Not paying tax”.
Well income tax perhaps . But presumably contributing to the state coffers via VAT, council tax, maybe via insurance tax & other levies and indirectly via taxes implicit in the price of everything ( if you buy a bus ticket, then fuel duty, nic for the driver etc etc). While not taking much out. By no means a free loader.
@ZX – Oh I see, you’re referring to this post: https://monevator.com/fire-side-chat-secret-squirrel/
Seems like most of the saving was done when the OP was working full-time, plus overtime, paying tax, looking after a child, and running side-hustles.
That aside, this must be the first time I’ve seen someone criticised for managing to save money on a low income.
Meanwhile, people who are doing pretty nicely for themselves, take every State subsidy they’re entitled to, and are applauded for their prudent planning.
I think, as you suggest, there is a lot more going on.
As we’re talking ‘class’ Suum cuique / to each their own.
Each of us is making our way. We’re all trying to grasp onto the sinews of financial security. Who can judge another here?
By @ZX’s measure, I’m falling short of making my ‘contribution’. I have no kids and I will leave nothing to the future beyond my death. I’ve accumulated now around 18x my gross income in investments and cash (and 22x overall in assets including my share of the house).
Evidently I should be doing my duty by spending it all to try to prop up the economy or by gifting it to the state to reduce the PSBR. But I feel no guilt now. I live like as though I were a wealthy student, and I like it that way. No foreign holiday since 2019. No car. Go to charity shops. Dislike spending money. Concerned about being ‘ripped off’ to the point of paranoia. And I could work harder and strive to earn more to pay more tax (bring on that 62% marginal rate, just can’t wait). But I don’t.
Does all that mean that I am ‘exploiting’ the ‘system’ (whatever “exploit” and “system” mean here, if anything). And do I actually care even if I am?
It’s my choice. My way of life. Suits me. Might not suit others. Live and let live. 😉
@ZX, fascinating response to Squirrel’s post. I enjoyed mulling over the gist of your argument.
Ultimately, I found it unconvincing and your anger a bit baffling. When billionaires pay some taxes and governments cease to divert taxpayer funds to looter/polluter entities (subsidies), I might spare a concern that someone like Squirrel is structuring themselves under the tax free threshold?
Thoughts? Will Reform hold true tax avoiders to account?
The class system must have social utility otherwise it wouldn’t have existed for over 5,000 years. For the most part it is an efficient heuristic with knowledge of someone’s class transmitting a host of other information that helps in navigating social interactions. It can obviously be wrong, but it only needs to be mostly right to be useful. It’s not intended to be determinative in itself. Mobility between classes is a whole separate issue.
Similar to ZX’s point, I’d be cautious in celebrating escape from something you’re not sure you understand (by the author’s own admission). What if your prison was actually your fortress?
If class had/still has self evident utility at a societal level then why do those with wealth and power strive to conceal that fact and present themselves as just being another one of the people?:
https://www.ft.com/content/6f834ebf-9013-4f60-b1af-8b6841ac14c8
Whether its Musk with MAGA; Farage with his flat cap, pint and cigarette; Starmer with football and (God only knows) how many times now reminding us that his Dad was a tool maker; or Braverman decrying luxury beliefs: no one wants to present as being part of an elite.
[Can you believe it, there’s even a website tracking how many times Starmer has reminded us:
https://mydadwasatoolmaker.uk/ ]
If classist and elitist structures were so obviously all to the common good, then why try so hard to hide them?
If you can’t name something then you can’t address it. Or, put another way, the unspoken problem is the unsolved one.
Depends on whether you’re trying to hoover up votes or not? For example, Zuckerberg neglected to cover up his $900,000 watch recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/zuckerberg-swiss-watch-meta-factchecking-video
While someone who lives near me isn’t trying too hard to hide his Ferrari.
@LALTA. What happens if we all do two days a week and structure ourselves under the personal tax threshold?
If we take what has been said as face value, then if Squirrel started work after the PhD at 25, earned steadily more, from £20k to their top salary of £38.4k, then by 40 their total income tax and NI paid is a measly £85k. Now, at two days per week, they pay no further NI or IT. Spending is £8-10k/annum, so perhaps £1.5-2k in VAT/annum.
This is where I do have a major problem with the whole LeanFIRE ethos. It’s not that these people want to live on less and save more. It’s that many are exploiting a system built as a safety net for those that cannot work. It wasn’t built for those who simply don’t want to work. Many LeanFire types talk BS when they say they are financially independent. They are actually very financially dependent on the state’s generosity and, by construction, on other taxpayers who are not retiring at 40-50 or working two days a week.
The population wants all these great govt services (NHS, education, big pensions, social care etc). That requires more tax which requires higher productivity/growth. Supersmart PhDs deciding to work two days a week for less than the personal allowance isn’t exactly the path to that.
P.S. Of course I don’t vote Reform.
@ZX: But there’s a philosophical question here.
Using another worked example: It’s perfectly lawful for someone on £150k p.a. to:
– salary sacrifice to the max of the £60k pension AA;
– splitting when doing so the 15% employer NI saving 50%/50% between employer and employee; and,
– having the employer direct, say, a 12% employer pension contribution from the employer’s occupational scheme to the employee’s SIPP.
That still leaves the employee on ~£100k p.a. salary (post-sacrifice) with a £60k SIPP PIA (bearing in mind the £6k employer contribution directed away from the occupational scheme to the employee’s own SIPP, and also the £3.75k NI saving as shared with the employee).
£100k p.a. nets to ~£68k p.a. with ~£28k IT paid.
The employee can then contribute £50k p.a. into SEIS. That gives £25k IT relief, leaving £43k p.a. to live on, with just £7k tax paid p.a. (NI and residual IT); but with £110k p.a. invested (i.e. £60k + £50k).
That’s not bad. And it’s exactly what Parliament has legislated for. Plain vanilla tax mitigation. No avoidance hanky panky involved.
And, as that’s also what the people’s own representatives in Parliament have voted for, how can it be criticised?
Do we owe a duty to take steps to maximise tax paid? No, there’s no such duty at law.
Few actually do this (the worked example) though, as it requires significant self discipline to live off a small fraction of salary (save for very high incomes indeed).
The bigger issue, both ethically and practically, are those of working age not working, not looking for work, but in receipt of benefits.
Are we really to believe that the numbers medically incapable of work have risen so far, so fast in the last several years?
This, and the triple lock, are what really jeopardises the public finances – i.e. not what people do with their own money, but how easily people are able to live off other people’s money.
@ZX, phew about Reform! 🙂
I understood your point. You’re right, of course, but you’re also wrong.
Here’s my point again: We should worry about Oligarchs who pay zero/negligible tax and not the actions of low/middle taxpayers.
PS. I find every post you write fascinating, and I always appreciate your perspective. I hope that goes without saying.
PSS. Ditto, Squirrel!
@ZX – glad to hear you won’t be standing for Reform anytime soon.
– We aren’t all going to do 2 days a week and pay no tax.
– I suspect LeanFIRE won’t unravel the social fabric anytime soon.
– Even most FIRE devotees don’t want LeanFIRE.
– Fiscal drag is fast making living beneath the Basic rate a pretty miserable place to be.
I do agree with your broader point that we’re going to have to pay more tax (across the board) and it’d be helpful if UK productivity shot up.
But I can’t begrudge anyone who finds a way to alleviate the despair of a dead-end job.
I think there’s a question of semantics here — and all ‘sides’ can be right.
It’s definitely a fair point that we can’t all live super tax-efficient LeanFIRE lives and expect life to go on as it does today. Perhaps then a gracious attitude is called for by adherents, or one that recognises the ‘game’ they’re playing with good humour?
On the other hand, we can’t all live the lives of high-earners maximising our incomes and tax receipts for the good of the state. Never mind the brain surgeons and engineers who might have gone into investment banking or other areas of finance if purely motivated by profit maximisation — who’d even collect the bins?
I’m not being entirely facetious. Both arguments (“If we all did X…”) are straw men, which I’d stress again doesn’t make them meritless IMHO. As thought experiments they do reveal the limits of what is (or isn’t) being achieved.
What does escaping the system mean? If it means ‘dismantling the system and replacing it with an alternative viable system’ then, well, that is a high bar with a terrible track record (Lenin, Pol Pot, um, Lennon).
Perhaps then it’s more akin to, say, surviving in the system under your own rules, as best you can?
We could look at say the samizdat writers of Eastern Europe. Despite Draconian censorship laws they copied and distributed banned literature which was read by an ‘underground’ elite but didn’t trouble the classrooms or the general bloke in the street (though it was often read by the highest-ranking officials).
I think they could certainly claim they were ‘escaping the system’. But a critic could (and people did) say their efforts would be better targeted at overthrowing said system rather than creating an intellectual bubble for themselves and their peers.
At the risk of stretching the metaphor beyond breaking point, we see here both the politburo members and struggling writers reading banned Western literature.
And in our economic system we see elites offshoring their assets and at the other end hardy LeanFIRE-ees both operating to maximise their take home incomes and minimise tax receipts, as @DeltaHedge notes.
The sums involved are vastly different but the principles are not dissimilar. And I’m sure both extremes might occasionally blunder into a boast — loudly or reluctantly — in the pub about how they’ve ‘beaten the system’.
It’s an interesting topic and a relevant one given the nature of @Squirrel’s post, albeit it moves us towards philosophy, game theory, or even perhaps morality…
Whereas anyone who finds their way to this blog will probably be most interested in the practical classes, whatever type of FIRE they are pursuing…! 😉
Pah! I can out-prole all of you. I was sent to primary school in clogs.
Fantastic article Squirrel. I loved this and like many here this really resonated.
I never really thought about class until my first day at the Big 4 surrounded by those location-less Uni accents.
Ironically, now it’s gone the other way a bit; I’m reminded of this every week taking my dad to a very working class pub in a fairly tough area of North Manchester. I feel I stick out like a sore thumb and all of the (very lovely) bar staff have asked me where I’m from and are astonished when I say a mile up the road!
Complicated old business but I reckon you’re getting on just fine doing your thang and all power you!
I like the idea of an “escape class”. I have had the benefits of a good education, a decent but not top tier job and made deliberate choices to do a lot of hobbies and have periodic sabbaticals from the rat race. I’m not engaged in the status wars of having a late model premium car etc and while I do take holidays some places where “rich” people like to go I know tricks to keep costs down and hate the idea of conspicuous consumption or keeping up with the Joneses.
I do wonder sometimes looking at peers whether that makes me a failure but then I look at the time I’ve been able to have with family and friends and my FI status and remind myself I don’t really worship material “stuff” and “standing” anyway.
Well done Squirrel for your story and your eloquence in relating it.
I started poor and didn’t have a fancy education but moved up socially and financially. Up, up, up, down a bit and definitely out of it all. I’ve learned the hard way to keep my mouth shut and be a chameleon in order to survive. I don’t tell people now because I got hurt a lot on that journey.
I see Squirrel’s other piece “Accessing the Access to Work scheme” is under attack from the wealthy and privileged on the front page of today’s Daily Telegraph. It says –
-ADHD ‘sickfluencers’ advise on how to claim £69k in benefits-
Oh well. I’m sure the rich and privileged have hard times too. Perhaps kicking those lower down the scale makes them feel better.
I fitted in better here 15 years ago when Monevator was “a rare UK-based money and investing blog.” (January 2010) and I found out how to look after my savings and pensions. Not so many super wealthy people complaining about their lot in life!
I’m 70 now and off to my rocky hillside, birds, rabbits, and occasional hare. Best place for me, being a mountain ash.
Really enjoyed this read!
I’d add a point on the ZX debate. Obviously everyone can’t end up being net takers or winners under a “state system”. But for now we have enough strivers still to maintain things. I fear there may be some nasty class/age rhetoric to come if it is actually identified what some people who “worked hard and paid in all my life” actually paid in relative to the state’s burden supporting them in later life. (and like WASPI women reminding them of their own decisions to avoid contributions and continuous work history etc) But as long as grey people turn out to vote the target is likely to remain elsewhere.
I think really the ambition for the FIRE “movement” as a whole is likely to move much closer to achieving RE at more traditional ages i.e. in 50s rather than earlier. Except on one’s own terms rather the “the man’s”.
I think the reason people think they are a ‘special case’ often comes down to forgetting that social mobility is possible. This article to me describes someone raised working class, who has become middle class, albeit still remembering what it felt like to be working class. That could describe my dad, who was raised in intense poverty, and yet through grammar school education made it to Oxbridge and into the middle class by the time I was born.
The number of ‘me too’s in the comments above should be a clue that you’re not all that unique (sorry!) and simply lived a social mobility experience that many of a certain generation did.
To Northern Lad, from a Northern Lass…. I think for me Squirrel’s article, and comments from many of us, are showing the confusion around what social mobility is, and where we “belong”. So we might be moving to middle class or elite in income terms… But in our heads, we don’t necessarily believe we belong there. For good or bad. Perhaps to rephrase Billie Eilish, when we (fiscally) wake up, where do we go?