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do you see a lot of obvious hypergamy in your circles?

My experience with “Old money”& “New money” in Europe and England 🇬🇧🇪🇺🏛️💰

Europe 🍷📚💼

I come from a young country, so there is no “old money” circle to speak of in the sense of wealth spanning several generations of a family. All money here is relatively recent.

Older HNWIs (my parents' generation) mostly married people from the social circles they grew up in—uni or friends—and they usually became wealthy together. It's also the story of my parents.

In the older generation, I know a few hypergamous couples. Usually, the woman is the second wife/partner to a wealthier older man after his divorce or becoming a widower.

The children of this older generation are my age. Almost all of them are marrying people from the same background/social class. These people are mostly low key and hardworking.

No one is flashy in their everyday life, but you'll eventually find out about expensive cars, boats, yachts, watch collections, numerous properties they're renting out, vacation homes etc.

It's different with people who are the first generation of “new money”, usually self-made men in their 30s and 40s. In these couples who have just entered “new money” circles, I guess hypergamy is more frequent and obvious.

The aesthetic for women in this circle is different flavors of high maintenance. Everyone in this circle, men and women, enjoys showing off to some extent, expensive bags, watches, jewelry, cars, vacations, media appearances.

The “new money” people and children of HNWIs are like night and day, even though we're the same age.

The funny thing is that because pretty much everyone who's rich here made their money in business, these two social classes often intersect, working together as business partners. But socially, there's a very clear divide.

England 🏇🎻🍾

As for my experiences with “old money”, I was educated in England and still maintain ties there. England is populous so there's a huge variation of “new money”, and I won't get into that.

“Old money” English people can fly under the radar of foreigners at first glance because they have all those funny unspoken rules that new stuff and mainstream status symbols are gauche (eg. furniture, electronics, Birkins). Their residences are likely to be falling apart. This is perceived as "character" and "charm" in England.

But then you learn about their niche hobbies such as flying internationally regularly to watch their favorite sports team's matches, hunting in African countries, funding random vanity projects to keep their wayward kids out of trouble (they all give up in a year), and traveling between their various estates to just chill.

I enjoy visiting my English “old money” contacts, they are polite and generous, they can be genuinely sweet. But it's also obvious that they won't ever consider outsiders part of their circle, thus making hypergamy all the more challenging. You don't "network" with these people, the circle is closed.

There's this persistent, slightly sour undercurrent that collectively, they're not taking you seriously at all. Social class is set in stone in England, you don't transcend your station in life no matter how rich you become or what family you marry into.

I detected this undercurrent quite early when I moved to England and it put me off trying to get closer to them in whatever capacity. I didn't feel that it was worth it because I already have money. Hypergamy in this environment, taking into account the cons I sensed, wouldn't be a significant enough life upgrade for me. As an outsider, I could never be sure about their intentions.

Being easygoing and not nosy inadvertently turned out to be the right approach to keep lasting, if superficial connections with them.

There has been some interest of romantic/sexual nature on their side.

An anecdote I can share is once an older gentleman tried to set me up with his “tall and blonde” son. I already knew him well at that point but I still questioned his motive. I was young, sweet and naive, and at the time many wanted to take advantage of these qualities. Or maybe he genuinely thought well of me. Perhaps he wanted to test me, see what I'd do, for pure amusement. Who knows.