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Comment by nonce42 | Hacker News Reader

The author seems pretty confused about rich kids. Having rich parents doesn't necessarily mean that you have a lot of cash in college. (Sensible parents are going to give their college kids enough money to get by, not enough to go on a spending spree.) Thus, it's totally reasonable that college kids are commonly broke. It's not some role-playing to escape their responsibilities as members of the elite. In other words, there's a big difference between being broke and being poor.

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Even if the rich parents aren't injecting a huge cash flow, that student still has the safety net to fall back on.

Yes, however the thing with safety nets is people typically avoid having to fall back on them. I could go broke and fall back to living with my elderly mother, but you can bet your ass I'd rather avoid that.

A rich kid might be able to ask their parents for more cash, but the embarassment and scolding that might come with that is likely enough to get a lot of rich kids to avoid the situation by choosing to live within the artificially imposed bounds of their allotted budget.

I came from a rich family. My parents let me flounder on my own in college. Never gave me a dime and I had earn everything I ever had. When I was 25 and my GF got pregnant, my parents said, “Well, you’re a responsible adult, you’ll figure it out.”

For me? There was no safety net. A year on food stamps, paying child support, working three jobs and being clinically depressed was me “figuring it out.”

At no time did they ever step in to help me financially. When I moved out for my freshman year was their idea of kicking me out of the nest.

Sad to say, you have assholes for parents. Sure, I can see them reasonably thinking that making you support yourself in college was a fine idea. But providing no support that would benefit their own infant grandchild? No.

Rich people can be really stingy

My experience having observed rich friends I knew from my high school and Ivy league college days has been that, when it comes to their own children, this is the exception, not the rule.

I’ve got to ask. But did you consider your parents rich or just just upper middle class. I have a few rich friends and nothing like what happened to you would ever happen to them. First, they would not need to ask for money. That comes from a trust where they get an allowance.

I had one friend who feigned being broke because he would spend all his allowance before the next disbursement arrived. And would borrow money from friends.

In each case their job was assured. they were graduating into the family business or to manage its wealth. Or start their own business with financial help from the trust.

This exact thing happened to me in college. I had a few fraternity brothers who were always broke and scrounging around, while simultaneously desperately afraid to let on anything about their family background.

It's always a combination of wanting their kids to go through a phase of knowing what it's like to have nothing (teach the lesson of frugality), and making them spend their early 20's living hand-to-mouth as a way to maintain the illusion of control.

But that's not an indictment of modern culture. You see that pattern occur across generations.

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