I grew up poor. Making rich friends changed my life

Telegraph

25-04-2025

Here in Britain, class has long been seen as the great divide when it comes to earning potential and aspiration. But these days, studies show there's an easy way to get ahead – hang around with rich friends, and start early. It certainly inspired me.
My childhood in the Seventies was what you'd call 'Bohemian middle class'. My mum was a playwright, my dad worked for the BBC, and they were very young. We lived in a Manchester suburb, first in terraced houses, then in a three-bed Thirties semi until I was nine. We went on annual holidays to North Wales with my grandparents, and my dad's cars (when he had one) were generally held together with bits of string and optimism.
I came from a long line of immigrant shopkeepers, clerks and postmistresses. But while we were always a bit skint, my family was also clever. We were never short of books (or blues LPs, in my dad's case). I spent my primary years being sent to work with the top class, which made me both stressed and unpopular with the children in my class. Aged eight, I passed the exam for a very academic private girls' day school, and my grandparents generously helped my mum and dad scrape the fees together.
That was when I met rich people for the first time. Of course, we didn't think in terms of 'rich' at that age, but I was very aware that when I went to birthday parties, other girls lived in big detached houses with landscaped gardens and banks of shiny cars in the drive. Several had ponies, in contrast to our beloved scruffy cats who covered my school uniform in orange fur. Some of my new friends would spend half-terms skiing, and summer holidays in Florida or the South of France.
My best friend had five siblings and her home life was equally bookish and normal, so it took a while for me to notice the gulf in income between me and my classmates. Nobody mentioned it, it simply existed. I didn't feel jealous so much as curious. Their parents seemed to be lawyers or doctors, dentists or tech entrepreneurs. After school, they'd all board the bus and head to mansions in deepest Cheshire, while I wandered home past the newsagents to our red-brick semi.
I sometimes wondered how their families earned so much money, forgetting that most parents were a good 15 years older than my own (and some had inherited it). At 17, most passed their driving tests and were gifted cars. One girl got a sports car. I carried on catching the number 41 bus into town.
None of this affected our friendships – on the whole, they were kind, clever, funny girls, even if Nadia did wear Armani jeans at the weekend, and I wore Fifties frocks from a vintage emporium. Still, passing round a forbidden copy of the Shirley Conran novel Lace at lunchtime held the same thrill for all of us.
It wasn't until I went to university in Glasgow that I became truly aware of the rich gap. My two flatmates both came from families far better off than mine. They had grown up down south (one had gone to boarding school) and, for them, dropping student loan money on designer clothes and hair-salon visits or buying 'good' wine was entirely normal.
I shopped at Oxfam and bought Bulgarian Country White. My hair was a nest. Again, it wasn't that it mattered – they never showed off or mocked me; we just had different attitudes to money. They didn't fret about their finances like I did, or desperately compete for minimum-wage jobs in the holidays (I worked on the Co-op meat counter for one unpleasant summer).
But when I left to start my journalism career, I swiftly found myself pregnant at just 21 and finally felt the burn of aspiration. I wanted security for my child; I didn't want to feel that queasy uncertainty about money that ran through my family history. As a result I worked so hard as a freelance writer, I was a blur. I saved madly for a mortgage and bought a five-bedroom house with my new husband, who had three children, when I was 28. I didn't care about cars, but I did care about eating out, holidays – we went to America, the South of France, Majorca – and well-dressed children.
It was subconscious but, looking back, my school days were instrumental in this. And this experience is not unique to me: according to a recent study from global research consultancy BIT, children who mix with better-off friends go on to earn an extra £5,100 a year.
I wanted my children to have what the well-off children had, I wanted them not to worry about money in the same way I had worried. Only an unexpected tax bill derailed me (I had grown up with a work ethic and the desire to earn money, but no one had taught me about the proper administration of it). But I was the breadwinner, so I picked myself up.
Working so hard meant I was missing out on time with my family, and by 34, I was burned out. I opened a vintage shop, and went part-time as a writer. I earned less and, once again, my friends were generally better off – our closest friends lived in a huge house, drove a Porsche, and went to Antigua on holiday.
Now, I'm remarried, and we live in a two-bedroom cottage in the Scottish Highlands. I write novels, and buy fancy vet-approved food for our two dogs and the cat. We haven't had a holiday in five years – but we are not poor. I suspect, deep down, that the phrase 'You have to see it to be it' is true. I was spurred on to work hard enough to buy a large house, provide for my son and step-children, pay for holidays and gifts and treats, partly because I'd seen what a well-funded life looked like. More importantly, I'd understood how it felt for my friends not to worry about money, because there was always enough of it. I wanted that feeling too.
Do I still have friends who are better off than me? Yes, absolutely. Am I determined to write that bestseller and go on holiday somewhere fancy again? Also, yes, absolutely – the inspiration that started in childhood never stops.