Why Do Rich People Think They Know More Than The Rest of Us?

Not my aunt but looks similar

Ok, this is something I’ve been needing to write for a while.

Why do rich people, or even just well-off people, think they are smarter than the rest of us?

When I was a kid, my wealthy aunt and uncle had money. It inspired me to write “My Uncle Was a 21st Century Ebenezer Scrooge.” And as one very insightful reader pointed out, he was actually Marley. Because in the end, he never learned his lesson before he died in 2020.

They would come over very rarely to visit. They would look around our small 900 sq. foot home, with its old, hand-me-down furniture and old appliances, and judge us.

I never felt equal to them or good enough. Most of my cousins were a lot older than me and I had nothing in common with them. I wrote about one of them in “The Tale of Two Cousins: One Rich and One Poor.”

My mom had depression and other issues, so my aunt took it upon herself to help out. My mom slept a lot and wouldn’t go to therapy or take medication.

So my aunt noticed this and started to give advice. All the time. It got so bad at one point that my mom stopped talking to my dad’s brother and his wife.

Sometimes the help was good. But other times it was hurtful.

She would comment on:

• My weight, went up and down a lot. She would tell me to exercise.
• My grades. She thought I could do better in school.
• My hair, my face my clothes. She never really offered financial help in those areas, just criticism.
• Who I dated. She thought the guy I dated in high school wasn’t good enough.

I went off to college and she would send me home-baked cookies and letters. I would tell her some of my problems. My mom was not around to help me, she was homeless part of that time.

So I would confide in my aunt and little did I know, she likened herself to being an unofficial therapist.

I found this out years later, my mom told me that my aunt thought because she had taken a few classes that she was a therapist. She had been using me as a guinea pig. I thought she was writing me as a caring aunt. I think I was more…