She’s a wealth of information.
Aside from the obvious flashy clothes and expensive cars — other subtle signs may indicate a person is wealthy.
“There are lots of different ways that someone might signal that they’re part of a certain class background,” said a woman named Dani Payne, who has a background in education and politics, in a recent TikTok video.
Apparently, the first signal is a person’s behavior — how someone acts and talks, “And that’s not just accent, although accent is a really big thing in the UK,” Payne said.
“But it’s also what are you talking about, what’s polite conversation. Do you know it’s extremely impolite to ask about money and wealth, etc.”
Supposedly, another signal is vocabulary. “Are you well-read and well-spoken? A lot of these things signal an allegiance to a certain class structure,” the content creator explained.
Payne went on to say that experiences and memberships to certain elite groups can possibly also indicate that a person is from the middle or upper class.
“Aside from old boys clubs, it’s also about going to the opera…art showings. Do you go on ski holidays? Things like that,” she said.
Another tell-tale sign that can supposedly give away if a person is part of the 1% is how knowledgeable they are about specific things.
“What do upper and middle-class kids know that we don’t teach working-class kids?” Payne asked in her video.
Things like knowing how to navigate applying for the right colleges, how to write a resume and how to apply for a job. “Knowing these rules and how to act gives them an advantage.”
Payne explained that these rules come from a theory “from a French sociologist who came up with this concept of cultural capital, which was essentially how upper and elite classes hoard certain resources, certain experiences and certain knowledge that signal to everyone else that they are a part of that privileged class.”
People in the comments chimed in on her video, adding to Payne’s list of rules.
“One big indication is the level of natural confidence,” said one person.
“They use ‘summer’ as a verb,” said someone else.
“Middle/upper class also taught about finance (especially tax efficiency) from a young age,” added another person.