This seems like an obvious thing, but what do you think?! How deeply routed are money, connections and culture when it comes to success, and does it matter more than personal drive and diligence?

42 comments

  1. Yes. Classism is rife in the UK and it’s so passive that it’ll struggle to get the same attention in corporate culture as being gay or black. I benefited from it but to deny it’s a massive issue is a joke. It’s hard to explain in detail but it’s so blatant.

  2. I can’t see how there’s anyone who could think otherwise. Your family background influences everything from even before you’re both, things like the amount of nutrition you had as a foetus impacts your long term health. There’s even studies that suggest the health of your grandparents impact your health.

    Then when you’re born, where you are, where you live and grow up and the community you’re in, how much resource you have, how much time your parents give you, your access to opportunities, your experience at school, your exposure to different kinds of work, wealth and success, your values, beliefs and attitudes, again all very much influenced by family background.

    I mean before you even get to adulthood, there’s already been thousands of family background factors impacting your life.

  3. I would say in general yes, family background has a massive benefit. Not just because of money and connections, but also the general work ethic and attitude to achieving something.

    But then again, I worked for a company where the MD was a multi millionaire that started with nothing. His sons were unbelievable lazy and they worked at the company for a while but he fired them as they were useless

    On the contrary, my wife comes from a family where not a single one of them has ever achieved anything, almost none of them work and they insist on the lowest quality of life as possible yet she has a couple of degrees and a good job.

    So it’s not set in stone, anyone can break free if they have the right motivation.

  4. To throw my perspective in: I’ve grown up in a poorer background, my parents were separated and had poorly paid work even though their jobs are respectable. As a result of all sorts of complicated stuff I spent my teenage years on a second hand sofa we got for free instead of a bed, etc etc etc.

    I’ve never really seen life with stability. It feels like when you’re poor everything breaks at the same time, but the true reality is that when you’re poor you can never fix anything quickly and you have to buy things on the cheap, so stuff breaks gradually and you can rarely replace it with due efficiency. Poor people always seem to have at least two things that don’t work properly in their house if they actually own things. I have a friend whose family uses an egg cup and a piece of string instead of getting their flush button replaced on their toilet.

    My life has been easier and better than a lot of people’s but also marred by issues like that, and I really feel money held me back compared to my peers who had stable lifestyles. They had easier access, almost. I also have anxiety, a lot of which revolves around an inherent lack of stability. I don’t always self-regulate as well as I could and I get stressed out quicker than other people.

    I’ve noticed my situation was completely different when I spent time with my ex’s family for a bit as a teenager. They were ex-millionaires who lived in a big house worth half a mil where everything worked and was convenient. They had wide open indoor spaces and they were adding an extension. My ex would complain about money being tight when I literally didn’t know if rent was going through. The types of issues she described were non-existent in my eyes because their version of tight still involved having everything they could ever need – as far as I knew they were mostly just consciously choosing not to buy branded cereal and all that typa shite because the dad wanted money for his own stuff. He still bought one of them a building. A literal building. If their fridge broke, they could replace it. If they got into debt, it’d be wiped. When paying off a car, they were paying their own patriarch who bought it for them, not paying someone who would’ve taken legal action if they couldn’t afford it. I felt liberated and healthy in a house like that, whereas at home I struggled to function. All in all I feel little things build up for poorer families, and that does decrease your chance of success because it absolutely obliterates wellbeing.

    My only saving grace is that my family exposed me to a lot culturally and that’s allowed me to get places, but otherwise, I think it would have been really difficult to navigate society. My read would be that drive and connections gets you further away from poverty, but it doesn’t fully release you from its affects. Money will naturally remain the deciding family factor that makes you better off, because you don’t even necessarily need the connections for survival.

  5. One of the biggest factors people don’t often talk about is the ability to take risks. If you have family cash to fall back on you can test out that business idea that might fail/go for that low paid or unpaid job that gets you on the ladder. As the great Jarvis said “if you call your dad he can stop it all!”

    If failure means you lose your home/have to go on UC you are much less likely to take a chance.

  6. Yes.

    I have two friends whom we went to school together and we are all part of a slightly larger friend group. One from an average background and the other from a wealthy background due to his father owning a engineering business.

    Both friends ended up going into the same field doing engineering, although the friend from the wealthy background did not work for his father, the connections the family had allowed for him to get a very well paying job earlier on in the career. Coupled with no student debt he now owns a £800K flat in London single handedly.

    Other friend is still paying off student debt and has an decent paying job in London but could never afford this £800K flat.

    Connections and wealth create more connections and wealth.

  7. It definitely does, but it’s not the only thing that determines success.
    If you’ve got the background great, but if you don’t that isn’t an excuse to not make something of yourself imo.

  9. I feel that it can and does, however the lack of should not serve as an excuse to give up without at least trying.

    I was a young carer while in education, my parents were lovely when both alive but their health let them down.. and subsequently I also ended up looking after my siblings.
    I still went onto college (while simultaneously working) in spite of that situation and I feel like as an adult it made me a decent enough person, but you can pick examples from that where financial security would had been beneficial.

  10. I think my family growing up poor (council estate up north) gave me personal drive and diligence. I now earn quite a bit (top 10%), but I am still very risk adverse (and live quite frugally) knowing that challenges can hit at any time. That approach meant I would never be rich, but I am definitely comfortable.

    One of my kids is applying for Uni’s soon, and will be the first. I didn’t go, our (my wife and I) parents didn’t go, and our grandparents didn’t go either.

    I have never felt looked down upon for growing up poor though. I didn’t do particularly well at school, but once I left and took responsibility for my own life, I managed to make things work. Having a rich family would of course made things much easier, but it isn’t everything. The important thing is to make sure you are better tomorrow than today.

  11. My family are poor, none of us are educated and none of us has ever been to university

    My friends are all highly successful and are continuously striving to better themselves, whereas I work in a warehouse and am happy with sticking where I am

    It does get me down because I tend to compare myself to my friends and feel like a failure in comparison, my friends are lovely but it’s hard sometimes

  12. Slight counter argument for select cases.

    If you grow up very poor, this can be a hell of a drive to better yourself, if you put the effort in.

    Both my brother and I grew up very poor, in a wealthy village. Both of us are doing far better than our peers. A vast amount of the wealthy kids got in to cocaine and just pissed away their youth, because they could.

    Whilst it’s not the norm, being poor was a huge driver for me to learn and master as many skills as I could. Now I can earn well where ever I end up because of it.

  13. It certainly does, as many comments have pointed out. To add a slightly different perspective, however, what people *perceive* your background to be can have an effect as well.

    Anecdotally, I’m fairly sure I (passively) give the impression of being from a cushier background than I am, and that this has benefitted me in terms of opportunities. The fact is I just have a fairly neutral accent rather than the local, northern, one and know a little bit about classical music, but that seems to be enough to shape people’s perceptions.

  14. Yes I think it does, that’s not to say you can’t change things but is is very difficult. I’m from a council estate up north. Mum’s mentally ill and an alcoholic, dad has always worked but never in high skilled or high paying jobs.
    I lived on my own from 17 and it was a big struggle going to uni, I had the attitude from my family of what are you going to uni for? You think your better than us.
    From colleagues I get, she’s the rough one etc (I have a strong northern accent) it’s taken many years and a lot of extra qualifications to get where I am (manager now) and basically someone taking a chance on me as I’m a bit different. Whenever anyone make a comment on my accent/appearance these days I call it out, northern accent and tattoos does not equal thick. I’ve seen younger less qualified colleagues sail through much easier both professionally and also money wise ie. Parents giving them house deposits buying cars etc.
    I dont begrudge it them its a different world and not their or my fault, but definitely famy connections and money open a lot of doors.

  15. I think your family’s attitude to education will have the biggest impact on your success. If they don’t care, the child doesn’t care. Education is the easiest way to get a good job and financial success.

    Financial and personal success may be different things though- depends on your priorities I guess!

  16. Absolutely, nurture is the most important aspect to being who you are.

    Family (be it direct or indirect such as ‘uncle’ Jim) provide you with your education you learn from their actions. Risk, vocabulary, network, attitude to others, how to compose yourself, ability to read situations: pretty much everything is directly linked to your background.

  17. Family connections, pre-existing wealth, and social class can be key enablers of success for a variety of reasons – but are never a guarantee. And there are plenty who have managed to succeed despite having none of the above.

    If you have wealth then you have a huge safety net that lets you take risks like business ventures. You also likely have access to the best education in the world, as well as personal connections (or simply the right ‘fit’) that gets you an advantage in securing a career in certain sectors.

  18. Definitely. I grew up not poor but not well off. I got into a good uni doing a difficult subject and I was so shocked to find out that like 90% of people there had parents that also went to uni. I’d never even knew anyone who’d had parents that went to uni beforehand. And now we’ve graduated, the majority of people have got jobs somewhere due to having connections to companies like family friends working there. They always say “it’s about who you know, not what you know”.

  19. Yes. I think the UK offers great opportunities for education and employment but there is an impact from economic, cultural background and circumstance that prevents a lot of very capable people from pursuing their best opportunities.

  20. Yes.

    Had I been born into royalty I would be preaching climate change at UN Conventions and travelling around in a private jet.

    Unfortunately I was not and work minimum wage and use public transport.

    Lame.

  22. It certainly must help if you have it, but both my wife and I and my brother have done pretty well without family money or connections.

  23. Massively so. I’m the only adult as far as I know on my street or the next street over who didn’t go to private school. That is no accident.

  24. I work in the television industry (scriptwriter) and the higher up the ladder you go, the more you meet people with independent wealth and family connections. I have zero, went to a comp and bog-standard uni, my mum’s a dinner lady but I’m more and more meeting people whose parents are actual aristocrats or very high up in the armed forces (actual admirals in two cases) and clearly have enough money to just hang around being interns or runners or whatever until they got a decent job. This isn’t to say they aren’t great people, or really good at what they do, but they definitely had multiple shots at the job they wanted and already had connections within the industry.

    So, I never thought of myself as being particularly held back by coming from a lower middle-class background and in fact most of the scriptwriters I know come from the same world, but man, if I’d wanted a non-scriptwriter route into television, I see now my chances would have been slim to none – and I’m a white dude who speaks with standard RP, so if that wasn’t the case, or if I wasn’t white, I imagine it would have been harder still.

  25. There are absolutely opportunities/benefits I’ve had that other people with different backgrounds wouldn’t – for example I passed my driving test in school because my parents paid for insurance, lessons, fuel etc – but the biggest thing I notice on an ongoing basis is the way I was brought up with regards to money. My parents taught us that having money and saving it is very important, managing it is important, and they worked to earn all their money and manage and spend it in the most effective ways. I think it’s massively different to having no money so not being taught what to do when you have it (and having a culture of stress around it so eg setting up a new bank account to get the current account switch bonus seems easy rather than stomach-churning), or to having so much money you’ve never had to think about it and your parents have never had to think about you thinking about it.

  26. Yes it can help if you come from a privileged background.

    It also helps if your parents are beautiful, talented and/or intelligent. Money is not the only endowment form your heritage by a long shot.

    There is some fairly good evidence (though not UK-specific and within countries rather than internationally) that you are better off in terms of financial outcomes if you are born in the top quartile of intelligence than if you are born in the top quartile of family wealth.

  27. In general yes, but it’s served as motivation for me personally and I don’t think people should use it as an excuse to not have ambitions or work hard.

  28. It does, being rich or influential is privilege, my dad is relatively wealthy but my mum is working class, I grew up with my mum and no matter how hard I worked I got nothing from it but when I took a job from my dad later on In life I was earning more then I could ever imagine purely because I was the son of the boss.

  29. In my personal experience, no. I had nothing handed to me and have been more fiscally successful than the wealthy guys i knew growing up. The lack of money is what pushed me onwards to success, if i didn’t go through being broke i don’t think i would be where i am today.

    Whereas the wealthy kids i knew growing up, the majority of them at least just mooch of their parents and have no real success of their own to show.

    I actually see growing up rich as a handicap – if you have always had money where is your drive going to come from to go and earn a lot of it? The enjoyment of becoming financially free is being able to look back to when you had nothing which is what makes it so sweet.

  30. Yes, absolutely. It’s only through the support of my family that I’ve been able to get an advanced degree and get the deposit on a house. I’m under no illusions about how astonishingly, absurdly lucky I am to be in this position.

  31. Yes.

    Growing up knowing people with a variety of jobs, for example.

    If everyone your parents know works in a shop or a factory, how do you even know what jobs exist? You’ll know the basics like doctors exist and lawyers exist but the majority of white collar jobs don’t show up in children’s books beyond “daddy went to the office”. How can you know what there is, what it’s called, whether you might like it, what qualifications are helpful?

  32. I grew up poor relative to my friends, but arguably we weren’t really poor because we always had food on the table and a roof over our heads, it gave me the determination to do well in my education and get a well paid job so I would be able to afford “nice” things when I grew up.

    However I acknowledge that I had the benefits of a safe and stable home life and supportive (pushy) parents, and without those things I probably wouldn’t have been able to get where I am.

  33. Yes. It is the biggest factor. If your Mam and Dad say “I never bothered with school and I turned out all right” in all likelihood ignore your greatest opportunity for social mobility, which is education. When you factor in things like family wealth being a determinate for things like being able to take risks with capital (for budding entrepreneurs) or whether you can stay in secondary education as long as required (masters degree, PhD etc) then it becomes clear that your family background is extremely important. When you add in smaller factors like connections and discrimination (accents and skin colour to name a few) then family background is arguably the biggest factor in personal success.

  34. I have noticed that overseas there are a disproportionate number of Scottish people v total number of expats. I assume this is a traditional work ethic and the fact that u have absolutely nothing to lose by taking a punt, literally.

  35. I work in finance and my GF is a social worker, so between us, we witness both ends of the spectrum. The influence is huge.

    The majority of my colleagues come from families with educated, professional backgrounds and the vast majority of people on benefits that my GF is working with have parents who are also on benefits/in low paid, insecure jobs.

    I think the biggest factor is having people who know the path who can guide you. Take my industry – there are so many diverse jobs in the finance industry, if you don’t have connections, you don’t even know what’s possible.

    Many of my colleagues’ kids did 2 weeks work experience here – that’s not going to get you a job by itself, but those kids now know what compliance officers, risk managers, relationship managers etc are, so they can already start to plan their careers.

    Plus if you’re professional, you also tend to be friends with other professionals too – so maybe my kids won’t want to go into finance, so my connections are useless, but if they show an interest in medicine I have friends who are doctors, dentists & vets who can provide some guidance. Ditto for IT, engineering, marketing etc. I’m not so well-connected that I could just get them a job, but those little steers give you an edge that accumulates over time.

  36. No. I came to the UK from Bulgaria in 2013. Granted, my parents supported me for the first 2 years in university (I wasn’t driving a Bentley or anything, lived on the cheapest rent around and ate noodles), but I’ve been on my own since then. I’m currently in the top 8-9% of UK earners per ONS statistics after 9 years in the UK (first 4 years of these spent in uni).

    Granted, I may be lucky, but I know people that started off even worse than me and got farther than me quicker. I find it annoying when people attribute so much to money, connections and culture, etc. Yes, they do matter and it’s much easier to make it if you do have them. However, **that doesn’t mean you can’t make it without them**.

    The situation in the UK is MILES ahead of pretty much 90-95% of other countries. It’s easier to get more money in the US, but then, well, you live in the US and you’ve got a load of other stuff to deal with. Germany and France may be comparative in terms of salary and living standard. How many other countries though can offer you this? Not many!

    The point I’m trying to make is that people in the UK have it a lot better than pretty much all other countries with a few exceptions. Personal drive and intelligence is way, way, wayyy more important than money, connections and culture, etc. You live in the UK. People literally die in boats trying to cross the English channel to come to the UK. Appreciate it a bit, please.

    I can understand that we live in difficult times and the next few years will be hard, but the UK is **still much better** than other countries. It may feel like it’s only happening here, but it ain’t. Check out the inflation in the rest of Europe: [https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?continent=europe](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?continent=europe)

    I know that lot of people probably won’t relate to what I’m saying because they’ve only lived in the UK or other top countries. To those people, I say read around a bit. See what other immigrants say or how other countries live.

    TLDR; Drive and perseverence matter much more. Money, connections, etc. help, but they’re not the be-all and end-all.

  37. Yes it absolutely does have an effect.

    When I was younger I had quite a strong scouse accent and I knew that it held me back for certain roles / jobs.

    I also know that my skin colour and the fact that I was from an area that had a very bad reputation also had made things much harder.

    The sad fact is even today a person’s accent / background / ethnicity can have a negative effect when it comes to progression in the professional world.

  38. Parental income, and specifically one’s father’s socioeconomic status, is by far and away the greatest predictor of future earnings. It comes above all else (height, gender, race). In fact, gender and race are no longer accurate predictors of future earnings in under 40s.

    What I find quite jarring is that it’s often the most privileged who decide to model their ego on fad social justice causes, and not only have no idea what they’re talking about, but act as if they’re completely blind to their own privilege. People really can’t see past the end of their own nose.

  40. Two things that stick out to me are attitude and finances.

    Attitude being having a role model, someone who worked in a professional job, ideally high level. Someone who had a strong work ethic. Someone who was confident and would leave a job on their own terms rather than get sacked/redundant.

    Finances being less having a safety net and more not having any obligations to the family. Some people have to get a job as soon as they are able to help support the family. That can be a huge drain on their opportunities.

    Overall personal drive & intelligence are the biggest indicators of success.

  41. From personal experience there is also family influence as a role model.

    My Dad had a good job when I was growing up, and I’d often get the opportunity to see him at work, seeing the respect he gave his staff and the respect he got back. My Dad retired 20 years ago and I still get people messaging me on Facebook asking if I’m his son and could I pass a message on.

    This hugely influenced how I behave as a leader in all my management position roles.

  42. Absolutely. I’d never have been able to get the internship I did or the lowish paying job in my desired industry without parents who live in London and could afford to keep me at home still as an adult.

    Also, when I didn’t get the A-Level grades to get into any of my chosen universities first time around, my Mum was able to pay for me to go to a private college to retake them.

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