I grew up lower-middle-class and didn’t realize these 9 habits were unusual until I made wealthy friends

Growing up outside Manchester, I thought everyone kept their tea bags to use twice. It wasn’t until I was at university, sitting in a friend’s kitchen in London, that I realized this wasn’t normal.

My friend watched in horror as I carefully squeezed out my used tea bag and placed it on a saucer for later. “What are you doing?” he asked, genuinely confused.

That was the first of many moments where I discovered that what felt completely ordinary to me was anything but ordinary to people who’d grown up with money.

My dad worked in a factory and my mum in retail. We weren’t poor, but we watched every penny. Being the first in my family to go to university meant constantly navigating two different worlds.

The more time I spent with friends from wealthier backgrounds, the more I noticed these little differences in how we approached life.

Some of these habits served me well. Others held me back in ways I’m only now beginning to understand. Here are nine things I did without thinking that my wealthy friends found completely foreign.

1) Reusing everything until it literally fell apart

That tea bag story? Just the tip of the iceberg. We reused aluminum foil, washed out plastic bags, and kept margarine tubs as Tupperware. Clothes got worn until they had holes, then became cleaning rags. Shoes stayed until the soles came off.

When I moved to London for work, a colleague once asked why I was still using a laptop bag that was clearly falling apart.

The zipper was broken, and I’d been closing it with a safety pin for months. It had genuinely never occurred to me to replace something that still technically worked.

This mindset goes deeper than just being thrifty. When you grow up thinking resources are finite, you develop an almost emotional attachment to making things last.

Even now, with a comfortable income, I feel guilty throwing away a jar that could be used for storage or a box that might be useful someday.

2) Never ordering drinks at restaurants

Water was free, so that’s what we drank. Always. The idea of paying three pounds for a Coke when you could buy a whole bottle at Tesco for a pound seemed insane.

I remember the first business dinner I attended in London. Everyone ordered wine and cocktails without even glancing at the prices.

Meanwhile, I was doing mental arithmetic, calculating that one glass of wine cost the same as my weekly grocery budget at uni. When the waiter asked what I’d like to drink, I asked for tap water. The silence was deafening.

It took me years to feel comfortable ordering anything other than water at restaurants. Even now, part of my brain screams “waste!” when I see drink prices on a menu.

3) Shopping exclusively based on price per unit

My mum taught me to check the price per 100g on every label. Didn’t matter if we preferred one brand over another. The cheapest option per unit won, every single time.

At university, I watched my roommates toss items into their shopping baskets without even checking prices.

They bought small containers of things because they were convenient, not caring that the larger size was half the price per unit. They chose products because they liked the packaging or the brand, not because they’d calculated the best value.

This habit has actually served me well in many ways. But it also meant I spent an enormous amount of mental energy on tiny savings, time I could have used for things that might have actually improved my financial situation.

4) Keeping the heating off unless absolutely necessary

“Put on another jumper” was the family motto from October through March. We’d huddle in one room in the evenings, using the heat from cooking dinner to warm the kitchen. The heating only went on when you could see your breath indoors.

Visiting friends’ homes where the heating was just… on, all day, in every room, felt surreal. They walked around in t-shirts in January while I sat there in three layers wondering how they afforded the gas bill.

The physical discomfort wasn’t the hardest part. It was the constant mental calculation: Is it cold enough to justify the expense?

Can we manage another hour without it? That mental load, that constant negotiation with yourself over basic comfort, is exhausting in ways I didn’t realize until I stopped doing it.

5) Never buying anything at full price

Sales, discount codes, end-of-season clearances. If it wasn’t reduced, we didn’t buy it. I learned to shop for winter coats in March and summer clothes in September.

My wealthy friends would see something they liked and just… buy it. Full price. No hesitation. The first time I saw someone do this with a designer jacket, I nearly fell over. They wanted it, they could afford it, so they bought it. Simple as that.

What struck me most wasn’t the money itself, but the mental freedom. They weren’t constantly calculating, waiting, checking if it might go on sale. They didn’t have a mental catalog of every upcoming sale period. Their minds were free to think about other things.

6) Fixing everything yourself

Broken appliance? Dad would take it apart on the kitchen table. Car making a weird noise? Weekend project. Leaking tap? YouTube tutorial and a trip to B&Q.

We never called professionals unless something was literally about to fall down or explode. The idea of paying someone to do something you could theoretically do yourself seemed like burning money.

My London friends would casually mention calling someone to mount their TV or assemble their IKEA furniture. They valued their time more than the money they’d save doing it themselves.

This was a completely foreign concept to me. Time was free; money was precious.

7) Having one pair of good shoes

You had your everyday shoes, usually worn until they fell apart. Then you had your “good shoes” for weddings, funerals, and job interviews. That was it.

I’ll never forget my first week at a corporate job in London, rotating between my two pairs of work shoes, when a colleague asked if I’d noticed that our boss wore different shoes every day of the week. I hadn’t, because it had never occurred to me to look. Who has seven pairs of work shoes?

The idea that shoes might be chosen for style rather than pure function, that you might own multiple pairs for variety rather than necessity, was completely alien to me.

8) Never eating out unless it was a special occasion

Restaurants were for birthdays and anniversaries. Maybe Christmas. The idea of grabbing dinner out just because you didn’t feel like cooking was unthinkable.

In London, I met people who ate out several times a week. Not fancy places necessarily, just casual dinners because they were tired or wanted to try something new. They ordered takeaway without guilt, picked up coffee every morning without wincing at the cost.

Food was fuel where I grew up. You ate at home because it was cheaper and that was that. The idea that dining might be entertainment, that the experience might be worth the extra cost, took me years to understand.

9) Planning everything around public transport

We had one car for the family, and Dad needed it for work. Everything else was planned around bus schedules. You didn’t go somewhere; you went somewhere the bus could take you, at a time the bus was running.

My university friends would casually mention getting taxis to places. Not for emergencies, just for convenience.

They’d split Ubers after nights out while I was checking the night bus schedule. They chose activities based on what they wanted to do, not what was accessible by public transport.

The freedom to spontaneously go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted, without checking timetables or walking twenty minutes from the nearest bus stop, was a luxury I hadn’t even known existed.

The bottom line

Looking back, I see how these habits shaped me. Some gave me resilience and resourcefulness that’s served me well. Others created a scarcity mindset that sometimes holds me back from taking necessary risks or investing in things that might improve my life.

What’s strange is how invisible these differences were until I saw the contrast. You don’t know your normal isn’t everyone’s normal until you step outside your bubble.

I’ve learned to let go of some habits while keeping others. I still check the price per unit, but I’ll order a drink at dinner now.

I buy shoes when I need them, not when the old ones are held together with superglue. But I still can’t bring myself to throw away a perfectly good jar.

These experiences taught me something valuable about how our backgrounds shape us in ways we don’t even realize. They’re not just about money; they’re about mindset, about what feels normal, about what we believe we deserve.

Understanding these differences has helped me navigate professional spaces where most people didn’t grow up checking the reduced section first. But it’s also helped me appreciate the ingenuity and resilience that comes from making do with less.