25 Upper Middle Class Complaints That No One Feels Sorry For

Reading these stories, you realise people are rarely content, often wanting what’s just out of reach. Even the wealthy have problems—like an ageing lake house deck or a two-car garage—that seem enviable to others. A recent Reddit discussion highlighted the real—if unsympathetic—problems of the wealthy. We’re here for the guilt, the delusion, and the dramatic complaints. While these upper-middle-class woes may seem trivial, they feel very real to those involved. It does put things in perspective, but at the same time, everyone's experience is valid.

#1

Image source: Well_Spoken_Mute, Kwami Fattah Al Sissi / Unsplash Not a middle class problem but I'm 6'2" and found myself standing at a concert behind someone who must have been 6'5" and my first thought was "I don't think I'm allowed to complain about this". PHX_Architraz: 6' 5" person here, sorry about that. I will pay my penance tomorrow when I have to cram myself into a Southwest Airlines stearage compartment tomorrow for work.

#2

Image source: p38-lightning, Michael T. Rose / Unsplash I need to replace the aging dock at my lake house. Yuklan6502: I hear ya... I often can't remember if the tools I need are at my house, or the cabin. We've started buying 2 of everything instead of trying to keep track. I'm actually driving there and back today because we forgot something we only have 1 of, so that's 3 hours of driving, but hopefully only a couple minutes of searching! We rebuilt our fixed and floating docks around 10 years ago, and are keeping our fingers crossed that the next rebuild will be the kids' problem!

#3

Image source: teacupghostie, pbutter92 / redddit Once upon a time I worked at a toy store. One day a woman came in upset and asked for help picking out Barbie cars. Turns out she had given her child a deluxe Barbie Dreamhouse for their birthday and a Barbie-sized SUV car and the Barbie SUV was too tall for the Barbie Dreamhouse garage. Anyway, Barbie got a convertible. momofmills: I bet you Ken's Mojo DoJo Casa House wouldn't have that problem.

#4

Image source: s7o0a0p, Aerps.com / Unsplash I was telling my mom about how my westbound flight to Australia would mean I’d lose my Duolingo streak if I didn’t take action to fix it (like changing my time zone before boarding the plane), and she ( very rightfully ) laughed in my face about it. Super__Mom: I lost my NYT Connections streak flying home from Thailand so I can commiserate.

#5

Image source: notevenfiguratively, Kel61085 I have a shelf of over 100 board games, and it’s completely out of space. I’m starting to have a few games sitting on top of the shelf, and that doesn’t look as tidy. T_Henson: My husband is pushing 700 games. We have one whole room lined with shelves of games and they’re spilling into the basement now. ☹️

#6

Image source: iuabv, Getty Images / Unsplash My mom brought in an interior designer for all of the renovations she's doing to our childhood home and I hate the interior designer's taste. Leody: A good interior designer doesn’t have a taste. They help you find your taste and bring it all together… Num10ck: To be fair thats a tough gig. no matter what they came up with it wouldnt align with your childhood memories and meaning.

#7

Image source: 4rch, Getty Images / Unsplash I thought once I had enough money, you could just pay people to make problems go away. Now I'm like, "holy f**k I paid $700 to have my gutters cleaned and this is the quality I get?!". first_best_fox: This is funny to me because we are in an enviable position to be able to pay people for things like gutter cleaning and landscaping and home repairs/upgrades. And I get grumpy about having the make calls and schedule people and arrange my day to be available (even though I work from home) when they all come and do the things I don't want to do myself.

#8

Image source: Corkydog2000, evhenii Deshko / Unsplash My laundry room is laid out such that the dryer and washer can't be side by side, but rather have to be placed perpendicular to each other on either side of a water heater in the corner. The door of the front load washer can't be reversed so it's always sort of in the way when transferring clothes. Also, it makes the area around the water heater all but inaccessible without moving the dryer several inches to the left. It haunts my soul and makes me secretly wish for the demise of my washer so I can get an old school top loader. Please, pray for me. WandererOfInterwebs: Lmao wait I have one like this: my washer and dryer kept texting me while I was on holiday and I had to forward the messages to my friends staying at my apartment. “The dryer has asked that you run the clean drum cycle”

#9

Image source: PMmeHappyStraponPics, Ahmed / Unsplash I'm teaching my kids to ski but they didn't seem too into it so I'll probably just go on my annual ski trip alone this year. TrippleDubb: Had a tiny boat, kids seemed to like fishing so we bought a bigger boat, kids hate fishing now we wish we still had the smaller boat.

#10

Image source: MissWinterisComing, Jared Rice / Unsplash I no longer enjoy traveling to the Bahamas because I’ve traveled there so frequently lol. gingerwheezy: Me planning my last vacation "Ugh. I can't go to Nassau AGAIN." I almost slapped myself.

#11

Image source: Ok-Cheesecake3194, Mlandvo@98 Ginindza When I heat my outdoor, in-ground pool too long and it feels like a bath. Frosty_Helicopter730: Maybe this is the wrong take-away, but that sounds so delightful, I got a shiver. One of the most relaxing things I ever experienced was going to a pre-natal aquatic exercise class. It was in a heated therapy pool and all us pregnant people with November due dates showed up really early to grab a pool noodle and have a cozy, warm float before class. It was 18 years ago and I still think about it! ?

#12

Image source: IndifferentGuavas, Stephanie Klepacki My mom likes to book cruises and gets great deals because she gambles in the casinos on the ships. She pays my way to go with her about once a year, and I pick up incidentals. I got divorced awhile back and didn’t change my name because I wanted the same name as my kids while they were in school. Now my youngest is a senior in high school and I wanted to change back to my maiden name, but I can’t because for the last ten years, I’ve always had a cruise planned and now I’m having trouble finding the right time to change my name because I need to do it in between cruise bookings. 20 years ago, I dreamed of having these types of stupid problems. Tynebeaner: I had a similar problem where I earned a flight credit in June, changed my name in July, got a RealID in August in case my passport change wasn’t quick, went to buy flights for October, and couldn’t use my flight credit because it was in my previous name. Fortunately a verrrrry long phone call with the airline fixed it, but so inconvenient.

#13

Image source: TypicallyTay, Getty Images My boyfriend and I order out too much. We aren’t upper middle but def an out of touch issue. iamdperk: I stop on my way home from work, to have 2-3 craft beers and dinner - often $30-45... Not really upper middle class, either, but could be doing considerably better if I was more disciplined about stuff.

#14

Image source: hobbes8889, Getty Images Our house is 200 ft too close to the school for them to be picked up by the bus. Normally, I wouldn't even complain, but with my wife's stage 4 cancer, anything I don't have to do, no matter how small, is a huge simplification in my life.

#15

Image source: Chairboy, Getty Images The local tire place we like didn't have the performance tires for my wife's EV in stock so we've had to wait three days for them to get shipped in. financiallyanal: This is one consideration for me when I select tires... I prefer tires that are more common and easier to get a hold of in case something happens on a road trip and I need a new tire. In a pinch, I want to be able to get a replacement tire same day even if I have to go somewhere pricier than my preferred Costco. (They ship them in, bypassing local distributors, and that takes time) Michelin CC2s are becoming pretty common and are really capable in all seasons, so I've been happy enough, but they are definitely not "performance" considering that's what you mentioned...

#16

Image source: withaph64, reddit My recycle trash can is full of Amazon boxes and I have more in the garage I need to throw away. CarmenDeeJay: I use them under my mulch in my vegetable garden. It blocks weeds and feeds my garden.

#17

Image source: ballsonthewall, Curated Lifestyle I am not upper middle class, but travel is my main discretionary spending. I save each year to take a week long trip to Europe. This year, I have to go to Germany for a wedding, so that's my first world problem. My annual European vacation has a firm destination instead of me picking where I want to go. SierraSeaWitch: Somewhat similar, I live on the East Coast of the USA and my mother is in a yuppie mountain town on the West Coast of the USA and she always pressured me to use all my PTO to stay at her place and snowboard. Like, I don’t want to spend all my time at my mom’s fancy house doing fancy winter sports! I’ve been better with boundaries and this ain’t actually a problem, but she does still bring it up a lot and I have to repeat “that sounds great, but Husband and I have other plans for that PTO…”

#18

Image source: WarmScientist5297, Getty Images I get confused about which condiments are left over at which residences because we have more than one house. bdfortin: Reminds me of a conversation I overheard a few years ago: “… and because of all the rain the basement on my north property got flooded so I had to pay someone to move the stuff into my west property.“ “Oh my goodness, are you alright?”

#19

Image source: All_FIREdUp, Curated Lifestyle My fiancée and I are having a destination wedding in Scotland. The dollar losing value has increased costs for us by about 6% since we first started our planning. When it’s all said and done it will probably be a couple thousand that just gets eaten up due to exchange rates. Not really something I can complain about to anyone without sounding very out of touch. ?‍♂️.

#20

Image source: DuntmatterReally, Getty Images I once heard someone say, in all seriousness, "It's so hard to buy art". So they did complain about it and they did sound out of touch. Math_refresher: Here's my current art-related complaint: The painting I ordered from Germany didn't ship immediately so now I'll have to pay 15% more for it to cover the tariff.

#21

Image source: pinniped90, reddit Pretty much every day to day inconvenience we encounter in the Western world? The bagel shop was out of garlic bagels this morning. s7o0a0p: One time when I was on vacation in Montréal, Fairmount Bagel only had All-Dressed bagels…at 7:30am. Oh woe was me lol

#22

Image source: Jungle_Official, reddit We have five bedrooms but three kids and the spare is used as an office, so when family visits (which is often) we don't have a guest room. We want a bigger house but we're locked into such a low mortgage rate that we're trapped in our five-bedroom, three-car-garage home. EatMorePieDrinkMore: We are a year out from empty nest and you will pry my 2.35% interest rate out of my cold dead hands.

#23

Image source: hayasani, Yunus Tuğ The ice rink closest to my house has inconvenient ice times, so I have to drive to a different rink 25 minutes away for my kids to figure skate. bonkers799: I started to learn to play hockey this year as an adult. With that meant learning how to skate. I never would have guessed how inconsistent the public schedule at an ice rink is. Took me two times driving a half an hour to a rink just to find out the usual skate that day wasnt happening. Once summer came and all the rinks started shutting down some of their rinks all hell broke loose. Such a roll of the dice. I understand why its like that (i think?) but it was a hell of a shell shock to me when everything else has pretty standard times from week to week.

#24

Image source: BBCBlackOps, reddit My garage only holds two cars. WeldAE: My garage theoretically holds 3 cars but I have a nice workshop in one of the bays and my driveway only holds 2 cars without blocking any of the garages with cars in it. So max 4 cars and I have 5x drivers. No one understands my problems.

#25

Image source: LeagueRx, Deric My coworkers complain about the taxes on their beach house being too much to the technicians making 1/3 of what they make. allthegodsaregone: My CEO used to email out family vacation pictures to all staff. He would bring the extended family, so clearly expensive. Half the staff made within $1 of minimum wage. Talk about out of touch.