Hi Steve!
I'm not old money. We're very nouveau riche. My parents are both first generation Americans. My paternal grandparents moved from Russia in the 1930s. Lucky for them, as they were Jews. Бабушка Rita ran a grocery store on Miami Beach, which my dad worked at after school. (Also, when my dad lived in New York, he drove cabs before he became a journalist. Neither were particularly lucrative jobs.) This property which we own is largely responsible for my family's current upper middle class status.
Please keep in mind that my departed grandmother lived in a very slummy Miami Beach apartment, which was recently torn down and turned into luxury condos. She rented her furniture. She was a bit nuts and paranoid. We didn't really make a profit on our Miami Beach commercial real estate until the '90s, when gays and young people started outnumbering the old Jewish folks. And that's how we became moderately well off.
By the way, my maternal grandfather was from Holland and also an asshole. He slept around, drank a lot, gave my grandmother VD (which we only learned because some asshole doctor looked into her medical history after her stroke and felt compelled to tell my mom this shortly before Nanny died), and left her for a younger lady. We didn't get a dime from him after that bastard died, and Bernie, his second wife, didn't tell us about his death until a week after he was dead and buried.
So there. Throw me in your hate pit for all I care, but I am not old money.
