Income inequality

When One of You Has a Trust Fund and the Other is Broke AF

It’s sort of like hosting an exchange student from another culture

Almost all of this was wasted. It still bugs me. Photo by Michelle Teheux.

I am close friends with a woman who could buy and sell me any day of the week. Let’s call her Berlin.

She has a family trust fund. I do not. She doesn’t have to work. I do.

Berlin drives a car that my husband says is expensive, while I drive an ancient Mini Cooper that was already old when I bought it in 2011. Cars don’t interest me that much. They mostly look alike to me. I like the Mini because it doesn’t look like other cars, so I can find it in parking lots.

We’re from different planets.

I’m married to a Dutch citizen who didn’t move to the U.S. until he was in his 40s, yet he and I have far fewer cultural differences than my friend and I have. Yes, my husband’s upbringing in the south of Holland was more like my upbringing than that of my friend who grew up in the same state as I did.

One cool fall day, Berlin was surprised when I mentioned I was hanging up my laundry.

“You hang your laundry up in weather like this?” she asked.