1. Eating at chain restaurants for no reason

Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Outback—these were celebration restaurants when I was a kid. Birthday dinner. End-of-season team meal. The laminated menus and unlimited breadsticks felt legitimately fancy.

Now I understand these are just casual dining chains. But there’s a small thrill when someone suggests going. Part of me wants to ask, “What’s the occasion?” even though the occasion is just Tuesday.

2. Buying fresh flowers for the house

My neighbor buys flowers at the grocery store every week. Not for anything specific—just because. This blows my mind a little. Growing up, flowers were for Mother’s Day, funerals, or when you really messed up.

Spending money on something that dies in a week seemed wasteful. But I’ve learned that to some people, fresh flowers are just part of making a space feel like home. Not fancy at all—just normal.

3. Buying books instead of using the library

I didn’t buy a book until I was in my twenties. The library existed for exactly this reason—why pay for something you could borrow free? Even now, walking into a bookstore and leaving with a stack feels indulgent.

Meanwhile, I know people who buy books like groceries. They don’t think twice. The difference isn’t about books—it’s about what counted as necessity versus luxury when your brain was learning what money meant.

4. Getting coffee from a coffee shop

My father made coffee in a percolator every morning for thirty-five years. Same can of Folgers. Paying four dollars for a cup would have seemed absurd—borderline offensive, honestly.

I still feel a twinge of guilt every time I order at a café. Not because I can’t afford it, but because that working-class voice whispers, “You could make this at home for fifty cents.” The voice ignores that other people grew up thinking Starbucks was just where you got coffee.

5. Throwing away leftovers

I’ve watched people scrape perfectly good food into the trash without a second thought. Half a sandwich. Three bites of pasta. A slice of pizza that’s been in the fridge for two days.

In my house, leftovers were the next meal. You ate everything, then ate it again until it was gone. Wasting food felt morally wrong, not just wasteful. I can’t do it without feeling like I’m committing some household sin.

6. Hiring people for things you could do yourself

Lawn service. House cleaning. Someone to hang Christmas lights. When I first encountered people who paid for these services regularly, I thought they must be wealthy. They weren’t—they just had different calculations about time and money.

The working-class math says: if you can do it yourself, you should. Paying someone else means you’re either lazy or showing off. But the middle-class math says: your time has value, too. That’s a mindset shift I’m still learning.

7. Driving a car that’s newer than ten years old

My uncle drove the same pickup truck for twenty-three years. It ran, so why replace it? New cars were for people with money to burn. You bought used, kept it running, and drove it until the wheels fell off.

I recently realized some people just trade cars every few years like it’s routine. They’re not rich—it’s just how they approach car ownership. Meanwhile, I’m driving a 2009 because it feels wasteful to get rid of something that works fine.

8. Taking vacations that aren’t family visits

Vacation meant driving eight hours to see relatives. Maybe camping if someone had gear to borrow. Flying somewhere just to relax, staying in hotels, eating in restaurants—that was movie-rich-people behavior.

Now I know plenty of regular folks who take trips. It’s not luxury—it’s just what they do with vacation time. But I approach travel planning like I’m doing something extravagant, something that requires extensive justification and advance guilt.

Final thoughts

None of these things are actually fancy. That’s the point. They’re ordinary middle-class habits that only feel special when you weren’t raised around them.

The weird part is how these perceptions stick. I’ve been solidly middle-class for years, and I still get that flutter of “is this allowed?” when I do something teenage me would have considered luxury. It’s not about the money—it’s about the internal measuring stick that got set early.

Understanding where these feelings come from doesn’t make them disappear. But it makes them easier to recognize for what they are: echoes from a different time, when the rules for what counted as “fancy” were completely different.