NHYM made the cover of the Saturday Times Magazine (UK edition), 11/10/14. I was asked to write an article on the lives of the SuperRich, purely for entertainment and informative purposes. So here I wrote on being a BWAG, why we are a dying breed, why I am mistaken for the nanny and why I am a SuperRich man’s pauper. Here are the first two pages. Contact me for further information….
xx
NHYM
http://www.nottinghillyummymummy.com
@NHyummymummy
NOTTING HILL MUMMY 
Endlessly entertaining… I am not a mummy but do hope I am yummy!!!! Your reviews make great reading.
Hi Hayley! Thanks for your comment!! Yes, my writing is meant to be pure entertainment, a little escapism and a bit of silliness… Glad you enjoy it. xx NHYM
‘An ex-Purple Dragon mother told me that she had spent more than £100,000 there (and finally cancelled her membership). One wonders how this prepares children for real life, or whether they will ever need to encounter reality.’
How can you spend 100k at Purple Dragon? The membership fee of 4k a year covers everything including babysitting.
I am not sure myself… I think she said family memberships were pretty expensive with the extra perks (there are different levels of memberships apparently), food you buy there, plus all the different classes you have to pay for on top (ie. private swimming classes per child etc…) multiply that number by lots of years, and you can get easily close to that number (i.e. £10,000/yr x 2 or 3 kids x 5 years??). Or perhaps she was just exaggerating, she was Italian after all 😉 xx NHYM
Your article in ST magazine was extremely well written. Very illuminating and a useful piece of entertaining writing which explained how relative the terms rich or wealthy must be .
I have been an expat for 20 years so found it particularly interesting . I particularly enjoyed your categorization of wealth groups .
Worthy of the front page , and in my view you wrote better than many of their professional journalists .
Well done ( however you are!)
Andrew Hunt. Saigon, Vietnam.
What a lovely compliment!!! Thank you very much for your comment. Yes, it was quite tricky writing about a somewhat sensitive subject, making it interesting, relevant, informative, relatable, without being too smug or self-idolising… So, I really appreciate your comment. Hope you are enjoying living in Vietnam, I love it there! xx NHYM
Fantastic article in The Times yesterday. Thank you for your eloquent piece and for highlighting your website here.
Thank you!! xx NHYM
Hi,
I am privileged to have access to a lot of the things you mentioned in your article.
However, I am entirely disgusted by the obscene excesses of the super rich.
No, I truly am not one of the people who “would like to have a peak”. On the contrary, I educate my children to stay away from such decadence. Both my children got into schools, which are regularly among the top 5 in the country but what both headmaster/mistress tell me time and again is how they stand out because of their happiness, confidence and kindness. The children I see who come from families you describe are often rather unhappy and have in fact quite a miserable life, as the parents spent all their time thinking about and comparing themselves to others and outsourcing everything. This tells you all you need to know of the effects such an irresponsible lifestyle has.
Unfortunately, being rich is not synonymous anymore with being truly cultured, educated, having manners and a sense of decency but being vulgar, ostentatious and self-obsessed. My God, Victoria Beckham having her birthday in the Art Club would make me run out of it.
Thanks for your comment! I agree with the statement that being rich doesn’t necessarily mean being cultured/educated/manners etc.. (although I don’t think it ever was synonymous), but I also don’t think all rich people have unhappy families. But, I think what I wrote raises a lot of questions, which is a good thing. When does the positive effects of being ‘wealthy’ (ie. being healthier/happier/living longer etc…) start becoming negative effects (competitiveness, materialism, superficiality, waste and excess). I think it’s important to teach our children the right values, whether you are wealthy or not, but also give them all the opportunities that wealth does bring (and whether we like it or not, money does bring with it a lot of opportunities). So, yes, we should try to give our children the best life they can have, which sometimes means just playing in a muddy puddle 🙂
I tried to write my article in a non-judgemental way, as I think there are all types of people out there; the happy rich, the unhappy rich, the happy poor and the unhappy poor. There is good everywhere and people like Bill Gates, who happens to be SuperRich, is a great example of how to handle that wealth and has started an amazing foundation to help the lives of others less fortunate. He also is not planning to leave much of his wealth to his children for them to understand the meaning of hard work and achievement.
In any case, these are questions that will continue to be asked when the gap between the poorest and the richest keeps increasing at a frightening rate…
xx
NHYM
A marvellous and fine crafted article straight from the heart. Thoroughly enjoyed every single word. I would rather say, you gave a far more crystal clear picture about london’s super rich than the FT and bloomberg. I am sure you are more than grateful for where you are, and may god grant you more abundance. I don’t know about sunday’s paper, but I still have the magazine with me.. haha..
Thanks for your lovely comment! I hoped to give a good description of what our lives are like while making it entertaining and a bit of fun. I am really pleased you enjoyed it, that was my goal. xx NHYM
I like the fact that you make the point that the bwag is educated! Important indeed…
I am also an ‘Ivy League over educated clever one’ with my husband being the one with luck and hard slog rolled together but unfortunately I would not even put us in the merely rich but the struggling middle class… Our advantage… Live in the country….but still have to pay £18K for school fees! But this is our sacrifice -we don’t even go on £5k holidays but rather give our children the best education we can… So in some ways you are still lucky to just we a BWAG!
Thanks for your comment. Absolutely, I really appreciate everything I have and all the luck I have had along the way (although the sacrifices we have made meant working 80-90 hour weeks and working through the night in our younger days)… I also think that education is the most important thing one could spend money on, so I completely understand your sacrifices and what you’re doing for your children. I hope that for our children’s generation, the ‘struggling middle class’ becomes less ‘struggling’ and more ‘content,’ but I don’t make the rules unfortunately. Best of luck with it all! xx NHYM
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OH, this is fantastic. Well done yummy mummy x
Thanks! Appreciate the support!!! And thanks for adding me to your favourite bloggers list!!! xx NHYM
Such an interesting article!