Starting from today, how long ago did you have to get rich to be "old money" by DL standards?

"Old money" families had it before the Great Depression..

1670’s when the Old Money Dutch landed in NYC

Better nouveau than no riche at all, darling.

1066

It's now the Dotcom era of 1998: if you've managed that windfall through 2001, 2007, and 2012 you are old and you have survived your coming out party.

Many crash and burn coming out of the closet - retreating to become jaundiced libertarians. It's the same for millionaires.

It's less a thing measured in number of days on a calendar than the remove from having had to make money.

Assuming you fit the bill for low-key and unassuming (in a can't remember anyone in the family who worked way) if you had two full generations above you who had never had to work, that might do it. A great-grandfather who maybe made some invention and married well, grandparents who never thought to make money, parents the same. If the money came from Chicago slaughter houses and your name is on tinned hams and Spam, it would take longer.

America: any money made pre dot.com

England: any money made pre-War. (Preferably the Boer War)

I miss exiled money.

Working night owl hours, I used to run into disgraced men living on an allowance who weren't allowed to step foot in their family homes.

Overly educated with very specific hobbies, they didn't brag so much as offer100 level courses in bizarre topics.

Each was tighter with money than the next so we got along wonderfully.

19th century.

[quote]Working night owl hours, I used to run into disgraced men living on an allowance who weren't allowed to step foot in their family homes.

The Hapsburg Hobo is the saddest of all.

You must be descended from the robber barons of the the Gilded Age.

R6- I am along your thoughts but I would push back at least two more generations to 80 years or more. That puts the wealth obtained before WW II. None of this Boomer acquired wealth would be old money.

I think there are a lot of Americans in this thread, lol. I have seriously heard British people claiming that the Spencer (of mother-of-the-future king fame) family is "new" (new-ish) money based on their actually being records of their earning it hundreds of years ago. From sheep-farming, iirc? Stealing land from peasants? Something like that. The 1066 poster is right. Either your ancestor was William the Conqueror's shoulder massager or you're a gauche piece of shit still reeking of your bloodline's former poverty.

*sigh* William was a damn bastard. Nothing more, nothing less. He had no place in polite society.

Truly, the Tudors were Welsh upstarts, with few redeeming qualities.

If you do not have Plantagenet blood in your veins, you are not "old money".

FFS, I wouldn't get too holier than thou about how clean old money is. Aristocracy, royalty, the most ethically obsessed entrepreneur, you don't have to scratch deep or far in most families to turn up so e bloody hands or worse.

It's a real trick to hold onto a name and money for more than a couple generations. The rich, even the aristocracy of 18thC England had was thick with losers and wasteland and shameful cases, the leading names of the 17thC were different from the 18th, the 19th, etc. because if a big turnover. Some names hang around forever through thick and lean times for the associated fortunes or debts.

There can be some squabbling about which is the better family name, but none are pure or without scandal. There's always the matter of overlooking some things (but not others), the newness of the money is just one.

[quote]I wouldn't get too holier than thou about how clean old money is.

I don't see anyone here doing that and trust that other posters understand that these bloodlines that can be traced back into the mists of time didn't build their fortunes or their names on the back of compassionate hearts and rainbow kittens.

You're all just...so adorable!

Before January 1st, 1863.