Our family was upper middle class when I was a child, both my parents were engineers. Then my parents divorced, my dad gave all our money to a dishwasher lady and claimed that there were no money, he claimed he had lost it all in the stock market. He tried to get it back from her after the divorce but she claimed that it was her money all along, hundreds of thousands, at least some were used to buy properties in the lady's name that today are probably worth over a million in total, all hers and her son's, so now he's the one washing dishes cos he had quit his job to avoid paying child support and was counting on the dishwasher lady to return or at least share the money. I saw her son at my university once, looking fairly middle class, basically attending university on our dime.

I became kinda poor for a few years but was upper middle class again by university(having an engineer parent really helps). I think I may have over indulged a bit, travelling a lot around the world, buying an expensive watch, fancy computer, paying for a banquet here and there, etc, and my spending attracted gold diggers, I eventually got rid of them after learning my lessons the hard way.

Today I live a low key life with a decent job, I still spend a lot of money buying food and eating out, but that is basically my only indulgence. I have enough clothes to last me another 5 years and I have not bought anything expensive in the past year. I know that even if I lose my job and can't ever find a good job again I will never be homeless and will always live at least a middle class life. It is a good feeling, but sometimes I look back and marvel at how close I could have come to total ruination.