A trust fund baby is a person who is born to someone with a large amount of money, who puts considerable assets aside in a trust for the child to access and use later.
But most of us trust-funders don’t relate to those stereotypes.
We are ubiquitous, yet rarely flamboyant enough to make ourselves known.
I criticize the people who live in high-rise, Miami-style glass condos and park their cars in the garages below when public transportation is just a few blocks away. And I hope once you get to know me, you’ll decide I’m not so terrible, even though I haven’t fully convinced myself of that yet.
I roll my eyes at the bottle-blonde girls in heels clutching their designer bags walking down Bedford Avenue in the middle of a weekday, on their way from Starbucks to a designer store. We trust-funders can never and would never defend ourselves publicly, because as a rule we do not like to talk about money and our easy possession of it.
The phrase, often used with modern socialites, became popular in the 20th century as more American families became wealthy and had children who inherited money.
The connotations of the term are often quite negative, but many individuals who inherit their money do not fit the general stereotype and work very hard for themselves and others.
After I gave him a confused look he explained what a phlebotomist is (they’re people that take blood).
Then he took me to dinner in Miami and asked me what else I wanted to do.
It’s unclear if the people who mutter the words, “Ugh, trust fund babies” with a jaded sneer know exactly who they are talking about.
The phrase has become a catch-all for the millennial men and women hanging out in the trendiest coffee shops all day, enjoying cold brews in the trendiest parts of Brooklyn (or L. or wherever), while the rest of the world is slogging away at work.