12 Things Truly Classy People Never Brag About

What do truly classy people never brag about? Twelve things, and nearly all of us slip into one or two without noticing. One American billionaire gave away almost his entire fortune in secret, and for well over a decade the universities and hospitals he funded weren’t allowed to say where the money came from. In this video: ✓ 12 things classy people never brag about, and what they say instead ✓ Why “so busy” became a status symbol in America, and what happened when researchers ran the same test in Italy ✓ Why the price of a thing is the least interesting fact about it, and how Edith Wharton’s old New York saw new money ✓ The 1883 Vanderbilt ball, and why a gracious host shows the guest to a chair instead of giving a house tour ✓ The Macaronis, the 18th-century travellers mocked for bragging about the Grand Tour ✓ The Christmas round robin letters, and why old families kept children’s achievements at home ✓ What happened to the royal governess known as Crawfie, and why name dropping betrays a friendship ✓ Why you never use your own title, and the Harvard graduates who avoid “the H bomb” ✓ The Tudor laws that made dressing above your rank a crime, and why the ancestry boom came from new money ✓ Seneca’s rule for favours, Maimonides’ eight levels of giving, and Chuck Feeney’s secret $8 billion ✓ What a Harvard study found about the humblebrag, and the one-line Waterloo story the British still love Classy people aren’t hiding anything shameful. They’re choosing not to turn good fortune into a competition. This week, the next time someone asks how you’ve been, skip the busy boast and tell them one real thing, then turn the question back to them. Tell me in the comments: which boast do you hear most often, and which one have you caught yourself making? The one that comes up most gets a full video of its own. #oldmoney #etiquette #classy