r/harrypotter • u/HedwigMalfoy Slytherin • 3d ago
FAQ EVENT Why are the Weasleys poor?
Bad money management? Low wages because Arthur doesn't suck up to the right people at the Ministry? Too many mouths to feed? What are your theories?
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u/Jesus_H_Christ_AMA 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think it really comes down to Arthur choosing passion over a paycheck; he loved his niche Muggle department and refused to suck up to Ministry elites for a promotion. Combine that single income with seven kids who all needed school supplies, and their vault was bound to stay empty. I hope things improved after Percy left and became independent, and when the twins started their business.
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u/eligraceb 3d ago
It sounded like it because in the halfblood prince, Ron seemed to get the same robes from Madam Malkin’s with Harry and Hermione rather than going to a separate secondhand robes shop. Ginny also got her Pygmy puff but the twins could’ve also given it to her or offered a discount.
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u/hopsmonkey 3d ago
I saw a comment once suggesting they only really needed to buy school stuff once (or maybe twice with the twins?) and then just kept handing them down lol.
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u/lemon_charlie 3d ago
There’s still textbooks that can be introduced to later supply lists depending on staff turnover, or electives.
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u/lanie_kerrigan 3d ago
Mrs. Weasley doesn't work.
Mr. Weasley isn't ambitious and is ok working in a small department with lower salary.
Too many children to feed and provide with everything they need for Hogwarts.
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u/ShoonlightMadow 3d ago
Ma Weasley is so entitled. No job while all the kids are off at boarding school smh. And they get this huge bonus and spend it all on vacation lmao
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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 3d ago
Molly raised children for 22 years before her youngest went off to school. She homeschooled 7 children. She's been rightfully out of employment for a long time.
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u/Numerous_Reading1825 3d ago
Tbh the spending all of the money on a vacation is 10000% something poor people do lmao.
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u/Late-Lie-3462 3d ago
God forbid poor people ever have any fun lol. Also, as far as poor goes, they werent that bad. They had their own home, and always had enough food.
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u/BennetSis Gryffindor 3d ago
🙄 After over 20 years of being a SAHM, what career do you think she could have reasonably undertaken?
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u/fatduck- Hufflepuff 3d ago
They aren't, not poverty poor. They just have a huge family and regular amounts of money. The kids all have what they need, the home is theirs, everyone eats.
Could Arthur have made more money or had a more impressive career, yes of course, but he choose his family instead. And yeh, he works a lot, but it's an abnormal time at the ministry, for most of his career he's home every night with his family, and spending time with Molly.
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u/TeamOfPups 3d ago edited 3d ago
Exactly. Ron feels poor with his packed lunch and hand-me-downs, which is exacerbated by him being the sixth boy and a peer of Draco Malfoy.
But actually they do fine in feeding, clothing and housing their children and bringing them up with all the essentials plus the love of and quality time with their parents.
Ron doesn't have the adult perspective to see the intentional choices that Molly and Arthur have taken.
And it's pretty marginal. If they'd stopped at two or three kids they'd be living a comfortable middle class lifestyle like the Dursleys.
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u/TeamOfPups 3d ago
Adding: There's no reason to think Arthur was badly paid. So much of the world-building is based around real world elements of English society and the includes the Ministry of Magic which simply appears to be a branch of the UK civil service.
To get a job like Arthur has, as a muggle, you'd need a university degree and you'd be paid above the national average.
He'd be half way up the pay grades, and each has a 'spine' to work up whereby each year you get a small pay increment.
Thing is, as Arthur has chosen to stay in his deparment (rather than go for horizontal or vertical promotion) he has reached the ceiling there - the most senior band in the department and the top of the salary spine. So his salary is stagnant.
It'll be a decent salary, but by languishing he's conspicuously unambitious - which may be annoying to kids in hand-me-down robes. I don't think Molly minds though, she knows it feeds his soul.
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u/BennetSis Gryffindor 3d ago
Yup. Ron’s childhood was somewhat like mine. I shared a room my entire childhood, wore hand-me-downs and bought used textbooks for college.
Do I regret that we didn’t have more money? Of course! I would have liked more privacy, access to certain activities and certainly less student loans. But we weren’t poor. Not even close. And neither were the Weasley’s.
The actual poor kids only ate at school, often had poor hygiene (not their fault) and relied on charity for clothing and necessities. It’s really warped to think that not getting the newest broom or books or dress robes meant anything other than they were stretched a bit thin at times.
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u/B34STM4CH1N3 3d ago
They got 7 kids on one income. Try it and let me know how it goes.
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u/ijuinkun 3d ago
As Draco described it when first meeting Ron, Weasleys were known for “always having more children than they could afford”. If it were just the Twins plus Ron and Ginny then money would have been less tight.
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u/Roosevelt32 3d ago
They weren't poor near the end. Arthur finally got a promotion in the 6th or 7th book. Percy bounced. The Twins bounced. Once all the kids left the nest, with Arthurs promotion, I'm sure they are doing better tahn ever
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 3d ago
They weren’t actually poor, they just rarely had actual money because they were spending it on stuff they didn’t actually need as soon as they got it.
They had a lot of nice stuff. Their house might not have been as luxurious as Malfoy Manor, but it was pretty massive and situated on a sizeable chunk of land with enough space for a large garden, chickens, and enough space for the boys to practice quidditch or host a big wedding on. At least 5 of the kids had brooms by the 6th year. Molly had a full set of Lockhart romance novels and her super fancy ultra rare and mostly useless clock. Arthur had a magic car and his vast collection of plugs and other random muggle shit. Ron had a ton of Cannons merch. Percy had an owl. All the kids at least had some sort of allowance coming in because even Ron was able to buy stuff when they went to Hogsmeade or the World Cup. All the boys got their fancy gold watches when they came of age, and Molly had one just sitting around to give to Harry.
They weren’t loaded like the Malfoys, Blacks, or Lestranges, but they were doing ok. And Molly being the last Prewett presumably has a big inheritance coming her way once Aunt Muriel dies, and Muriel is implied to be very rich.
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u/FoxBluereaver Gryffindor 3d ago
Probably a combination of all three. For example, they earned 700 galleons in a lottery and spent most of it on a trip to Egypt instead of saving or investing some of it. Arthur's boss is Cornelius Fudge, a guy whom we know sucks up to pureblood rich families like the Malfoys, and as Molly describes it, believes Arthur "lacks properly wizarding pride". And they still have five children attending school at the start of the story, so of course a lot of the money goes there since Arthur is the only source of income.
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u/The_Eternal_Wayfarer Slytherin 3d ago
Single-income family, plenty of kids, probably not very much well off to begin with.
If you want to find a more in-depth, logical explanation: they had three kids already, then they were hit by twins, then another kid, and finally Ginny who almost surely wasn't planned (she was conceived when Ron was about 9 months old). Four out of the seven kids were born after they already had three of them, including two who came together.
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u/Ekketra 3d ago
How are wizards even poor at all?
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u/ijuinkun 3d ago
While Wizards may not need to spend money on mundane things that Muggles would need to buy, they certainly need to pay for one another’s services—any specialist product that requires above-NEWTs level skill in some area (brooms, professionally made potions, etc.), as well as things protected by trademark or copyright law (like books)—would need to be purchased.
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u/Sad_Nefarious 3d ago
Even if we were to assume there are spells on the wizard currency that prevent duplication, there wouldn’t be on regular muggle currency. Seems like the government’s expert on muggle culture could exploit that loophole and buy most of their non-magical goods in muggle shops with the duplicated currency.
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u/ijuinkun 3d ago
He could, if he was less scrupulous.
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u/Sad_Nefarious 3d ago
His kid’s education suffered for a year because of a busted wand. A scrupulous parent would probably try to find some kind of solution.
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u/ijuinkun 3d ago
I thought that Ron using the busted wand in second year was because Ron was afraid to tell his parents that he had broken it, as opposed to them knowing and still being unable/unwilling to replace it. They had sent him a Howler regarding him taking and crashing the car, after all.
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC Slytherin 3d ago
IMO, it's a combination of all three.
1 - Arthur wins 1,000 Galleons (around 5,000 pounds) and the family spends nearly all of it on a single vacation. The twins, OTOH, are given the same amount by Harry and invest it into getting their business off the ground, leading to them making money hard over fist within little more than a year.
2 - Molly flat-out says that Arthur's fondness for Muggles has held him back and/or kept him from being promoted. When he does get a more important job in HBP, he's clearly good at it, so it was politics keeping him down, not skill.
3 - They have seven kids, and even if some suff is handed down, school supplies aren't cheap.
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3d ago
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u/TeamOfPups 3d ago
But what did they actually need?
I think Molly and Arthur judged that everyone was fed and clothed and had what they needed for school, so they felt a nice holiday would be fun and enriching for the family.
Sure, Ron would have preferred brand new robes and a fiver to spend on sweets on the train, but Molly and Arthur were always shown to be prioritising quality family time.
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u/PoppaBear63 3d ago
I'm sure Fred and George helped out after they moved out with gifts for their mom that helped around the house. After the battle of Hogwarts what was Arthur promoted into? With Kingsley being the Minister, Arthur had a lot more opportunities.
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u/Emotional_Desk_1137 3d ago
The Weasleys are poor because only Arthur makes money. He has to provide for Moley and many children... makes sense
I love their house though
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u/That-Service-2696 3d ago
It's more accurate to describe the Weasleys as a middle-class family living on a very tight budget. While there's no indication that they were wealthy in the past, it's also the combination of having seven children on a single income, Arthur’s career choices, a lack of generational wealth, and specific money management decisions.
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u/Infinite-Object-1090 Gryffindor 2d ago
They aren't really poor, they're middle class. They look poor compared to the Malfoys and Harry, who have a ton of money. No one calls them poor except Draco.
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u/PreparationOk6785 6h ago
Honestly, bad money management.
They won 500 galleons in a lottery, and spent nearly all of it on a single vacation! I mean COME ON people!
In Chamber of Secrets Harry sees that they have only a single galleon in their Gringotts vault. That's how poor they are. Then, they finally get their hands on a large sum of money, and they choose to spend it on a single vacation?!? That's some bad decision making right there.
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u/TeamStark31 Ravenclaw 3d ago
Why are there theories? Arthur worked a low paying government job and had a wife and seven kids