At the beginning of December the Daily Mail newspaper published an article which claimed to show you the various signs that you had truly “made it” in this world. It was in fact a study that systems company Synseal had commissioned and asked 2000 participants a series of questions. Their answers helped determine to what standards of living people can think of themselves as “made”. It was a good read, and here are some of the main things they discovered. Some of them are quite quirky, as Synseal put it:

1. Holiday home

2. Children go to public school

3. Having a cleaner

4. Having a nanny

5. Frequent shopping trips to other cities

6. Annual ski trips

7. Pony riding lessons for the kids

8. Have flown first class

9. A driveway longer than 200 yards

10. Wine cellar

11. A summer house

12. At-home gym

13. Car for mainly weekend use

14. Owning a sit on mower

15. Personal number plate

16. A hot tub

17. Golf membership

18. Enjoys sailing weekends

19. A small orchard in the garden

20. Home cinema system

21. Has an orangery

22. Shops at Waitrose

23. Having electric garage doors

24. A wet room

25. Designer luggage

26. Attending horse racing/Ascot every year

27. A glazed conservatory

28. Own an aga

29. A TV larger than 55 inches

30. Eat lobster

31. His and her sinks

32. Log burner

33. A TV in every room

34. Member of a tennis club

35. Fridge with ice dispenser

36. 400 thread count sheets

37. Have a pedigree dog

38. A wine cooler

39. Takes the dog to doggy day care

40. Takes the dog for treatments

41. A Facebook page littered with foreign holiday pictures

42. A golf handicap of under 15

43. A lazy Susan

44. Owns a picnic hamper

45. Matching bathrobes

46. Own many gilets

47. Own cricket whites

48. First name terms with the local vicar

49. First name terms with the pub landlord

50. Have 2,000 Twitter followers

Let’s play “Have you made it” bingo. How many of you went down that list and ticked off what you matched up with your own lifestyle? Personally I can’t say that I’m on first name terms with the local vicar, or own an aga.

There is a serious side to this research however. You may have noticed the odd mention of a conservatory or glazed extension. Well, there was a second string to this research. It revealed that a quarter were planning on building an extension and a fifth were intent on building a conservatory. So, under the fun stuff there was a serious side, to find out what the middle classes plan to do on the home improvement front in the future.

The numbers aren’t that bad. I imagine that a quarter of the people surveyed who want to build an extension, or a fifth who want to build a conservatory, equate to a rather large potential market. This is what Synseal will have wanted to find out, in order to see where the market is moving to.

So, what have we found out? We know that if you have a pedigree dog, a hot tub, a wine cellar and cricket whites, you have made it. Well done! Not sure where you might have arrived to, but well done all the same. Importantly though, we also know that a quarter and a fifth of the middle classes with money to spend plan to carry out major forms of home improvements at some point in the future. Plenty of business still out there people, time to go and grab it while things are betting better!

Click here to view the original story on the Daily Mail