Current Events > Did you grow up poor?

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I grew up poor. Never went without, food wise or housing wise, but besides a few years when I was a young child we were always poor. Nearly always relied on some form of government assistance (food stamps, subsidized housing) or family assistance (no rent in the place we lived).

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Kind of poor

Always had enough to eat and a roof over our heads, but we always relied on benefits
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yes and it's one of the reasons I despite my mom
she never bothered getting a job

in retrospect, probably.

Po. I couldnt afford the or.

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We transitioned from poor to middle class, but by that time i'd bailed.

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Very.
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Kind of. My dad had money but he spent it at the bar and shorted my mom on bills at times. He built up a bank account for each of us over the years that had like $250 each for all 4 of us, then my mom had to use it on bills when he shorted her.

The only time it felt like we had money was on vacation. We did get to go to Florida or Texas/Mexico yearly. And my dad would give us $100 each. Which is a decent amount when you're in bordertowns.

But we lost power and shit like that before. I don't remember, but my family reminds me. I always just rolled with whatever and being the youngest of 4, I was protected the most. None of the stress ever trickled all the way down to me.

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between poor and middle class. There were times when we were fine and times that my dad couldn't afford to buy me a fucking water bottle from the gas station. I'm the youngest so they would never fill me in on what was going on which left me very frustrated and anxious.

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between poor and middle class as well. my father was/is obsessively frugal, to the point of refusing to shower to reduce the water bill. i had very little growing up, explains my current materialism i suppose

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I thought so at the time, but in retrospect no. I just got less for Christmas and birthday than everyone in my class did. Turns out my dad was just frugal, and he's reaping the benefits with early retirement.

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kind of.

my dad was a professor, but he was financially supporting a house full of people - my mom, his brother, my mom's sisters, and us kids.

but after his brother and my mom's sisters moved out, and we were old enough to be left with others/alone, my mom went back to school for her master's, and the family did well from there on.

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teepan95 posted...

Kind of poor

Always had enough to eat and a roof over our heads, but we always relied on benefits

This probably describes me well enough. There were certainly people poorer than us, I had a decent life growing up.

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I was a spoiled, but only child. I had all the toys, and games I wanted, but none of it fulfilled my loneliness. :(

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kind of. my dad was a handyman and my mom was a cleaning lady. my clothes were mostly gifts from relatives or cheap/thrift stuff. my video games were all hand me downs from friends/relatives/neighbors (i.e., I got my ps1 from my neighbor when she got her ps2). I didn't have a cell phone until years after everyone else around me was getting them. we never ate out except the occasional fast food with coupons. stuff like that

I always had running water and stuff, so that's why I'm saying kind of. couldn't really afford any luxuries. just the necessities

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Wouldve said middle class at the time, but probably closer to well off.
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A couple of times. We were homeless when I was 5, and when I was 11, my parents were still recovering from a lawsuit, and they were incredibly unhappy during that time.

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Kinda poor then went to upper middle in highschool, but my parents didn't trickle down the goods to us kids

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Yes

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We were very poor, still are pretty poor. I've managed to get some savings going for myself while helping keep my family above water as an adult. Any decent sized problem could wipe out that savings real quick though.

Mom and dad still basically have no money to speak of. They can keep food on the table and bills paid, and that's the extent of their finances. I'm living here with them helping them out.

As a kid it was the same, no money, but often the bills went unpaid and we went without food for a while every now and then.

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These topics always interest me because I like seeing how different people define poor. More interesting is how one's perspective changes as they get older. Just in this topic there are numerous people who thought they were poor but realize now they were better off than they thought. I imagine it's usually as you get exposed to true poverty, you start to realize how fortunate you actually were. Nothing wrong with it, of course, just a part of life where we continue to learn. Perspective is a wonderful thing.

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I was homeless for about a decade as a child, after my dad went to jail (and bounced around in and out of rehab afterwards)

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