Poll of the Day > Growing up, what was the thing that made you feel another family was rich?

(+) Yeah! (+)

For me it was ice and water in their refrigerator door.

any pool

VampireCoyote posted...

any pool

This, considering we lived in a place where you could maybe use it for like 3 months of the year
In Vegas pretty much everyone has a pool though

Shoes without holes and xmas holiday trips to a theme park 2 states over

Yep, kids dont appreciate being dragged along to a 2 week camping trip (bare bones), especially not after scoring Sega and Nintendo games for xmas..

I didn't view anybody as rich, but the following made them come off to me as "privileged":

Microwave oven
Satellite/Cable TV
Nintendo
Nikes/Reebok shoes
Going on vacation during the school year

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This

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We were pretty poor but had every console but that was because my mom and grandmother was as much gamers as I was. My grandmother even regularly beat Zombies Ate My Neighbors which I couldnt even get close to doing.

Oh yeah, a microwave

We didn't get one til like 97

Two television sets, with reruns.

We had every console but we didn't get cable TV until I was in highschool

Being able to get everything you wanted with lots of vacations and food.

Air conditioning and Cable TV.

I never really thought any other families were rich when I was growing up. Mainly because I only ever really hung around with people who were more or less on par with my own socioeconomic bracket.

Inground pools

Growing up I never knew we were poor because we had a modest home, food and decent clothing. The thing today is that with social media, wealthy people are more visible than they were before SM so people are exposed to the poorest people to the wealthiest people because of SM.

I grew up on a very odd boulevard. The whole street was very average smallish single family homes, except for an enormous mansion at the end of the block. Indoor pool, tennis court, garage full of classic cars. You name it, it had it. It was like this enormous castle that loomed over the entire neighborhood. Pretty much a constant reminder that we were woefully poor compared to them.

I was friends with a kid a few doors down, both of his parents were university professors. They had air conditioning and two computers in their house. Also they had a home theater in their basement with a projector. The kid had both an N64 and a PS1. He also had a Game Boy Color and all three Gen 1 Pokemon games (but he'd only ever really play Blue).

Many things as my old man had very little money. I love travelling though so was always had envy for those who travel a lot. I had no holidays abroad and stuff growing up.

One of my friends had a "pizza day" every week where his family ordered pizza for dinner

childhood friend was in a millionaire family and honestly the two things that stuck out to me the most were 1) their house had really good AC and 2) they had a pool that they kept up year round

poor louisiana nerds like me coveted being able to beat the heat

If they could afford cat litter trays with the crystals in them.

Being in debt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HX4a5P8eE

A clean house.

No joke, my mom was a hoarder and I was embarrassed to have friends over. Plus I am pretty sure I could count on one hand the times we ever used cleaning products growing up. I didn't even know we had a butchers block countertop next to the fridge until my parents divorced and my dad and I actually cleaned the kitchen.

my family's poor and my mom has always been absolutely terrified to let anyone over if there's a single dish rag out

Honestly, I grew up extremely poor, so just about everyone else's family was rich to us. Our house didn't even have running water, so if someone could have a shower without heating the water up in a kettle on the stove first, they were rich to me. If their parents drove cars that weren't rusted out, they were rich to me. If they had any toys they liked, or got stuff they wanted for Christmas, or had disposable income, or went on a trip, or ever had any new clothes that weren't hand-me-downs or secondhand, they were rich to me. If they had actual cash for food, and not food stamps / a free lunch card, they were rich to me. If they had cable and / or the internet, they were rich to me.

My childhood was pretty sad now that I think about it.

Phantom_Nook posted...

Two television sets, with reruns.

What's a rerun?

Not so much as rich but better off financially:
my friends dad worked for IBM so they had a pc before it was normal. Playing Wolfenstein when it was on dos was an amazing experience. Weird thing was that they had Sega consoles when I had Nintendo. Kind of a nice mix.

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Its crazy man.

Almost as crazy as being so fucking butthurt about cat litter tray jokes that I just got 5 back-to-back moderations about them lmfao.

I lived in a small town in a mountainous area. We couldn't get cable, they weren't able to lay the lines for it. The one person with a satellite and a heated pool was very popular. It was one high tech house surrounded by farms and 200year old buildings.

They had a heated seventy-foot indoor pool, which they put in themselves after tearing down the previous multi-million-dollar home to build a new home on the property. Oh, and the father's income was somewhere in the millions.

Kids that got to eat at home and not just school lunches, or especially kids who brought their own food and didn't even eat the school lunch.

For a bit there we lived in a cabin with hay for walls in Putney Vermont in the middle of 50 acres of woods and deer would come up and eat off the walls. So, I guess families that had homes that were not made out of hay.

Kids that got birthday/christmas presents and owned more then 1 set of clothes.

By the time I was 11 though I was working pretty much constantly and actually had more money/food (and whatever food I wanted) than most kids, but the first 11 years or so were pretty hard.

electric ovens

Kimbos_Egg posted...

electric ovens

Things I've never had.

When you're invited to trick or treat in their neighborhood every year, because their gated community full of mansions always hands out pillowcases worth of candy. And some of the neighbors are star MLB players.

Just being able to travel. We had to stay and work on the farm on summer break while the " rich kids" flew places on commercial or private jets. Hell, even driving miles and miles to go somewhere was a rarity for us. We didn't have time for vacations.

I did know many people much poorer though. Many folks I knew didn't have indoor toilets. Many only had wood burning stoves for heat and no AC. We didn't have AC until I was around 10. I knew a girl whose dad turned a small back porch into her bedroom. He used an old car windshield for a window.

Friend's dad had a camaro and built him a tree fort. He was my next door neighbor.

Central heating and air. Most things about the house looking clean and new. My house just had a swamp cooler in the front window and while we could clean it, nothing ever looked new.

GameReviews posted...

Honestly, I grew up extremely poor, so just about everyone else's family was rich to us. Our house didn't even have running water, so if someone could have a shower without heating the water up in a kettle on the stove first, they were rich to me. If their parents drove cars that weren't rusted out, they were rich to me. If they had any toys they liked, or got stuff they wanted for Christmas, or had disposable income, or went on a trip, or ever had any new clothes that weren't hand-me-downs or secondhand, they were rich to me. If they had actual cash for food, and not food stamps / a free lunch card, they were rich to me. If they had cable and / or the internet, they were rich to me.

My childhood was pretty sad now that I think about it.

My childhood was about the same as yours, except that nobody had cable at the time or internet. No indoor heating either except for a wood stove in the center of the house. Where I was raised (Minnesota) it gets really cold in the winter; so we didn't bathe unless we heated water and, if it became too cold, we didn't bathe until it was warm enough to do so. No indoor bathroom either; so if you wanted to go, you have to visit the outhouse outside. Our running water was one faucet in the kitchen with cold water most of the time. Nowadays those living conditions would be considered child abuse.

Action53 posted...

What's a rerun?

You'll find out.

They had a van.

I thought if you can seat 7 people compared to 4-5? Yeah, you got it made.