rich vs poor

[malmalthekiller]

I grew up fairly poor. My father was a technician with a drug problem, so whatever extra money he had went to that. I don't speak to him anymore. My mom worked two jobs and went back to school later, and worked hard for everything we had.

We only went on two vacations (Ocean City, Maryland, and Niagra Falls) - but we went camping a lot. And we went to the lakes in the parks nearby.

My sister and I had to take out loans to go to college, and we're still paying them off. Right now I live with her and her boyfriend in a rented house - I have a newer used car. I worked two jobs until recently, but I'm alright financially now.

[cindybubbles]

I was, and still am, middle class. My sister and her family are more upper-middle class.

I live in a two-storey condo unit with my parents, and my sister and her family live in a large house in a nice neighbourhood. My condo complex is well-kept and well-guarded; it also has a convenience store, a recreation centre, and two pools (one indoors, one out).

The complex has three low-rise and one high-rise condo buildings. Each low-rise has 153 two-storey units, and the first floor of the high-rise consists entirely of two-storey units (the rest of the floors only have one storey per unit).

[hinakiba777]

I grew up in a Middle Middle Class or Upper Middle class home. It was not until after my father was forced to retire that the family had any true financial issues, so I can't really speak to being on either end of the spectrum. We were pretty comfortable. The only real sacrifice I remember was my dad paying for a bathroom renovation with our other vehicle.

[Jester]

This is going to be a bit more personal than even I like to get online. And that's saying something. But in order to truly explain the financial circumstances I grew up with, I have to delve a bit deeper than just the money.

When I was very young, my family was typical middle class for the time (early Seventies), with Dad working a good job supporting the family and Mom staying home with the three kids. Nice houses (we didn't have multiple houses, but we moved frequently), decent amount of nice toys, two cars, etc.

Then at some point when I was about 4 or 5, apparently Dad had a nervous breakdown. I don't remember it, as I was very young and he was just Dad to me, but it put him out of work for quite some time, then later it put him into a different field of work, making less money, and things were a bit tougher. Yelling matches/fights between Dad and my older sister, who was a young teenager, were frequent; two stubborn personalities colliding, each with a fierce temper.

Then Dad got sick, was in the hospital for several months, and then died. Leaving Mom alone to raise three kids, aged 14, 10 (me), and 9. She hadn't worked in decades. But she went back to work, doing what she could to make ends meet, while also dealing with the medical bills and funeral expenses for Dad, which could not have been cheap. I'm not sure about the specifics, but I believe at this time she reached out to Dad's family for help, though he had distanced himself (and us) from most of them. Dad's family, for the most part, refused to help her, for reasons I am still unclear on. She would not reach out to them again.

We continued to struggle, with Mom working, us moving to be closer to her parents, and as we grew up, things weren't easy. This was the time of Reaganomics and the "trickle down theory" of economics, and we knew nothing was trickling down to us. I still get blindingly angry when people today, some of them my friends, lump all single mothers together as deadbeats or wanton sluts who just pump out kids. My mother was a single mother, through no choice of her own, so I know from experience that such pigeonholing is often quite wrong.

During this time, my older sister did what teenagers often did, which in her case resulted in some minor troubles and major fights with Mom, often resulting in more yelling matches, thrown plates, and Mom locking my older sister out of the house. I often found myself in the role of peacemaker, sometimes having to physically get between the two of them, even though for much of that time, I was still smaller than both of then. There were times I would have to get between them physically while one of them was driving, putting me in fear of my life, as I thought the car would crash. When my older sister turned 18, a legal adult, Mom had had enough, and threw her out. (They have a much better relationship now.)

Mom continued to struggle, and for a couple years, my little sister and I had to share a bedroom in a crappy little apartment, which neither of us was quite thrilled with. We were both young teenagers now, and it wasn't easy for any of us. (Older sister was off at college at this point.) Money was right, Mom was starting to date, and we were beginning to rebel. I became a bit of a thief, shoplifting on a regular basis, often selling my ill-gotten goods to other kids in school, so I could get money I wouldn't otherwise have. I didn't need it to survive, I just wanted it. Meanwhile, my little sister was becoming quite a pothead. I suppose you could say we were typical for the time.

Mom eventually got together with Stepdad. There were some issues, but overall it was a good fit. He was going through a brutally ugly divorce with his ex-wife, and was dealing with his own two teenaged children. Eventually Stepdad and Mom boy a place together, and we lived with them and Step Bro. Step Sis lived with her Mom; I barely knew her back then. There were still financial struggles, but it was easier with two incomes. Mom still worked; I don't know if it was ever considered for her not to.

Eventually we would move out to Arizona. A month after I first set foot in Arizona, at the age of 17, I knew I was Home. Financial issues were still there, though we were probably still middle class-ish. But money did play a role in my college choices, partly because of my parents' income, and partly because of my aunt, Mom's sister, having conned my Mom and Grandma out of some money, including money that was supposed to be for our colleges. Mom and Grandma would eventually forgive my aunt. I never have. Not for the money per se, but for ripping off Mom and Grandma so blatantly.

How did all this affect me? I don't know. Looking back, I know that a lot of food choices Mom made were financial ones, though I didn't realize it at the time. Dishes I considered normal at the time were actually her getting creative financially and culinarily, and stretching the budget to feed all the mouths. I still make some of those dishes to this day. I'm sure a lot of things that happened in my childhood shaped my future attitudes and politics in various ways; you don't have to be Freud to see that.

I've never been wealthy, as a child or adult. I've never had more than a few thousand in the bank, if that. Currently I don't even have that. I could have probably gone into sales and made a fortune; I have always had quite a talent for sales. But money was never all that important to me. I didn't pursue it. Which may be why I never got it. The almighty dollar was never all that almighty to me. Don't get me wrong, money is better to have than not to have, of course. But I've made a point of living my life well, making great friends, and enjoying everything I could. And because of that, while I've never been wealthy, I consider myself quite rich, and better off than many people who have far more money than I ever will.

Take all this however you want. This was my experience.

[Ghel]

I grew up comfortably middle-class, so I'm not going to tell my story. Instead I'm going to tell my hubby's story. I've heard it so often, I almost know it by heart.

This would have been mostly in the 70s/early 80s in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Illinois. Hubby's family was poor mostly because of his parents' drinking problems. His father rarely held a job for more than a few months. They packed up everything in the car and moved around once a year, to "start over," as his father would say. Essentially, they were abandoning all their debts because they had no other choice. Hubby says that many times, his father would put the check for the power bill in the envelope for the rent, by "accident," and vice versa, in order to buy them some time to pay those bills.

For several years, they lived in a trailer without electricity or running water. Hubby and his dad would walk along the railroad tracks, and his dad would pick up a fist-sized rock to throw at a rabbit, which he would field dress right there. They would pick wild asparagus on the way back, and that was dinner every night for at least a year. During this time, breakfast was barley with sorghum molasses. Every day. Hubby still refuses to eat asparagus, barley, or molasses.

For much of his childhood, his parents requested beer or cigarettes as birthday and Christmas presents. They may not have had money to pay the rent, but they always managed to scrounge enough for a case of beer. His parents would get in violent fights with the slightest provocation. Yelling, dishes smashed, punches thrown, etc. The fights didn't end until they split up.

When Hubby started working for himself, he saved up enough to make a down payment on a used car. He agreed to make payments, which his father insisted on handling. Only a few months in, his father lost the car payment playing poker, and the car was repossessed.

Hubby bought another car, right before his father decided to pack everything up and move again. They loaded Hubby's car up with some of the household goods and left it in a neighbor's yard, saying they would come back for it once they were settled in. They never went back.

Because of Hubby's childhood, he doesn't want to move. He doesn't even like to move the furniture in the house. We do well enough now, but he's always worried that we might not be able to make it. Hubby says he learned a lot of what not to do from his parents. He rarely drinks, he walks away from heated arguments, etc.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I grew up on the poor side of the rich/poor divide, although I would have said we were lower middle class. This was in the 50s and 60s. I was the oldest of four kids.

As a kid, I never or rarely had ice cream. We always had ice milk (no-fat ice cream these days). Even when we had home made ice cream from a hand cranked freezer (motorized freezers were for the rich folks) it was ice milk. I didn't have true home made ice cream until I was an adult and made my own, not worrying about the cost of the cream needed.

We also ate lots of fish that were given to us by relatives who fished a lot. (I wonder it that could be into a palindrome?)

[protege]

I'd have to say that my parents were poor when I was growing up.

When I was very young, my dad had a good job at a major advertising company. That job required long hours and a lot of traveling. That meant it wasn't fair to my mother--she was stuck at home raising two little kids. Dad was tired of his job's hours, the office politics, and other bullshit. So he went into business for himself.

Problem was, Pittsburgh at that time was in the middle of a major economic failure. The steel companies, along with most of the related industries...plus the factories, breweries, and other heavy industries...were about to implode. When he set up his own shop, many of those businesses were his clients. Then, what hadn't gone out of business, was destroyed when the early 1980s recession started.

By the mid-1980s, the writing was on the wall. Nearly all of his clients had gone out of business, and the money wasn't coming in. What little money that came in, plus what my mother earned (she'd gone back to work by then), went into keeping a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and the various utilities. There was very little leftover for other things. Didn't stop us from going on vacation though.

When 1993-4 came around, it was all over. Dad was working multiple jobs, and could no longer keep the agency afloat. Equipment got sold off, and it was closed later that year. By then, things were in pretty bad shape. Years of deferred maintenance on the house, cars (except for the MG--the engine had blown up several months prior and was unsalable), and other things had taken its toll. There simply wasn't enough money for proper repairs. Anything that broke had to be patched up and put back into service.

Over the next 6 years, things finally began to change. Dad was able to go back to school, get his teaching degree. Finally, they were able to reverse the affects of the previous 2 decades. They finally got out of the financial mess they were in, and were able to start over. Now they're both retired, the house has had some serious work done, and there aren't any junk heaps in the driveway.

The only *good* thing that came out of all of this, is that it made me stronger. That is, poverty sucks donkey balls. Once I got out of college, I vowed that I'd been poor once, and I'm *not* going through it again. I put myself through school, landed a decent job...and even though money is tight at times, I'm *not* going to make the same mistakes that my parents did.