Growing up poor (and how it messed with my mind)
A couple of weekends ago, Kim and I enjoyed a short vacation on the Oregon Coast. She’s been taking foraging classes, and she had an early morning workshop on harvesting sea vegetables one Sunday. Rather than wake in the middle of the night to drive out, we rented a small place in Tillamook and took the dog for an adventure. (The dog loves the coast.)
We let Tally lead us on a walk through town one rainy afternoon. Coming home, we cut through a trailer park. “We’re in the poor part of town,” Kim said.
“Yep,” I said. “But look at that trailer house right there. That is almost exactly like the one I grew up in.” Here’s the trailer I grew up in:
We stopped to look at the trailer. I pointed out the tiny windows and the sagging roof. “It’s small,” Kim said, frowning.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes it is.” The trailer was a beat-up 1970-era single-wide. Nothing about it looked appealing. I could imagine the inside: shag carpet, thin wood paneling on the walls, faded linoleum, colors like Avocado and Harvest Gold on every surface.
If you’ve been watching Stranger Things season four, as we have, the trailer houses in that show remind me of ours too. Look at this mobile home from Stranger Things; it’s very, very similar to the one my parents owned:
Everything about that image feels like my childhood to me. (Well, except for the demonic tentacles wrapped around the house and car…)
Growing Up Poor
I’ve talked before about how my family was poor when I was young. When he was working, Dad didn’t make much money — but he was often out of work. Mom bought our clothes from the discount rack. There were times we relied on the church “relief society” for food. Mom and Dad often tried to make our situation seem like an adventure (“Kerosene lamps are fun!” “A wood stove provides more heat than a furnace!” “We don’t need a TV! TV rots your brain!”) but in retrospect, I know now they were doing whatever they could to make ends meet.
There was indeed a brief time when Mom and Dad had money coming in. Dad started a business in 1976 that slowly grew into a profitable venture. When he sold that business in 1980, though, the buyer went bankrupt after making only one payment. Poof! There went Easy Street. And, of course, when Mom and Did did have money, they spent it. They never ever saved or invested.
It wasn’t just my mother and father either. My Dad’s entire family was poor. (My mother’s family was not, but we had little contact with them.)
My cousin Duane’s family, who lived about ten miles from us, was poor too. They had a big old drafty house instead of a trailer, but they also struggled to get by. His mother and father, like mine, were all about self-sufficiency. They grew their own food. They hunted. They fished. They built what they could by hand.
Duane loved to tell the story of how his father once refused to buy washers at the hardware store because they were too expensive. They cost seven or eight cents, or maybe a dime. Instead, Uncle Norman went home and drilled holes through nickels to make his own washers.
My father’s sister and her family were just as poor as the rest of us. They lived up in the foothills outside Estacada in another big old drafty house. They needed a big house because there were nine children in the family. When I see movies featuring poor country folk from the 1930s, their circumstances often remind me of Aunt Virginia’s bunch. (Long-time readers will recall that I’ve shared some stories from my aunt’s family here at GRS in the past: “A Six-Dollar Christmas” and “The Night That Mama Cried While Angels Sang”.)
Naturally, the poverty of these three siblings had a source: their parents. Grandma and Grandpa were poor too, although it didn’t seem that way when I was a boy. To me, Grandma and Grandpa were rich. Sure, their house was small. Sure, they lived simply. Sure, they grew much of their own food (in the form of gardens and livestock). Sure, they chopped their own firewood. Sure, they rarely bought anything beyond necessities. But their home and yard were always clean and tidy. And they could both make small things — oatmeal cookies, Bobbsey Twins books — seem like lavish luxuries.
Friends with Money
During my early childhood, our life seemed to revolve around the extended family. We spent holidays with Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins. Outside of church, this was the only life I knew. To me, this was how the entire world lived. I had no conception that there might be anything else.
During those rare times I was allowed to watch TV, I saw different ways of living, of course, but these seemed like fantasy. Besides, the Cunninghams on Happy Days and the Bunkers on All in the Family didn’t have lives that seemed too far removed from ours — except that they lived in the city. (The Brady Bunch, on the other hand, blew my mind. Such a big house! Such nice things! They were rich, and I knew it.)
Eventually, I made friends and I started to visit my friends’ homes. Those friends who lived in the country sometimes lived in the same circumstances that we did, but many did not. Many had bigger homes, nicer homes, cleaner homes. (You would not believe me if I described how dirty and cluttered our house was when I was young.) And my friends who lived in town? Well, there was no question in my mind that they were rich.
I remember going to an overnight birthday party in town when I was in fourth or fifth grade. My friend’s house was huge. It was modern. He had so many books and toys. His parents had new, fancy cars. They ate in restaurants. They could afford to take the entire birthday party to pizza! Looking back, it’s probable that this friend’s family was only middle class, but in 1980 they seemed rich to me.
As I entered middle school and high school, the differences between our circumstances and those of my classmates became even more apparent to me. Again, not all of my peers were rich. Some were poor like us, and they tended to become my friends. But I have vivid memories of my first experiences in the homes of rich people, and of how these rich kids carried themselves.
Once during high school, for instance, I went over to a friend’s house after play practice. (We were rehearsing You Can’t Take It With You.)
My friend’s father was a dentist — my dentist. Their house, located on the shore of the Willamette River, was enormous. It was so big that there was an actual tree growing in the center of it. It was a smallish tree, but it was still a tree. My friend and her brother each had their own computer. They each had their own television. The family had so much. I was in awe.
During high school, I had brief encounters like this with wealth and wealthy people. In each case, I felt out of place. I felt dirty. I felt like an impostor.
It was also about this time that I began to notice a difference between the rich kids and the poor kids like me. The rich kids exuded confidence. When they wanted something, they asked for it — or they took it. We poor kids were much more timid. We never took anything, and often we were afraid to ask for what we wanted. We were rule followers. My rich friends were not. They behaved as if rules were meant for other people. (Inevitably, it was my rich friends who got into trouble. Just as inevitably, their parents bailed them out.)
A Higher Education
I awakened to the difference between rich and poor during my teenage years. And I awakened to the knowledge that my family was poor. I began to think about my future. I never explicitly thought, “I want to be rich” or, “I don’t want to be poor.” Instead, I thought, “I don’t want to live in a trailer house when I grow up.” It seemed to me that the best possible escape route was college.
Fortunately, I was smart. I didn’t particularly apply myself to my studies, but I didn’t need to. I coasted through high school with a 3.29 GPA with zero effort. I never had homework (I finished it in class or during lunch) and I never studied for exams. I did phenomenally well on standardized tests. I could write well. I participated in a wide range of activities. In time, I was accepted to every college I applied to (although, admittedly, I didn’t cast a wide net). And one school, Willamette University, offered me a full-ride scholarship based on my test scores and extra-curricular activities.
College was a shock. I was discomforted by my rich friends in high school, but that was nothing compared to the wealthy kids I met in the dorms. These kids had nice clothes, nice cars, and (seemingly) no cares. Again, they had so much confidence. They acted as if the world was made for them. How did they do it?
One of my friends, for instance, had a new BMW that his parents had bought him for high school graduation. His father was a doctor. My friend (and his sister, who also attended Willamette) weren’t especially smart. In fact, they were kind of dumb. I tutored both of them at different times, and was always amazed by how little basic knowledge they possessed, and by how poor their study skills were. They didn’t get into college on merit. They got into college because their father with deep pockets was an alumnus.
My friend and his sister sailed through college with poor grades and a rich social life. They were active in their Greek organizations. Their parents gave them money, which they promptly wasted on drugs and alcohol. To them, college wasn’t about studying. College was about making connections.
I know it sounds as if I have negative feelings toward these two friends, but I don’t. I loved them both. I have only fond memories of them. But there’s no question that they were rich kids who acted like rich kids.
Once during my freshman year, I visited my friend’s house. It was like a palace to me, and I said so. My friend was offended. To him, his house was a house. He took it for granted. But the place was enormous. It was opulent. I remember standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows that looked out over the valley below us and watching the sun rise. I’d never experienced anything like that before.
At the end of my freshman year, I began dating a woman from Portland. Amy was terrific, and so was the rest of her family. But again, their life was outside my realm of experience. They owned a big old home in a nice part of town. Her father was a real-estate agent who owned several rental properties, including the building where he had his office. Amy’s mother (who couldn’t remember my name, so she called me “The Initials”) was a wonderful woman who was interested in the arts and philanthropic organizations. “Your family is rich,” I told my girlfriend once. She was offended, but it was true.
I had many experiences like this during college. In time, I became numb to them. I would visit a friend’s childhood home, and it would look nothing like what I had grown up with. Always always always, I felt out of place. I didn’t know how to behave. I didn’t know what to do or think or say when in the presence of such wealth. But all of my friends seemed to fit in fine. They’d grown up in this world, and they knew its unwritten rules.
This is no small thing.
The Mental Side of Money
I’ve been fortunate in life. When we were married, Kris and I started with modest means. We lived in an apartment. Before long, we bought a standard ranch house near the high school where she taught physics and chemistry. We weren’t rich but we were certainly middle class. In fact, by the time my father died in 1995, Kris and I had a home and lifestyle that surpassed what Mom and Dad had ever been able to achieve.
Dad’s box factory did eventually allow him to escape poverty, but he didn’t live long enough to truly enjoy it. And Mom’s health declined before she could enjoy the change in financial fortunes either. Today, the box factory pays for her memory care and medical bills.
As an adult, my experience has been markedly different than when I was a kid. I’ve gradually moved from poverty to middle class to upper middle class. In the physical world, I am now rich. But inside? In my internal world? I’m still that poor kid living in a trailer house. Foolish though it may seem, I am trapped by those thoughts and those emotions. They guide my decisions (often at an unseen level).
I still lack confidence. I still feel like I don’t deserve anything that I have. I still expect it all to vanish, to go away. I find it difficult to defer gratification. Intellectually, I understand that if I want to purchase something, I can do so any time I need to. I can wait. Emotionally, however, I feel like I have to buy things now because the opportunity may never arise again. It’s irrational, I know, but that’s how it is.
Last week, I had a conversation with a new friend here in Corvallis. I was talking about how frequently Kim and I have moved during our ten years together, and about how we’re ready to stay in one place. “In retrospect,” I said, “we probably should never have sold our condo in Portland. It was a beautiful place. It was the best unit in the building: top floor, on the corner, with a view that looked over the river toward downtown. It was, by far, the nicest place that I have ever lived.”
“So why did you move?” my new friend asked.
“There were a couple of reasons,” I said. “We acquired pets, for one. We had two cats and a puppy, and they didn’t do well on the top floor of an apartment building. Plus, the crime and traffic and homelessness in our neighborhood had become overwhelming. But if I’m being honest, I think the main reason I sold the place was because I felt like I didn’t deserve it.”
“What?” my friend said, shocked. “Didn’t deserve it?”
“I’m serious,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about this before, but it’s true. During the four years we lived there, it never felt real. It felt like a dream. It felt like the place was too good for me. I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I felt like an impostor.”
She and I then had a long discussion about coming from a poor background (because my new friend grew up poor too) and how poverty can mess with your mind, can lead you to conflate wealth with self-worth.
On a whim, I just looked up our old condo unit on Zillow. It just sold again two months ago! I bought it for $342,000 in 2013. It sold for $737,000 two months ago today. I think you can get a sense of just how posh the apartment was.
The Green-Eyed Monster
All of this rambling was inspired by a post I saw yesterday on the /r/fatFIRE forum on Reddit.
For those unfamiliar, /r/fatFIRE is a judgment-free place for rich people to talk about rich people problems. These are folks worth $5 million or $10 million or $100 million. Generally speaking, I do not begrudge these people their wealth. (I’ve never been one to envy the wealthy, actually. I’m not an anti-billionaire, “eat the rich” kind of guy.) That said, this question triggered some deep-seated issues inside me:
Our child is going a private four year east coast college. We are FAT but trying not to spoil him. All of our trusts are confidential and completely discretionary. He went to a private high school but does have a summer job. I want him to enjoy school and studying. What is a reasonable allowance per month for him? 529 will cover most of her other costs (housing, travel, books, etc). I don’t want him to be the spoiled trust fund kid that I hated in college.
Besides being unclear on this child’s gender (him? her? why does the poster use both?), I was floored by this question. I’m not so much floored by the idea that a kid’s parents might pay for their entire education — I’ve seen that plenty — as I am by the entirety of what’s going on here: private high school, trust funds, a college allowance.
An allowance in college? Are you kidding me?
I’m serious: Even after a day to think about this, I still can’t get over the concept. Do you know how much money my parents directly contributed to my college experience? Zero dollars. And I knew that’s how it was going to be, which is why I pursued scholarships and grants and why I worked several jobs concurrently to have spending money. But it’s not just that this Reddit question is far removed from my own life; it’s also that I think it’s a terrible, terrible idea. (My own experience has shown me just how spoiled kids like this can get. The Millionaire Next Door, though, backs this up with data.)
But what if I’m simply being jealous? What if I’m not flabbergasted; what if I’m actually envious? Does this situation get me riled up because I wish that I’d had the same advantages? And what if I had enjoyed the same advantages? What would I be like then? Would I have turned out spoiled too? Is the confidence I see in wealthy people produced by being spoiled? I don’t know.
My mental health, which was woeful for several years there, has improved considerably during the past twelve months. (There are a variety of reasons for this.) All the same, I still suffer from some of the same core problems that have plagued me my entire life: lack of confidence, poor self-esteem, rotten impulse control. I look at my peers and they all seem to have their shit together. They’re poised. They have direction. They act with purpose. Not me!
I can’t say that growing up poor is the sole source of my hang-ups. Part of the problem is simply my genetic makeup, I’m sure. Part of the problem comes from the fact that my parents, who did the very best they could, weren’t able to impart certain fundamental skills. Part of the problem stems from being picked on all the time during grade school.
But you know what? The older I get, the more I believe that many of my faulty mental models exist because I grew up poor.
What do you think? What’s your experience? Did you grow up poor? Middle class? Rich? How do you think your family’s financial circumstances during childhood affected who you are today? Are you richer or poorer than your parents? To you, do there seem to be differences between the choices and actions of the wealthy and the poor?
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There are 49 comments to "Growing up poor (and how it messed with my mind)".
While living in a trailer seems to have left some scars on you I chose to live in a trailer even though my starting salary was equivalent to $80,000 of today’s dollars. It just made sense to buy a very used seventies single wide, full of green appliances and linoleum, and then to resell it after a couple of years to avoid throwing money away on rent. My wife, raised on a farm, didn’t care about looking poor at all, she had a long view on money like me and we both knew we’d be eventually wealthy on just my salary alone since I was killing it at work. When I see trailers it brings back fond memories of the first home we owned. That decision to not care how we looked to others in order to build a strong financial foundation was a key one in our early married lives. It’s been mostly cake since then.
I love this, actually. It makes so much sense. And there’s a part of me that wants to do this even today. Sure, growing up in a trailer house may have left scars, but it had unexpected benefits too. I don’t need fancy environs to be happy. When I travel, I don’t mind staying in dives. In fact, I prefer it. Luxury hotels are nice but mostly it seems like a wasted expense to me.
Also, your comment highlights the difference between choosing something like this and being forced into out of necessity. I know we talk about this concept a lot in the personal finance world, but it’s an important one. There’s a very real difference between intentional thrift and forced thrift. One is a deliberate action intended to live out a set of values. The other is often the only option.
Your childhood story is very close to my story. My family was middle class for my early childhood but after the steel mills closed we were poor. Government cheese and free school lunches poor. If my dad didn’t hunt we didn’t have meat poor. The only reason we didn’t live in a trailer was because my parents bought a 100-year old fixer upper that we never had money or time to fix up. I went to college on a full ride scholarship. My husband’s family didn’t have extra money when he was little but was comfortably middle class when I met him in college. He went to school on merit scholarships and his parents paid his living expenses. We started our life together with my temp salary and the extra groceries his parents sent us home with.
Fast forward 20 years and we’re now working rich by most standards. Not do-whatever-we-want billionaire rich but enough that we’ll be paying for my son to go to college in the fall. And, yes, we’ll be giving him an allowance. While I understand your gut reaction to this, I’m not really sure what would be a better alternative. We have worked hard to make sure that my son doesn’t live totally in a privileged bubble. He understands the haves and have-nots at least on some level. Truthfully he’s very attuned to social justice and will likely pursue a field in that area. Will he ever understand it on the emotional level that we do — no, of course, not. Nothing I can do now would ever really teach him that real fear of going hungry or being homeless. And truthfully I wouldn’t want to.
So I guess the question is – is there some middle ground between dirt poor and clueless rich. I think some families try to address this by making their kids work in the summer or through school. I’m not entirely convinced this arbitrary constraint really has the right effect since the safety net is always still there. But in any event, this isn’t really an option for us because my son has some cognitive disabilities that already limit his ability to take a full slate of classes. He works hard enough as it is. I would never add to that just to inculcate some arbitrary financial values that might not even really take anyway. I don’t know what the right answer is here but at this stage of my life I’m actually glad that I have the financial resources to support my son and to make his path easier.
As to the FAT parent – I would suggest that maybe setting an allowance is actually their attempt at constraints. Maybe they are trying not to raise that spoiled rich kid. A set allowance certainly seems a better option than just paying all the credit card bills.
Great comment, Terri. I don’t know what the right answer is either. I don’t know what the proper middle ground is. It probably differs for each parent and for each child. And you’re right: If you worked hard to be able to put your kids through college, you should be able to do that — allowance and all. No question.
I thought more about this while I walked the dog this morning, and it occurred to me that there were many kids I knew in college — like the girlfriend I mentioned in this article — who were wealthy but not spoiled. Not all rich kids become entitled. I might have made it sound that way here, and that wasn’t my intent. (All of the entitled kids I knew growing up came from money, but not all of rich kids I knew were entitled. Does that make sense? The entitled kids were a subset of rich kids.)
That does make sense and it occurred to me as I read this that I know plenty of poor kids that turned out entitled too. Plenty of my own family actually that feel like they’re owed something from the government, from the family members who have done well or from society in general. I have siblings who had the same limited opportunities I did but didn’t stick with them. And now they think my success is from marrying an Ivy League lawyer. They seem to miss the fact that I’m the one who put him through school and, again, carried our family when he left the big law firm and started his own. That both of us worked hard to get where we are. You talked about the impact of being poor. There can be real trauma there from food insecurity and fear of being homeless. From being ostracized or bullied by our peers. For some people that experience doesn’t lead to a hard work ethic but rather the opposite. I think maybe that sense of entitlement has less to do with your financial background than the values you were raised with and maybe your own personality.
I know some years my family was below the poverty line for a family of four. I also know that my parents never made above the median income for a couple in their entire lives and most of my growing up was lower-middle class. But boy could my parents be frugal and I even attended a private high-school (I’m assuming with massive financial aid) which also meant plenty of my friends were rich.
The frugality has largely stuck with regards to living within our means. My wife and I are much more wealthy than either of our parents and from data I see on dqydj, we’re in the top 10% for wealth for our age… crazy thought.
When you wrote about the condo in Portland, I got that. I’m not sure the exact words I’d use but when my wife and I put an offer on a great house overlooking a large body of water, the next day we both wanted out. Mainly because of distance from friends and family but for me, it just wouldn’t have felt like home. It would have been like a dream life and I don’t think I would have had roots to hold me in place in such a nice house… as weird as that may seem to some. Old houses with imperfections for me thank you very much.
Very interesting read today. I liked this article. I’m reminded of many things from my past and how informative they were from caddying for club members to having a rich grandfather who retired in his 50s with 3 properties to live in, to the old “command credit” I’d hear from my parents to make ends meet while paying for an unexpected expense. I feel lucky. A lot has gone my way and while I can’t live in a really nice house, it’s also a lot cheaper to not live in a really nice house anyway. 🙂
I love this article, JD! I had a somewhat similar upbringing. We were mostly middle class in the sense that I always knew there would be food on the table, but we didn’t really have luxuries until I was older. I also lived in a trailer, shared with my brother, his wife, and their baby, while we waited for my parents’ new construction home to be built (although that house purchase almost broke us). My dad was in the military, then worked blue collar jobs before getting disability benefits from the military, while my mom was an immigrant and was a SAHM who raised 3 kids and taught herself English by watching American soap operas. I’m very grateful for the unique experiences I had and wouldn’t change a thing.
I was the first in my family to go to college, but much like you that was motivated by thoughts such as, “I don’t want to worry about paying for an emergency” or “I don’t want to stress about paying my bills” when I grew up. So I always knew I wanted to go to college. My parents contributed a little bit, my dad’s military benefits covered more, and I paid off the rest after I got my first job.
My biggest challenge as I’ve entered the workforce is much like yours of never feeling like you belong. I never had an adult in my life model what working in a white collar job was like. I don’t know the ins and outs of being “seen” with leaders and wielding influence in such a way that promotions come easily to me. I treat my job much like I did school: Put my head down, put in the effort, and get to work. But over my career I’ve learned that’s not what works when you want to get ahead.
Because of that, I’ve shifted gears a bit. Rather than subscribe to the rat race, I’m trying to focus more on what I want in life, what I feel is the right work/life balance, and ultimately determining how much is enough. And once I answer those questions, figuring out how to maintain it all.
As they say, comparison is the thief of joy. I’m making it my life’s work to focus only on myself and compare today’s me to yesterday’s me–the only competition I want to have is with myself.
I’ll jump in here with an alternative perspective. By all the measures you described, I would have been “rich” – we had a two-story house in a decent area, two cars, I attended private schools, went to college, etc. But literally everyone I interacted with had more than I did, so I didn’t appreciate my privilege at the time and felt poor in comparison. As an aside, I’ve never met anyone who would describe themselves as “rich”, because people always are looking up at those who have more than them.
Our family’s situation was unique, because both my parents had grown up relatively poor, with little in terms of “stuff” except parents who valued education. My parents both attended college through full-ride athletic scholarships (the only possibility) at a very prestigious private university. The relationships they made, and “mental reprogramming” they received there, certainly altered the trajectory of their lives, and mine. In particular, it instilled an appreciation for the power of relationships, on top of an existing appreciation of education.
They both worked relatively modest jobs, as an elementary teacher and a low-level bureaucrat at the local university, but my family’s friend groups were full of investors, lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, politicians, and executives. They *stretched* the family budget to the brink to make sure my sibling and I were in the same rooms as these peoples’ children. My schoolmates argued about things like the best paint color for a Porsche, referrals for residential elevator mechanics, who had the nicer yacht, or which city on the French Riviera was the best to “summer” in.
I couldn’t relate to them at all — it was a big deal for us when we bought a computer for the family to share, and we never had a TV or gaming system in the house. What I *did* pick up from my classmates was that sense of confidence you mentioned, the sense that you can ask for things and people will give them to you. I was taught not just to enjoy my privilege, but to recognize and actively exploit it. Rules were bent, allowances were made, doors were opened. I distinctly recall the first time someone responded to a request of mine with “Right away, sir.”; I was twelve.
When it came time for college, my parents had set a little by for me so that I could “focus on my studies” by working 20 hours instead of 40 in college. But more importantly, my parents could guide me through the application process with an insider’s knowledge, which helped even more. Between that and my education, I was offered several scholarships on top of a full ride (plus living stipend!) to a well-ranked public university. Since their saved money wasn’t needed for my expenses, my parents doled it out slowly as a (small) allowance and saved the rest for my brother’s tuition. I ended up saving everything they gave me and using it to study abroad for a semester, which led indirectly to meeting my now-spouse — and a second citizenship which has brought its own benefits.
That sense of confidence and privilege-awareness allowed me to rise slowly but steadily to the executive level at my first job out of college. I knew when to take a risk and go back for additional education later on to get my MS and PhD, and to negotiate aggressively for a position that now puts me in the 98th or 99th percentile in the US.
If you ask my parents now if they felt they had to sacrifice to make all that happen, they would say no, that their lives were perfectly enjoyable, and they’d give me 100% of the credit, but without the decisions they made even before I was born, I would never be where I am today. I also have to say it’s a fair amount of luck as well, being in the right place at the right time.
But I still don’t consider myself “rich” — after all, I have to work for my money! 🙂
I was poor growing up but never really felt it. I think it really had a lot to do with my parents’ attitude about it all. They always kept our small 2 bedroom, one bath rental clean and tidy. In fact they made a point of taking care of our few possessions. We had a 2 door Plymouth Champ that I rode around in the back of until I was 16, I loved that car. They taught me about finances at a young age and showed me how they saved up for the things they really wanted. I remember how they spent my college fund ($400) on building a home and promised to pay me back with interest. I think the thing that bothered me the most is that my mom never had a career even though she eventually finished college while I was in elementary school (she originally dropped out of college because she got pregnant with me). I knew from a very young age that I wanted a career and that I would not be giving it up when I had kids.
Skip forward to now, my husband and I are both engineers and we have 3 kids. And as MMM would say, we live in a hurricane of cash. (or at least it feels like that after my childhood) I would say we are in the top 5%. But we work hard to not spoil our kids. The other day my daughter mentioned to one of the popular kids that her dad worked for NASA and his first words were “why don’t you dress nicer?” (all of my kids clothes are either cheap as you can get at Target or hand me downs from their cousins cause they destroy their clothes with play) We plan on paying for undergrad degrees for all of our children as long as they work hard at school. This will include a reasonable amount of spending cash as working during school can make it hard to get good grades. We consider it an investment in our children.
I think you might be getting distracted by the shiny outside that everyone shows and not what is really going on. At lot of people who live rich have a lot of debt. And a lot of people who are doing really well shop the bargain bins. And a lot of people who are truly well off are not that happy. And I am not sure that anyone really feels like they belong, everyone is faking it. Rich kids just have more practice at faking it, haha. I never seemed to care as much about fitting in cause my parents did not value it that much. Normal is boring.
I was raised by parents who were raised on farms, one of them an impoverished farm. My dad went to university, got a good job at graduation, and invested wisely. He spent most of his spare time researching the stock market and did very well. By the time I was in high school we were living at the upper end of upper middle class. Our houses were viewed as investments, so minimal upkeep took place, just enough to turn a profit before selling and moving as dad climbed the corporate ladder. We kids were raised to be frugal, though. Money was viewed as a tool, and lots of money did not equal spending, rather as capital for more investing. I was given no money for clothing in high school and expected to buy all of mine with after school and summer jobs. My seamstress skills grew exponentially, because I was a pretty girl and wanted to look nice.
We often visited our country and hillbilly relatives. I grew up seeing and experiencing that side of life. I learned farm woman skills from grandmothers and aunts; sewing, vegetable gardening, canning, quilting. I am creative and not materialistic by nature. My mother discouraged learning these things, as she wanted to break away from her upbringing and wanted us to also. I grew up watching her change her grammar, appearance, and social behavior. Comparisons were made to other kids in our neighborhood, yet when I would point out how their parents bought them nice clothes and jewelry, the standard nice car at sixteen and requiste European tour at high school graduation, had actual hair appointments at a salons rather than someone in the family trimming my hair, the stock phrases were that they came up the hard way, so should we. All good lessons–I am quite frugal and resourceful, but did resent that I was expected to be like the other girls in the neighborhood. My parents didn’t like my friends, but what did they expect? The rich kids next door would not accept me. The kids I hung out with were shocked when they saw where I lived. I was the child who didn’t want to assimilate and wasn’t given the skills to do so. My sibling, very canny and wanting to please our parents did, and our divergent paths were formed at that time. I have had an interesting life and don’t care too much what others think. Sibling is quite the opposite.
Though my husband did incredibly well, we moved frequently and I handled the money (which I learned how to do from my dad) and still do things like make fancy lined curtains, paint the interior of our houses myself, and so on, even though we have more than enough funds to not have to.
I guess what I’m trying to get at, is there are advantages and disadvantages with every type of socioeconomic upbringing. I was fortunate to experience upper middle class and rural (some of it hillbilly) lifestyles during my formative years. I married a good man from a blue collar background who, as a young man could fix any car, tear down and build anything, and knew even more about vegetable gardening than I did. I admired these things very much, and to me a man who could do these things (and hunt and fish and provide that way if need be) was a true man, in my book. He didn’t laugh or make fun of me when I pulled out my knitting or mending when watching TV like my other boyfriends did, then. (Needle work is trendy these days with millenials, which is so cool, I am so glad to see it finally coming back around.) So I married him. Definitely not what my parents wanted or expected. He finished his degree and did quite well. I was there at the start to help him navigate a world he was not familiar with, though it didn’t take long for him to figure it out and excel and become a true leader.
Something I got out of my unusual upbringing is that I can talk to anyone. One of my jobs involved dealing with celebrities and very wealthy people. I take a reverse sort of pride in certain things, too. I always snicker to myself if someone one thinks I’m poor, or appears shocked when they find out what my husband does for a living and some of the places I’ve lived or traveled. I can dress and present very well, or not at all. I have done travel to unusual places (not tourism) and can completely blend in and go unnoticed, due to keen observation. My background has taught me to be almost invisible, or “like water” as Bruce Lee would say.
Great article! Part of the reason that I believe the middle class is so important! I think it’s the sweet spot between rich and poor; financially and mentally.
Oh my goodness! Our stories are so similar. I almost lived the same life (albeit in New Zealand): early poverty and being bullied, best friend’s dad a dentist (!), puzzlement at other people’s parents supporting them beyond the age of 16, and eventual escape through putting myself through university and moving far away. Yes, I am richer than my family of origin, after many years of working and saving, but my brain is still addled by growing up poor.
I feel that I have been very, very lucky: I grew up house poor, but both of my parents had excellent jobs. Honestly, it was often hard as a kid not to be able to keep up with the cool kids, but I think the combination of frugality (house poor) and safety (not actually poor) allowed me to grow up being more thankful than average for little luxuries without being disproportionately affected by financial anxiety.
Re: reddit… I am now a teacher at a ritzy private school. So many of the kids there could afford not to work, but still do, mainly because their parents believe that it’ll teach them strong work ethics. What it actually teaches them is to value paid work over intellectual growth: to a 15-year-old, what do you think sounds like a better use of five hours? Crafting a superb essay, working on their Spanish accent, learning about genetics… or making $60 bucks restocking shelves? And which do you think contributes more to long-term character growth and flourishing? And the thing is – they are still entitled! The culture of “everything is a financial transaction” feeds their “my parents pay a lot for this school” mentality, and constant busy-ness is stressing them out, which is good neither for their equanimity nor for them indulging in daydreaming and personal pursuits. I often compare their lives to mine growing up (in France, middle class, teenagers not legally allowed to work), and I can tell you that these rich working kids are way more entitled than the kids with modest allowances I grew up with. So, after all this, I guess I’m trying to say that I find that parent’s question an excellent one. How much is enough for the kid not wasting their time chasing after money, but not so much that they’ll fritter it on timewasters and status symbols? If you can give that kind of gift of experience to your child, I applaud you 🙂
I grew up dirt poor.
Went to college on a scholarship.
I am very well off.
I deserve it and more.
Zero issues.
I have been writing Get Rich Slowly for sixteen years — since 15 April 2006. Out of the thousands of articles I’ve written, I think I’ve appreciated the responses to this article more than any of them.
Thank you, everyone. Sincerely. Your comments are excellent.
I get it. But you really need to move on from yesterday to today.
I grew up lower middle class. Railroad conductor dad and stay at home mom. A two family home in a declining two family home neighborhood (all the ‘best folks’ were moving to the new suburbs). We didn’t starve or need heat. We had what we needed but not a lot of extras. But with a union job, not a lot of worries about money. And since the neighbors were situated about the same (no college grads anywhere near), it didn’t seem too bad as a kid. But going to a regional Catholic High School, social and money differences were huge among the kids. About half like me and half well off to very well off. And I survived HS about as well as any but did leave with a desire to earn some money.
And I did. And pretty quick. And I’ve been fat FIRE for decades after a really nice career.
But I look at my life as it is not as it was. I’m old enough that some of my grandkids are in college and my kids are all in their 40s and rich. And their success built on the foundation of my success and that is the way it is supposed to work. My grandfather was a penniless immigrant from central Europe. He got settled and his kid (my dad) got through high school and found secure work.
If you are rich, it’s about time you act it. Living in a good school district is what a rich dad should do. Paying for college, of course. You want to pretend you are poor at the cost of your kids’ future? If you pretend poverty, your kid will eventually know and resent it. And you will possibly deprive your kid of an education that could have helped them have their best life. Based on your story, how would you feel today if you had later found out that your parents had enough money to pay for your college several times over and just didn’t without any explanation?
Same with housing and cars. You should buy what you can really afford and that which meets both your needs and desires. The goal is not to die rich but to use well the wealth you accumulate. If you make a mistake selling a home, admit it and buy it back (or something similar). So what if you lose a bit of money. It’s just a number on a screen if you are rich. If you are rich, you have the opportunity to make mistakes and to be able to fix them. And that is a good thing.
And from a family and friends and children perspective, they didn’t and don’t live your early experiences with poverty. And none of them will appreciate your attempt to live a lifestyle of faux poverty. So don’t do it.
There are some for whom spending is truly unlimited. But I’m talking about a level of wealth that supports a very good lifestyle … perhaps $3MM to $10MM. In this situation, living on $40k for no good reason is not appropriate. But yes there are limits and ‘budgets’ but they should reflect what you can afford. And if you have wealth, you should use some of it to help others. Your kid(s), siblings, extended family, and then maybe charities that have appeal to you.
If you are rich, it doesn’t matter how it happened. You are rich.
If you are rich, it doesn’t matter that you ‘feel poor’. You are rich.
If you are rich, what is the excuse for not living a comfortable and interesting life?
If you are rich, what is the excuse for not helping your family do better?
It doesn’t matter how you feel. If you are rich, you are rich. You can’t play act poverty and you shouldn’t ask your nuclear family to play act either. You really need to move on from yesterday to today. And you should start enjoying the opportunities wealth has given you.
I wish you and your family all the best.
So there’s others with that share the same experience I’m seeing from the article to the comments. I had to write a comment after reading this article. Everything you said about faulty core beliefs, self worth to delaying gratification. Growing up in scarcity never really leaves you.being single in this current dating market they call it, your really dwindled down to your income and career. Not having any family I found when I would self sabotage the chance I got. I appreciate that it allowed me to be more empathetic toward others and have and able to find the joy in a bike ride or a pleasant conversation with someone who’s a complete stranger. That was a good read and I saw that I wasn’t the only one who had the same thing going on. I felt seen.
This is an absolutely fascinating post. I grew up solidly middle-class — a stay-at-home mom and always two cars in the driveway (bought new, special-ordered at the lowest possible trim, and driven ’til the wheels fell off). Those cars didn’t have A/C until 1994, and our every-year-or-two “vacations” were always simple road trips to see out-of-state family. I was also incidentally a product of forced busing to integrate public schools in the nation’s largest and most affluent Black minority-majority county, which was a unique factor all by itself. My childhood was not bad in any way but a little unconventional.
I think the biggest difference is I never had any doubt that as long as our desires weren’t obscene, my brother and I always had the security and confidence of ENOUGH. Mom and dad were good about making sure we valued the extras in our lives; if there was something we wanted we’d use our $5 allowance or mow neighbors’ lawns, and our parents would often kick in half if it wasn’t a silly expense and we’d been saving for weeks.
My wife’s family was better-off than ours — working parents with terminal degrees, a country club membership, two newer convertibles in the garage and an upper-trim minivan in the driveway. To this day I notice small things like her utter disinterest in clipping coupons or comparison shopping, although she’s used the same iPhone for the last six years and cried when she had to part ways with her 16-year-old Mazda last summer. Our values and mindsets mesh well enough. And it luckily works really well from a FIRE viewpoint… we had very few habits to unlearn.
J.D., I’ve been reading GRS for years and I’ve never commented before. Please know that your experiences and feelings resonate deeply with me. The first time I saw how middle-class and rich people lived it changed me. I’ve learned (in therapy) that all of my fears and anxiety about everything stems from not wanting to be poor anymore. All of my decisions are based on keeping my head well above water — not about getting and having money and things, but keeping me and my children off the streets.
My mother would have turned 100 this year. Looking back now, I know her life would have been so different had there been reliable contraception available. She wouldn’t have had five children to support. Our family’s life would have been different.
Thank you for your stories and for telling your truth.
This post really resonated with me but from a different perspective. I have never figured out if we were really lower middle class or upper working class, probably the latter. We had a home and enough food, although the clothing situation was iffy. But the parenting situation was an utter nightmare.
Our father had pretty much only one emotion and it was a tearing rage that he unleashed regularly on us. There were no rules for us, that way he could always rage at us for breaking them. We lived in utter terror of him. My mother coped with her issues by checking out. She worked, and cooked and cleaned but refused to interact with her children, even to the point of basically not speaking to us or teaching us anything about basic hygiene. We lived sandwiched between neglect and terror, and it still governs me a certain amount these many decades later.
My point that I am working towards, is that I could never interact with people for any length of time unless they had traumatic childhoods also. I couldn’t even date men who had healthy childhoods. They were from another planet and I couldn’t relate. I think we are not just marked by our formative years, but very much sculpted.
And the gentlemen who remarked up post, that you should just suck it up and forget about who you are and enjoy being rich…..just does not get it.
Anne, I’ve never talked about this before at GRS, but my father and his siblings grew up in a household that was both physically and mentally abusive. Dad was in therapy for years because of that. Naturally, despite his best efforts, some of this bled over into the next generation — meaning that he was (mildly) physically and mentally abusive toward me and my brothers. We didn’t think of it as abuse at the time, but when Dad was going through his therapy, he thought of it as abuse and became deeply apologetic about it. He was regretful. I don’t believe this left any scars on me — well, except that I am pathologically conflict-avoidant — but who knows? (I guess the need to avoid conflict does prevent some healthy arguments/disagreements. I avoid them at all costs.)
I’m pretty sure I’ve read almost every GRS article over the last 15 years and I am fascinated by this article.
I grew up “rich”. We had fancy international trips, fully paid for college, and I had an “allowance” and credit card that I could use for any Greek life activities I enjoyed at our top-tier University. Like many of the commenters, it can be hard to observe our relative wealth. Our family attempted to live the “Millionaire next door” lifestyle but we certainly had way more resources than all of our neighbors and almost everyone at our church (which was most of our family’s community). However, I wouldn’t say that I personally ‘felt’ rich most of the time- everything mostly felt ‘normal’.
My friends spent almost every weekend at our house because we had a fancy basement, tons of video games, toys (bikes/4wheelers), and lots of snacks. I ended up going to an out-of-district high school that had lots of multi-millionaires but also lots of poor people (almost exclusively divided by race). It was a fascinating fishbowl to observe. I had good friends on both sides.
I did well on tests and had fun going through school through to finishing my my PHD in financial planning. Everyone in my family went to grad/professional school. I think the part that resonated most with me we that I felt like I fit in across almost all socioeconomic situations (didn’t realize this privilege until recently). I lived overseas for a while after college in a 3rd world country but our friends enjoyed coming to visit our family’s multimillion dollar beach and lake houses as well.
Now, our live resembles Mr Money Mustache. We are very efficient spenders and likely spend 50% of our peers on similar lifestyles. I like to bike to work and often under-live (house, cars, clothes). We save 70% of our income and we lean minimalistic in many ways. Our relative consumption is low but we have subsidized access to fancy vacations, properties, country clubs, sporting events etc.
The takeaway for me was how it is/was for me to simply ask for what I wanted in almost any situation. Surprisingly, it often worked. I also ended up with a confidence that I’ve never really reflected on. However, my siblings all grew up together and ended up very different financial lives (poor/debt overwhelm, to multi-multi millionaires). We also grew up in the same house, same parents, same access and dramatically different outcomes. Most of the wealthy people I know actually work really hard and often have stressful, demanding, and always ‘on-call’ jobs. I see a lot of non-wealthy people work really hard as well.
I’m actually posting this anonymously because it is still a little strange to talk publicly about some of these topics. It is almost as taboo to talk about privilege in many circles as it is poverty. Even in some of the richest circles that exist, it would be faux pas to claim to be rich.
What happened here? All your previous comments disappeared.
There is a note at the top of the article about a site issue he is having.
Yeah, there’s something very very weird going on. All of the comments on the site are gone. They still exist in the database, but they’re no longer connected to the articles they belong to. They’re just floating in the ether. I have contacted Tom to see if he can figure out the problem, but we’ll probably have to restore from a backup. I’m not willing to spend time on the issue right now because I had set aside Thursday to Monday to work EXCLUSIVELY on the new GRS “de-design”, and I’m sticking to that. I get that the comments thing is a Big Problem, but if I try to fix it now, I’m going to lose precious hours that I need to allocate to coding the new site.
As my grandfather would say, “Gosh, you were born in a country that you can do anything. Try not to bitter about your beginnings.” He was born squarely inner city lower middle class. Put himself through college and law school. Married at 30. Lost first baby. Wife died. Parents died. Moved across country with a baby in tow. Started over in finance. Bought a franchise. Retired wealthy. Served others until he died.
My husband grew up poor- hunting birds for family dinner. Moved potato pipe starting at 14. Vietnam. Lineman for forest service. Nine years for college. Rejoined army. Retired early. Went back to work- we saved 3/4 of income for five years. Both kids married and started on their own road, he retired for good in his late fifties. No excesses, just steady growth into millionaire status.
I was brought up as a debutant. I have to admit after our first year of marriage I declared us “broke”. He went into full panic. “Oh honey, I am sorry. I didn’t mean we have NO money- just not enough to go to the movies.” I quickly learned our difference in money views. We only have had a few arguments in our 40 yr marriage- that was a doosy! I learned to budget /save that very day.
My 65 years tells me that excess of anything brings unhappiness- alcohol and drugs were the downfall of many of our friends and family. We were meant to be turtles. Slow and steady. Occasionally run after that grass hopper. Our kids are a bit faster paced, but seem to be on the same track.
My father was a minister to small churches in rural areas and did not make much $. Fortunately every church he pastored provided a house beside the church for us to live in. So we “looked” middle class but we were not. My daddy grew up as a farm boy during the depression. There were no extras. My mother was a little better off she was the last of 8 children- some siblings were adults by the time she was born- so she was mildly pampered by her older siblings but still wore homemade clothes and even her wedding gown was made by my grandmother. I only found out after my father died and we were going thru old paperwork that we were below poverty level. He filled out my financial aid paperwork and I got grants and was a work study student. The only way they helped during college was to give me gas money and some groceries. I worked 2 & 3 jobs during college. Finances were not discussed I was just that we couldn’t afford things when I was a kid. I thought it was because my dad was stingy ( I think he was- but we also didn’t have money). My dad had some college but my mother’s parents wouldn’t allow her to go off to college- though it was only probably 40 miles up the road. The people we rubbed shoulders with were similar to us in that they grew their own food and preserved it. Most had a little more than us. Through voracious reading I came to understand that there were other ways to live. I was always in hand-me-downs from others in the churches we were in and it seems they never fit and I was made fun of a lot. There were no thrift stores in the areas we lived but in my early 30’s I discovered them and found I could look pretty darn good for pennies on the dollar. I still have the mentality that we should fix whatever brakes instead of tossing it. I was a single mother for awhile after my first husband became an alcoholic. Thank goodness I knew how to live cheaply. All of my daughter’s toys and most of her clothes came from yard sales and thrift stores. For several years I received no child support. I remarried and my husband grew up middle class and had a well paying job. He had been taken to the cleaners by his first wife and with our combined incomes and by living below our means we were able to build a healthy nest egg. We were able to pay for state college educations for 2 of our 3 kids- the 3rd one used his GI bill and lived with us for a while. My husband literally dropped dead at the age of 51 and my thrifty ways got me thru some hard times the first few years until I was financially stable. I was able to retire last year at 62 and its such a blessing. I still have that inner script that says I need to be busy all the time and I’m working on that. I can live simply but I’m fighting poor kid ways and am traveling overseas this fall. I have to keep telling myself that just because I don’t NEED to go doesn’t mean I can’t go- and have fun.
I grew up poor, because my parents were clueless about money. My dad’s parents were rich and even in the depression he never wanted for a thing. My mom went to boarding schools with the daughters of rich people and didn’t have other role models she was willing to pay attention to (her mom was a struggling single parent who sacrificed a lot to send her to school). When they got married it was strictly keeping up with the joneses, and any time they got money they went right out and spent it, and they were both snobs who never even considered saving up for stuff or shopping at secondhand stores. My grandfather supported them in the style to which they aspired.
That shaped my life. I vowed early on to stand on my own two feet and not mooch off anyone. My husband and I worked low paid jobs for years, and I had to pinch every penny twice, but we managed it. Slowly we built up our bank accounts. We didn’t buy stuff we couldn’t afford and we mainly used our credit cards for inescapable bills that we didn’t have the money to pay at the time (car repair, medical expenses, etc). Our kids wore top of the line name brand clothes that I bought at the thrift store. We did our own repairs whenever possible.
Now we are in our 70s and comfortable financially. I wouldn’t say we’re rich, but we have enough. Our kids are also good money managers. My siblings followed our parents’ example and at least one of them is always broke. And naturally they will not listen to me. It makes me very sad. I don’t allow my relatives to mooch off me. I have lent money to nearly all of them, and nearly all of them paid me back. The one who never paid back now knows never to ask again.
This is one I want to answer before reading what everyone else has to say. We were middle class, but I have to say lower middle class. My Dad had a steady job with benefits but he was a draftsman, the male version of a clerical type job. Our family of ten achieved some middle class milestones only because my parents were extremely frugal and had clear goals and worked incredibly hard. We were always fed but the meal was limited. There were rarely leftovers. Everyone of us gobble our meals to this day. My parents helped each of us with college but not a lot.
One of my brothers will tell you we were poor and compared to lots of people we were but my parents never acted as if their lower income made them lesser. They had friends who they played cards with and drank cheap beer and laughed. We had pot luck picnics in the park with other families. Sometimes our main dish was homemade macaroni and cheese but I enjoyed it. The day old bread and cheap baloney sandwiches, not so much.
I think our constrained circumstances damaged me more indirectly. Keeping us all in acceptable shape was a huge job. My Mom sewed and mended our clothes. My Dad did all the work on the house, often with Mom and all of us doing the less skilled jobs. We almost never went to restaurants. I was unsure how to behave in restaurants for most off my 20’s.
My parents were tired and when we didn’t cooperate they were angry. I grew up feeling I wasn’t pulling my share, maybe wasn’t capable of pulling my share – because my Mom told me that. For decades I felt guilty if I paid list price for an item when surely there was a better deal somewhere. Even though I could afford the higher price and didn’t think it was worth my time to find the deal.
Though poverty is no fun for anyone, I think the rich miss out in some ways. The people watching is much more interesting on the upper deck at the stadium than in the fancy suites. My husband and I often end up with more authentic travel experiences ferreting out unusual accomadations than we’d have in a fancy hotel. We also know that we could get by on a lot less money if we had to since we’ve done it. So we don’t have to stay in jobs that ask us to do mind numbing work. I think it is really sad when someone tells me they can’t leave a job that they hate for a more interesting one that pays less because they think they’d be miserable without the luxury goods they are accustomed to.
My Mom always argued with my brother who thought we were poor. She’d say we weren’t poor because we always had a house, were clothed and had enough to eat. We felt secure in those things. So I think at least part of the line between poverty and middle class is that feeling of security in the basics. Your trailer childhood was perhaps a bit chaotic and insecure. While my childhood was more secure, it had it’s times of chaos and those were the most damaging. Still, seeing my parents work so hard to keep us going told us a lot. We learned a lot of money lessons from them also.
I’ve never related more to an article than this one. I grew up poor and white trash. I put myself through college and went on have a solidly upper middle-class life/career. From the outside my life looks good but I have trust issues (from the emotional abuse) and control issues. Also, it took me years to realize that it was ok to buy myself something I didn’t “need”. Fortunately, I have found a wonderful SO and a positive thinking group. They have given me the support that I need to get therapy to deal with my childhood traumas. Growing up poor has an impact on a person that extends much much further than financial.
Thank you for writing this.
Yes, Amanda, this. It’s what I was saying in my comment that is one of the many that disappeared.
Great post. I appreciate the honesty and empathize to a fair degree. I grew up poor until I was 10, and then upper-middle class after that. The most formative, and long-lasting, mental impressions were undeniably made in my earliest years. Even now, several decades later, it’s really hard to shake those.
My parents married right after high school and had four kids in five years. We wore a LOT of hand-me-downs* (first my cousins, then my older sisters, then me) and ate a lot of lima-bean** suppers. Very small house, just two bedrooms (and later the attic became a bedroom for my brother after our dad finished it off). We did have bikes (bought on time from Sears), an ancient baseball bat and a similarly old catcher’s mitt (but no glove until my brother signed up for Little League, which also resulted in a new bat).
I don’t remember feeling poor because everyone we knew lived this way. When I started babysitting for a doctor’s family, I remember feeling stunned by the size of their house (which today would NOT be considered a McMansion). But I do remember feeling that if I didn’t get out of that small township and its constrictions, I would probably die.
My parents split when I was 16, and I remained in the family home to run it for my dad and brother. Can’t remember the day my mom moved out, but I’m pretty sure I had a hot meal on the table at 5:30 p.m. My last two years of high school were on autopilot, rarely studying or paying much attention to classwork because my focus was on keeping the house clean and the laundry done, and stretching the money Dad gave me twice a month to buy groceries.
When I went to college in Philadelphia, THAT’S when the poorness showed. I had no idea how to dress or act, and it showed. I lasted just that one year, and didn’t go back until I was in my late 40s. During that year I got pretty much zero help from anyone because either they couldn’t afford it or it never occurred to them. My dad mailed me a $5 bill twice, and I filled in the difference with a work-study job, babysitting and housecleaning. (Still wound up $2,000 in debt with student loans. (In 2022 terms, that’s about $10,275.)
I never did figure out how to act as though I had class. When I started working at the Chicago Tribune, a fellow reporter complimented my shoes and asked where I’d gotten them. “K-Mart,” I replied, and the woman actually RECOILED. Sigh. I should have said, “Gosh, I don’t remember, I’ve had ’em for years.”
Still writing for a living, but now I do it at home where no one gives a toss what I wear. What’s stayed with me about the poor mentality, though, is the same fear you have: That sooner or later, someone will figure out that I don’t deserve ANY OF THIS and will come to take it away. “Imposter Syndrome” doesn’t begin to describe that feeling.
*My grandmother worked at a dress factory, and got an employee discount. She’d occasionally bring us dresses and good grief were they HIDEOUS. I have a vivid memory of standing in her living room while she hemmed a dress to fit me, holding back tears because I was going to have to wear that to school.
**Lima beans in milk, mostly, although sometimes it was lima beans and macaroni salad with a side of the tomatoes and cucumbers. All the produce came from our garden. Man, I wish I could get a decent bowl of fresh limas and milk right now….
I love everything you write Donna!
Why, thank you!
I agree with Mags! I love Donna’s writing. I remember her as a writer on GRS many years back and now that I have the link to her blog, I look forward to checking it out.
Many thanks to you as well.
“That sooner or later, someone will figure out that I don’t deserve ANY OF THIS and will come to take it away.”-
And that’s exactly what those on the left side of our nation want to do, so I hope more of us that grew up with very little wake up and vote them out of office!
P.S. On the bright side, living “poor” led me to a new career in personal finance writing after going broke during my divorce. It also helped me to SURVIVE that divorce.
https://donnafreedman.com/living-poor-loving/
Wow! Thank you for your honesty and this beautiful post. I’m dealing with this now. I grew up in a housing project in Alabama during the crack cocaine epidemic. In a single-parent household, my mom managed to do her best with what she had. I didn’t feel super poor, but it was a struggle. Ketchup mustard sandwiches, potted meat, possum, and squirrel have all been dinner. And I loved it all. My uncle killed himself, his pregnant wife, and a childhood best friend killed his GF and kids. Not to mention the family members who went to prison for drugs, one doing 999 years. Poverty is bad, and when you add the natural tribal biases humans have ( all the isms) I can feel hopeless. I always tell my wife I live with a dark cloud over me; I’m always waiting for rain, for everything to disappear. It’s interesting that you feel the same way, although you’re a different ethnic demographic than me Thanks for the posts, It really resonated with me. I have a great life now, a globetrotting ex-pat with more experience than I can remember. Though, I’m always hunted by these feelings. Thank you.
Thank you for doing this article. I grew up poor, with hand me downs, food stamps, government issued cheese, and getting a house foreclosed. You have been able to articulate what I never could.
Great article! Grew up poor due to financial abuse – one salary, two parent, immigrant (no extended family on the same continent) household and the salary earner controlled everything financial.
Grew up hearing all ‘rich’ people were criminals – they didn’t earn their wealth through hard-work or smart investing but by defrauding those around them – “there is no such thing as an honest businessman” or “the bank manager is rich because they steal from the customers.” So being poor was portrayed as suffering caused by others’ crimes = in order for one person to be rich, another person (or people) had to be poor.
Yep. This is basically a defacto type of cultural communism which gets foisted upon us when we are young. The nation is suffering from it reaching a creshendo now. Growing up poor should ignite us to do better for ourselves instead of wanting to use our government to steal everything from others in order to satisfy some type of status envy.
Hi J.D. Glad to see you back writing more! I’ll have to remember to check the site regularly again since I just noticed this from your newsletter the other day.
It’s always struck me when you mention in articles the effects you’ve had of growing up poor, that “scarcity mindset”. I didn’t grow up terribly poor, but I certainly wasn’t wealthy either. Perhaps lower-middle class? My dad was a pastor, and like Shay below we generally lived in the “free” parsonage provided next to the church. My parents did buy a small house when I was in 3rd grade but divorced 4 years later, my dad lost his job (divorce doesn’t look good for pastors), and through college I lived in small apartments alternating between parents. Like you I was smart and got scholarships for college, but my parents couldn’t help at all since they were barely getting themselves by at this time. I ended up working myself through my last 3 years of college, and still had a decent amount in loans that about a decade and a half later are finally paid off.
That said… that question you shared didn’t really bother me at all, except perhaps annoyance that someone that rich can’t use proper grammar (I guess they don’t have to?). I suppose I’ve been reading about personal finance, and like the WSJ, for so long that situations like that sound normal to me now. It’s the type of situation I want to be in, though I still don’t have kids. You realize you could basically provide that now, if you had a kid too?
I guess I’m so focused on the goal of not needing to worry about money that I just look at things like that as “That’s right, that’s my goal!”
I appreciate this article and will share it with my wife, a bright kid who grew up in. poor circumstances and still exhibits some of the self esteem and impulse control traits that JD mentions, unnecessarily but certainly. I’d never thought before about the impulse to something “right now”, because one might not be able to later. Thank you for that insight.
I grew up comfortably and spent my career working in philanthropy with quite wealthy Americans, even some billionaires. My takeaway is, I just cannot generalize. I can think of second, third and fourth generation super-wealthy people who clearly feel inadequate, probably because they will never accomplish as much as the patriarch/matriarch of the family did, and seem to feel they don’t measure up. Alcoholism, failed relationships, toxic behaviors, you name it. And I’ve met many people from such families who are accomplished, confident and generous. And the world is full of stories of Americans who started with nothing and built business empires and charities.
Here’s what I’ve learned after 30 years in philanthropy: You just never can tell.
You probably had privledges in other ways? Did your parents love you? My parents divorced when i was young and my Mum didn’t have much and my father (whose parents were rich) was rich. He had ferraris and things. People always assumed i was a rich kid, i coped a lot of resentment as a kid (at age 13 a girl in high school liked me and my ‘friend’ said “she only likes you cause you are rich”.. i was 13 my bank account had about 13cents in it.. i didnt control my father’s money. And to this day, my father didnt give me money. My father was also a narcassist, he did not love me. All i was, to him, was someone to serve his needs. Growing up, i would face same resentment from ‘poor people’ (did your Dad show you any love?) that you expressed in your article…yet it wasnt my money it was my father’s. And i got none. Also, time and time again i would see friends whose parents had way less than my father… and they had way more toys and stuff than me (or they had stuff i never had). Their fathers cared about them and would actually spend their limited pay checks on their sons to make them happy, even though they were not rich. I would even be an example of that, now, with my own son, my son has a dirt bike (a used one) and all the stuff i didnt have and wanted.. yet i am living on a government pension. My father never once asked me how i am, or took an interest in my life, ive never had a conversation with him about my life or even my day, ever. I never got a birthday present or Christmas present from him… To this day and i am nearly 40. He did pay me an allowance, once, of $80/week in my early 20s. But at the same time i had to pay my mum $150/ week rent to live in my bedroom and help her with her bills. So it kind of cancelled out. My point is, not everyone who had a wealthy parent grew up rich.. even if it appeared that way. And sometimes ‘poor’ people have more. Im not saying rich kids dont exist but for me i got screwed both ways.. not only did i get no money of my wealthy parent.. but when i was successful in my early 20s.. from an internet business i started from $0 in my bedroom at my mother’s… people resentfully assumed i was a rich kid and gave the credit to the guy who never loved or helped me who drove around in Ferraris.
I agree with much of what you say, although appearances can be deceiving. Rich kids are actors.. you don’t get genuine self esteem from not accomplishing anything yourself. It’s fake. They are empty.
And honestly i am not at all resentful at rich kids… But i am resentful of rich kids who act successful. That is the difference in my mind. If a rich kid is honest about where the money came from i dont feel resentment. For my spoiled father who got his money from his parents and acts like he is the most successful person on earth, there is a lot of resentment.
Wow — thank you for sharing your story so candidly.
I grew up lower middle class. I was the scholarship kid in a private Catholic school. Everyone but me was “rich.” Their parents drove Hummers, they lived in houses with high ceilings, and they went to Disneyland for their birthdays. I heard “we can’t afford it” and was humiliated when on a baton trip we were the only family that had to stay in the motel down the street while everyone else stayed in the hotel with continental breakfast.
I guess that’s why I’ve always felt alienated and unworthy compared to my peers.
I too am impulsive with spending. I lack confidence and an identity. I “know” I’m supposed to save, but at 30 years old have nothing to show for. I only learned the importance of investing and set up a ROTH IRA because of my ex-partner. I have to accept the fact that I will be poor the rest of my life.
I am also blessed that my grandma left her car to me, Pell Grants and scholarships paid for my bachelors, and that my more financially savvy aunt bought my mom a mobile home.
A few months ago I spoke to a lawyer with a sociology background who, for the first time in a while, validated my experience. He mentioned class rage. I do feel that especially with social media, seeing people go on luxe vacations, who have it all together, who excel in the corporate world, who are looked up to in their professions. Once, my well-meaning boss encouraged me to do a speaking engagement on a successful campaign I led. I did it terrified and felt like an imposter the whole time.
But — back to the lawyer — he also encouraged me to find my community of people and really lean into that. It feels the most comforting, honestly. When you can go to the dollar store with someone, and hang out in your messy crammed homes, and book the cheapest flights and hotels. Perhaps that’s why my ex-partner came from an immigrant family, and all of my closest friends come from similar backgrounds.
If the adage is true that “you’re average of the five people you spend the most time with,” I’m going to stop trying so hard to fit in where I never will, get into circles where I frankly don’t want to belong because it’s exhausting, and lean on my community of hard-working, loving people.
Thanks again for this article.
I grew up in one of the poorest towns in Iowa. I’m now a moderately successful middle manager. I interact with upper echelon white collar workers everyday including the c-suite. I can easily blend in, but I feel most comfortable in blue collar neighborhoods. I’ve become the millionaire next door(not by much). I can remember in high school we were filling out some forms in class and another student saw what I put down for household income…their response? That’s it. I still get very anxious if our checking account gets below $10k…I don’t want to ever be poor again.
I grew up extremely poor; so poor that I sometimes look around at my basic, lower-middle class life in disbelief at just how poor my childhood was.
My parents were divorced. My father used the one car to go to work, but my stepmother couldn’t drive, so we walked to and from school every day.
My mother and stepfather had 10 cars—but only one or two of them ran.
My stepmother cooked every day to save money and we NEVER went to a restaurant. End-of-the-month meals: hot dogs with sandwich bread, or “flour soup” (gravy.)
My mom’s favorite poor food was Kraft mac&cheese—but she wasn’t above stopping by the local diner for “dog bones”, scraps of steak left mostly untouched by picky eaters, and then feeding that to us. I suspect the owners knew.
There was no money for college. **I** sent **my parents** money. Since it was free money from FAFSA, I had to help out, right?
There was emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
I’ve moved past the worst habits, but still can’t bring myself to pay full price for anything.
I’m dating someone now who makes $200k salary, and can’t help but look at him like he has two heads. His definition of “not much money” and mine are so far off that I feel bad about myself. He wants to “buy me nice things” and wishes he could “afford even more, since I deserve it”, but I’m remembering the time my teacher bought my graduation outfit since I obviously couldn’t afford it or when my stepdad found a roadkilled rattlesnake and fried it up with rice for dinner.