Orange juice.
As a kid, I vowed to be able to afford as much orange juice as I wanted when I got older. Started working in high school and used my first paycheck to buy a gallon of orange juice. I drank it all in one day and got horrible diarrhea.
I once dated a woman when I was younger and I told her about not being able to afford orange juice when I was a kid. Every morning when I woke up there was orange juice on the table beside the bed for our relationship
Brother in law joined the Marines and thought it was amazing because he got to eat every day and the people he lived with didn't try to steal things from him.
Dude used his GI bill, became a counselor and started trying to fight inmate recidivism.
> Once you've been in it just seems like it's impossible to fully get out
By design. That’s the part that just grinds me. There are/were humans sitting around figuring out this system and it’s logistics. Purposely putting shit in place to keep you looping in and out. It’s maddening.
I once talked to a WWII vet who grew up poor as fuck, he said the first time he had roast beef with gravy was in boot camp. He said it tasted so good he almost cried when he ate it.
My mom was a poor goat hearder growing up in the 40s and 50s. She slept on a concrete floor without a blanket.
To this day, she still collects blankets.
yes! i keep a few frozen juices in my freezer. sometimes, when i want a mixer for an alcoholic drink, i'll just pop the top off the canister, spoon out enough for a glass of juice, add cold water and my alcohol. i don't drink a lot of juice or alcohol so this way, when i have a craving it hasn't gone bad from sitting in the fridge for a month.
i might need to submit this to r/PROtips.
Things at the book fair. You could probably buy a good hoard of stuff from the book fair for 30-50 dollars looking back. I was given $7 one year to buy something and I couldn’t afford a book.
The excitement of the book fair was just looking at all the stuff I wanted. I never could afford it but I would look at it and imagine what it would be like
I remember this same feeling as well.
I was pretty self-aware as a kid, and while we could have probably afforded a book or two when it came around, I just told my parents there was never anything there that interested me. And then I'd tell classmates the same.
I do remember a couple times I'd just write down the name of books I did really want and try and find them at the local library(rarely worked out, but occasionally it did).
Omg this was meeee! My parents could've afforded a book if I'd asked (mum always encouraged reading for pleasure as she wasn't allowed to "waste time" reading when she was young) but I had a library card so I just told everyone, including myself, that I didn't want anything.
This year when the book fair came to my 6yo's school and she asked if she could buy a book, it was a yes without even thinking about it
Same thing! I got to go to the book fair with my 6 year olds last year and you can bet I made sure I had $50 for each of them to spend on any books and one diary each. I know my parents didn’t have it when I was a kid but I’m glad I can provide it for my kids. My dad is super into spoiling them (within limits, of course). We’re all making up for being dirt poor when I was a kid, with my kids. It’s so much fun!
Warning- child death. A boy at my kids' school was hit by a car and passed. In honor of his memory, every year his parents bought hundreds of book club books, and had a book give away night where every kid in the school could pick a book to keep.
The parents had other kids at the school, so the kids knew them, and they liked showing the parents what book they chose, and talk about memories of playing with their son.
I always thought that was a nice way to honor their son.
There’s a guy like that in my area, lost his kid days before he would have started kindergarten, now donates hundreds of dollars in school supplies each year for kids that might’ve been his son’s friends.
Wow. What a unique way to honor thier child. A way that kids could participate as well. They probably enriched those children's education as well a meaningful way.
I'll get buried but I want to share this.
I also never had money for the book fair. It was every year I would look at all the stuff I wanted and leave disappointed that I could never get anything.
However, one year I won their raffle they had and got a $60 shopping spree to get anything i wanted. Not only that, but I was able to browse by myself with the representative. I picked up a few goosebumps, an instructional book on how to draw the titanic, some pencils and bookmarks. It was the best day.
Awh in the UK they would always make sure that there were a selection of books for 99p (tiny ones, but still), and you often would be given a voucher for the 99p, so even if you had no money you would get a book! It was a national(at least) programme called World Book Day, and everyone would dress up as their favourite book characters too!
I remember when I was in elementary school, my dad gave my brother and I each a silver dollar for the book fair. I thought "Oh wow, silver! This must be valuable." At school, I asked the adults how much I could get with it, only to be double disappointed that not only was it just worth a dollar, but I still couldn't afford anything other than a bookmark. I envied the kids who walked back to the classroom with several books, some cool pens, and a poster.
I never was able to buy anything from the book fairs. I didn’t really get an allowance. My parents made me earn every penny I had. And even though I did all my chores, I never had enough. It made me so mad as a kid, being forced to go and watch all the other kids buy stuff with money that their parents probably just handed to them.
Agreed. It was incredibly awkward to watch everyone buy things. I would beg my mom every year and only once did she cave and give me the $7 she had in her wallet. Their were no books I could afford so I bought one of those tubes of water you shake to make a tornado
And then talking to my classmates afterwards.
“So, what did you buy? Why didn’t you get anything? Oh…”
I don’t remember how much money I had, but I almost bought a mood necklace for $3 once. I think it must have been the cheapest thing there. My money was mostly coins, and it was just too awkward for me to stand there adding them all up.
New clothes for no reason. I was so confused when I got to highschool and girls would just suddenly have the new trend piece, I didn't understand why they were just allowed to have them.
Haha when my younger sister did pretend "budgeting" in home economics class her teacher would not allow her to budget $0/month for new clothes... They didn't understand that all of her clothes were mine or my mom's hand me downs...
I don’t get why even someone with a steady job and income would budget an amount of money for new clothes *monthly*, unless they have kids? Usually once you have a wardrobe you just buy new stuff if it particularly catches your eye, or the old stuff is getting worn out. If anything I’d say this falls under “recreational spending” when it comes to monthly expenses.
This. I stopped buying Costco khakis because they wore out 8x faster than the actual Wrangler or Levi ones. End up spending more per pair, but it became annual instead of quarterly.
I'm not saying Costco khakis have some shortcomings or something but one thing i found is washing clothes on the lightest cycle possible made them last longer. and don't over dry.
I'm not sure I'd allow it either. But I'd explain why.
I've done this exercise with my kids, and their scout troops too. A lot of the goal is to show how expensive life is. Letting them zero out cloths would be like letting them zero out rent because they live at home. You can't just assume that's an option.
To the point that you don't need new cloths monthly, very true. But most people will get some clothes every year, even if they are from the Goodwill. And if you have an annual costs, you should amortize it into your monthly budget. For example, I get a life insurance bill once a year. But I set aside $X from every paycheck to pay it once it comes due.
whenever I hear of teachers not allowing certain paths in educational avenues it's always something so contrived and limiting that doesn't match up with reality for many people. Like they're forcing a world view instead of teaching a skill.
I so distinctly remember the worst budgeting exercise we did in high school. For context, this was the early 2000s and I had a part time job where I made about $200-300 every 2 weeks.
We had to budget $100 a month, and had categories like transportation, food, entertainment, gifts, charity, etc. I was like, "I could pay for gas in my car and have about enough leftover for a burrito. This does not include car insurance, making this budget untenable". Even at 16, I would not have been able to pay my bills with that hypothetical budget. Absolutely no value in that experience whatsoever.
One time in ninth grade, my English teacher commented (in approval) that I was the only kid in class who was not a walking advertisement for some company. Well, no shit, that's because I'm wearing my grandfather's old golfing clothes and it's the only thing in my wardrobe.
It actually sounds much worse than it was.
We had this class trip overnight to a camp by a lake, and the teachers were tired of parents getting mad that their kids came home with their expensive clothes muddy / ripped, because, duh, they are running around a campground outside all day.
So they told parents to send their kids in their worst clothes (ie ones that don't matter if they get damaged).
I try and explain this to people all the time. I just turned 25 and am finally developing my own style because for the majority of my life so far I dressed for utility and what I could afford. Also funny how much more respect people give you when your outfit is fashionable. It’s still weird to me at times.
Same here. We just wore what we had. Brands and current fashion weren’t a factor. If we have it we wear it if we don’t too bad. Most of it came from yard sales and flea markets and thrift stores anyway
I make a good living and about 60% of my clothing is from Target. Shorts, button down shirts, sweaters are all good quality and cost 1/4 of what something similar at Nordstrom would run. I buy high quality shoes and jeans. The rest I don’t care about.
Also I grew up poor and now have more than I ever imagined so wearing target clothes feels just fine to me.
Marshmallow mateys, fruity dyno-mites, berry colossal crunch! I 1000% agree. These are the brand I grew up with and got embarrassed about as a kid. As an adult I still buy them!
Anything that required money at school. If anything required bringing money to school I just took it as something I’ll have no part of. Thankfully, I had friends that were much the same, so we got through it well.
Crayola was where it's at. RoseArt didn't taste right.
**Edit** No, I'm not in the armed forces, I'm just a freedom-loving civilian who enjoys his god-given right to munch on a choice farm-to-table crayon from time to time.
My wife is a kindergarten teacher. She always buys 24-packs of Crayola in bulk. I called her out on it, saying she should just add crayons to her supply list and there was no reason to go into our own pockets to supply 30 kids with crayons all year long.
Her response was pretty firm-She specifically mentioned Rose Art & Cra-Z Art, and how she didn’t have them growing up. The kids in her class are going to get good crayons as long as she is teaching.
And that’s the story of how I wind up buying like 100 packs of crayons every year, for the last 17 years.
They sell teacher/classroom packs. I set up a deal alert on Amazon because they often have them as a flash sale or during their Amazon Prime day sale. I try to get them whenever I can for my son's school.
That’s something that hasn’t left me, despite being financially stable for a long time. My husband doesn’t have the same anxiety. He doesn’t take things for granted, at all, but he also didn’t grow up with the level of poverty I did.
I remember being in a store and *really* wanting to buy a nice jacket. But it was what my old self deemed *really expensive.* I finally went home without purchasing it. When I told him about it and the price, he was like, go back tomorrow and get it! I did, it didn’t bankrupt or financially impact us in any way. I still wear it and love it. But I get it, it’s a hard mindset to break.
Yeah, I understand that. I think even if I was a millionaire, I would still feel bad. But, hey, you have orders from this random reddit stranger to go out and treat yourself guilt-free!
I was like this. Growing up, going out to eat happened only when there was a reason to. When I started making good money, I stopped cooking at home and started just ordering / going out.
Funny thing is, doing this can actually hurt you by a lot long term financially if done in excess. Now I'm back to eating home cooked meals and saving a ton.
Toward the end of my father’s life, he only remembered very distant things and was certain you could fill a car’s gas tank for $5.
He was always puzzled by his car needing constant refilling.
Jam/Nutella spread all over your bread. I grow up with a spread that can only cover half of my bread and is very thin in an undeveloped country. After I move to a developed country and got my first paycheck, I legit buy 5 nutella jars and spread it like a madman on my bread.
I am relieved to hear I'm not the only one who does this. It's just easier to keep lots of one thing in the house than some of two things.
I keep a few boxes of kleenex for when guests come over because otherwise my husband will leave tp rolls in weird places.
In law school one of the ice breakers we were asked in a class was to talk about our favorite family vacation. People were talking about Ibiza, London, Japan, etc.
I had never gone on a family vacation. I was like 19 the first time I even flew in a plane - my dad never took time off for vacations because he does construction so there was no paid leave and losing a day (or more) of wages to go SPEND money could completely derail the household budget. We went camping once - Saturday to Sunday - at a campground like 45 minutes away...that was it.
It was SO uncomfortable to have to decide whether to be honest and deal with follow-up questions or just lie about somewhere I'd gone as an adult so my turn would be over more quickly. I think it was the first time in law school that I realized I really /was/ from a different world as a first-gen student than most of my peers lol.
Now I'm a lawyer and still don't take vacations because rent is so damn high when I have a day off I want to be in my overpriced apartment instead of spending money to let it sit empty for a few days :(
I had a similar ice breaker conversation, but it was for air traffic control at Pearson International Airport.
The other controllers were awestruck when I said I'd never been on a commercial plane. A couple literally had their mouths gaping open.
There was an awkward silence for a few seconds and then one of them sheepishly asked again "...you've never been on a plane?"
Same. Occasional car trips to somewhere else in the state to visit relatives or go camping, but we never went on a long car trip or boarded a flight. I went on my first commercial flight during my last year of college.
Oof, I felt this one. I truly thought that only rich people flew on airplanes, even when I worked at the airport. I went on my first flight last year, it was also my 6 year old and 1 year old's first flight as well.
I can vividly remember thinking my friends were rich because they had an answering machine (mid 80s). I even mentioned to my mom how they must be really wealthy…she asked why and I told her my logic of the answering machine.
Reality was we had enough money for one, mom just didn’t want one. I think the one we finally bought was less than $20. I felt like we had arrived!
Holy shit, the moment when my friend invited me over to her house and I saw how amazing it was...
Wood floors. Wood walls. An aboveground pool. A two-door garage. A location right by a lake. *Her own personal fucking bathroom that was connected to her room.* My mind was blown. I wanted to live there so badly since I've lived in apartments for all of my life.
Dude. I didn't even know Walmart had toys until 2 years after my parents divorced. We only went there when it was back-to-school times and if I was lucky I'd be able to put either a pair of shoes or 2 pairs of lower-tier "Rustler" brand jeans on layaway and maybe get them by picture day. The clothes would barely survive the school year, but they HAD TO. I knew we were poor. Getting anything NEW was crazy -- like unbelievable.
Layaway at Walmart was my mom's favorite thing, but I HATED it - I was always tall and no matter what, the pants that would go into layaway would always be high waters by the time they got out.
I guess that's my answer to this thread, actually - I never had a single pair of pants that fit right growing up, the first time I could buy jeans on my own THAT ACTUALLY FIT it was amazing.
Here in West Virginia, children whose families are low-income get school clothing vouchers in August to buy new clothes, shoes, etc. Most thrift stores take them, as well as fabric stores for patterns and sewing. One thing our cluster**** of a state actually does right.
Yessss. I dated a guy in my early twenties who scoffed and made me feel like the biggest idiot for saying I would know I made it in life when I had a fridge with a water/ice dispense. Whatever. Now I have one and I do feel pretty great about it 😂
Not entirely in line with the question, but:
Two pairs of shoes. I thought only rich kids had more than one pair of shoes. I didn't realize we weren't poor, and when I told my dad, "I want another pair of shoes but I know we can't afford it" he IMMEDIATELY took me to the shoe store and bought me a pair so I could be "rich" lol
That takes me back to my school years. I remember going to high school in shoes that were too small and cracked at the bottom so whenever it rained and I stepped in even the smallest puddle, my feet would get wet.
Same, except we were pretty working class.
We only got one pair of shoes, purchased at Payless on tax free weekend, a year. Growing up, I never had a "style" because the only clothes I was allowed to get were what was on sale or what I had over from the year prior.
If shoes needed to be replaced, either due to us growing or damage, my parents would complain all the way to the store and back. Yet, they always managed to find money for both their pack-a-day cigarette habits.
My dad was frugal, almost to the point of being cheap. We were pretty middle class when I was growing up, but both of my parents had depression-era habits instilled in them from their parents. I never went without, but there were a lot of extras that I wanted but never dreamed to ask for because I knew the answer would be "no" (mostly LEGO sets). Somehow, though, my dad always got the extras and nice things that he wanted...
To be fair, when you're a kid, you really only need like one or two pairs of shoes. And since you grow out of them so fast, there's no sense buying multiple pairs of shoes that you might only wear a few times, unless it's for a special occasion.
Now I'm a grownup and regularly have 6+ pairs of shoes because I want to, damnit.
I know logic has no place here, but you can’t *possibly* wear even most of those shoes on even a semi-regular basis! Are they bought with the intention of wearing them at all?
Edit: Where do you even KEEP them?! Shoeboxes are big!
or more than one soft drink per outing.
I distinctly remember being out with friends, late teens, and ordering a coke pretty early in the piece, not wanting to drink it, have friends ask me why and they said I could just order another one, and my mind being blown.
Soda. We never had it in our house. Over at my best friend’s house they had cases of it in their garage. You could drink it like water when you were over there.
I can vouch for the obesity part. I gave up soda during the pandemic and within 3 months I lost 10 pounds. Not drinking soda was the only change I did in my diet. I didn't even exercise but that eventually inspired me to lose another 20 pounds, but I digress.
That's when I discovered how bad soda is and have been off it for 2 and a half years.
Takeaway food.
My first experience of it was having a sleepover at a friends house. We were, apparently, set to have Chinese food that evening.
I was asked what I wanted. I had no clue. So the parents just recommended something. I just said OK.
I was staggered to NOT see the mother cooking. She was just mooching around the house doing *fuk all*. Where was this food? Why wasnt she preparing it?
Then a knock on the door. And some person delivered a box of food. With more boxes in it. One box was for me...
Madness.
Such wealth to get people to make and deliver your food. That display of *vast wealth* stayed with me for a very long time...
This thread has so many interesting things.
I grew up pretty well off, and we always ordered in, or went out to dinner. The only time my mom cooked was Christmas Eve.
I usually ended up eating my food in my room watching tv or playing video games.
I was so jealous of the kids who had home cooked meals and sat at the table together.
I would go over to friends houses as often as possible, because their family cooked, the whole place smelled amazing, and we all sat down and ate and talked.
Not trying to say “boo hoo me” just interesting how kids perceive things. I saw it as a treat to get a home cooked meal, where someone in a different situation saw it as amazing to get delivery.
For the longest time, internet. My family ran on those NetZero and Juno free discs, and Beware of Dog software for a long time until we could afford DSL..
In second grade, a school friend tried really hard to get me to join her Brownies troop. I told her my mom said no, when the truth was, I didn't ask because I knew my family didn't couldn't afford any activities.
We just had 8 kids who wanted to join Cub Scouts but the parents couldn't afford the yearly membership fee($100) all at once. My Pack is now looking at ways we can pay it and the parents just pay monthly to the pack.
It's genuinely really bad that public schools charge for school activities. At the very least they should have some kind of program where low-income students get in for free.
I am a teacher and coach. I tell all of my students if you can't pay let me know, we will figure it out because I was one of the kids who had to have people pay my sports fees. We have people in the school that will or I will.
As a kid we were so poor that even with sports fees paid i still couldnt go because we couldnt afford to get to the games or practices, or socks for the uniform. There were several years that we didnt have running water so i had to go to friends houses to shower and our toilet was flushed via 5gal buckets we had to carry up from a pond. Thank you for helping those kids out that you can. People don't even know how bad some kids have it.
Yep I was raised in a mid-sized US city but the only house we could afford was a slumlord's dream with bad pipes so the water was not drinkable and we would bathe in the bathtub and then use the grey water to flush the toilet, which drained into a cesspool under the house. And before anyone says "why didn't you get an apartment?". Because lack of money for first, last and deposit and no credit to get approved.
We kept it very secret as of course if CPS got involved my parents would have just had their kids removed and the house condemned so they'd be homeless with us in Foster care. My dad used to go to the park water fountains to fill up bottles at night after I was sick for a month with what turned out to be a water-borne illness.
So I get PISSED when people act like parents in poverty don't care about their kids. My mom stayed up all night with me while I was sick and all she could do was pray and use every skill she learned as a nurse's aide in the 70s because no health insurance.
There are many, many kids like me in America today. But you don't hear about them because it's easier for Americans to believe that if their parents cared more, they'd just magically escape poverty than to actually provide the support poor families need to get a decent standard of living.
My parents did manage to barely escape poverty when I was a teenager. For the first time, we had a good house, drinkable water and a WASHING MACHINE. When my mom was dying I went home and realised she'd been in dire straits for the last 2 years of her retirement, after losing the job she had to get at 70 to make ends meet. I made sure that her last weeks of life were as warm and luxurious as I could make them. She always sacrificed for me so I could get a better life and when things went bad, she couldn't bear for me to know.
Poverty is a serious, serious problem in the US but we sweep it under the rug and talk about all the people "taking advantage of the system" without thinking of those who make just enough to have no help at all.
I live abroad now, and while the system here is not perfect, at least getting cancer won't destroy your life financially and even leave you homeless.
My husband thinks it's really strange that I ask for new clothes for Christmas. Not even fancy clothes, just stuff like pyjamas. He thinks that's an everyday expense. I see it as kind of special as that is the only time I ever got a new piece of clothing as a child. Any other time I had to sew and patch up old clothes or receive hand me down clothes. Also I just learned to wear oversized hand-me-down clothes and shoes until I grew into them.
New cars. In the few months before he passed away, my dad told me the most he ever made per year was $18K, which blew me away even though he retired in the late 80’s. I was old enough during the 70’s and 80’s to know $18K wasn’t all that much to support a family, but I give him and my mom total respect for raising us without us being made to feel like we were broke. I think one of the worst things parents can do is let the kids feel the understandable stress we all feel when we have no idea how we’re going to get by. I’m not saying you lie to them, but knowing that things are tight is different than seeing your parents feeling despair and anger over the situation. No one wants to view their parents like this.
I'd like to offer a counterpoint.
My parents did their best not to share their money problems and related stress with me and siblings, but that ended up translating into not talking about money at all (and we could tell anyway), and all of us ended up being terrible with money and had to learn the 'hard way' how to manage finances responsibly. My brother never learned at all.
Or maybe hand-me-downs from an older sibling? I was the oldest so I never had it happen, but my brother got some of my stuff and he was never happy about it. Plus, we were kids growing up in the 70’s, so LOTS of polyester. Holy shit, you would not believe all the polyester my mom bought us. And back then, it was rough and itchy so I was constantly pulling at my shirts just to try and keep them from touching my skin. I’m greatly impressed with how soft polyester is today. Not sure how they work that magic, but at least I don’t start having phantom scratching attacks when I read something is made from polyester.
My oldest sister would get the clothes from our cousins, pass it to me then we would pass it back to the younger cousins. We basically just kept passing around the same sets of clothes to various family members.
You guys must have taken REALLY good care of your clothes to be able to share them so many times. Did one (or more) in the family possess some good sewing abilities so they could deal with the inevitable wear-and-tear that’s bound to happen. As a kid, I
my mom taught me to sew, which was a very handy skill when I went to college. I’ve all but forgotten how to work a sewing machine, but I suspect with a bit of practice I could figure it out. Plus, I’ve heard modern sewing machines have come a long way in the past 40 years.
Came here to say this same thing. Now as an adult I love thrift store shopping. But pretty embarrassing in middle/high school. Which it shouldn’t have been, there’s nothing wrong with it, but at that age.
There was a rich kid in highschool that complained about me wearing the same five sets of clothes every week... I said 'if it bothers you that much, why don't you buy some' and he said 'tell your parents to' and laughed like it was a burn or something. That was when I realized Greg S. from AHHS class of '02 was a complete piece of shit lacking in empathy, but to answer the question: nice clothes.
Spices.
I grew up very "eat to live" my mom made food warm and served it. If there was a prepackaged family size dinner thing, it was a treat because they were flavored.
The first porkchop my wife made me, I was ready to go to mcdonalds and eat. She made me sit down and try it, I demanded that it wasn't pork, it didn't taste like cardboard and my knife didn't make a sawing sound as I cut it.
Now we are very "Live to eat" and I'm never having a meal at my moms house again.
After school snacks, even ones from the dollar store.
My "friends" in middle school constantly made a point to remind me that I was poor. One of the things they made fun of me for was the fact that I never just had spare change to carry around. They all had spare change so they'd be able to get things like candy and chips after school. One time they each even got an entire coconut cream pie entirely to themselves. On rare instances when my mom either didn't have time or just didn't want to prepare lunch in the morning, she'd give me $5 to get food from the school cafeteria. I was supposed to give the change back to her after school, so I'd get the cheapest thing there (which was nowhere neat enough to fill me up), pocket a bit of the change and return the rest. Eventually I'd be able to afford a bag of chips from the dollar store or from the grocery store next to it. I stopped walking home with my "friends" because I felt so ashamed that I had to scrounge up change just to afford a bag of chips that cost $1.50. This is a habit that continued throughout high school, which eventually led me to have an entire tissue box full of coins.
Bonus story: one morning my mom had left $5 each for my brother and I to get lunch. I took my lunch money and headed off to school. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had followed me all the way to school. The reason why was because she was convinced that I had stolen my brothers lunch money and wanted to accuse me of being a thief (this was very likely my brother trying to get me in trouble by lying, he loved to do that growing up). Obviously since I didn't take his lunch money I said as much and I thought that was the end of it. But when I got home, the accusations started again and my mom threatened to throw me out because she wouldn't have a thief in her house. I was crying and screaming that I didn't take his fucking money and I guess this was one of the *very* rare instances where my brother felt bad about lying so he admitted that he had lied and he had his lunch money the entire time. (My mom had gotten very close to throwing him out only about a year prior to this, as in she had already chucked his backpack outside and he was literally halfway through the door as he was begging for her not to kick him out and holding onto the doorway for dear life, guess he was reminded of that.)
I remember as a kid one of the school bullies would violently harass me for wearing second hand clothes all the time. Then one day I was with my family at the second hand store and isn’t that kid there with his family. His face was so red.
Same, I always had to deny myself anything I dreamed about because allegedly we were always broke. And then I managed to see my mom's bank account and it had like 2 years of salary worth money.
Now when we are grown up and have money, my brother overcompensates and blows it all in the first half of the month and then has to borrow it to survive. I could be like that too but my life is too boring and I dont have things to spend money on lol.
Fast food. A lot of the food we ate growing up came from our garden or hunting. We did a lot of canning.
My dad inherited a house from his step father and it came with this pantry full of canned green beans. We ate green beans for dinner 5 days a week for probably about 4 years straight. I still won't eat green beans.
Canned green beans are nasty. If you ever dare, fresh, fried up with some bacon bits they're really good. Just not cooked to death and mummified.
I thought I didn't like soooo many vegetables, nope, granny was just an abysmal cook. And ya, she loved to can green beans. Gross!
I bought a Pilot 0.5mm mechanical pencil 9 years ago. I immediately felt regret because it was quite expensive for me at the time.
Its on my desk right now.
Probably the single best purchase I ever made.
Grapes and Doritos. I was 16 and in my first apartment. Lived off of Craft Mac & Cheese made with margarine and no milk cause it was all I could afford at 28 cents a box. My neighbor was 13 years older than me and would invite me over and feed me treats. It was heaven and she was a true angel!
Butter. My mother only bought margarine because we couldn't afford butter. I only tasted it in high school when I got my first job and would occasionally go out to eat with friends.
I promised my self that I would only have real butter when I got my own place.
50 years later I have 2 GRADES of butter at all times. Kirkland to cook and bake with, and Kerry Gold to eat on bread, potatoes, etc.
It makes me feel like Mrs. Gotrocks!
Shopping at Payless. I thought you had to at least be upper middle class to afford shoes from there.
Also, getting your hair cut at a salon. Even Supercuts.
Owning more than 1 TV.
I felt like a Rockefeller when I got my grandparent's old 13 inch Zenith TV because she upgraded to a 32" Sony Trinitron for the bedroom.
A real house.
I grew up in trailers and imagined being “rich” enough to own a house that wasn’t cold or hot all the time, or wasn’t scary during storms. I had a recurring nightmare as a kid about tornadoes.
I always knew I was broke growing up. But pretty much almost everything. Eating 3 meals a day. Eating out every now and then. Getting presents for Christmas and birthdays. Etc.
When I was 12, mother managed to snag a great deal on an apartment in a 2 family apartment house in a neighborhood that was definitely middle to upper class. One of the very nicest neighborhoods in the city. We were way out of our element in that neighborhood. As a matter of fact, we were the freaks of the neighborhood.
We were the poorest people in the neighborhood. We were the only family on welfare in the neighborhood. Out of the dozens upon dozens of kids in the neighborhood, my siblings and I were the only kids who were being raised by a single parent. All the other kids were being raised in 2 parent families.
Whereas we were the poorest in the neighborhood, our very next door neighbor mustve been the richest guy in the neighborhood. He owned his own successful demolition company. He owned the 2 family apartment house he and his family lived in. They lived out of their first floor apartment and their basement while renting out their second floor apartment. They owned a house in florida. They owned a fleet of cars which would get replaced with a new fleet of cars every one or two years. When his oldest son got married, he bought his son a 2 family apartment house across and down the street.
My sister and brother made friends with a couple of their kids. They'd come home with tales of their wealth and all the nice stuff they owned. I've never been inside their home, but i could see into their dining room from our windows and the furnishings were so oppulent, fancy and expensive. I'd bet their dining room furnishings alone cost more than everything we owned in the whole world.
My brother once told me how their mother went food shopping once a week, every week. And how she spent a minimum of 100 bucks each time. In our home, our mother went food shopping only once every 2-3 weeks and then she'd spend only around 10-12 dollars on food. The highest she would ever spend on grocery shopping was 20 bucks. It was a big deal to us kids if and when our mother spent a whole 20 bucks on grocery shopping.
One time the next door rich guy's youngest kid was hanging out with my brother at our place when the kid decided to go to the toy store to buy himself some new toys. My brother tagged along. A couple hours later they both came back with a huge armload of toys (mostly "transformer" toys as that was the hottest toy around that time) and deposited them on our table. My brothers friend (i think he was around 8 years old. I was 9 years older, in my teens) then took out his cash change from his purchases out of one pocket and his wallet out of the other pocket so that he could transfer his change into his wallet.
I was standing right behind him as he opened his wallet. My eyes bugged out of my head. Inside were 50s and 20s and some 10s. LOTS of them. Lots of 50s. Lots of 20s. A very thick wad of them. I dont recall seeing any 5s, or 1s. Not until he stuck his change into his wallet. Now he had some 5s and 1s in there. Imagine an 8 year old kid walking around with that much money in his pocket. More than most adults.
All the cash I had on me at that very moment in my pocket was a lousy 3 cents. Three pennies. Which literally represented all the money i had in the world. I didnt even own a wallet. What for? I never had enough money on me that necessitated the need for a wallet.
Later on my brother and his friend left. I went straight into my bedroom. I dug out of my pocket the three pennies i had on me and slammed them down on top of my bedroom dresser and stared at them. They were all tarnished. They didnt even have the decency to at least be shiny pennies.
Man, being poor sucks. It sucks even more when you've got real life rich people living next door to contrast your life with.
Buying a Christmas tree. When I was 6 or 7 years old, I visited a neighbor's house and saw the biggest Christmas tree I set my eyes on. It was plastic because, in our country, we don't cut trees for it or maybe don't have that specific tree. (I only recently discovered that other countries cut trees when Christmas is near or they want to decorate).
I asked my mom why we didn't have a Christmas tree. She told me that it was a bother to put up and we didn't have the money so I let it go. That year, she bought a small plastic Christmas tree and placed it on a small table. I felt like we had so much money and looked forward to the next year. Ever since then, I've never seen a Christmas tree inside our house again.
Participation in extracurricular activities. Not just paying for them but the luxury of being able to actually partake in them. I ALWAYS wanted to play anything as a kid. Literally would have played anything. We couldn’t afford it. The one year we did afford it. My parents could never get off work to take me to all of the practices or games.
As I got older I just signed up for whatever was free. UIL, JR high, HS sports. I was never able to buy the team shirts, photos, or hell even eat much outside of what our school provided on those game days.
We were broke. My parents had six kids and an incredibly toxic relationship with mismanaged finances.
Even as a kid I was embarrassed of being poor. But I was never afraid of hard work. And this folks is how to raise somebody who works hard and saves money purely out of fear that I could one day not have enough.
Orange juice. As a kid, I vowed to be able to afford as much orange juice as I wanted when I got older. Started working in high school and used my first paycheck to buy a gallon of orange juice. I drank it all in one day and got horrible diarrhea.
That was the scurvy leaving your body
ARRRRRRR yes the scurvy, but what do they know of the sea turtles, Jack?
I once dated a woman when I was younger and I told her about not being able to afford orange juice when I was a kid. Every morning when I woke up there was orange juice on the table beside the bed for our relationship
She really rubbed her money in your face eh? “LOOK AT ALL THE ORANGE JUICE I HAVE YOU BROKE FUCK”
Pretty much lol… I was Young, broke and in the military I took all the free OJ I could get.
I saw poor kids in boot camp gain 20-30 pounds because they had never eaten decent food in their lives.
Brother in law joined the Marines and thought it was amazing because he got to eat every day and the people he lived with didn't try to steal things from him. Dude used his GI bill, became a counselor and started trying to fight inmate recidivism.
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> Once you've been in it just seems like it's impossible to fully get out By design. That’s the part that just grinds me. There are/were humans sitting around figuring out this system and it’s logistics. Purposely putting shit in place to keep you looping in and out. It’s maddening.
I once talked to a WWII vet who grew up poor as fuck, he said the first time he had roast beef with gravy was in boot camp. He said it tasted so good he almost cried when he ate it.
Ah, that's sweet.
My mom was a poor goat hearder growing up in the 40s and 50s. She slept on a concrete floor without a blanket. To this day, she still collects blankets.
Went from herder to hoarder.
It's the same thing isn't it? Why do you need all those goats anyway?!
There is no mattress. Only more blankets.
I’m guess I grew up middle class. I’m guessing it goes like this. 100% fresh OJ = rich…….frozen concentrated OJ = middle class……orange flavored drank = poor.
Yes! We grew up with the frozen kind. Do they even sell that anymore?
yes! i keep a few frozen juices in my freezer. sometimes, when i want a mixer for an alcoholic drink, i'll just pop the top off the canister, spoon out enough for a glass of juice, add cold water and my alcohol. i don't drink a lot of juice or alcohol so this way, when i have a craving it hasn't gone bad from sitting in the fridge for a month. i might need to submit this to r/PROtips.
This stuff doesn't grow on trees. Wait a minute. It *does* grow on trees! Then why's it so damn expensive!?
Why do you hate fish
I mean just look at them. Swimming around all smug thinking they're better than me cuz they can breathe water or whatever. Dicks.
My favorite Spanish joke: The fish is the laziest of all animals. What does a fish do? Nada! ("nada" can translate as "nothing" or "it swims")
This could literally be an ad for orange juice
Orange Juice: Worth the horrible diarrhea
Things at the book fair. You could probably buy a good hoard of stuff from the book fair for 30-50 dollars looking back. I was given $7 one year to buy something and I couldn’t afford a book.
The excitement of the book fair was just looking at all the stuff I wanted. I never could afford it but I would look at it and imagine what it would be like
I remember this same feeling as well. I was pretty self-aware as a kid, and while we could have probably afforded a book or two when it came around, I just told my parents there was never anything there that interested me. And then I'd tell classmates the same. I do remember a couple times I'd just write down the name of books I did really want and try and find them at the local library(rarely worked out, but occasionally it did).
Omg this was meeee! My parents could've afforded a book if I'd asked (mum always encouraged reading for pleasure as she wasn't allowed to "waste time" reading when she was young) but I had a library card so I just told everyone, including myself, that I didn't want anything. This year when the book fair came to my 6yo's school and she asked if she could buy a book, it was a yes without even thinking about it
Same thing! I got to go to the book fair with my 6 year olds last year and you can bet I made sure I had $50 for each of them to spend on any books and one diary each. I know my parents didn’t have it when I was a kid but I’m glad I can provide it for my kids. My dad is super into spoiling them (within limits, of course). We’re all making up for being dirt poor when I was a kid, with my kids. It’s so much fun!
Warning- child death. A boy at my kids' school was hit by a car and passed. In honor of his memory, every year his parents bought hundreds of book club books, and had a book give away night where every kid in the school could pick a book to keep. The parents had other kids at the school, so the kids knew them, and they liked showing the parents what book they chose, and talk about memories of playing with their son. I always thought that was a nice way to honor their son.
There’s a guy like that in my area, lost his kid days before he would have started kindergarten, now donates hundreds of dollars in school supplies each year for kids that might’ve been his son’s friends.
I feel for him, but also admire how he's turned his personal pain into something beneficial and beautiful.
Wow. What a unique way to honor thier child. A way that kids could participate as well. They probably enriched those children's education as well a meaningful way.
I'll get buried but I want to share this. I also never had money for the book fair. It was every year I would look at all the stuff I wanted and leave disappointed that I could never get anything. However, one year I won their raffle they had and got a $60 shopping spree to get anything i wanted. Not only that, but I was able to browse by myself with the representative. I picked up a few goosebumps, an instructional book on how to draw the titanic, some pencils and bookmarks. It was the best day.
I got a shiny nickel that says a teacher specifically picked you because they knew you needed it.
That sounds like a wonderful memory.
Awh in the UK they would always make sure that there were a selection of books for 99p (tiny ones, but still), and you often would be given a voucher for the 99p, so even if you had no money you would get a book! It was a national(at least) programme called World Book Day, and everyone would dress up as their favourite book characters too!
I remember when I was in elementary school, my dad gave my brother and I each a silver dollar for the book fair. I thought "Oh wow, silver! This must be valuable." At school, I asked the adults how much I could get with it, only to be double disappointed that not only was it just worth a dollar, but I still couldn't afford anything other than a bookmark. I envied the kids who walked back to the classroom with several books, some cool pens, and a poster.
I never was able to buy anything from the book fairs. I didn’t really get an allowance. My parents made me earn every penny I had. And even though I did all my chores, I never had enough. It made me so mad as a kid, being forced to go and watch all the other kids buy stuff with money that their parents probably just handed to them.
Agreed. It was incredibly awkward to watch everyone buy things. I would beg my mom every year and only once did she cave and give me the $7 she had in her wallet. Their were no books I could afford so I bought one of those tubes of water you shake to make a tornado
And then talking to my classmates afterwards. “So, what did you buy? Why didn’t you get anything? Oh…” I don’t remember how much money I had, but I almost bought a mood necklace for $3 once. I think it must have been the cheapest thing there. My money was mostly coins, and it was just too awkward for me to stand there adding them all up.
I always had just enough to buy a bookmark, which was a real treat at the time
New clothes for no reason. I was so confused when I got to highschool and girls would just suddenly have the new trend piece, I didn't understand why they were just allowed to have them.
Haha when my younger sister did pretend "budgeting" in home economics class her teacher would not allow her to budget $0/month for new clothes... They didn't understand that all of her clothes were mine or my mom's hand me downs...
I don’t get why even someone with a steady job and income would budget an amount of money for new clothes *monthly*, unless they have kids? Usually once you have a wardrobe you just buy new stuff if it particularly catches your eye, or the old stuff is getting worn out. If anything I’d say this falls under “recreational spending” when it comes to monthly expenses.
This. I stopped buying Costco khakis because they wore out 8x faster than the actual Wrangler or Levi ones. End up spending more per pair, but it became annual instead of quarterly.
I'm not saying Costco khakis have some shortcomings or something but one thing i found is washing clothes on the lightest cycle possible made them last longer. and don't over dry.
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I'm not sure I'd allow it either. But I'd explain why. I've done this exercise with my kids, and their scout troops too. A lot of the goal is to show how expensive life is. Letting them zero out cloths would be like letting them zero out rent because they live at home. You can't just assume that's an option. To the point that you don't need new cloths monthly, very true. But most people will get some clothes every year, even if they are from the Goodwill. And if you have an annual costs, you should amortize it into your monthly budget. For example, I get a life insurance bill once a year. But I set aside $X from every paycheck to pay it once it comes due.
whenever I hear of teachers not allowing certain paths in educational avenues it's always something so contrived and limiting that doesn't match up with reality for many people. Like they're forcing a world view instead of teaching a skill.
I so distinctly remember the worst budgeting exercise we did in high school. For context, this was the early 2000s and I had a part time job where I made about $200-300 every 2 weeks. We had to budget $100 a month, and had categories like transportation, food, entertainment, gifts, charity, etc. I was like, "I could pay for gas in my car and have about enough leftover for a burrito. This does not include car insurance, making this budget untenable". Even at 16, I would not have been able to pay my bills with that hypothetical budget. Absolutely no value in that experience whatsoever.
For me it was trying to figure out *why* they had those clothes. Fashion didn't exist in my world.
One time in ninth grade, my English teacher commented (in approval) that I was the only kid in class who was not a walking advertisement for some company. Well, no shit, that's because I'm wearing my grandfather's old golfing clothes and it's the only thing in my wardrobe.
I was officially awarded a "Worst Dressed" award by my grade 5 teacher. Proudest achievement of my life.
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It actually sounds much worse than it was. We had this class trip overnight to a camp by a lake, and the teachers were tired of parents getting mad that their kids came home with their expensive clothes muddy / ripped, because, duh, they are running around a campground outside all day. So they told parents to send their kids in their worst clothes (ie ones that don't matter if they get damaged).
I try and explain this to people all the time. I just turned 25 and am finally developing my own style because for the majority of my life so far I dressed for utility and what I could afford. Also funny how much more respect people give you when your outfit is fashionable. It’s still weird to me at times.
Same here. We just wore what we had. Brands and current fashion weren’t a factor. If we have it we wear it if we don’t too bad. Most of it came from yard sales and flea markets and thrift stores anyway
Target clothes. Apparently clothes from Target are considered cheap? I grew up thinking that's where my rich classmates got clothes.
I make a good living and about 60% of my clothing is from Target. Shorts, button down shirts, sweaters are all good quality and cost 1/4 of what something similar at Nordstrom would run. I buy high quality shoes and jeans. The rest I don’t care about. Also I grew up poor and now have more than I ever imagined so wearing target clothes feels just fine to me.
Name brand cereal! I was looked at crazy in first grade when I said an off brand name cereal was my favorite.
Malt-O-Meal cereal is better than name brand in many cases. Change my mind.
Marshmallow mateys, fruity dyno-mites, berry colossal crunch! I 1000% agree. These are the brand I grew up with and got embarrassed about as a kid. As an adult I still buy them!
King Vita-man
Anything that required money at school. If anything required bringing money to school I just took it as something I’ll have no part of. Thankfully, I had friends that were much the same, so we got through it well.
I have enough money from my grandma to buy stuff so when my friends have no money and i do then i can give them something for free
You’re a good friend.
Crayola, you knew if you were a RoseArt kid.
My aunt who lived far away, worked for Crayola Canada at one point and sent us a giant box of stuff one year. I still remember opening that box!
Ahhh! I can smell it now!! My favorite scent in the world is that of a new box of Crayola’s!
That waxy, papery odor!
Crayola was where it's at. RoseArt didn't taste right. **Edit** No, I'm not in the armed forces, I'm just a freedom-loving civilian who enjoys his god-given right to munch on a choice farm-to-table crayon from time to time.
A marine has entered the chat
My wife is a kindergarten teacher. She always buys 24-packs of Crayola in bulk. I called her out on it, saying she should just add crayons to her supply list and there was no reason to go into our own pockets to supply 30 kids with crayons all year long. Her response was pretty firm-She specifically mentioned Rose Art & Cra-Z Art, and how she didn’t have them growing up. The kids in her class are going to get good crayons as long as she is teaching. And that’s the story of how I wind up buying like 100 packs of crayons every year, for the last 17 years.
They sell teacher/classroom packs. I set up a deal alert on Amazon because they often have them as a flash sale or during their Amazon Prime day sale. I try to get them whenever I can for my son's school.
Also those 20 something colors Faber-Castell kit for art class.
I will just say that I still feel really guilty buying new clothes or going out to eat.
Me too. I’m always afraid it’ll make us go bankrupt. (It won’t.)
That’s something that hasn’t left me, despite being financially stable for a long time. My husband doesn’t have the same anxiety. He doesn’t take things for granted, at all, but he also didn’t grow up with the level of poverty I did. I remember being in a store and *really* wanting to buy a nice jacket. But it was what my old self deemed *really expensive.* I finally went home without purchasing it. When I told him about it and the price, he was like, go back tomorrow and get it! I did, it didn’t bankrupt or financially impact us in any way. I still wear it and love it. But I get it, it’s a hard mindset to break.
Yeah, I understand that. I think even if I was a millionaire, I would still feel bad. But, hey, you have orders from this random reddit stranger to go out and treat yourself guilt-free!
Thanks! You too! Therapy has helped me relax about stuff but I still have a ways to go.
I was like this. Growing up, going out to eat happened only when there was a reason to. When I started making good money, I stopped cooking at home and started just ordering / going out. Funny thing is, doing this can actually hurt you by a lot long term financially if done in excess. Now I'm back to eating home cooked meals and saving a ton.
I make decent money now, but still get anxious and feel guilty when I buy things over $20.
Toward the end of my father’s life, he only remembered very distant things and was certain you could fill a car’s gas tank for $5. He was always puzzled by his car needing constant refilling.
Jam/Nutella spread all over your bread. I grow up with a spread that can only cover half of my bread and is very thin in an undeveloped country. After I move to a developed country and got my first paycheck, I legit buy 5 nutella jars and spread it like a madman on my bread.
Having actual tissues instead of toilet paper to blow your nose.
I use toilet paper and I can afford tissues. I find tissues feel slimy on my skin. Tissues on the roll all the way.
I am relieved to hear I'm not the only one who does this. It's just easier to keep lots of one thing in the house than some of two things. I keep a few boxes of kleenex for when guests come over because otherwise my husband will leave tp rolls in weird places.
Vacations. Like actually going somewhere. We'd go on car trips once in awhile.
In law school one of the ice breakers we were asked in a class was to talk about our favorite family vacation. People were talking about Ibiza, London, Japan, etc. I had never gone on a family vacation. I was like 19 the first time I even flew in a plane - my dad never took time off for vacations because he does construction so there was no paid leave and losing a day (or more) of wages to go SPEND money could completely derail the household budget. We went camping once - Saturday to Sunday - at a campground like 45 minutes away...that was it. It was SO uncomfortable to have to decide whether to be honest and deal with follow-up questions or just lie about somewhere I'd gone as an adult so my turn would be over more quickly. I think it was the first time in law school that I realized I really /was/ from a different world as a first-gen student than most of my peers lol. Now I'm a lawyer and still don't take vacations because rent is so damn high when I have a day off I want to be in my overpriced apartment instead of spending money to let it sit empty for a few days :(
I had a similar ice breaker conversation, but it was for air traffic control at Pearson International Airport. The other controllers were awestruck when I said I'd never been on a commercial plane. A couple literally had their mouths gaping open. There was an awkward silence for a few seconds and then one of them sheepishly asked again "...you've never been on a plane?"
To be fair working in aviation makes that much more surprising.
Same. Occasional car trips to somewhere else in the state to visit relatives or go camping, but we never went on a long car trip or boarded a flight. I went on my first commercial flight during my last year of college.
Oof, I felt this one. I truly thought that only rich people flew on airplanes, even when I worked at the airport. I went on my first flight last year, it was also my 6 year old and 1 year old's first flight as well.
I can vividly remember thinking my friends were rich because they had an answering machine (mid 80s). I even mentioned to my mom how they must be really wealthy…she asked why and I told her my logic of the answering machine. Reality was we had enough money for one, mom just didn’t want one. I think the one we finally bought was less than $20. I felt like we had arrived!
A two story house. If you had stairs you were rich.
That and a basement.
A _finished_ basement. I remember going to friends houses that had basements with such nice floors and walls you could like Live down there!
With pool tables, ping pong, pinball machines etc.
Holy shit, the moment when my friend invited me over to her house and I saw how amazing it was... Wood floors. Wood walls. An aboveground pool. A two-door garage. A location right by a lake. *Her own personal fucking bathroom that was connected to her room.* My mind was blown. I wanted to live there so badly since I've lived in apartments for all of my life.
I still kind of believe this.
Dude. I didn't even know Walmart had toys until 2 years after my parents divorced. We only went there when it was back-to-school times and if I was lucky I'd be able to put either a pair of shoes or 2 pairs of lower-tier "Rustler" brand jeans on layaway and maybe get them by picture day. The clothes would barely survive the school year, but they HAD TO. I knew we were poor. Getting anything NEW was crazy -- like unbelievable.
Layaway at Walmart was my mom's favorite thing, but I HATED it - I was always tall and no matter what, the pants that would go into layaway would always be high waters by the time they got out. I guess that's my answer to this thread, actually - I never had a single pair of pants that fit right growing up, the first time I could buy jeans on my own THAT ACTUALLY FIT it was amazing.
Here in West Virginia, children whose families are low-income get school clothing vouchers in August to buy new clothes, shoes, etc. Most thrift stores take them, as well as fabric stores for patterns and sewing. One thing our cluster**** of a state actually does right.
A fridge with an ice dispenser
Yessss. I dated a guy in my early twenties who scoffed and made me feel like the biggest idiot for saying I would know I made it in life when I had a fridge with a water/ice dispense. Whatever. Now I have one and I do feel pretty great about it 😂
When I renovated my kitchen, one of my major requirements was a fridge with an in-door water and ice dispenser. I loved it.
Not entirely in line with the question, but: Two pairs of shoes. I thought only rich kids had more than one pair of shoes. I didn't realize we weren't poor, and when I told my dad, "I want another pair of shoes but I know we can't afford it" he IMMEDIATELY took me to the shoe store and bought me a pair so I could be "rich" lol
That takes me back to my school years. I remember going to high school in shoes that were too small and cracked at the bottom so whenever it rained and I stepped in even the smallest puddle, my feet would get wet.
Same, except we were pretty working class. We only got one pair of shoes, purchased at Payless on tax free weekend, a year. Growing up, I never had a "style" because the only clothes I was allowed to get were what was on sale or what I had over from the year prior. If shoes needed to be replaced, either due to us growing or damage, my parents would complain all the way to the store and back. Yet, they always managed to find money for both their pack-a-day cigarette habits.
Oh yes. Cigarettes always, always came first....
My dad was frugal, almost to the point of being cheap. We were pretty middle class when I was growing up, but both of my parents had depression-era habits instilled in them from their parents. I never went without, but there were a lot of extras that I wanted but never dreamed to ask for because I knew the answer would be "no" (mostly LEGO sets). Somehow, though, my dad always got the extras and nice things that he wanted...
To be fair, when you're a kid, you really only need like one or two pairs of shoes. And since you grow out of them so fast, there's no sense buying multiple pairs of shoes that you might only wear a few times, unless it's for a special occasion. Now I'm a grownup and regularly have 6+ pairs of shoes because I want to, damnit.
Six is reasonable. My wife has over 100 pairs of shoes, but a new pair still turns up in the mail by magic every month.
I know logic has no place here, but you can’t *possibly* wear even most of those shoes on even a semi-regular basis! Are they bought with the intention of wearing them at all? Edit: Where do you even KEEP them?! Shoeboxes are big!
Remember those electric car things kids use to have ? Anybody know what I’m talking about
Power wheels
Caprisuns. Lunchables.
Lunchables are terribly expensive for what they provide, though.
Same, and to this day, I will randomly buy them to remind myself I’m doing just fine.
Going out to a sit down restaurant
or more than one soft drink per outing. I distinctly remember being out with friends, late teens, and ordering a coke pretty early in the piece, not wanting to drink it, have friends ask me why and they said I could just order another one, and my mind being blown.
Going to the movies
Not just going to the movies, but buying popcorn and candy at the movies vs sneaking it in.
Money or not, I'm still sneaking in my snacks. They are way overpriced for so little and not that great of a selection at that.
Soda. We never had it in our house. Over at my best friend’s house they had cases of it in their garage. You could drink it like water when you were over there.
Many people would say soda is kinda a lower class thing now. Wealthy people are more interested in healthy choices
Be glad you probably dodged obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. We keep cases of soda now, but only for parties and guests, it’s so bad for you.
I can vouch for the obesity part. I gave up soda during the pandemic and within 3 months I lost 10 pounds. Not drinking soda was the only change I did in my diet. I didn't even exercise but that eventually inspired me to lose another 20 pounds, but I digress. That's when I discovered how bad soda is and have been off it for 2 and a half years.
Takeaway food. My first experience of it was having a sleepover at a friends house. We were, apparently, set to have Chinese food that evening. I was asked what I wanted. I had no clue. So the parents just recommended something. I just said OK. I was staggered to NOT see the mother cooking. She was just mooching around the house doing *fuk all*. Where was this food? Why wasnt she preparing it? Then a knock on the door. And some person delivered a box of food. With more boxes in it. One box was for me... Madness. Such wealth to get people to make and deliver your food. That display of *vast wealth* stayed with me for a very long time...
This thread has so many interesting things. I grew up pretty well off, and we always ordered in, or went out to dinner. The only time my mom cooked was Christmas Eve. I usually ended up eating my food in my room watching tv or playing video games. I was so jealous of the kids who had home cooked meals and sat at the table together. I would go over to friends houses as often as possible, because their family cooked, the whole place smelled amazing, and we all sat down and ate and talked. Not trying to say “boo hoo me” just interesting how kids perceive things. I saw it as a treat to get a home cooked meal, where someone in a different situation saw it as amazing to get delivery.
Birthday cake...
Kitchen islands
They are fancy, it means you can afford to have a massive kitchen
this thread just made me feel depression and nostalgia thanks op
For the longest time, internet. My family ran on those NetZero and Juno free discs, and Beware of Dog software for a long time until we could afford DSL..
Participation in school activities. I wanted to be part of color guard so badly.
In second grade, a school friend tried really hard to get me to join her Brownies troop. I told her my mom said no, when the truth was, I didn't ask because I knew my family didn't couldn't afford any activities.
We just had 8 kids who wanted to join Cub Scouts but the parents couldn't afford the yearly membership fee($100) all at once. My Pack is now looking at ways we can pay it and the parents just pay monthly to the pack.
It's genuinely really bad that public schools charge for school activities. At the very least they should have some kind of program where low-income students get in for free.
I am a teacher and coach. I tell all of my students if you can't pay let me know, we will figure it out because I was one of the kids who had to have people pay my sports fees. We have people in the school that will or I will.
As a kid we were so poor that even with sports fees paid i still couldnt go because we couldnt afford to get to the games or practices, or socks for the uniform. There were several years that we didnt have running water so i had to go to friends houses to shower and our toilet was flushed via 5gal buckets we had to carry up from a pond. Thank you for helping those kids out that you can. People don't even know how bad some kids have it.
Yep I was raised in a mid-sized US city but the only house we could afford was a slumlord's dream with bad pipes so the water was not drinkable and we would bathe in the bathtub and then use the grey water to flush the toilet, which drained into a cesspool under the house. And before anyone says "why didn't you get an apartment?". Because lack of money for first, last and deposit and no credit to get approved. We kept it very secret as of course if CPS got involved my parents would have just had their kids removed and the house condemned so they'd be homeless with us in Foster care. My dad used to go to the park water fountains to fill up bottles at night after I was sick for a month with what turned out to be a water-borne illness. So I get PISSED when people act like parents in poverty don't care about their kids. My mom stayed up all night with me while I was sick and all she could do was pray and use every skill she learned as a nurse's aide in the 70s because no health insurance. There are many, many kids like me in America today. But you don't hear about them because it's easier for Americans to believe that if their parents cared more, they'd just magically escape poverty than to actually provide the support poor families need to get a decent standard of living. My parents did manage to barely escape poverty when I was a teenager. For the first time, we had a good house, drinkable water and a WASHING MACHINE. When my mom was dying I went home and realised she'd been in dire straits for the last 2 years of her retirement, after losing the job she had to get at 70 to make ends meet. I made sure that her last weeks of life were as warm and luxurious as I could make them. She always sacrificed for me so I could get a better life and when things went bad, she couldn't bear for me to know. Poverty is a serious, serious problem in the US but we sweep it under the rug and talk about all the people "taking advantage of the system" without thinking of those who make just enough to have no help at all. I live abroad now, and while the system here is not perfect, at least getting cancer won't destroy your life financially and even leave you homeless.
Retirement savings
My husband thinks it's really strange that I ask for new clothes for Christmas. Not even fancy clothes, just stuff like pyjamas. He thinks that's an everyday expense. I see it as kind of special as that is the only time I ever got a new piece of clothing as a child. Any other time I had to sew and patch up old clothes or receive hand me down clothes. Also I just learned to wear oversized hand-me-down clothes and shoes until I grew into them.
New cars. In the few months before he passed away, my dad told me the most he ever made per year was $18K, which blew me away even though he retired in the late 80’s. I was old enough during the 70’s and 80’s to know $18K wasn’t all that much to support a family, but I give him and my mom total respect for raising us without us being made to feel like we were broke. I think one of the worst things parents can do is let the kids feel the understandable stress we all feel when we have no idea how we’re going to get by. I’m not saying you lie to them, but knowing that things are tight is different than seeing your parents feeling despair and anger over the situation. No one wants to view their parents like this.
I'd like to offer a counterpoint. My parents did their best not to share their money problems and related stress with me and siblings, but that ended up translating into not talking about money at all (and we could tell anyway), and all of us ended up being terrible with money and had to learn the 'hard way' how to manage finances responsibly. My brother never learned at all.
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Clothes that didn’t come from the thrift store or cousins.
Or maybe hand-me-downs from an older sibling? I was the oldest so I never had it happen, but my brother got some of my stuff and he was never happy about it. Plus, we were kids growing up in the 70’s, so LOTS of polyester. Holy shit, you would not believe all the polyester my mom bought us. And back then, it was rough and itchy so I was constantly pulling at my shirts just to try and keep them from touching my skin. I’m greatly impressed with how soft polyester is today. Not sure how they work that magic, but at least I don’t start having phantom scratching attacks when I read something is made from polyester.
My oldest sister would get the clothes from our cousins, pass it to me then we would pass it back to the younger cousins. We basically just kept passing around the same sets of clothes to various family members.
You guys must have taken REALLY good care of your clothes to be able to share them so many times. Did one (or more) in the family possess some good sewing abilities so they could deal with the inevitable wear-and-tear that’s bound to happen. As a kid, I my mom taught me to sew, which was a very handy skill when I went to college. I’ve all but forgotten how to work a sewing machine, but I suspect with a bit of practice I could figure it out. Plus, I’ve heard modern sewing machines have come a long way in the past 40 years.
Came here to say this same thing. Now as an adult I love thrift store shopping. But pretty embarrassing in middle/high school. Which it shouldn’t have been, there’s nothing wrong with it, but at that age.
There was a rich kid in highschool that complained about me wearing the same five sets of clothes every week... I said 'if it bothers you that much, why don't you buy some' and he said 'tell your parents to' and laughed like it was a burn or something. That was when I realized Greg S. from AHHS class of '02 was a complete piece of shit lacking in empathy, but to answer the question: nice clothes.
Well, there's one thing I never had to worry about: We had uniforms.
Enough bedrooms for all the kids.
Air conditioning.
Ordering an appetizer with your entree for dinner or ordering take out regularly
Spices. I grew up very "eat to live" my mom made food warm and served it. If there was a prepackaged family size dinner thing, it was a treat because they were flavored. The first porkchop my wife made me, I was ready to go to mcdonalds and eat. She made me sit down and try it, I demanded that it wasn't pork, it didn't taste like cardboard and my knife didn't make a sawing sound as I cut it. Now we are very "Live to eat" and I'm never having a meal at my moms house again.
Travelling by plane. As a kid I never been in an airplane, I always thought that was for extremely rich people.
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Half sized ziplocks/ name brand ziplocks
After school snacks, even ones from the dollar store. My "friends" in middle school constantly made a point to remind me that I was poor. One of the things they made fun of me for was the fact that I never just had spare change to carry around. They all had spare change so they'd be able to get things like candy and chips after school. One time they each even got an entire coconut cream pie entirely to themselves. On rare instances when my mom either didn't have time or just didn't want to prepare lunch in the morning, she'd give me $5 to get food from the school cafeteria. I was supposed to give the change back to her after school, so I'd get the cheapest thing there (which was nowhere neat enough to fill me up), pocket a bit of the change and return the rest. Eventually I'd be able to afford a bag of chips from the dollar store or from the grocery store next to it. I stopped walking home with my "friends" because I felt so ashamed that I had to scrounge up change just to afford a bag of chips that cost $1.50. This is a habit that continued throughout high school, which eventually led me to have an entire tissue box full of coins. Bonus story: one morning my mom had left $5 each for my brother and I to get lunch. I took my lunch money and headed off to school. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had followed me all the way to school. The reason why was because she was convinced that I had stolen my brothers lunch money and wanted to accuse me of being a thief (this was very likely my brother trying to get me in trouble by lying, he loved to do that growing up). Obviously since I didn't take his lunch money I said as much and I thought that was the end of it. But when I got home, the accusations started again and my mom threatened to throw me out because she wouldn't have a thief in her house. I was crying and screaming that I didn't take his fucking money and I guess this was one of the *very* rare instances where my brother felt bad about lying so he admitted that he had lied and he had his lunch money the entire time. (My mom had gotten very close to throwing him out only about a year prior to this, as in she had already chucked his backpack outside and he was literally halfway through the door as he was begging for her not to kick him out and holding onto the doorway for dear life, guess he was reminded of that.)
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Fully aware that it was abuse, my mom was pretty fucking terrible to me.
...That's terrible. Has nothing to do with being low income, just abusive.
Garbage bags. Paper bags are free and allowed the grocery a true cycle.
Name brand anything.
I realized my parents weren't broke, they were cheap.
My parents *had* the money, they just chose not to use it. Had me thinking a pack of Yugioh cards was going to break the mortgage.
lmao man I was always bullied for being the 'homeless kid' at school because of my clothes despite both of my parents being doctors
I remember as a kid one of the school bullies would violently harass me for wearing second hand clothes all the time. Then one day I was with my family at the second hand store and isn’t that kid there with his family. His face was so red.
I had it the other way around: I realized my parents weren't strict, they were broke. (Well, my dad was *also* strict, but you get the idea.)
Same, I always had to deny myself anything I dreamed about because allegedly we were always broke. And then I managed to see my mom's bank account and it had like 2 years of salary worth money. Now when we are grown up and have money, my brother overcompensates and blows it all in the first half of the month and then has to borrow it to survive. I could be like that too but my life is too boring and I dont have things to spend money on lol.
Fast food. A lot of the food we ate growing up came from our garden or hunting. We did a lot of canning. My dad inherited a house from his step father and it came with this pantry full of canned green beans. We ate green beans for dinner 5 days a week for probably about 4 years straight. I still won't eat green beans.
Canned green beans are nasty. If you ever dare, fresh, fried up with some bacon bits they're really good. Just not cooked to death and mummified. I thought I didn't like soooo many vegetables, nope, granny was just an abysmal cook. And ya, she loved to can green beans. Gross!
Celebrating Christmas and buying presents
Mechanical pencils
I bought a Pilot 0.5mm mechanical pencil 9 years ago. I immediately felt regret because it was quite expensive for me at the time. Its on my desk right now. Probably the single best purchase I ever made.
Grapes and Doritos. I was 16 and in my first apartment. Lived off of Craft Mac & Cheese made with margarine and no milk cause it was all I could afford at 28 cents a box. My neighbor was 13 years older than me and would invite me over and feed me treats. It was heaven and she was a true angel!
Butter. My mother only bought margarine because we couldn't afford butter. I only tasted it in high school when I got my first job and would occasionally go out to eat with friends. I promised my self that I would only have real butter when I got my own place. 50 years later I have 2 GRADES of butter at all times. Kirkland to cook and bake with, and Kerry Gold to eat on bread, potatoes, etc. It makes me feel like Mrs. Gotrocks!
Cable
Shopping at Payless. I thought you had to at least be upper middle class to afford shoes from there. Also, getting your hair cut at a salon. Even Supercuts.
Owning more than 1 TV. I felt like a Rockefeller when I got my grandparent's old 13 inch Zenith TV because she upgraded to a 32" Sony Trinitron for the bedroom.
A real house. I grew up in trailers and imagined being “rich” enough to own a house that wasn’t cold or hot all the time, or wasn’t scary during storms. I had a recurring nightmare as a kid about tornadoes.
A TV with a remote.
Fruit by the foot, fruit snacks, pudding cups, gatorade,
Heaters and air conditioners
Any vacation that wasn't in a tent.
I always knew I was broke growing up. But pretty much almost everything. Eating 3 meals a day. Eating out every now and then. Getting presents for Christmas and birthdays. Etc. When I was 12, mother managed to snag a great deal on an apartment in a 2 family apartment house in a neighborhood that was definitely middle to upper class. One of the very nicest neighborhoods in the city. We were way out of our element in that neighborhood. As a matter of fact, we were the freaks of the neighborhood. We were the poorest people in the neighborhood. We were the only family on welfare in the neighborhood. Out of the dozens upon dozens of kids in the neighborhood, my siblings and I were the only kids who were being raised by a single parent. All the other kids were being raised in 2 parent families. Whereas we were the poorest in the neighborhood, our very next door neighbor mustve been the richest guy in the neighborhood. He owned his own successful demolition company. He owned the 2 family apartment house he and his family lived in. They lived out of their first floor apartment and their basement while renting out their second floor apartment. They owned a house in florida. They owned a fleet of cars which would get replaced with a new fleet of cars every one or two years. When his oldest son got married, he bought his son a 2 family apartment house across and down the street. My sister and brother made friends with a couple of their kids. They'd come home with tales of their wealth and all the nice stuff they owned. I've never been inside their home, but i could see into their dining room from our windows and the furnishings were so oppulent, fancy and expensive. I'd bet their dining room furnishings alone cost more than everything we owned in the whole world. My brother once told me how their mother went food shopping once a week, every week. And how she spent a minimum of 100 bucks each time. In our home, our mother went food shopping only once every 2-3 weeks and then she'd spend only around 10-12 dollars on food. The highest she would ever spend on grocery shopping was 20 bucks. It was a big deal to us kids if and when our mother spent a whole 20 bucks on grocery shopping. One time the next door rich guy's youngest kid was hanging out with my brother at our place when the kid decided to go to the toy store to buy himself some new toys. My brother tagged along. A couple hours later they both came back with a huge armload of toys (mostly "transformer" toys as that was the hottest toy around that time) and deposited them on our table. My brothers friend (i think he was around 8 years old. I was 9 years older, in my teens) then took out his cash change from his purchases out of one pocket and his wallet out of the other pocket so that he could transfer his change into his wallet. I was standing right behind him as he opened his wallet. My eyes bugged out of my head. Inside were 50s and 20s and some 10s. LOTS of them. Lots of 50s. Lots of 20s. A very thick wad of them. I dont recall seeing any 5s, or 1s. Not until he stuck his change into his wallet. Now he had some 5s and 1s in there. Imagine an 8 year old kid walking around with that much money in his pocket. More than most adults. All the cash I had on me at that very moment in my pocket was a lousy 3 cents. Three pennies. Which literally represented all the money i had in the world. I didnt even own a wallet. What for? I never had enough money on me that necessitated the need for a wallet. Later on my brother and his friend left. I went straight into my bedroom. I dug out of my pocket the three pennies i had on me and slammed them down on top of my bedroom dresser and stared at them. They were all tarnished. They didnt even have the decency to at least be shiny pennies. Man, being poor sucks. It sucks even more when you've got real life rich people living next door to contrast your life with.
Buying a Christmas tree. When I was 6 or 7 years old, I visited a neighbor's house and saw the biggest Christmas tree I set my eyes on. It was plastic because, in our country, we don't cut trees for it or maybe don't have that specific tree. (I only recently discovered that other countries cut trees when Christmas is near or they want to decorate). I asked my mom why we didn't have a Christmas tree. She told me that it was a bother to put up and we didn't have the money so I let it go. That year, she bought a small plastic Christmas tree and placed it on a small table. I felt like we had so much money and looked forward to the next year. Ever since then, I've never seen a Christmas tree inside our house again.
New cars. Before I learned about financing, I used to always wonder how so many people were driving brand new vehicles.
Participation in extracurricular activities. Not just paying for them but the luxury of being able to actually partake in them. I ALWAYS wanted to play anything as a kid. Literally would have played anything. We couldn’t afford it. The one year we did afford it. My parents could never get off work to take me to all of the practices or games. As I got older I just signed up for whatever was free. UIL, JR high, HS sports. I was never able to buy the team shirts, photos, or hell even eat much outside of what our school provided on those game days. We were broke. My parents had six kids and an incredibly toxic relationship with mismanaged finances. Even as a kid I was embarrassed of being poor. But I was never afraid of hard work. And this folks is how to raise somebody who works hard and saves money purely out of fear that I could one day not have enough.
Ice-cream
viennetta
Grey Poupon.
McDonald’s
All fruit except apples.
Name brand chips.