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[Nealand Liquor]

Both my wife and I grew up dirt, dirt poor. We rarely had food, the clothes I wore were stolen and we lived in low income housing. Being young professionals when we met, our childhood is something we connected on, something most of our peers didn't understand like we did. We both have the same drive to never go back to having nothing, and both want the family we dreamed of as kids. Hell just owning a house was this fantastic dream that seemed near impossible to actually obtain.
Now 12 years after we first met we're financially well off, own two houses, our kids are in the top private school in our city, and we finally got out from underneath our inherited poverty. Though here's the thing, I don't understand money.

One thing you might not know that happens when you grow up without any food and you finally can afford to eat, you eat (and buy) like you're never going to eat again. I remember being seven and stealing cereal just so I could eat. Now I have an entire cupboard just for fucking cereal, as if I am preparing for the great cereal drought of 2015 or some shit. This would be fine if my food hoarding was limited to cereal, but I also do it with creamed corn (My Mom treated like a filler food and put into every-fucking-thing to stretch it out)... I fucking hate creamed corn.

How about any of you?
What adjustments can you just not make?

 

[Travo]

I wasn't dirt poor, but I buy food and hoard it like that. My biggest concern is losing my job, so I'm gonna make sure we are at least ok with food for a while.

 

[IchigoSharingan]

How can you be well off without understanding money?

All you need is a decent job and a decent savings rate. The rest comes naturally. My personal savings rate is 34%.

 

[MoodyFog]

I wasn't poor, I was po', couldn't afford the o r

 

[Cuphead]

I still eat Spam and Ramen

 

[KingGondo]

How can you be well off without understanding money?

All you need is a decent job and a decent savings rate. The rest comes naturally. My personal savings rate is 34%.

It's not realistic for most people to put over 1/3 of their income into savings.

 

[Octavia]

Reverse actually. Grew up lower middle class and now I'm low income.

 

[JJDinomite]

That's the dream. Studying electrical engineering now which will hopefully pay off in the near future.

 

[Phat Michael]

Grew up in a pretty average to lower income family and couldn't afford much. Now can afford everything I want that's not a supercar or a huge house. No budgeting necessary really. The longer I stay single the more well off I will be.

 

[The Elite]

How can you be well off without understanding money?

All you need is a decent job and a decent savings rate. The rest comes naturally. My personal savings rate is 34%.

I'm surprised everyone isn't rich.

 

[Mister0079]

it's the opposite, my family was better off and now we're struggling.

 

[kinggroin]

Grew up in Queensbridge then Ravenswood. My mom used to play a "game" with my sister and I where we'd scour the house for pennies and loose change. Whoever finds the most picks dinner (that was bought with that change).


Now I own my own home. Have a great job, three amazing boys, and an amazing wife. I'm not wealthy, but life is good on this side.

 

[Ultimadrago]

That's the plan, OP. I'm still struggling, but at the moment I believe there will be a light at the end.

At what point did you say to yourself, "Okay, I'm on the up-and-up. I've breached the gap and it all gets better from here."? After the first house, the second?

 

[davepoobond]

I'm surprised everyone isn't rich.

All you need is a decent job (hard to find) and low enough costs to save 1/3 of your income (hard to do)

That's all. All you need to do. Not hard at all.

 

[Vicetrailia]

I haven't made it but I'm not nearly as poor as before. My fondest memory at nine was living in an abandoned house witnessing drugged up homeless strangers huddle up like the "I am legend" creatures in the middle of a Chicago winter. The severity and gravity of that situation flipped a switch within me (and my mom).

One thing that I have a hard time adjusting to is not immediately cutting people off when we have significant, devastating conflict. Its all about perspectives, and one should swallow their pride and talk it out. Keep your eye on the prize.

 

[Relix]

Well, growing up I wasn't poor, I was generally well off, but my parents had constant problems with debt and budgeting that affected us overall a lot of times. I learned from those mistakes and so far early on I am leading a well adjusted life, without the need to worry about if I am being too wasteful (unless I buy a huge new 4K TV, a brand new gaming PC, and probably some other shit I don't need). I do budget of course, but I've realized my income far exceeds expenses.

I am saving, and next year I am buying my own house, something my parents couldn't do until after their 50s.

 

[Nealand Liquor]

How can you be well off without understanding money?

All you need is a decent job and a decent savings rate. The rest comes naturally. My personal savings rate is 34%.

When I say I don't understand money, I mean I'm not use to having money. Yes I am aware of savings and retirement funds, etc; however having the money to actually contribute to those is a foreign concept due to being raised in poverty.

Besides to truly understand money takes more than just a decent job & savings. Your post is overly simplistic, as for most living in poverty just getting the opportunity for a decent job is rare. It really comes off as "Poor people just shouldn't be poor if they don't want to be poor".

 

[Parch]

A lot of baby boomers would fit into this category. Most grew up poor with strict parents and then benefited from a favorable job market when they got out on their own, which usually happened right after high school graduation.

There seems to be a generalization that boomers were born with a silver spoon in their mouth but the opposite is much more common. A lot of boomers had very rough childhoods and were extremely poor.

 

[jkanownik]

My biggest challenge is learning to have an innate sense that time is my most valuable resource, not money. I still waste way too much time trying to save a buck or two when that time would be much better spent on sleep, working or improving myself.

 

[Carnby]

I grew up poor. And for a long time i was a poor adult. Im in my 30s and I still only make around 30k. It's just enough to get by while raising a child.

The good news is that I have two potential job offers that are in the mid 40ks.That's not much to some people, but this is going to have a huge impact on my life. I went back to school and worked really hard for this opportunity. I didn't think this day would ever come.

 

[Watevaman]

Some stat my HS econ professor spouted struck me as being stupid, but now I'm seeing how it's possible. He said that something like 80% of kids will end up in the same economic bracket that their parents are in.

Seeing as my parents don't make shit and it's looking likely that I won't either, I can now see how it's true. Looking at my friends who had nice middle-class families, they're mostly making less or the same, never really more. It's weird. It's also funny, I used to dream about owning a house, but now that's looking harder and harder.

 

[ProtoCents]

Started from the bottom now you here, OP.

 

[KingGondo]

I grew up poor. And for a long time i was a poor adult. Im in my 30s and I still only make around 30k. It's just enough to get by while raising a child.

The good news is that I have two potential job offers that are in the mid 40ks.That's not much to some people, but this is going to have a huge impact on ky life. I went back to school and worked really hard for this opportunity. I didn't think this day would ever come.

Congrats. Hope it works out for you.

 

[Mr.Swag]

Yes to the first part, but not 'well off' yet

 

[Carnby]

Congrats. Hope it works out for you.

Thank you.

I'm determined to use this new income to pay debt and still keep the same lifestyle. I'm not going to make a new life style where I need 40k just to get by.

 

[Tesseract]

dirt poor, but my dad always found a way to get me things. he gave up beer and smokes to buy me a playstation. stuff like that.

now i'm wracked with injuries and will probably be on ssi until i'm toast.

 

[Nealand Liquor]

That's the plan, OP. I'm still struggling, but at the moment I believe there will be a light at the end.

At what point did you say to yourself, "Okay, I'm on the up-and-up. I've breached the gap and it all gets better from here."? After the first house, the second?

I guess when my wife and I realized we could buy a house. For years leading up to that point we lived poor while paying off our student loans and gradually acquired "things" ie: couch, bed, nice work clothes, actual pots and pans and real forks and knives, gas for our car! Lol.

It wasn't a specific moment, but a gradual series occurrences.

 

[victreeb3l]

I'm not well off but things are definitely trending upwards. Much much better life now than when I was a kid. Still got ways to go but I'm very thankful for everything I have.

 

[Clockwork]

Well, my family started well off. Then they got divorced and my dad dove into alcoholism and my mom all but disappeared for several years.

During this time we became very poor (except for a period of about 10 months where my father had his shit back together) which continued after finding my mom again and moving with her as her issues appeared (at least at the time) not as bad as my father's.

Anyway, I have experienced it all...no food/hunger, no clothes, having to move from one shitty place to the next, etc. What I have found is in some ways it has made me very frugal (I only buy clothes/shoes when mine are really worn out or faded) but at other times I will drop more than I should on groceries and dining (and probably also overeat because of it). For other entertainment I probably don't go out as much as I could as I am happier saving the cash yet at the same time if I want a brand new toy/gadget I will just drop the cash without even thinking about it since I wasn't always able to in the past. We always had shitty cars too (10-15 years old with high miles), so since adulthood (I'm 34) I have owned 6 nice cars that I either got brand new or with low miles.

 

[whatsinaname]

OP, I didn't grow up poor but there have been some phases when money was extremely tight. What I have noticed is that it has made me very careful of how I spend any money I have. I consider each purchase 2-3 times, even when I might not need to (to the point where my mom has mocked me for being cheap). It would be nice to get past those hang-ups.

How can you be well off without understanding money?

All you need is a decent job and a decent savings rate. The rest comes naturally. My personal savings rate is 34%.

What are you on about. His "I don't understand money" was about the philosophical aspect, not practical.

 

[Mr-Joker]

Reverse actually. Grew up lower middle class and now I'm low income.

Same, kinda depressing when you think about it.

 

[The Lamp]

Well, not exactly. I'm one generation off from that. My mother was a very, very poor girl who grew up on a coffee bean farm in rural Colombia. She didn't have much to eat most days, and since public school was not a thing, only girls who had the right background and money could go to private Catholic school. My mother's grandmother married a man of the right status just so my mother could have the opportunity to go to school.

My mom worked hard, often going hungry and having to beg for some food from her friends' lunches. She ended up graduating as one of the first female chemical engineers in the country and became a very successful chemical engineer (although an accident in industry has now left her permanently disabled).

Because of her success, I was able to spend most of my life in the United States and get access to education, so now I'm a chemical engineer too. She broke the generations and chains of poverty in our family.

The rest of my family is still very poor (like my aunt) because they didn't take advantage of education like my mother did.

 

[BajiBoxer]

Both my wife and I grew up dirt, dirt poor. We rarely had food, the clothes I wore were stolen and we lived in low income housing. Being young professionals when we met, our childhood is something we connected on, something most of our peers didn't understand like we did. We both have the same drive to never go back to having nothing, and both want the family we dreamed of as kids. Hell just owning a house was this fantastic dream that seemed near impossible to actually obtain.
Now 12 years after we first met we're financially well off, own two houses, our kids are in the top private school in our city, and we finally got out from underneath our inherited poverty. Though here's the thing, I don't understand money.

One thing you might not know that happens when you grow up without any food and you finally can afford to eat, you eat (and buy) like you're never going to eat again. I remember being seven and stealing cereal just so I could eat. Now I have an entire cupboard just for fucking cereal, as if I am preparing for the great cereal drought of 2015 or some shit. This would be fine if my food hoarding was limited to cereal, but I also do it with creamed corn (My Mom treated like a filler food and put into every-fucking-thing to stretch it out)... I fucking hate creamed corn.

How about any of you?
What adjustments can you just not make?

Sounds like my dad. He had a dirt floor at one time as a kid, and has some goofy habits when it comes to food (especially as he had a few siblings). Growing up we went from semi poor, to middle class, and are on a downward trajectory again thanks in large part to medical bills and debt. I understand the money thing too. When you can't afford to save because every last dime already has to go towards something else (like food or rent) using money as soon as it comes in almost becomes a compulsion.

 

[KingGondo]

Well, not exactly. I'm one generation off from that. My mother was a very, very poor girl who grew up on a coffee bean farm in rural Colombia. She didn't have much to eat most days, and since public school was not a thing, only girls who had the right background and money could go to private Catholic school. My mother's grandmother married a man of the right status just so my mother could have the opportunity to go to school.

My mom worked hard, often going hungry and having to beg for some food from her friends' lunches. She ended up graduating as one of the first female chemical engineers in the country and became a very successful chemical engineer (although an accident in industry has now left her permanently disabled).

Because of her success, I was able to spend most of my life in the United States and get access to education, so now I'm a chemical engineer too. She broke the generations and chains of poverty in our family.

The rest of my family is still very poor (like my aunt) because they didn't take advantage of education like my mother did.

Wow. Your mother sounds like an amazing person.

 

[cryptic]

It sounds like the type of people who succeed are inherently selfish.

 

[Carnby]

Well, not exactly. I'm one generation off from that. My mother was a very, very poor girl who grew up on a coffee bean farm in rural Colombia. She didn't have much to eat most days, and since public school was not a thing, only girls who had the right background and money could go to private Catholic school. My mother's grandmother married a man of the right status just so my mother could have the opportunity to go to school.

My mom worked hard, often going hungry and having to beg for some food from her friends' lunches. She ended up graduating as one of the first female chemical engineers in the country and became a very successful chemical engineer (although an accident in industry has now left her permanently disabled).

Because of her success, I was able to spend most of my life in the United States and get access to education, so now I'm a chemical engineer too. She broke the generations and chains of poverty in our family.

The rest of my family is still very poor (like my aunt) because they didn't take advantage of education like my mother did.

Wow. That's a great story. Thank you for sharing that. Good for you and your mom.

 

[sirap]

I did, grew up in Bradford (incredibly shitty neighborhood) We barely had any food, all my parents had were scholarships and standard research allowances to feed a family of four. Afternoons after school was pretty rough, if I wasn't running from Brit bullies who hated foreigners, I was running from Arabs who hated Malays.

Doing pretty well for myself now, I own/co-own multiple businesses and I make stupid money writing. Life's pretty great.

 

[riotous]

Some interesting stories; and sad at times.

I grew up with a weird family when it came to money.. never poor enough to worry about food but my parents were just bizarre with money. My Dad bought himself everything he wanted and if I touched any of it I'd get beaten.. I had no toys.. all my clothes were hand me downs.. my parents refused to buy me new gear for sports so my soccer shoes were covered in duct tape as they were 2 sizes too small.

I had friends parents who offered to buy me things because they assumed my parents were just poor; my parents wouldn't buy me special shoes for Basketball so I wore my low top regular tennis shoes to practice and games... I had a friends Mom offer to take me to the store to buy me high tops and I let them and was grounded for it lol.

I became relatively successful compared to my peers at a very young age; a teenager really and I'm now 36 and have been doing very well for almost 20 years.

I have terrible spending habits I think because of how I was raised. I'm also crazy generous towards other people.. sort of the opposite of my parents.. I'll buy my friends things, my significant other's have always been constantly bought gifts, etc.

 

[Winterfang]

I grew up in this similar environment

I'm by no means well off, I live in a crappy studio apartment and have to share a bathroom with two other dudes. But I'm doing fine living on minimum wage, I have HDtv, game consoles, tablet, high speed internet. I'm grateful.

 

[Nealand Liquor]

It sounds like the type of people who succeed are inherently selfish.

Huh? Could you elaborate on that please?

I have no idea if you are talking to someone, about someone itt, or just making a drive-by statement to rile people up.

 

[Handsomejan]

All you need is a decent job (hard to find) and low enough costs to save 1/3 of your income (hard to do)

That's all. All you need to do. Not hard at all.

Does not compute.

Well i grew up just fine. We didnt had much but it was ok, no starving or something. Now im still not that well up, but it will come sooner or later. Excited for it

 

[terrisus]

I grew up (relatively) well-off, and now I'm dirt poor (and massively in debt)

So, hey, I balanced someone out >.>

 

[Phoenix]

I grew up in a lower social economic class, but I wouldn't say that we were poor. We moved from lower middle class (back when the downtown areas of cities weren't crime ridden shit fests like today) to upper middle class where we are today.

My kids don't know what its like to be poor, but I keep trying to make sure they understand what it means so that they grow up with a clear understanding of what people have to go through in this country. However, what we call poor in the US isn't poor. I've traveled to a LOT of countries and I've seen *REAL* poor. I've seen people living out of storage containers with wires running to them to power their lights. I've seen people bathe in streams because that's all they had. I've seen real poor (and I'm sure I'd see worse if I traveled further into some of these countries), and what our poor experience is a luxury compare to them.

 

[NoctisVsStar]

in my case it's sort of the reverse i might add. Growing up in NYC my pops had a bodega and we did fairly good the 90's economy was booming everything was good. eventually my moms wanted a house in jersey instead of our 3 room apt in manhattan but my pops refused and bought a house in DR and practically i was sent over there to live. Crib was big no complaints only thing was that i had to learn spanish and idk life in a third world country was slow for my taste. My father i only saw him a few times throughout the year since he was pretty much supporting us from the US.. i guess his plan sort of backfired cause we couldnt live together until years later.

once i finished HS i was returning back to NY cause the caribbean life its just not for me. so i return back. by the time i return back my pops sold his business and no longer was a boss but an employee at my uncle's store. He does extremely well type cheap lol but good enough. when i got back i lived in the basement. after that in a room rented it was uncomfortable cause you needed privacy and at times your only space was your room, but the lady where i stayed was extremely nice she even cried when she needed the room cause her preggo daughter got kicked to the curve by her husband. finally once my moms and sister decided that they were coming over we got a break cause my uncle was moving to Jersey since he bought a house, he gave us his 3 room apt that only pays 600 in the upper westside. technically its illegal however neighbors and the superintendent remembered us when we used to live there so they gave us no problem.

im currently 26 i shouldve been graduated by now but by father errors i lost a year in the caribbean since i had to learn spanish and grade was deducted from me..however in spring 2015 im getting my BS in criminal justice and certificate in Dispute resolution. everything turned out well i guess it made me appreciate everything more since i've seen the struggle and lived the rich and fabulous life..trust me i've seen poor i remember once time in DR someone had sand instead of a marble floor..man i've seen some shit that truly has made me appreciate and be humble..without that experience i couldve been an asshole

 

[The Lamp]

Wow. Your mother sounds like an amazing person.

Wow. That's a great story. Thank you for sharing that. Good for you and your mom.

:') Thanks, she's my ultimate inspiration.

 

[Escape Goat]

My parents had zero money when they got married. But my dad went into the military and my mom became a realtor. My dad didnt have a car so he rode this beatup Post Office surplus mailcar to work every day. Eventually, mom quit because they now had 3 kids at home. My dad did well in the military, got his masters and retired as a Captain. He went to work in the private sector and his hard work paid off so we were upper middle class by time I was in high school.

I had to wear hand-me-down clothes from my brother and we had to share a room. We ate out when there was a special for buffets at Ponderosa. But we always had food to eat and a 4 walls and a roof to call home. And theres not a day that goes by that I am thankful for my parents sacrifices and hard work.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

I wasn't dirt poor but we were pretty poor. Our house burnt down when I was an infant and we moved to this old farm that was in the family. It was 240 years old and didn't have a kitchen with plumbing when we first moved in. There was no central heat, just a coal stove in one room that kept the house at about 50 degrees in winter. I never went hungry ir anything, we just never really had good living conditions. Eventually my mom got a nursing degree and they saved money to build a new house.

As for me, I went from living without a good source of heat in my childhood to earning six figures.

 

[Stinkles]

Caution: This turns into a rant out of nowhere.


I grew up in one of the worst parts of Scotland, a slum that was the location for the "heroin baby" parts of Trainspotting. My dad left when I was three so my mother raised three of us (two sisters) herself, with part time jobs. There were days I didn't eat, but those were rare. We ate very poorly, however and if it wasn't for free school lunch, it would have been grinding.

I was the only one of our family who went to college, again, thanks to a free education system, there were plenty of rungs out of poverty for those who could reach them to climb. Which sounds simple, but when you grow up in poverty and violence, you don't get to "be" smart. You're surrounded in rough schools by rough, pasty-faced thugs who will continually drag you back down to their level.

I struggled out of it, got an education, got a great, lucky-ass first job as a writer on a games magazine in England, eventually moved to the States and I am now very comfortable. If my twelve year old self could see me now, he'd think me "rich." But while I am comfortable and sensible with money, the occasional 3am terror wakes me up, believing myself back in that grim, violent poverty. So I never feel safe. (OP should watch the Herzog documentary, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly to get an insight into his food hoarding).

Scotland in the 1970s was almost completely homogenous and white, so I have a slightly weird view of American race and poverty, but the older I get, the more correct I believe it is.

African American poverty is an institutionalized version of the poor kids I grew up among. They aren't poor because of some inherent flaw in their makeup. They aren't more violent than the poor in my country (actually, I'd argue less so, since the lack of guns where I grew up makes other less lethal forms of violence more casual and frequent).

The point and difference being that this country has a very obvious history of problems, and since African Americans are easily identified, they can be easily and continually discriminated against, cementing many of their problems. I always find it absolutely confounding that racists in this country FUCKING INSIST on pretending that discrimination isn't the cause, and that instead there's an inherent flaw in that "culture." How a human brain can contain those two ideas at the same time - that black people are awful and that black people aren't discriminated against - without exploding into a jelly of cognitive dissonance, is beyond me.,

Black people are (more likely to be) poor because of racism, pure and simple. It doesn't have to be deliberate or even evil. In this country I think there are reflexes built into both individuals and systems. Even "good" people do racist things or do too little to prevent them.

"Why don't they fix the problems in the inner cities themselves?" is the refrain, and it's aggravating as fuck. There is no "they" except the "they" deliberate and accidental discrimination create and maintain.

What's the point of that rant? I'm not sure. Just that sometimes I will see a poor black kid in a shitty neighborhood in the States and think, "That kid might be smarter than me. He might work harder than me. He might be having a much harder time than I ever did." But that he's fucked, because this country won't lower that ladder down to him. Because it recognizes him on sight. The simple fact of the way he looks and a history and habit of hating it.

That ladder was lowered to me because I looked the same as the systems and people in charge of it. They didn't recognize my origin. It didn't really matter.

I still marvel at how recent the civil rights era was. We were on our way to the fucking MOON. And it was still legal apartheid. Fucking crazy. And don't get me started on Obama Derangement Syndrome.

The only cure is time and hard work and deliberately going out of our way to lower the ladder to everyone. And to those that need it most, first. Which is why it's not Affirmative Action. It's basic fucking fairness. It's going the extra yard to do what you should have been doing in the first place and didn't.

 

[……forgetit]

How can you be well off without understanding money?

All you need is a decent job and a decent savings rate. The rest comes naturally. My personal savings rate is 34%.

That's not possible for a lot of families. If you are capable of putting a third of your income into savings then you're well off.

 

[qizah]

Grew up low income, still low income but I just started working full time. Helping out at home as much as I can, it's very stressful for someone just starting out.

Know the feeling, but always remind myself it could be worse and to think positively.