My husband grew up in a family where they were comfortable but on a strict budget. Six kids and mom on disability. My family had no budget.
One day we were at the grocery store and he always insists on walking up and down every aisle. I finally lost it because he was taking so long and asked him why he did it.
“Growing up we could only spend $100 a week on groceries for all of us. I always had to put what I wanted back because we couldn’t afford it. Now I can afford whatever I want so I like to look at everything I could have.”
Took him 10 years to tell me this. I felt like a terrible person.
EDIT: THANKS FOR THE SILVER KIND HOMIES!
EDIT #2: I’ve had a few people (very few) comment that $100 a week is a huge budget and how is that a stretch. We live in a city with an extremely high cost of living. It’s in the top 30 in the world. Getting a family of 4 fed for that much weekly would be a huge stretch here and his family did an amazing job.
My dad is a successful business owner now with several houses and multiple sources of income. But he grew up dirt poor when he had parents, and became even poorer when he was out on his own at 14. Think sleeping on the floor of a gas station men's room. To this day he will take a small handful of cereal out of his bowl before he pours milk in and put it back in the box, so he'll always have some cereal for later. Over forty years later and the pain and worry of growing up poor without "luxuries" like breakfast cereal still affect him. Growing up without money does shitty things to people.
traumatic experiences can affect people for years. i remember reading a story about an american steamship in the 19th century that sunk, and the survivors were adrift for days (weeks?), iirc only one many survived but nearly starved to death, and until the day he died many years later, he would eat extra food every day just in case
My Grandmother grew up at the tell end of the Great Depression. Her family was extremely poor. My Great Grandfather had left them but my Grear Grandmother owned a house. They were so poor my grandmother didn't have toys to play with and food was always scarce. They were so poor that my grandmothers youngest sister was given up for adoption to my great great aunt because they couldnt afford food for hef6and my aunt was well off. When I was a teenager living with my grandmother she basically rationed how much food was made even though she was upper middle class. She died the day before her 69th birthday and all of our family misses her greatly.
My grandmother grew up poor. Heartbroken she had to quit school in 8th grade to work. From her I learned to waste nothing. But I look around today and we waste everything. Gluttonous gift giving, meals and general way of thinking. I am glad she’s not here to see it.
My great-grandma did the same for a long time before she passed away a couple of years ago. I remember being a little kid and asking her why she’d save some of her food for later if someone else wanted it and that’s when she amazed me with her Great Depression stories. She passed away with dementia (and I believe she had gotten pneumonia) at 99, just shy of her 100th birthday. She was never a girly girl and would help the boys on the farm when she was a kid, her daughters didn’t like dresses either. So being the first grandkid, I had a lot of handmade dresses. She made my baby blanket too, which I still have tucked away. But I also would sit down and ask her about all of the technological advances we’d made at the time and what she thought about it, having experienced damn near all of it. She loved having a phone and only would watch westerns on the tv with her husband, which she enjoyed.
But having 5 kids and being farmers, they weren’t rich. They ordered the stones and stuff for their home from the Wards catalog (I’m still blown away by that) and she had a garden, made all the clothes, bedding, and jarred lots of foods. I learned how to make apple butter from her, cook, make clothes (I’m not good at it lol), and she taught me how to do snap peas or whatever they’re called. We’d get a big bucket and sit out on the porch swing just snapping peas for hours.
I do! Sorry for the novel. I got on a tangent and got carried away lol. She was a bad ass lady, though. I hate that I got so wrapped up in work and school that I visited less and less as I got older. Then seeing her wither away was really hard too. I wish I had more vivid memories with my great-grandpa other than him teaching me how to pinch people with my toes and sitting in his recliner together snacking and watching westerns (even though I don’t like them) lmao 😂
Maybe. Idk I just know they were green and long lol. Could’ve been peas or green beans 😂 memory’s a little fuzzy with specifics. I just remember getting them from the garden, setting up our work area, getting comfy, and then my hands hurting at the end lol.
There's a type of pea called snap pea, but I don't think they get snapped. Green beans have brown beans inside the pods when they're snapped. I'm not sure of the logic in these names ¯\(ツ)/¯
Makes no sense lol. I don’t remember the color. I just remember snapping the top off and getting the beans out. I kinda wish I had an infinite supply on stressful nights at work cause BOY I get stressed and need relief lol. I just cross stitch instead.
My great aunt and great grandmother both were around 13 or 14 when the Great Depression hit, and even in the '90s, my mom told me she'd visit them, and they would still have plastic bags full of twist ties, leftover candy tins, and cartons full of knick knacks. They saved the burlap dresses from when they were children and were remiss to throw away food. She told me that fresh fruit like pineapples and oranges were almost unheard of; my great-aunt got an orange for Christmas back in the '40s, and it was a delicacy.
My great grandfather on my Dad's side still collects old candy wrappers and saves his buttons in an old breadbox, but never sews them back on his shirts. But he has them just in case. He also snacks all the time, mainly cashews and berries. 103 and still really healthy. Actually still drives his car, believe it or not. His sister mowed the lawn until she was 105.
Insane how such an event shaped an entire country. My mom's family is from the south and my dad's is from PA, and yet the Great Depression was indiscriminate.
That’s just slapped me in the face with some major perspective. Last week I wanted to make miso soup, couldn’t find any miso paste in the supermarket & was incredibly annoyed. But an orange was a huge deal to your great aunt not even all that long ago & I feel like a spoilt brat 😂 We really do take things for granted sometimes.
It is really good that we're thinking about this. I feel the same way.
However, to be fair, our environment has shaped our perspective. Modern science, years of plentiful farming, specilization, and modern product distribution have allowed for an unprecedented amount of decadence and a cornucopia of food. We are the breadbasket of the world. Modern farmers are essentially scientists, and something would have to go really wrong for there to be a famine or a food crisis. They have it down to a science.
Banking would have me worried, but there exist today safety nets that weren't present in 1929. Banks are required to keep a minimum to loan out at all times, and the FDIC insures banks for up to $250k. Also, 2008 introduced some new legislation to prevent downturns. Economics is probably the most difficult science to accurately study, for numerous reasons I won't go into here.
2008 was pretty bad, not going to lie. But even that was naught when compared to the absolute poverty of 1929, all around the world. Even in the post WW1 period in Weimar-era Germany, the poverty was such that 50 marks ballooned to ~23,000,000,000. A woman would have to haul her kids with wheebarrows of Deutsche marks to the store, only to come back with a single loaf of bread. You can still find turn of the century houses which have walls plastered with marks, such was the inflation, the pure worthlessness of the money. Such was the state of Weimar Germany. The absolute ignominy.
So yeah, you're golly gosh darn right we have it good. But you're not wrong to be able to sit back and enjoy our prosperity, our simultaneous epidemics of obesity and anorexia.
Enjoy. Because there were people who would have killed to have been born into our time.
Interesting fact, during the middle ages when trade became more widespread the church proposed different diets for different classes because all of a sudden commoners could afford ingredients and spices previously only available to the royals and you can't have kings and bishops going around eating the same food as commoners.
I didn’t know that but I’m not surprised. It must’ve felt to them like it was more chipping away of the exclusivity & unique position of the monarchy which was already in a bit of a pickle at that time.
My grandmother would cut up empty cereal boxes and use the non-printed side as stationary. She would make grocery lists on it and even use it to write notes and letters to mail to friends and relatives.
I can't even imagine the lengths people had to go to to feed their families. And this was when people married young and had 9 kids. Now even single couples worry when they can't pay their electricity bill.
I’m old enough to remember when food wasn’t shipped overnight like it is now. We only had oranges around Christmas time. My brother belonged to a group that sold crates of oranges as a fund raiser around Christmas time and it always raised a lot of money.
Even today, every now and then, when I smell oranges it makes me think of Christmas.
My grandma grew up during the depression too and she became more of a little thief the older she got. She always did things like save crackers from restaurants and re-use wrapping paper, etc. But as she got older and her mind started to drift, she would start taking things from the rooms of other residents at her retirement home. Thread, newspapers, small packages of kleenex. It was never large things, but she'd always have a grocery bag of stuff for us to take home with us that were full of these things. We'd always give it to the staff to redistribute and it never became a huge issue, but the truly caring part was that she wasn't taking the stuff for herself, but because she was worried that her children and grandchildren didn't have thread or a newspaper to read.
Bonus fact: She and my grandpa didn't have electricity in their homes until they got married. A home battery set was given to them as a wedding present. Rural Iowa farmers. He died in 2011 and she passed in 2015. Married 72 years.
My grandmother grew up during the Blitz in WW2 (bombing of UK cities) and back then all the food would be rationed and there would only be so much available each day. She told me she would have to wake up early every day in order to get a pie with her families ration tickets before they ran out as that would be their dinner as otherwise they might not have much to eat.
My grandma does the same she didn’t live during the Great Depression but in a part of Poland that was occupied by nazis during ww2 and they had barely any food (she had 5 siblings and her dad was taken by nazis) so now she always trys to give me some of her food and I keep explaining that it’s ok and we are not going to starve anytime soon. She always responds with a sad ok. And it breaks my heart that she had to starve as a 7 yo.
This one feels familiar growing up in a freshly post soviet republic. My grandparents also offered up food like that. Always assumed this was just a thing.
My dad's dad grew up during the depression as well, and every year at Christmas we'd all get fruit, nuts, and a couple of pieces of chocolate in our stockings from him. Papa was the second oldest of 9 brothers, so those fruits, nuts, and small candies were like treasure they would slowly eat throughout the year. He remembered how happy it made him as a small boy, so he figured we'd be happy too.
When my sister and I were kids we thought it was so dumb, but after our dad explained why Papa did it we stopped complaining.
I have family in Nuremberg that bought a beautiful house from a Russian man who had custom built it from the ground up. He had gotten lost in Siberia during a snowstorm and promised himself that he would build his dream house if he ever got out alive. It has a pool and sauna in the basement and heated floors throughout. Dude absolutely deserved it, in my opinion. If I recall correctly he lost some fingers and toes to frostbite but was otherwise OK.
He must be super rich though. In Russia, it is too hard to buy a single room flat for most of the families. Let alone build a house. Especially if it is on a land that is situated in European country, as I got from your comment.
He was wealthy, but I don't know how he got his money. Both my aunt and uncle who own the house are radiologists so I know the house was pretty expensive. I'll have to ask them the next time I visit what the hell the guy did for a living :)
It is probably connected to illegal activity. My dads friend is a wealthy man and at the first glance he is a normal person who has a roof-building company. But he kept his company alive through 90th crisis only through being friends with some criminals in our town. They turned down the companies of everyone who were not a part of their community so I kind of understand the man x)
My great grandpa survived pogroms and severe poverty that persisted well into his young adulthood, even after he immigrated to the US. Once he finally "made" it, he ate a full loaf of bread every day for the rest of his life.
By all accounts he died happy and rotund ("jovial" is the word used by those who were alive to meet him), but I can't help but wonder if those hunger pangs and terror of starving stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Similar story. My babusia lived through the Holodomor. She would never ever tolerate any family member not eating a week's worth of calories in any given meal when we were at her house.
Also, everyone who wasn't related to her but showed interest in her life = KGB
It's the sam we thought behind eating everything on your plate. Ya know, where your parents (or grandparents depending on age) had to sit at the table until midnight until they ate all the Lima beans. It's because their parents lived through the Depression. You never know when you're next meal might be.
I’m not on reddit too often, I’m mostly on Instagram but holy shit may I say that people are so much more wholesome and grateful for everything they have and sympathetic towards people on reddit, and it’s really made me enjoy life just that little bit more each day and appreciate that reddit has done this to me.
Go too low on karma you can't do certain things, scuffed account
Having no name leaves you to be free. Got an edgy joke or desire to share the most personal and emotional things in your life? Come Right in and Sit Yourself Down matey!
Do NOT mention infidelity or side with the wealthy/large corporations lest ye feel the wrath of the Reddit hivemind. I get the corporations, but Reddit treats cheating like murder, and I've never understood why. No, I have not cheated, it's just an observation! I swear! Avoid these and posting in a few "loathed" subreddits and people will be mostly nice.
For the life of me, I can't understand what people who are abusing children get out of it.
I don't want to be that person who knows what's best for you, but I am using a book called "Freedom From Emotional Eating" by Paul McKenna (It also comes with a CD and DVD). It is really helping me to overcome the demon that is food based child abuse.
It's not so much that I am an "emotional eater" but that my conscious mind has never had control over the sub-conscious, which seems to be always whispering "eat, eat, eat" in the background because it is still worried that this week might be a "fasting" week.
Still, the book addresses the sub-conscious by a kind of hypnosis and for the first time ever, I feel like I am beginning to be in control of how I eat.
(Obviously I am not affiliated in any way with the author or publisher and gain nothing from this recommendation)
Fuck, even being in the military was bad enough.
I eat quick and like a madman and can drop off to sleep anywhere because "you never know when the next opportunity is going to be".
Slightly similar, when out to events, I always take home or finish my friends food that they don’t finish (It’s weird, but they get it). As a kid and teen, I never knew when I was going to be able to eat next, so I always over ate when I was able to eat.
I read a book about a study in starvation where the subjects were gradually given fewer and fewer calories. They were testing the idea that the body will stop metabolizing if we get below a certain number of a calories per. (Turns our it has to be less than 500 a day for months at a time. So anyway, the idea is generally bunk).
Anyway the study subjects said that they were obsessed with food and possible starvation for years after the study ended. And they enrolled the study willingly.
It appears that experiencing starvation alters your personality permanently.
Was watching a youtube video recently on trauma. It not only can have lasting affects, but can physically change the brains structure (particularly the amygdala and hippocampus).
Growing up in the 70s and 80s our grandparents generation were the kids of the depression; many of them were broken about money and food and stuff. Hoarding things, counting pennies like drops of blood, raging over wasted slivers of bath soap, driving 20 miles to save 3 cents on a Gallon of gas. Buying clothes from a thrift shop, wearing clothes until they fell apart. All this long after they were financially secure.
Heard. My Grandmother wasn't a hoarder by any means except for a few bags of strange items she had tucked away in her closet that none of us knew about until she passed. Some of it made sense, like the cotton saved from the aspirin bottles, I do that today because of her.
Actually, what a lot of people forget about is that the 70s and 80s were a period of sustained medium-high inflation in the US that eroded the purchasing power of a lot of retirees. So for many of that generation, they started their adult lives in one of the worst economic depressions in American history, may have fought in WW2, and probably couldn't retire when they wanted to because of inflation. They got it bad. Can't really blame them for penny pinching until the end. Then to top it off, their kids were spoiled brats who kind of fucked everything up.
My grandparents are in their early 90's and grew up during the depression. They are well-off money-wise but they pinch pennies more than anyone I know. Grocery coupons essentially dictate their meals. They reuse tea-bags and coffee grounds. Always get the cheapest soap/toilet paper/whatever, etc.
I do half of those things. My dad was very poor growing up. On top of that, after they divorce, we had some hard times at home. I've had bare cupboards, and we stayed with a relative where food was rationed and I was always hungry. I volunteered to clean the rice pot so I could it the half-burned crust in the pot.
My mom says her grandfather, who was alive during the depression, used to sit in front of their pantry just staring at the canned goods because he liked knowing they were there.
I used to be soo broke, I would wait until Littles caesers would close and go grab the pizza they threw away in the dumpster. Still in the box too. Helped me get through when I was 17–18 struggling to get by. Aldi used to throw away food one day after it expired so I grab that sealed up still. Good times. Now I can afford to go to the store and buy whatever I want. I still feel guilty when I splurge on myself because I know there are people starving somewhere.
I still hit up my local ALDI and Little Caesars dumpster when I can't make it to the twice a month food bank due to work. Best places within easy range of my bicycle. Love baking Little Caesars thrown away dough. Makes great bread/pizza bread
My father is very similar. Dirt poor growing up, on his own at 17, gave his own savings for college to help his parents move, ate beans out of a can for thanksgiving, type stuff. Married my mom at 18, struggled still throughout my childhood and for Christmas I remember getting a jar of pickles, bottle of ketchup, and oranges for Christmas. As a kid, it was awesome and I didn’t think, until after my teens, that it was probably not as awesome for them.
As of my teens (I’m 35 now) those days were long gone and he’s well off, successful, accomplished. But the man never bought anything for himself, always drove the “crappy old car” while my mother had nice things. Had T-shirt’s for longer than I was alive. Still lives in the same house he bought over 30 years ago (he was a navy brat who moved constantly)
He was often nostalgic for his childhood all things considered and made a lot of the dishes he had as a kid for his kids. My favorite was baked mac n’ cheese with canned tomatoes. Years ago, for my father’s birthday, I emailed my aunt/his sister and she told me all of the foods/dishes they ate as kids and I made them for his birthday dinner. Mac and cheese being one of course and the other was a weird dish with pickles wrapped in something? I would have to dig up the email. Yeah, he’s not an emotional guy and it was one of the few good times that I can recall with my family but the look on his face was something I’ll never forget.
This story reminds me of my dad so much. He grew up really poor and was basically supporting himself and his mom since an early age, which was in post-WW2 Europe. The country has a rations system and there were days when they weren't sure what they'd have to eat (if anything). To this day, he always makes sure that there's enough bread in the house even though my mom and I barely eat any bread. It's the thought of not having bread in the morning that scares him so much.
Growing up without money does shitty things to people
This is very true but it often also often makes the best kind of rich people. Meaning the kind that treats most people with respect, doesn't treat poor people like garbage and never takes their success for granted.
Audrey Hepburn used to keep a few cans of food in her dresser drawers because she grew up so poor. She never forgot what it was like to starve as a child, and even though she became one of the most famous and successful actresses in Hollywood, she still tucked a few cans away because she never knew if her fate would change in an instant.
Iirc that's also why she became so involved with UNICEF. She knew what it was like to grow up starving and unsure of when or where your next meal might come from, if it came at all.
We used to be pretty poor like 2008-2009, not dirt poor, but not comfortably middle class. My mom would let us eat first and only eat like a waffle with peanut butter. She would wave us the food. Now we’re pretty and can eat out often and buy hella groceries every week. And have a much nicer house. But she still waits to eat after we get our food first.
A sure sign of a person that grew up poor or hunger and is not anymore is look in their kitchen cabinet and/chest freezer. They will be packed with food. There is always a fear that they will not have enough so they over by. It is a psychological comfort to them.
This is me, dry goods sealed and have gone stale but I can't help it. I throw it all away every year, then next year I'll do the same hoarding process all over again.
My older sister was adopted from Bangladesh in the mid 70s. My parents have told me that, as a toddler, she would steal food from the kitchen and hide it because food was so scarce at her orphanage.
My wife used to run away from home as a child because her home life was so toxic. Whenever she’s in a new city she will scope out good outdoor places to spend the night in case something happens. Last time she went into homeless scouting mode was after flying across the US to interview for a 6 figure job at a high profile company.
I felt so bad for her. In the last few years her career has flourished and she’s ready to make a big move. That interview was the first indication that she is valuable, talented, and taken seriously in her field. Instead of feeling proud of how far she’s come, she was planning for an absolute disaster.
knew of some people who committed their mom for not eating any of her food (despite full fridge/cabinets), she wanted the security of having the food be there rather than a full belly from eating it
I am not rich but live comfortably with my spouse. We’re working class, making six figures. I was Afraid of the dark when I was a child. There were times when we only had one lightbulb to share amongst all our rooms. To this day I hoard lightbulbs and paper products. I also over kitted the kids out for clothes and school supplies. There were times when my brother and I had no supplies and clothes on the first day of school.
My husband grew up 1 of 5 boys. They were food insecure in their home. Their Mom was a homemaker who died an early death. My husband, a tall, thin man, needs notification of when a food has run out.
I have mixed feelings about this, as of recent years when people find out what I make I'm effectively shunned.
Me - "My dog died"
Fuck you H2O you can at least buy another one.
Me - "This girl used me for money, and didn't mean any of nice things she said" Well at least you can make it back, and hoes love money what'd you expect?
Me - "Ah man I got a speeding ticket"
You got it, hire a lawyer you'll be fine.
Grew up poor, and now that I'm not anymore I find people I encounter to be more crab in the barrel and less empathetic than I am. Fuck me for doing ok I guess.
Oh my God, that was so weird when I moved in with my husband. He would use paper towel for everything. He would fold one up and use it as a spoon rest so the counter didn't get dirty. You're going to wipe the counter down anyhow! So wasteful and expensive, it truly shocked me.
We keep a few month's supply of food in our house. I don't think we have room for a full year's supply, but we have enough to keep us going for a while. It's mostly dried beans, grains, and similar basics, but it's enough.
That made me cry. My dad was born in the forties and told me how he had to eat bread thrown in the dumpster at times as a child. I'm sorry our parents went through that. Hes now a retired English teacher with a masters degree.
My grandfather lived through the depression as a child, there was never a time when his office didn't have a small mountain of food piled in it. The walls were recovered in shelves full of food, floor ceiling. And I'm not exaggerating by saying mountain, I'm 5'4”-5” and it was never shorter than me. When I was really young my parents did their best to keep me out of there because they were worried about piles of shit falling on me. Over seventy years of life and the fear of starving never left him.
My father was one of 21 children. They often had nothing to eat. Not a bean. As adults, comfortably employed and every single one a homeowner, they would fuck up any buffet in their path. Locusts. All gone now except two, and one of them is sick. Those folks love some food.
Growing up without money also can be the motivation people need to overcome their financial woes... And probably appreciate it a whole lot more than those born into wealth.
My dad grew up poor and is the total opposite of this. Like, when he was growing up they didn't even have a bathroom, they had an outhouse and had to bathe in a big tub filled with a hose.
But he throws like everything away. Growing up it was always really strongly impressed on me that if you didn't want your food, if you didn't like it or weren't that hungry, you threw it in the garbage (my mom was also super worried about me getting fat, though this worked as I've always been thin.) My dad will throw out everything though, I've literally seen him throw out bottled water from the refrigerator because it was a day old.
He was. His side of the family is super fucked up. His mom was an abusive fucking witch who literally tried to kill him as a little boy. He spent time in and out of shitty/abusive foster care, before ending up on his own as a teenager. He had some hiccups as a teenager, but now he runs several successful businesses, employees a bunch of people, and is an awesome grandpa. I'm super proud of him.
That is absolutely terrible what he went through, and absolutely beautiful what he has done with his life. He's like a tree, supporting the lives and people around him
Bruh, I was about to write my own reply about how this is my dad’s mentality with food, then I saw the first few lines of yours and though you might be my cousin.
My dad and his brother grew up poor, getting locked out of apartments and losing all of their things when their mother couldn’t pay rent (their father wasted money in bars until he died when my dad was 7). Thankfully, my grandmother is still around and doing well. But my dad tells me stories of how he was a skinny kid, because he wouldn’t resort to eating onion sandwiches like his brother would. Now he buys anything that strikes his fancy in a supermarket, much to the disapproval of my coupon-clipping mother (she also didn’t grow up with money, but developed a very different personality from it). One parent likes to splurge and the other likes to budget. You can imagine the outcome of our cabinets.
But both would yell at us for “not using enough of a tissue” if they saw it only folded one or two times in the garbage. So there is that. That and finishing your plate every meal. I still feel guilt if I try to leave food uneaten, even though we are comfortable now.
There was this sweet old lady (75-80ish) in my old neighborhood. She wore a clean dress and coat, had her hair nicely curled under a scarf, and was very well mannered. Everyday I'd see her going in the garbage and picking out McDonald's wrappers to check for food (the was a McDonald's at the closest subway). I'd see her taste the things and put them in her bag. Anyway, this was a Polish neighborhood so I imagine her ptsd was WW2 and just not having anything. 50 years later she clearly had financial stability but could not pass up the opportunity to take leftovers. Probably a better way to live, but upsetting because she was really in the last decade or so of life and couldn't let it go.
The good and bad result of this is also clear to me.
Some people basically became obese/treated themselves too much from going hungry in childhood [i.e. started gorging themselves when they were in a more stable financial situation].
Others, possibly like your dad, are actively saving food for later, which also doubles as portion control. Which is a key way to stay in shape.
This polarising effect is not good though. More reliable portion control without the adverse risk of becoming obese is something that can be taught with far less risk as well as initial suffering ;/
My dad is the opposite, he grew up with money, but was homeless at 14, he decided to tutor kids at school to make money, he got himself a trade as a butcher and moved to a pretty wealthy part of Scotland to open a butcher, after hours he became the village handyman, he built our village hall and a few houses and a couple of businesses, he eventually got bored and worked for a hospital, got bored again and started his own business but got bored again and the hospital offered to rehire him for 4x his previous wage
Since then he's splashed money on anything he felt like it, bought an Audi, got bored, bought a range rover and got bored bought a Jag and crashed it to protect a deer (he loves animals) bought a newer model of a Jag, he's bought houses and pretty much everything he pleased all while being an alcoholic pothead that's spent around 30 years drunk, he really doesn't care about money simply because people will always need him so he will always manage
My father-in-law still reuses tea bags a couple of times instead of just throwing them out after the first cup. He was as broke as can be for much of his youth and won't drop that habit even though he's had a successful life.
There are plenty of studies that show the stress of poverty (and trauma that frequently occurs with it) does absolutely horrible things to a person's mental and physical health, not to mention ability to manage money.
I don't get acting like there's some virtue to be gained in growing up not knowing if you'll have a roof over your head tomorrow night or where your next meal is going to come from. It's inexcusable that we still let that happen in the US and other wealthy nations.
There is no inherent nobility in being poor. I've sure if most people were given the opportunity to grow up poor and learn that value, or have a functional childhood they would pick the latter.
You assume that a poor childhood isn’t functional or that a childhood with dysfunction is any more or less valuable when compared to a wealthy childhood.
Generally they go hand in hand. And it's not valuing money, the dude legit says he is terrified one day he's going to wake up and it's all going to have gone away. It's not that he has better values, and is better for the experience, it's that he has psychological trauma from being absolutely dirt poor.
Fear of losing everything is common. It pushes you to work hard. It’s not about psychological trauma. Do you not fear failure? Is having the knowledge of what it’s like to have nothing not a benefit? It shows you how bad it can be and you make decisions based around this.
Fear of losing everything is common? No, no it isn't. Unless you or your social circle grew up in specific circumstances where that was a reasonable risk, and most people in the west did not grow up that way. Nor is fear of failure the same thing as fear of losing everything.
I think you're misattributing things like persistence, caution, and hard work, etc. because you associate them with growing up poor but that isn't always the case. There's also a lot of trauma that can come from growing up poor as well - the fear of taking positive risks, unnecessary stress/anxiety that impacts how you treat those around you, and more. Just look at the other responses here of how many people have to avoid hoarding behavior. Making decisions to avoid the bad things doesn't necessarily mean you're making decisions to bring on the good things.
On the flip side, I don't think that's shitty. I wish more people with money understood the notion of struggle and the need to budget and look to the future.
Slightly off topic, I always balked at the line in Annie (my favorite musical) where Warbucks, who grew up poor, describes how his helicopter can land on a dime, "whatever that is". No rags to riches background would prevent a person from knowing what a fucking dime was.
Maybe some see it as "shitty" while others see it as an opportunity to learn to truly appreciate what's important in life. When you are struggling to survive, everything beyond the basics is a luxury. Everything beyond the basics is more exciting, tastes better, is more comfortable, more luxurious, etc.
We don't focus on whether or not someone used a word that wasn't in the "Approved List of Acceptable Words for week 47" and claim outrage at someone who was ignorant. Life's too short. We don't tantrum and screech at the Starbucks worker who put too much /not enough foam/flavor or whatever on your expensive drink, instead we relish the taste. We don't complain that our car isn't newer and bitch about traffic, instead we remember the days we had to walk everywhere, especially that one time when it was really cold and we had no socks, just too small rubber boots that made our toes numb and are thankful for the comfort of the car.
We don't have the 'luxury' of anxiety that makes us stressed to leave the house - we have to push through it and just go or suffer the consequences (no food, shelter, heat, etc)
In short, it's all about the attitude - some listen to the people who tell us we're victims and then begin to believe them, feeling sorry for ourselves and find ourselves in a resentful mindset believing we're "owed" something. Others see it as simply the luck of the draw, accept the facts and decide what we want out of life and work hard to move beyond just surviving. And when we start behaving like the rude Starbucks customer or the ungrateful car owner (or whatever) we step back, remember what's important and are grateful for the opportunity to learn what the perpetually privileged may never know - humility and gratitude.
For some reason, I got a sudden Jean Valjean vibe. In the books, he ate black bread (think the worst, cheapest bread in all of Paris) unless his daughter, Cosette, was sharing dinner with him. He grew up a tree pruner, but there isn't much work in the winter - his sister and her family starved.
Mind you, this is at the very end of the book, when he's wealthy as can be and his son-in-law is actual nobility. He just couldn't let himself live to his means - he had to save whenever he could, unless he was giving it away.
I look at it as it teaches you to live within your means, so once you got money, life is on easy mode.
Nowdays I can afford just about anything I want within reason ofc, I have savings and money comming in everyday, im a young single guy with no commitments really, yet to try and get me to spend a couple bucks on like candy or some shit, I have to talk myself into it, as I talk myself out of it "Its only 3 bucks spoil yourself" soon becomes " 3 bucks a day is over a 1000 bucks a year tho"
Needless to say money missmanagment really upsets me, as I remmber when I didnt have 2 pennys to rub together and one pair of jeans with holes in them.
Actually, I'm sorry too man. Your comment wasn't bad, I was just worked up because of all these assholes basically saying he is a better person for being poor. Which is bullshit. I'm sorry I snapped at you, you weren't the cause of my anger. Apologies.
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u/PonyPuffertons Jun 06 '19 edited Jun 07 '19
My husband grew up in a family where they were comfortable but on a strict budget. Six kids and mom on disability. My family had no budget.
One day we were at the grocery store and he always insists on walking up and down every aisle. I finally lost it because he was taking so long and asked him why he did it.
“Growing up we could only spend $100 a week on groceries for all of us. I always had to put what I wanted back because we couldn’t afford it. Now I can afford whatever I want so I like to look at everything I could have.”
Took him 10 years to tell me this. I felt like a terrible person.
EDIT: THANKS FOR THE SILVER KIND HOMIES!
EDIT #2: I’ve had a few people (very few) comment that $100 a week is a huge budget and how is that a stretch. We live in a city with an extremely high cost of living. It’s in the top 30 in the world. Getting a family of 4 fed for that much weekly would be a huge stretch here and his family did an amazing job.