How many of you grew up poor?

[rudeguy]

😱




I grew up poor too, single mother+1st gen immigrants

much respect to your mom and you!

I'm a typical white boy that grew up poor with a single mom. I can't even begin to imagine the racial bullshit you guys had to deal with besides the everyday struggles.

Mind me asking where from?

 

[rhino56]

yup 🙂 good times, lived in a chicken shed infested with rats at age 13, I would eat anything i could find, bark tastes like hell no matter how hungry you are just so ya know, one time ate a box of taco shells that were just completely covered in green mold, surprisingly they weren't bad at all. by 16 i could hardly stand up from malnutrition. skin and bones i started realizing nobody was coming to help me. i rested for 3 days drinking as much water as i could from melted snow, and hitch hiked to FL. from near upper MI, i was lucky and a nice guy in a camaro bought me sandwich because i could hardly hold myself up. lived on the streets for about 4 months until i got a job and saved enough money for an apartment. been doing great since about 25 y/o im 43 now.

 

[FoBoT]

no
we were solid typical middle class , although my dad was/is super cheap, he never want to spend any money

 

[TehMac]

Grew up in an orphanage. Only thing I had were books.

🙁


Still, books are good.

 

[zanejohnson]

grew up pretty poor until about high school..

and when i say pretty poor i mean living in trailors, and other peoples spare bedrooms, my dad was an alcky and a druggie, so even though he made decent money we still struggled... ehh, it was more emotional damage then anything.. when i was about 15, 16 my dad started making some real money and we had nice things... parents moved to a country club.. the nine yards, it was nice but yeah, i know about scraping and scrimping too...

 

[lyssword]

much respect to your mom and you!

I'm a typical white boy that grew up poor with a single mom. I can't even begin to imagine the racial bullshit you guys had to deal with besides the everyday struggles.

Mind me asking where from?

Ukraine. And yeah, I did experience some xenophobic bs. At the moment I don't feel like I belong to either my immigrant community (most of them being hardcore religious while I became agnostic) nor natives (because I spend too much time on comp instead of meeting people).

 

[zerocool84]

This is Anandtech. We all grew up rich.

 

[Sumguy]

My dad came to this country (legally) not knowing a word of English. Same with my mom. Shit was pretty rough for a while, but they make a decent living.

I wouldn't say we were poor, but if I graduate with an EE degree as planned I'll be making quite a bit more than both of them combined with the lowest predicted starting salary.

 

[IronWing]

I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin' on the porch with my family, singin' and dancin' down in Mississippi.

 

[Cal166]

I had a poor childhood but my parents were very hard working and always had a roof over our heads. We would wear clothes that was given by family and friends. I remember wearing a unisex winter coat that's more on the women's side for years.

 

[Jadow]

Never thought we were poor growing up, but recently when cleaning my parents basement I found some old 1040s from the 80s.

They got by and raised 2 kids with less than 20 grand a year many years in the 80s.

Now they're both VERY well set up for retirement.

 

[rh71]

not poor but my mom worked 3 jobs at the same time to keep us in a middle class home. She would often work till midnight then do it again at 7am.

 

[Zebo]

Not poor but latch key. My mom was going to school getting her masters and phd most of the time and my dad was a small businessman who worked from 6am-9pm six days a week. He retired at 45 long after I was gone so I missed out a lot.

I was second oldest of 8 so the younger ones got more attention but basically it was Lord of the Flies growing up around my house.

I swore to my kids I'd be a husband and father first before anything due to my poor experiences with my parents.

 

[gorcorps]

Not poor but more limited than many friends I had at the time. Still more luxuries than others these days though

 

[Howard]

Middle class, I suppose. I never really wanted for anything.

 

[JimmiG]

We weren't exactly rich, but because I grew up on a self sufficient farm in the Swedish countryside, we didn't have to buy a lot of vegetables, meat or fish. That made it possible for my parents to spend almost as much money on other things as anyone living and working in the city. The advantage being that my parents worked from home and could spend time with us kids. That's more important than expensive toys, luxury holidays etc. IMO. I wouldn't have wanted my parents to be away at work from 7am to 6pm just so we could own a nicer car or travel to exotic destinations every year.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I remember making powdered milk, wearing high waters o plenty, cramped shoes and mac and cheese a great deal with peanut butter sandwiches. We lived fairly meagerly until around 10 or so when mom got a career and my father got on at the nuke plant. Interesting. At the time, I did not think we were poor, because I went to school with people who had dirt floors and were even poorer than us...but they were all very good people, helped out at the chili suppers and with others in need. quite different today...my kids have everything, so do we...my wife and i are quite charitable. getting older now and reflecting back on things... i grew up at a place where as a kid you could go off somewheres for hours and hours...did not have to worry about being abducted...we built forts outside, went fishing, camping and swam in anything with water in it...bleh...lol...

perspective is good...sometimes i think kids these days need a great dose of it.

Ok, I grew up in what some might say was a lower-third class household. Parents were essentially irresponsible because they had way too many children for their household income. That probably could have been said had they had only 2-3 kids, instead they had 11.

Parents never finished basic school. Father served in WW2 (oldest brother in Vietnam). There was more than a generational gap between myself and my parents. Summers were hot in Providence, and winters were cold.

Imagine living in ~700 SqFt home that was built around the turn of the century, broken single-pane windows that interior moisture allowed 1/4-3/8" thick ice to form on the insides!

Milk was a scarcity. Dad figured it was a luxury--mind you he grew up during the 20's and 30's. So, his views on life as to what was and was not important was something estrange. I do not know of any of my siblings that finished highschool. I personally never got to HS.

And while I never lived in the home with all of my siblings, the end result of constantly sharing living space made me grow up, work hard, buy a nice house (more than four times the size of what I grew up in), have no kids, and move on with my life.

The only way life could have been harder on me is if some sort of physical or mental disability were added to the above. Growing up in my childhood wasted a lot of time, certainly caused a lot of missed opportunities, but I would not go back change it for anything.

Simply put: I love the women I am married to, I have good employment, and a crappy house that is much, much better than what I was raised in. Heck, Forest Gump had it better than I did! 😀

 

[aircooled]

Not welfare poor, but lunch ticket poor.

 

[JEDI]

sometimes i wished i grew up poor. Everything was handed to me on a silver platter.

I'm not appreciating all the things i have now. 🙁

$$$ doesnt make me happy, yet i cant get myself to join the peace corps and help those that dont even have clean water to drink

 

[ahenkel]

We grew up bottom lower middle class. Wasn't horrible though. I got the things I needed not always what I wanted though.

 

[moshquerade]

We grew up bottom lower middle class. Wasn't horrible though. I got the things I needed not always what I wanted though.

I would say this was my scenario too. There were 5 kids and my mother was a SAHM. Wouldn't change a thing about it though.

 

[lokiju]

Nope, my story is basically the complete opposite.

Parents were considered rich/wealthy when I was a kid till the age of about 10 when we were not longer rich/wealthy and became middle class.

I didn't know the difference as a kid between any of it and only realized it when I was older.

 

[Chunkee]

I think the problem with asking these kinds of questions of multi-generational posters is that the definitions have changed drastically over time. Although I grew up middle class, attending college at that time was definitely upper class. Kinda like now. 🙂

but this is good, because it depicts differences in perspective of what poverty is for others.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I grew up dirt poor... I was 12-13 and remember thawing out frozen pie crusts to eat with jelly from jelly packets from who knows where.. Ugh... single mom, messed up situation. My dad (who wasn't around although it was not the typical dad ditched mom+kids) instilled in me to focus on making money and not allowing myself to get into the same situation he and my mom got into (kids too young, divorced, etc)

I started working 40+ hrs a week at 15, got IT internship at ~16, own apartment at 17 (emancipated), bought house (regular 30yr loan w/ down payment) at 19-20, focused on saving and not getting into debt, etc.


So even though I grew up poor it taught me what a dollar is worth and that you have to work hard to survive. I look around at how a lot of people act that were spoiled as a kid and realize that I'm lucky to have grown up the way I did.

There are also a lot of... experiences.. you miss out on being spoiled. Growing up poor generally means you have a lot of street smarts. I don't know if it's naive or what but a lot of people that were spoiled as kids seem to have no clue what is going on around them (see username)

Edit:

I'm 26 to give you a comparison of age..

 

[Chunkee]

my father grew up very poor...other side of the tracks label...shared bed, bedroom, coal heat, pumped water...never saw a doc or dentist until he joined navy nuke sub program. raised by grandparents and aunts..his father just left and his mom was not around much either...house was like 8 or 900 sq ft. it no longer exists, but i visited their several times...they made it work though...i think that is why he never throws things a way...he is retired and doing fine now...i remember our house looked like an hold junk yard...we fixed everything ourselves..never took it to repair business or had anyone come out...i learned so much from my pops...i remember replacing the water main from the meter to the house and digging out that trench..lol...amazing.....now, my kids horror stories include....? nada. I do however provide for them a strong work ethic...they hate pulling weeds, but i make them do it...my son asked, how come you just do not use round up... i told him, i am a better father to teach you to do things you would prefer not to do...large lesson here. 🙂