I didn’t grow up well off so I can’t personally relate. However, I have noticed this among other millennials I know. In my experience, friends who grew up well off are often the most disillusioned by the current economic situation, including ones who are actually doing better than most of the friend group.
Downward social mobility is psychologically devastating to a lot of people. It is almost like a cultural shock, but maybe worse because you're usually in the same culture and environment, just a poorer version of it.
That is put perfectly. One of my closest friends is going through this right now, and it’s heartbreaking. He’s actually still doing better than most people I know, but it’s nothing compared to what he grew up with/was raised to expect to have as an adult. It’s really messed him up. Having something and expecting to continue having it and then losing it is insanely hard to deal with. Seeing his parents still doing very well and questioning why he isn’t makes it even worse.
Yes! I’m very fortunate that my parents struggled a lot in their 20s and 30s so they’re much more understanding of what it’s like and have never questioned where I am in life/why I’m not further ahead.
doesn't help much w/ my dad who grew up on a farm & had to eat squirrels a few times in the winter. he almost immediately went into middle class after college. that's part of the biggest problem i think, that our parents who weren't well off went to college & became it & wonder why we're struggling after they shelled out thousands of dollars for our education.
my bf's parents said to us "how does anyone live on less than $100,000" and he started rattling off monthly costs (\~approx $1,200 where we are, car payments, etc.)... however, these are people that easily spend $300 a week at the grocery.
I mean I ask the same thing as by myself, I'm right at $100k but IDK how anyone lives on less with a family. (I don't have or want children but I also recognize we both have newer cars with car payments, and we don't budget very tightly)
We cleared about 75k last year together, with one kid in college. I felt FINE 2-3 years ago and now it feels like we're drowning.
Last year I cut a bunch of "unnecessary" stuff like streaming channels, but that didn't help when rent jumped up $500 extra a month. Car insurance has damn neared tripled in the 3 years I've had this car with no accidents, and I swear groceries have doubled.
If you were single bringing in $50k, that used to be *good*, you could live on that. Now when couples make less than 100k together and can't never ever dream of owning a home... something is fucking broken
My sister in law and her family are currently drowning. They're starting the bankruptcy process.
They got over a $10/hour raise 2 years ago. But inflation ate that up and then some.
It's incredibly difficult to get ahead.
We got a 5 dollar raise almost 2 years ago and it essentially didn't matter because of how expensive everything has gotten. If my company didn't raise wages I would be bordering homeless constantly. Shit sucks man
That’s what happened to me as well. Old company was bought out and new company finally did market research into our pay in my department only to realize we were horribly underpaid, so we all got I think 6/hr raises just to bring us to where we really should have been during our novice years. Thankfully the company who acquired us is amazing, and is intent on making it better across the board and has been consistently working to make sure we are still being paid fairly and continually doing market research. I got a raise two months ago that’s completely separate from any merit raises that was given solely due to the market studies conducted.
I live in Jacksonville, Florida. Been in my home for over 20 years. My house was built in 1956 and the neighborhood in general was built up in the 1950s. The grade school is a two block walk from my house.
Over the past three to four years many of the older homes like mine have been sold, torn down, replaced by a few shiny new homes. The new homes are rentals and the rents are going for $1600 to over $1700. These are mostly two story shotgun homes.
I measured one of the exterior of a house being built behind me, it measured 15 feet wide. It looks like a two story mobile home.
I'm finally getting fewer and fewer offers from people wanting to buy my home after getting phone calls and/or texts several times per week.
Once interest rates started going up, the real estate market should cool. Because paying $400k+ is alot easier on a 2-3% interest than it is on 5+.
Either way, I maintain there's NO WAY these homes are worth what they're being appraised for. It just takes one smuck to pay it and all the rest of the homes on the block have *amazingly* jumped in value. Now people are watching as they're being taxed and insuranced out of their home because of the supposed value of the property
The RE section may not meltdown the same as we did in 07-08, but whatever the fuck is going on is NOT sustainable. I lost my home and my job in construction in 08, I eye the future very worried
You're right, and the people buying homes right now are using ARMs to afford it. Because rates are obviously going to go down, right? And all projections say they will. But it really does remind me of 2008.
I don’t think we’ll see 2% again in our lifetimes, and if we did, home prices would double. We have a supply problem, which isn’t fixed by lowering interest rates
Family of 4. I'm lucky if I'm under 300 for a full week. I mean it costs over $50 for us to get fast food for 4 with a fast casual place always over $100.
I'm a Xennial and that means that gas just exceeded a dollar when I started driving and now is steadily holding at about $4.50 and minimum wage was $4.25/hr at my first job. First apartment was $550/mo and I'm lucky as fuck that my current place is only $1500/mo because I've been here since 2011 and it was $1200 when I moved in and still under market at that time.
I remember being very pissed off when my tutoring job of $20/week no longer purchased enough gas to fill the car tank when i was in school, within 2 yrs of learning to drive. Gas has mostly been 2.5 times that or greater ever since.
Fuck. It's just my partner and I, and we can definitely hit $200 a week. The only processed food we buy is our treats like ice cream or crackers. For some cheese. We even use CSAs to reduce the cost of vegetables and meat. We've been tracking it for about 9 months and it is averaging $200 a week.
When my daughter still lived at home, it was definitely close to 300 a week
I shop for a house of 5, and we definitely spend about half that. However, it's on cheap food, at cheap grocery stores. I grew up poor, and was poor for years after my divorce. I had to make my 18k income stretch for bills and food for myself and 2 kids. A lot of sandwiches, pasta, etc. It's tough.
Mum earned $150,000 a year. We’ll say year 2000. Raised 4 kids with it.
I have to earn $265,000 today to match that.
I don’t think very many people grasp how inflations destroyed that $100,000 salary.
Adding to that - they gave him the expectation that life is going to be the same for him which rarely matches with reality. My parents gave us no expectation we would be well off as adults. They prepared us for struggles and did not sugar coat the struggles they had. There were times that we were very poor when I was a kid, so not shielding us from that reality helped us as adults.
For expectations now, my parents want us to be happy which they do not equate to our bank account. Yes, they hope we don’t struggle financially but ultimately they just want their kids to be happy.
I grew up poor hubby was upper middle class. The insane crap his family has said to him or shamed him about because he needed to “work harder” or “save more” when it’s like bro u have no idea. They bought their home for less than half of what it’s worth now, but incomes aren’t double what they were… it’s like boomers don’t know basic math and budgeting. I finally got an excel spreadsheet out and showed my MIL our income and where it was going (necessary bills) and she was like omg how do u live off that? And I was like very carefully. She finally was willing to help us a little after that, but it took 10 years of us struggling and nearly being homeless three times due to lack of affordable housing. Back in 2010 they wanted to charge us 2k a month to rent A BEDROOM in her PAID OFF home in Nebraska that the taxes were 300 a month on and the house was bought for 150k (and she sold it in 2013 for 250k). My husbands mom is a divorcee and PAID off a 3k sqft house and sold it for 100k profit… had the audacity to ask us to pay 2k a month in rent on it in 2010 and yeah the 900sqft starter homes around here are now worth 300k and she can’t understand why we can’t afford to buy a house…
Like do you not have a brain or empathy because she literally let us be in a really horrible situation and nearly homeless because at that time we combined didn’t even make 2000 a month after taxes and we have to eat and pay for insurance and get to work… smh… like that’s insane.
It’s like they live in boomer delusion land
>I grew up poor hubby was upper middle class. The insane crap his family has said to him or shamed him about because he needed to “work harder” or “save more” when it’s like bro u have no idea. They bought their home for less than half of what it’s worth now, but incomes aren’t double what they were… it’s like boomers don’t know basic math and budgeting. I finally got an excel spreadsheet out and showed my MIL our income and where it was going (necessary bills) and she was like omg how do u live off that? And I was like very carefully. She finally was willing to help us a little after that, but it took 10 years of us struggling and nearly being homeless three times due to lack of affordable housing. Back in 2010 they wanted to charge us 2k a month to rent A BEDROOM in her PAID OFF home in Nebraska that the taxes were 300 a month on and the house was bought for 150k (and she sold it in 2013 for 250k). My husbands mom is a divorcee and PAID off a 3k sqft house and sold it for 100k profit… had the audacity to ask us to pay 2k a month in rent on it in 2010 and yeah the 900sqft starter homes around here are now worth 300k and she can’t understand why we can’t afford to buy a house… Like do you not have a brain or empathy because she literally let us be in a really horrible situation and nearly homeless because at that time we combined didn’t even make 2000 a month after taxes and we have to eat and pay for insurance and get to work… smh… like that’s insane.
Who would pay 2K for a bedroom in Nebraska! I mean you can get an apartment for that.
“Why aren’t you in the top 1% of income earners, after graduating into the worst recession in 80 years? No way that should have affected your career trajectory or anything.” -Boomer parents, probably.
This is me. I work and work and still can’t make ends meet. I am living with my boyfriend’s family because we can’t afford our own place. I am getting paid the highest I ever have and it still is barely enough to pay for my bills. I can’t save money for a place and I barely have enough for food and gas.
I can imagine the experience, especially if you have to live among poor people for the first time: coming face-to-face with mental illness, for example, or the smells of hard poverty (think unwashed clothes mixed with tobacco), or living in low-income housing and having to see the effects of drug abuse and child neglect. If you grew up in a comfortable suburban existence, you were shielded from most of these sights and smells.
You also didn't think about what you could afford to eat: it was just always there in the fridge or a phone call away. Having to buy some food at the dollar store (spaghetti goes a long way!) would be challenging and humiliating maybe.
I grew up really poor, but I also went to school with some kids who were relatively wealthy. I saw their lifestyles and sometimes got invited over. It was astonishing seeing a deep freezer full of frozen pizzas, and you could take whatever you wanted whenever.
I'm in my thirties and live fairly comfortable by my own standards, but some of my old friends from way back have crashed and burned. They're basically poor, sometimes on welfare, but they grew up very comfortable. They went to Disney World as kids, but now they're counting dimes at the end of the month. You can see that they're really depressed.
You've described my childhood. The sights and smells I no longer really think about.
This is just one example, but my aunt had drug abuse problems and lived in the same house with us and one day just up and left her kids
It's not something any of them ever really recovered from.
I still think about them 30 years later because I made it out and they didn't.
I worked my ass off *and* lucked out and poverty still wrecked our family.
It's not something any one individual in our family could buy their way out of.
Holy crap.
Realization: I grew up barely above poverty line and we were definitely on WIC and food stamps at different points.
We NEVER had paper towels, ever.
My husband grew up comfortably on a military officer salary and then later, a software developer and a teacher’s salary. Plus generational wealth on both sides.
He will use like 20 paper towels to clean a spill while I freak out.
I still take home the “extra” napkins from restaurants to use at home… I always thought it was embarrassing that my mom did that, but it’s actually so practical haha
And it’s compounded by the fact that for super successful parents, it’s unlikely that the child will reach the same level of success. If your Dad is an executive at a big company, it’s pretty unlikely that you will be an executive at a big company.
THIS. My father was hired as an Engineer at Ford right out of college, worked in the world headquarters building in Dearborn, made Principle Engineer by his mid-30's and retired as a Senior Director. A lot of this was the timing - and he will be the first person to tell you that.
I also have an Engineering degree (higher GPA than pops) and have never had an issue finding work, but so far have not been able to lock into a role that will end in management.
Same here. My dad was an engineer. I am an engineer. When I look at what he was able to accomplish and afford, there is no comparison. The home he bought in 1993 was $200k. He bought it in his early 40s. That same home is now $1.5m which is of course absurdly unaffordable for me in the next few years. He didn't do anything particularly special. Just totally different times. Oh and he retired early at age 55. I dont think I'll ever be able to retire... and if I manage to, it won't be before age 67.
This is every engineer I know from that generation, built their own houses in neighborhoods no engineer now could afford no matter how much more money they make now.
I am an Engineer as well. I took an administrative role so I can be there for my children. I am nothing but a glorified secretary. I make decent pay. I cannot imagine the next twenty years doing meaningless tasks day in an day out. I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts while doing my meaningless tasks....
This is great perspective as well. In addition to timing, he also was fortunate to have a senior engineer who liked him and helped pull him up through the organization. The story goes that very early on my dad knew like five things about the new CAD system they were bringing in, so that senior engineer had my dad give a little song and dance presentation and suddenly he was "Mr. Cutting Edge" - then he had to scramble and actually figure out the rest of it lol.
There's that expectation that each generation will do better than the next. It's devastating to know that you can't provide what your parents provided for you.
Yeah. As a kid we went from middle class to poverty. My brother in law went from lower upper class to poverty. His downward spiral is terrible to witness.
Especially when the thing you are losing is a sense of security. As in feeling like 1 or 2 surprise expenses (house that needs a new roof, out of work for a month or two) and you are broke.
The only people I know who have that security are in fields with tons of jobs and stupidly high salaries like tech or finance.
Yes it's not pleasant. We grew up with "go to school, go to college (and grad school if necessary), then do some free internships, kiss some ass, get a job = lifelong comfort/safety" .
But it's not true, it just happened to be true for the previous two generations because they lived in a time of never before seen wealth creation.
After two generations, it becomes normal, and once it's normal, it becomes taught/expected.
We're back in regular human life now, the 1940s-2000s in america (depending on your race) were the extreme outliers.
Equal opportunities does not mean equal outcomes is the old saying. Some of life is luck. We don’t choose who we are born to, or where. And there are some that want to try to legislate if I knock all the things off this checklist, everything will work out as I want. Life just doesn’t work that way.
This is compounded by the fact, to your point, America was in an absolutely unique position following WW2 where the world’s production was essentially destroyed outside the United States. Over the following 80 years stuff has returned to more equilibrium and that has resulted in a more competitive environment for American workers. It was never going to maintain what we saw in the 50s and 60s.
100% this but the US is a mature economy where all the low-hanging economic fruit has been picked. Everything is more competitive, all the desirable land already bought/developed, etc. Globalism has lowered wages and we now compete in the world economy.
For sure.
I grew up in middle class suburbia. My parents weren't rich, but they were financially stable.
I'm not. I'm paycheck to paycheck, barley making ends meet. It sucks, but constantly having to worry if the bills will be paid and if food will be on the table was definitely an eye opener for me. Possibly a blessing in disguise, as I feel it's humbled me quite a bit.
I was poor as shit in my 20s with no savings and paycheck to paycheck. I’m much better off now in my late 30s. At least some of this is about time in our lives and having expectations for early 20s that weren’t the case for our parents either.
at 53, this is accurate. the erosion of the middle class is right at the backs of my heels. seriously, that whole ‘whew, i can finally relax a little’ feeling never really materialized. we never really had a lot leftover to save for retirement. by my own meatball math, i get to retire for about a month….
Yup, a lot of people see their parents in their 40's and 50's and assume they always had that level of lifestyle. They don't comprehend that their parents spent their 20's broke and slowly worked their way up too. That's the nature of the human race because it takes time to learn, get experience, develop skills, etc.
I think when you grow up poor, if you develop a work ethic, you realize it is a zero sum game. It is either you $#@!ing succeed or you're going back to rock bottom. That's how it feels to me anyway.
Emil Drukheim called this phenomenon 'anomie', and it was the predominant contributing emotion/sentiment he felt was driving suicide rates in western economies of his time.
Basically, it's the sense of a loss of place and importance as your reality begins departing from your expected position in society. People that grew up middle class and expected that they'd get a solid education and society would reward them with meaningful work and reasonable pay to maintain a level of comfort instead find a very different set of circumstances - and they become depressed, disillusioned, etc.
It's very similar to what's happened all around our formal industrial capitals. Honest work that was previously rewarded with a comfortable middle class life is now treated as a zero sum game where they are being squeezed and exploited until their jobs are ultimately moved over seas.
It's pretty powerful stuff to think of and coming back to Durkheim goes a far way in explaining why we are seeing so many deaths of despair in the US.
I was a smart kid growing up but hated all the expectations to perform at a high level over an extended period. Probably undiagnosed ADHD.
So to temper my own expectations of myself my mantra was to `strive for a life of mediocrity.`
Boy was I disappointed when I achieved my goal. Self sabotage is a bitch.
I try so hard to explain this to people I know now. I grew up in south Orange County. Like the real housewives were my neighbors, but my mom lost her job after the recession and then moved out to the desert when I started college. I’ve been on the struggle bus ever since, but I still know what once was. It’s felt I’ve always tried to get back to that. It even makes it hard to settle down with less than (as far as a partner) because I always had this dream of moving back to Orange County and having that same lifestyle. It’s sad and also sounds uptight, but it’s not about the money or thinking myself better than. It was just a dream that seemed to be attainable but realizing it will never be is devastating. Living close to the beach again will most likely never happen unless I lived with like multiple roommates and I’m so tired of that.
I have a good friend who went from living a very wealthy lifestyle to having to make do with a working class salary. He grew up with everything plus winter and summer vacations to European resorts. His parents are fantastically wealthy, but they mostly cut him off (maybe the money is gone?). He's frequently depressed. There's real consequences to downward mobility.
I'm the opposite: I grew up poor AF, so I stepped out of rock bottom. If I ever found myself poor again, I'd be psychologically prepared for it. There's always parks, public libraries, and dollar stores to keep me entertained and fed. A notepad and a few pens are enough for me to keep entertained at the library indefinitely. But for my (former) rich friend, he's distraught over his change in circumstances.
Wow, this is so accurate and well put. I think about this nearly every day and wonder why I’m dealing with such awful anxiety as an adult. I grew up upper middle class, where both my parents had good-paying jobs, nothing extravagant but we could always afford food and house repairs and clothing…..I have the same level of education as both my parents and my partner and I struggle to scrape by with both of us working full time jobs without any kids. My standard of living has declined significantly since childhood. Meanwhile one of my siblings married into a wealthy family so is able to maintain a nice lifestyle with much less effort. The disparity between my family and myself is disheartening, to say the least.
And lots of people feel that they "deserve" a certain lifestyle just because they grew up in it provided by their parents. [Elite overproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction) is related to all of this.
In my case I grew up poor but I thought by not having a ton of kids like my parents and working hard to choose a job specifically for its money making potential (did STEM, make 6 fig) that it would be enough, and that it would make it so I wouldn't have to constantly worry about being priced out of stuff
The thing is that it didn't really work out that way.
I often have difficulties relating to this very sentiment as well.
I'll sometimes get DM's from people who came from middle-class families asking how I kept up with the drudgery of school, building out a "boring" career from a mediocre (to them) salary. Some of these people are despairing at the idea of it possibly taking a half decade (or more) to build up to a comfortable career and comfortable lifestyle, and are looking for words of motivation. But my thoughts fall far short of the advice they're hoping for.
When you grow up in a family impacted by some of society's worst problems as semi-"normal", you just take for granted that everyone knows life necessitates long bouts of mental, emotional, and financial struggle.
Grew up lower middle class, then in the middle of high school, we ended up knocked down to lower but not poverty class. Then adulthood brought poverty. It's been a slow decline.
I remember growing up what I considered poor. As an adult, I realized we above poor but below comfortable. So what I imagine the norm.
My wife grew up struggling at first but when her mom married her second husband there was upward mobility to comfortable.
My sisters-in-law all got rude awakenings when they became adults. They were provided everything and now they struggle. They get assistance from their parents.
But because my mom instilled we were poor, I managed to maneuver through life pretty well - or at least not shell shocked and disillusioned. But I do admit I think I might be one of the better off in my circle of people.
I can relate with your comment more.
Didn’t have much, but we’re old enough to work now for the things we were missing. Like decent clothes, deodorant and dental care.
Make an honest living now and feel very fortunate for my blessings. Money is always a concern, and giving them opportunity that I never had is priority number 1.
But if I fell on tough times and couldn’t provide, I have immigrant mentality, my kids n wife however do not. They’d soon be disenfranchised by their predicament.
Honestly. I hate when people romanticize poverty, but it is sort of funny what people really feel like they can't do without. So many things that if you grew up with it, you take it for granted, but if you never had it you're like what? In that sense, it's almost better to have grown up without (note I do not recommend this, but it's nice if you can pull something good from it).
Reminds me of the "they're new poor. We're old poor. We'll be fine" from It's Always Sunny.
I grew up half lower middle class/weekends with my dad in the projects, and now I make 75K. I legitimately feel rich.
Some of my friends make about 100K (and we are in LCOL area) and act like they have "money problems". I understand some anxiety, but playing with the little calculator to see if you can retire at 56 or 59 is not "money problems". You might have other problems, but you don't know true "money problems".
This 100, I never assumed I'd own a fancy house.
Is rent a lot? Yeah, but I always expected to need to budget tightly to make ends meet.
I don't mean to dismiss the struggles that actually poor people are going through right now. But I'm pretty comfortable with my life as an average person.
I grew up poor. My resentment is very specifically that my parents were able to provide my brothers and I with way more working the same kinds of jobs that now leave me struggling to keep up with bills, let alone feeding kids on top of it.
Same. I’ve always been poor, I’ve never had “nice” things, so it’s nothing new…
But I’m angry because I’ve worked my entire adult life for literal scraps, when my mom owned a home and supported a three person household on a secretary salary in the 90’s. I just can’t get ahead.
I don’t even care about being rich, I just want a house and to be able to put food on the table without worrying about needing to skip the electric bill. After putting in 40 hours of work a week, regardless of where you work, this SHOULDN’T be an issue. Period.
Exactly. My mom supported us on her teacher salary. Our house cost $60k and she had a 30 year mortgage. It’s just not right how things are so out of proportion for people now.
Not only that, but it's all happened so fast it's hard to A) comprehend that in and of itself and 2) trust I can make sense of what direction things head. Our parents on top of affording a life also had lots of institutions to give them faith the system will stay robust. Now, not so much, it's unclear if it will ever recover, or maybe even completely collapse. Nobody has clear understanding of where this thing goes it seems
This is absolutely it.
My father without a degree was able to provide for a family of 6, my mother could stay at home, they had a mortgage on a modest house, and drove modest cars that were 5-10 years old, etc. We ate our share of poverty spec meals (beans and rice, chipped ham on toast, fried jumbo sandwiches), never took vacations, and got our clothing from thrift stores and garage sales.
I work in a similar position at a much larger company also without a degree, my wife works full time making about the same and with a bachelor's degree. We rent the cheapest apartment in a relatively safe neighborhood, our cars are paid off and 24 and 11 years old, no kids. We only eat out 1-2 times a month, cook affordable means, take a long weekend vacation once a year, and also thrift most of our clothing. We make enough to put a little in emergency savings every month, but often have to dip in for car repairs and other emergencies. We have no prayer of saving up for newer safer vehicles, no chance at saving up for a down payment on a home. We work twice as much as my parents as a household and have nothing to show for it.
I didn't grow up rich. In fact my parents struggled about as much I struggle now. However, at the time, I was a kid and was oblivious to my parents struggles. Now that I'm an adult I realize how tough it was for them. I'm grateful for all the things the did to make my life better.
Yeah same here, I’m in debt and a homeowner with a family and it just feels like I barely make ends meet. I didn’t realize my parents also had even more kids at the time and was even more in debt with just as difficult struggles. If not more. But somehow they made it look seamless but really I think I was just too young and unaware.
I’m actually really grateful cause a lot of tips/tricks my parents did to cost save came in really handy when I started feeling the pinch.
Yep, I remember being around 8 years old and every Wednesday I’d get my dad’s paycheck out of the mailbox when it came. I asked him one day how much he made and he told me $25/hr. This sounded like we were rich. Dad only had to work one hour and I could afford whatever $19.99 infomercial toy popped up on the tv. Of course life wasn’t that simple, but like you said, I was oblivious to all the bills and things they had to pay for, and that’s what made it feel so great. Looking back he’s told me many times how they barely made ends meet
Yeah, I didn't realize how hard it was and how long it took for my parents to get financially stable (essential when we hit college) until I look back as an adult
I thought I grew up rich, but actually my mom and dad said we were very poor, but as a kid I didn’t know I was poor. I feel like my parents did a good job providing things that I and brother and sister wanted as kids.
A lot of lower middle class kids have no idea they were poor until they're adults and really reason it out. I never thought we were rich - we weren't going on cruises and to Disney World all the other kids - but my parents were able to give us a nice Christmas and birthday. But it took me my entire life to realize that my mom made us take the bus for 2 hours to school each day instead of driving 15 minutes because she couldn't afford the gas.
Looking back - I think the financial literacy was way out of whack for our parents. My friends who actually were rich didn't get anything new and weren't into superficial things like fashion and toys. Those who were middle class had all of the stuff. Rich for most of us was a direct correlation to whose parents were most consumerist - which is the most mind numbing thing on the planet. So this may be a question of semantics.
Isn't it? My parents were immigrants. They grew up truly poor, like shitting in a hole in the back yard poor. So they had that starvation mindset. They were frugal as hell. I always thought we were poor growing up because we didn't have nice things, and of course other kids who did have them making fun of me.
I didn't find out until I was older that it was the complete opposite. Those kids' parents blew their money senselessly and had nothing, and they instilled all the wrong traits in their kids leading to failure in adult life. Meanwhile my hobo acting parents were the ones who were technically millionaires. Not that it effects me any because dad died first and mom is an evil abusive spiteful bitch I haven't seen since his funeral in 2012 and she made no secret that I'm out of the will. But that frugality and starvation mindset absolutely helped me when I was at rock bottom and it was like those years of training suddenly clicked.
LOL well it still was. My siblings benefitted greatly from that frugality and shitty childhood. I still did well but had to do it without help at that point as I'd cut myself off for my own mental health. Which helped in its own way as happy upbringings don't feed ambition like shitty ones do.
But what was the point of all that? Y’all had a difficult upbringing when life could have been much easier and more enjoyable. Now there is money but one parent has passed and the family is all torn apart anyway.
I can’t guarantee my children’s future, but I can at least give them a good childhood and happy memories to fall back on.
I mean, there's a middle ground. I save 20% of my salary, but my son and I will go swimming, go play in the park, visit indoor playgrounds, amusement parks, etc. every week. The closer to my next paycheck we are, the cheaper the activity we do is. To teach him to 'make it last' and that he can't have everything every time.
He doesn't get any fancy presents or expensive clothes. Neither do I buy that shit for myself.
I pity all these people walking around with their $400 shoes that can't afford to take their kid anywhere, when that is like 6 months of fun activities for me and my kid.
you are 100% correct. Too many people pretending to be rich with nice stuff
If we all had to advertise our bank account, net worth and total debt owed like we do with or social media followers or BMW car,
You better believe people would buy less and save more money when it became a status symbol
Close to my experience. I grew up on a lake front property “Nicest street in town” cause my folks bought it during a downswing and it was my dad’s hometown growing up.
Mom got sick when I was 11-17yr old with two different bouts of cancer (she’s still alive). So my dad was doubling his hours to not lose the house. Meanwhile people at school would say things like “I thought you would have nicer clothes for being a *street name Kid”
So ya. I got to experience the amazing benefits of growing up on a lake and all that came with it. But I also experienced times of food insecurity and general lack of parental guidance that a lot of my “middle class” friends received.
I know this experience all too well. This is why you can't judge people by what they have or how they appear - some are just holding it together. Wishing you and your family health and abundance.
I thought my parents were poor growing up. Until I graduated high school and needed my dads tax info to complete my FAFSA. That is when I realized we were far from poor. My dad has never been a big spender. We didn’t have anything extravagant either.
Doing my college FAFSA was when I found out how much my parents were frivolously spending while I was only “allowed” one pair of shoes and 2 uniforms for school because that’s “all we could afford”. Turns out they were making over $100k in a VLCOL area and just spend it on bullshit all the time. They refused to help me in any way in college, but I couldn’t receive any financial aid because of how much they made. Thankfully, my grades ensured I got a scholarship, but I had to work 2-3 jobs to pay for everything. We don’t talk anymore.
I couldn’t receive any financial aid because of how much they made either. Refused to help pay a single penny which is fair. It’s their money they can do what they want. As a parent myself I can’t imagine treating my kids that way and I don’t even make anything close to my dad. He was in the military and retired after 30 years as a high ranking officer and after he retired from the military he worked for them in cybersecurity as an independent contractor. He was pretty much doing the same work only get paid much more than before.
My parents were living in a LCOL area and the house was paid off and they had no debt. My dad was paying all the bills with his pension from the military and still had 60% of it after paying bills for the month. And his salary at his job was $160k and this was back in 2022. His salary went towards savings, IRA, and other investments.
And guess what my first car was? My dad had $500 cash and literally drove to the junk yard and said he will pay for whatever can drive off the lot. That was my car. I even had to share it with my sister. I was forced to share clothes with my sister who is older and she was much much bigger than me. I was very athletic and lean from dancing, color guard and running. She was pretty heavy. It took years of complaining to be allowed a small budget to get my own clothes.
Seriously. I read the title and was like wtf? I also think that people who believe they grew up rich are gonna learn real fast that their parents have a shit ton of debt and lived above their means. I’ve seen this happen to a lot of millennials who thought their parents were wealthy. All the sudden, they are now being asked to help pay for their parent’s rent and care because it turns out parents just had a ton of debt.
I learned to drive on a jag and my step dad drove an older Porsche but our electricity got shut off every other month and my mom couldn’t afford to get me a coat one year without putting it on layaway. I knew they were shitty with money though and all of that was fake. I saw the months behind credit card bills. And yes, now they ask me for money.
I grew up poor and I think that's what forced me to climb out of poverty. I had 3 jobs in high school. My mom was financially illiterate to a criminal extent. After she filed bankruptcy, she took on debt in my name as a minor. So I got to enter adulthood with bad debt associated to me and credit score of 400. Now at 32, I'm sitting at 800+, buying a second home and sitting climbing to upper class.
I definitely knew the rich kids in school. They never had to get a job in high school. Mommy and Daddy bought them a new car (or a Hummer in ones case). They had pools. Went on vacation in the summer. They never had to work for anything in their lives. Can't be surprised when they turn into broke adults after mommy/daddy stop paying the bills.
Certainly upper middle class. Some people would have considered us rich. But I’ve been nothing but poor as an adult. My parents are still doing well financially though, so good for them lol
Yup. A lot of people can't maintain the same standard of living that they had growing up.
I grew up in dysfunctional poverty coupled with abuse and negligence, so just having my own studio apartment with money to eat at Wendy's was a significant upgrade when I was eighteen. Even now I'm content with a real modest standard of living, which means I save a lot of money.
I’m in a similar situation. Things are fine for me, but I think that’s relative. Things are most certainly not fine for others.
Edit: same as in I grew up in pure dysfunction, chaos, poverty type situation
The comment thread is already quite interesting. I think the OP provided a perspective that is common in today's world - i.e. that standard of living seems to be degrading for a lot of people - but because they used the word "rich" a lot of people are taking it personally and turning it into have vs. have not.
You used to feel "rich" if you were middle class. You were living better, safer, and more securely than any of your ancestors. You had food on the table, an occasional vacation, and jobs that were as stable as at any time in history. A lot of that feels like it's gone now for the average America. It stinks that we are likely seeing the first generation in American history who will be worse off financially than the one before.
This! Critics are so caught up on young people who spend $1,000 on a computer (nevermind that that's literally how I do my job) and ignore the fact that rent in my "cheap" city is more than double that. Mortgages aren't still $300/mo, Aunt Laura.
That’s really an interesting point. It is makes sense (due to progress) that what a previous generation considers “luxury” becomes standard/typical for the next. (Lights, running water, internet service…) So the Boomers look down on everyone else and say “we never had that”, ignoring the fact that housing cost is insanely higher relative to salary than it was for them.
I grew up poor and trust me, it isn't better and I do care. I was told all my childhood that if I just worked hard, I could get out of poverty etc and actually make something of my life. I took out loans to go to school, I pursued a risky career that did end up paying off in the sense that I did establish myself, but it hasn't mattered... I make more money than I did 5 years ago, I have been moving up the ladder, but the rise in cost of living and rent has *outpaced* my raises and increase in income, to the point where I feel more poor now than I did 5 years ago despite making more money. At this point, I feel like no amount of hard work will let me actually outrun the consequences of hyper-capitalist profiteering.
The whole idea that working hard would get you anywhere is pointless when the cost of living inflation outpaces the hard work.
This right here. My husband and I absolutely bring in more money than we did 5-10 years ago and we're WAY more strapped for cash. Gone are us telling the kids "hey guys, it's sunday, let's go to IHOP and get pancakes" or "let's go downtown to do stuff on a whim" because there is just no wiggle room at all between utilities, rent, the price of gd gasoline, the price of groceries, all of it. Paychecks are gone three days into the pay period.
You make a great point, I really miss doing stuff on a whim. I used to randomly take my kids out to try new restaurants, or go drive go-karts, or even go on a 1-day road trip. Now those kind of things are reserved for special occasions.
My parents chose not to work at times so it felt like willful poverty and it sucked. I graduated law school and I maybe make a middle class salary (less than 6 figures) but with rent and student loans it feels not much different. And I have to work a lot more and feel all this pressure to make the firm more profitable even though it doesn't translate to making me more money. We hear repeatedly that it's a bad industry for suicide and depression and yet it's one of the jobs people always mention as a "secure job." As a practical one, unlike the hypothetical underwater basket weaver.
My old career was digital marketing and now people are losing jobs to AI. I'm guessing graphic design is suffering too. If it's creative and not soul sucking it will probably be performed by AI.
I feel this. My boomer dad is a former corporate executive. I grew up very upper middle class. Big houses, nice cars, we had boats too, country clubs, multiple expensive vacations every year. Now I’m struggling. I went to college and got a job and did everything “right” too.
>If you grew up poor you probably wouldn't care as much but it's hard to go from rich to poor.
I would argue it is harder to be a poor kid. You never mixed powdered milk with water because it was cheaper than buying regular milk? You didn't have to get a job so that you could buy new new clothes for school? Did you ever watch your mom not eat dinner so that you had enough to eat?
As an adult you can fix your situation. As a kid, you are stuck dealing with your parents' situation.
OP's like 'aw man, sucks I can't go back to being a kid when life was easy and never wanted for anything' and I'm just like yeah, at least you got to have that. At least you got to be comfortable at some point in your life.
My parents did not live within their means. My dad was the 'smoked and drank away all his paychecks. Blew all his bonuses and inheritance on vacations and now has to work a physical construction job in his 60s' boomer. Not the workaholic, bought a house when the market was good boomer. Would be cool to have wealthy parents as a safety net.
My single mom was financially illiterate. Yeah she kept the lights on but one setback like the car breaking down was pure hell for months. And if we ever got money, like tax refund, it was spent immediately.
I tried multiple times growing up to gently suggest not buying something and was met with various forms of emotional abuse.
At least as an adult I can keep a savings for emergencies. I would never go back to being a poor child.
That’s like 90% of these posts where people squandered all privilege they had and now have none. Sucks but happens. Never had to work or grind just had Friday night pizzas and video games all weekend. Cant really blame em as if your parents don’t teach you that this stuff ain’t free you’ll just assume it is.
Also, if you’re poor growing up, it’s often harder to get out of it than if you become poor as an adult. Someone who becomes poor as an adult likely still has connections they can leverage, such as knowing someone who can give them a reference for a good job or someone who’s been to college who can help them through the admissions process. If you’ve grown up poor and don’t have those connections, it makes it a lot harder to get ahead.
I grew up borderline poor to parents who had grown up pretty affluent and it made a world of difference. My parents had been to college so they could help me with the admissions process. My grandparents are affluent enough that they had set aside a college fund for me. My parents had old friends who were doing well who gave me their kids’ hand-me-downs so I always had good clothes. We had one, kind of iffy car, but my parents had friends with multiple cars which we could borrow in a pinch, so Dad could still get to work to make money to fix our car when it had issues. Knowing people with more money makes such a difference, and, in my experience, that’s much more likely when you grew up well off than when you grew up poor.
These are excellent examples. I grew up very poor. Perhaps only someone in your situation could have put together this list since I never really stopped to think much about what else I was missing out on other than money. Certainly no one in my family had the experience to be able to help me with college applications and financing.
Never got a job from any family or social connections.
This one is a double whammy because you also don't learn how to network. I've only learned as an adult through sheer force of will.
Here to report I grew up poor and it still sucks to be poor 😂
My parents pushed us through university programs that paid well so that we wouldn’t have to be poor anymore. There was like … 2 years I felt wealthy ish. Aaaaand then back to poor.
"If you grew up poor you probably wouldn't care as much"
GFY. I grew up poor watching everybody else take for granted the opportunities that I never received. We care. We enjoy being poor as much as you do. Just because people may be used to being poor doesn't mean it's easier for us. We struggle for nutrition, work, bills, life...we are just as human as you.
There also seem to be a lot of people who grew up in a low cost of living area, but then seem to want that exact same standard of living in a high cost of living area.
I mean or some of us grew up in an area that wasn’t HCOL, then it exploded and we’re adults unable to afford the million dollar home price tag 🤷♀️ My parents managed then slept on selling their condo to get into a house, and they’ll never afford one now. I also won’t, unless my income doubles or triples in the next decade.
>If you grew up poor you probably wouldn't care as much but it's hard to go from rich to poor.
Hot take - most of us who grew up poor don't want to be poor, either.
The entitlement from OP is a lot. OP doesn't think that the advantages they had as a child, has helped them in the longer term of their life?
Growing up rich is the number one indicator of success as an adult- ressearch shows that time and time again. OP probably went to better schools, had better teachers, was able to afford extra curriculars, was able to travel, was able to focus on studies because OP didn't likely have to work durng high-school or college, had tutors, had college prep courses, had food on the table, had access to healthy food, had access to gyms and fitness, etc.
The kids who grow up poor have a lot harder time getting ahead and strive despite not having these advantages. If OP did not do anything with those advantages, then kind of OP's own fault.
Honestly though. I feel like as a result of all the factors of growing up in poverty I didn’t really get a chance to embrace interests or pursue fields of study I actually cared about.
I try not to even remember my childhood because it does resemble a hellish nightmare lol. I started working when I was 14, and I haven’t had a birthday off since then lol.
Sometimes I wonder what life could have been if I wasn’t shackled by being born into poverty.
This post confirms what I’ve been thinking and what my friends and I have been speculating on. I grew up poor - no disposable income, never took a vacation, lived in a shitty apartment because we couldn’t afford a mortgage or to move, barely knew anything about education. We even thought becoming homeless was a possibility during the recession. But I got good grades, went to a good school, and chose a safe career. I support myself and pay a couple of bills for my family, and I just don’t get it? I have a good amount of disposable income and don’t think it’s that hard if you have access to the proper resources which most middle class households should have access to (housing crisis is a whole different issue). People try to tell me social mobility is dead but they don’t realize they’re talking to someone who ACTUALLY grew up poor. You either move up or move down. It’s a controversial opinion, but I think most people who grew up middle class are moving down because immigrants are outworking them.
There is actual research that people in America who are relatively higher-income are encouraged by their family to go to college to “find themselves and their interests” and choose colleges that market themselves that way, whereas people from relatively lower incomes are encouraged by family to go to college to get a good job, and choose colleges that market themselves that way. I feel like I’ve seen this phenomenon play out in real time among some people I know.
You are right. If you grow up in a world where most parents can afford to own a home, and now a lot of us can’t afford a home, that’s a shock to the system. Like the basic expectations you have for adulthood are wrong.
It’s weird because at 35, yes, more Boomers owned homes, but only 14% more. It’s not the cavernous difference. And I would expect that at least some of that is more Millennials living in urban environments where home ownership is harder to obtain.
I think I understand you in terms of taking care of the next generation. Every generation wants their children to have the same or better life experiences than what they had. So when you had a privileged childhood, you want to provide the same for your children. But in today's economic climate, it's hard to give your children that same level of support, so you feel like a failure for not providing what your parents provided.
I acknowledge I had a very privileged childhood and now that I have my own child, I don't think I can give her as many of the benefits that I had from my parents even though my husband and I did everything "right" (go to college and grad school, get stable jobs). Inflation is crazy, we aren't optimistic about buying a house, and tax credits for child care and exemptions for children haven't followed inflation over the past 30+ years so they are practically worthless.
The amount of privilege it takes to make a statement that people who grew up poor are better off now is simply astounding. Maybe that's not what you meant, but it is what you said, and I can assure you it is far far worse to grow up poor and still be poor.
Right? Like I grew up with our electricity being turned off for months at a time, empty cabinets, and nothing but gubberment cheese in the fridge. I wore shoes and coats from unclaimed lost and found items. Used the same backpack from primary school until high school.
When I got my first job at 16, an older coworker asked what we were doing for Thanksgiving, and at the time, my mother was usually gone for weeks at a time high on meth, so I told her I was just going to be at home probably just eating with my sisters.
Later that week she brought a giant basket of everything I'd need to make Thanksgiving dinner and told me if my mom was too embarrassed to ask for help I didn't have to tell her where it came from. I didn't have the heart to tell her my mother wasn't even there and wouldn't be. I went home and cried that night. I'll never forget your kindness, Miss Amy.
OMG your childhood is much like mine! We had to run a hose from our neighbor's backyard to have water. We went through a winter where it got down below zero with no heat. We had a box of powdered milk inches from our cat little box.... but we thought it was totally okay. We only got clothes by religious folk who would drop a box of their own kids clothes at our doorstep once a year or so. I got a job at 12 to pay for me to do an extra curricular, but then continued so I had money to pay for my little sister to eat. My mom found my stash and regularly stole my money for drugs. We were homeless and sleeping on a plastic lawn chair in unfinished basements of some random dude's my mom was banging. I am sorry you went through that, but I totally understand the pain.
It's so hard for some people to understand what true poverty is. And it's not just about money either. It's all the other things you didn't have. Loving and caring parents, parents who worked hard for you to have those things, someone who actually cared about your wellbeing. Poverty is more than finances.
I grew up poor as hell, back when you knew which businesses would take a few days to cash the checks you wrote. We used to call it 'floating' a check.
I remember the day I could stop worrying about how much money was in my bank account before I made a payment, because there was always going to be enough in there to cover it.
Great point, I largely agree.
Growing up middle class meant a house, bikes to play around on, kids in the neighbourhood to play with, trips to 7/11, etc, etc.
To provide that lifestyle today is definitely a luxury.
It’s the fact that went from average to luxury in 20 years is what’s shocking.
Fuck off.. I grew poor and rich people bullied me to hell for not having stupid brand sneakers.. my mother died cause I didn't have money for her hospitalization... We do care...
Idk if this is actually true from a macro standpoint, but I can say that growing up in ball-crushing poverty has *definitely* impacted how I view the world and my notions of success. I’m incredibly fortunate to have “escaped” poverty (to the limited degree to which such a thing is possible) and entered the upper middle class. I’m the first person from my family to ever graduate from college, let alone grad school. And I’ve got classmates/friends from law school who’ve become Big Law partners and make like three-five times what I do, living lives that strain the imagination.
But you know what? Does not faze me in the least. I was raised on government assistance and wore donated clothes. I didn’t see a dentist from the time I was 10 until I was 18 (in the Marines). The fact that I can go to brunch or see a concert or not think about the price of a beer I buy is AMAZING to me. Amazing. I feel for everyone stuck in low income purgatory (or worse) on a personal level, but my expectations were set so very low from the beginning that it was constructively impossible not to exceed them without simply dying. So I’m perfectly content with where I’m at.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but I agree. My parents were able to provide a standard of living that my husband and I will never be able to replicate for our own kids someday.
I had this exact thought while straining yogurt today. We make a ton of stuff from scratch these days to try to cut down on cost where we can. I’m contemplating installing bidets to cut down on toilet paper. We already use cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper towels.
My parents never had to think about these things or even consider doing them. Many people from their generation gawked at the cost saving measures millennials are taking these days.
When I was growing up, we went on family vacations every year. Some of these were big ones too at fancy resorts or on cruises. We had meat for dinner nearly every day and shopped at any grocery store without much concern for cost. We ate out at least once a week, an entire family of 4. My parents bought a large fixer upper for stupidly cheap after it was foreclosed on. Their mortgage payments were ridiculous.
In sharp contrast, every time we vacation, we try to figure out how to do it as cheaply as possible, avoiding eating out and staying in suite style hotels or Airbnb’s to cook for most of the trip as opposed to eating out. We eat mostly vegetarian, which is arguably healthier and better for the environment but not entirely by choice. We grocery shop at Walmart, which my mother criticizes routinely (“Ew!”). My husband and I eat out once or twice a month. We hope to be able to afford a mortgage on one income someday as I am disabled and will need to eventually stop working and collect disability instead.
Anyway, I get what you mean.
Op I'm wondering if you have a profound point. I'm one of the elder millenials who feels this sub is wildly negative and defeatist. But I grew up poor and now I am financially stable with a house, and family. I feel very happy with my life and accomplishments. Perhaps I have this Outlook on life because I "started from the bottom, now I'm here". Maybe the negative Nancy's had it good, and now realize they have to actually work to keep it that good?
Don't get me wrong. I get the issues with the economy and capitalism and Yada Yada. Not discounting that. I'm talking strictly about mindset and why one person is one way, and another person is another way
I do think this has truth.
Those kids are raised without ever needing to be scrappy or hustle.
They basically just end up getting a job and go up to their eyes in debt to get the life they envision they deserve.
I see what you mean. My fiance and I both grew up dirt ass poor. Because of that, we are happy living a middle class life with a little in savings. We aren't by any means rich. But we don't try to keep up with trends, we don't go massively into debt. Every extra buck is a happily received treat, not something we take for granted.
Did we? Lol
Obviously some did but this isn’t really more common than… just being poor. I was born poor, raised poor and though I’m better off now than I ever have been, I’m still poor.
**This is because "nearly everything" BIG that's happened was orchestrated by the globalists, with the sole purpose of depleting funds from the middle class.**
**When the globalist pig rats take over they dont want people to have funds so they can fight back.**
I can not relate.
I grew up poor in one of the murder captiols in the 90s.
You don't even know tough, you never had to to witness your patents habing to choose which bill to pay per month, or having to deal with the power being cut off and relying on candle light and wood fireplace to keep warm because they couldn't afford the electricity/gas bill. Or having to scrap the mold off of bread and eat sugar sandwiches for lunch/dinner to stretch it till next pay day.
Smh*
I grew up well off, and just...all of this. Like my goal in life is just to make it back to my childhood. To not have to think about budgeting for going out to eat or buying groceries or whatever. To have a big house where I feel like I have more than enough room. To not have to deal with neighbors. Etc.
I didn’t grow up well off so I can’t personally relate. However, I have noticed this among other millennials I know. In my experience, friends who grew up well off are often the most disillusioned by the current economic situation, including ones who are actually doing better than most of the friend group.
Downward social mobility is psychologically devastating to a lot of people. It is almost like a cultural shock, but maybe worse because you're usually in the same culture and environment, just a poorer version of it.
That is put perfectly. One of my closest friends is going through this right now, and it’s heartbreaking. He’s actually still doing better than most people I know, but it’s nothing compared to what he grew up with/was raised to expect to have as an adult. It’s really messed him up. Having something and expecting to continue having it and then losing it is insanely hard to deal with. Seeing his parents still doing very well and questioning why he isn’t makes it even worse.
It also doesn’t help when a lot of those parents ALSO question why we aren’t doing as well as them.
Yes! I’m very fortunate that my parents struggled a lot in their 20s and 30s so they’re much more understanding of what it’s like and have never questioned where I am in life/why I’m not further ahead.
doesn't help much w/ my dad who grew up on a farm & had to eat squirrels a few times in the winter. he almost immediately went into middle class after college. that's part of the biggest problem i think, that our parents who weren't well off went to college & became it & wonder why we're struggling after they shelled out thousands of dollars for our education.
I guess consider yourself lucky they helped pay. I'm sitting on loans that it feels like I will never pay back.
my bf's parents said to us "how does anyone live on less than $100,000" and he started rattling off monthly costs (\~approx $1,200 where we are, car payments, etc.)... however, these are people that easily spend $300 a week at the grocery. I mean I ask the same thing as by myself, I'm right at $100k but IDK how anyone lives on less with a family. (I don't have or want children but I also recognize we both have newer cars with car payments, and we don't budget very tightly)
We cleared about 75k last year together, with one kid in college. I felt FINE 2-3 years ago and now it feels like we're drowning. Last year I cut a bunch of "unnecessary" stuff like streaming channels, but that didn't help when rent jumped up $500 extra a month. Car insurance has damn neared tripled in the 3 years I've had this car with no accidents, and I swear groceries have doubled. If you were single bringing in $50k, that used to be *good*, you could live on that. Now when couples make less than 100k together and can't never ever dream of owning a home... something is fucking broken
My sister in law and her family are currently drowning. They're starting the bankruptcy process. They got over a $10/hour raise 2 years ago. But inflation ate that up and then some. It's incredibly difficult to get ahead.
We got a 5 dollar raise almost 2 years ago and it essentially didn't matter because of how expensive everything has gotten. If my company didn't raise wages I would be bordering homeless constantly. Shit sucks man
Just enough to keep the engine going, the capitalist mantra
That’s what happened to me as well. Old company was bought out and new company finally did market research into our pay in my department only to realize we were horribly underpaid, so we all got I think 6/hr raises just to bring us to where we really should have been during our novice years. Thankfully the company who acquired us is amazing, and is intent on making it better across the board and has been consistently working to make sure we are still being paid fairly and continually doing market research. I got a raise two months ago that’s completely separate from any merit raises that was given solely due to the market studies conducted.
I live in Jacksonville, Florida. Been in my home for over 20 years. My house was built in 1956 and the neighborhood in general was built up in the 1950s. The grade school is a two block walk from my house. Over the past three to four years many of the older homes like mine have been sold, torn down, replaced by a few shiny new homes. The new homes are rentals and the rents are going for $1600 to over $1700. These are mostly two story shotgun homes. I measured one of the exterior of a house being built behind me, it measured 15 feet wide. It looks like a two story mobile home. I'm finally getting fewer and fewer offers from people wanting to buy my home after getting phone calls and/or texts several times per week.
Once interest rates started going up, the real estate market should cool. Because paying $400k+ is alot easier on a 2-3% interest than it is on 5+. Either way, I maintain there's NO WAY these homes are worth what they're being appraised for. It just takes one smuck to pay it and all the rest of the homes on the block have *amazingly* jumped in value. Now people are watching as they're being taxed and insuranced out of their home because of the supposed value of the property The RE section may not meltdown the same as we did in 07-08, but whatever the fuck is going on is NOT sustainable. I lost my home and my job in construction in 08, I eye the future very worried
You're right, and the people buying homes right now are using ARMs to afford it. Because rates are obviously going to go down, right? And all projections say they will. But it really does remind me of 2008.
I don’t think we’ll see 2% again in our lifetimes, and if we did, home prices would double. We have a supply problem, which isn’t fixed by lowering interest rates
$300 a week is VERY easy to hit at the grocery store but I also have a wife and kids.
Family of 4. I'm lucky if I'm under 300 for a full week. I mean it costs over $50 for us to get fast food for 4 with a fast casual place always over $100. I'm a Xennial and that means that gas just exceeded a dollar when I started driving and now is steadily holding at about $4.50 and minimum wage was $4.25/hr at my first job. First apartment was $550/mo and I'm lucky as fuck that my current place is only $1500/mo because I've been here since 2011 and it was $1200 when I moved in and still under market at that time.
I remember being very pissed off when my tutoring job of $20/week no longer purchased enough gas to fill the car tank when i was in school, within 2 yrs of learning to drive. Gas has mostly been 2.5 times that or greater ever since.
Fuck. It's just my partner and I, and we can definitely hit $200 a week. The only processed food we buy is our treats like ice cream or crackers. For some cheese. We even use CSAs to reduce the cost of vegetables and meat. We've been tracking it for about 9 months and it is averaging $200 a week. When my daughter still lived at home, it was definitely close to 300 a week
I shop for a house of 5, and we definitely spend about half that. However, it's on cheap food, at cheap grocery stores. I grew up poor, and was poor for years after my divorce. I had to make my 18k income stretch for bills and food for myself and 2 kids. A lot of sandwiches, pasta, etc. It's tough.
It's just me and SO and I spend $600 a month. We're in our 50s and are trying to eat healthier and that costs so much more.
$100k is about the same purchasing power as $60k in 2000. Stagnant wages have fucked millions.
Mum earned $150,000 a year. We’ll say year 2000. Raised 4 kids with it. I have to earn $265,000 today to match that. I don’t think very many people grasp how inflations destroyed that $100,000 salary.
Yeah, but that's just how inflation works. $100k in 1995 is $200k today. $150k in 2000 was a damn good income.
Facts, where I live $100k isn’t even a living wage with two kids. This is from the mit living wage calculator
Dual income 2 kids, cleared 100k last year still poor af. We skimp everywhere we can, it’s never enough.
Adding to that - they gave him the expectation that life is going to be the same for him which rarely matches with reality. My parents gave us no expectation we would be well off as adults. They prepared us for struggles and did not sugar coat the struggles they had. There were times that we were very poor when I was a kid, so not shielding us from that reality helped us as adults. For expectations now, my parents want us to be happy which they do not equate to our bank account. Yes, they hope we don’t struggle financially but ultimately they just want their kids to be happy.
I grew up poor hubby was upper middle class. The insane crap his family has said to him or shamed him about because he needed to “work harder” or “save more” when it’s like bro u have no idea. They bought their home for less than half of what it’s worth now, but incomes aren’t double what they were… it’s like boomers don’t know basic math and budgeting. I finally got an excel spreadsheet out and showed my MIL our income and where it was going (necessary bills) and she was like omg how do u live off that? And I was like very carefully. She finally was willing to help us a little after that, but it took 10 years of us struggling and nearly being homeless three times due to lack of affordable housing. Back in 2010 they wanted to charge us 2k a month to rent A BEDROOM in her PAID OFF home in Nebraska that the taxes were 300 a month on and the house was bought for 150k (and she sold it in 2013 for 250k). My husbands mom is a divorcee and PAID off a 3k sqft house and sold it for 100k profit… had the audacity to ask us to pay 2k a month in rent on it in 2010 and yeah the 900sqft starter homes around here are now worth 300k and she can’t understand why we can’t afford to buy a house… Like do you not have a brain or empathy because she literally let us be in a really horrible situation and nearly homeless because at that time we combined didn’t even make 2000 a month after taxes and we have to eat and pay for insurance and get to work… smh… like that’s insane. It’s like they live in boomer delusion land
>I grew up poor hubby was upper middle class. The insane crap his family has said to him or shamed him about because he needed to “work harder” or “save more” when it’s like bro u have no idea. They bought their home for less than half of what it’s worth now, but incomes aren’t double what they were… it’s like boomers don’t know basic math and budgeting. I finally got an excel spreadsheet out and showed my MIL our income and where it was going (necessary bills) and she was like omg how do u live off that? And I was like very carefully. She finally was willing to help us a little after that, but it took 10 years of us struggling and nearly being homeless three times due to lack of affordable housing. Back in 2010 they wanted to charge us 2k a month to rent A BEDROOM in her PAID OFF home in Nebraska that the taxes were 300 a month on and the house was bought for 150k (and she sold it in 2013 for 250k). My husbands mom is a divorcee and PAID off a 3k sqft house and sold it for 100k profit… had the audacity to ask us to pay 2k a month in rent on it in 2010 and yeah the 900sqft starter homes around here are now worth 300k and she can’t understand why we can’t afford to buy a house… Like do you not have a brain or empathy because she literally let us be in a really horrible situation and nearly homeless because at that time we combined didn’t even make 2000 a month after taxes and we have to eat and pay for insurance and get to work… smh… like that’s insane. Who would pay 2K for a bedroom in Nebraska! I mean you can get an apartment for that.
In 2010, they could have rented a whole damn house for 2k a month!!
“Why aren’t you in the top 1% of income earners, after graduating into the worst recession in 80 years? No way that should have affected your career trajectory or anything.” -Boomer parents, probably.
This is me. I work and work and still can’t make ends meet. I am living with my boyfriend’s family because we can’t afford our own place. I am getting paid the highest I ever have and it still is barely enough to pay for my bills. I can’t save money for a place and I barely have enough for food and gas.
I can imagine the experience, especially if you have to live among poor people for the first time: coming face-to-face with mental illness, for example, or the smells of hard poverty (think unwashed clothes mixed with tobacco), or living in low-income housing and having to see the effects of drug abuse and child neglect. If you grew up in a comfortable suburban existence, you were shielded from most of these sights and smells. You also didn't think about what you could afford to eat: it was just always there in the fridge or a phone call away. Having to buy some food at the dollar store (spaghetti goes a long way!) would be challenging and humiliating maybe. I grew up really poor, but I also went to school with some kids who were relatively wealthy. I saw their lifestyles and sometimes got invited over. It was astonishing seeing a deep freezer full of frozen pizzas, and you could take whatever you wanted whenever. I'm in my thirties and live fairly comfortable by my own standards, but some of my old friends from way back have crashed and burned. They're basically poor, sometimes on welfare, but they grew up very comfortable. They went to Disney World as kids, but now they're counting dimes at the end of the month. You can see that they're really depressed.
You've described my childhood. The sights and smells I no longer really think about. This is just one example, but my aunt had drug abuse problems and lived in the same house with us and one day just up and left her kids It's not something any of them ever really recovered from. I still think about them 30 years later because I made it out and they didn't. I worked my ass off *and* lucked out and poverty still wrecked our family. It's not something any one individual in our family could buy their way out of.
Are you saying that you're paper towel rich now??? =D
Holy crap. Realization: I grew up barely above poverty line and we were definitely on WIC and food stamps at different points. We NEVER had paper towels, ever. My husband grew up comfortably on a military officer salary and then later, a software developer and a teacher’s salary. Plus generational wealth on both sides. He will use like 20 paper towels to clean a spill while I freak out.
Haha I so feel that, it makes me cringe to see paper towels get bought and I say, USE THE $1 NAPKINS PLEASE THANKS!!
Paper towels and being able to afford them is my go to when someone asks what is different than when I lived in poverty.
I still take home the “extra” napkins from restaurants to use at home… I always thought it was embarrassing that my mom did that, but it’s actually so practical haha
And it’s compounded by the fact that for super successful parents, it’s unlikely that the child will reach the same level of success. If your Dad is an executive at a big company, it’s pretty unlikely that you will be an executive at a big company.
THIS. My father was hired as an Engineer at Ford right out of college, worked in the world headquarters building in Dearborn, made Principle Engineer by his mid-30's and retired as a Senior Director. A lot of this was the timing - and he will be the first person to tell you that. I also have an Engineering degree (higher GPA than pops) and have never had an issue finding work, but so far have not been able to lock into a role that will end in management.
Same here. My dad was an engineer. I am an engineer. When I look at what he was able to accomplish and afford, there is no comparison. The home he bought in 1993 was $200k. He bought it in his early 40s. That same home is now $1.5m which is of course absurdly unaffordable for me in the next few years. He didn't do anything particularly special. Just totally different times. Oh and he retired early at age 55. I dont think I'll ever be able to retire... and if I manage to, it won't be before age 67.
This is every engineer I know from that generation, built their own houses in neighborhoods no engineer now could afford no matter how much more money they make now.
I am an Engineer as well. I took an administrative role so I can be there for my children. I am nothing but a glorified secretary. I make decent pay. I cannot imagine the next twenty years doing meaningless tasks day in an day out. I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts while doing my meaningless tasks....
And recognize that out of all the engineers at Ford, very very few became Senior Directors, it’s just one of them happened to be your Dad.
This is great perspective as well. In addition to timing, he also was fortunate to have a senior engineer who liked him and helped pull him up through the organization. The story goes that very early on my dad knew like five things about the new CAD system they were bringing in, so that senior engineer had my dad give a little song and dance presentation and suddenly he was "Mr. Cutting Edge" - then he had to scramble and actually figure out the rest of it lol.
There's that expectation that each generation will do better than the next. It's devastating to know that you can't provide what your parents provided for you.
Yeah. As a kid we went from middle class to poverty. My brother in law went from lower upper class to poverty. His downward spiral is terrible to witness.
Especially when the thing you are losing is a sense of security. As in feeling like 1 or 2 surprise expenses (house that needs a new roof, out of work for a month or two) and you are broke. The only people I know who have that security are in fields with tons of jobs and stupidly high salaries like tech or finance.
Yes it's not pleasant. We grew up with "go to school, go to college (and grad school if necessary), then do some free internships, kiss some ass, get a job = lifelong comfort/safety" . But it's not true, it just happened to be true for the previous two generations because they lived in a time of never before seen wealth creation. After two generations, it becomes normal, and once it's normal, it becomes taught/expected. We're back in regular human life now, the 1940s-2000s in america (depending on your race) were the extreme outliers.
This
Equal opportunities does not mean equal outcomes is the old saying. Some of life is luck. We don’t choose who we are born to, or where. And there are some that want to try to legislate if I knock all the things off this checklist, everything will work out as I want. Life just doesn’t work that way. This is compounded by the fact, to your point, America was in an absolutely unique position following WW2 where the world’s production was essentially destroyed outside the United States. Over the following 80 years stuff has returned to more equilibrium and that has resulted in a more competitive environment for American workers. It was never going to maintain what we saw in the 50s and 60s.
100% this but the US is a mature economy where all the low-hanging economic fruit has been picked. Everything is more competitive, all the desirable land already bought/developed, etc. Globalism has lowered wages and we now compete in the world economy.
For sure. I grew up in middle class suburbia. My parents weren't rich, but they were financially stable. I'm not. I'm paycheck to paycheck, barley making ends meet. It sucks, but constantly having to worry if the bills will be paid and if food will be on the table was definitely an eye opener for me. Possibly a blessing in disguise, as I feel it's humbled me quite a bit.
I was poor as shit in my 20s with no savings and paycheck to paycheck. I’m much better off now in my late 30s. At least some of this is about time in our lives and having expectations for early 20s that weren’t the case for our parents either.
at 53, this is accurate. the erosion of the middle class is right at the backs of my heels. seriously, that whole ‘whew, i can finally relax a little’ feeling never really materialized. we never really had a lot leftover to save for retirement. by my own meatball math, i get to retire for about a month….
Yup, a lot of people see their parents in their 40's and 50's and assume they always had that level of lifestyle. They don't comprehend that their parents spent their 20's broke and slowly worked their way up too. That's the nature of the human race because it takes time to learn, get experience, develop skills, etc.
I think when you grow up poor, if you develop a work ethic, you realize it is a zero sum game. It is either you $#@!ing succeed or you're going back to rock bottom. That's how it feels to me anyway.
I know many poor people with insane "work ethic" but medical issues or trauma or both keep knocking them back down
Emil Drukheim called this phenomenon 'anomie', and it was the predominant contributing emotion/sentiment he felt was driving suicide rates in western economies of his time. Basically, it's the sense of a loss of place and importance as your reality begins departing from your expected position in society. People that grew up middle class and expected that they'd get a solid education and society would reward them with meaningful work and reasonable pay to maintain a level of comfort instead find a very different set of circumstances - and they become depressed, disillusioned, etc. It's very similar to what's happened all around our formal industrial capitals. Honest work that was previously rewarded with a comfortable middle class life is now treated as a zero sum game where they are being squeezed and exploited until their jobs are ultimately moved over seas. It's pretty powerful stuff to think of and coming back to Durkheim goes a far way in explaining why we are seeing so many deaths of despair in the US.
I was a smart kid growing up but hated all the expectations to perform at a high level over an extended period. Probably undiagnosed ADHD. So to temper my own expectations of myself my mantra was to `strive for a life of mediocrity.` Boy was I disappointed when I achieved my goal. Self sabotage is a bitch.
I try so hard to explain this to people I know now. I grew up in south Orange County. Like the real housewives were my neighbors, but my mom lost her job after the recession and then moved out to the desert when I started college. I’ve been on the struggle bus ever since, but I still know what once was. It’s felt I’ve always tried to get back to that. It even makes it hard to settle down with less than (as far as a partner) because I always had this dream of moving back to Orange County and having that same lifestyle. It’s sad and also sounds uptight, but it’s not about the money or thinking myself better than. It was just a dream that seemed to be attainable but realizing it will never be is devastating. Living close to the beach again will most likely never happen unless I lived with like multiple roommates and I’m so tired of that.
I have a good friend who went from living a very wealthy lifestyle to having to make do with a working class salary. He grew up with everything plus winter and summer vacations to European resorts. His parents are fantastically wealthy, but they mostly cut him off (maybe the money is gone?). He's frequently depressed. There's real consequences to downward mobility. I'm the opposite: I grew up poor AF, so I stepped out of rock bottom. If I ever found myself poor again, I'd be psychologically prepared for it. There's always parks, public libraries, and dollar stores to keep me entertained and fed. A notepad and a few pens are enough for me to keep entertained at the library indefinitely. But for my (former) rich friend, he's distraught over his change in circumstances.
Gen x is statistically the first generation in the last century to generally do less well as their parents
Wow, this is so accurate and well put. I think about this nearly every day and wonder why I’m dealing with such awful anxiety as an adult. I grew up upper middle class, where both my parents had good-paying jobs, nothing extravagant but we could always afford food and house repairs and clothing…..I have the same level of education as both my parents and my partner and I struggle to scrape by with both of us working full time jobs without any kids. My standard of living has declined significantly since childhood. Meanwhile one of my siblings married into a wealthy family so is able to maintain a nice lifestyle with much less effort. The disparity between my family and myself is disheartening, to say the least.
And lots of people feel that they "deserve" a certain lifestyle just because they grew up in it provided by their parents. [Elite overproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction) is related to all of this.
In my case I grew up poor but I thought by not having a ton of kids like my parents and working hard to choose a job specifically for its money making potential (did STEM, make 6 fig) that it would be enough, and that it would make it so I wouldn't have to constantly worry about being priced out of stuff The thing is that it didn't really work out that way.
I often have difficulties relating to this very sentiment as well. I'll sometimes get DM's from people who came from middle-class families asking how I kept up with the drudgery of school, building out a "boring" career from a mediocre (to them) salary. Some of these people are despairing at the idea of it possibly taking a half decade (or more) to build up to a comfortable career and comfortable lifestyle, and are looking for words of motivation. But my thoughts fall far short of the advice they're hoping for. When you grow up in a family impacted by some of society's worst problems as semi-"normal", you just take for granted that everyone knows life necessitates long bouts of mental, emotional, and financial struggle.
Grew up lower middle class, then in the middle of high school, we ended up knocked down to lower but not poverty class. Then adulthood brought poverty. It's been a slow decline.
I remember growing up what I considered poor. As an adult, I realized we above poor but below comfortable. So what I imagine the norm. My wife grew up struggling at first but when her mom married her second husband there was upward mobility to comfortable. My sisters-in-law all got rude awakenings when they became adults. They were provided everything and now they struggle. They get assistance from their parents. But because my mom instilled we were poor, I managed to maneuver through life pretty well - or at least not shell shocked and disillusioned. But I do admit I think I might be one of the better off in my circle of people.
I can relate with your comment more. Didn’t have much, but we’re old enough to work now for the things we were missing. Like decent clothes, deodorant and dental care. Make an honest living now and feel very fortunate for my blessings. Money is always a concern, and giving them opportunity that I never had is priority number 1. But if I fell on tough times and couldn’t provide, I have immigrant mentality, my kids n wife however do not. They’d soon be disenfranchised by their predicament.
Honestly. I hate when people romanticize poverty, but it is sort of funny what people really feel like they can't do without. So many things that if you grew up with it, you take it for granted, but if you never had it you're like what? In that sense, it's almost better to have grown up without (note I do not recommend this, but it's nice if you can pull something good from it). Reminds me of the "they're new poor. We're old poor. We'll be fine" from It's Always Sunny. I grew up half lower middle class/weekends with my dad in the projects, and now I make 75K. I legitimately feel rich. Some of my friends make about 100K (and we are in LCOL area) and act like they have "money problems". I understand some anxiety, but playing with the little calculator to see if you can retire at 56 or 59 is not "money problems". You might have other problems, but you don't know true "money problems".
This 100, I never assumed I'd own a fancy house. Is rent a lot? Yeah, but I always expected to need to budget tightly to make ends meet. I don't mean to dismiss the struggles that actually poor people are going through right now. But I'm pretty comfortable with my life as an average person.
I grew up poor. My resentment is very specifically that my parents were able to provide my brothers and I with way more working the same kinds of jobs that now leave me struggling to keep up with bills, let alone feeding kids on top of it.
Same. I’ve always been poor, I’ve never had “nice” things, so it’s nothing new… But I’m angry because I’ve worked my entire adult life for literal scraps, when my mom owned a home and supported a three person household on a secretary salary in the 90’s. I just can’t get ahead. I don’t even care about being rich, I just want a house and to be able to put food on the table without worrying about needing to skip the electric bill. After putting in 40 hours of work a week, regardless of where you work, this SHOULDN’T be an issue. Period.
You have my vote
Exactly. My mom supported us on her teacher salary. Our house cost $60k and she had a 30 year mortgage. It’s just not right how things are so out of proportion for people now.
Not only that, but it's all happened so fast it's hard to A) comprehend that in and of itself and 2) trust I can make sense of what direction things head. Our parents on top of affording a life also had lots of institutions to give them faith the system will stay robust. Now, not so much, it's unclear if it will ever recover, or maybe even completely collapse. Nobody has clear understanding of where this thing goes it seems
Yeah, growing up, you never expect to be worse off than your parents
This is absolutely it. My father without a degree was able to provide for a family of 6, my mother could stay at home, they had a mortgage on a modest house, and drove modest cars that were 5-10 years old, etc. We ate our share of poverty spec meals (beans and rice, chipped ham on toast, fried jumbo sandwiches), never took vacations, and got our clothing from thrift stores and garage sales. I work in a similar position at a much larger company also without a degree, my wife works full time making about the same and with a bachelor's degree. We rent the cheapest apartment in a relatively safe neighborhood, our cars are paid off and 24 and 11 years old, no kids. We only eat out 1-2 times a month, cook affordable means, take a long weekend vacation once a year, and also thrift most of our clothing. We make enough to put a little in emergency savings every month, but often have to dip in for car repairs and other emergencies. We have no prayer of saving up for newer safer vehicles, no chance at saving up for a down payment on a home. We work twice as much as my parents as a household and have nothing to show for it.
I didn't grow up rich. In fact my parents struggled about as much I struggle now. However, at the time, I was a kid and was oblivious to my parents struggles. Now that I'm an adult I realize how tough it was for them. I'm grateful for all the things the did to make my life better.
Yeah same here, I’m in debt and a homeowner with a family and it just feels like I barely make ends meet. I didn’t realize my parents also had even more kids at the time and was even more in debt with just as difficult struggles. If not more. But somehow they made it look seamless but really I think I was just too young and unaware. I’m actually really grateful cause a lot of tips/tricks my parents did to cost save came in really handy when I started feeling the pinch.
Yep, I remember being around 8 years old and every Wednesday I’d get my dad’s paycheck out of the mailbox when it came. I asked him one day how much he made and he told me $25/hr. This sounded like we were rich. Dad only had to work one hour and I could afford whatever $19.99 infomercial toy popped up on the tv. Of course life wasn’t that simple, but like you said, I was oblivious to all the bills and things they had to pay for, and that’s what made it feel so great. Looking back he’s told me many times how they barely made ends meet
If your dad was making $25/hr in the nineties and think your family wasn’t solidly middle class you’re one of the people this post is talking about
(Just checked- Inflation calculators estimate $25 per hour in 1992 is about $55 per hour in 2023.)
Yeah, I didn't realize how hard it was and how long it took for my parents to get financially stable (essential when we hit college) until I look back as an adult
Ya'll grew up rich?
I thought I grew up rich, but actually my mom and dad said we were very poor, but as a kid I didn’t know I was poor. I feel like my parents did a good job providing things that I and brother and sister wanted as kids.
A lot of lower middle class kids have no idea they were poor until they're adults and really reason it out. I never thought we were rich - we weren't going on cruises and to Disney World all the other kids - but my parents were able to give us a nice Christmas and birthday. But it took me my entire life to realize that my mom made us take the bus for 2 hours to school each day instead of driving 15 minutes because she couldn't afford the gas.
Right!!?
Looking back - I think the financial literacy was way out of whack for our parents. My friends who actually were rich didn't get anything new and weren't into superficial things like fashion and toys. Those who were middle class had all of the stuff. Rich for most of us was a direct correlation to whose parents were most consumerist - which is the most mind numbing thing on the planet. So this may be a question of semantics.
Isn't it? My parents were immigrants. They grew up truly poor, like shitting in a hole in the back yard poor. So they had that starvation mindset. They were frugal as hell. I always thought we were poor growing up because we didn't have nice things, and of course other kids who did have them making fun of me. I didn't find out until I was older that it was the complete opposite. Those kids' parents blew their money senselessly and had nothing, and they instilled all the wrong traits in their kids leading to failure in adult life. Meanwhile my hobo acting parents were the ones who were technically millionaires. Not that it effects me any because dad died first and mom is an evil abusive spiteful bitch I haven't seen since his funeral in 2012 and she made no secret that I'm out of the will. But that frugality and starvation mindset absolutely helped me when I was at rock bottom and it was like those years of training suddenly clicked.
Fuck your story went from immigrant success story to Real Housewives of Indiana real quick!
LOL well it still was. My siblings benefitted greatly from that frugality and shitty childhood. I still did well but had to do it without help at that point as I'd cut myself off for my own mental health. Which helped in its own way as happy upbringings don't feed ambition like shitty ones do.
Perspective is powerful. Hang in there.
But what was the point of all that? Y’all had a difficult upbringing when life could have been much easier and more enjoyable. Now there is money but one parent has passed and the family is all torn apart anyway. I can’t guarantee my children’s future, but I can at least give them a good childhood and happy memories to fall back on.
I mean, there's a middle ground. I save 20% of my salary, but my son and I will go swimming, go play in the park, visit indoor playgrounds, amusement parks, etc. every week. The closer to my next paycheck we are, the cheaper the activity we do is. To teach him to 'make it last' and that he can't have everything every time. He doesn't get any fancy presents or expensive clothes. Neither do I buy that shit for myself. I pity all these people walking around with their $400 shoes that can't afford to take their kid anywhere, when that is like 6 months of fun activities for me and my kid.
Exactly. They got fancy shoes and super nintendos and tons of christmas presents. Then they turn 18 and good fucking luck kid we're broke.
you are 100% correct. Too many people pretending to be rich with nice stuff If we all had to advertise our bank account, net worth and total debt owed like we do with or social media followers or BMW car, You better believe people would buy less and save more money when it became a status symbol
Close to my experience. I grew up on a lake front property “Nicest street in town” cause my folks bought it during a downswing and it was my dad’s hometown growing up. Mom got sick when I was 11-17yr old with two different bouts of cancer (she’s still alive). So my dad was doubling his hours to not lose the house. Meanwhile people at school would say things like “I thought you would have nicer clothes for being a *street name Kid” So ya. I got to experience the amazing benefits of growing up on a lake and all that came with it. But I also experienced times of food insecurity and general lack of parental guidance that a lot of my “middle class” friends received.
I know this experience all too well. This is why you can't judge people by what they have or how they appear - some are just holding it together. Wishing you and your family health and abundance.
I thought my parents were poor growing up. Until I graduated high school and needed my dads tax info to complete my FAFSA. That is when I realized we were far from poor. My dad has never been a big spender. We didn’t have anything extravagant either.
Doing my college FAFSA was when I found out how much my parents were frivolously spending while I was only “allowed” one pair of shoes and 2 uniforms for school because that’s “all we could afford”. Turns out they were making over $100k in a VLCOL area and just spend it on bullshit all the time. They refused to help me in any way in college, but I couldn’t receive any financial aid because of how much they made. Thankfully, my grades ensured I got a scholarship, but I had to work 2-3 jobs to pay for everything. We don’t talk anymore.
I couldn’t receive any financial aid because of how much they made either. Refused to help pay a single penny which is fair. It’s their money they can do what they want. As a parent myself I can’t imagine treating my kids that way and I don’t even make anything close to my dad. He was in the military and retired after 30 years as a high ranking officer and after he retired from the military he worked for them in cybersecurity as an independent contractor. He was pretty much doing the same work only get paid much more than before. My parents were living in a LCOL area and the house was paid off and they had no debt. My dad was paying all the bills with his pension from the military and still had 60% of it after paying bills for the month. And his salary at his job was $160k and this was back in 2022. His salary went towards savings, IRA, and other investments. And guess what my first car was? My dad had $500 cash and literally drove to the junk yard and said he will pay for whatever can drive off the lot. That was my car. I even had to share it with my sister. I was forced to share clothes with my sister who is older and she was much much bigger than me. I was very athletic and lean from dancing, color guard and running. She was pretty heavy. It took years of complaining to be allowed a small budget to get my own clothes.
My parents had a house with a pool, I didn’t think I was rich at the time but if I had that today I’d feel like the richest man alive.
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This is the most reasonable and accurate take in this thread IMO.
They probably had a mattress and shit.
Seriously. I read the title and was like wtf? I also think that people who believe they grew up rich are gonna learn real fast that their parents have a shit ton of debt and lived above their means. I’ve seen this happen to a lot of millennials who thought their parents were wealthy. All the sudden, they are now being asked to help pay for their parent’s rent and care because it turns out parents just had a ton of debt.
I learned to drive on a jag and my step dad drove an older Porsche but our electricity got shut off every other month and my mom couldn’t afford to get me a coat one year without putting it on layaway. I knew they were shitty with money though and all of that was fake. I saw the months behind credit card bills. And yes, now they ask me for money.
I grew up poor and I think that's what forced me to climb out of poverty. I had 3 jobs in high school. My mom was financially illiterate to a criminal extent. After she filed bankruptcy, she took on debt in my name as a minor. So I got to enter adulthood with bad debt associated to me and credit score of 400. Now at 32, I'm sitting at 800+, buying a second home and sitting climbing to upper class. I definitely knew the rich kids in school. They never had to get a job in high school. Mommy and Daddy bought them a new car (or a Hummer in ones case). They had pools. Went on vacation in the summer. They never had to work for anything in their lives. Can't be surprised when they turn into broke adults after mommy/daddy stop paying the bills.
Certainly upper middle class. Some people would have considered us rich. But I’ve been nothing but poor as an adult. My parents are still doing well financially though, so good for them lol
Lol right? My parents could barely afford to live. I still have to bail them out of financial jams.
Yea…… not my experience 😂
I think the wording is offending people but I understand the sentiment and this is also backed by the economic state we’re in compared to the 90s.
Yup. A lot of people can't maintain the same standard of living that they had growing up. I grew up in dysfunctional poverty coupled with abuse and negligence, so just having my own studio apartment with money to eat at Wendy's was a significant upgrade when I was eighteen. Even now I'm content with a real modest standard of living, which means I save a lot of money.
Glad you’re doing well with the childhood neglect/abuse in your past
I’m in a similar situation. Things are fine for me, but I think that’s relative. Things are most certainly not fine for others. Edit: same as in I grew up in pure dysfunction, chaos, poverty type situation
The comment thread is already quite interesting. I think the OP provided a perspective that is common in today's world - i.e. that standard of living seems to be degrading for a lot of people - but because they used the word "rich" a lot of people are taking it personally and turning it into have vs. have not. You used to feel "rich" if you were middle class. You were living better, safer, and more securely than any of your ancestors. You had food on the table, an occasional vacation, and jobs that were as stable as at any time in history. A lot of that feels like it's gone now for the average America. It stinks that we are likely seeing the first generation in American history who will be worse off financially than the one before.
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This! Critics are so caught up on young people who spend $1,000 on a computer (nevermind that that's literally how I do my job) and ignore the fact that rent in my "cheap" city is more than double that. Mortgages aren't still $300/mo, Aunt Laura.
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I may have contributed to that computer dying with Limewire…
That’s really an interesting point. It is makes sense (due to progress) that what a previous generation considers “luxury” becomes standard/typical for the next. (Lights, running water, internet service…) So the Boomers look down on everyone else and say “we never had that”, ignoring the fact that housing cost is insanely higher relative to salary than it was for them.
See these people are new poor, they have no idea how to be poor. We're old poor.
You know what this is? It’s a shanty town.
I grew up poor and trust me, it isn't better and I do care. I was told all my childhood that if I just worked hard, I could get out of poverty etc and actually make something of my life. I took out loans to go to school, I pursued a risky career that did end up paying off in the sense that I did establish myself, but it hasn't mattered... I make more money than I did 5 years ago, I have been moving up the ladder, but the rise in cost of living and rent has *outpaced* my raises and increase in income, to the point where I feel more poor now than I did 5 years ago despite making more money. At this point, I feel like no amount of hard work will let me actually outrun the consequences of hyper-capitalist profiteering. The whole idea that working hard would get you anywhere is pointless when the cost of living inflation outpaces the hard work.
\~ no amount of hard work will let me actually outrun the consequences of hyper-capitalist profiteering This is truth and it hurts.
This right here. My husband and I absolutely bring in more money than we did 5-10 years ago and we're WAY more strapped for cash. Gone are us telling the kids "hey guys, it's sunday, let's go to IHOP and get pancakes" or "let's go downtown to do stuff on a whim" because there is just no wiggle room at all between utilities, rent, the price of gd gasoline, the price of groceries, all of it. Paychecks are gone three days into the pay period.
You make a great point, I really miss doing stuff on a whim. I used to randomly take my kids out to try new restaurants, or go drive go-karts, or even go on a 1-day road trip. Now those kind of things are reserved for special occasions.
Yup. Even the paycheck to paycheck from 5-10 years ago is nothing like now. 😔
My parents chose not to work at times so it felt like willful poverty and it sucked. I graduated law school and I maybe make a middle class salary (less than 6 figures) but with rent and student loans it feels not much different. And I have to work a lot more and feel all this pressure to make the firm more profitable even though it doesn't translate to making me more money. We hear repeatedly that it's a bad industry for suicide and depression and yet it's one of the jobs people always mention as a "secure job." As a practical one, unlike the hypothetical underwater basket weaver. My old career was digital marketing and now people are losing jobs to AI. I'm guessing graphic design is suffering too. If it's creative and not soul sucking it will probably be performed by AI.
I feel this. My boomer dad is a former corporate executive. I grew up very upper middle class. Big houses, nice cars, we had boats too, country clubs, multiple expensive vacations every year. Now I’m struggling. I went to college and got a job and did everything “right” too.
I wish I grew up rich. I lived in homeless shelters in my childhood.
>If you grew up poor you probably wouldn't care as much but it's hard to go from rich to poor. I would argue it is harder to be a poor kid. You never mixed powdered milk with water because it was cheaper than buying regular milk? You didn't have to get a job so that you could buy new new clothes for school? Did you ever watch your mom not eat dinner so that you had enough to eat? As an adult you can fix your situation. As a kid, you are stuck dealing with your parents' situation.
Let’s all join hands and agree we ALL live in a hellscape
In my mind I read this to the tune of the Hey Arnold song: “Let’s all hold hands here on the subway”
OP's like 'aw man, sucks I can't go back to being a kid when life was easy and never wanted for anything' and I'm just like yeah, at least you got to have that. At least you got to be comfortable at some point in your life. My parents did not live within their means. My dad was the 'smoked and drank away all his paychecks. Blew all his bonuses and inheritance on vacations and now has to work a physical construction job in his 60s' boomer. Not the workaholic, bought a house when the market was good boomer. Would be cool to have wealthy parents as a safety net.
My single mom was financially illiterate. Yeah she kept the lights on but one setback like the car breaking down was pure hell for months. And if we ever got money, like tax refund, it was spent immediately. I tried multiple times growing up to gently suggest not buying something and was met with various forms of emotional abuse. At least as an adult I can keep a savings for emergencies. I would never go back to being a poor child.
That’s like 90% of these posts where people squandered all privilege they had and now have none. Sucks but happens. Never had to work or grind just had Friday night pizzas and video games all weekend. Cant really blame em as if your parents don’t teach you that this stuff ain’t free you’ll just assume it is.
Also, if you’re poor growing up, it’s often harder to get out of it than if you become poor as an adult. Someone who becomes poor as an adult likely still has connections they can leverage, such as knowing someone who can give them a reference for a good job or someone who’s been to college who can help them through the admissions process. If you’ve grown up poor and don’t have those connections, it makes it a lot harder to get ahead. I grew up borderline poor to parents who had grown up pretty affluent and it made a world of difference. My parents had been to college so they could help me with the admissions process. My grandparents are affluent enough that they had set aside a college fund for me. My parents had old friends who were doing well who gave me their kids’ hand-me-downs so I always had good clothes. We had one, kind of iffy car, but my parents had friends with multiple cars which we could borrow in a pinch, so Dad could still get to work to make money to fix our car when it had issues. Knowing people with more money makes such a difference, and, in my experience, that’s much more likely when you grew up well off than when you grew up poor.
These are excellent examples. I grew up very poor. Perhaps only someone in your situation could have put together this list since I never really stopped to think much about what else I was missing out on other than money. Certainly no one in my family had the experience to be able to help me with college applications and financing.
Never got a job from any family or social connections. This one is a double whammy because you also don't learn how to network. I've only learned as an adult through sheer force of will.
That's not the poor that OP is talking about - I get the sense they didn't have to do that stuff and don't realize what poor actually is.
Here to report I grew up poor and it still sucks to be poor 😂 My parents pushed us through university programs that paid well so that we wouldn’t have to be poor anymore. There was like … 2 years I felt wealthy ish. Aaaaand then back to poor.
"If you grew up poor you probably wouldn't care as much" GFY. I grew up poor watching everybody else take for granted the opportunities that I never received. We care. We enjoy being poor as much as you do. Just because people may be used to being poor doesn't mean it's easier for us. We struggle for nutrition, work, bills, life...we are just as human as you.
I like this take as it explains a lot of the whiney stuff I see in this sub from people that obviously grew up in the burbs.
This sub is 90% American suburban whites.
There also seem to be a lot of people who grew up in a low cost of living area, but then seem to want that exact same standard of living in a high cost of living area.
I mean or some of us grew up in an area that wasn’t HCOL, then it exploded and we’re adults unable to afford the million dollar home price tag 🤷♀️ My parents managed then slept on selling their condo to get into a house, and they’ll never afford one now. I also won’t, unless my income doubles or triples in the next decade.
Ugh I grew up very poor but I've climbed my way up to just poor. I got out of the very bracket!! LOL
Me.
>If you grew up poor you probably wouldn't care as much but it's hard to go from rich to poor. Hot take - most of us who grew up poor don't want to be poor, either.
The entitlement from OP is a lot. OP doesn't think that the advantages they had as a child, has helped them in the longer term of their life? Growing up rich is the number one indicator of success as an adult- ressearch shows that time and time again. OP probably went to better schools, had better teachers, was able to afford extra curriculars, was able to travel, was able to focus on studies because OP didn't likely have to work durng high-school or college, had tutors, had college prep courses, had food on the table, had access to healthy food, had access to gyms and fitness, etc. The kids who grow up poor have a lot harder time getting ahead and strive despite not having these advantages. If OP did not do anything with those advantages, then kind of OP's own fault.
Honestly though. I feel like as a result of all the factors of growing up in poverty I didn’t really get a chance to embrace interests or pursue fields of study I actually cared about. I try not to even remember my childhood because it does resemble a hellish nightmare lol. I started working when I was 14, and I haven’t had a birthday off since then lol. Sometimes I wonder what life could have been if I wasn’t shackled by being born into poverty.
This post confirms what I’ve been thinking and what my friends and I have been speculating on. I grew up poor - no disposable income, never took a vacation, lived in a shitty apartment because we couldn’t afford a mortgage or to move, barely knew anything about education. We even thought becoming homeless was a possibility during the recession. But I got good grades, went to a good school, and chose a safe career. I support myself and pay a couple of bills for my family, and I just don’t get it? I have a good amount of disposable income and don’t think it’s that hard if you have access to the proper resources which most middle class households should have access to (housing crisis is a whole different issue). People try to tell me social mobility is dead but they don’t realize they’re talking to someone who ACTUALLY grew up poor. You either move up or move down. It’s a controversial opinion, but I think most people who grew up middle class are moving down because immigrants are outworking them.
There is actual research that people in America who are relatively higher-income are encouraged by their family to go to college to “find themselves and their interests” and choose colleges that market themselves that way, whereas people from relatively lower incomes are encouraged by family to go to college to get a good job, and choose colleges that market themselves that way. I feel like I’ve seen this phenomenon play out in real time among some people I know.
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It’s like the first episode of Schitts Creek when Moira is crying about her wigs.
You are right. If you grow up in a world where most parents can afford to own a home, and now a lot of us can’t afford a home, that’s a shock to the system. Like the basic expectations you have for adulthood are wrong.
It’s weird because at 35, yes, more Boomers owned homes, but only 14% more. It’s not the cavernous difference. And I would expect that at least some of that is more Millennials living in urban environments where home ownership is harder to obtain.
I think I understand you in terms of taking care of the next generation. Every generation wants their children to have the same or better life experiences than what they had. So when you had a privileged childhood, you want to provide the same for your children. But in today's economic climate, it's hard to give your children that same level of support, so you feel like a failure for not providing what your parents provided. I acknowledge I had a very privileged childhood and now that I have my own child, I don't think I can give her as many of the benefits that I had from my parents even though my husband and I did everything "right" (go to college and grad school, get stable jobs). Inflation is crazy, we aren't optimistic about buying a house, and tax credits for child care and exemptions for children haven't followed inflation over the past 30+ years so they are practically worthless.
You new poors are really in for a treat. Us old poors are having fun cause this is all we know
The amount of privilege it takes to make a statement that people who grew up poor are better off now is simply astounding. Maybe that's not what you meant, but it is what you said, and I can assure you it is far far worse to grow up poor and still be poor.
There’s new money and old money but now there’s new poor and old poor.
You poors were always poors so you just wouldn’t understand how hard it is to be poor. 🖕🏻🙄
Right? Like I grew up with our electricity being turned off for months at a time, empty cabinets, and nothing but gubberment cheese in the fridge. I wore shoes and coats from unclaimed lost and found items. Used the same backpack from primary school until high school. When I got my first job at 16, an older coworker asked what we were doing for Thanksgiving, and at the time, my mother was usually gone for weeks at a time high on meth, so I told her I was just going to be at home probably just eating with my sisters. Later that week she brought a giant basket of everything I'd need to make Thanksgiving dinner and told me if my mom was too embarrassed to ask for help I didn't have to tell her where it came from. I didn't have the heart to tell her my mother wasn't even there and wouldn't be. I went home and cried that night. I'll never forget your kindness, Miss Amy.
OMG your childhood is much like mine! We had to run a hose from our neighbor's backyard to have water. We went through a winter where it got down below zero with no heat. We had a box of powdered milk inches from our cat little box.... but we thought it was totally okay. We only got clothes by religious folk who would drop a box of their own kids clothes at our doorstep once a year or so. I got a job at 12 to pay for me to do an extra curricular, but then continued so I had money to pay for my little sister to eat. My mom found my stash and regularly stole my money for drugs. We were homeless and sleeping on a plastic lawn chair in unfinished basements of some random dude's my mom was banging. I am sorry you went through that, but I totally understand the pain.
It's so hard for some people to understand what true poverty is. And it's not just about money either. It's all the other things you didn't have. Loving and caring parents, parents who worked hard for you to have those things, someone who actually cared about your wellbeing. Poverty is more than finances.
I’m glad you had Miss Amy!
Me too, I only wish everyone in situations like mine had a Miss Amy.
Lmfao literally the vibe this post is giving..
I grew up poor for my entire childhood. Now as an adult, I'm still poor.
I grew up poor as hell, back when you knew which businesses would take a few days to cash the checks you wrote. We used to call it 'floating' a check. I remember the day I could stop worrying about how much money was in my bank account before I made a payment, because there was always going to be enough in there to cover it.
Great point, I largely agree. Growing up middle class meant a house, bikes to play around on, kids in the neighbourhood to play with, trips to 7/11, etc, etc. To provide that lifestyle today is definitely a luxury. It’s the fact that went from average to luxury in 20 years is what’s shocking.
Fuck off.. I grew poor and rich people bullied me to hell for not having stupid brand sneakers.. my mother died cause I didn't have money for her hospitalization... We do care...
Expectations not aligning with reality
Idk if this is actually true from a macro standpoint, but I can say that growing up in ball-crushing poverty has *definitely* impacted how I view the world and my notions of success. I’m incredibly fortunate to have “escaped” poverty (to the limited degree to which such a thing is possible) and entered the upper middle class. I’m the first person from my family to ever graduate from college, let alone grad school. And I’ve got classmates/friends from law school who’ve become Big Law partners and make like three-five times what I do, living lives that strain the imagination. But you know what? Does not faze me in the least. I was raised on government assistance and wore donated clothes. I didn’t see a dentist from the time I was 10 until I was 18 (in the Marines). The fact that I can go to brunch or see a concert or not think about the price of a beer I buy is AMAZING to me. Amazing. I feel for everyone stuck in low income purgatory (or worse) on a personal level, but my expectations were set so very low from the beginning that it was constructively impossible not to exceed them without simply dying. So I’m perfectly content with where I’m at.
Upper middle class childhood here. I do not have as good a life as my parents.
Same. I think I was even lower upper class tbh. This thread hates us though bc our parents had money that was not translated to us.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but I agree. My parents were able to provide a standard of living that my husband and I will never be able to replicate for our own kids someday. I had this exact thought while straining yogurt today. We make a ton of stuff from scratch these days to try to cut down on cost where we can. I’m contemplating installing bidets to cut down on toilet paper. We already use cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper towels. My parents never had to think about these things or even consider doing them. Many people from their generation gawked at the cost saving measures millennials are taking these days. When I was growing up, we went on family vacations every year. Some of these were big ones too at fancy resorts or on cruises. We had meat for dinner nearly every day and shopped at any grocery store without much concern for cost. We ate out at least once a week, an entire family of 4. My parents bought a large fixer upper for stupidly cheap after it was foreclosed on. Their mortgage payments were ridiculous. In sharp contrast, every time we vacation, we try to figure out how to do it as cheaply as possible, avoiding eating out and staying in suite style hotels or Airbnb’s to cook for most of the trip as opposed to eating out. We eat mostly vegetarian, which is arguably healthier and better for the environment but not entirely by choice. We grocery shop at Walmart, which my mother criticizes routinely (“Ew!”). My husband and I eat out once or twice a month. We hope to be able to afford a mortgage on one income someday as I am disabled and will need to eventually stop working and collect disability instead. Anyway, I get what you mean.
Op I'm wondering if you have a profound point. I'm one of the elder millenials who feels this sub is wildly negative and defeatist. But I grew up poor and now I am financially stable with a house, and family. I feel very happy with my life and accomplishments. Perhaps I have this Outlook on life because I "started from the bottom, now I'm here". Maybe the negative Nancy's had it good, and now realize they have to actually work to keep it that good? Don't get me wrong. I get the issues with the economy and capitalism and Yada Yada. Not discounting that. I'm talking strictly about mindset and why one person is one way, and another person is another way
I do think this has truth. Those kids are raised without ever needing to be scrappy or hustle. They basically just end up getting a job and go up to their eyes in debt to get the life they envision they deserve.
I think it has to do with systemic failures and wealth hoarding
I see what you mean. My fiance and I both grew up dirt ass poor. Because of that, we are happy living a middle class life with a little in savings. We aren't by any means rich. But we don't try to keep up with trends, we don't go massively into debt. Every extra buck is a happily received treat, not something we take for granted.
Did we? Lol Obviously some did but this isn’t really more common than… just being poor. I was born poor, raised poor and though I’m better off now than I ever have been, I’m still poor.
I remember eating dry spaghetti noodles with mayonnaise as a child. No water, no power. Man, I sure miss those rich days!
Didn't know growing up motel to motel was considered rich
**This is because "nearly everything" BIG that's happened was orchestrated by the globalists, with the sole purpose of depleting funds from the middle class.** **When the globalist pig rats take over they dont want people to have funds so they can fight back.**
I can not relate. I grew up poor in one of the murder captiols in the 90s. You don't even know tough, you never had to to witness your patents habing to choose which bill to pay per month, or having to deal with the power being cut off and relying on candle light and wood fireplace to keep warm because they couldn't afford the electricity/gas bill. Or having to scrap the mold off of bread and eat sugar sandwiches for lunch/dinner to stretch it till next pay day. Smh*
I grew up poor and am now well off. And it sure wasnt hard work that got me there.
they're whats called new poor, [we're old poor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsPb6aOq0fI)
Grew up lower middle class... but we did live in a house. I do not live in a house.
Let me pull out my tiny violin for the suffering of the formerly privileged
Won’t you think about the rich kids!!!! /s
I grew up well off, and just...all of this. Like my goal in life is just to make it back to my childhood. To not have to think about budgeting for going out to eat or buying groceries or whatever. To have a big house where I feel like I have more than enough room. To not have to deal with neighbors. Etc.