FAN members who were poor growing up, git n hur

[King Ghidorah]

A question for us poor folk growing up, how long did it take for you to realize you were poor. I gotta say, my mom and pops did a real good job of getting me anything I 'wanted". It was once I went to this very high class High School that I realized that I grew up poor. In fact, I can narrow it down to a single conversation where I realized I was hood raised, it was all I knew.

["Hollywood" Cactus Matt]

We only did laundry once a week to save on water. (which makes sense.) If we were lucky enough to get new clothes (i.e., at the start of a new school year), if the day we got them did not coincide with Laundry Day, we just pulled the tags off and wore them to school.

Well, when I was in 7th grade, I went to the math teacher's desk to ask her a question; I heard giggling and snickering but couldn't understand why until this kid Ben (who had been bullying me since 3rd grade) loudly pointed out that I had left a tag on my new pants, and "HAW HAW HAW YOU SHOP AT K-MART!"

Up to that point, I thought that K-Mart was the "nice" store, since a lot of our clothes came from the Salvation Army and other thrift stores. (at this point in time, around 1992-1993, we didn't have a Wal-Mart, and the "nicer" store - Meijer - was "too pricey," even though now it's considered this area's version of K-Mart, since the K-Mart here in my hometown went out of business.)

So in a nutshell ... probably around age 12-13, when I really started paying attention to how much things cost and the value of money.

["I'm Batman..."]

All the other kids/ families in grade school lived in houses and had cars.

We lived in an apartment and didn't have a car. If i wanted something, I couldn't get it because, "We can't afford it".

[edtheripper]

I was never wanting for anything when I was growing up. I just didn't realize how reliant my mom was on credit cards until I got older. That's when I realized how thinly stretched she was financially.

[Throwback]

Mar 21, 2012 20:59:59 GMT -5 "Hollywood" Cactus Matt said:

We only did laundry once a week to save on water. (which makes sense.) If we were lucky enough to get new clothes (i.e., at the start of a new school year), if the day we got them did not coincide with Laundry Day, we just pulled the tags off and wore them to school.

Well, when I was in 7th grade, I went to the math teacher's desk to ask her a question; I heard giggling and snickering but couldn't understand why until this kid Ben (who had been bullying me since 3rd grade) loudly pointed out that I had left a tag on my new pants, and "HAW HAW HAW YOU SHOP AT K-MART!"

Up to that point, I thought that K-Mart was the "nice" store, since a lot of our clothes came from the Salvation Army and other thrift stores. (at this point in time, around 1992-1993, we didn't have a Wal-Mart, and the "nicer" store - Meijer - was "too pricey," even though now it's considered this area's version of K-Mart, since the K-Mart here in my hometown went out of business.)

So in a nutshell ... probably around age 12-13, when I really started paying attention to how much things cost and the value of money.

Even if I was a millionaire I would still shop at thrift stores. Completely dressing yourself for under 20 bucks is always a good deal.

[Deleted]

Considering we went a year without cable, yeah, I'd say we were poor

[Mister Pigwell]

Yup, was raised on thrift stores and just going without.

[Koda, Master Crunchyroller]

Honestly? Probably around my middle-teens, so 13-15 somewhere in that range.

It was definitely hard for me to notice as a kid, though, because they did a pretty good job at getting me things that I wanted.

It also helped, I guess, that the things I wanted most of all as a kid, video games and new systems, were usually in the twilight years of their release cycle, and thus were much cheaper than normal. Like I got my Genesis in the mid-90s(it was one of those revised models), I got my PS1 when Sony released the PSOne model in 2000, my GameBoy was a GameBoy Color(and those things were always cheap), really until I started buying my own systems in 2005, the only systems I got when they were "new" were the Game Boy Advance and the PS2.

[Throwback]

I hate to be that guy. But nobody here has any idea of what real poor feels like. There are kids in this world that would kill for just basic tv being a sign they are poor.

[Mister Pigwell]

Mar 22, 2012 1:04:07 GMT -5 Throwback said:

I hate to be that guy. But nobody here has any idea of what real poor feels like. There are kids in this world that would kill for just basic tv being a sign they are poor.

There's a huge difference between "AAAAH I didn't have a XYZ toy" and "starving child covered in flies".

I'm aware.

But when single mothers are living in government housing, 6 credit cards maxed out, heading to churches for handouts, and giving a young C-Fed a monopoly money looking food stamp to go get an ice cream once a week, yeah regardless of whether there's someone poorer out there... that's still poor.

I'm full aware of my blessings I HAVE had and realize it could be much, much worse.

Doesn't mean I could be classified as anything but a po' folk tho growing up.

[Koda, Master Crunchyroller]

Mar 22, 2012 1:04:07 GMT -5 Throwback said:

I hate to be that guy. But nobody here has any idea of what real poor feels like. There are kids in this world that would kill for just basic tv being a sign they are poor.

Well.......yeah, the majority of us that post on this forum are from America, Canada, the UK, or Australia, even those who are below the poverty line(and thus are technically "poor") in these countries can have some luxury items, if they play their cards right.

[King Ghidorah]

Mar 22, 2012 1:04:07 GMT -5 Throwback said:

I hate to be that guy. But nobody here has any idea of what real poor feels like. There are kids in this world that would kill for just basic tv being a sign they are poor.

You have no idea how I was raised, so please don't speak for me.

[Koda, Master Crunchyroller]

Mar 22, 2012 1:16:03 GMT -5 King Ghidorah said:

Mar 22, 2012 1:04:07 GMT -5 Throwback said:

I hate to be that guy. But nobody here has any idea of what real poor feels like. There are kids in this world that would kill for just basic tv being a sign they are poor.

You have no idea how I was raised, so please don't speak for me.

Same. My family on good years only pulled in around $15,000, and like I said that was the good years.

We had food stamps up until we moved, and hell even the monthly payments I got until I turned 18 for my father passing away went majority into the family, it was my own money that in hindsight should've been going into a savings account so I could pay for college but it was going into the family. We made due, though.

[Throwback]

maybe I did jump the gun. But without getting too personal. I'm raising 2 children on about $1000 a month. Granted I live in a country where certain things are taken care of by the government. The truth is I too have days where I have to choose not to eat. But because I'm warm, not starving and have clothes on my back, I could never truly consider myself poor. I guess it's just me but because of the opportunities that are given to me based solely on what country I happened to be born I feel strange complaining about things like not having cable. Even as a kid when kids at school would make fun of my clothes or lunch. I had a "whatever" attitude towards it.

Mar 22, 2012 1:16:03 GMT -5 King Ghidorah said:

Mar 22, 2012 1:04:07 GMT -5 Throwback said:

I hate to be that guy. But nobody here has any idea of what real poor feels like. There are kids in this world that would kill for just basic tv being a sign they are poor.

You have no idea how I was raised,

True. But this gave me a pretty good idea.

Mar 21, 2012 20:53:27 GMT -5 King Ghidorah said:

I gotta say, my mom and pops did a real good job of getting me anything I 'wanted".

[jagilki]

My classmates made it abundantly clear that I was poorer and inferior to them.

["Hollywood" Cactus Matt]

Also: I distinctly remember a giant jar with PEANUT BUTTER in black letters over a white label. After opening the jar, you'd have to mix the peanut oil with the peanut mush to make actual peanut butter.

Putting dehydrated milk on off-brand cereal was another big hint. A lot of the food we ate was either generic as hell or supplied by the government.

[Back to being Cenanuff]

I remember having generics, getting government cheese, even knowing that the purple food stamps were $5, the green ones were $10, and the tan ones were $20. This was in the early 80s, when they didn't pay nurses anything, and my mother was divorced. I had hand me downs until I was old enough to get a job, and buy my own clothes. Never really thought of myself as poor until I got that job, and got that small amount of financial independence, and saw how much we did without. Made me not like the rich kids so much, and made me realize that as much as everyone said labels didn't matter, they really did.

[Deleted]

I never really thought about it until I was in college, but I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that everyone in the county I lived in was pretty poor. Even the 'rich' kids were kinda poor.

[THE Baldy Kendrick]

I know we were on food stamps since I was young, but it was about 12 when I figured it out and the 'poor' thing clicked in my head. We moved into public housing at that point, and that's when I realized a lot of the things my mom did so we could get by. That was also about the time that my mom lost her job at a school and couldn't get hired anywhere else, so that made things worse.

It eventually got to the point where at 17, I had to take a 2-week advance from work so we wouldn't be evicted.

[Dat Dude]

When I found out that not everyone at school used food stamps.