Life when you’re well-off and when you’re incredibly poor is like night and day. The difference in your family’s income doesn’t just affect the quality of your food and how you spend your free time—not having enough money impacts nearly every aspect of your life. In ways that you couldn’t imagine.
One redditor, user Jicta, asked their fellow site users who grew up poor to share the “unwritten social expectations of your world growing up,” besides practical and widely-known money-saving measures. The responses have been heartrending. Have a read through them below, dear Pandas, and let us know what you think. Have you ever had to do anything like this while growing up? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section, dear Pandas.
The creator of the Financial Samurai blog, financial expert Sam Dogen, went into detail with Bored Panda about climbing out of poverty. "One of my main reasons for writing 3X a week on Financial Samurai since 2009 is so that I can help people for free reach financial independence sooner, rather than later. Not only is my blog free, but so is my newsletter," he said. We also reached out to the original poster of the question, Redditor Jicta. Read on for both of their insights.
#22
Homemade birthday cakes, homemade pizza, we NEVER went out to eat. Fast food/restaurants were a waste of money. Soda was a treat, as was sugared cereal. You got sox and undies as stocking stuffers at Christmas. You wore your clothes 2-3 times before washing them unless they were obviously dirty or smelly. You washed and dried zipper bags to reuse. We never used paper towels to clean.
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#23
Number one rule of growing up poor. Avoid buying anything nice for yourself and feel absolutely guilty if you do.
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#25
Keep your hair brushed, your clothes clean, and be articulate and polite in all circumstances. We were not going to be "trash" just because we were poor.
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#26
We weren't allowed to do any kind of extra curricular activities. So, no instruments, no joining any kind of sports or girl scouts or anything that required an upfront investment for uniforms or the season. Walmart shoes.
My dad once said I wasn't really in need of glasses, that I just wanted to look like all my four eyed friends? lol (spoiler alert, totally needed them)
Off brand everything.
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#27
Never fill up the gas tank. You don't want to be in a situation where you have gas in your car but no groceries.
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#28
Generous borrowing and “burning” culture. Everything you own is available to be borrowed by other poor people. My family had an extensive movie collection (especially when we could record movies from cable to VHS tapes), and our neighborhood friends were welcome to borrow what they needed. Games, movies, CDs. We swapped and borrowed a lot. Often times, it was only long enough to burn a copy to have for oneself.
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#29
Most meals were "experiments" made from the food we got from the food pantry.
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#30
Going to fast food (with any adult), you only order off of the dollar menu.
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#31
Its funny now seeing my leftovers as a bonus snack and not part of the next days meal.
Had some weird lunches packed for me. Like cream cheese and olives in a burrito wrap.
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