#1
As a kid, I vowed to be able to afford as much orange juice as I wanted when I got older. Started working in high school and used my first paycheck to buy a gallon of orange juice. I drank it all in one day and got horrible diarrhea.
To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to Amy Saunders, founder and CEO of AlphaPR. Amy has discussed her humble background on her blog before, so we asked if she could shine some light on what it was like growing up poor. "I think growing up poor, or without a sense of financial security, skews your relationship with money," Amy shared. "I didn’t have money growing up so I didn’t know how to HAVE money when I did get it. When I began running my own company in my twenties and began making a livable income, it was like it was time to celebrate by blowing it all. Suddenly, I was making close to six figures, but ended up racking up an even higher debt."
"Of course, I wasn’t taught financial literacy, or even how to save when I was younger," Amy explained. "And that lack of literacy spilled into my late twenties and early thirties. Having grown up poor, I only knew how to stay poor, even when I had money."
But Amy shared that there was no definitive moment when she realized she had grown up poor. "I just always knew that we went without. I think the bigger realization came when I was older, and had to work through my financial trauma in order to build a financially stable life for myself."
#3
We also asked Amy if she could share any of the things she had always considered luxuries for rich people until she got older. "Good water pressure in the shower is a big one," she told Bored Panda. "I had a friend who lived near me, in a low income neighborhood, and one time when my power was out, I went to her place to take a shower. I remember how shocked I was by the way the water hit me in her shower. She had actual water pressure. I was 19, and I had never used a good shower before."
"I also always thought having your own room, your parents owning a house or a car - these were rich people things," Amy noted. "I never got my driver's license until I was 32. In my mind, I wasn’t rich, so I would never afford a car anyway. So what was the point?"
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Amy also noted that the topic of food can be a whole separate conversation when it comes to growing up poor. "The quality of food you eat when you're poor is vastly different than what you eat when you have some money - but it’s not all about affordability," she noted. "Growing up, my mom worked three or four jobs, sometimes all in a day. By the time she got home, she wasn’t about to cook a lovely, big, healthy home cooked meal. We were getting frozen dinners in front of the TV. Perhaps we could have afforded fresh veggies to make big stews and chilis and meals, but when you’re poor and working to make ends meet, you don’t have the time." It's no surprise how many responses on this list have to do with food, beverages, eating out and having access to snacks.
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We also asked Amy about some of these things she previously considered luxuries that have now become normal to her. "I have a car now, and I think about doing groceries as a kid and pushing the broken down cart full of food all the way home, or in the snow in the wintertime," she shared. "It reminds me that when you’re poor, your 24 hours in a day are different than the 24 hours in a day of someone with money. Lugging groceries home is something normal people do every day, but not something I have to do now that I have a car, which also feels very normal."
And over time Amy has found a way to change her perspective and understand that she does deserve access to these things. "Things began to shift once I worked on addressing my unconscious beliefs about money, wealth, and my deservedness of money," she explained. "It was exceptionally painful to shift this perspective. I used to cry every time I got a piece of mail from the bank or the government about my taxes."
"Now, my husband and I make nice, fresh, healthy meals. I haven’t eaten peas out of a can, or a TV frozen dinner, since I was a teenager," Amy told Bored Panda. "I also own a house, but as a millennial, I still consider that a luxury in today's market. That and, my shower actually works these days."
#10
My first experience of it was having a sleepover at a friends house. We were, apparently, set to have Chinese food that evening.
I was asked what I wanted. I had no clue. So the parents just recommended something. I just said OK.
I was staggered to NOT see the mother cooking. She was just mooching around the house doing *f*k all*. Where was this food? Why wasnt she preparing it?
Then a knock on the door. And some person delivered a box of food. With more boxes in it. One box was for me...
Madness.
Such wealth to get people to make and deliver your food. That display of *vast wealth* stayed with me for a very long time...
Despite Amy's humble beginnings, she still wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that we don't all have the same opportunities. "I have privilege as a white woman. I recognize that people still experience many of these things as luxuries, and escaping poverty when you come from a historically marginalized community is harder than escaping poverty when you’re white," she shared. "I carry a lot of privilege, and I think that is something important to recognize when it comes to discussions about poverty, wealth, and financial trauma. It is not an equal playing field."
If you'd like to hear more wise words from Amy, you can find her blog right here or follow her on Instagram right here.
#15
We also reached out to writer Assad Abderemane to hear his thoughts on this topic, as he has a poignant essay on Medium discussing similar themes. Assad opened up with Bored Panda about how growing up poor impacted his relationship with spending money. "Spending money for food, some clothes, and a roof over our heads? Of course, we need to survive. Spending money on things we didn't absolutely need like a new TV or a bigger fridge was always for special occasions, like, when the old TV stopped working or a new sibling came along," he explained. "But spending money on experiences like going to the cinema or a concert? That was useless, a waste of money. I used to silently judge friends who'd pay so much money to go see a singer they already listened to every single day on Spotify. Then they'd complain about being low on cash in the middle of the month?! That was ridiculous to me."
But Assad was not always keenly aware of the fact that he was poor. "I think it really dawned on me that I'd grown up poor when I stopped being good at math," he shared. "In the 8th grade, they started adding letters to math, and suddenly all of it was too abstract for me. From the first grade to the seventh, I was always top of my class at mental math. I'd been doing mental math for my mom every time we'd go grocery shopping. I was a walking percentage calculator during sales season. We couldn't afford to pay too much for groceries, so I took my mental math missions pretty seriously."
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#18
They quite literally had a rags to riches story, they lived in the most run-down house available in the Philippines.
After years of gaining money, my grandpa and grandma managed to move the entire family into a condo. And that’s where my mum and dad come in, once they had me they gave me a life that they didn’t have. Toys, proper food and generally a better life then what they had. I’m forever thankful.
Assad also touched on some of the things he had previously assumed were only for rich people. "I thought only rich people could wear different sets of clothes day after day," he told Bored Panda. "Hashtag OOTDs (outfit of the day) became popular when I was at the age where you expressed yourself through fashion. But I was like an anime character - I wore the same clothes every day."
"Shopping for new clothes and new shoes only happened before the beginning of a school year," Assad explained. "I'd be teased by, apparently, significantly wealthier friends at the beginning of a school year like, 'Aaayooo he's got some new kicks and a new hoodie! New socks next week or am I too optimistic?' Turns out they weren't that much wealthier than me and got a lot of hand-me-downs - I'm the oldest sibling, so I never got that 'luxury'."
"I very much could relate to a lot of what was said in the Reddit post. Going on vacation really hit me," Assad noted. "The first time I went on vacation with my family I was 15, and that was most definitely because we could stay at an uncle's dingy apartment - I remember us having some of the most fun we'd ever had."
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