A thread to describe your experience with and the impact of poverty.
Not whether we should do anything about poverty or anything like that. What we could do and whether we should do anything are both separate conversations for another thread.
This thread is where we can explore the experience of poverty in all the ways we have experienced and observed it manifest. Help us understand what you’ve seen and gone through.
I was definitely “poor” when I was between about age 5 and age 18. My father was a severe alcoholic. He basically destroyed my grandfather’s business that he inherited, then drank himself into oblivion as we descended the socioeconomic ladder - we were middle class with a house and a car, then forced to move into a trailer park, then lost the car, then my parents finally separated after my poor mother suffered for 30 years, then me and my mom lived on socially assisted housing for several years.
My story since then (socially assisted housing to university on a bursary and student loan, to the big city with a scholarship, to professional, to upper class) is basically a textbook story for government help. I could have stayed in that trailer park and dealt drugs I guess. But I ended up having a life instead.
Not going to have time to post any detailed stories for a day or two, but we were pretty poor for a few years growing up when my parents got divorced. Food stamps, mom working under the table cleaning houses to try to pay for night school. She often couldn’t afford a baby sitter so she’d take me along in the day and leave me and my brother at home in the evenings, sometimes with TV dinners if we were lucky and strict instructions not to leave the house. When we got a bit older we were stereotypical latchkey kids in a working class neighborhood full of them.
I was different kinds of broke for pretty much all of my 20’s. Lived out of my car twice. Lived illegally in run down commercial buildings twice. Always had to support myself with shitty service industry jobs. I trashed my credit score early and it stayed trashed for decades.
The people I met along the way will stay with me forever. It’s one thing to read about a single mother trying to raise 3 kids, but it’s something else entirely when you work with her every night during the graveyard shift at the donut shop and experience her life that closely. To live in the same semi-squat as some street kids on the gutter punk circuit. To have grown up with multiple friends in abusive households because that’s just how it is in the neighborhood.
Poverty sucks.
After a few years of being broke I wasn’t poor, but I could definitely relate.
This rings true to me as well. We were poor, but we weren’t really cut off from society. I grew up in a small town in the 1980s with one school, so my class included the doctors’ kids, the fishermen’s kids, the welfare kids, the black kids who were bused in from one town over, etc. So we mixed, we played, etc. I think that’s a big difference compared to now where it seems like there is more class segregation with gates communities of McMansions for example.
Some distinct memories from my childhood:
When I was small we couldn’t afford fresh milk. We had big boxes of powdered milk with the boxes of cereal. To make breakfast I would have to first “make milk”, then add to the cereal.
We lived in a trailer park. I don’t remember it as terribly uncomfortable living but I do distinctly remember occasionally not having heat in Canadian winter because we couldn’t afford fuel. Not fun.
We also had a lot of used stuff. I dont think we ever bought a new set of skates, for example. But rich kids that played hockey were forever growing out of their skates and selling them cheap. You can live a pretty sweet childhood off the dregs of the wasteful rich. Trickle down economics baby!
The closest brush I had with poverty was making minimum wage when it was like $8 in CA, bringing home $850 a month, and my rent was $650 not including utilities. I did this for a few years. I got into this situation by being thrown out in the street with 2 weeks notice by my grandma/mom who were selling the house and pocketing the equity to pay for my moms massive debt she accrued while cheating the IRS and a healthy drug habit. I found a run down place on craigslist that was owned by this total slumlord who would do crazy shit like tear out a wall or ceiling with no notice (i was too young to know it was illegal). I was very seriously considering living in a storage shed before I found the place.
ANYWAY, surprisingly, you CAN get by - not well though. I look back on those days as much happier than the ones I have now, although it was extremely uncomfortable. Stuff just piles up on you and you cannot escape.
My strategy was basically to eat as cheaply and as little as possible. Funny enough I did not meet the income requirement for food stamps, the govt determined I made too much. welfare in this country sucks ass and doesnt go to a lot of people who really need it for getting through hard times.
I (luckily) decided very early on that obtaining credit was the only way to make it in this country, so I started out with a $300 secured credit card that required like a $200 down payment. I had to sell some stuff to afford it.
This card got me out of a lot of jams when I was low on food at the end of a month. I never really got into a debt snowball, where the balance was hopelessly increasing, but there was definitely a rotating balance that never ever seemed to disappear.
Later on when my credit started to improve I started playing the credit card reward offers, where you get a free $300 if you spend $1k in 2 months or whatever. I did as many of these as I could, filled the bonus, then kept or closed the card depending on if there were annual fees or not. If not, I kept the card. To this day i still have some of them and they are major factors in my credit score (for length of credit history).
Eventually, seeing no way out of the situation, I enrolled in community college on somewhat of a whim. In CA if you make less than 34k or somewhere around there, CC is free(ish). I say “ish” because you still need to pay some fees and books, but it is very cheap overall.
This opened a lot of doors for me. I got my captain’s license (for small boats), and doubled my salary. Things got a lot easier then, and I was finally able to get a new-ish car. From there I was able to start doing Uber to supplement my income and my low primary salary was no longer as much of an issue, so I relied much less on the credit cards. I intentionally had to keep my income lower one year by taking a few weeks off because I was going to go over the ~30k “threshold” for tuition assistance - that’s the only time I ever really gamed the system. And I still feel bad about it.
Doing this for a few years, I finally got my computer science degree (with almost zero debt) and make a stupid amount of money for what I actually do day to day. It’s been a real Cinderella story for me, and despite a largeish windfall I received after graduation, I still live like I’m a poor person a lot of the time. It’s something I constantly have to work on, not worrying about money constantly. I firmly believe being poor for long periods of time is psychologically damaging.
Sorry for my life story here, I just feel I know what it’s like to be broke and with little hope and I was able to come out of it fairly unscathed. I have a great deal of sympathy for people who are in similar situations. It also has given me a bit of a “if i did it, you can too” kind of bootstraps attitude towards poverty - but then I acknowledge that I had massive safety nets, a good head on my shoulders, very few health or life issues other than my mental health, and no children to worry about. Had I had even one thing go wrong there’s no way I could have pulled it off. So I really fight thoughts like that.
Sometimes it is a bad thing. Many people who grow up poor assume that the natural order of things is that every dollar that comes in goes right out. Saving is a learned and developed skill and many poor people never get that skill.
My step-f-in-law who recently passed away who I was helping take care of grew up in the depression in Arkansas, eating squirrels, skinning horses at 10 years old to get some money, hardly ever seeing cash, 10+ kids on a farm, trading for or making almost everything for themselves. He moved to California young and did well - relatively high ranking government employee and a long and good retirement.
He wasn’t like stingy, but basically didn’t spend money and was kind of obsessed with preserving it in a way that I think is explained by his childhood. One time while my wife was there recently the heater kicked on and he said “that’s the sound of money disappearing”. Anyway, he died at 95 with a shit load of money. A double shit load. Everyone knew there would be a lot, but there was apparently more than twice as much as thought. (no, I’m not a beneficiary. He had a family before he married my m-in-law (after his first wife died) and his own kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.)
Hmm hard for me to say if it sucked as a kid. I grew up pretty poor. Both of my parents were both drug addicts and dealers until I was about 15. House was disgusting. Lived through a couple drive-bys. Had the house broken into by other drug addicts while I was home alone. I for sure got a little trauma there. My fight or flight while I’m sleeping is insane. My ex’s and friends thought it was insane that I would legit FLY out of bed ready to fight to the death if I was awoken by a super loud noise. Legit from dead asleep to 100% adrenaline. Lived in hotels with my dad while moms was in jail. Watched dad beat my mom.
Although I got to experience life as a kid and learn a lot. Ran the streets from like 12 years old on. And my mom always loved me, even when she was super strung out.
In the end I turned out dope as fuck. All my friends love the shit out of me. I’ve lived a wild and crazy and fun life.
No regrets. But, this 100% varies and is completely dependent on each situation and I still recognize despite everything I was super privileged being white and having good people in my life that cared for me. I think for the vast majority of people in poverty is absolutely crippling and this in no way undermines that. Just my personal experiences.
Also I was privileged enough to get a PC after by dad got sober when I was 15. Allowed me to get into gaming, then poker, and grow up online where I wasn’t as limited with only interacting with others also struggling in poverty or terrible schools.
I think growing up online made a HUGE difference.