S/O do you consider yourself raised in a wealthy family?

[susankenny]

Do you feel you were raised in a wealthy family?

 

Explain.

 

This is just for fun!! :)

[Mergath]

What could possibly be the point of discussing something like that?  :huh:

[Heather in Neverland]

What could possibly be the point of discussing something like that?  :huh:

 

We discuss all manner of unusual, contentious, frivolous, etc., around here. What's one more?

 

 

 

To the OP: no, I was raised in a middle class, blue collar family. My dad was a plumber and my mom was a homemaker. Not wealthy but not poor.

[Amy in NH]

Heck no!  My mother was always scraping to get by.  I got a job when I was 12 so that I would have some spending money, and bought most of my own clothes from then on.  We were some of the "poorest" kids in our wealthy, snobby community/school.  I never fit in; graduated early to get out of there.

[Melissa in Australia]

It all depends what you are comparing it to

 

 for me it was  we were poor. I was raised below the poverty level. there were 8 children. plus my parents sort of fostered some troubled teens. It was a single income family and my father worked very long hours. We were a 1 car family, only had secondhand clothes that were mostly given to us by church members, ate stews and soups several times a week  that had one as their main ingredient as leftover porridge, went on 2 camping trips in our entire childhood, knew that having more than one filling on a sandwich was a luxury that was not affordable etc.

 

 The funny thing is that my DH thinks he was raised in a very poor family- but his childhood to me sounds like a life of richness. They had sail boats, skis, water skies, new bikes, dune buggies went on holidays every year, his mother had a car, they drank soft drink, had new clothes and his parents went on holidays to other countries. His family came from aristocrats in Europe and lost everything in the war.

[Camelfeet]

Looking back I think we were on the poorer end, but I didn't know that at the time. I as an army brat.  Crappy PMQs, older cars, no eating out, not much in the way of new clothing.  Got worse after my parents divorced.  

 

Like another PP said though, still better than how most of the world lives.

[Isabella]

Well, not ultra poor, but our clothes were always hand-me-downs from other church families.  I think my first new item of clothing was a sweater at age 16.  That cost about $10, and it was my birthday present!  My mum cooked from scratch, and we bought bulk items cheaply.  My husband was raised with more, but still not wealthy.  My parents now are quite wealthy, as they made a lot on the stock market after all their kids left home.  They spend a reasonable amount on their grandkids which is nice.  My husband's parents on the other hand, are having to go on the pension, and have little apart from their home and a little bit put aside.

 

[fraidycat]

Middle class. Some "extras", but not a lot. We had a couple family vacations growing up, but not every year and the vacations consisted of going to visit the relatives, so staying with them throughout most of the trip with maybe one or two hotel nights between destinations. We had new clothes, but not brand name (I got a job at 15 for that kind of stuff). We ate out once in awhile for special occasions, but definitely not every week, or every month. Some years were leaner than others, but as kids we weren't aware of that.

 

Mom drove used vehicles, Dad has a company vehicle. Mom was sometimes home with us kids, sometimes she worked. Now that I think about it, as in just now while typing this post, she was probably working on those "leaner years" I mentioned above.

[mom@shiloh]

Thanks for asking this, and I mean that.  It made me stop and think about the choices my parents made and how that has influenced me. They both grew up poor, but said they never knew they were poor.  Having faith, family, health and hard work to do made them feel rich.  They set an example for us of serving the church and community and living contentedly within their means.  

 

Trying to do likewise....

[creekland]

Probably lower middle class here.  My parents were both teachers in the days when teachers didn't make a whole lot, but they also got divorced when I was 11 and ran two households.  We had a garden and pigs to supplement our food budget.  We did car trips annually at Christmas to spend time with one set of grandparents in FL.  We had a couple of other major road trips.  But nothing in our house was new (furniture, cookware, etc).  New clothes came at birthdays or Christmas and mostly went to my sister before coming to me when I was young. We knew better than to ask for things at any other time and never asked for expensive things at Christmas.  I had ponies at home and rode some "nice" ones (for pay) at shows for others.  I started working for pay when I was 8.

 

But I never felt poor... until one year (10th grade) in FL I was sent to a private school (100% on scholarship) while we were there helping my grandma resume life after my grandpa had died.  There I saw wealth...  I had friends... one of our discussions was about how much my dad made.  When I told them ($18,000 that year) one of my peers looked at me in awe and said, "Wow, we have a painting in our living room that cost more than that!"  My friends pretty much paid all of my expenses after that (we were allowed to go out for lunch - though I always had brought my own from home previously).  They were nice kids, but they really had no clue how "the other half" lives.  I guess I was their economic exchange student for the year.  All of us learned a little bit.  I also worked as a groom at the stable where some of them rode... I got to ride some REALLY nice horses keeping them tuned up for them.  I considered that a plus.  A couple also had nice waterfront houses... with great pools.

 

The interesting thing is it never really bugged me - and still doesn't.  Of course I'd love more $$ to travel more and to not have to worry about expenses for fixing up our house and such things, but on the other hand, I'm pretty content with life so a couple of things we could do to bring in more income (like me working full time) we opt not to do.  I was content with life both before and after that year at the private school too, but it sure was a learning experience.

 

I still don't feel the need to keep up with the Jones.  We have some wealthier families in our circle of friends and their life vs mine doesn't bug me at all.  They likely wonder why we live in as run down of a house as we do... ;)  It's probably because having a "great" house was never a priority in my youth, so isn't for me now.  We have several lower and similar economic families in our circle of friends too.

[Pawz4me]

Maybe not wealthy, but solidly well off.  I never heard my parents worrying about paying the bills.  There was always plenty to eat and never any discussion of budgets.  I knew there was plenty of money in the bank.  I got a new Mustang for my 16th birthday, paid for in cash (the only loans my parents ever had were mortgages).  I never got an allowance as a teenager, but always just said "I need" and I got.  If I needed $20 for school or gas or to go somewhere with my friends, it was given to me.  My brother and I knew we could choose any place we wanted for college and that our parents could and would pay for it.  But outwardly?  Probably other than the new car I got at 16 no one other than very close friends/family knew that my parents were so well off.  Our house was average and not always kept up the way it should've been.  We didn't buy a lot of new clothes or gadgets.  We were one of the last families in our neighborhood to get cable.  My dad drove older vehicles. My mom didn't start driving until I was an adult, but when she did she bought an inexpensive car and kept it for 18 years.  Outwardly, w/o looking close, my parents probably appeared lower middle class, even struggling.  My dad was old enough to remember the Depression, so his focus was on saving, and putting money where it counted (i.e., college for his kids) rather than outwardly keeping up with the Joneses.  That attitude has stuck with me.

[Renee in NC]

Yes and no.  With my father it was feast or famine, and the feast was pretty middle class (he was blue collar.)  He grew up wealthier, though, and I was raised with those values, attitudes, and habits.  

[Onceuponatime]

I didn't consider us poor because I knew people with less, but we ate government cheese and got free lunch in school.

[RoughCollie]

We weren't a wealthy family.  My dad was in the Air Force.  Mom stayed home with us.  We lived on bases, had tons of friends, and were in walking and biking distance of school, the movie theater, the BX, and the library.  Mom made our clothes.  We ate very healthy meals, with fruit always available for snacks. 

 

We didn't have a ton of toys or clothes.  We had one car.  We didn't go out to eat often -- maybe three times a year.  We didn't take vacations every year.

 

We were perfectly happy the way things were.

[clarkacademy]

I would say we weren't millionaires or anything but yes as a child we were pretty well off. My mom was a stay at home but she did ALOT of volunteer work. We went to private Catholic school. My parents were out every weekend. My mom drove a big Lincoln with designed by Bill Blass interior. My fathers business did very well. We always had big parties. We had the second biggest house on the block. By the time I was 14 it was all gone though. My father became a drunk, the business was gone, the house was gone I can still remember my mom selling off her car and jewelry and having to work two jobs. It wasn't a pretty time that's for sure. My bio dad died my mother remarried and worked her way up my parents are pretty well off now. I consider my step dad my dad. So there was a few very rough years. So I am sure there are tons more details that is what I remember most.

[Mama Geek]

No, when my folks were married both worked although when I was older my dad had a hard time holding down a job, then my parents divorced when I was 13 and my mom worked a full time job and several part time jobs, plus got some help from my grandparents.  I started babysitting about 13 or 14 and did a lot of that.  When I started driving, I worked in waitressing and continued to babysit.  Married dh my sophomore year of college and we were poor.  He was a grad student while I worked on my undergrad.  

[BigMamaBird]

We were wealthy by the world's standards. We had phone, TV, reliable cars, an average home in a safe neighborhood, good health, good school district.  But my individual family wasn't particularly wealthy.  We lived paycheck to paycheck.  We had all of our needs and some wants but there was careful budgeting by my parents.  We were probably on the slightly lower end of middle class.  Despite what we may or may not have had though, I had a wonderful childhood and I lay that squarely on the shoulders of my parents.  They raised us with lots of unconditional love.

[Garga]

No. My dad made a modest salary, my mom stayed home. We didn't have government assistance, but we also only had one car and no a/c and no cable. No extras whatsoever. We never EVER went out to eat. Our meals at home were very simple. We bought our clothes at Goodwill.

[Kim in Appalachia]

I was raised in a blue collar family.  While I was young, my parents were always strapped for cash because my brother had cancer.  The medical bills were overwhelming, but I never realized it as a kid.  It always felt like we had what we needed, and my mom was a genius and stretching a dollar.  

 

When I was a teenager my dad got into marketing and sales, then management. The medical bills were gone and they had a bit more.  

[Jerico]

Next to my classmates that drove beemers we were middle class... But take us ou of our location we were wealthy. My parents started with very little and did not have college degrees. I kinda wonder how i ended up being so frugal when we never had a budget growing up.

[Dmmetler]

I was university middle class. So were most of my friends. We were the kids who never took vacations that didn't coincide with an academic conference, guest lecture, or an REU, went to a lot of concerts, recitals, plays, guest lectures, and campus sporting events, but rarely anything that we couldn't get into free with a faculty ID, abandoned the public library for the university one as soon as we started doing serious research papers,  and were used to calling most of the adults in our lives "Dr. Someone".

 

Not a rich lifestyle, but a good one.

[Julie Smith]

Middle class compared to the rest of Canada. 

 

But rich in savings. As in my parents put more money into savings then the typical middle class family. So now they are richer then middle class. 

 

Recently I liked to mention to close friends that my parents just bought a plane. (I then found out someone gave it to them :glare: ). It was the wood panel shell of an old one seater a friend of a friend built. No engine anymore, but it did fly 30? years ago. It no longer even had a propellor so my Dad put a ceiling fan in that place and they let the grandkids play pretend with it. 

 

 

[Carrie12345]

No. We ranged from able to have relatively inexpensive perks to near poverty level.

Dh was raised in a "comfortable" household, but in a mega-rich town, which comes with its own issues.

[GreenKitty]

Wealthy in love and encouragement. That's all we really needed.

[Cinder]

No. I grew up on welfare. Single mom with few work skills and 5 kids. (Dad was no help financially as he became disabled shortly after the divorce and couldn't work.) Mom made sure we always had food though. And she was determined to get off welfare. She worked hard to ensure that in spite of our circumstances we had every advantage she could manage. (I went to private school on full scholarship--lunch included.) There were many bumps in the road but today we are all--Mom included--much better off financially than what we grew up with.

 

ETA: While growing up, friends that I considered wealthy were--I now know--solidly middle class. My perspective was different back then.

[Rhonda in TX]

If you're only looking at comparisons among others in our country, no, I didn't. Dad was a teacher. Mom was a secretary at the school. We lived in a small home and did not have nice cars. We didn't go on fancy vacations or have the latest and greatest things. However, there was lots of love and I never felt deprived. My childhood was wonderful. It's only looking back that I see signs of the money problems.

[Ottakee]

We grew up poorer. It wasn't really out of the ordinary in our rural community though. We went to Christian school through tuition help. All the kids there were working class/farmer kids. We wore bread bags on our feet in the winter as our boots leaked, kids brought lunches to school in old sugar bags, one friend had a winter coat she got from her mailman uncle, most kids wore hand me down clothes, etc. No one went out to eat often or had cable TV or a VCR, etc. By 12 all of us were working to various degrees, often 15-20 hours during the school year and close to full time in the summer. It was just the way it was.

 

When I got to highschool it was a bit different. It was a school made up of a lot of rich kids---like own helicopter and airplane rich kids. I hung with more of the country kids that still worked, didnt' get brand new cars for their birthday, etc. I did a lot of the things I wanted and had the clothes I wanted----but that was because I worked a lot and paid for them myself.

[ThatHomeschoolDad]

I had a sort of duality.  From K-10th grade, I lived in Upper Montclair, NJ (and the Upper is important, you know).  Trey posh.  Yogi Berra had a house there.  Olympia Dukakis, and Bob McGrath from Sesame Street, among others behind the gates of the really big houses with views of Manhattan.  Every one of my school friends either had a second vacation home, or took frequent trips abroad.  I knew we did not have that kind of money, but it didn't seem like a huge deal.  By my 11th grade, my father's business boomed and we moved onto a 5-acre plot in a more rural part of the state, and I finished high school with kids who were in Future Farmers of America because they really were going to run the family farm.  We were prob upper middle class in that area.  At least I got a bigger room.

 

Now, our family income exceeds my father's at his peak,  but we have less and struggle more (and my parent's mortgage was at 15%!).  That's why I threw that graph up on the other thread.  The economic history of the past two-ish decades really matters, but barely registers.

[mytwomonkeys]

growing up, i just thought we were average. as an adult now, i'd say my parents are very well off.  

 

as a teen, we seemed normal because "rich" kids lived in the atlanta country club at my school & they received new cars when they turned 16. their homes were enormous!  they had nannies and such.  so when comparing our lives to them, we were not rich.

 

as an adult now, i see my parents as wealthy though.  i live outside of the suburban bubble and realize the home i grew up in and lifestyle i had been raised in is not the norm.  my parents are debt free and pay cash for everything, down to new cars.  their home is 2 stories with a full basement. 6 bedrooms, 4 baths. it's beautiful.  not a mansion, but truly lovely.  my parents travel a lot & are seriously the most generous people i know.  my kids have had the best vacations ever due to my parents generosity & inviting us on vacation every year.

 

my 3 sisters have all grown up to live in the same area and have lovely homes and lifestyles too.  my one sister has a very lavish lifestyle & honestly lives in a way that i can't even grasp - but that's another story.  my husband and i have equally lovely lives, but are not financially well off in any of my family's eyes.  my husband's income is a lot to us now (more than he's ever made!) but to get out of debt we purchased land & are living in a mobile home until we can afford to build a house (about 2 years away still - but it will paid in full :) ).  my whole family views us as "poor".  it's never meant to be a jab to us, just their perception.  we are happy though! "Budget" isn't a bad word, lol.

 

[gingersmom]

Wealthy, no.

 

Upper middle class, yes.

[mytwomonkeys]

What could possibly be the point of discussing something like that?  :huh:

 

i just took the question as a mere spin-off from the DR thread. people are describing what wealthy is from their POV.

[SKL]

Nope.  The exception being that my parents were "homeowners" (but always with a mortgage).  Being raised in a house that my parents "owned" (in a modest but decent neighborhood) probably felt different from being in rent.  We even had an old, out-of-tune piano.  ;)  We also went to Lutheran schools for about 8 years, partly on scholarship (then we moved to where the public schools were OK).  But my parents always had plenty of debt, and were low-income by any measure.  We were continuously economizing and "no" was heard after nearly every "can I have."  We were the worst-dressed kids in school.  The only reason I hesitate to say a flat "no, we were not wealthy" is that we were still wealthier than a lot of people around the world.

[Cindy in FL.]

Lower to middle middle class. Dad was a carpenter, mom was a receptionist.

[Miss Marple]

Parents both have 9th grade educations.  Dad was a bricklayer (began at age 14), mom got married to him when she was 15. Both eventually got their GEDs.  Due to a job injury (and no workers comp) dad often made less than $10,000 per year.  Mom supplemented the income by going to garage sales and re-selling items.  Once we girls were old enough (I was about 10 and the youngest) she went to LPN school and worked PRN after that.  She had an inherent business sense and eventually, though her buying and selling, they moved up in income.  She started a business based on her nursing experience and that eventually led to them moving into middle class income (after we were all married).

 

 

[redsquirrel]

I was raised in a first world country and we always had enough. So, that makes us wealth beyond imagining in comparison to most of the world.

[MissKNG]

Very well off.

 

My parents weren't ones to "flaunt" it while I was growing up but have loosen up now that they are semi-retired. My dad still drives a beat up work truck and wears tattered clothing. 

 

They are very successfully self employed.

[Mbelle]

I would say upper middle class.  No debt except mortgage.  I have boomer parents.  Dad worked full time (upper management, white collar huge corporation) and had a business on the side. Mom is RN and worked about 60-70%.  Very frugal people, but we did have nice vacations and went to state university's of our choice. 

 

The thing is dh works just as hard with similar income and we follow financial peace (Dave Ramsey) and our level of living is very different from the 80's and 90's.  The money simply does not go as far.  DH also has boomer parents who both worked.  We decided that wasn't going to happen in our family.  One of us needed to be home or both work part time.  So far I'm home and that is great.  Also unlike our parents we look at wealth as more than money.  Money IS important and without it life is way too tough, but it is only one part of holistic wealth.  We make a conscious effort to stay out of the rat race.  

We did get hit hard 5 years ago with the economy crash.  It was insanely hard.  I think it's not possible to have holistic wealth without a certain secure feeling money wise.

 

I can relate to mytwomonkeys story.  I might even live nearby!

[Dandelion]

No.  

 

I was raised by a single mom (she left my dad when I was 4 months old).  We were either poor or somewhere between poor and the lower end of middle class my entire childhood.  Mom did have a degree (R.N.) but didn't always work in that field.  We moved a lot, including back and forth between the U.S. and Germany a few times.  Each time, that meant starting over. 

 

We always rented and at times lived with other people. My mom has never owned a house. The nicest house I lived in was when my mom briefly worked as a nanny for a very wealthy family (I was about 4 years old, and we were given a room in the house).  We always had beater cars.  After we moved back to Germany the final time (from when I was 7 to age 18), we no longer had a car.  Or a TV.  The latter I'm actually glad for, because it made me an avid reader.  

 

Even so, my mom always tried not to let finances limit my opportunities.  I was always able to take classes, participate in sports (some of which were quite costly, like figure-skating), and I went to camp most summers.  I never wore brand name clothes (until I got a job at 15 and started paying for them myself), but I always had decent clothes.  We never went hungry.  In retrospect, my mom sacrificed her own wants and "frills" she might have liked in order to make sure that I didn't feel deprived.  I definitely knew that we were poor compared to many of my friends, but I still had a happy childhood.  

[Ripley]

We were middle class.  My dad was a pilot who became an exec at a major airliner. My mom also worked at the airline, but her paycheck didn't go towards family finances - it was her fun money. She worked part-time, but was mostly a professional mom doing all the mom stuff: parties, volunteering, serving on boards and stuff. They were both college-educated, had savings, ate out regularly, entertained often and afforded their hobbies. Both came from large immigrant families, and grew up poorer. We kids were given the benefit of a comfortable life but were instilled with the ethic of working hard rather than expecting things be given to us.

 

We traveled often and well, but that was more about being an airline family than it was socio-economics. Everyone we knew at the airline took awesome trips. It was easier to back then. LOL

 

 

[bluemongoose]

We were probably considered lower middle class. Mom was a secretary and Dad a contractor. Mom basically got us medical insurance and Dad made the income. I was the oldest, so it fell to me to take care of the siblings after school. We didnt live in a hoity toity area, so although I knew we didnt have a lot extra, I did have more than others in my area.

 

I also wore (ill fitting) hand me downs from a cousin, learned to repair my clothing, and didnt ask for new stuff. My Grandmother would take us at the beginning of the school year to pick out a new outfit or two for school. That was the extent of the new clothing unless it was a gift at Christmas or Birthday. We were on reduced lunches at school and I didnt have to pay for some of the extra curricular activities.

 

We rarely went on vacation and if we did we stayed with family most of the time and drove or we went camping as that was a cheap way of having a vacation. Eating out was usually Taco Bell because we could feed everybody cheaply.

 

I knew we were not well off growing up, but it didnt feel so much that way until I went away to college. I worked my way through and struggled with making it work to stay in school. I didnt pick a state school because I wanted the best school in my area for my chosen career. At that school many were from very well off families, and I had to put up with lots of digs about my clothing, my lack of participation in things that cost money, the job I did on campus (cleaning the restrooms of the campus buildings), and the snide remarks about not caring if they dont pass their class because Daddy could pay for them to take it again. I did feel very poor there, but I was proud of my efforts to pay for it almost entirely myself and of my hard work.

[Um_2_4]

Comparing to here in the USA, well I had a bit of both growing up.

Well to do up till age 10 (yearly family vacations (in the USA), nice cars (not luxury), new clothes as needed, eating out/movies often) and then dad got laid off and we went to struggling, but thanks to my mom's savings attitude, we never needed aid or the like, just cut back on spending drastically, little meat, no eating out unless gma invited us,my only new clothes for a few years were gifts from gma, etc.

 

Then my mom & dad's business took off and we went to very well off (maid, new cars, bit more $$ vacations, eating out a lot (due to schedules mainly), new clothes, cash whenever I wanted (movies, dinner with friends etc), cell phones (in the early 90s), etc.). I got full ride to university, but that was because it was expected of me from an academic standpoint, kwim? If I hadn't, my parents would have put a cap I am sure on which universities I could pick from.

 

But I do think my DH earns just as much as my parents did then and we can not afford those things now. Prices have just gone up,up,up.

I'm really thinking back and kind of amazed how may parents made it all work. I knew the costs of many things when I was in high school (their mortgage was $1000/mo, maid was $100/week, etc) and I am a bit puzzled still.

[ocelotmom]

I think we were pretty poor when I was little. My mom stayed home until my younger brother started kindergarten (and I was 8), though she did do some part time work for the church that I think brought in something (though may have been volunteer). My dad was a gardener. I honestly have no clue what he made, but I doubt if it was enough for us to qualify as middle class with a single income.

 

Obviously, they did a good job of insulating me from our financial circumstances, or maybe they weren't actually that bad. If we were on government assistance, I was never aware. I found out only recently that the preschool I attended was on scholarship.

 

After we were both in school, my mom became a substitute teacher, which eventually turned into full time, so our finances gradually improved.

 

We lived in a weird town - lots of very rich and upper middle class, lots of military enlisted families, and not a whole lot who fell in between. On one hand, it left me always feeling poor, even when we weren't. On the other, I've never really felt like I had to compete with anyone else materially - I just wasn't going to keep up with the Joneses, so why worry about it? 

[Jeannie in NJ]

I grew up dirt poor, just me, my brother and a single mom.  My mom always had to work 2 jobs. I started working at age 11 (various jobs, don't remember any child labor laws, working papers etc).  We lived in bad neighborhoods, either rats in walls and sometimes actually running around in the apts.  One place we lived was a sleezy boarding house with one bathroom at the end of the hall.  Drunk men would bang on all the doors all night.   Usually it was just my younger brother and I at home since mom was working.

 

We shopped at the day old bakery and ate lots of spam, gov. issued velvetta cheese, potatoes, beans and cornbread.  My mom refused to accept welfare, she didn't "want the government in her business"  even tho we did accept the cheese.  We never had fruit, too expensive and only went out to eat for our birthdays and that would be a diner type place.  My mom would always make sure I had 5 new dresses for each school year so I did not have to wear the same dress twice in one week.

 

My mom was born in the '30 and her parents were sharecroppers and mom picked cotton as a child.

 

I was the first person in my family to go to college.  My mom always planned that I would go and she made it happen.

 

I consider myself fairly well off now.  Dh is a college professor and I have always been able to stay home with our dc.  We can buy whatever we want and go to Disney World quite often.

[dbmamaz]

upper middle class with my mom always complaining how poor we were . . . 

[LucyStoner]

I think sleeping in a van, living in a motel paid for by a shelter program and eating from food stamps and food cupboards qualifies me to say poor instead of couching it as "low income". I also prefer that term because while it can be a state of mind it is also a real point of fact reality for some. I was not poor of mind or soul but my body more certainly felt the realities of poverty.

 

There were glimmers of getting out as a child. At one time my dad had a full time job as a social worker and my mom had a full time job as an accounting clerk. Then mom was laid off due to federal budget cuts and her physical condition worsened not long after (my mom was mostly deaf and suffered from several chronic medical conditions and epilepsy.) Things fell apart again and again either due to things beyond my parents' control or choices made by my, to put it nicely, unrealistic father.

 

I was a reader, big time. My mom taught me to read using hooked on phonics she bought somewhere. And I played recreational sports (always with a scholarship for the fee). I went to a special high school for self motivated, talented students. I had a good school experience for high school which let me transition to college. I am the first person in my mother's family to graduate from high school, to say nothing of college. My mother was 12 and working full time as a waitress and factory worker.

 

I had a lot of upper middle class friends who thought they were poor because their family only had one new car or they had to go to parochial school instead of the big academies. I always thought that was, um...misguided.

 

I worked from age 11 onwards. I went to college and married someone from a different background. I worked until my older son was 8.5 and it was necessary to rethink my priorities because his needs were not met with two parents working fulltime. I have never been poor as an adult. Short term bits of lower income (my husband is in school) but we have resources and opportunities my parents did not. It is situational and no longer my day to day, year to year reality.

[flyingiguana]

Yes and no.

 

We had everything we needed.

 

But I had way less than all the kids I went to school with.  So we looked "poor".  For some reason, my high school pulled in kids from a lot of wealthy areas -- and a small tip of our neighborhood where folks weren't so rich.  So they had new cars and boats and big houses and swimming pools and lots of clothes and they all went to fancy colleges.

 

I don't think it ever bothered me.  It just was.

 

Compared to some folks, of course, we were filthy rich.  We had food on the table every night.

 

The comparison to my high schoolmates has made me frugal, instead of spending wildly.  I always figure, well, maybe I don't need that.  Or that. Or that other thing.

[Cafdog]

Grew up comfortably middle-class in a wealthy suburb.  Never felt deprived, nor rich.  

[Crimson Wife]

Now, our family income exceeds my father's at his peak,  but we have less and struggle more (and my parent's mortgage was at 15%!).

This is us. I grew up upper-middle-class in a wealthy town (we lived on "teachers' row") so I felt poor compared to my classmates, but looking back now my parents had the disposable cash for a lot of things that DH and I don't. I was such a spoiled brat back then for sulking about things like vacationing domestically rather than at Club Med like my classmates did.

[Guest]

Not even close.  When my mom and father were married, there were many times that we had utilities turned off...sometimes in the middle of winter.  Or we would have to pack up and move in the middle of the night because my father had either pissed someone off, or hadn't paid the rent. She married my stepfather when I was 10, and while he is and always has been a hard worker, it was still always very tight financially.

[Woodhaven]

No.