if you grew up with no money and now you are financially comfortable...

[nomorearsingmermaids]

...do you live with this awful, grinding fear of it all being taken away?

Let me start by saying I know how lucky we are. I know it has piss all to do with hard work. I am grateful for it every day. I grew up in a single parent household and my mum used to work an 80 hour week doing two jobs to pay the bills yet we were constantly on the breadline, worrying about where next month's money was coming from. The threat of having no money was always there and even now, when DH and I are financially comfortable, I can't shake that fear.

We have a major thing to pay coming up which is going to wipe out the entirety of our savings and I feel scared of DH losing his job (or me losing mine, but he earns far more than I do), or getting ill etc and being unable to work. I can never ever relax and enjoy my life because I am always worried it will be taken away from me.

I wonder if this is left over from my childhood or if I am just irrationally over-anxious.

Kind of. I wouldn’t say I worry about it on a day to day basis, but that’s only because we have paid off the mortgage and have plenty of savings. Due to both growing up in poorer households we gave been very careful over the years not to live beyond our means, so when our peers have been moving to bigger fancier houses we have stayed in the same one and concentrated on paying ours off as quickly as possible. We were always terrified that if we moved into somewhere with a big mortgage and he lost his job we would end up homeless!

And I keep detailed records of all my spending and balances and always have to know how much I have.
And looking at my spending I donated more to charity and political campaigns last year than I spent on everything else put together (excl school fees) that spending I don’t have a problem with (particularly because I know it would really piss off my ex husband)

and have 7 figure sum in bank to live off Isn’t is better to have that money invested rather than sitting there?

spending I don’t have a problem with (particularly because I know it would really piss off my ex husband) 👍🏼😁

I wouldn’t describe it as a ‘grinding fear’, no. However, the sense that it could all be pulled out from under us at any moment is definitely always there in the background for me. Consequently, we have insurances and savings pots coming out of our hoo-has

“Bank” was shorthand for “invested in various VCT’s and EIS’s and a large propn with a PWM along with my pension” I could tell you the exact amount I have in my current and savings accounts

Just checking TJEckleburg 😉

I also had a student loan even though my parents could have payed although they did have to help as I think my loan was 3k p/yr & my accommodation was 2.7k. I also worked during holidays etc.
We have a holiday home in the S of France & I always contribute when I go whereas so many of my friends get holidays paid for & I feel hard done by! However I did have significant help with a deposit.

In short, yes.
I’m single and my parents are long dead so I have no family safety net. I have a ds to provide for and a mortgage. I keep at least six months money, and usually more, in an ISA. I go without broadband, and the car is nearly 10 years old, rather than eat into it.
I could use it to reduce the mortgage but that would leave me with no emergency fund, so it sits there earning hardly any interest.
On the other hand, I can sleep nights

We were, not really poor, but just about managing, no spare money, when I was growing up. Rented flat, DM relying on family allowance to get her through to DF's next payday. Now, I have what is to me an extraordinarily well-off and privileged life - quite a lot to do with DP being a high earner, and us both profiting from the London property boom. I never worry about losing it, because before I was with DP I could always provide for myself, although I lived much more modestly, and I know I will have enough to survive on for the rest of my life.

I live with the fear of it being taken away but in a different way! I don't 100% trust banks because accounts can be frozen, assets can be seized etc. So I'm the opposite and tend to spend my money on enjoying life! Money & things can be taken, memories cannot. No matter what happened I wouldn't end up as poor as I was in childhood so I know I could cope. I save, up to a point, but I'm not really frugal.

I grew up in an impoverished middle class fashion: big house, charity shop clothes. In many ways I didn’t think enough about money growing up - as long as there was a book to read and architecture to look at, I was happy. But I never felt financially secure as everything was my father’s and he ruled with a despotic rod...

My DH was brought up in a poor but striving immigrant family. He is highly successful and we are richer than either of us ever anticipated, but he never feels content or secure. Whereas I feel hugely fortunate.

It has been the cause of big issues between us and might, I suspect, be the eventual cause of a permanent rift between us.

I am certainly like this. Growing up we were either working class comfortable or church mouse poor and hiding from the rent man! Not my parents fault at all - dad was made redundant several times during my primary school days. I vividly remember going to the school office to get my free school meals tickets and then, once dad was working again, happily going in and telling the school secretary that I wasn't on FSM anymore as dad had a new job! I was one of the few kids on FSM at my school. I never felt ashamed though; I was always philosophical about our financial ups and downs.

When I was about 15 dad got a good permanent job which he stayed in until he retired at 65 so my parents are not well off but also not worried about paying the gas bill. For this I'm very grateful.

I'm a saver. [Middle class with teacher parents] DP is different - he would spend on frivolous things and I think he thinks I'm tight. We compromise on one takeaway a month! I actually have an endowment policy for an old mortgage I had in my 20's which is going to pay out about £50k in 5 years - at first I was very much "what exotic destination holiday will we go on?" but I know that won't happen and I'll actually use it to pay off some of our enormous mortgage

The worry about having no money is also the reason why I work full time and pay the maximum I can afford into a company pension. Only having one wage coming in would be scary for me. At least I know that if one of us loses their job we can survive for a while on just one income. I'm terrified of the financial uncertainty that a no deal Brexit would bring.