Quirks from a poorer childhood that have followed you through life.

[Motorwayview]

Inspired by the tight people thread.
No matter how much underwear I have I am always slightly panicked that I'll run out of clean underwear so have been known to handwash and leave overnight to dry. Ive got draws and draws of the stuff now - BUT growing up for a while I had just enough to get by on but only if DM washed them every night. ( 3 pairs knickers) Sometimes we didn't have the 50p for the meter to use the emersion heater or boil a kettle (this was the '70's).
The one that drives DH mad is that I have to use every last drop out of a bottle even if Ive got 3 more of the same in the cupboard ( shampoo ect) .
Anyone else ?

I use every last scrap of soap if I can. After not having a car for several years and then getting one I found myself doing the same thing as my parents used to do - putting a tiny amount of fuel in it and running it 'til it was empty. It took me some time to realise that as an adult with debit cards I can keep it filled up and not have that 'running out of petrol' anxiety at all. There are some things I splurge on now because I can afford to. From once only having a pair of school shoes and occasionally a pair of wellies, I now have shelves full of them, many of them somewhat frivolous and not the sort of thing you could wear on a long hike. Although i've tried!

At my school the free school meal tickets were red and the ones paid for by parents were green.

Which is why I went home for lunch (tinned soup / beans on toast) or if plans dictated staying at school I took a ham sandwich and a packet of crisps - we would have been eligible for me to have free school meals but my Dad was working and my Mum didn’t want me to have the shame of the ‘red tickets’ or my Dad to have the shame of not being able to provide food for his family.

She went without a lot so I could eat better food. Bless you mum.

Me too.

Really interesting thread!
My parents were very poor growing up (born in 1940) but managed to buy a house in a lower middle class area when I was 6.
Dad worked in a factory - paid on Thursdays so we never had eg bacon on a Thursday as money had run out.
But in the 70s wasn’t really noticeable - no-one had designer clothes or fancy holidays so no envy.

I am now very wealthy but no interest in fancy things - clothes from Asda and Primark get me compliments. I prioritise my mental health so use my money to buy me time and convenience. Nothing saved for ‘best’ -just use it!

I do agree with you so much! I think about it all the time - I used to save the best things too, but after a friend made me a charity shop fan - (before her I never went, thought it was embarrassing, weird I know - my rich friends always went charity-shopping, I wanted to distance myself from any form of 'charity' and never went, but now I am charity-shop mad) I saw the amazing things people 'saved for best' which their offspring donated to charity after they passed - I could not believe it - like Royal Derby china sets (!!!!) never used, mink fur coats never worn (!!!!!), etc. etc. do I don't save anything for best anymore, I use it all up, I wear it and force my family do the same.

I go round the supermarket comparing prices like a hawk and often don’t buy things that feel too expensive. eg I will get the £1.70 British apples, never would I spend £3.30 on the Pink Lady apples because the others are half the price and just as good.

But also…I get my children’s hair cut regularly at a really good salon because we only had one haircut a year and I want them to look groomed

On the plus side I’ve always saved and have no problem budgeting, and rarely go shopping for fun since this wasn’t a thing in our house so I find it boring (we read books since library books were free.)

Result being I have saved about five times as much in pensions as my husband which will stand us in good stead. He grew up in a home with 5x the household income that we had and it does mean we have very different attitudes to spending.

Yes poor mining village with very little.
DM bought one Mars bar per week, it was sliced and shared between 3 of us over an entire afternoon.

At the seaside, definitely no toys or treats really.
Such that now I go in swimming pools on holiday and love secretly swimming with all the inflatable toys that parents have bought for their children - crocodiles, flamingo’s etc.
Literally just been swimming now alongside an inflatable dolphin
I’m 70 😬😊

How right you are about resilience. Same with mine.

I have today bought an inflatable swan on Amazon 😂

Yes, yes and yesss!!!!

I hide my jewellery when we go on holiday as we always got burgled.... I could never read 'Burglar Bill' - terrifying.

Poverty is so bloody grinding isn’t it? I remember those scratchy decades old worn towels, nothing matching. I have loads of new towels now from upmarket shops and clothes ‘for best’ unworn- while I’ll wear shoes and jumpers with holes in. I spend a great deal of money on stuff I’ll not wear or use. The psychology is so odd. I have been inspired to chuck out my old towels so that I’m forced to use new ones. I’ll feel more comfortable keeping back one unused set though, ‘for best’ 😁

That's incredibly sad. Your poor husband.

Oh and one DP hates because he has a flashy car - long car journey we take blankets to keep warm. He tells me the car has heating but I don't trust that we won't all freeze to death.

I do the shower thing otherwise I find that the stream from the shower washes off the shampoo or shower gel.

My daughter will buy something and put it on immediately. Doesn’t need to wait for an ‘event’ and never saves anything ‘for best’. This makes me happy. I cannot do this for myself. I have unworn clothes, unused towels and a whole cupboard of high end candles.

I have always got warm coats in the car, one for me and one for a passenger. Car heating is fine and dandy till the car breaks down.

At DH’s school children having FSM stood in a separate queue and ate sitting at separate tables too. Just awful. DH also had free meals at school during the holidays, it was often his only meal of the day.

I stopped selling things unless they are worth a lot more than a tenner. By the time you have paid postage and bought packaging (even if you use recycled, there is still stuff like sellotape) and driven to the post office, it wasn't worth my time. I started putting things on my local facebook giveaway group and the joy that has given me is worth more than the few quid I would have made by selling.

So much of this. We were properly poor when I grew up, never hungry but certainly no money for birthday presents.
I'm 68 now and very comfortably off but lifelong habits of frugality stick.
I tend to mix frugality with extravagance. So while I might stay in an expensive five star hotel I will take a packed lunch for the journey.
DH had a similar background and also has similar attitude to money now. Happy to pay £££ for a meal out but hates wasted food at home.
When we had children I felt a bit panicked at losing my income and gaining the cost of children. I still worked part time but it all went on nursery fees. Actually I didn't need to be because we were fine but memories of my childhood made me worry.
I tried to get the balance right with the DC. They weren't spoilt all year round but got expensive birthday treats. They are now adults and both have very similar attitude to money to me.

I do try to remember to wear / use the good stuff but I've learned that expensive clothes don't really interest me whereas fancy hotels do!

Regarding wearing other people's clothes, because of the age and shape gap between me and my sibs, we never had hand me downs and my Mum made most of our clothes apart from coats. Outgrown clothes and shoes were passed to the local church and thence to families who needed them. I was taught from a very early age NEVER to comment if I saw a child wearing something that had been mine. we were nowhere near comfortably off but better off than some!

Where were you all when I was at school? I always felt as if I was the only child who didn’t have new clothes, didn’t go on school trips, couldn’t afford to go and spend at the local shops. I opted not to do home economics for O level because my mum would’ve had to buy all the ingredients. It felt very lonely.

Old habits die hard, I am now very happy to buy my clothes from charity shops, use leftovers, etc because I think it’s better for the planet. I’ve just about managed to overcome the hoarding and ‘keeping for best’. I don’t have children, but I often buy things for my friend’s kids because I can’t bear the thought of them missing out like we did.

Branded period products. Lots, and lots of variations for different flows too.

I was given a box of vespre for first period (well, the first I told mum about). Vespre was ultra thin as they had that liquid turn to gel stuff nappies have, there were not many on the market which did that. But more expensive. After that one, it was a drive to the cheapest product- the own brand and cheapest thick towels which hurt the top of my thighs when it rubbed as I walked to school and back- the towel was always the thickest super super pad so I wouldn’t use as many and it would bunch in my pants through the day. Horrid. But I knew I shouldn’t ask for better, more expensive. When my younger female cousin started a period during a visit I remember urgently insisting to mum to get vespre for her so she wouldn’t suffer as I did. She never asked why I was so insistent but I think she knew ☹️. Working class, both parents worked manual type jobs, but we weren’t hard hard up I don’t think. Bills were always paid, always food in. And Mum smoked. I wish there were period pants back then, on light days at the end of period as my legs had been rubbed for a few days by then, I would wear the big navy blue gym knickers with cotton or toilet paper placed into the gusset, then remove and hand wash the knickers. A period pant pre-cursor 😆. I should have gone into production, could have been Michelle mone 😂

My mum was the same - 14 when war broke out.

I wish I had a sewing box as I’m now a professional dressmaker and would love to think I got it from her, but she never sewed or knitted a stitch after I was born (even though she was good at both) in 1970 as she had made everything including nappies and cloth handkerchiefs for my older sisters in the 1950’s and was so glad to be able to buy ready made kids clothes for me.

I got a duvet (or continental quilt as they were called here in UK) for my birthday in 1976. I was 11. It was so exciting as my ‘posh’ friends next door had them. My mum was all up for it as I could then easily make my bed myself.. and she didn’t have to boil blankets .. it was a game changer in our family as my dad was very poorly and incontinent - so mum was forever boiling sheets and blankets ..

Waking up on a winter morning - ice inside the windows and running to the Aga wrapped in my duvet to get dressed and scorching my upper thighs which went all itchy with heat rash - but my arse was blue with cold ..