Dh always says he grew up poor. I’m sceptical.

[CredulousThickos]

He bases this on the fact they had a black and white telly until he was a teenager, no phone until he was 15, they never had a car and they went to the Isle of Wight on the train for their holidays.

He says I grew up rich because we had two tellies (one was black and white though!), a phone, two cars at times and a home computer. Oh and we went to France twice.

I reckon he’s barking. Our dads both had very similar jobs and bought their (very similar) houses for tuppence but then struggled through 15% mortgage rates. We both had piano lessons. Both wore handmade or hand me down clothes and never had Nike trainers or a Mr Frosty. Both families of five.

His parents are now minted (inheritance) and other than a few nice holidays a year they still live very frugally. Same for mine although they eat out a lot too and do have the latest things, Sky, big tv etc. ILs still have an old CRT tv and a video recorder.

So my theory is that they are just frugal people who don’t put any importance on technology or ‘things’, and that his tales of abject poverty are flights of fancy.

The funny part is, when we met he had a flat furnished with stuff he’d been given (most of it went in a skip when I moved in, I’m not kidding when I say it was grim, the sofa was falling apart). He didn’t have a landline or a pc and his mobile was a Nokia Brick (this was only 11 yers ago). He wasn’t poor at all. So his theory holds no water.

He won’t have it though. And he says I’m seeing it from my ivory tower of a privileged upbringing.

WIBU to ask his mum at Sunday lunch tomorrow?

(Lighthearted obviously before you all roast me).

If you think you grew up either poor or wealthy, what were the signifiers? Because IMO we both grew up in relative comfort.

Many people don't like to accept that true poverty can exist in the UK. My mum wasn't being frugal- there was no money for electricity or food. Frugal is when you're trying to save money. There was no money to save. It's not a competition to see who had it worse, but it was (and sadly still is) the reality for many families.

Poverty now is not like poverty in the 70s/80s as people generally have more in terms of material goods, but it still exists and is shameful. You only have to consider how many families have to use foodbanks to know this is true.

Sadly most families use foodbanks because of sanctions/delays in benefits. And that has changed.

Every time I want to improve something in the house my DH begins "When I was growing up we never had/ could never afford ..." Yes, but we CAN afford these things now, so why not replace the old threadbare carpet etc. He never says it when it's something HE wants.

The thing is, this is pretty subjective, because everyone grew up in different financial brackets & different households.

As an example, I grew up in a fairly well-off household (Dad was a commercial property surveyor & partner in a firm owned by him & 9 others - he's retired now). We had a 5 bed house, a family of foxes living in our garden which the uni would study, had a gardener & cleaner for a bit & went to private school for secondary. My folks bought a holiday cottage in Devon the year I was 25 & Dad was a director of a well-known Football Club for a bit & had BMWs then Lexuses as cars.

Now, many people would believe we were loaded. Not really, we were comfortable. Also, not only did we know value of money (my Dad grew up behind a Butcher's shop & my Mum was one of 5 & they lived in a high-rise flat) & me & my sisters all had p/t jobs at 16, but I remember the time (70s & 80s), where they needed lodgers to help pay the bills very well (mostly students from the uni). Heiko from Germany, Frankie from Italy, Mario from Spain, Darren from Birmingham, Richard from the Netherlands (he rode a motorbike & wore leather, so at age approx. 7 & 8 me & my middle sis thought he was fantastic!), Sarah from the home counties probably (she was that type) & Allison from Burnham-on-Sea. Then my Dad sold business & bought it back for tuppence & the rest is history.

So you see, subjective is right. We were lucky, we had opportunities, but it is what you do with those opportunities that counts.

To be fair OP I have also recognised you from your many previous threads, and despite all the good advice you always get nothing ever changes does it. It's only natural that some posters will get frustrated with you at some point.

You have posted that you got your family in to tens of thousands of debt through your massive overspending. You have admitted your poor DH has been working 70+ hour weeks to pay it all back because he hates being so in debt.

Yet you were still determined to spend thousands on a new guitar for him recently. You kept saying it was because you wanted him to treat himself and because he deserved it for working so hard. Several knowledgeable posters explained you could get him a good guitar for a few hundred, but no you wanted to spend thousands AGAIN didn't you.

What your poor DH really deserves is a wife who won't get him so heavily in debt.

It's no wonder that money is at the forefront of his mind and that he feels the need to point out that your behaviour is entitled/rich. You are deluding yourself that this is something jokey and light-hearted between you. He is the one carrying all the financial responsibility and all the debt that you caused.

But I know you won't listen because you never do. You just keep posting similar stuff every few weeks.

The plot thickens.....

It really doesn’t.

DH would have done the overtime anyway. I wanted him to buy the specific guitar he’s wanted for about ten years. He wouldn’t buy it until we were debt free. We now have the cash and he STILL won’t buy it because he’d rather save. Which is fine. But it is something he wants, not me.

Yes the debt was down to me, I was very ill and undiagnosed for a long time. I spent while depressed and I spent more while hypomanic. I’ve had intensive and lengthy therapy and I’m on a fuck tonne of meds with horrendous side effects, but I no longer think I’m rich and superhuman, nor do I think I deserve to die or that I’ll feel better if I just buy xyz.

It’s very easy to make your mind up about someone from a few posts on a forum but please remember people only tend to post about the negatives or the drama, I could write hundreds of threads about the lovely mundanity of our lives but they wouldn’t make for very interesting reading. This was meant to be a chatty bobbins thread about how we view our upbringings but I clearly misjudged it.

Just rest assured that while I am spendy and DH is less so, we have a good balance and no money troubles. And despite my doubts and need for reassurance from him, he’s very happy with our lives and doesn’t feel like my poor abused husband. The past few years were hellish as far as my MH is concerned and I told him numerous times to leave me. But for some strange reason he loves me and won’t. And I spend every single day doing my utmost to make his life simpler.

It really does, OP.

The info above casts your original AIBU in a completely different light.

Good luck, OP- sincerely meant.

I have been on several of your other threads and they always end the same way with you insistent that everything is fine and good and that everyone else is wrong.

But we're not the ones taking our families into awful debt. Until you learn to give your family what they need as opposed to what you think they want then this is a tragic pattern that is going to keep on repeating itself.

Oh I feel duped. OP it sounds like your DP is being frugal because of your behaviour not because of his upbringing. it sounds particularly shit.

I grew up with both my parents in work, including my disabled Mum who eventually gave up work about twenty years later. We were poor and most definitely couldn't afford Piano lessons.

Reppin yes a lot of posters probably feel the same. But the OP will determinedly insist that everything is lovely and light-hearted and use twee words like 'bobbins' to trivialise what is actually a really dreadful situation.

I'm sure her poor DH would dearly love a nice guitar. But there is a world of difference between 'wanting to save' and 'being scared to spend'. And I bet the DH is the latter because he can't trust his wife not to blow it all.

This is all getting a bit personal and hurtful now. You don’t actually know me, or my DH,and you are extrapolating a lot here.

There is no ‘dreadful situation’. No dire straits, no impending financial doom. He’s not scared to spend, he has literally just booked our summer holiday for next year. He just finds it difficult to spend big money on things for himself and will find excuses. He has always been the same, always. Way before I came along. He has no problem with holidays, meals out, days out, stuff for the kids.

I’m not some mad selfish spendthrift driving us into the ground. I was ill and now with a lot of hard work I am very much better, I’m very aware of the issues around my spending and have put a lot of time and effort and headspace into addressing them. We have paid off nearly £16k of debt in less than a year and have money in the bank.

Our situation is not what you think it is. DH is an absolutely amazing man and while I have no idea why he puts up with me, he does, and he wouldn’t think of himself as ‘poor DH’ in the slightest.

Yes I can see it must be really frustrating and hurtful when someone takes a few details from your posts and then applies a negative spin to them so it feels very personal.

Something we should all be wary of doing.

Wishing you all the best OP.

What decade was this I think is prudent to ask?

My mum grew up poor (60s &70s) - 5 siblings and 2 parents in a 2 bed council house. Dad worked for the mines and then a factory, Mum didn’t work. None of them could go to uni as couldn’t afford to live even with free tuition. She moved out at 16 after doing well in Assurance. They had a B&W tv, 1 car, no holidays.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. If you were poor, you got a grant that was enough to live on. It wasn't money that stopped poor people going to University, but more that a small percentage of the population went to University, and that it was rarely seen as being for poor people. And especially poor women.

I have no idea if I was poor or not. I used to get school trips and uniform but casual clothes were just jogging bottoms and T-shirts from the market. Quite often they would have holes in them.
My mum was a heavy smoker, she would withdraw 70 pounds a week and spend about 10-15 on food, toiletries and cleaning products. A everything else went on smoking.
She was very stingy with money. When I went to uni, she still got child benefit for the year but told me I was to sort myself out for food and clothes and travel. She’s keeping the benefit as rent.
When I graduated and got a job, she charged me full rent. As in the full rent for the council flat she was renting plus a bit on top for bills. When I wanted to move out she made it difficult and impossible to move out.
I remember having an argument with her about using a 56k modem to get details from an email from work. I think my words were “if I can’t get the flight details i’ll Get the sack and there goes your cash cow”. She let me in the end but pointed out I cost her 70p