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.

I definitely grew up poor - I remember being kept late for school every Monday because that's when my mother got the child benefit and had money to buy breakfast. And someone delivering food parcels - now I recognise it was some kind of food bank or charity, but she pretended it was a friend. And the rented TV being taken away because she couldn't pay for it, and having to sit in the dark because there wasn't any money for the meter. I don't think your husband grew up poor...

I grew up poor. The signifies were:

Heating for the kids rooms only. Mum and Dad in bed in their coats.
Bus was for coming back from town with the shopping. The three mile journey to the shops was always by foot.
No brand name foods-ever.
Holidays to Clacton or Walton. Mum tells me she used to feel guilty about these because apparently that's not what benefits money is for . Also: we had second hand clothes in order to save for this extravagance which Mum also agonised over.
Being subject to anti social behaviour and not being able to move away from it. Knowing the police wouldn't protect you because it's just chav's kicking off at each other and honestly who cares?
Knowing not to ask for things and having that slip so deep into my psyche that as an adult I only own one pair of jeans and would feel irrationally anxious if I tried to buy another pair while these are still wearable.

At any point did his parents default on the mortgage? have to cancel piano lessons? Cancel Christmas? Get blacklisted from the bank? Mine did all of that and more and I still had a richer upbringing than they did as kids.

He just had a normal for the times upbringing in a big family with parents who aren't big into electrical goods.

Why does it even matter to him?

I think it depends which decade he grew up in ? 70's child here and we had very little for quite a long time . I went to school with people who had a lot less though . 'Stuff' didn't seem as important in those days though , although maybe I am remembering it all through rose tinted spectacles

How old are you OP? I am just trying to compare with my very working class upbringing where we always had a landlne, holidays in the lakes (we only live an hour and half away) and got a colour tv when I was about 10 in 1976. I was suitably impressed when I met DH 7 years later and they had a VHS, microwave and dishwasher, I was in awe at their wealth,! He is also of very working class parents. Both families of 5. My parents now gave a far nicer house and more money in the bank.

He was born in 75, I was born in 79.

My dad has always been really into technology stuff, we had a computer in the mid eighties and were the only people we knew with one. Not because we were rich, but because my dad really wanted one.

ILs bought their first laptop a few months ago, to great fanfare.

dilutingjuice yes I get like that too. I'm 40 now and I can only just bring myself to have a choice of warm rainproof jackets, and to buy something I actually really like instead of the cheapest

We were comfortably off.

Oh yes, microwave and dishwasher as well. Such extravagance in my youth!

I didn't grow up poor but after being cut off from my family as a young woman I brought my eldest child up in poverty. For me the indicators are
No heating - jumpers and gloves in bed
No television - couldn't afford one or the licence.
I did the porridge in mince too and it's amazing how many meals I can get out of a chicken.
I would tell dd1 we would eat later so she could have the food.
Clothes from charity shops.
No car.
No holidays.
No music lessons or clubs for dd1.
Gas and electricity on meters and always being on emergency credit.

Funnily enough though dd1 doesn't remember growing up poor (it was till she was about 10) so I suppose it's all about perception.

never had . . . a Mr Frosty

You poor little bugger - talk about a deprived childhood!

It doesn’t matter to him, it’s just a silly back and forth that we have every once in a while and it got on my pip today.

Btw it was early 1990's if that makes a difference

I know, right, Schaden? That’s almost neglect.

Neither of you were poor. Poor is when you are forced to skip meals because you can't afford to buy food let alone a television,

It's relative. Your DH sounds MC, but maybe compared to his friends they were poorer?
I would never say I grew up in abject poverty..yes we ate powdered milk, oatmeal, crappy food from cheap grocery stores and food pantries, and at one point we were on food stamps. Thrift store and (if we were lucky) Walmart clothing. Never any holidays. One crappy car. Forever obsessed with money and fixated on getting out of poverty. I have huge issues w anxiety surrounding money now.

Even then my parents refused to accept reality And were dead set on being seen as middle class. insisted on my mother staying home with us and buying crappy houses so that they could say they were homeowners.
there was a lot of shame for them in being poor, so maybe that's why I'm loathe to say it. im surprised some ppl make a big point of bringing it up (your husband)

At the school I went to, I was definitely the poor kid. Everyone else was very well off and I was very conspicuous for my lack of luxuries. My parents were also weird about children getting things that they wanted (this is Very Bad, apparently). So I did sometimes feel quite hard-done-by.
That stopped when I met my husband. He was brought up in a house with no running water and no electricity, his grandparents lived with them and all told there were 10 people crammed into a small 3 bedroom house. His dad was unemployed for most of his childhood, so frequently if they couldn't catch and kill their own food, there wouldn't have been any (this was way before benefits of the kind we have today). There were no new clothes, ever. Shoes were for Sundays and school, the rest of the time they were barefoot.
Now I think I lived a life of comfort if not luxury.

Ha ha we had ice on the inside of the windows and Parents only got double glazing about 15 years ago. No central heating until after I left home at 22.

My dad was brought up in the 30s in absolute poverty so I think they were frugal.

I agree with the OP her DH parents sound like mine, only worse, and younger.

Born in ‘65
Most clothes, apart from uniform (2nd hand) home made or knitted. Food grown so we had a lot of veg and fruit. Kept chickens, bullocks
, geese and turkeys: bought as chicks from the market. Kept bees to sell honey. Real good life stuff. No carpets until Mum taught us to latch hook rugs

Then dad got a job abroad and whoosh: we had stuff! Still didn’t get a tv until mid 70’s though.
Didn’t suffer and we were always too busy to be miserable.

I would imagine he's comparing himself to the friends he had at the time.

I'm also a child of the 70's and it was a different time in terms of material 'stuff' friends who had a soda-stream in the kitchen or a brand new bike at Christmas (and they were a fortune, like a months wages if I recall) seemed impossibly loaded.

In hindsight I only really knew one well off family, dad was a stockbroker, the rest tended to be milkmen, postmen, police officers and such when those wages were pretty good and there was a chance to progress.

Going abroad was seen as very exotic - even a week in Spain was a bit 'wow'.

I grew up with sharing bath water with 4 others and being the youngest had the last bath. yuck and will never share bath water again

The kitchien floor having a big hole in it and was covered with a slab of wood. I'd allways push it away and drop stuff down it

Though we had a tv. Parents used to shimmy the elec box for coins to feed the gas and vice verser at times

Dinner was nearly allways sandwhichs sometimes with cake.
My parents both worked full time but with 4 children in London it was hard did have a car though.
Never had fashionable clothes.

I wouldn't say we where well off but I never felt poor maybe that was because my parents covered it well. But there's alot worse to have being brung up in.

Holidays on the Isle of Wight and piano lessons does not sound poor to me! We did not go on holiday, my mum took us on day trips on the bus in the summer. We didn’t have piano lessons, in fact we didn’t have any extra curricula activities that cost money. Lots of theatre group and sports teams at school, also Guides because they waved my subs money. I qualified for county hockey squad one year but I couldn’t afford the bus fare to get to practice, so had to drop out. For a few years we seemed to have no money at all (though I think this may have been exacerbated by my mum’s depression and not simply from lack of money) and I had no clothes except school uniform(which we got vouchers for). I went to a party in that school uniform but I felt very out of place. I never skipped meals because of a lack of food, but by mum sometimes said she just wasn’t hungry which, with hindsight, I realise was her going hungry so my brother and I could eat more.

This does all read a bit Monty Pythonish, but it’s how it was. We did have a color TV by the time I was 10 though (gift from family IIRC). I see what you mean about your DH seeming disrespectful about real poverty. But in so many ways poverty is relative - despite the poverty I grew up in, I still had an education and access to good health care, a roof over my head and the freedom to be a child instead of getting a job to support my family. Around the world there are (still) millions of children far worse off than I was. So I wouldn’t be concerned with that aspect of it unless he does it in a way that isn’t lighthearted and uses it as a way to beat up on people without money.

I think he's comparing the time he grew up in to modern standards and thinking he was poor. I was born in 76 - hand me downs and British camping holidays were part and parcel of growing up then. Only 1 girl in our glass got to go abroad on holiday on a plane - I still remember to do this day she went to Malta

My ex husband was brought up in poverty. He didn't say very much about it, but I do know that they regularly had no electricity, that he started off school when he was in his early teens to run errands for the men on local building sites to earn extra money which he used to buy food for himself and his 7 siblings and that they were regularly evicted for non-payment of rent. My sis-in-law says it was great being in the children's home when they were evicted because not only did they have their own bed, but also had such luxuries as sheets and blankets.