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.

stayed off school

Born in 66. I grew up poor, often we went hungry, we lived in an overcrowded council house, we had a tv that you put coins in the back, no cars, one holiday to a caravan once which someone loaned us for free, sometimes we had no money for coal and we chopped down trees or broke up furniture for wood. No phone, no bikes, we all did paper rounds/the milk etc. Handed down clothes, mum and dad both worked. Sometimes we had to add clothes to bed to keep warm. At times I didn't have a bed; a mattress on the floor or shared with a sibling and for a time I had a camp bed.

I was very jealous of my friend who was still working class but a family of 2 kids instead of 7 and she was very much cocoa and clean Pjs, actual new shoes, one she got a pair of adidas gazelles!! My life was much more chaotic.

No telly or B&W, or phones or a car isn't poverty. He needs to look at whether he was fed, clothed and loved. The rest is fripperies

I had lino on my bedroom floor up until the age of 7. We had our first colour tv when I was 13. Telephone when I was 16. Went to Devon twice when I was 12 and 13, only time we went away as a family. Had my first pair of denim jeans when I was 12 when on holiday in Devon. Prior to that my trousers were handmade. Lived in a council house until my parents bought it under Right to Buy. Rust bucket of a car. Mother didn't drive and we never had pop off the pop man. We were not well off.

There's levels of poor. In my town which was coal mining based we were all poor but some people were skint. If you had a car you were considered well off, nearly everyone rented and clothes were from market or charity shop but we were all the same.

We were never short of food but were in a tight budget so mum shops at several shops, tea before pay day was home chips and egg (dad liked meat). Dad had ok job so we had small caravan and holidays so we were very lucky. There were many kids in my class in thread bare/too small clothes. Parents had outdoor toilet until I was 1. Most kids had free school meals.

No mobiles until I went to uni and got a free one with student account. I'm nearly 40 so not that long ago

Begging for leftover food from the school dinner ladies to take home to feed your Mum and sister with. The alternative being to go to bed hungry.
Not being able to get to school because we lived rurally, the school bus didn't come as far as us and Mum didn't have enough money to put petrol in the car.
No holidays at all, not even in the UK.
No piano lessons - no or anything 'extra'
Going to bed in gloves and a hat because we had no oil left (living rurally so no gas mains) and therefore no heating.
Going foraging for dead wood to burn because open fires were our only heating.

I wasn't born into poverty, but I spent my teens in it. Your DH has a very rose tinted view of 'struggling' because believe you me, if he'd truly struggled then he wouldn't be boasting about it. The fact that his parents had enough money to spare to pay for piano lessons makes a mockery of his 'poverty' - any spare pennies we had went on food. Or a gas bottle for the cooker. Or petrol in the car so we could get to school.

OP it does sound like you both grew up in financial comfort. Your DH parents just sound careful with money and don't give a hoot about technology. And why should they? I bet today's society with people who are constantly glued to screens and those who see shopping as a leisure activity makes them weep. The level of consumer consumption is alarming. I grew up in what sounds a similar background to you but my DH was definitely poor. I can tell the anxiety of it stays with him still, like other posters too.

I was born in the 70s like you op and would class what you described as just about comfortable. I would say my parents were a little bit better off and were solidly comfortable.

As children, my parents came from totally different worlds though, end of the war, still rationing in place, dad grew up in a northern dock town and his dad had died in the war, they genuinely had nothing. 1 meal a day and it wasn't much. Mum on the other hand was a farmers daughter and back then, that meant she was quite well off.

I always thought we were poor but actually my parents just don't value stuff (which as a teenager, I really did) they preferred to spend money on meat from the butcher for example rather than Sky. My parents also had no mortgage / rent so although they didn't have a huge income, they were in a better starting position each month.

I had an unusual childhood as I lived in a house with two spare bedrooms and a big garden in a fairly nice street, after my DF left with my big bro, but we survived on my mum's earnings as a school dinner lady, topped up by a very parttime cleaning job. In some ways I had a very good quality of life, thanks to luck ànd my mum's hard work growing veg, knitting and sewing etc but I rarely ever had new clothes , all the rooms except the sitting room were freezing, we had no car, a twin tub washing machine, black and white portable telly, tape recorder but no record or cd player. Holidays were spent at my cousins home, which was brill.

It would have been a very different story had it not been for my mum's childless uncle and having kind friends and neighbours. We were cash poor in otherwise nice circumstances.

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

Arch I'm 31 and we're comfortably off and have been for a number of years.

I still can't buy things I really like. It just doesn't even occur to me because it's so ingrained to look for the cheapest instead. I'm so sick of looking at the prices of things first, finding the two cheapest pairs of jeans/boots/whatever and then giving myself a choice from those only.

There's absolutely no need for me to do it but I can't not do it now, it's automatic.

Similar is the way I count all the way around a supermarket. I don't even have to focus that much on it, it's like an automatic calculator in the back of my brain that looks at prices and keeps a running total - it's trained into me from years of my mum adding up as she went round the supermarket.

My DH gave my mum no child maintenance. Quite the rotter eh.

School trips. That’s the big giveaway. Did you go on foreign trips? Skiing? Christmas markets? Or to the Roman thing at caerleon?

We just had a pile of leaves.
A pile of leaves would have been luxury for us we had a torn paper bag!

OP, get him to read The Glass Castle to understand what it’s really like to grow up in poverty.

We were poor till my mam met my stepdad, luckily my late grandad was about to help out. We never went hungry or without school uniform and trips as him and my gran would pay. My gran still buys my DC uniforms today.

My mam worked full time but my bio-dad left her with three kids and a massive mortgage.

I was born 88 in the north east.

I always wanted a Mr Frosty

Sorry that Mr Frosty made me laugh. I've got one for DS for Xmas. Very glad to know that I have now made sure his childhood is perfect and can stop making any effort.

We were probably poor growing up (no heating; no hot water; no washing machine; food a bit intermittent) but my mother grew up in poverty (sometimes no shoes for school; left school at 12; working in a city, sending money home at 14), so I always knew we were not affluent, rather than in poverty. And there were children at school with me who were far less well-off than us (a child in my class had ricketts).

I've seen children in schools where I've worked and my own children's class in poverty (no stable home - living on people's floors; no furniture). I just find it utterly horrific that this is still the case.

A pile of leaves would have been luxury for us we had a torn paper bag!

We lived in the shadow of that torn paper bag, and thought ourselves lucky at that.

I had a Mr Frosty. I always wanted double sided sticky tape. Now I have about 30 roles of the stuff.

I often read these threads and realise we grew up in awful poverty. We had one wage coming into our house and it came in a brown envelope on a Thursday.

My siblings and I were often hungry at night. We got free school meals and even on school trips got a free packed lunch.

My parents only had basic food for dinner to feed us first. My older brother started doing the milk round before school when he was 13. My other brother was the paper boy at 11. My sister and I worked in the corner shop at 13. All money went to the house and things got a little easier when we all worked.

It was a hard life but my parents tried their hardest. Now we are all grown up and some of us financially stable. My parents still struggle so I now pay their bills and help when I can.

I would say your DH doesnt really know what poverty is.

I think that food scarcity is the dividing line for me between "poor" and "not so poor."

I grew up with oats in the mince to soak up the fat so it would stretch further, porridge made with water, lots of beans, meals based on potatoes and onions, and sometimes just being a bit hungry.

I have issues with food, and struggle with my weight.

My DH and I are comfortable and for me, the very biggest luxury in the world is being able to buy whatever I want at the grocery store without worrying about the price.

You know, I went to Cambridge, and someone asked me about my economic background at a party. I told them, and my friend (her father used to work designing computer systems for the EU and he was collected for work in a helicopter), a hard-left CPGB member and radical feminist, replied with that Monty Python sketch.

We carried on being friends but I think, in my heart of hearts, I never really forgave her. It's odd - she's dead now but even now, when I think of her, that floats to the surface and it still mixes with the good memories I have of her.

I grew up in a very affluent home, but never had money for anything I wanted or needed. I used to take the expensive show food from the fridge and eat it with my friend & her family in her poverty stricken but loving home. I was also in poverty when dd was little, but doubt she remembers the occasions I was going to eat later or when the heating, various electric items were apparently broke.

One of my best friends grew up in abject poverty. When she was about 10/11 she once got pissed off about the fact she and younger siblings lived on plain mash and cheap bread in school holidays whilst her mum got a free cooked meal at the pub she worked all hours at, and they just got stuff the kitchen was throwing out. She was heartbroken when she found out through the local alcoholic that her mum ate people's leftovers in school holidays because she couldn't feed them all.