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.

Credulous I think most people got why you were asking.

It fascinates me what different people consider poor, there's a few things people have mentioned here that I thought were fairly average.

@CatfromJapan - I think I could accept that the circumstances in my childhood just plain sucked. It's shit but it's over. But it's actually still with me, every day, in ways I don't even notice because it's limited my outlook on life. That does make me angry, and I'm angry that so many have so little even now.

brasty it doesn't work that way. Person a could be on income x, with fsm, and person b on income x plus £100 a month and no fsm. But that £100 isn't always extra. Housing costs differ for starters. Plus previous overpayments and debts can be taken from that income, regardless of how much hardship that causes, whether you're fsm or just above it.

It's more than believable that coke is working ft, budgeting wisely, and still worse off than someone entitled to fsm, and it's dismissive to suggest otherwise.

I grew up poor and it has made me totally terrified of being poor again. Like others I rarely buy any clothes full price and when food shopping I look for deals even though now I really don't need to.

I grew up on one of the most deprived estates in Scotland. Poverty was very very real. We had pennies to live on. We were surrounded by people who were really struggling, often with mental health issues and the multi I lived in was often the scene of suicides. We used to play "dead people" where we'd lie on the ground and someone would draw around you with chalk.

My mum worked in the local nursery part time. Kids would come in filthy and covered in fleas. She would bathe them, put clean donated clothes on them and they would stay in those clothes until she bathed and clothed them again. People really had nothing. I went to a school across town and most kids lived in bought houses. For years I thought the height of luxury was a 2 bed semi bungalow. For me it really was. I'd look at all my classmates getting off the bus and wonder at their lives. So posh! So amazing! Where were the burnt out flats and the roaming semi-feral dogs?

One couple fostered children. These children were abused - certainly mentally and physically. Painfully thin kids, terrified, kept barely alive. It still haunts me.

We had no money to cover the concrete floors with carpet. We had no money for anything. But everyone we lived among were in the same boat. It was surreal when I went to friend's houses after school. Gardens! Heating! Meals that didn't contain mince or a piece. Proper furniture!

When I was ten we did a moonlit flit to London where my dad got a job and within a few years we were normal: working class, on an estate but with some money and carpets and heating.

My life now is so far removed from that it almost seems a dream and my children have a life of luxury compared to mine at their age. I remind them of this from time to time. It is important.

Your husband's upbringing seems very well off to me. Lacking in luxuries perhaps, but so very far from real poverty.

I work in an industry where hardly anyone is working class, let alone has a clue about poverty. I am happy to share if people will listen. I am terrified of being poor, but I will never forget and will not be ashamed.

Thank you lurked

Brasty That's not necessarily the case.
The poorest in society in the UK are often the working poor that's why something like 93% of new housing benefit claims are in work. With zero hour contracts and the tenancy for some companies to offer 20 hours contracts.

Given that you can earn £16100 a year as long as you don't work more than 16 hours.

I have a friend who works 15 hours on a decent rate of pay but gets child tax credits and earns under the £16100 limit and is entitled to free school meals and reductions on other stuff. She receives maintenance privately from her children's father although I don't think you have to declare child maintenance for benefits anyway.(not sure on this)

I am self employed. Entitled to WTC and CTC and earned less than her last year including tax credits.

There was a point that friend ones child was bring £15 a day spends and got a trip in school free (gcse theatre trip) which my dc cannot go on as I can't afford it.

If I was in a council house I’d not have to top my rent up. I private rent which means I have to top my rent up. I earn 13800 per year. I have to do a commute each way of walk train bus of just under 2 hours. I’m expected to travel that and my train ticket alone costs £60 a week. I can’t buy a monthly ticket because I can’t afford the outlay.

My kids have school dinners once in a blue moon. I can’t afford it. And many the Friday it’s jam sandwiches.

If your family had a phone, you weren't poor.
If your family had a car, you definitely weren't poor.
If you didn't have free school meals, you weren't poor.
If you had central heating, you weren't poor.
If you had holidays, you weren't poor.
If you didn't have coin meters for gas & electric, you weren't poor.
If you were always warm enough and never went hungry, you weren't poor.

Some people have absolutely no fucking idea of the meaning of the word poverty.

I have never taken my kids on a holiday. I can’t afford it. My eldest is now an adult and I will never twke them on holiday.

There's been times in the past my dc have commented about how cold our house is to my parents. When asked why they didn't turn the fire on (no central heating) they've said because it costs too much to use. I've never said that to them.

Haven't read the whole thread yet. A lot depends on different ages.

I'm 48. As a child we were poor in the sense of, bare carpets, ice on the windows, duvets weren't the norm (to this day I CANNOT bear being cold in bed), no central heating (corn beef legs anyone??), hand me downs, holey shoes etc etc.

But yes, still we were "richer" than many.

You're welcome coke. I can understand people not knowing the full details of poverty, but most of the Uk problem with it stems from people who don't have a clue but dismiss it anyway.

Grew up very poor. Single mum in the 80s in a small town where we were the only single parent family (this did change). Often had no electricity, everything was from jumble sales, Christmas wouldn't have happened without charitable donations, it was not easy.

We're doing ok now, but the posts about not buying things at full price, shopping frugally at the supermarket etc. really resonate. I struggle to shake it off. My DDs will never feel poor, have never gone without the essentials but are not spoilt. I have tried to bring them up to value what they are lucky to have.

You know the thing I miss the most about being poor? A bath. I’d love to put the water on and go and lie in the bath. Instead of that I have a shower because it’s cheaper.

This thread is upsetting

I think this thread with its “lighthearted” is in really poor taste. Specifically because of the lighthearted which normally denotes a joke thread. I dont think this is really something to be laughed over.

You know you're poor when the 'poor 'people on that Rich House Poor House swap thing have substantially more weekly money to live off that you do.

I only own one pair of jeans and literally wear them every day. Until they literally wear out. Then I go to Matalan and spend £12 on another pair.

Yet even I wouldn't say we are poor. Not truly poor.

It does make for some sad reading this thread as I think there are a huge number of people who are literally counting every penny as we speak. And an even bigger amount who think nothing of going out for a meal costing £50 (more than we have to spend on food shopping a week)

Be humble be thankful for what you have when/if you have it.

Oh god, sorry. I’ve reread and I can see how it looks.

I meant lighthearted in that it’s not some massive argument, and I’m not really going to ask his mum if they were poor.

It wasn’t meant to be upsetting, although I can see how it would be and I’m deeply sorry.

This thread has crystallised for me just why I feel so uncomfortable about this running ‘gag’ of his and I’m going to shut it down next time he brings it up. So it’s been useful to post.

I agree with everyone that says that in the 70's much of what we consider 'poor' now was just normal for everyone- so heating downstairs only, one fire, baths on a Sunday and a quick strip wash inbetween (immersion heater on once a week), jumble sale clothes. My parents were lower middle-class and had quite ok incomes compared with some, but they prided themselves on eking out food and getting bargain clothing, or making the clothes themselves; my mum knitted all my baby clothes and sewed other clothes herself.

Whoever said no-one went abroad, they didn't in my school either, and I remember in the last year of primary when one boy went to Yugoslavia. I'd never heard of something like that before! I didn't go abroad til I was nearly 20.

His sounds like a typical lower middle class upbringing with parents who were frugal but not poor. Frugality isn't poverty, it's a choice- they had the money for piano lessons so they had the money for a cheap car, they chose not to get one or to spend the money on weekly payments to the Argos catalogue for newer clothes or whatever. Most people were frugal as they had been brought up in or after the War and consumer culture wasn't yet fully established.

I agree Starutopia I remember years ago my Dad taking me shopping because we were really struggling and I promised to pay him back when I got paid. He said he didn't want the money back but it was still hugely stressful as I hate taking money and wanted to give it back. I was putting my usual value range stuff in and he was saying oh they are rubbish you can't feed the kids that get the nice stuff. He put food for the dog in the trolley which cost more than what I usually spend on me and the kids for a week. It came to £42 for a weeks shopping and made me massively stressed about the week after shopping and having to give the money back.

He sounds like a dick.

I think calling him a dick is a bit harsh.

Unless you live in or work with poverty, you really have no idea how bad it it, even in Britain, even in the 21st century.

In fairness I wouldn't call him a dick.
I have a friend who seriously considers herself skint if she doesn't have a few hundred pounds disposable income each month. She's told me she's skint and then spent £70 at Paperchase the next day and I've had £3 in my bank account.

I genuinely don't think some people have a clue.

Op I took it that you meant lighthearted about you and DH arguing, not that you were making light of actual poverty. It would have been in poor taste if you’d posted it after reading people’s experiences but you didn’t.

Anyway I think it’s good that posters feel able to talk about their experiences of poverty especially when some don’t feel able to in RL.

Summerswallow you’re right about the difference between frugality and poverty. One involves choice, the other doesn’t. We weren’t well off but at least we never went hungry and although we knew we had a lot less than many of our friends, my parents made sure we understood there were many worse of than us. It’s far from music lessons I was reared but we at least had the security of a roof over our heads and food in the cupboards. Some of the stories here are heartbreaking .

It’s all a bit jolly japes look how skint we both were growing up hanaha

Sner sner.

And yet living actual poverty really isn’t anything like what you describe.

I have a pair of ankle boots and a pair of shoes needs heeled. I can’t afford it - I will do one then the other

I’m in bed. It’s so cold my nose is cold. I’m in a dress, fleece, leggings and socks. I have a hot water bottle. Crappy rented house has droughts everywhere.

Forgive me for not bloody laughing at how tough the op and her DH had it with their competitive holidays and piano lessons.

Yy. Definitely frugal rather than poor.

He’s really not a dick, but I think this whole ‘bit’ he does is now becoming slightly dick-adjacent.

It sickens me that we still have real poverty in this country, utterly disgusts me. We are relatively well off and I have a sort of survivors guilt about that. It would be so easy to eliminate poverty but the govt seems intent on making it worse (universal credit, fucking PIP, slashes to essential services). And I think I’m a bit riled about that lately so today’s round of ‘we were raised poor’ has just raised my hackles.