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.

Cherie Blair is well known for her excess, she’s rightly pilloried in the press for it, but I can relate, buying stuff can make you feel secure. It’s disordered though, as someone said because consuming things is not growing assets.

I try not to tell people about all the bad times now because I’ve found that whilst people make the right noises, they judge you for it - even the nice ones assume things about your values etc. I don’t suppose more than a handful of people I told as a young adult know I had charitable sponsorship at uni.

Oh and coke I presume op is looking after their dc whilst her dh is doing these long hours. I can understand why you feel bitter, but it’s mostly bitterness you’re conveying.

If that's the case, I can see why he's anxious about getting into a situation where you're poor/in debt.

It sounds as though you both have some issues around attitudes towards money. Getting into debt through unresolved depression is not, I suspect, uncommon. Attitudes towards spending can be rooted in feelings of insecurity/lack of love/fear about the future/anxiety about self-fulfilment - all sorts - and can lead to damaging secrets in a marriage/relationship -- al of which can lead to financial instability and emotional insecurity.

I think the PP who suggested that you shouldn't close him down, you should listen - and perhaps then think about your own attitudes has a point.

Neither attitude is really correct is it? as op has explained, she was unwell and presumably coming to terms with that. As with 99.99% of threads about dps on here, the answer is always talking more to properly resolve things.

Honestly, with that backstory, this thread isn't about what constitutes 'being poor'. It's really about an actual problem in your relationship. I think that problem will have a wide base - and may even be about both of you feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities of adulthood. Ultimately, you both need to feel that your partner 'has your back', so that you both feel strong enough to take decisions and responsibility, and that if 'things go wrong', you both have the capabilities to sort out the responsibilities of life.

In part, that's about being able to trust your partner, but it's also about feeling confident in yourself and your capabilities (trusting yourself).

Totally agree with FarceFace .

And I think both of you need to explore what you think about when you talk about 'being poor'. It sounds as though you both have anxieties about this (and reading this thread, it's not hard to understand why it is such a big fear in our society - but that is a whole other thread) - but I think it operates in a slightly different way for both of you.

His parents were home owners. That’s not poor!

Does he ever use the word poverty though? Sounds a bit like I was brought up. Very very basic and parents on minimum wage type jobs. Does sound like he was poor but not quite broke. My parents wouldn’t have been able to afford what you had in a million years. In fact they’re still just plodding along.

We were poor (born mid 60's). One of my first memories is hiding behind the sofa with my mum when the rent man called round. We had no carpets, sometimes no fridge, coats on bed instead of blankets. Outside lav with no loo roll, gas and leccy often cut off. I stole food (well, crisps and biscuits) from shops regularly, with no comeback from my mum if I was caught. It was an occasion if our tea was actually on the table when we got home from school. We were once fed by our teachers when we rocked up to school at 7am one morning as we hadn't had breakfast or tea the night before. When I was about 6 Father Christmas didn't bother with our house, I knew I'd been good so could only rationalise that it was because we were so poor we weren't even worth bothering with. As you can imagine, we were in and out of children's homes a lot.
But, when I get together with my siblings, we mainly talk about the good bits of our feral childhood and are quite proud of the resilience we had at such young ages, we were quite canny!
Sadly there are still such levels of poverty in the UK today, though on a lesser scale and affecting children who have less resiliance than we had.

When I was about 6 Father Christmas didn't bother with our house, I knew I'd been good so could only rationalise that it was because we were so poor we weren't even worth bothering with.

As a mother, that makes me weep.

DH and I have different attitudes to money and it’s always been a source of friction. For us, the difference is all about our own parents attitudes to money: his parents were a lot more frugal than mine, so his attitude to spending is very different to mine.

That’s given me a lot to think about, actually.

I was very poor in early adulthood, I was homeless for about a year and then spent the next few years bouncing around squats and dodgy bedsits working horrible jobs. Then I married my first husband at 22 and lived hand to mouth with two toddlers while he bought himself new cars and went out all weekend.

I left and got my shit together, had a nice little flat and a job in a shop and money was fine, no debt, bills all paid on time, never ran out of food or toiletries. And then met DH and within a few years we were very comfortable and I started buying stuff. I know now that it was partly because I thought it could all be taken away again and partly because I wasn’t used to having the freedom to buy nice things.

DH on the other hand got a good job straight out of University, saved a hefty deposit to buy his flat and never spent money on stuff. He always had loads left at the end of a month and never had to think about it, his only extravagances were Friday nights out and as many CDs as he could want.

Within a year of meeting me he went from a single chap with pots of spare cash to having a family and all the associated costs of that, we bought a house and a car and furniture etc etc. We were always comfortable but never had much spare at the end of the month. I always worked at this point. And then the debt started to mount up through overspending and I massively buried my head, as did he.

We are in control now, he takes a much bigger role in our budget and spending instead of leaving it up to me, and we don’t ever argue. Everything is spreadsheeted and accounted for and we are starting to build up a savings pot now the debts are cleared.

He is scared of being poor and I’m scared of not having nice things, to massively simplify it. But as I said earlier, we have found a good balance.

Taffeta it didn't make my mother weep, unfortunately. She had gone out on Christmas Eve (by way of the pub) to post our letters to Santa leaving me and my younger sibling at home. But... that was the night that I watched jailhouse rock and fell in love with Elvis, who I decided I would marry!

Bloody hell Fedfukzsake. Some people shouldn’t be parents. You sound as though you were feisty and resourceful. Poor kids.

Mummy poverty and ignorance (on the part of the adults) is the worst combination for children I think.
People's perception of what makes someone poor, beautiful, clever, disadvantaged, etc is all relative. Generally there will always be someone else worse off on the face of it. Really it's how you deal with disadvantage that's key. If the worst that has happened to someone is that a beloved pet died, then that doesn't make their experience any less traumatic than anyone elses.

Cokeis

I can understand your being bitter - you have obviously had and are still having, a very hard time - but it isn't the fault of the OP her DH or anyone else on this thread.

You are right Ferfukzsake. You sound a lot more clued up than I ever was. I wasn’t brought up in poverty. But in parental ignorance and emotional neglect. I shared my experience upthread. I was and to a certain extent, still am very damaged and had no self esteem, loathed myself.

I do wonder at your resilience. And admire it. I didn’t have it. I had no one, not even a pet to confide in or comfort whereas you had your siblings. Perhaps that is one of the differences. However, I read of lone children or scapegoat children, who are singled out from the other siblings and have come through far worse than me yet seem to have far less scars. I know I’m a highly sensitive person and I have read my emotions are felt 10 fold more acutely than those, who are not.

I watched a tv programme about apocalypse scenarios currently running on history channel atm. Apparently children are the most ruthless and dangerous when resources are scarce and therefore the most willing to kill under certain circumstances.

It sounds like you put your skills to good use. Good on you and all the children, who were sadly neglected like you were.

Mummy I found psychodynamic therapy helped me a lot. I had it about 8 years ago. I'm happy to chat privately if you want to pm me? I do wonder about resilience and whether it's something we have or something we learn? I think with me my ability to move on had a lot to do with a "fuck 'em" attitude towards the adults in my life.
for you.

Thank you. I will bear that in mind. All of it.

We were a weird mixture of betting shop pens (the only stationery in our house), regularly had scrambled eggs and beans for supper, nothing much was new but we had piano lessons and a big house in North London. My mum was amazing with money but my dad drank and gambled quite a lot of it.

As a child I asked Mum if we were poor and she said that we were 'hard-up'. She always waited to get a 'red bill' before she paid it. We wore hand knitted cardies and jumpers and new shoes were a treat - not bought willy-nilly. Clothes were bought a bit on the big side so that we could grow into them. Sister and I (twins) had to share text books bought for school as we couldn't afford one each.

We certainly didn't go on holiday every year and didn't have a phone or a car. Our telly was B&W until we were in our teens. No central heating or fitted carpets. Dad walked to work but he always made sure he had some money for a pint each Friday (and cigarettes) and a nice suit. He always regretted that he never earned £100 a week.

Sister and I had to help dust and polish every Saturday morning but instead of using proper dusters it was old knicker legs cut up, yes really. I loathe dusting to this day.

Surely the in laws can't get a picture on the old CRT telly - they have to be digital where you can at least get Freeview.

I I realise from this that I definitely didn't grow up poor. Sometimes there was too much month left at the end of the money or the gas cheque was sent to the electric to buy a little time. I think the issue can sometimes be comparison. I had big feet and my mum had no interest in clothes or shoes and she once made me go to school in a pair of shoes my grandma had given her. I was teased mercilessly and can remember it forty years later as though it was yesterday. Relatively well off now and I always ensure DD has beautiful shoes and clothes. DH and friends tease me about her wardrobe but no-one knows why I take so much care with it.

I grew up in at the time was the most poverty stricken places in UK which is weird to say this like 20 yrs ago and now ppl are still saying that. Anyway, I find if u have nothing u over compensate. I have stuff I've not used clothes I've not wore that end up at the charity shop. I am frugal now and luckily I am with someone who emotion supports and understands me. It's not just me it's my siblings also who buy things. We're all clean freaks and cook freaks. OCD is a major thing. I think it depends on how harsh a living ur partner think he had. But not having a new tv isn't poor. Thinking it is, is a lil unaware of the world or parts of it.

Born early 60's. Mum was sahp (as most seemed to be) dad was a factory worker. We always lived in rented housing. My parents somehow 'got by'and could feed and clothe us, albeit from jumble sales. After they split up mum found a part time job and had to claim help from benefits. No TV, no central heating, no double glazing, frost on the inside of the windows. I didn't go on school trips and yes, I had free school meals. And the school uniform man - my mum got a grant to buy school uniform and when we went to buy it, the man from the council accompanied us to pay the bill. How embarrassing that was for me, let alone for my mum. After she met my step dad, things got slightly better although she refused to heat the house(by that time the council had put in central heating) so she could save the money for a two week holiday for herself every year. I was sent to stay at a neighbours when she went away.