If you grew up poor do you ever miss it?

[Fstt1978]

This is a weird one. I grew up very poor , generational benefits, insecure housing etc.
I'm now firmly middle class to anyone looking in , and I'm probably romanticising it, but sometimes I find myself missing the simplicity of my other life. It's hard to talk about as it's very crass, and I have a lovely secure life now, but sometimes the choice of everything is overwhelming. Can anyone relate? I do not wnat to come over as tone deaf or entitled etc but I do find the class jump hard.

No, but your version of “poor” and mine sound worlds apart. We didn’t have people popping over, it was icy and the house was falling apart. The choices were if someone was going to attempt to borrow bread from someone or who wasn’t eating. You’d have probably been robbed if you’d left the back door open. If we had 50p left over, it’d be if you went to get reduced sticker food from the shop or put it in the TV meter…

Not much to romanticise, to be honest…

I think there is definitely something in this OP, I think living a MC life or in a MC world when your upbringing and role models struggled or had a different lifestyle / outlook is difficult. For me, I can certainly buy nice clothes whenever I want (within reason), BUT I feel I have an obligation to wear them out. There was 20 years between my siblings and I, different gender, but I had to wear the hand me downs as they were still useable. So now I feel a massive pull between the joy of being able to buy something for me, my size, my style, and new.... once I own it I HAVE to wear it out, or retire it to painting / gardening clothes. My income allows me some spare money but rather than buy things, I want to invest in my pension / future (as I grew up watching others struggle), but I can't have conversations around investments or s&s, as spare money isn't a thing so there is no familial understanding or financial education there. Personally, i feel it is navigating a different world as an adult. If id have been brought up in a MC household, some of the conversations and points of reference would have been very different. However, im entering this unfamiliar world as an adult, expected to participate in this world, and it feels like added bandwidth to navigate it, all whilst thinking I could lose it at any moment. I realise I sound like I need to seek therapy 🤣, but hopefully get my gist :)

By starting a thread like this it just shows how tone deaf you are. There are countless threads on here from people with actual problems, worrying about the rising cost of living and how they will afford to feed their families. Meanwhile you’re complaining that your friends are always trying new wine bars and coffee places and saying how you “just felt calmer generally” when you were poor. No need for anyone to try to make their way out of poverty, they’ll miss it when it’s gone 🙄

Ignore that poster @Fstt1978, you have articulated really well the feelings that you have of not quite belonging in your new, privileged life. This isn’t about money, it’s about cultural/class belonging and is every bit as real as someone who is struggling with belonging from the perspective of race, sexuality… whatever.

This is an excellent post that highlights the cultural divide that I think the Op is struggling with.

There's no need for this attack
My posts have been measured and I've taken advice. Continuing to attempt to belittle me or tell me off is unnecessary

Yes I resonate with loads of this. I struggle to buy things and always still buy the cheapest and yes, I wear it to needing replacement !

The title of this thread makes it abundantly obvious what it's about. People need to take some responsibility for not clicking on topics they know are going to upset them.

I find discussion of a certain issue that comes up on here sometimes to be very difficult, for personal reasons. Rather than whining because someone else has the temerity to discuss it, I do some adulting and don't open threads about it.

Absolutely not. Then again my mother was left to raise me alone and has worked full time all her life.
She did not receive any benefits if any kind over struggled on her ‘woman’s wage.’
I grew up in a very mysoginistic, racist area. Lots of us were poor.
There are certain things I miss from my childhood such as far less traffic pollution, more greenery etc.
However being poor was not good.
Who on earth would choose to work hard and have nothing?

No, I don’t miss it. I was cold, hungry and miserable growing up. That was the reality.

You can live a simple life when well off if that’s what you crave, but having money takes at least some of the stress out of every situation I’ve ever been in as a financially secure adult. I’d never have wanted my children to experience what I did as a child.

I’m not rich but even if I was then I would never live in a rich area or have friends who are stuck up or constantly keeping up with the jones’.

Being poor is very difficult but it helps you appreciate the little things in life.

I understand the saying that money can’t buy you happiness because a £600 handbag will never give you true happiness.

One of my best birthdays was when my bf made me a cake (looked like a car crash) and we scrapped our money together to buy fish and chips, which we ate in bed whilst watching a movie.
I can do that any day I want to now and it would bring me joy but not as much as it did then, because it was such a massive treat.

Your friends wanting to go to a coffee shop or wine bar instead of having a cuppa at home really resonates with me.
I think it’s probably the company you keep that is the most challenging because they can’t appreciate the little things in life.

It’s great being able to eat and have the electricity on but I will always be more at home on a council estate with genuine people, rather than a country estate with fake people.

We lived in London in the 70s.big group of children safely playing out.not poor exactly but never went t Restaurants and only hols in uk .apart from one trip abroad. I think as an Adult though it would be quite a bit different really

Although I’m not rich, I tend to work with wealthy well educated people and you definitely feel like a fish out of water.

I understand feeling like an outcast and that you don’t belong because you’re not from the same class as them.

God no, I don't miss being hungry. We were rationed on how much food we could eat and it was shit quality, plus we never had the heating on. How can you miss that?!

No, as a child I was stressed all the time and I fear ever being in poverty again.

It sounds to me like despise “poverty”
your childhood was rich in other ways? Community, love, time spent etc… these things matter more than money, in my opinion.
I grew up upper middle class but from a family that saves and lives simply and green and only spends on essentials too. I also find the whole keeping up with the Jones middle class thing grating.

The choice of which wine bar/coffee shop is too hard so you would rather to only be able to afford cup of tea in each other's houses??????

Don't need the outrage. Click on my posts and you'll see we have talked around the issue .
Grabbing one thing and being outraged about it doesn't reflect the thread at all

No, I don’t miss it at all. I was always labelled as an anxious kid and young person but when I became financially stable away from my family I didn’t suffer from anxiety. My anxiety came from the fear losing our home, utilities being cut off etc. and once that wasn’t a constant backdrop in my life I felt I could function properly.

I’m thinking about retirement in the next few years and am having conversations with colleagues who are all a bit baffled at me taking my pension as soon as I can. When I was growing up every retired person I knew was a state pensioner living in a council flat. I look at my pension now and see how much better that that standard of living it is so, I have a happy days, take it now, could be dead tomorrow kind of mentality whereas my middle class colleagues are approaching it from a very different point of view.

Like you, OP, I moved away and I think that has a lot to do with it. Where I grew up was (still is) a shithole and, I have to say, everyone that I’m still in touch with from school who is still there has had a vastly different life to mine and most of them are still skint. I think my views would be very different if I was still there. I do think I know what you mean though - I saw a photo on Facebook of a dive bar I used to frequent when I was a teenager and felt a wave of comfort and nostalgia. I think it was more for the people though, my friends and the times we had. There’s still love in shit.

I get what you mean OP! I find having money stressful at times which is ridiculous m, I know and I worry that my kids don’t appreciate what they have because I only got new things at Xmas and for birthdays. If I needed something m, even clothes any other time they were 2nd hand, homemade or really cheap.
But… we had no heat in our home other than a gas fire, we had no car, no phone, we never travelled, I couldn’t go in school trips, we didn’t eat very well despite both parents working really hard. So…

Our lack of money though was counterbalanced by having loving, present, involved parents who valued education and being part of a community so perhaps never going on the school French trips etc wasn’t such a big deal.

Why on earth would I miss it?
I didn't grow up poor, but in a Communist state, and "married up", if you want.
I don't miss anything and anyone, really.

Sounds like you’re suffering with imposter syndrome in your own life!

I grew up poor and don’t miss it at all now, but do reflect and appreciate that it made me who I am. All my subsequent life choices though, have been to get me out of that situation and I did it! I’m very grateful to live comfortably now, and know that I worked hard for it, made sacrifices along the way to achieve that end goal and I now BELONG where I am.

It’s easy to go back to the simplicity that you miss. Put aside your families monthly income and block your savings. Live on benefit level. See how it goes. You will miss your wealth and the real simplicity it brings not the difficulty of poverty.

It’s not about that.

It’s about her friends only finding happiness in buying expensive, fancy coffees and wines, instead of just appreciating each others company with a cuppa on the sofa.