to think that being poor is not what it used to be?

[oldenglishspangles]

When I was a child being poor meant
no electricity/gas/water - delete as applicable depending on whether money ran out.
We ate left overs.
No colour tv even though everyone else had it. We had a remote control though - us children!
We didnt have kettle a pan does the same job.
cardboard insoles, to cover holes in shoes holes in shoes
alimited number of non branded, hand me down clothes
Walking (not bus or cars)
No holidays
only a few toys - (a very limited budget which as children we understood and tried to get as mmuch as possible with)

Some of it is still the same. Most benefit claimants cannot afford Holidays and struggle if their dc need new shoes/clothes.

However you are right, it's not the same. But that, imo, is a good thing.

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When I was a kid we had a Black and White TV, which we rented, B&W cheaper.

Didn't have a phone till I was about 10 either.

No holidays at all.

Clothes only ever bought in he sales and my sister had all my Hand Me Downs.

I didn't really notice at the time but I think it gave me good habits with regards to being frugal. I am a single parent and have one disabled child so on benefits and I manage without feeling it too much.

no it's not the same - although as Shiny says it's a good thing. Do we really want to stay stuck in time? Perhaps we ought to go back to when our grandparents were children and how poor was then..........or maybe we want social progression?

FWIW most of my (ex)IL's live as you describe, but they're pretty well off where they live....

We didn't have much money when I was young, we had hand me down clothes only and mum would sometimes not eat so that there would be enough for us
but i didn't notice at the time and unfortunately it hasn't taught me to be frugal.
DP and I don't earn much now but still have money for evreything we need, so YANBU

Actually thinking about it's all relative isn't it? Yes, they now have TVs. TVs are cheaper now, everyone has them. When I was 'poor' I had a lovely widescreen that my Grandad gave me when he upgraded his old set.

My 'poor' friend has no Wii, or PS3, everyone else does (according to her dd), but these things are the new the TV, if you cannot afford them, you can't have them. Even 2nd hand they are still expensive and people generally don't upgrade and just give the old console away. Just like the way the TV used to be.

A lot of her dds clothes were/are hand me downs from me. However my dd1 and hers are the same size now, so she gets a lot less.

She walks everywhere and many of her dds toys are 2nd hand or hand me downs. She has very few new ones.

The food and electricity has hopefully changed for most. There are occasions where my friend will call around to borrow a couple of sachets of porridge or a food bag full of cereal, the day before pay day, but generally they have food in the house. Although, not always what she would like to be able to buy. No fresh salmon kebabs or other 'luxuries' like that.

Her dd has never been on holiday. They go on lots of day trips, which are put on by local residents associations to make up for the lack of holidays. But those sorts of things were around when I was young.

We lived in a shoe box on the M4...

"mum would sometimes not eat so that there would be enough for us"

I don't ever buy anything expensive for myself to eat, like fresh meat or fish etc. I have a set list each week and is 98% food and items for dc's. Usually buy a bit of veg or salad and eat that and sandwiches. Very rare I would cook a meal for myself. I don't know that it is a conscious thing but the bill shoots up if I buy food specifically for myself so I tend to eat what happens to be in, bread, tins tuna, eggs, cheese etc.

I suppose this is a habit carried over from a poor childhood.

WWW - you were lucky to have a shoebox. And the M4? call that busy???? we had to live on a small leaf in the central lane of the M6!

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Some things are relatively cheaper these days compared to the days of our youth- and other things are relatively more expensive. Using a pan instead of a kettle is unlikely to remain economical with rising electricity prices. When I was a child we ate lots of herring and fish in general, because it was cheap. Bit of a luxury these days.

seriously - dp has been out of work for 2 years and I've been at college trying to get some qualifications so we've been living on benefits and I think we would class as poor.

I am hugely grateful and glad that we live in a country that can afford (so far) to give benefits to make sure people don't starve to death but... the JSA was late one week so the electric dd didn't get paid - caused HUGE problems with the dd and bank charges etc.

We don't buy clothes. The dc get hand-me-downs and dp and I ask for clothes or vouchers from family for birthdays and christmases. The TV was bought for us as a gift one xmas by the whole family who clubbed together. We don't have wiis or play stations.

We eat leftovers regularly.

The washing machine broke down recently and I handwashed all our clothes in the bath until we'd saved enough to get it fixed (about 2 months)

Our holidays are generally a long weekend in a second hand tent again bought by relatives as a gift.

We don't tend to bother with the cardboard insoles... we just wear shoes with holes and pretend it's a fashion statement.

It's dd2's birthday next week and she's getting second hand toys bought off ebay and some bits that cost literally pence.

I don't think that things have changed that much, tbh.

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lol WWW - I bet it had a lid thought....did i tell you about my (housing association) house (no garden/ yard.....)

It is all relative. It is better that its not as bad for most people. However many people just seem to have lost the plot when it comes to what poverty really means.

The kind of poverty the OP refers to does definitely still exist and in the area I live in I see it every day. I can easily think of people whose pay as you go electricity runs out for days at a time. I also know of children who don't eat anything that isn't smart price. But everybody eats, short of real neglect - thank God for smart price food!

I don't drive, we have never been on holiday adn we all wear second hand clothes but I certainly don't think of myself as poor. I'm incredibly lucky to be a SAHM and I sometimes feel a bit when I read threads started on mumsnet about how a family can possibly survive on sums which are about double our income... poverty is all relative, I guess.

I remember that our oven broke and Mum couldn't afford to replace it - we had Christmas dinner cooked in the microwave one year. I can remember hating getting changed for PE at school as my dress had the name of a girl in the year above me in it as we'd got it in Oxfam. Our TV was one of those with the dial to change the channel - not even buttons, never mind a remote. Food shopping was done at Giant (remember them?)where most of the stuff was only a couple of days in date.

We even used to have to scrap around for coppers sometimes for the 10p bus fare to school. Alternatively, it was a 2 mile walk with my younger brother and sister in tow, and then the same back home afterwards.

We didn't even have hot running water as the immersion broke and couldn'd afford to fix it so we heated bath water in a second hand baby Burco and had about a two inch bath...this was in the early 90s. I do think it's given me a real appreciation for what I have now though, still having hot water in the tap seems like a real luxury!

But then just because things aren't as bad as they used to be, doesn't mean that they aren't still abysmal for some people.

I still do eat leftovers. E.g., have just microwaves some indonesian noodles I made on monday night. I could never bring myself to throw good food . I still also turn off lights/heating when I'm not in a room. Perhaps once you've been poor you'll always have that mindset.

Well, the thing is, what oldenglish describes wouldn't cut it with my grandfather's generation- when people lived off boiled spuds or (in Northern Europe) mixed tree bark into their bread and took it in turns to go to school because the family only owned one pair of shoes. So it's always relative.

Am very intrigued, though, by someone who says "we ate leftovers" as a sign of poverty? Do you mean you throw leftovers away these days? That seems very odd to me, not a sign of being comfortably off, just wasteful and odd. Or do you mean, you were so poor you went around the neighbours begging for leftovers?

I always thought us eating leftovers (which we do regularly) was a sign of affluence: we can clearly afford to buy more food than needed.

But am very aware that there are genuinely poor people out there: people who are cold and hungry and unable to look after themselves.

ooh
I want to join in...
11 of us living in a three bedroom terraced house...all clothes bought from jumble sales or gifts from relatives... never had a holiday abroad until 10 of us went to Cork in one car (seriously!)... starting work at 11 babysitting every night I could and putting it dtraight in mums purse... being evicted and spending a year sleeping on the floor at my sisters flat...

But actually there did not seem to be the same shame about poverty that there is now.
My mum and dad ( and we kids) drew our pride from the factthat we were self sufficient. We pulled together and made do with shit because there was a dignity in that.

Now there is less dignity in that. And parents are put under pressure to provide the trappings of affluence ( branded goods etc) that they really can't afford.

If my mum and dad had been under the same pressure from us to provide stuff that is considered essential now I think we would never have got through it.

So poverty now is probably worse than that which I experienced.

We ate left overs because there was not a lot of food. Food was precious just enough the majority of the time, but there was always a risk. A lot of people I know dont use left overs, they bin them and that includes the ones that claim poverty.

Poverty is not worse than what it was, people just expect more nowadays