If you've been poor but are now comfortable, when and how does it stop feeling so tenuous?

[ClitorisMaximus]

I grew up poor where money was always in short supply.

I'm now financially comfortable but it feels very unreal and very tenuous. I can't shake the feeling that its all going to go up in smoke.

This going up in smoke isn't something that I think about or worry about every day. It doesn't really cause me anxiety because in my head its a foregone conclusion anyway.

I wonder whether this feeling of tenuousness ever goes away for people who've been poor and now find themselves in a more comfortable financial position? I would really appreciate any insights.

It has never gone for my DH. Late 40s now but he is still tormented by how his parents struggled. It has created an amazing work ethic but he can never relax enough to enjoy it and has so many random back account with money squirrelled away. I do worry he will die before he finally relaxes and starts to enjoy the money he has worked damned hard for.

@mybeesarealive
@ManchesterLu

Don't you find this nagging worry that it could all come crashing down creates a low level but constant stress and worry that won't go away.

I know when I go back to my home town and see the much harder lives of people I grew up with that it scares me to think that on paper that should be my life and it would only take one catastrophe for everything to be taken away.

I no longer feel it's tenuous because I've paid off my mortgage. I grew up in terrible poverty and now I try and use what I've learned; money gives people more control, I like experiences more than stuff, I don't like waste and too many people spend money on rubbish that they don't need. I give stuff to charity shops in really poor areas ( because I used to love finding nice stuff in them) and I buy good quality food. But - the memory of poverty stays with me......

I'm the same. It keeps me agile and adaptable in one sense but there is that impending doom feeling sometimes or that I'm an imposter and my house will be take away, for example

In my experience it never goes away. I have a plan B, plan C and plan D for if/when things go tits up. I don't mind buying nice things if it's a really solid investment but if I buy something and realise I've overspent I really beat myself up about it. Can't shake the feeling that "one day I'll need that money".

Grew up in a poverty stricken house, Dad was an immigrant and there were too many children.

It did feel tenuous till we paid off the mortgage we were incredibly lucky and had a high risk investment pay it off quite a few years ago. My anti capitalist militant Labour teacher gave us a talk about the evils of the stock market. I had never even heard of it at 15. As soon as I had some money I started investing.

It made me creative and a thinker on my feet. I managed to retire at 55, I’m careful but I do not worry.

For me it never stops.
I have a good steady well paid job, mortgage paid, kids left home, dh earns well yet I'm afraid I'm of falling into poverty if I'm not careful. I've over 100k of savings but buy second clothes, hate being frivolous with money.
I wish I could let my hair down a little.

I grew up poor. I knew we always had to scrimp and save (shopping for food exclusively at Kwik Save, Xmas gifts only from those Park catalogue schemes, shoes from the £ shop type places, clothes from the second hand shop) but I was happy mostly and didn't realise how poor we were until I went to uni (first in the family to do so). I was eligible for so many 'hardship loans' and things like that, grants that my new non-poor uni mates had never heard of. They had nice clothes, phones, TVs and laptops, plus spending money from home etc. I had my old shitty falling apart clothes, no electronics, had to get a job immediately.

Later I then married and felt briefly secure as both then-H and I earned decent money. Had kids, so I stepped back in my career as H was proving incapable of parenting. I'm now divorced and back to the stomach-rolling feeling of impermanence as pp put it. I do work but only part time min wage role due to needing to fit around SEND DC. Not able to rejoin the fast-paced, higher paid career I used to be in. So I rely hugely on exH continuing to pay maintenance regularly and on UC coming through steadily. I'm constantly terrified of exH suddenly deciding he's not paying any more or of there being a glitch in the UC system and them suddenly deciding I don't get that any more. It's a horrible way to live but I have no other options at the mo. I hate relying on others or the state to survive.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your really personal stories here. Its really heartening (but also frustrating) to see I'm not alone in this.

DP doesn't really get it. He feels secure in how much we have and the "fact" we'll always be fine. I know he's right but I just can't feel it. We don't have a mortgage or any debt. We have about 10 years of comfortable lifestyle savings saved up

I don't worry about losing my job. I don't watch the pennies. I just have this sense that I'm temporarily living someone else's much more comfortable life.

It's kind of paradoxical but I don't have underlying stress or anxiety about my financial comfort being snatched away because I feel its inevitable even though I know it not, but its almost like that absence of anxiety is what makes me anxious.

What I mean is - I grew up in a house where money was absent (we had none but also always present (thought about, talked about, budgeted, counted out, hidden, doled out).
Nowadays, money is flipped. It's present (I have lots) but because of this its also absent (we don't talk or think about it everyday, we don't count out pennies, we don't budget every day, we don't hide it in jars). Its this absence which is weird to me and freaks me out. Like PP said, I feel like its in my DNA to talk/think/worry/count/budget about money but I'm not doing that any more.

Having said that, like PP, I'm absolutely shit-hot on investments. Every spare penny is well-invested and making money.

Even now it affects my purchasing choices (but in weird irrational ways). I rarely buy new clothes as I can't get past the idea that it's wasteful. When I do I realise that I'm thinking of Next as expensive. I drive a 16 year old hatchback with knackered AC because I can't get past the idea that PCP and leases are luxuries for mugs. I have only travelled abroad twice on holiday in the last 10 years. For context I'm a senior lawyer in the regions on six figures. I have a mortgaged 5/6 bed detached house in an affluent town on which I've got probs £500k equity (though I achieved most of that by self building about 50% of the space myself). No isa's but just over £110k in pension pots. I'm only 43. I'm not setting the world on fire but I'm doing ok. Maybe I'll let rip when I'm debt free and over 55. It's what my own father is did. Spends all his money now on round the world cruise travel. 😂

For me the feeling of tenuousness has stopped, but it took a long time! I'm now in my 50s, been mortgage-free since my early 30s and it's only really been in the last few years that I've felt deep down that everything will be okay.

Like others, I'm shit-hot with saving/investment and calculated several years ago that I have squirrelled away more than enough money to live on for the rest of my life. I've got it all spread out between different banks/investments to minimise the impact if one of them turns sour. This allows me to breathe.

I'm still rubbish at spending money on myself though. I now try to view this through the lens of saving the planet, as I only buy second-hand clothes, yellow-stickered food and don't replace any consumer goods until they are completely and utterly beyond repair! I look like a eco-warrier, but it's just in my DNA.

One thing I've started to do is give myself "permission" to buy a small bunch of flowers for the house every week. It's frivolous and unnecessary, so it's not a natural thing for me to do, but when I see them they remind me that I deserve to have nice things. I think for a lot of us we didn't have nice things for a long time and it's hard to break that habit.

DH and I both feel this way for different reasons, but both due to our backgrounds and life experiences.

We are mortgage free and both work full time with combined monthly net pay about £5.5k, which seems like a huge amount to us. This increased a lot recently when I went from part-time freelance work to a full-time salaried position.

We have started saving about half of that as we worry we won't have enough for retirement or if things need doing in the house. And we're sure we don't have enough for retirement, so we try and be disciplined about saving.

We're age 53/54 with 2 DS (mine) and a dog, but seem to manage OK paying all bills and covering spending money with half our income.

We do live fairly simply, although we tend to spend more to get something better quality we think will last, but then we don't replace things until it's absolutely necessary.

Our main extravagance is food, we spend about £200 a week, but that includes 3 different organic fruit and veg boxes a week from different suppliers. We buy mainly organic, cook from scratch most days and buy the best quality food we can find. We can afford it, like to eat well and don't eat out or get takeaways so feel we can justify the cost. It's our luxury.

Never, I don’t think I will ever feel comfortable. However when it comes to Dd we are a lot more relaxed about spending. For ourselves not so much,

Agree with others, never. I'm in my 60s

I grew up, as I have discovered, poor(ish) - we certainly weren't destitute- we were actually in the services, but clothes were homemade, or from the camp thrift shop. I never realised, my friends all appeared to be the same.

I then became a single parent on benefits so obviously that was hard, but again, we didn't go hungry just had a restricted life.

Married a very money-savvy man and we now have more money than I could have ever dreamed of, despite us both working on less than average pay jobs.

I still watch the pennies, buy yellow stickers, love a bargain, flinch when a big bill comes in, because I too am worried it might all disappear.

Never. Because it's true, it CAN all disappear in an instant. When I see people leasing cars, flying first class, swigging cocktails, I feel ill, even though I can afford to do these things myself. It's like vertigo: even though you know you can't fall, the fact the drop is there never stops being terrifying.

That said, I don't regard fripperies as treating myself anyway. I take joy in simple things, in being careful, in hating waste, and in being able to help my adult DC when they need it.