Am I a brokey and is my family poorer than the average Brit?

[Donnysredcard]

I think I’ve been deluded into thinking I was well off my whole life, to begin with I’m weird af so only had a handful of friends growing up who all had alcoholic/messy parents who didn’t teach them hygiene so no one else wanted to be friends with them except me. That kind of warped my view of things, the kids from normal families never invited me around so I was comparing my clean home (unemployed mum who stayed home and cleaned it) to the home of alcoholics. And in all honesty those families probably had more income than my mum because they had dads who worked. I also got free lunch at school and they didn’t even though they definitely could have done with it.

Obviously growing up we were all told to eat our dinner because other people were starving out there.

I had my children extremely young (massively pregnant at GCSEs) and then Covid hit while they were toddlers and I was always reading in the news headlines along the lines of “half of all British children don’t have a bed” “half of families rely on food banks” “X amount of children have rickets from malnutrition”. Again I thought I was doing better than a large percentage of the population.

Now my kids are in school and they are far more sociable than I was at their age and im socialising with their parents by proxy, it would seem everyone is going on foreign holidays constantly, other kids have branded clothes, not just a few branded clothes but branded everything down to their socks. Everyone seems to have a nice car while I can’t even drive. Etc

This is not an ungrateful whinge I know there are starving children all around the world I’m just wondering if anyone has had a similar revelation?
I’ve never heard anyone say they were unaware they’d been broke their whole life until they were well into their 20s.
Im a little worried about my kids feeling inferior to their friends too I guess

Nobody smart buys their food from Fortnums on a regular basis, their delivery service is abysmal and everyone goes to Aldi and Lidl now. And Jags are so 20 years ago, yer people still trot out these clichés.

I don't think it is. Nike socks are still much more than supermarkets equivalent, even on sale.

I know what you mean to an extent OP. I had only ever been camping until I was 21. But I thought we were lucky because we went on more holidays than other people I knew. The fact in was in a field never occurred to me because that was what holidays were.

When I went to university and had a boyfriend whose parents took us out to dinner and they paid, it blew my mind. I thought it was ridiculously extravagant (it was Frankie and Benny's)

That said, there's so much in family life that money can't buy. It sounds like you had a stable home and know how to care for your own children, something those who grow up in chaotic households lack whether they wear designer clothes or not..

Someone who’s broke ? I’ve not come across it before but assume it’s a slang expression from a different part of the country to me (and you!)

I just made it up tbh, was going to put “broke loser” but thought it was a bit too self abasing.

Human geography was more covered in Citizenship when you were a teen. Did you not have that?

I can see why you wouldn’t think there was much difference between you and your mum in a clean house with food and clean clothes and someone else with a similar life but in, say, a more expensive area. Or their house was bigger but more people lived there. Or they owned vs council. Lots of these divisions aren’t that obvious I suppose. And if your mum didn’t talk about money and your friends were neglected… it makes some sense especially if you weren’t that curious about the world outside your bubble.

Jermyn St is the old tailors road in London. Heritage tailors and suit and shoe makers etc.

Or it could be a slang term for a broker which is where my mind went first 😂

This is a really interesting thread! I grew up in poverty, I was very aware of it at the time, it was shit. I then went to uni, worked etc. I met a new group of friends in my mid twenties when I was still renting, didn’t have loads of disposable money but worked full time and thought this was very normal. The new group (my age) all had so much more - better jobs, owned their homes that had been done up, nice holidays, new cars etc, and I was really surprised because I thought that everyone in their mid twenties was in the same position as me - trying to save for a house deposit and not much spending money. It took my right back to feeling embarrassed, worthless and poor. I probably should have distanced myself from the group sooner because it all just made me feel shit.

But you’ll always be poor compared to someone. I’m unimaginably wealthier than I was in my very deprived childhood, but I do also know people with trust funds, multiple holiday homes, private jets and other people with minor titles who grew up in Elizabethan houses that were opened to the public in summer and whose great-grandfather had the library of their Oxford college named after him. You’ll say ‘But that’s not normal’ — sure, but it’s normal for them. At university I once shared accommodation with an embassy brat who thought my washing up technique was hilarious because she’d only ever seen it done by her family’s Filipina housemaid who had a particularly time-consuming way of doing it. I know someone who, when doing compulsory military service in his home country, used to have his beautifully-ironed laundry and luxury food dropped by helicopter in the desert at night. These things are relative. To them I’m poor.

@Donnysredcard I think you probably did know deep down but as you were in a better position than your friends it didn’t matter at the time. What tells me that you did know is that you were pregnant at 16. Teenage pregnancies tend to come from poorer backgrounds.

I’m not knocking you. I came from a poor background and my sister, also 16, had her first baby. We were well aware that we were poor (me more than my sister), same as you unemployed mum, free school meals etc.. I took a different route and made sure I was never poor as an adult.

I now know statistically teen mums were more likely to be raised in poor families but I didn’t know that fact until relatively recently. And i think most of the general population aren’t aware it’s a thing

On the contrary, I think it’s widely known!

Agree - I think this is commonly known

I disagree. I think the population automatically assume there is poverty or family issues involved when they hear of teenage pregnancies.

Also- you can’t assume that everyone has access to the same information. Particularly when web sources/news/feeds are fed by algorithms personalising content nowadays. And back when the OP was growing up 20 ish years ago, it depended on what circles you lived in, whether people you knew were talking about this stuff, whether your family had the news or current affairs programmes on the telly or had newspapers around the house. Without access to all that, it’s easy to not hear about plenty of things that others would assume are common knowledge.

Agree.

I only focussed on my immediate circle.

Its only as I’ve got older and became more interested in politics and society ( probably due to my job) I became a lot more aware.

I can assure you that most are aware of that. Are you working to make sure the pattern doesn't repeat itself over generations?

I think most of the general population are aware it’s a thing too

But come on you know it’s not true. I own my own £1m plus house outright but I can’t afford a holiday abroad every year. Asset rich but cash poor.
The fact you didn’t notice any lack throwing up shows that your mother did her best and you were rich in other ways. So what if your realise belatedly you had less than some others - there’s always going to many people better off than you and many people less well off than you.
Im not sure what your worry is. My DD isn’t interested in branded clothes - her wardrobe is 99% charity shop or Vinted. No one can tell. Growing up a fair property on of their clothes were from Tesco - again, so what? They have some nice clothes there!
For a few years in my youth my father was very ill. In hospital fur nine months. My mother worked (this was the 1960s). At one point all of us (family of five) lived in a one bedroom flat - I remember how exciting it was for me and my older sister to sleep in the livingroom near the Christmas tree! Did I think ‘gosh we are poor’. No I did not. Did I envy the family that lived in the five bedroom house above us (we were in the basement flat), no I did not. Because you generally just don’t when you’re a kid. As long as you have a roof and food.
Do not project your current feelings of inadequacy on to your kids. Are the other kids walking in to the shops buying branded socks? No. And I reckon the majority are also wearing supermarket socks just like yours - mine did! And we were very comfortable when they were young (I became a widow when they were in primary which changed things but we’re still comfortable).
Stop comparing your set up with others. Wealth comes in many forms.

Maybe not half but it is an ongoing issue in the UK

www.barnardos.org.uk/blog/what-bed-poverty

Your household's income : Where do you fit in? | Institute for Fiscal Studies https://share.google/EEg2hjb2QTgJg6T2Y have a look here, OP.

Nike socks aren't to aspire to though They tend to look a bit ( the c word that people get upset about using on here)

Kids do not have branded everything. In fact if you mix is solidly upper middle class circles you’ll see kids in hand me down, mismatched clothing from charity shops and not a branded sock in sight. You’ll see unkempt appearance too because it’s you don’t feel the need to prove anything i suppose. My DD’s never had branded clothes unless George or H&M counts, never bought a branded sock in my life. As for cars, I doubt they own them, people lease these days if they are trying to keep up with the Jones’s. Plenty live beyond their means and exaggerate on social media too.

we are wealthy enough, own outright, he’s retired now on plenty yet 2 holidays a year and old cars are still what we have!

Many people are struggling because of cost of living, since the economic crisis wages have stagnated, rents are high, tax’s are high, energy is expensive. Most working people are just worrying about paying the bills, putting food on the table and making what they do have stretch from one pay day to the next.

Parents will do their best to feed and clothe their children, for some doing that will mean buying brands but I don’t think buying brands like Nike is an indicator of wealth. It is just what some people do. These things matter to
some people and not to others.

I would guess that all working people are
struggling to some degree. Parents might or might not manage the family finances well.

And then there is another level, children of parents whose household incomes is solely from or mainly from benefits. Those children most probably are living in poverty and are
aware of it because you must be living in poverty to have all of or most of your income provided by benefits.

I definitely think it’s the case that we benchmark ourselves against those we associate with and therefore it is normal if your associates change you may feel relatively poorer or richer.

I never felt poor at all at school, I just thought I was normal, and only really knew people from my bog standard lower middle class area where all the houses looked the same. Going to university with kids from much better off backgrounds was a revelation to me. Of course I theoretically knew people wealthier than me existed, it was just a shock to come across so many of them in one place (and to realise in turn that within this group I was considered one of the poor ones, although I had a perfectly nice life).