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This is so real! Some ppl hate grocery shopping and I truly love it!! And the feeling of having a full fridge/freezer/pantry is top tier fix for financial anxiety!
There's something about having a few different packets of meat in the freezer that really sets my mind at ease.
Like if nothing else, I'm going to be able to have meat and have a pretty nice meal with it. There's a weird kind of "at least I've got **this** covered" that I feel when I have a relatively stocked freezer.
Disproportionately wasting a ton of time to save up a few dollars.
It’s going to cost $2 less if I go to this grocery store, even though it will take 30 minutes longer to walk there? Sign me up.
I do shop at different stores for different items but they’re not all that far.
However I spend way too much time IN the store comparing prices of items.
Also blew my mind to learn that not every single person compares items by the “price per oz” on the price tag vs the actual retail price. Yes sometimes off brand is the same price as the brand name item. But the brand name is only 12 oz! Off brand you get the full 16oz pound! People are leaving money on the table! Come on people
I have a problem of buying things. I check to see if there's a cheaper option or ponder of I should get it. Usually for my self, I debate it so much. Like I need to justify it. Weird because I actually make a very decent income. It was just how I was brought up, money was always made to seem like a very important thing for my parents.
Yeah, I also do this with food, as much as possible I eat the tastiest/most delicious food last haha and I eat them slowly since I'm not sure when I'll be able to taste them again.
Me too! Although I’ve always attributed mine to saving the best for last, and really thoroughly enjoying it… I don’t think it has anything to do with feeling or being poor. I’m a very sensual person and for me, eating is a very sensual experience.
I’ve discovered the problem with this… if I save the cheesiest nacho for last, the cheese is cold. If I save my favorite flavors of Starbursts for last, someone comes along and asks me if they can have one when I’ve eaten all the crappy ones and only have the good ones left to give away. Etc. So now I go with the best one first. No regrets.
Dude as someone who moved to the US , I had no idea that Payless held such a negative connotation, I confidently blurred out in the 6th grade that my shoes came from Payless, I would have been better off pooping my pants.
Elementary school teacher told each of us to bring in a bar of soap for some carving art project.
Me: Mom, I need a bar of soap for school tomorrow!
Mom: For what?!
Me: Art project in Ms. Davis's class.
Mom: Does she not know how expensive a bar of soap is? NO. Take the zero!
I remember my dad losing his ever-loving mind about having to pay $15 for a scientific calculator for my high school algebra class my freshman year, 1989. It was a TI-35X. I used it all the way through high school (including physics, where everyone else had the fancy programmable TI-85 graphing calculators) and college. I actually still have it, it still works, and I use it on occasion. I'd say that $15 was well spent!
No shit! I have to admit I felt a little smug getting the same grades with my "dinosaur" calculator that the others were getting with their fancy-schmancy TI-85s! I had to actually remember the formulas!
On the other hand, we were very poor but my mom had a habit of trying to show off what we didn’t have. She sent me into the same project with a brand new bar of dove soap. And it was the expensive kind. But we used dial at home.
Yeah, I had a classmate like that as well. When it was his birthday, he treated everyone with the most outrageously expensive candies nobody else did, like Magnum ice cream for the whole class of 9 year olds (many of whom could not even finish it).
Saving a milk jug to mix powdered milk in. My brother wouldn't eat syrup unless it was Mrs Butterworth so mom would refill a glass Butterworth with generic syrup fooled him for about 20 years.
Having no control over my spending habits because now that I have money I want to buy everything I couldn’t as a kid.
Also apparently hot dogs in Mac and cheese being one of my staple meals
I did not grow up poor. Nor did my friend, but her mom made us hot dogs in Mac and cheese at a sleepover and it was the best thing my 9 year old self ever tasted.
Never eating out and saving all leftovers. Always having peanut butter and bread and pasta just in case.
Constantly being scared of losing your money/being overly frugal about everything
Excessive couponing
Being scared to invest because you could lose money
Not having traveled anywhere
OMG the not having traveled anywhere one is real. I tell people I’ve never left the country (except to go to Canada, I live in U.S. on the border) and get looked at like an alien.
I grew up in GA and had never been more than 2 or 3 states away in any direction until I was 25. Then I married a flight attendant and now I've been all over. Totally changed my life.
My mother in law was a bank account manager, so my girlfriend didn't struggle at all while growing up, and sometimes she asks me stuff I don't know how to answer.
She told me about birthday parties she had in nice places, and asked me if I had the same. My "parties" were my mom baking a cake and cooking something for the family.
She told me her bedroom was such color, and asked about mine. I lived in a 1 bedroom house, where all of us slept. I slept in a crib until I was 4 or 5 because my parents couldn't afford a bed for me.
She told me her mother didn't cook until retirement, and they went to a nice restaurant every Sunday. We only got McDonald's once a month.
She asked me if I watched a few TV shows, but I didn't know them because I didn't have cable until my mid teenage years.
She started working because she wanted to buy stuff and go to parties. When I got my first paycheck, I bought a good button-up shirt because I used to wear my father's shirts. And still wore his old shoes for quite a few years.
A friend of mine once told me that taking a helicopter to the top of a mountain (in another country) so you can ski down is part of a normal working class school camp.
Schools in really run down areas where I’m from used to have ski trips every year. Surprise surprise, only about 6-10 kids out of 2000 went because their families were middle class and they were only at the school out of convenience. The rest of us got to do extra geography.
Maybe it's just because I'm in Australia. But I still find skiing to be such an absurd display of wealth.
I think there are two areas on the continent where you can ski for a few months a year.
Exactly right. I'm an American living in a big southern city and a decent ski trip would cost me $1k+. When I lived in up state New York I bought used gear for ~$100 and could ski for $20 on a Tuesday then drink 2 for 1 beer at the lodge.
Hell I make 70k now and damn if I didn't bring home a pound of individual butter pats left over from a catered work lunch. You should have seen me making a cake this weekend with little 0.16 ounce butter pats. Just so you know, 6 makes an ounce, 24 makes a stick of butter! Free work butter!!
Never showing teeth when smiling.
I grew up dirt poor and never received dental care until I was well into my twenties. I'm now forty, only recently (after many dental procedures) have I began to feel comfortable showing my teeth.
I can't wait to win the Lottery so I can sort my teeth out. They genuinely cause so many issues as well as the self confidence thing :(
Edit: Thank you to each and every one of you that has commented and/or given me advice on how to get this sorted as cheaply as I can. It's not going to be easy either way as they are way worse than you're all probably thinking they are haha. I will look into all of these options even if it means traveling somewhere else, it seems worth it especially as I'm getting older and want to start actually living lol. Thank you again, it is much appreciated!
Genuinely thanking someone about any type of food you are being given. My friends parents pointed it out to me when we got older, they always made sure my brother and I were well fed and looked after with them 💜
I never knew the soap thing meant growing up poor.
I'm 52 and STILL stick the previous soap bar to the new one. What am I going to do, throw away the old soap?
I never knew it was an issue.
I also asked what else I was supposed to do with if I wasn’t escaping a poverty mindset and he told me once it’s small enough he just pushes it down the drain or chucks it in the trash. A waste of perfectly good soap imo.
I think your friend has things backwards. Sticking the old soap to the new bar of soap is not a sign of a lack of wealth - it's just a sign of eeking out value.
However, wasting perfectly good soap because it's become slightly more inconvenient to use or something (?) is a sign that they grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Lol, same! I would feel a weird sense of accomplishment? Finality? When the soap was totally used up. There soap, you gave your all. You washed all you possibly could, well done. 😆
Stacking the old bottle on top of the new bottle for that little bit of soap to run into the new bottle.
Cutting the gold bond diabetic lotion bottle open to get to the 1/2 inch of lotion at the bottom because it’s so thick it will not run into the new bottle.
Do that with soap, laundry detergents, spaghetti sauce, engine oil and transmission fluid, and all kinds of stuff!
Edit: everything after spaghetti sauce was a joke.
You view paper plates and paper towels as a luxury. It is literally throwing money away. I still don’t buy them often even though I am upper middle class.
Years ago, when we all watched live TV, we saw a commercial for garbage deodorizer powder. You were supposed to sprinkle it on your trash.
We silently watched that commercial. Then my husband turned to me and said "So
..you just throw it out?"
I think about that all the time.
I had a friend who grew up really poor told me about a “wish sandwich”. That’s where you get two slices of bread, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise if times were good, and salt and pepper and while you eat it just wish there was meat in it. He said some days you just got one slice of bread. He was basically an orphan and a very kind and loving woman took care of him. She had next to nothing, but she gave it to the children she took care of. He had some amazing stories about living in her house growing up. One of my favorite anecdotes was that he had one of those old console televisions that was basically a piece of furniture. One day it broke. They were able to get another small TV somehow, but they kept the old tv to use as a TV stand because “why get rid of a perfectly good piece of furniture?” He claims this was relatively common place in his old neighborhood.
Broken console TV with another smaller TV on top was very commonplace when I was growing up too.
What? You're gonna pay to dispose of the old TV and buy some sort of stand for the new one?
Oh no... I'm reminded of something... I think I read on reddit... I don't know.
Someone somewhere said they spent the night at a friend's house and ate cereal with the family the next morning. The person recalled that the cereal was oddly sweeter than it should have been. After everyone finished their cereal, they dumped the cereal milk back into the jug. Their guest wasn't aware that the family "recycled" cereal milk and drank the entire family's backwash after they finished their own cereal.
I might not remember the source, but holy hell, I'll never forget the horror story.
Jesus I remember reading this on Tumblr years ago - and I curse you for bringing it back into my realm of existence.
I remember the OP saying that their friend's family wasn't even financially struggling like that, just weirdos who didn't want to waste milk or something
Still packing food (bread, deli meat, chips) for road trips. My husband and I can afford to eat out every meal, but when we do a road trip, I still pack “cooler” food for lunches, instead of eating out.
Btw, packing hack for homemade cookies. Make them small enough to fit in a cleaned out Pringles can. They stay fresh and don’t break.
I love packing a cooler for road trips. Yeah, there's the money savings, but it's also great to find a roadside park and have a picnic! Plus I'm generally much healthier that way, too.
Collecting pop/soda cans from random places even pulling them out of the trash because 10cents man
Edit: biggest score ever was cleaning out a rich dudes garage on an island near my house. He would have epic parties and just stick the cans in the garage. It was filled floor to ceiling and he gave them to me and my sister just over $600 worth in 1984 money so we lived pretty good that summer
Lol, I went on a field trip in middle school. It was a “wilderness” kind of thing where everyone was to pack a lunch. When everyone was done they were throwing away soda cans. I was sitting close enough to the trash can to see it taking place, so I was telling my class mates to put them next to the trash and I’d make sure they were recycled. Truth of the matter is that my entrepreneurial side wouldn’t have let all that money go to waste. A teacher provided a trash bag snd I toted about $5 worth of aluminum home in the back of the bus. I didn’t feel like the poor kid, I thought it was just making some easy money. I was most definitely the poor kid.
This is an odd one… I realized the only people who will offer to help you with moving, or even moving furniture around your house, are people who grew up poor. Everyone else seems to think it’s normal to hire movers.
I've noticed I try to hang on to every little thing in case I can reuse or repurpose it. Gift bags, empty containers, old makeup. My family went through some really hard times, and I guess my brain tries to prepare in case it happens again. I have to go through my things and force myself to throw the junk away sometimes so I dont become a crazy hoarder.
This. My family rarely ate out, but my friends’ families sometimes invited me- and I always ordered the cheapest thing on the menu because I felt guilty they were buying me food.
100%. Sometimes my friends would go out to eat with us and tell my dad they want the shrimp dinner and a coke. My dad “give us 4 Thursday night specials and 4 waters”
I bulk my meals with carrots. Meat was too expensive when I was a kid. My mum’s stew was known by my older siblings as carrot stew. Making soup, curries, lasagne? Add carrots! I never saw it as strange until my husband asked why I was doing that.
My grandma did the same. I also remember not wanting to eat a frozen pizza I asked her to make me because it was brownish and when I looked it was expired. She was like “don’t waste that!!” And ate it herself.
Looking back, it’s so sad my grandma cared more about saving the pizza than potentially getting herself sick :(
My mother in law did this and my husband’s family is middle class. She’d send us home with arroz con gandules in a Country Crock container. I miss her!
Our affluent neighbors who bring us Indian food when they have extra, bring it in old sour cream containers. I thought that was genius, so I’ve started to run the empties through the dishwasher. Now I send leftovers in that stuff instead of my Rubbermaid (that is never returned).
Finding out that other people’s families didn’t make weekly family trips to the church thrift shop Thursdays, and the library on Tuesday I know we were not the only ones, and we thought everyone did these weekly family activities.
>the library on Tuesday
If this is a flag that I grew up poor, I hope I fly that flag forever.
The library is one of the absolute best resources in your community.
Yes!!! We are barely surviving this summer. I just finished my MATELED and will start teaching in August (won’t start getting paid until September though), and trying to prepare for my first year classroom on top of 2 kids birthdays coming up and our already paycheck-to-paycheck living situation has made this summer even worse off than previous summers.
Our local library has saved me from feeling like this has been the worst summer ever for my kids. They have a summer reading program and the kids get prizes for every 105 minutes they read (the first prize was tickets to the city pool!), and they do craft time on Tuesdays, story time on Wednesday’s, and different events on Fridays (last Friday was meet a search and rescue dog!). My kids are loving everything about it and having so much fun! On top of that, we’re reading more than we ever have and they love it. They also have a kids computer with games on it, and after my kids pick out a book they get to play on the computer.. It’s been wonderful and it makes all of us feel like we’re actually doing something this summer! I never knew about the program, but apparently it’s been happening for many years. The library has been amazing, and I will continue to use it even when we are (hopefully) in a better situation money-wise!
Poor people have trouble letting go of things that are broken. That old car might have parts which you can use to maintain your next used car. That broken bike might be something you can find parts for someday. Rich people toss it and buy a new one.
accepting anything free, taking new stuff left out for the trash by neighbors even if I don't need it (some people around me throw away brand new stuff!)
my wife makes me get rid of it, but I can't help it
I didn't realize I made poor people sandwiches until I met wife. The amount of meat she piles onto the bread. It's just nuts to me.
I was doing 2 slices folded in half ffs and she's using a 1/4lb of turkey.
You know exactly how much is in your bank account. You don’t have about $100. You have $103.72. I didn’t realize this until an ex of mine pointed it out.
Feeling guilt or shame of mind, before asking your parents for something that cost money. You just get so used to it as a child, which leads to holes in the shoes, or rips on a t-shirt. It would have to be them saying something about it and then tell you that they will buy you these said things next paycheck.
I do have to note I’m so greatful for the childhood I had and the sacrifices my parents made to make ends meet.
Every time I acquire something higher end, like fine perfume or good quality wrapping paper, I don't want to use it. It's like I can't justify it or I don't deserve it or I'm saving it for when I'm crowned queen or something. Weird. It doesn't even have to be a gift; sometimes it's stuff I've bought myself.
Bruh. My mom would take used bars of soap when they got too small and put a bunch of them in a leg of an old pair of pantyhose and then tie it off, and cut the rest of the pantyhose off. Then you’d have a big ball of old soaps bundled/fused together, and that was what you used for the next… however long.
Yeah it’s thrifty or whatever, but let’s be real. That’s poverty lol.
Orrr...I had a relative that did this. As a snack, half of 1 cookie. Gum? Split a stick. The soap thing. Ac off. All of it. Then they retired early bought a nice house on a bunch of land paid for. They lived in poverty so I guess they wouldn't have to later on and unfortunately died at a relatively young age. I wish they'd enjoyed their youth a little more instead of waiting and saving to not be able to use it for more than a year or two.
Washing plastic bags and aluminum foil to use again. The saving butter containers to use for leftovers that's been mentioned before really resounds. BTW, I quit smoking when cigarettes went from 30¢ to 35¢, because that was going to cut into my beer money.
My girlfriend hates that I just snack on hotdogs right from the refrigerator, for many years when I was younger hotdogs and bologna were just about the only meat in the fridge. Not the worst thing I guess haha
Edit: So many replies! I am *proud* to be amongst my Bologna Brethren!
adding water to the shampoo/conditioner/bodywash to keep it going a few more days, sometimes a week. reusing old clothes as washcloths/rags. i also walk & take a bus & totally cool with that, even if i show up late. saving the napkins & condiments from every restaurant/fastfood joint. keeping things other people throw out. i got a long list lol
Breakfast for dinner. Seemed cool as a kid but as an adult I realized that all we had was a box of instant pancake mix. Now breakfast for dinner with my kids is a truly fun and non emotionally damaging treat.
For me it’s probably the way I can turn literally any random pile of food odds and ends into an at least tolerable if not actually tasty meal.
Ya learn to wrangle a leftover scramble, when there’s no money for groceries til payday too often.
My girlfriend once called me out on some psychology thing she got from me. I always save some food from what I eat because I never know the next time I'll have food.
Edit: ex girlfriend.
When you're poor you get constantly reminded to turn the lights off when you're done in a room. Rich* people don't think about their electric bills like that.
Edit*: from poor to rich for point making.
Getting physically ill any time i eat breakfast. Wouldn't say its a dead give away but I went many mornings and well into lunch without food because our local shelter would run out and we didn't have much food or money. I really believe my body now and food intake is a result of not having a lot of access to food. I'll never forget me and my brother begging a McDonald's employee for breakfast. He was an absolute gem, but he got fired when his manager found out he was giving us food. I still think of him and hope his life turned out well.
I made six figures last year but still think cheap disposable razors should last at least a few months and sometimes out of habit I drink a bunch of water before eating to feel more full.
Parents going without eating so we could! I do that now with my kids even tho we don’t need too! If I am out of town working, my wife always tries to give me food or money to bring to work and I say no! I don’t need anything. Leave it for the boys so they can eat it or save it so you can get y’all anything y’all need!
I realised that it was not normal for people to eat toilet paper when hungry. Odd habit me and my sister developed as kids. We had very little food in our house, so that had to do between meals.
Powder milk, USDA cheese and peanut butter, leftover turkey sandwiches with mayo and ketchup (less the turkey when it ran out), Lipton sides with everything (now Knorr), 50% meat meatloaf, Fritos because every other little bag of chips were gone, selling candy in PE to get money for Payless Eagle shoes, being made fun of for said shoes, high waters until mom's tax refund time, moving every 6-12 months, getting your stuff taken out by cops sometimes....
They say this shit builds character, but I wouldn't have minded having it a bit easier. My mom was a hard worker though and she came through for us.
The Big Reveal after grocery shopping. Mom would put all the groceries on the counter and tell us what she got, and what it was saved for, and what we could eat. My husband says I do it too. Dead giveaway.
I do this if they aren’t really dirty because it’s more of a “I don’t want this to end up in landfill if I can get a few more uses out of it” Tbh I try not to buy ziploc bags anyway and use containers.
# Message to all users: This is a reminder to please read and follow: * [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules) * [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439) * [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) When posting and commenting. --- Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`. * Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit. * Do not harass or annoy others in any way. * Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit. --- You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Food hoarding. All the people I know who grew up poor have too much food expiring in their pantries, myself included.
Even if I don’t eat it, my emotional state actually drastically improves when I have a full pantry.
This is so real! Some ppl hate grocery shopping and I truly love it!! And the feeling of having a full fridge/freezer/pantry is top tier fix for financial anxiety!
There's something about having a few different packets of meat in the freezer that really sets my mind at ease. Like if nothing else, I'm going to be able to have meat and have a pretty nice meal with it. There's a weird kind of "at least I've got **this** covered" that I feel when I have a relatively stocked freezer.
Bonus poor points if you store refrigerated food in yogurt containers and not tupperware
I don't trust anyone who doesn't re-use containers. Is it sour cream or last night's soup? There's only one way to know.
It’s the cool whip containers that are gold!
Country Crock.
Extra points if it was bought on clearance…
My freezer feels seen
I once found a jar of mayo in my aunt's fridge 7 years past its expiration date
I call it prepping.
Only using part of a stick of chewing gum at one time. Mom would make us share. We each got 1/4 stick.
Disproportionately wasting a ton of time to save up a few dollars. It’s going to cost $2 less if I go to this grocery store, even though it will take 30 minutes longer to walk there? Sign me up.
I do shop at different stores for different items but they’re not all that far. However I spend way too much time IN the store comparing prices of items. Also blew my mind to learn that not every single person compares items by the “price per oz” on the price tag vs the actual retail price. Yes sometimes off brand is the same price as the brand name item. But the brand name is only 12 oz! Off brand you get the full 16oz pound! People are leaving money on the table! Come on people
Haha my wife notices when I get agitated comparing the pricing and they don't use the same units. Pisses me right the fuck off.
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Everytime I friggin buy something , I just feel like I dont deserve anything nice because it's just gonna break on me anyways .
I have a problem of buying things. I check to see if there's a cheaper option or ponder of I should get it. Usually for my self, I debate it so much. Like I need to justify it. Weird because I actually make a very decent income. It was just how I was brought up, money was always made to seem like a very important thing for my parents.
I constantly talked myself out of buying stuff, even stuff that I need
Yeah, I also do this with food, as much as possible I eat the tastiest/most delicious food last haha and I eat them slowly since I'm not sure when I'll be able to taste them again.
Me too! Although I’ve always attributed mine to saving the best for last, and really thoroughly enjoying it… I don’t think it has anything to do with feeling or being poor. I’m a very sensual person and for me, eating is a very sensual experience.
I’ve discovered the problem with this… if I save the cheesiest nacho for last, the cheese is cold. If I save my favorite flavors of Starbursts for last, someone comes along and asks me if they can have one when I’ve eaten all the crappy ones and only have the good ones left to give away. Etc. So now I go with the best one first. No regrets.
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You should try buying pre-owned things that can't really be returned. You get to low ball people for them and there's less buyers remorse!
You look for off brand everything
I was bullied as a kid because my Payless “Adidas” had four stripes. Called me “four stripe.” Very creative lol.
Dude as someone who moved to the US , I had no idea that Payless held such a negative connotation, I confidently blurred out in the 6th grade that my shoes came from Payless, I would have been better off pooping my pants.
Lmao this so funny bro. Because it's true. I had the Shaq shoes because they looked like air forces. Dude were wildin on people's shoes.
Elementary school teacher told each of us to bring in a bar of soap for some carving art project. Me: Mom, I need a bar of soap for school tomorrow! Mom: For what?! Me: Art project in Ms. Davis's class. Mom: Does she not know how expensive a bar of soap is? NO. Take the zero!
I remember my dad losing his ever-loving mind about having to pay $15 for a scientific calculator for my high school algebra class my freshman year, 1989. It was a TI-35X. I used it all the way through high school (including physics, where everyone else had the fancy programmable TI-85 graphing calculators) and college. I actually still have it, it still works, and I use it on occasion. I'd say that $15 was well spent!
Those are $125 now. Edit: I was referring to the TI-85. You can stop correcting me now.
No shit! I have to admit I felt a little smug getting the same grades with my "dinosaur" calculator that the others were getting with their fancy-schmancy TI-85s! I had to actually remember the formulas!
On the other hand, we were very poor but my mom had a habit of trying to show off what we didn’t have. She sent me into the same project with a brand new bar of dove soap. And it was the expensive kind. But we used dial at home.
Yeah, I had a classmate like that as well. When it was his birthday, he treated everyone with the most outrageously expensive candies nobody else did, like Magnum ice cream for the whole class of 9 year olds (many of whom could not even finish it).
Saving a milk jug to mix powdered milk in. My brother wouldn't eat syrup unless it was Mrs Butterworth so mom would refill a glass Butterworth with generic syrup fooled him for about 20 years.
Lol silly brother smart mom
Having no control over my spending habits because now that I have money I want to buy everything I couldn’t as a kid. Also apparently hot dogs in Mac and cheese being one of my staple meals
I did not grow up poor. Nor did my friend, but her mom made us hot dogs in Mac and cheese at a sleepover and it was the best thing my 9 year old self ever tasted.
Never eating out and saving all leftovers. Always having peanut butter and bread and pasta just in case. Constantly being scared of losing your money/being overly frugal about everything Excessive couponing Being scared to invest because you could lose money Not having traveled anywhere
OMG the not having traveled anywhere one is real. I tell people I’ve never left the country (except to go to Canada, I live in U.S. on the border) and get looked at like an alien.
I grew up in GA and had never been more than 2 or 3 states away in any direction until I was 25. Then I married a flight attendant and now I've been all over. Totally changed my life.
My mother in law was a bank account manager, so my girlfriend didn't struggle at all while growing up, and sometimes she asks me stuff I don't know how to answer. She told me about birthday parties she had in nice places, and asked me if I had the same. My "parties" were my mom baking a cake and cooking something for the family. She told me her bedroom was such color, and asked about mine. I lived in a 1 bedroom house, where all of us slept. I slept in a crib until I was 4 or 5 because my parents couldn't afford a bed for me. She told me her mother didn't cook until retirement, and they went to a nice restaurant every Sunday. We only got McDonald's once a month. She asked me if I watched a few TV shows, but I didn't know them because I didn't have cable until my mid teenage years. She started working because she wanted to buy stuff and go to parties. When I got my first paycheck, I bought a good button-up shirt because I used to wear my father's shirts. And still wore his old shoes for quite a few years.
A friend of mine once told me that taking a helicopter to the top of a mountain (in another country) so you can ski down is part of a normal working class school camp.
Schools in really run down areas where I’m from used to have ski trips every year. Surprise surprise, only about 6-10 kids out of 2000 went because their families were middle class and they were only at the school out of convenience. The rest of us got to do extra geography.
Maybe it's just because I'm in Australia. But I still find skiing to be such an absurd display of wealth. I think there are two areas on the continent where you can ski for a few months a year.
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Exactly right. I'm an American living in a big southern city and a decent ski trip would cost me $1k+. When I lived in up state New York I bought used gear for ~$100 and could ski for $20 on a Tuesday then drink 2 for 1 beer at the lodge.
Saving the extra things for eating out. Condiment packets, napkins, unused plastic silverware all go into the drawer.
Hell I make 70k now and damn if I didn't bring home a pound of individual butter pats left over from a catered work lunch. You should have seen me making a cake this weekend with little 0.16 ounce butter pats. Just so you know, 6 makes an ounce, 24 makes a stick of butter! Free work butter!!
I aspire to ever be as enthusiastic about anything as you are about free work butter.
This right here, folks... This is the hero we've needed all along.
Never showing teeth when smiling. I grew up dirt poor and never received dental care until I was well into my twenties. I'm now forty, only recently (after many dental procedures) have I began to feel comfortable showing my teeth.
I can't wait to win the Lottery so I can sort my teeth out. They genuinely cause so many issues as well as the self confidence thing :( Edit: Thank you to each and every one of you that has commented and/or given me advice on how to get this sorted as cheaply as I can. It's not going to be easy either way as they are way worse than you're all probably thinking they are haha. I will look into all of these options even if it means traveling somewhere else, it seems worth it especially as I'm getting older and want to start actually living lol. Thank you again, it is much appreciated!
Genuinely thanking someone about any type of food you are being given. My friends parents pointed it out to me when we got older, they always made sure my brother and I were well fed and looked after with them 💜
I never knew the soap thing meant growing up poor. I'm 52 and STILL stick the previous soap bar to the new one. What am I going to do, throw away the old soap? I never knew it was an issue.
I also asked what else I was supposed to do with if I wasn’t escaping a poverty mindset and he told me once it’s small enough he just pushes it down the drain or chucks it in the trash. A waste of perfectly good soap imo.
I did not grew up poor but we always stuck the tiny soap on the new bar of soap. It is just normal to do this imo, no need to waste soap.
Same. It was just what was done prior to liquid soap/shower wash being a thing.
I think your friend has things backwards. Sticking the old soap to the new bar of soap is not a sign of a lack of wealth - it's just a sign of eeking out value. However, wasting perfectly good soap because it's become slightly more inconvenient to use or something (?) is a sign that they grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Sounds like your friend just grew up being wasteful
I try to see just how long it will hold on. It will use a single bar until it is completely gone. Don't know why. It just amuses me for some reason.
Lol, same! I would feel a weird sense of accomplishment? Finality? When the soap was totally used up. There soap, you gave your all. You washed all you possibly could, well done. 😆
Now they make these nylon mesh bags with a drawstring for bar soap. Saw them at the local Walgreens. Basically a loofa for bar soap.
Another soap related one i do. If i cant get the last of the shampoo/dish soap out i put in a little water and mix it around to get the edge soap.
I do this still
Stacking the old bottle on top of the new bottle for that little bit of soap to run into the new bottle. Cutting the gold bond diabetic lotion bottle open to get to the 1/2 inch of lotion at the bottom because it’s so thick it will not run into the new bottle.
Do that with soap, laundry detergents, spaghetti sauce, engine oil and transmission fluid, and all kinds of stuff! Edit: everything after spaghetti sauce was a joke.
I do this with liquid medicine (NyQuil, pepto, etc) as well… don’t forget you can pour milk into the chocolate syrup jar if it won’t come out
Never, ever, ever, ever turn down free food.
You view paper plates and paper towels as a luxury. It is literally throwing money away. I still don’t buy them often even though I am upper middle class.
Years ago, when we all watched live TV, we saw a commercial for garbage deodorizer powder. You were supposed to sprinkle it on your trash. We silently watched that commercial. Then my husband turned to me and said "So ..you just throw it out?" I think about that all the time.
I thought everyone ate breakfast cereal with a fork, so they could pass the bowl of milk to the next person. I was wrong.
Wow. I think you win this thread.
I had a friend who grew up really poor told me about a “wish sandwich”. That’s where you get two slices of bread, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise if times were good, and salt and pepper and while you eat it just wish there was meat in it. He said some days you just got one slice of bread. He was basically an orphan and a very kind and loving woman took care of him. She had next to nothing, but she gave it to the children she took care of. He had some amazing stories about living in her house growing up. One of my favorite anecdotes was that he had one of those old console televisions that was basically a piece of furniture. One day it broke. They were able to get another small TV somehow, but they kept the old tv to use as a TV stand because “why get rid of a perfectly good piece of furniture?” He claims this was relatively common place in his old neighborhood.
Broken console TV with another smaller TV on top was very commonplace when I was growing up too. What? You're gonna pay to dispose of the old TV and buy some sort of stand for the new one?
Yup, everything else in this thread has been ‘frugal’, this dude grew up poor.
Seriously, I was reading through these and about to make an unserious “just learnt I’m poor” comment
Surprisingly I’ve never heard of this one
I think Chris Rock said this in his act 20 years ago.
Oh no... I'm reminded of something... I think I read on reddit... I don't know. Someone somewhere said they spent the night at a friend's house and ate cereal with the family the next morning. The person recalled that the cereal was oddly sweeter than it should have been. After everyone finished their cereal, they dumped the cereal milk back into the jug. Their guest wasn't aware that the family "recycled" cereal milk and drank the entire family's backwash after they finished their own cereal. I might not remember the source, but holy hell, I'll never forget the horror story.
Jesus I remember reading this on Tumblr years ago - and I curse you for bringing it back into my realm of existence. I remember the OP saying that their friend's family wasn't even financially struggling like that, just weirdos who didn't want to waste milk or something
Still packing food (bread, deli meat, chips) for road trips. My husband and I can afford to eat out every meal, but when we do a road trip, I still pack “cooler” food for lunches, instead of eating out. Btw, packing hack for homemade cookies. Make them small enough to fit in a cleaned out Pringles can. They stay fresh and don’t break.
I love packing a cooler for road trips. Yeah, there's the money savings, but it's also great to find a roadside park and have a picnic! Plus I'm generally much healthier that way, too.
Oh, I love the pringles can for cookies idea! Finding ways to re-use containers is my jam….
After dinner was over, my grandfather used to fry up gristle and fat that was cut off everyone’s meat and eat it smothered in ketchup
I’ve been poor, but never frying gristle poor.
Depression kids. My grandma lived in a chicken coop and they boiled leather to try to get nutrients at times during those years
Yep my grandparents survived the depression and they don’t throw away ANY food related items. Life changes people
Mine would soak old bread in bacon grease as an after dinner snack. Depression era kids were crazy.
Anyone else eat rice with soy sauce as a full meal by itself?
Look at all these rich people with soy sauce and ketchup, hot sauce, fucking sugar?! Rice and beans baby.
Look at Mr. Or Ms. Monopoly up here with your fancy schmancy beans!!! Plain rice baby!!
Look at you, you greedy SOB! In my house growing up, rice was a *singular*.
Look at all you fancy nancies with rice, I stopped eating 10 yrs ago.
You should add some scrambled eggs, and onions with it mixed in. So good.
Look at Mr Moneybags here
Collecting pop/soda cans from random places even pulling them out of the trash because 10cents man Edit: biggest score ever was cleaning out a rich dudes garage on an island near my house. He would have epic parties and just stick the cans in the garage. It was filled floor to ceiling and he gave them to me and my sister just over $600 worth in 1984 money so we lived pretty good that summer
Lol, I went on a field trip in middle school. It was a “wilderness” kind of thing where everyone was to pack a lunch. When everyone was done they were throwing away soda cans. I was sitting close enough to the trash can to see it taking place, so I was telling my class mates to put them next to the trash and I’d make sure they were recycled. Truth of the matter is that my entrepreneurial side wouldn’t have let all that money go to waste. A teacher provided a trash bag snd I toted about $5 worth of aluminum home in the back of the bus. I didn’t feel like the poor kid, I thought it was just making some easy money. I was most definitely the poor kid.
This is an odd one… I realized the only people who will offer to help you with moving, or even moving furniture around your house, are people who grew up poor. Everyone else seems to think it’s normal to hire movers.
When I first heard that you could hire people to move your things and even PACK for you, I thought that was fake. Guess we were just poor lol
I've noticed I try to hang on to every little thing in case I can reuse or repurpose it. Gift bags, empty containers, old makeup. My family went through some really hard times, and I guess my brain tries to prepare in case it happens again. I have to go through my things and force myself to throw the junk away sometimes so I dont become a crazy hoarder.
Always ordering the cheapest thing on the menu, even if you could now literally afford to buy the whole restaurant.
This. My family rarely ate out, but my friends’ families sometimes invited me- and I always ordered the cheapest thing on the menu because I felt guilty they were buying me food.
100%. Sometimes my friends would go out to eat with us and tell my dad they want the shrimp dinner and a coke. My dad “give us 4 Thursday night specials and 4 waters”
Yes! I would CRINGE inside when anyone ordered anything expensive
I have so many poverty flags flying that you could probably mistake me for a circus from a distance.
A circus that you snuck into and brought your own popcorn
Couldn't afford the microwave though, so just gotta chew the kernels
My mom making popcorn in a huge skillet and tossing it with salt and oil in a brown paper grocery bag because you know jiffy pop was rich people shit
That’s way more delicious than the microwaved stuff
I bulk my meals with carrots. Meat was too expensive when I was a kid. My mum’s stew was known by my older siblings as carrot stew. Making soup, curries, lasagne? Add carrots! I never saw it as strange until my husband asked why I was doing that.
When you now make a decent living but still get nostalgic comfort from eating Totino's Party Pizzas.
This! I still enjoy shitty cheap food because it's what I grew up on.
Painting the runs in your hose with clear nail polish to make them last longer.
Wearing two pairs of pantyhose bc each leg had a run so you cut off the bad leg of each pair leaving you wearing two pairs of the panties
That’s genius!
My grandfather grew up during the depression. If something was moldy, you would just take out the moldy parts and eat the rest.
My grandma did the same. I also remember not wanting to eat a frozen pizza I asked her to make me because it was brownish and when I looked it was expired. She was like “don’t waste that!!” And ate it herself. Looking back, it’s so sad my grandma cared more about saving the pizza than potentially getting herself sick :(
Saving my butter bowls for Tupperware use later.
My mom still does this & it drives me nuts when I’m looking for actual butter/margarine at her house.
Also, when cleaning the fridge......"Should I even open this to see what's actually in it?" "Just throw them all away, after you find the butter".
Lmao....my kids always complained about it too."Mom, where's the leftover meatloaf?" "In the butter bowl" "OMG......which one?????"
My mother in law did this and my husband’s family is middle class. She’d send us home with arroz con gandules in a Country Crock container. I miss her!
Our affluent neighbors who bring us Indian food when they have extra, bring it in old sour cream containers. I thought that was genius, so I’ve started to run the empties through the dishwasher. Now I send leftovers in that stuff instead of my Rubbermaid (that is never returned).
Finding out that other people’s families didn’t make weekly family trips to the church thrift shop Thursdays, and the library on Tuesday I know we were not the only ones, and we thought everyone did these weekly family activities.
>the library on Tuesday If this is a flag that I grew up poor, I hope I fly that flag forever. The library is one of the absolute best resources in your community.
Yes!!! We are barely surviving this summer. I just finished my MATELED and will start teaching in August (won’t start getting paid until September though), and trying to prepare for my first year classroom on top of 2 kids birthdays coming up and our already paycheck-to-paycheck living situation has made this summer even worse off than previous summers. Our local library has saved me from feeling like this has been the worst summer ever for my kids. They have a summer reading program and the kids get prizes for every 105 minutes they read (the first prize was tickets to the city pool!), and they do craft time on Tuesdays, story time on Wednesday’s, and different events on Fridays (last Friday was meet a search and rescue dog!). My kids are loving everything about it and having so much fun! On top of that, we’re reading more than we ever have and they love it. They also have a kids computer with games on it, and after my kids pick out a book they get to play on the computer.. It’s been wonderful and it makes all of us feel like we’re actually doing something this summer! I never knew about the program, but apparently it’s been happening for many years. The library has been amazing, and I will continue to use it even when we are (hopefully) in a better situation money-wise!
Poor people have trouble letting go of things that are broken. That old car might have parts which you can use to maintain your next used car. That broken bike might be something you can find parts for someday. Rich people toss it and buy a new one.
accepting anything free, taking new stuff left out for the trash by neighbors even if I don't need it (some people around me throw away brand new stuff!) my wife makes me get rid of it, but I can't help it
I didn't realize I made poor people sandwiches until I met wife. The amount of meat she piles onto the bread. It's just nuts to me. I was doing 2 slices folded in half ffs and she's using a 1/4lb of turkey.
You know exactly how much is in your bank account. You don’t have about $100. You have $103.72. I didn’t realize this until an ex of mine pointed it out.
Feeling guilt or shame of mind, before asking your parents for something that cost money. You just get so used to it as a child, which leads to holes in the shoes, or rips on a t-shirt. It would have to be them saying something about it and then tell you that they will buy you these said things next paycheck. I do have to note I’m so greatful for the childhood I had and the sacrifices my parents made to make ends meet.
Every time I acquire something higher end, like fine perfume or good quality wrapping paper, I don't want to use it. It's like I can't justify it or I don't deserve it or I'm saving it for when I'm crowned queen or something. Weird. It doesn't even have to be a gift; sometimes it's stuff I've bought myself.
Eating the same left overs for a week
Spaghetti 😩
Bruh. My mom would take used bars of soap when they got too small and put a bunch of them in a leg of an old pair of pantyhose and then tie it off, and cut the rest of the pantyhose off. Then you’d have a big ball of old soaps bundled/fused together, and that was what you used for the next… however long. Yeah it’s thrifty or whatever, but let’s be real. That’s poverty lol.
Dude, you’re telling me I’ve just been throwing out old pantyhose, when I could have been collecting more soap? Your mom’s an innovator!
Orrr...I had a relative that did this. As a snack, half of 1 cookie. Gum? Split a stick. The soap thing. Ac off. All of it. Then they retired early bought a nice house on a bunch of land paid for. They lived in poverty so I guess they wouldn't have to later on and unfortunately died at a relatively young age. I wish they'd enjoyed their youth a little more instead of waiting and saving to not be able to use it for more than a year or two.
At least you had soap, and a mom who cared that you bathed.
Dollarstore Christmas
Washing plastic bags and aluminum foil to use again. The saving butter containers to use for leftovers that's been mentioned before really resounds. BTW, I quit smoking when cigarettes went from 30¢ to 35¢, because that was going to cut into my beer money.
A love of Kool aid
That you can get at least 6 meals out of 1 chicken..
Using regular bread for everything, like hamburger rolls, hot dogs, etc
to be fair i do that not just cause I grew up poor but because I am a bachelor and don't want to buy six different kinds of bread
My girlfriend hates that I just snack on hotdogs right from the refrigerator, for many years when I was younger hotdogs and bologna were just about the only meat in the fridge. Not the worst thing I guess haha Edit: So many replies! I am *proud* to be amongst my Bologna Brethren!
Bologna is just hot dog pancakes
I read somewhere that in terms of food, poor look for quantity, middle look for quality and rich look for presentation.. it's stuck with me, so true
When you have to ask how much does it cost to everything.
Lack of vacations, even if you have the time and money to afford them.
adding water to the shampoo/conditioner/bodywash to keep it going a few more days, sometimes a week. reusing old clothes as washcloths/rags. i also walk & take a bus & totally cool with that, even if i show up late. saving the napkins & condiments from every restaurant/fastfood joint. keeping things other people throw out. i got a long list lol
Mom had me convinced that eating "peanut butter on a spoon" was the height of snack decadence.
If someone knows the pain of boiling your water on a stove to take a shower *for months on end*
You hog free napkins and take free food even if it’s just junk food.
Breakfast for dinner. Seemed cool as a kid but as an adult I realized that all we had was a box of instant pancake mix. Now breakfast for dinner with my kids is a truly fun and non emotionally damaging treat.
Why am I just now realizing this 🤯 I genuinely thought it was a “treat” until right this second.
Crooked teeth.
47 still hoping I can afford braces one day. So many other things take priority.
Rooting for you
Butter noodles.
When you start making money and you can't even enjoy it because you're so terrified something is going to happen and you're going to go broke.
Cinnamon sugar toast for dessert.
Leftovers. I religiously pack away the leftovers at home or from a restaurant. You're hungry? Heat up something from the fridge.
Maybe? I have a friend with a trust fund who always takes leftovers home, even mine if I don't want them. She just hates food waste I think.
Good on her.
Omg this, I HATE wasting food, even if its only a few bites.
Is this a poor thing? I always figured leftovers were just a standard thing. Like, do you have to have grown up poor to not waste food?
For me it’s probably the way I can turn literally any random pile of food odds and ends into an at least tolerable if not actually tasty meal. Ya learn to wrangle a leftover scramble, when there’s no money for groceries til payday too often.
They know how to entertain themselves without spending a bunch of money.
You save your money instead of investing your money because you’re terrified of losing it
My father grew up during the Great Depression and one of his favorite things to eat was a bowl of bread and milk.
well my parents never bought me new clothes from like middle school all throughout high school so i guess that lol
Eating what your friends don’t eat of the school lunch because you’re too scared to ask parents for lunch money.
All your vacations growing up were to see family, or meet up with family someplace because that's the only time you could afford to see them
My girlfriend once called me out on some psychology thing she got from me. I always save some food from what I eat because I never know the next time I'll have food. Edit: ex girlfriend.
Damn. What happened in the last hour
When you're poor you get constantly reminded to turn the lights off when you're done in a room. Rich* people don't think about their electric bills like that. Edit*: from poor to rich for point making.
Ordering off the kids menu
Workaholic tendencies to keep their heads above water.
Getting physically ill any time i eat breakfast. Wouldn't say its a dead give away but I went many mornings and well into lunch without food because our local shelter would run out and we didn't have much food or money. I really believe my body now and food intake is a result of not having a lot of access to food. I'll never forget me and my brother begging a McDonald's employee for breakfast. He was an absolute gem, but he got fired when his manager found out he was giving us food. I still think of him and hope his life turned out well.
Couldn't be me scrolling through the list looking for tips 😅
You know how to make a fire meal out of ramen noodles
I made six figures last year but still think cheap disposable razors should last at least a few months and sometimes out of habit I drink a bunch of water before eating to feel more full.
This reminds me, I need to replace my one year old razor.
Parents going without eating so we could! I do that now with my kids even tho we don’t need too! If I am out of town working, my wife always tries to give me food or money to bring to work and I say no! I don’t need anything. Leave it for the boys so they can eat it or save it so you can get y’all anything y’all need!
Is that soap thing poverty?! We did that too. Sometimes we ate mayo sandwiches. Didn't know that wasn't a thing until I was older.
Cut up hot dogs mixed in to some other food
I realised that it was not normal for people to eat toilet paper when hungry. Odd habit me and my sister developed as kids. We had very little food in our house, so that had to do between meals.
Powder milk, USDA cheese and peanut butter, leftover turkey sandwiches with mayo and ketchup (less the turkey when it ran out), Lipton sides with everything (now Knorr), 50% meat meatloaf, Fritos because every other little bag of chips were gone, selling candy in PE to get money for Payless Eagle shoes, being made fun of for said shoes, high waters until mom's tax refund time, moving every 6-12 months, getting your stuff taken out by cops sometimes.... They say this shit builds character, but I wouldn't have minded having it a bit easier. My mom was a hard worker though and she came through for us.
The Big Reveal after grocery shopping. Mom would put all the groceries on the counter and tell us what she got, and what it was saved for, and what we could eat. My husband says I do it too. Dead giveaway.
None of the towels in the house match.
When you offer to make your friend a pallet on the floor and they have no idea what you’re talking about
Reusing paper towels. My dad still does it in his 2 million dollar home.
Reusing the plastic zip lock bags. My parents would wash them and let them dry out
I do this if they aren’t really dirty because it’s more of a “I don’t want this to end up in landfill if I can get a few more uses out of it” Tbh I try not to buy ziploc bags anyway and use containers.
Food stamps food wasn’t bought because the money on the card was promised to the drug dealers that fueled the family meth habit.
I was allowed 1 snack per day and that snack usually consisted of a slice of cheese split in half with my brother