attending university from a low-income background IS a huge culture shock. Realising your classmates had high school trips to Japan, Coding classes & enough funding for various niche sports team makes you realise how big of a gap the lower and middle class really is. Completely different worlds.
Currently going through this (I’m in my third-year now) and I’m having a hard time trying to cope even though I knew that I would experience the culture shock.
Even crazier is to learn that both low and middle classes are "worker classes". I cannot even imagine what kind of alien lifestyle the high society has. Are they just rotting on their bed? Surely not! They are human like us, but they are so detached from the rest of us and reality in general that I can't imagine what hell they live in...
Honestly though, the internet closed a lot of those gaps. I grew up in section 8 housing and learned to code by reading websites on an old computer that I pulled out of a dumpster that a local business threw away. It isn't easy but it is available...the hardest part isn't learning those things, its knowing that you need to know them in the first place. (and a school trip to Japan is just a waste of time. That's a luxury. Skill and network development are essential though)
I was in a lecture of over 300 where the lecturer asked if anyone took Latin. Internally I scoffed as I thought who does Latin nowdays. Well as over two thirds of these students went to private school many put up there hands. Despite all my hard work at school there was no way I could even try to compete with these people, my so called peers
@@cosmovyd Latin is a luxury class signal, not an indicator of future success. It's important not to conflate the two when trying to help people from the working class move up. Building strong social networks with upwardly mobile people, developing the skills to be useful to people more successful than you, rapport building, understanding personal finance and investing, etc. Those are tools for climbing the socio-economic ladder.
One of the hardest pills to swallow was that “networking” is really a rich man’s game. During orientation at my first corporate job I remember overhearing a conversation between a few guys discussing their multiple semesters abroad, trips to Europe, what airlines they prefer, etc and thinking about how even in the same company, in the same role, these little break room conversations provide a clear divide that worsens these differences as you get further into your career.
Yup, it is the same in academia. People sound like bon viveurs talking about what wines they prefer, the best schools for their kids, and all the traveling they did before the age of 18, and yes, semesters spent abroad. Although I went to a university that offered semesters abroad, I remember my parents refused to pay for any semesters abroad because it was too expensive.
What airlines they prefer! Oh I know these conversations. I'm in Europe, in Ireland, but I don't have a second home in Italy or Spain. For a while I thought, if I just get x job do up my house, send my daughter to x uni, eventually, I'll be included. Nope. I get it now. I always have to be the ORDINARY to their extraordinary.
So a few months ago, our vacuum cleaner died a horrible death (asphyxiated on dog hair, RIP). I was able to get in the car, drive to the store, and purchase a new one right away and that's when it hit me how much my husband and I have moved up in the world, financially speaking. A few years ago, we would have just. . . not had a vacuum until somebody was giving one away, or until we could find somewhere to cut back to save for one. I sat in the parking lot and thought about that for a long time before I went in.
I've had this sort of similar realisation, too. Husband's niece kicked a ball into the TV and we got a new one within a week, and I cried. We got a small, not-big-brand TV from the department store and I cried because it was the most expensive thing I've bought in my life, but the fact we could get one... it was all a bit too much.
@@glass-yuzuthat reminded me of when i moved out on my own. Everything i owned fit in two large boxes and two medium suitcases. It took me 6 years sleeping on a mattress pad on the floor before i was convinced by a friend who worked at sears to buy a discounted close out mattress. I wouldnt do it before because the idea of owning something i couldnt move terrified me.
one of the most depressing college experiences i had was everyone being told they MUST get summer internships, but I was not able to accept any offers bc they were unpaid and full time and I needed to work to stay housed & fed. The worst part was the lack of understanding my classmates and professors had. Sometimes I feel like people who grow up wealthy develop this mental block where they’re willfully incapable of putting themselves in a poor persons shoes.
i don't even think it's "willful incapability", they literally cannot step into your shoes because they've never even considered your situation possible. it's privilege. it really does a number on some people, especially when paired with a lack of empathy.
You just reminded me when I was in university, I had a lecturer ask me why I never came to the lectures only to the tutorials and I straight up told her well the lectures are recorded I can catch up in my own time while the tutorials are when we go over all the material together so I make time for that so I understand the material. She told me I should make time for all. I told her that I needed to work otherwise I wouldn't be able to afford my rent or pay for food etc. It still astounds me to this day how she really didn't care, when I know for a fact multiple people in my class were in the exact same situation and other lecturers would take it into account. Later when she went on strike for pay and she stopped me to give out a flyer. I told her I wasn't interested in supporting them as I looked up their salary and it was 46k while the average in the UK was 26k. I didn't think they were struggling to keep the heating on or not being able to buy the needed food shop, unless they were living above their means. Luckily she wasn't my lecturer anymore or I probably would've gotten in trouble for that 😅.
@@Amelia-vk4jt Crazy how she hounded you for not showing up because you are literally having to make money and then she asked for help with money.... 🙃 The lack of awareness
@@coolm3th people can be very unsympathetic and hypocritical. Honestly I feel lucky that attendance didn't matter to your grade at the time, something tells me that's changed now, or I definitely would've failed, feel bad for kids nowadays having to choose between work and attendance, honestly don't see why it matters I got a degree with having barely gone to lectures.
This was something I noticed as a culture difference as soon as I moved from community college to the state university. At my local community college, they knew we all had jobs, I felt very supported and encouraged- and classes cost about a quarter of the cost of university classes, and they were just as good and challenging. In fact I’m in graduate school right now and I can still say the best professor I’ve ever had was at the community college!!!
@@caitlinmccloud7431 the problem is too, that when you do get a bit of money, you want to spend it on unimportant shit, just for the mental relief a frivolous purchase gives you.
the tax of being poor for me is not having as many volunteering hours for my graduate healthcare degree, and thus I have to work even harder in other aspects to prove that I am worthy. But how am I supposed to be doing volunteer work to the underserved communities when I am literally the underserved community that need paying jobs every hour to survive. Imagine giving free soup to the poor and realize you haven’t had anything to eat the whole day either…
Yes, good point, so many times, I heard that "volunteer!" Ot made me cross. I had already volunteered. How long do you have to go on giving away your time?
Your volunteering place should include a meal for you too :/ I know most places don't, but I felt very lucky when a church I volunteered at offered us to have food among the other clients. You shouldn't assume that just because somebody is volunteering, they wouldn't appreciate the food
This is a great introduction into why the younger generations are choosing not to have kids. We experienced being an expense our parents couldn't afford. We can't afford to exist as adults either. All that our parents couldn't give us growing-up, we're giving ourselves now. This is a perception often overlooked.
Definitely me 🤚🏻 Why would I want to live my whole life just as broke as I grew up, now that I have the choice? With just myself to look after, I can keep my head above water. Having another person to feed/clothe/support who isn’t bringing money in would mean instant poverty.
Agreed. The world would be better if a lot of people didn’t have to juggle parenting with everything else life offers A lot of them aren't built for it
Absolutely accurate assessment. One of the biggest reasons I chose to be child free and am still living in poverty even with a fancy college degree from a top university. I did not want to have children suffer the way I have.
Finances is a large reason why I don’t have kids. It’s already stressful enough with holding my breath on being able to afford things. Why make it worse by bringing children into this world, when they’ll feel like a financial burden (since kids are smart and aware of things)? Plus, when society as a whole, at least in my perspective, the societal gaps of rich and poor is only growing, setting any potential kids up for a hard adulthood.
Poverty isn't just an absence of money, it's an absence of hope. In fact, this absence of hope is really the hallmark of poverty. The poor are inundated with problems that cause them to abandon the dream they could have a better life. Poverty pushes people into survival mode. The health and mental health consequences, vulnerability to substance use, obesity, all of it, come from this. These people need support. They need a break and they certainly don't deserve to be judged.
This. I am so tired of being on survival mode all the time, knowing the only way it will change is with luck. No amount of work or effort on my part will change this
it is expensive to be poor. pulling oneself out of poverty requires luck. some rare circumstance or person crossing the path of a very determined person.
@jonmartin3220 risk have 10 to 100x the consequences for those in poverty. One wrong move that has nothing to do with your efficiency in 99% of other life areas will also catapult everything else into the wrong direction. Then you are judged in totality as a failed human not as a person who "entered the market for coffee at the wrong time".
Poverty is treated like something you're guilty of rather than going through. And it sucks when you get stuck in low wage jobs. People figure you can't do anything better and you don't get a chance to try.
And you’re treated like you’re not trying at all if you’re still in low wage work. They see you as impotent. That you must’ve done it to yourself by not trying. So you’re guilty once again.
25, former welfare baby If anyone were to tell me “growing up poor isn’t a disadvantage and this country has equal opportunity” I may be moved to unkind reactions.
This feeling of needing to "perform your class" when you suddenly have money after a childhood of poverty is called "class anxiety". You perform your class by buying "class signifiers" like a nice car, nice clothes, fancy dinners, expensive appliances, etc. It is very expensive to perform your class, and entire industries make bank selling class signifiers to poverty-scarred middle-class people with class anxiety. The social shame of appearing poor is a very exploitable and profitable phenomenon, for the owner class.
I don't know about that. My upbringing did focus on frugality, to have class meant to only buy white dress shirts which could be utilized for every occasion. The soldiers in the military were admired for having dependable boots, and linen sheets that you could bounce a penny on. Material wealth as a signifier is heralded as a reward for discipline, but the discipline is what is heralded as the primary signifier of class. Keep the grass mowed. A nice car was more about reliability, and not inheriting somebody else's problems. One member of my extended family had a rule that if a car ever broke down side of the road, it would be immediately placed up for sale and be replaced with a new vehicle. Power windows, air conditioning, power steering, these are not considered to be "upper class". Though, the A/C is questionable, given that showing up to a function sweating is a faux pas. Dave Ramsey did push for moving away from brand new, and to single owner lightly used vehicles, but the principle of not getting somebody else's problems remains the strongest. The class above me, often gets advertisements for upgrading to more energy efficient goods. Mostly windows in one's house, but the marketing materials are all about reducing the cost of living. Refinance your home with a fixed rate mortgage that may be lower than your current rate, etc. Fancy dinners is simply not eating hot dogs and white rice. Or having meat instead of beans. Moving away from processed foods towards fresher foods, often from a Farmer's Market with a focus on weight loss and healthy living to reduce medical costs. At the very low scale, even moving away from microwave cooking to a stove/oven cooking is performing one's class. Microwave cooking is often associated with reduced fridge space, but it could be worse and a lack of storage and cooking equipment (i.e in a rented room) necessitates a dependency on cheap fast food. Fancy dinners may be more common as business expenses, charged to one's employer, as a means of "wining and dining" a client. Performing your class is then done without any direct expense to the individuals themselves. Perhaps, I have never been near the 1%, to worry about dressing for the job I want and not the job I have in a social setting outside of work. The notion of successful people being "soft" as to have no patience for an individual "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", is a bit foreign. The roots of my local city still remembers being a farm community. Being "soft" with air conditioning might be a thing, though.
I'm lucky my mother imparted her philosophies of "not giving a $hit over what other people think", "nobody pays my bills so I don't owe them nothing" and "if my old clothes bother them so much, they are welcome to gift me new ones", it really sent home the message that performing class is a stupid game to play.
On the other hand, you have the choice of “underperform your class”. Coming from a poor country has given me perspective in what is really needed to be happy in life. Many people here have enough material stuff but they are not satisfied with what they already have. Success in life are not the possessions, is the peace of mind and freedom that comes from not wanting too much and to have time to do the things that brings you joy. It is hard to save money if one chase “bigger and better” often . Just “downplay, underperform, and you will see the results 😊
I remember when I got my first "serious" paycheck and started overspending to "perform my class". girl, i was so anxious and I still felt like I looked like the poor kid. now i'm trying to get rid of the mountain of stuff i bought back then. nowadays I "underperform" my class and live comfortably below my means. i'm lucky to be able to save money, but I don't think the fear of one day being back in that position will ever go away
The biggest issue with growing up generationally poor, from a background in crimes, uncountable divorces, families falling apart, and what you can grab is all you can have is this: My parents knew I was smart. They couldn't afford to send me to a better school. We knew I should go to college for STEM. Didn't know any engineers, scientists, etc to explain what those jobs were like, or even those fields. Reading about a world you've never experienced to try to prepare to join it, is like reading a survival guide before crashlanding on an uninhabited island. The lack of information about what we should be doing, who we should be talking to, how to prepare, etc was completely missing. How am I supposed to ask for help to pass an interview when neither of my parents have done a technical interview? I got really lucky I pushed through, but TL;DR The biggest thing you are missing when being generationally poor, is information or connections to people with that information to dig yourself out of poverty
I agree. It took my a long time to see my scholarships/fellowship as valuable to build that net work of information and mentorship. I was just so grateful for the 💰 that I didn't realize the longevity of support from mentors and peers was necessary to maintain the foundation that education could give me
I an so obsessed with how clean my home is and it took me a while to realize my obsession with organizing and cleanliness was because I grew up in a very disorganized home that was always in some form of disrepair. Holes in walls, cracking bathroom tile, splintering floor boards. I never wanted to invite friends over and was obsessed with my classmates' homes. Wall to Wall carpet, pools and hot tubs, even having a 2nd floor was wild to me! I panic when my home now starts to resemble my childhood home because of how ashamed I felt as a kid.
THIS THIS THIS THIS 😭😭😭😭 GOD ALMIGHTY, this still affects me now and I'm turning 40 soon. My husband never really understood until he visited my parent's house just before we married.
There with you! When I first started dating my now fiancee I basically didn't let him come over for the first year because my mom is extremely mentally ill, and I lived in a home I didn't have any control over. I couldn't throw away a candy wrapper without her freaking out. We've been living on our own for three years and I cannot live like my mother did because anything that reminds me of that brings in heavy waves of depression. For the first time in my life, feel like basics of my hierarchy of needs is finally fulfilled, and I'm able to focus way more on self actualizing. Maintaining a clean home and throwing out clutter heals me.
Oh my lord I feel this so much!! As a kid I never cared about cleaning because my mom did an amazing job of keeping a clean home, but when I was 16 I spent a year living with my older sister and her family, and it literally scarred me. Despite being a solidly middle class family living in an objectively nice, brand new home, I hated being inside because they never cleaned and everything was disgusting all the time. They had a toddler, a newborn, and three inside dogs, and just… never cleaned anything. If I wanted to cook something I had to sift through all the dirty dishes to find what I needed and clean it first. Laundry would be done and left out for weeks at a time until it was gathered up to be washed again because the dogs had trampled it enough for it to be dirty again. The couches were always covered in dog fur and mystery stains from the toddler. And don’t even get me started on the bathrooms. I once spent an entire 8-9 hours straight cleaning, and only managed to get through the living room and kitchen. They were the first family to live there, and by the time they sold the house and moved (after like, 4 years?) it was DESTROYED. After living like that, even for just a year, I’m completely neurotic about my own home. If my husband puts dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher I have to hold myself back from yelling at him. If the trash isn’t taken out or I feel like the floors are too dirty, I start to feel claustrophobic and panicky. I simply can’t function anymore when I find myself in situations even remotely similar to what I lived with. The need to clean and change my surroundings has just become insane 🫠
I grew up lower middle class, and the am quite the opposite of her. After being financially unstable for so many years, I have a hard time spending money on things I don’t explicitly need. There is almost a level of guilt for me. Why spend money on frivolous things when I could use it to get out of debt faster and become more stable. Financial insecurity is tough. Even when you start to make more money, there is always a feeling of the shoe about to drop. Like something bad is going to happen and take it away
5 месяцев назад+188
Worse, it's the *feeling* of financial insecurity in actual financial security.
1000% my husband and I are both type 1 diabetic and have paid dearly for that and it seems so unfair. One of our children has a rare heart defect (not related to our diabetes, literally a combination of all heart issues on both sides coming together) despite that (and due to some pretty intense work on our part) he is the picture of health at 18 (but potentially in need of a heart and liver transplant sometimes in the next 30 years as statistically that is a 100% haute tee with his heart issue) but the costs of those things has us so traumatized that when we go to buy back to school clothes for our kids and know as the teachers in the building we need to look decent but we both struggle to let that happen because what if…. It hovers over everything and is pretty toxic 😢
Same. Its poverty mindset, but it benefits me in many way. I own 3 pieces of property and am looking at buying a fourth. That’s because as a middle class single mom I don’t buy shit I don’t need.
@@type1fun476I buy barely enough clothes to function. I topically have 6 outfits and I only replace them as they start to deteriorate. It's funny, though, because I also picked up reckless spending habits (or should I say avoidance strategies) due to the same poverty. Awareness is sometimes so overwhelming that you spend money to avoid it, ironically causing the fears to become true.
In the late 90s as a homeschooled teenager, I loved going for a week to this Christian summer camp that my parents didn't fully object to. One evening in my cabin, one of my bunkmates told all of us that her family was struggling after her dad lost his job, and it was so bad that she had even had to pay for most of the $120 camper fee herself. I looked at her, astonished, and said that I have always had to come up with the camper fee myself from babysitting money or however else I could earn it. Looking around, it was clear that no one else in this cabin had been tasked with paying for camp herself.
Even if any of them did pay for it with their own money, it probably would have come from their "allowance" which they got whether or not they did anything to earn it. My allowance came from doing tasks like washing dishes after dinner (50 cents), vacuuming (50 cents), taking out the trash (25 cents), etc. I remember being at friends' houses where they whined about having to take the trash out to the curb, like 20 ft. They never had to go down 2 flights of stairs and through a hot parking lot to toss a bag more than half their size into a tall, stinky, overfilled dumpster shared by the whole apartment complex. But I didn't whine about it; I was happy to earn my 25 cents for it!
@kekica11 I didn't get an allowance, I had to do chores for free. I worked from the age of 10 at to pay for necessities like school fees, transport and clothes and my parents regularly stole and demanded money from my work.
@@kekica11 I washed the dishes and I was "allowed" to eat off clean dishes, I never knew any kid to actually get paid tbh. I got Christmas and birthday money in Dec, and that was my entire spending for the year, every club t shirt, every colored pencil, if I needed a new bow in Jan that was my spending for the whole year
I had to work to earn money for camp too. To this day I feel lucky to have had an experience that was mostly accessible only to the middle class and the wealthy.
My Christian summer camp had a program where you could memorize portions of the Bible, and the more you memorized the more would be knocked off your camper fee and that is how I funded summer camp (sometimes fully and sometimes partially). Luckily I am VERY good at memorizing things.
The animosity is real. My husband was talking about how hard it was that his dad was always on business trips during the week growing up and his dad got him and his sister a pager so they could communicate - late 90’s early 2000’s. I’m sitting there thinking about the calls and letters I would get from my dad in prison. I’m sure it was hard, but sometimes hearing about those experiences just makes you jealous that you didn’t get those things.
I feel you on this. I much rather have received a pager from my Dad to message with than what I received, which was letters and collect calls from my Dad in prison. Add to that being an African American male going to a predominantly white elementary and junior high school. So much embarrassment when other kids would ask about my Dad and I would say he’s currently in prison. I naturally gravitated and still do to people’s lifestyles that are more the opposite of mine. I don’t want to forget my family by any means, and I love them dearly, but what I was exposed to as a child really sucked. All of it sucked. I see people glamorize single parenthood and I say it’s one of the worst things I ever experienced. I got the double whammy. Mom struggled financially and still does to this day, and my dad abandoned me after he got out of prison and I didn’t see or hear from him for 25 years before he died. I’m 40 years old and it still bothers me today. I’ve had to tell friends the reason I don’t get to take risk, and my life is so heavily calculated, is because I grew up being exposed to taking risk, even slight ones, not only means we fail, but we also take two steps back financially and emotionally. My Mom and Brother have both struggled financially the majority of their adult lives. It’s really sad honestly.
People don’t understand the shame that follows you for the rest of your life. It influences everything you do no matter how much time has passed and how much personal growth you go through. As someone who had a very similar experience, although Hispanic and not African American, I’m proud of us. We didn’t deserve the childhood we were dealt. My dad was deported after he got out of prison and then passed away when I was 16. My mom struggled with finances significantly and recently filed for bankruptcy. There are 7 kids in my family and we all have moved on with our lives in different ways. I’m still in touch with most of my siblings, but there is a lot of trauma from our childhood to be worked through. I’m 27 now, and everything I do is because of what I learned from my parents mistakes. Thank you for sharing this with me. It made me feel less alone in that terrible experience. The fact that we are both here means we came out of it strong. I hope you have found healing over the course of your life and continue to do so. 💚
Men failing their daughters so they can struggle in poverty and grow up with a dad in prison. Then when you grow up traumatized all the sudden you have "daddy issues" like it wasnt a man that failed you to begin with. Blah. What else is new? Sorry that happened to you.
I understand as well. My husband's parents divorced when he was 12 and his youngest siblings was 4. My parents didn't divorce until I was 17 and my brother was 12. That being said, his mother never worked and just his dad made more than both my parents ever did. He didn't have his 1st job until after HS, was given a first car, family could afford braces, he got to spend summers doing fun things. I got non of it and worked since 14.
I feel you. My partner grew up in an entirely different socioeconomic class than I did. They had international trips, his parents didn’t divorce until he was in university, etc. At a family gathering recently, everyone was reminiscing about how many different extracurriculars & music lessons all their kids had gone through: violin, clarinet, drums, trumpet… sports, riding lessons…- it was so hard to keep my mouth shut and not spill out how the one extracurricular I wanted to do as a kid, we couldn’t afford. Mom scrimped and saved to get a secondhand piano when I was a teenager, and I only got lessons because it was our pastor’s wife giving them at a discount. It was just me and my mom since I was in 4th grade. It’s so difficult to not let those differences seethe.
it’s a hard pill to swallow. Realizing your parents had you when they couldn’t even afford you and they sacrificed so much, but you still had a very less than ideal childhood and you were robbed of certain experiences. No child should have to get a job at 13 to help with bills.
Genuine question but why not? Sure it's preferable if the kid can be a kid but the idea of childhood we have is very modern and specifically western idea. Kids working is incredibly common.
@@apache8795Faulty logic, just because something is common somewhere or was common at sometime doesn't mean that it is in any way a good thing. The only reason why it is still common today is because most people around the world live in deplorable poverty and must send their young children to do unsuitable and potentially unsafe work just to get by
@@czcccc9627 Saying that because it's common isn't an argument either. It's good because it gives kids actual skills, teaches them to be self sufficient and develops discipline. Compare the kids that have these skills to first world kids. I'm not saying put the kids in the mines, but a child working on the family farm, business or a friends business is fine. Japan does something similar giving kids as young as 3 errands so they learn to be independent and reliable
@@apache8795 The implication of the original comment is that she had to work a job in order to help her struggling family to pay the bills. There's nothing wrong with kids helping out at a family business at a variety of ages depending on what they can safely do, but there is definitely something wrong about a 13yr old having to work at a regular job to make ends meet. Also the language used clearly indicates that the job wasn't at a family owned business either. Japan has a variety of issues that I won't touch on here, but literally every recognised country has kids doing small amounts of work around the house and at school lmao
I had a really rough start in life due to being poor. The effects of poverty are one thing, such as the lack of access to healthcare or inability to participate in social events like summer camp, but poverty often goes hand in hand with mental illness in the family, abuse, and generational trauma. When you have a kid in an abusive environment who cannot afford access to mental healthcare or any other resources and is socially isolated due to not being able to afford social activities, it's a recipe for disaster. That kid had no chance in life. I only got out due to being really, really smart and getting a scholarship and good degree. If not for that I'd be trapped with everyone else in a deadend town where everyone ends up either working retail, unemployed, arrested, or a single mom. Also, a lot of poor kids get exposed to environmental health hazards like smoking parents, parents who abuse drugs, lead paint, contaminated water, low quality food and nutritional deficiencies, unclean air, no access to exercise, etc. and of course being poor prevents them from receiving healthcare, compounding that. so if you are a poor kid you get a graduation gift of lifelong medical issues that could have been prevented, corrected, or treated early if you'd been in a middle or upper class family. a lot of poor kids just live in pain and discomfort from untreated health issues. For example, my teeth were crooked which meant I got made fun of, turned down from good jobs, and experienced TMJD pain in my jaw because my parents couldn't afford orthodontics. Now as an adult I had to pay for my own orthodontics, which cost me $6k out of pocket. Rich kids got that paid for them, skipped all the pain and bullying, and didn't have that expense dropped on their lap as a young adult. And that's a small example that is easily solved, others have it way worse. Also, "you aren't ugly, you're just poor" so young people without mommy and daddy's money have their social life crushed and experience low self esteem because they can't afford contacts, or orthodontics, or acne treatment, makeup, good clothes, haircuts, etc. And anyone who says that is vain is being obtuse because it sets you up for a lifetime of lowered standards. The ramifications of poverty are endless.
All of this. I feel like this channel often ignores the more complicated parts of poverty such as frequent involvement in the criminal justice system. (I've been both a public defender and prosecutor and have practiced law for almost 20 yrs.) A lot of it is systematic but, like everything, personal choices do actually matter. I see that in my own clients all the time. Glad you were able to pull yourself out.
@@BRBRidingMyHorseWow, I am soooo happy to live in a country with a functioning social system with a health care insurance for everyone. Yes, being lower class often shows (especially if the parents are caught in a generational cycle of neglect), but there’s access at least to proper health care and a basic income.
@@BRBRidingMyHorse This is not true. There is enough research about school to prison pipeline, about how even schools are geared to further marginalised poor or minority kids. Individual choices come into play when a person has d choice to opt. Most poor kids lack d parenting, education , support systems to gain d wisdom to make better choices. Not to mention, d video talks about those kids who have not chosen a life of crime, n yet being poor sets dem up for a life of financial struggle n I'll health. The video focussed on how discipline, hard work n individual choices alone can't help a poor kid rise up in society, as there are too many systemic obstacles in place.
My brain chemistry changed the day I went to a friend's house and it was 2 stories in a nice neighborhood with a stuffed full fridge AND pantry. My 8 year old self was SHOCKED, and even more shocked when I said "I didn't know you were rich" and they said "We're not".
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this or even feels the same way. But I really don't like the glamorousation of side hustle as a means to become financially free on social media. For me, it's a slap in the face of people in poverty who have been doing this for decades just to survive. Side hustles are a second, third, or fourth job. Being told that if you don't make enough money to "get your side hustle on" is insulting. I worked hard educating myself so I could get a better paying non-phyical paying job. If I am not promoted or receiving a good raise, I will look for a better paying job. Or figure out it starting my own business is better for me. I would not just stay in a low paying job and look for another low paying job to double my income by working twice as hard. I tell my son and his friends to work smarter, not harder. In my opinion, promoting side hustles instead of educating is another tool to keep people in poverty.
The problem is the wages themselves. Even if YOU escaped those jobs, someone will still have to do it. There aren’t enough “good” jobs for everyone so we need to make sure the “bad” jobs at least pay enough for basic necessities and that one accident or health incident doesn’t make you homeless.
@@emmanarotzky6565this, it’s not only about escaping the legislated feedback loop on an individual level, it’s also about getting living wages for ALL jobs, somebody has to get the trash to landfills, somebody has to make the burger you get in the drive through. Those people deserve a comfortable life just as much as someone on the corporate ladder
@@emmanarotzky6565 exactly this. People always focus on the individual and tell them they need to improve their lives. But how does the world run with no janitors, no burger flippers, no waitresses? We need people in these jobs, so the only way to make people broadly happy is to make minimum wage work a viable lifestyle.
I will never forget when I talked to a teenager with rich parents about struggles the boy was trying to tell me that rich people have depression too - and I told him: yes, they do. but what they don't go through is existential fear. they don't need to worry about if they can pay rent or not, afford to buy enough food or if they're able to replace one of their old socks. it just adds another type of struggle that higher income families don't have to think about. it was also arguably the biggest struggle my own family went through.
When I was school , I remember I kept secret everything was going on like packing my house hours before we got kicked out, in the freezing winter a week before my birthday, why I repeat the same clothes every week, and , or not having water or electricity because I lived in a , richer town, as a low class family. It was hell. I remember teachers MY FINANCE TEACHER FOR 7TH GRADERS used to make fun of the kids who wore the same clothes everyday… as a grown woman. 😐
Rich people have depression over the meaningless of life. If they're able to buy anything, money isn't an object, they've been there and done it all and ask themselves if they have everything, why do they feel nothing? Why are they so empty? Meanwhile, poor people's existential dread is quite literally, "how will I survive this?" Death and ruin always just around the corner.
@@arianam6430 right, i agree. i think they're both existential, but for people in poverty it is very immediate. it about's life potentially ending early, plus being this struggle the whole time. for rich people, the existential threat is that they will have lived their entire life for nothing. it's not the same, but it comes from the same concern about wanting to live a worthwhile life.
@@mick6247 😮Now if she gets into a situation where she starts to struggle herself, that would be her KARMA. SMH so sad there's so many in the world like her.
Hugs. I'm always trying to work out whether when something happens financially whether I should freak out, or if things are ok. And I never really feel like I have enough money, even though I haven't been working paycheck to paycheck for a long time.
I freak out over home repairs. Even though my husband knows my trigger, understands it, has a HEALTHY emergency fund set aside explicitly because of it... I still get absolutely irrational if a sink backs up or our dishwasher is making strange noises. Thanks Dad for never having an emergency fund and always refusing to hire someone to do household repairs so windows would remain broken, sinks would remain clogged, and we'd be stuck hauling wet laundry to the laundromat every January because the dryer wasn't working and we lived in MN ... 🤦🏻♀️
My boss grew up poor. I grew up poor. We had a company trip that was manditory. I told him I was going to have to quit because I couldn't afford it. He told me that the company paid for everything. After picking my jaw up off the floor, we went over the travel rules. One of them was to "try not to" have a meal more that $25 for one person. Neither of us could imagine WANTING to spend that much on a single meal. Heck, I felt guilty for putting a pack of AA batteries for my camera on the company card.
I didn’t know I was “poor” until I was in college when all my friends had their tuitions paid for by their parents and I was one of the few in my group who had student loan debt and whose parents didn’t own a home at the time. It was a huge culture shock especially when friends would tell me “why cant I just ask my parents” whenever I’d tell them I didn’t have enough money to do things. Now it affects me in ways where I had to learn financial literacy later in life and how to save/invest. It feels like everyone’s miles ahead and I’m building my life from the ground up.
I had a similar experience in college. I think it's the first time I uttered the phrase "Must be nice to have money . . ." And I used it a lot. My family wasn't utterly destitute, but getting my dad to even consider buying things that weren't cheap crap was like pulling teeth. I didn't realize other families weren't like that until college.
I remember going to the student health center for birth control when I was in college and the doctor got on my ass really hard about being under weight. I asked her what she wanted me to do about it and she yelled “EAT MORE!!!” all exasperated and annoyed. And that would have been rude if I was anorexic anyway. But I wasn’t. I couldnt afford to eat more. When I told her that, she was completely gobsmacked for a second, and then told me to “CALL YOUR PARENTS THEN!!” sigh We are truly from different worlds. Not everyone’s parents are made of money or even give a shit about them, Rebecca…
Whenever I tell people I'm paying for college all by myself they look at me like I have 3 heads. I'm 22 and this is my last semester to graduate with an asscosiates. I've had to take a gap year, then take part-time classes so I can be out and working to make enough to afford school and life. Most of my age group has gotten a BA by now. I'm only just now getting my associates. I. HATE. THIS.
@@heyfella5217 Both my parents worked and supported themselves to get their BA's . Back then this was much more the norm. Of course, it was shortly after WW2 . And they grew up during the great depression!! Most people could earn enough to pay for all college expenses at state colleges.
Poverty and growing up with ADHD and autism undiagnosed for the majority of my life was hell. I wish it on no one. I hope many find their way and succeed in their escape from poverty.
Succeeding while neurodivergent, especially if you need more support, tends to require folks helping you with things like delivering things or you or cleaning for you, etc., without those, we burn out very easily trying to balance taking care of ourselvws, our homes, AND studying/working. Or we could just do only a little each day...
@@pinokosthewifeyes, as I’ve posted in other threads in this comment section I’m a mama five I am an AudHd woman and all of my kids are on the spectrum because their father’s on the spectrum and you know how genetics goes and I’m struggling big time. Just being able to get through the process of getting Social Security check or finding and daycare for them that will actually help their progress is been hell let alone being their mother was struggling with the exact same disabilities that they have. I feel your pain. Try to keep your head up as best as you can. 💜
I’m like you. This was hard to read, especially the part about not being able to enjoy your childhood or college years. I still struggle to have fun. I didn’t learn to swim, ski, or play most sports because we never had the money for lessons or fees to be on teams. Now as an adult, I can’t catch up to those who learned recreation. I only know how to work and avoid harm.
This was me. I came to college with no support but my own. No money, no college dorm purchases bought by parents, worked. Took me 10yrs to finish between failing mental health (couldn't afford therapy). Another 6 to land a decent job
I was just reflecting on this. In my experience, it makes it hard to talk and connect with people at work because they're conversing about places they go skiing or rock climbing gyms. It truly is a challenge when networking involves so much of these recreational experiences.
You’d be surprised how many people who “look rich” are drowned in debt trying to keep up the lifestyle.
5 месяцев назад+16
A friend of mine jointly inherited his parent's house in Los Altos Hills with his sister as a roommate. He looks fucking homeless all the time, probably partially as a defense mechanism while primarily as a DGAF about impressing anyone.
We are poor too just lucked out in home ownership form a cheap house before the market went crazy, otherwise we aren’t much better off then my friends who can barely afford their own home and they did not luck out as us
That's essentially the middle class in a nutshell. I think this video is hinting at the real rich kids, the ones who go to Europe every summer and are guaranteed a spot at a school like Harvard/Yale.
That's how the rich live, though they have.Assets that aren't liquidated and then take loans out against that, and so long as they have good credit and keep it rolling, they live off their debts.It's literally a method
I am a nomad in my van, have worked the same two stable jobs for over 3 years now. During the day I chill around and at night I get to work, I'm sitting on my money to sling shot ahead. Other people call it homeless from their view. To me, I am living no different if not better in this van than I did growing up. And the money produced from this will allow me to get something really nice
Scarcity mindset sucks. It took me over a year to convince myself to buy a $15 book I'd wanted, just because it wasn't food, and for work, I needed a full stomach more than a full head. Wound up waiting for my birthday just so I could make an excuse, and I still wondered if I should have saved the money to buy gas. My sister looked like she wanted to cry when I mentioned it over dinner once.
Waiting until a birthday or holiday is so real, I'm doing this right now even though I've been repeatedly told that I can afford the thing. It is extremely expensive, though, and would be the most expensive thing I've ever bought (not including paying back student loans.)
I got that mindset. Unfortunately, I was about to be homeless and joined the military. Had tricare and never had to worry about a single medical bill during that time but I still saved any unused meds and tried to not take every pill (outside antibiotics) because I may need it later and was never able to go to drs as a kid. Even having that medical access I still couldn't break away from that possibility of needing and not getting.
Survivor's remorse hit me as a phrase. I feel this is sooo relevant, especially a feeling a guilt, obligation to give back, and even family alienation because they think you are "better" than them now that you have escaped poverty
The thing that I’ve also noticed is that growing up lower income also can lead to hoarding behavior. Keeping items that others might get rid of because “what if I need it” while also buying a lot of discounted items because “it’s a good deal”. It can be a lot to try to break out of that mindset and realize your “smart financial decisions” aren’t very good choices.
@lumensapace Yes! When I was growing up (1970s), my father earned about 15% of what my best friend's father earned (so little that I qualified for an equal opportunity college fund 😮). Every year for elementary, middle and high school, my parents would buy me *1 pair of shoes.* I got sneakers for gym every other year. Fast forward, many decades later, I have dozens of sneakers and shoes that I hardly wear (plus over 70 wool and cashmere sweaters, too many shirts, pants, coats, jackets...) I have had multiple storage units, and then scheduled the salvation army to pick up the boxes to donate nearly everything... This has been a pattern for the past 25 years. I could have saved all that wasted $$$$ for a house down payment and probably pay off a good percentage. Self sabotage is a strong force in my life. 😟
yup, and its a generational issue thats harder to escape than it seems. great grandma lived through the depression, grandma has a house with two useable rooms and the rest is piled with junk "so we can sell it during hard times". mom is the same way but is working on it (more by force than by choice. and the rise of online shopping and her lack of fulfilling hobbies isn't helping. but were getting there). I am trying SO hard to not be the same way but its hard to distinguish between what you NEED and what you think you need, to justify throwing something away and filling landfills with stuff youll have to buy again when you inevitably DO need it again, and not knowing if you will be ABLE to buy it again if you need to. i feel constantly anxiety about the amount of STUFF i have taking up unnecessary space but every time i have a good ol "i need to get rid of EVERYTHING its too overwhelming" freak out and go through all of it... what do I get rid of? and how can i bare to throw it away when i remember all the things i threw away and then NEEDED shortly after?
That's my mom. We were always acquiring more junk from thrift stores, but never had enough money when I grew out of my shoes and needed a new pair. I still can't bring myself to replace a pair of shoes until they start to fall apart.
This is something I feel deeply, I'll add another layer (more specific to poor Americans) saving medication and trying to not take all of a medication if possible because you may need it in the future but know you can't go to the doctor again.
Income doesn’t equal wealth! And that’s a very important point that’s glossed over in this beautiful video. A person who makes 90k salary that comes from generational poverty vs 90k salary and come from the middle class family who already has wealth are two very different lives and wealth positions. Higher income doesn’t elevate you into a different class unless you really have the wealth to back it up. Wealth is ultimately more important than the incomes.
True its not equal, but higher income will start to elevate you eventually. At 90k most people have a good amount of money left over every month. Once you start living below your means you your savings will increase and so too will your investment opportunities. Your will be consistently building wealth.
@@willbass2869 This is highly location dependent but most places $90k is a pretty good wage for a single person and should be at least survivable for a small family… assuming no major financial issues like debt or needing to hire medical help. $90k/year means $7.5k per month before taxes. Probably closer to 5.6k/month after taxes (I did the math at 25% tax rate). That should be enough to pay rent, utilities and food, with some left over for replacing clothing, spending, and savings or debt repayment. There may be a few locations where that is not enough, and debt may play some factor, but it is a far cry away from having to make the decision to eat this week or get winter clothing so you dont freeze. That said, owning a home and making $90k/year is a significantly different situation than paying off a home and making $90k/year.
My poor tax was having no other option but joining the military to escape poverty. So i signed up. My price? PTSD, joint problems, nerve damage, TBI, died twice, nicotine addiction, and a really bad distrust of any authority.
@jtowensbyiii6018 those are actions. You don't know what I did while I was in. And the person above could be a great humanitarian. As a human, I believe all of us have equal value. It's our actions we should judge. And I don't think all reasons for joining the military are equally valid. A person that joins to escape poverty is different than one who joins to kill people. I've met both.
The resentment for being poor and not really experiencing a childhood while others did is so real I was lower middle class, I had a roof over my head and food on the table and an internet connection, but I was always the poor friend, being the only one with divorced parents. The worst was being the poor SIBLING. My two half siblings share the same father, and he was significantly richer than mine (their dad is a landlord with multiples properties...) I spent years watching my own brothers open gifts of laptops and TVs and a car, even housing! Meanwhile in college I often skipped meals to save money.
Also remember that there are people with full siblings in that situation, I grew up in an apartment in the hood, my parents decided to get their shit together get a 2 story house, my siblings grew up in a house while I was struggling in college lol now there's a big disconnect
Wow, Jaciel speaking about his feelings of jealousy hit me. My husband and I (both late 20s) talk about this all the time since we grew up around people with a lot of generational wealth. It's hard not to feel extremely jealous when we watch our friends' parents buy them houses or get to retire comfortably, meanwhile we know we're our parents' retirement plans. We do well very for ourselves now, but it was against all odds.
indeed, my parents gave their savings to struggling (due to crap financial planning) sibling, now i need to support entire family, although i just want to focus on my kid instead.. while my friends are buying new property and investing in stock, i see all my savings immediately disappear into accounts of my family, my credit loan, etc... we might hang out in the same restaurant and drink same fancy cocktails, but we are NOT the same, for my luck feels forever temporary, one more bad decision of my family away from disaster, while they have limitless means and can take more chances, more risks, never having this crippling insecurity..
@@amistieldude, your comment and the original comment both hit! My husband and I both came from poverty and financial instability (although I had about ~6 years of financial stability before the age of 20, but the rest was lived in poverty), and we're doing ok now. But like you said, while we may eat at the same restaurants as our friends we are not at all the same. Our friends were able to graduate college debt free, but even with going to a cheap college we didn't have that option because we didn't have any kind of financial support from our parents, and we knew we couldn't ask (let alone expect) that from them. We're just hoping that our kids can be raised before either set of our parents can no longer work, because we absolutely are our parents requirement plan and are trying to plan our lives accordingly. Our friends don't have to make any kinds of plan like that, even the friends that grew up "poor", their parents always had a steady job and now have retirement.
It's hard when you have jealousy to your own husband 😅 I come from low middle class (for some time was poor) and he from upper middle class and it's hard to hear about his childhood going to resorts and getting new consoles. I'm working with this feeling, but it's not easy
SO felt. I was obviously devastated when my mom passed suddenly from covid in 2020, but there was a small part that was also a little relieved because she was in so much debt, no retirement fund, and I could not have afforded to care for her if she was not able to work. It's an awful feeling, and it's hard not to feel spiteful every time I talk to someone who DID get to retire, whose family WONT have to have that extra layer in their grief when their parents pass. I'm glad that don't, but it's hard not to be bitter for sure
The jealousy and resentment being unshakable bit was the part that hit hardest and is totally my reality. Hearing Jaciel express those feelings made me feel less alone. I grew up poor in an upper middle class town so I've always been hyper aware of what I had vs what my peers had. Now I live in an EHCOL city and work a public service job where my near six figure income is technically just below the middle-class line. I'm proud of what I've made of my life - I officially have no student loan debt thanks to 10 years of public service (yay PSLF), have an adequate emergency fund, fly a couple times a year and have travelled internationally twice, play ice hockey recreationally, and am throwing something at retirement. But everyday living in this EHCOL city feels like my childhood all over again ... non-stop comparing myself to others and pining after the things I can't afford (mostly a bigger place to rent). The most toxic form my jealousy takes lately is silently directed towards friends or coworkers who can rely on their parents for childcare, wedding funds, house down payments, or really ANY kind of support as an adult (many of these things related to rites of passage). Not only do I not have that (and never will) but I am still providing support to my own parent and younger siblings. I'd like to have kids of my own, and that window is closing, but I'm terrified that I can't afford them, especially without family support. I'm working on these feelings. I know they're toxic and unproductive. But damn is it hard to just let go.
A fashion RUclipsr I like made a video about fashion trends vs. what people wear IRL (by literally observing people on the train) and she said something that made me think. She said ''while in fashion vintage and distressed looks are fashionable people wear very clean and new clothing IRL'' and that's definitely true. Wearing overly distressed or old looking stuff by choice is a rich people's thing. I even heard how British aristocrats will wear their decades old fancy wool clothing with holes and stuff like that. Or think Balenciaga or even wearing workwear for fashion. And the reason is that these people can do that because they ''don't have anything to prove to anyone''. Working class people are judged on their clothing and it literally dictates how people will deal with you. My family had this obsession with pristine and pressed clothing (and getting something new as often as possible, even if low quality, and an aversion to thrift stores) for this same reason - to make sure we would be treated a little better.
That's unfortunate. There are some really good clothes in theift stores, whereas cheap new clothes fall apart pretty quickly, especially nowadays. I avoid department store clothes and mall clothes unless I need something for a specific occasion.
@@kaedatiger Yes, of course! I myself favour thrift stores nowadays, especially for the quality but the point still stands in my opinion. Wearing noticeable vintage stuff is very different if you are working class or a rich/middle class person with all the other signifiers of wealth apart from the clothing you wear on you.
British aristocrats wearing old fancy wool clothing with holes is a bit of myth. I used to live in an area which had plenty of 'Old Money' types, and you could definitely tell those shirts and chinos were not from H&M. They might have some odd items in their wardrobe from their grandparents but they have plenty of new and often tailor made clothes, also young people. Also, whilst it's true that most of them don't wear flashy brands on everyday basis, the amount of Chanels, Hermes etc. on charity dinners or some other types of gathering frequented mainly by this type of people is absolutely staggering.
I'm 32 and grew up house poor. My parents made enough to buy a house that gave the illusion of wealth, but we never had money for vacations, back to school clothes, or... food, a lot of the time. I love my parents but they didn't know how to bridge the class gap. I really attribute my workaholism to this upbringing, and while I'm much more stable now I still feel I'm in constant danger of falling back into scarcity. If you do, by some miracle, make it out, you might be tasked with helping to stabilize the rest of your family as well. There's really no way out completely.
The thing about being tasked with stabilizing the rest of the family is a thing for sure. The problem with that is that some of them are poor because of poor choices, and no amount of my time and resources can overcome poor spending and saving habits.
I now have 2 grown children… and we are poor. I tried to hard. I was raised by my grandparents and we survived from their social security checks and payday loans. I joined the Army at 17 and went to nursing school.. assuming I had made it out of the poverty cycle… I had a baby and got sick… 18 years later I am back to a cycle similar to how I was raised. I was so close to a better life and it felt like it was ripped away. Hopelessness is what really does society in.
My parents never let me realize how "poor" we were. It wasn't until I went to college that I found out about all the things they had insulated me from. But they taught me the value of money, how to build credit, and ensured that I never get in debt (like they were).
I had the same experience! My mom worked so hard to shield me from the potential statistic that I could’ve become, coming from a single mother, immigrant household. She tried to give me so much access to things that the people around me didn’t have, that I felt like one of the most privileged people. The moment I went to my PWI, I realized how abnormal most of my life was for others. And also just how dangerous where I grew up really was. It’s always interesting when you have that shift in perspective, once you’re put into a different environment.
And even that is a privilege. Poverty was coupled with abuse and extreme parentification in my childhood, which has definitely taken its toll both on my mental and physical health. That's why it's so important to understand that there are many variations on an experience and all are valid. Glad to hear you had parents like that.
I had the opposite experience. My parents constantly told me what we couldn't afford and we were "too poor." As an adult I recognize we were very middle class. It made me obsessed with money though, so I guess I can't be too annoyed by it.
Just a thought to consider..... In the US & I imagine elsewhere the actual process of "building credit" is really about taking on debt and then repaying that debt, ON TIME, with interest.....IOW debt must precede "credit". I know your parents meant well but try as hard as you can to avoid that trap. Having "good credit" is about proving to someone you'll pay back *their* money they lent.....money you didn't have in the first place. Good luck
This was a hard watch for me. The anger and resentment from not having money to do sports, or other fun hobbies (like martial arts) still affects me. Now being in my mid twenties, I can finally afford to do the things I wanted to do as a child. But now I feel a little old to be starting things like ballet, and I’m a bit scared to see how “far behind” I am compared to others. I know I shouldn’t be. Growing up in poverty comes back to haunt me in the most random ways. Frequently.
The really wonderful thing is there are now classes specifically for beginner adults in things like that. The one I have noticed the most is figure skating which is an expensive sport and traditionally you have be young when you start. Where I live most figure skating clubs have started offering not just skating but figure skating lessons to adults which is so nice. So go take the ballet lessons! There will be others in the same situation as you.
Growing up poor and "making it" as an adult, the biggest carryover is the inability to connect with the middle class peer group. I cannot and never have been able to connect with my white collar peers. It's hard to pin point, but the we think, communicate, our values, concerns, aspirations, approach to problems etc. All entirely different on a core level. It just feels like constant friction.
My advice (from the middle class) is to make food your thing. Everyone eats, and you can be a food snob about your. Homemade food. Start bragging about how you've found a cheaper way to have the same high quality food (the middle class loves a deal) and that can carry a 5 min conversation. Idk, act like a child and every new experience can be a talking point. People love showing their friends new experiences, maybe they'll be so incredulous you've never had X, they'll want to take you to try it. That would be my angle at least.
@@M.M.Y.B Yeah not bad advice at all. I'm bad at small talk and I come off as kinda intense (again, growing up poor makes you rough around the edges) so middle class ppl tend to perceive me as an uncomfortable person lol.
Do you HAVE to connect with "them?" Just because a certain group of people are at a certain socially accepted form of success, it doesn't mean their ideas or ways of being are right or "better." If you thought like that, then the richest man in the world's behavior would be the most "correct." Don't kiss up to the snobs, their entire way of being is corrupt and twisted. They're heartless ghouls.
@@izzybennet.t The idea of preserving resources and living with less that comes from growing up poor takes on a whole new meaning in this climate change awareness era, speaking of that naively-selfish attitude lol.
Took me 20+ years after college to become “upper middle class.” I’ve moved up in life but never forgotten how hard it was. Income inequality is a real thing and unions are integral to fighting back against corporate greed. My kids attended “elite” top 10 colleges and both have become successful professionals, but we have hopefully made them aware of their privilege, with the intention they will always reach back to lend a helping hand.
For me, the biggest case of the "growing up poor tax" is the lack of opportunity I had in college to do things to get myself ahead. I had to work every day after class to be able to afford rent that my parents absolutely could not pay. Because I had to work, I could never take an unpaid internship which in my field were huge advantages, because I couldn't do the internships I got overlooked for scholarships and the paid opportunities. Since I had no money, I would sometimes skip classes or labs to pick up shifts/work special events that paid more money. This obviously lowered my grades since the amount I was working meant I couldn't study as hard or as much as a lot of my classmates. It really held me back from being the student I knew I could be when I didn't have to support myself. If I had never met my spouse who is from a family with modest generational wealth, I don't think I would have been able to make it on my own.
41:16 “Ultimately the biggest cost is time.” Exactly! Low-income workers are more likely to work long, underpaid hours, not including the unpaid labour of household chores, cooking etc. just to survive
When we were growing up my mom had to go to her parents to ask for money to buy toilet paper and some basic foods. This has led to 35 years later she still feels the intense need to have at least 3 packages of 24 rolls in the house at all times. The scarcity mindset is real and so often not understood by those who didn't live it. Also: we didn't run out in 2020 so...win ❤
You know, I never thought about the fact that my family having a closet full of paper towels, toilet paper, bar soap, hand soap… Was all based on a scarcity mindset, but it makes perfect sense. And it’s ironic because I grew up trying so hard to not have a cluttered house from hoarding, and it was probably because of knowing subconsciously that it came from my family growing up not having enough.
This hit home, as I feel compelled to have a pristine pack of toilet paper in the cupboard, as well as replacing the open pack of tp before using up the last 2 rolls. That is coming from a challenging childhood when my birthmother would have us remove and successfully transport tp rolls from public restrooms with more than one roll. I began refusing to steal tp when I realized that it was stealing, not "borrowing."😮😢
I always went to what were considered inner city schools but a lot of us were high scoring students and thought we did fine. Like you mentioned, we were all around the same socioeconomic level so what we had was just the norm. It wasn't until we went to college that we realized just how many opportunities were available to those in better schools and areas, even in the same district as us. There was definitely a sense of jealousy sometimes and a lot of "what if-ing". Although we did good for the area we came from we did question if we could have done even better had we had more resources available. It was a rude awakening for a lot of us when we got to biology/chemistry and realized we had no idea how to use a microscope or any of the equipment because our school didn't have enough money to have a working science lab. Of course some people went above and beyond but it was wild to see how much more we had to do individually to get what had just been expected and handed to others.
This really speaks to me. I grew up bouncing between poor and lower middle class, lived for the first decade after high school in one of the most expensive cities in the world (Vancouver, Canada) where I worked minimum wage and tried to get a university degree. All I got from Vancouver was debt and realizing I will never be able to get ahead enough. Now I’m married to someone who makes good money and I’m more stingy than when I was poor because I’m so scared of getting back to that life.
This year I met a wonderful man. Handsome, smart, kind. He's doing well in his life and comes from a good family, and at the time I was and still am battling homelessness. I tried to cancel our first date because I didn't want to burden him w my dram but he insisted. I enlisted in the military and intend to pay the price for a better life, but it kinda hurts my heart to realize that a lot of girls meet men like him all the time and go on dates Like that all the time. He seems Like a prince to me, but many other girls my age consider him average. Deep down, I know there's nothing I can do to stop him from meeting someone with a better job, disposable income and more to offer who's just as nice and pretty as me. I hope with the help from the army ill be able to have a stable, normal life. But things like getting married or getting to go to another country some day seem SO far away 😮😅😢 It's so EASY to make bad choices when all your opportunities are bad. It's so easy to make good choices when all your opportunities are good
It is a weird thing, but since my parents could only buy cheap plastic glasses for me when I was a kid, as an adult, I will spend the extra money (or now credit) to feel good about my appearance. I felt so ugly as a kid and did not like wearing my glasses. Also, as an adult, before the pandemic I had a pretty good paying job (the most I've been paid at $65k), but I fell into a group of friends who made $110-130k salaries. They would freely spend $150 on a Christmas present, or other non-event presents. It was tough matching them. I now am still on a pandemic pay cut, and really can't afford friend anymore. it is also good to not be friends above your budget, because a $100 meal for them might not be a big deal, but it could be a lot for one's own budget. I really hated as a kid living in a house of a bunch of broken things, so when I moved out, I tried to make sure my stuff (like a window screen, dishwasher, etc) worked. In the last years of the pandemic pay pinch, my house is in disrepair. My foundation is cracked, causing the front door to not open, plus the cracks in the wall. My microwave light needs to be replaced. My toilet squeaks. I guess I understand how when you can't afford to fix something, you just can't afford it.
I see it differently. Some of my friends are also high income, but they really don't mind hanging out with us. I know it is weird, but you are one of the people who are capable of "bringing the rich down". You gotta find ways to make them become comfortable with spending less and accept humble experiences. The longer they live in their wealthy bubble, the worse it becomes for themselves. On the other hand, if they are open about their struggles, you can also see more of what it takes to be human. Class segregation is, sadly, a psychological, instinctual thing... Sucks to be tribalist.
The only glasses covered by Medicaid were cheap child sized frames. It was so humiliating to be 16 and forced to wear glasses meant for prepubescent children. It was physically painful to wear and wore my skin down, but my vision was too poor to make it a choice.
If u can’t afford to have something fixed by someone else then yeah..u just do without but I grew up poor..oldest of 6 kids…yeah my parents had messed up priorities and shouldn’t have had so many damned kids and my being the oldest suffered the most because of the sacrifice I was expected to make so that my siblings could have what they wanted…meaning I didn’t go to the doctor or dentist unless it was an emergency…and even then I was treated like trash by the dentists…had an accident on the playground at 8 where one of my front teeth was busted in half, broke my nose and crushed my cheekbone and apparently caused head trauma…idk about it until I was 30 when I became chronically ill and X-rays showed I’d been in a severe accident …I never went to the doctor for it when I was a kid…cuz my parents couldn’t afford the bills and we didn’t qualify for welfare because my parents were married and white…..so when people talk about my white privilege…it pisses me off…even the church that hosted the school I was attending when the accident happened told my parents too bad…sue us. Leaving me disfigured for half my life….but that church has helped non parishioners who were colored skin pay bills and put deposits on rentals for them or paid Al their medical bills for them without question but wouldn’t help my parents pay for my medical bills at all…I honestly have seen the exact opposite of what’s being gaslit to believe My point is…if u can’t afford to have it fixed…that’s when u say ok,…I’ll fix it myself…and u learn how to fix things…I’m a 5’ tall petite white woman and I’ve fixed my own central ac, roof, vehicles, I’ve even fixed the tv when it wouldn’t turn on…bad capacitors…I refuse to take no for an answer
Im a cis white male who grew up on welfare in a house afflicted with drug addiction issues in an incredibly low income portion of middle America and having to become a secondary "parent" for my younger siblings. Oof that was a mouthful. This video sparked tears in my eyes thinking about how far I have come from that position in society. Thank you so much for this video. I will likely be rewatching multiple times and sharing with my friends and family. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'm an Asian-Canadian female but man, I can relate to your being a second parent for younger siblings. Poverty also sucks. If I see anyone else romanticising poverty again I shall throw a fit.
@@norikotheguardian it always hurts me seeing people act like being poor isn't that bad and is able to be rectified off an attitude change. My relationship with my siblings is something I would consider priceless but it came at a steep expense on my mental health and the feeling that I was "robbed" of parted of my childhood. Im sorry we both had to deal with being a secondary parent and poverty.
@@LordDestrus Ha! If I weren't so absurdly poor, I'd be putting my money to good use and helping as many people as I could. I'm always angry at rich people who spend all their money on partying, while I'm dirt poor and wish I just had enough to help those living on the bloody streets.
@@norikotheguardian i feel exactly the same. Nobody deserves to be without food/water, shelter, education, public transportation & hygiene/healthcare. I truly believe if these needs were met for society, we would all be in a much better place mentally & physically.
The size differences between green spaces/parks depending on low or high-income housing environments is especially disastrous when you consider how green spaces help reduce ambient local temperature, runaway storm runoff, and improve wellness. You may think it would come down to a funding issue (less property tax value, etc.), but Strong Towns research has shown that, overwhelmingly, low-income neighborhoods are subsidizing the sprawl costs of suburbs (including their larger parks). Curious! "Blaming poor people for being poor" is not even a new concept either (there's commentary on this in a section of "Slaughterhouse Five"). With that in mind, I'm hopeful with the coming generations we really can start neutralizing this way of thinking.
I think a big factor is that with low income housing, the developers’ goal is to cram as much housing onto the lot as they can, leaving things like parks afterthoughts. The greedier the developers, the tighter the housing. And for publicly funded housing, again the goal is to fit as much housing as possible. I work in architecture. You would be shocked at the new “luxury” studio apartments that are being built. They’re basically glorified subsidized housing with LVT and quartz countertops. People are getting cheaper with their money and land and square footage is getting more expensive. The only people who can really afford to build nice things are the people with money. Unfortunately though, most of the housing being built is funded by greedy developers.
@@keashablew7728i would assume in terms of transportation and infrastructure, in an urban enviroment less infrastructure and especially transportation such as roads are needed, not to mention that gas in the USA I believe is subsidized, of which suburban teants use more of.
Love seeing people talk about Strongtowns, NJB etc. Urban design has such a huge impact on our lives and until recently has gone completely unremarked on.
@keashablew What they mean by subsidize is that wealthier areas don't/can't pay for themselves in tax revenue. Counterintuitively, the poorer areas tend to earn more money for the city and are effectively subsidizing the rich neighborhoods. The reasons it works this way are complex but a few things are recurring themes - poorer areas have more density than richer areas (more houses per city block, more revenue); poorer areas are more likely to have mixed use zoning (commercial buildings get taxed higher than residential); poorer areas have more taxable structures than richer areas (more apartments, convenience stores, even light industry like auto shops, whereas rich areas are just single family homes and a lot of non-taxable infrastructure like roads, parks, boat docks, etc).
The tax you pay for being poor is fear. You are defined by a fear of lack, success, stability, money, etc. You are always reaching for a way to overcome that fear but it is always remain. What you have to learn is how to move forward carrying that fear with you.
Wow, this point really hit the nail on the head. I notice I'm always, ALWAYS anxious about my financial stability- or perceived stability, who knows really. One wrong misstep and it's back to clamouring for scraps of it, that thought is always somewhere at the back of my head. If you've managed to learn how to move forward while carrying that ever present fear, how did you manage to take the first step?
@@serah3521 Accepting the fear and using it to help me. I had to honest about what was important to me and not worry about what my friends and family thought.
thank you for sharing the video, it's a very important topic. I grew up very very poor: I was often told about how we don't have enough money to pay for electricity, I hated my birthday and Christmas because our gifts was food. slightly better food on those days. I still have unhealthy relationship with money: while all my peers can ask their parents for help; while others have a home to come back to when it's hard, i have nothing to return to. i can only rely on myself. I want to go on a nice vacation but i have this anxiety surrounding money: I need to save save save, what if I lose everything and have nothing left? I watch other people around me and realize I'm so behind and I didn't even have a childhood. i had to grow up so early. I had to work three jobs in college so couldn't even enjoy my college years. I was thrown straight into adulthood
I absolutely feel you. I grew up with similar insecurities in a single mother household where she struggled to feed her three kids. I felt humiliated going to college, I am a smart person and am now a scientist, but I struggled in classes. I blamed myself at first, like I somehow wasn't trying hard enough even though I was working full time and going to school full time and barely able to take care of myself. I realized later that almost all of the other students in the program didn't have to work because their parents were paying for everything. I did what I needed to to get by and it really hurt my self esteem at the time, but now in my career, I am shining. My advice to you is, find people in your life other than family. My best friend and her family were there for me when I almost had to go live on the street for a year and a half. They couldn't provide much, but let me sleep in a spare bed without paying anything. I am so happy to have met my 'adopted' family. Also, keep in mind with money-- once you have your safety fund, and you save up adequately for your vacation, that you'll be ok. One thing that surprised me with all of my struggles is even as a broke college student, I still lived better and more stable than I ever did growing up in my broken home. Every time my husband freaks out about finances I am always able to tell him we're fine. We are able to afford our place and reliably have food on the table. You deserve to be able to enjoy yourself and have worked incredibly hard. I wish you the best!
As someone who grew up in a very well-off family (still working full-time but never worrying about money), I definitely can see how I've come out on the other side of this. I have functionally no savings but feel comfortable enough to seriously consider going into debt for things as insignificant as "This backpack is bigger and somewhat inconvenient to fit under the seats on the train, I should buy a smaller laptop so I can carry my smaller backpack to work instead". I'm not going to go into debt to buy that laptop as doing so is financially irresponsible, but it has been a significant eye-opener for me to become friends with people who have $10k in savings as a college freshman but refuse to spend $50 on extremely useful and necessary tools for their work. The confidence that I will receive my next paycheck on time, that said paycheck is likely to grow in the near future, that I could find another comparably-paying job if I get fired, that I have family I could borrow money from or live with if needed, causes me to be SO much riskier with money than I am in almost every other area of life.
I would like people to know (not that they care) that growing up in poverty is one of the most isolating and traumatizing experiences a child can go through. There are so many things that go along with being poor like mental illness, abuse of all kinds, neglect. The most memorable things is the pain of hunger. Being the poor kid in school with the mentally ill mom that disappeared all the time made it so that I didnt have a single friend as a child. I lived a quiet, sad, lonely, dirty painful life as a kid. Now I’m a poor adult with no friends or future just existing. Not for lack of trying to change my station in life. But I’ve resigned myself to a lonely life of poverty.
I bought my first "computer" at 16 years old with my own money. A tiny netbook from Wal-Mart for about $200, on sale. I was overjoyed. I met a girl at a community dance who was from one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the city, and had an incredibly bizarre experience the first (and last!) time I went to her house: she had a Macbook that she broke in frustration when her reality show wouldn't play. I looked on incredulously. Now she had no computer! She just laughed and said her dad would replace it again, and that it'd be the third time. I couldn't fathom that. And I used my little netbook until it no longer functioned at all. It was one of the most eye-opening experiences for me; I knew I would simply never be so reckless and carefree. My single mother could never have replaced the netbook, let alone a Macbook!
I've watched you for many years Chelsea. Just want to say that this is exactly the kind of honest talk that we need to be having. As someone who grew up a first-generation immigrant with no money, and now working a white collar job - these conversations are basically taboo in higher SES circles. No one wants to talk about them. And even their insinuation will lead to awkward silence. I've learnt to just not even bother having these types of conversations anymore with some people - but it's so good to see that the message is still getting out there somehow. Thanks Chelsea - keep doing what you're doing.
It is expensive to be poor. i changed my social class but i’ve been in crisis mode my entire life. i was laid off twice in the past 12 months, and my reaction was to plan on losing everything and live in a car like we did when i was 11 or 12.
oh gawd honey those fears actually left scars. i'm pushing 60 - who's gonna hire an "old man"? - and the same fears are all through me, too. i've survived this long, you will too. God bless. sure hope you eventually have a measure of peace in your heart.
What I also find hard is changing jobs. I don’t live in the states, but I can imagine it to be equally hard if you chose the “wrong” education and wanting to change the field you work in to get to a higher income, it’ll take time and recourses you might not have or can’t afford, even if there is partial financial help from the state, program or scholarship. And there is this giant difference between theory and practice. My education should allow me to work in certain places, but without a bachelor and/or masters degree you will never be able to get in.
Yep! I respec'd into a new career a few years out of college. Luckily the need was very high so I was able to earn as I paid tuition fees for my certification, but I would be in a very different financial situation if I had gotten the training as an undergrad. But, surprise, 19-year-old me who had never worked outside of janitorial work and fast food did not know what she wanted to do with her life. I just knew what classes I found interesting.
@@Kfroguar This speaks to one of the big flaws in our education system. People go through required schooling and then on to college if they're fortunate, and are expected to figure out what they want to do real quick, usually within the first two years as lots of colleges expect you to declare a major by then. There are lots of people who do know what they want to do early, but many more don't. And while I think any work experience is valuable, the jobs that are actually available to high schoolers and college students are often the sort that only motivate you to finish college because you never want to go back to those kinds of jobs.
@@ariwl1 Agreed! My high school did have opportunities to get hands-on job experience and training, but it was pretty much only for trades and it meant you were limited in what classes you could take due to time constraints. I don't regret the social science/language degree I got, as what I learned enriches my life and I use the skills I developed literally every day. And some of the things that led me to my current career had to be learned through experience (e.g. the pros/cons of working public sector vs. private). That said, having a year or two before starting university where I worked medium-term in an office and in a classroom and in a hospital etc. would have really helped me narrow down what I needed. TL:DR I don't regret my own path, but I want it to be easier for the next person to find their academic and vocational passion.
Yeah, I had one shot in getting good score in national exams to get into the university. My family hadn’t had the means to pay the - back then - 300 usd/year tuition. We aren’t in the USA, but even that low of a tuition was impossible for us. Second chances weren’t a thing for us
This is why I put off getting an education lol. I just got an amazing chance to further my studies and decided to take it after trying to get a higher paying job. All jobs (that I want to / can do) need a bachelors!
Wearing a $445 cardigan because growing up poor with next to no clothes that were either thrifted or stolen, I know having money now it was a dumb decision but for me it really was an "I made it" moment, I'm still not living in luxury but the fact I could afford it is huge for me.
I grew up middle class. I am lower middle class. My wedding dress cost little more than your cardigan and most of my clothes are from Vinted or Primark. Almost everything I own: appliances, electronics, furniture, car etc are second hand. But the only debt we have is a mortgage that we're paying off early. My purebred huskies can sit on their oxblood leather chesterfield in front of a marble fireplace because I didn't pay retail for any of it.
Right like. 😊 I just got done with my military training and I wa sao careful with the money I got paid. I put it in index funds ,HYS account and a Roth IRA. The test is carrying me through a job search. But I felt like a STAR ❤🌟 when I got buy something at the Aritzia store like I'd always wanted
This is not a shade to you or anyone else who does this, but it’s amazing how much luxury purchasing among the working and middle classes has become normalized. This was not a thing 20 or 30 years ago like it is now.
@@pisceanbeauty2503 It's definitely got worse over the decades. We've gone from Nike/Adidas being the in thing to Burberry, to Chanel etc. The trendy brands are getting more expensive and exclusive. I blame credit cards and buy now pay later. People weren't always able to spend money they don't have so easily.
Touching on the scarcity mindset. Even if you are able to work your way to a potential second chance, it's often later in life, and the stakes are higher. Bandwidth is limited. Compounded further by a sense disconnection to success from remediation of any knowledge gaps without much external structures to guide you.
Yeah, this is where I'm at right now. The lack of guidance through external structures is hard. I'm trying and doing better (mostly through luck, honestly) but it's like I have hit a wall and I don't know which way to turn..
One of the worst things I was ever told or even told myself was to be thankful I even have a job. If it wasn’t for always striving for better and improving my education and skills, I’d still be at near minimum wage. I now am in the trades at six figures owning my own home and don’t owe anything on my tundra truck.
@@victorbaird8220lol its easy to judge. But not everyone wants a eco car. Some people want a fun car. If you are concerned about gas prices, maybe avoid a car all together
Unfortunately I am thankful for the measly job and hours I have cause if I do try to strive for more the government would take away my dads disability benefits and then my entire family would be worse off 😔 and it’s completely on the government and how the systems work
@@Cryinginthecloudssss you could always strive for much more so you don't have to rely on benefits that's a thought. Government support programs are designed to keep people broke.
I really appreciate you mentioning the military industrial complex. As a female veteran who was medically retired it took me years to become financially stable and it was largely due to sharing the expenses with my partner and exhusband. I'd love to see a video on the intersection of military's mispending (DOD has never passed an audit), predatory targeting, divorce rate, and poor education of soldiers on financial management.
To say nothing of the myriad towns which live and die on military spending. Lest we forget, the main character in the movie Falling Down was a defense industry engineer who, after the Cold War ended, saw his firm downsize.
I’m also a medically retired female vet and I feel like I could’ve written this, the way they will sell poor kids a dream and give them no kind of guidance for how the Real World™️ operates is sick!
Comment on the Policing the Poor chapter- I lived in Spain and the city I was in took the exact opposite approach. Public transit and green spaces were purposefully built in low income and mostly immigrant areas. One housing project was built in the most desirable area in the city, between a botanical garden and the beach. It made me realize for the first time that these environmental features I always considered as a premium growing up in the U.S. can actually be accessible for everyone.
The discussion of poverty directly ties in to how current generations and the ones coming up are having fewer children, if they end up having any at all. There is a long list of reasons why someone may choose not to have kids, but feeling like they aren't financially stable enough to do so is one of the most prevalent. I recently watched a video that talked about this and, of course, the comment section was littered with people saying things like "If you're not having kids, it's because you haven't prioritized having them" and saying, I'm guessing not coincidentally, all the same things people use to derail the conversation every time we try to talk about the housing affordability problem. "You need to get a better job. Move where it's cheaper. Stop spending all your money on luxuries." etc. etc. These same commenters also assumed people weren't having kids because they couldn't provide them lavish childhoods, when what most of the childless were REALLY worried about was being able to have children in clean, safe, and stable housing and being able to afford their healthcare. And if it wasn't that kind of just willful deflection, then they just made the case that growing up poor was...fine I guess? Essentially the argument was if the child made it to adulthood then all's well that ends well, completely denying that growing up in extreme poverty leaves a mark. I remember reading this interview of a man who grew up in poverty, as in literally sleeping on a dirt floor kind of poverty. He managed to get out and become successful, but even into his 50s he still had anxiety over money just up and vanishing on him some day (and he was a millionaire by this point).
I grew up lower middle-class in a developing country, and my family was poor for several years. I had classmates from rich families (they're not richie rich, but their parents earned a lot more than mine), and seeing them made me think about avoiding low waged jobs. Long story short, I now work in a Nordic country. I have a decent salary to spoil myself even after sending some money home. I live in a nice basement apartment in a nice neighbourhood. It's a humble life by Nordic standard, but I'm living my childhood dream to have a bedroom as nice as the ones my rich friends had and live in a house as nice as the ones their parents had. The trade-off is I'm childless at 35 and I don't think I'll ever have any kids
I think internships are one of the US's biggest scams. It's unpaid labour (the "u" should tell you I'm not in the US myself). I have never come across them anywhere else in the world. I recently retrained and took a six month internship. I was required to be paid minimum wage, but the company had a policy of paying a living wage (i.e. one that would cover rent, other living expenses and allow for a small amount of savings), so I counted myself very lucky.
I come from Poland, we also have unpaid internships. While you can actually gain some experience in some jobs, at the bank where I was 'hired' my main duty was getting lunch for full-time employees.
It's a way for the wealthy to gatekeep good careers, same reason our education is so overpriced and the good jobs require impossible levels of certifications and extra schooling. Poor kids cannot afford to go to medical school here. Unpaid internships are class violence.
Unpaid internships are a thing, sure, but they're illegal and don't help your career. The best internships pay. It's sad that this scam still works on people who don't have anyone to protect them.
Some unpaid internships are fine. When your internship is basically observing and making school assignments about what the job is like, it makes sense the company doesn't pay you for that. If you're basically an employee with employee responsibilities, you should be paid as an employee
being the only "high earner" in the family being a hamster wheel is so real. No matter how much i make, everyone always has a new emergency that's prevents me from being able moving forward in my own life
I was attempting to finish Itaewon Class recently (and failed) and remembered how touched I felt by the character of Soo-Ah, a girl who grew up in a group home (what we like to call orphanages) who escapes poverty by taking a chance to attend college with the funding of the villain of the story and then workingfor him. This character gets so much hate (much of it was due to her not bending over the male lead) because she took that opportunity. That character for me was the embodiment of the fear of knowing you will very likely not get another opportunity to escape your circumstances. That privilege of second chances is real. This fear for me manifests in aggressive saving and planning. Sounds great on paper but hop in this brain for a day...
I too have started thinking aggressively about saving money since I have started thinking about having a baby and buying a house. I am feeling like my life will only be about saving money so that I can have a home that I can pass to my children so they won't have to struggle in future since the inflation is only going to go up. And since I started putting money in saving accounts and investing in market the phrase - money makes money ' has hit me so hard.
Chelsea, I suggest covering how the new FAFSA has just made college loans inaccessible to many in the middle and lower middle classes, ostensibly so that more poor people can qualify for financial aid, though that makes no sense at all since poor people already qualified, and a lot of poor people are getting LESS last year, despite having less income in 2022 than 2021. Especially families with two or more people in school-the EFC has been replaced by a “Student Aid Index,” which corresponds to how much a family is expected to pay for college…like the old EFC, only it’s no longer divided between students. It’s like if your EFC was $20k and two people were in school, rather than that $20k being divided to $10k each, it now being just $20k EACH, so $40k. There are other changes too that are really screwing people, like step-parent income is now seen as usable for school expenses, even if the parent and step-parent didn’t marry until a student was already 20. The SAI is so high for so many people-a full half, in some cases, with loans so hard to get and even Sallie Mae, with usurious interest rates, requiring very good credit and income now. They’re pushing these Parent PLUS loans, which are entirely inaccessible to independent students working on a bachelors. College was already expensive, but it’s just gotten worse. And the sale is that middle and lower middle income people who complain are being accused of not wanting to help poor people. Stopping people from being able to go to school isn’t helping poor people. It’s just preventing more people from being able to go to school, which is likely to result in increased tuition, raising rates for those still going. I’m halfway to a degree, and since we were given no heads up, had no chance to save the thousands of dollars it’ll take. I had to drop my degree. I know a lot of people in this position. And as far as this being to help the poor who already qualified for max grants and loans? Not only have those limits not even gone up, many are qualifying for less. A friend of mine, whose income dropped in 2022 from 2021 AND had another kid, she’s getting a full $3,000 less.
Hate this system. My parents are old and retired and have a good amount of money in the bank. They do not want me to go to college because it's against their beliefs. I am not getting any of their money. I live on my own and have for a good while, I've been working since I got my license. I worked my ass off trying to make money and get good grades for scholarships. I graduated hs with above a 4.5 gpa. Took all the AP/Dual Credit courses I physically could. Wanna guess how much money I get from the FAFSA? $840 Wanna guess how much I get in scholarships? $8,000 All together, it's quite a bit. It's a good 9k. And I'm thankful for that. It's still less than a third of my yearly tuition, but yk it is what it is. What gets me is the fact that, if I, someone from a more "privileged" background, is having this difficulty, HOW TF DO THEY EXPECT PEOPLE IN WORSE SITUATIONS TO DO THIS
Oh shit my son still got over a decade before we can consider college but if things don’t change by the time he is I will have to stir him from college bc I’m still paying off debt and it was a waste of time for me
I am a twin. I will be going to college at the exact same time as my twin. College is bad enough with one kid at a time. Even a year or two age difference would have lightened the financial burden, but it still would be rough. The fact that they no longer take siblings into account is definitely a burden for my family. There was no way for my parents to predict the change to the FAFSA almost two decades into the future and prepare for it. My family isn’t poor, but we are certainly not rich enough to not worry and not have to plan for saving for college. My parents can’t double our college savings overnight. I may have to change my plans for college based on this tbh. Inevitably, there will be people who will be at a disadvantage because of the changes, and that happens to be my family. I will have to wait and see how my financial aid is though before completely panicking. I hope at the very least low-income people overall get more benefits, but it seems like your friend hasn’t 😢.
I grew up poor, and often went to bed hungry. I knew exactly how many calories I needed to still function, and for how long. Being hungry was just a normal state of existence for me. Needless to say I was skinny. As an adult I made sure to always have enough food so I would never go hungry again. But here what I didn't realize, I didn't actually know what being full was supposed to feel like. It was even an emotionally triggering experience as I dealt with 1. The anger at never being properly fed/cared for as a child. 2. The anxiety it brings bc I'm worried I just ate all the food and now I won't have any. 3. The fear that bc I'm full I won't be able to run away from danger fast enough. It literally took me until my mid 30's to finally learn how to eat. How to eat enough to feel full, and not just enough to keep moving. I've gained about 20lbs, which my doctor says is very healthy. The dizzy spells have gone away, and I look much healthier. So even after leaving my abusive, poverty stricken childhood home, there are still many random things that I have to learn, like how to eat.
In college Sociology class I learned that when you grow up poor , schools don't push for advanced classes for you and put you on the "dumb track" . It puts you at a disadvantage even in your education. Not to mention tax brackets affect the funding schools get. Poor folks like me don't even get a chance to start out on equal footing with an education .
@@HosCreates Not sure what you are going on about "there are poor white folks too". I literally just told you that I grew up poor. Yes I am white. You don't sound terribly swift yourself...
Such a relatable video! Once you have experienced financial instability, that fear never leaves you. We live in very uncertain and unstable times, too, and that doesn’t help. I grew up poor with parents who did not have any financial savvy, so a double disadvantage. Hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don’t possess boots.
Growing up poor is something else. I've got my MBA and was able to take the last 2 years off dealing with burnout but have started running out of cash and competing to get a job in this market sucks...still I have nightmares of the bottom and if it weren't for my fiancé covering everything, I would easily be on the streets. No one talks about how burnout is also deadly for us that had to work 3 jobs our entire college and masters years only to burnout 5+ years into your career. Had I not had the opportunity to take this time off, I don't know what I would do. I've spent this time studying, getting certs, planning our wedding, helping my parents and extended family, and re-planning my financial life for the upcoming 20 years. It's insane...no one taught me this but thank God for RUclips University. Finance gurus literally changed the way I think of my finances and how to invest in my future.
Poor people are great for business, and this is why they want to ban abortions and then prevent any sort of paid family leave, subsidize childcare, etc, and tell people that single-income families are the ideal. If they truly cared about family and about children, lifting people out of poverty would be a priority, rather than keeping them impoverished with children they/we can't afford.
Something I learned from Harry Truman’s bio is that in the mid and late 1800’s it was extremely common for poor farmers to have 10-13 children each. They had much less than we did.
@@b3thamphetamine Very relevant it shows the amount of items in life which have been monetized and the rralities of the treasury inflating the value of money away by printing it. It shows that there were more accessible resources in bygone era where grit and hard work would take a person somewhere.
@@sarahuber8567 You may want to sit down for this, but it's 2024, not the 1800's, we don't live in an agrarian society anymore where we all produce most of our own food on our own land, our infant mortality rate isn't 30% anymore, and the only farmers who continue to do this are Amish.
Spot on. This happened in my country a few decades ago. The dictatorship outlawed not just abortions but contraceptives too. They didn’t bother to pretend it was a moral (or religious) issue, they came right out and said the country needs cheap labour. They also closed the borders so nobody could go get abortions or contraceptives abroad. The result: thousands of dead women (from unsafe amateur abortions) and thousands of abandoned babies (unwanted or orphaned). Plus other aspects of a dictatorship: secret police, kidnappings, torture, poor living conditions, rationing, having to queue for food, no heat in the winter etc. The dictator was eventually overthrown and executed by firing squad. Family planning is legal now and widely practiced. Living conditions are much better than in the old days. Not perfect, but definitely an improvement. Societies that treat their poor this badly are making a choice to do so. They don’t NEED to treat them quite this badly. Even if they’re given a genuine living wage (and their labour is only slightly exploited), there will still be plenty of wealth anyway. What’s happening now stems from greed, not necessity.
I'm only 7 minutes in and already shocked how much I relate to your story. I too came from a weird mix of being lower class and simultaneously 'middle class' which led to a lot of problems for me growing up and even as an adult my social circle is pretty small because middle class people get to know me and think I am a lowlife or a disappointment once they catch wind of my true background, and working class people perceive me as overly formal or even accuse me of lying about my class background all the time because I 'act' so middle class. It's like you just can't win.
It was eye opening to see, from the perspective of someone who grew up quite poor, that the rich (millionaires not billionaires) struggled financially too, it just looks different. I ‘married’ into a wealthy family with wealthy lifestyles and I felt completely unmoored. Like, hearing people complain about loosing 100k on investments, buying a tiger, being in elite universities with secret underground societies, it all felt so obviously fake. The little reevaluations were the worst, like texting with proper grammar & punctuation, and keeping up with the high level of knowledge literally everyone around you has. When I was happy about such minuscule things, like a great find at a thrift shop, sharing that with friend groups always resulted in laughing or bemusement.
I have a thing for texting with proper grammar and spelling. I grew up lower middle class, but texting wasn't even a thing until I was older. People who use "textspeak" or bad grammar always come off as stupid or immature to me.
These takes always confused me. Do you also think people look immature when they use acronyms? Why should a message sent via smartphone in a nonprofessional setting look like you're writing a thesis statement in order to be seen as mature and literate? It's a text message not a dissertation.@@andreacook7431 Usually i use a mix of text speak and proper grammar lmao, it's more fun that way!
I come from a low income "trailer trash" background and I've been really lucky to have been able to go to college and then enter into a lucrative industry (IT), but even though I make a really good salary I still feel like I'm having to dig myself out of a pit of intergenerational poverty, and I'm not even having to take care of family members. But it does feel like I am having to pay for things that a lot of my friends who come from middle class families either got a discount on or didn't have to pay at all. Like a car, for example. A lot of my friends got their cars second-hand and in decent condition from their family, or their parents just literally bought them a new car. Meanwhile I spend about $650 a month (on average) on my car loan, car insurance, gas, car maintenance, and toll road fees. I also can't go without a car where I currently live. I wouldn't say I'm living paycheck to paycheck, but I do feel incredibly frustrated because all of the little things add up and I'm not able to save nearly as much money as I feel like I should be able to save and just like when I was poorer, there's still accidents and emergencies that happen that suck up any money I have been able to save and I'm just so tired of it.
In my experience, Information Technology being "lucrative" is false advertising. A degree, and experience growing up with a family computer repair business, only resulted in $11 per hour. Jobs on a nearby military base were sought by nearly the entire community, with the line of potential applicants looping around multiple times outdoors. Air conditioned desk jobs, high supply low demand, means low wages. The military weighs active service applicants higher, existing government employees higher, disabled members higher, and diversity applicants higher. Software has been moving perpetually licensed thick clients, to cloud based subscription services in an effort eliminate local I.T. positions. The smart phone market has not been friendly to the repair community, Loius Rossman has remarked that the path he took to success is no longer viable. The entire industry is noted for obsoleting entire careers overnight. You are then overqualified and subject to age discrimination for general I.T. positions, while not qualified for specializations within the I.T. field/industry. I thought I could avoid my career experience and skills becoming obsolete, but smart phones are a world apart from ATX computers. Microsoft Intune is unfamiliar to an old Active Directory guy before Azure became Entra. Batch scripting isn't quite Powershell scripting. Broadcom has been pushing the industry away from VMWare, so who knows how valuable VMWare cluster administration skills will be in a few years. I worked for a company for 8 years, which includes the company going through a "7 year itch" which resulted in mass turnover of experienced individuals and management. Ambitious individuals have goals, and remaining with one employer may lead to stagnation. However, the support vacuum left behind results in higher risk exposure, and thus decreased job security. A new Chief Information Officer informed me that promotions would now include the same new hire probationary periods, which would result in termination. A promotion was now a means of firing tenured employees to reduce payroll costs.
A week ago, when my 3rd pair of shoes that I bought this month came in, I started to think, why always mid to late summer i get obsessed with buying shoes and always buy 2-3 pairs. Oh right, because I only would get 1 pair of shoes a year, and half the year they had holes in them. The same reason why my brother buys a pack of socks every week (I also buy too many socks). We don't want holes in our shoes or socks
0:56 I grew up homeless with my mother (who had me at 16) and 4 siblings. This speaks to me so much. My mother didn't finish high school. I am a first generation high school graduate, first generation college grad, and am the only member of my family to buy my own home. I cannot over state how much joining the military helped me get out of poverty. There was a long stretch in my 20s where I made every financial mistake you can make tho. Looking back, I think I found comfort in having things when I should have been saving.
I grew up without parties, sleepovers, sports, or extracurricular activities. Thankfully, I had church and was a voracious reader, so I didn't feel deprived. I'm paranoid about being poor and homeless, so I avoid overspending. But I'm grateful for my experiences because I see the impact of debt on others and couldn't live that way myself!
Thank you for having a financial therapist on this! Feelings of defeat or being threatened (even when we're doing well) is so real and hearing it is helpful/healing to affirm where it's coming from.
I'm a CPA that specializes in affordable housing, NONE of these programs work together. You can make too much for healthcare but still be able to have housing, or if there's housing the waiting list is 6 years, it's all a mess. We need an all encompassing approach that doesn't leave people in the lurch.
The feeling of obligation to help family is not limited to immigrants. I think it is a poor people thing. I am ADOS ( just s descriptor, not politically) and often find myself feeling guilty that I am doing better than my family and I am constantly kicking out money. I am making more money than I ever have in my life but I am still afraid of big ticket purchases. I am single and child free, but I feel like I always has to have money liquid at all times in case my mom or sister needs something. Investing freaks me out because at any moment I may need to send them hundreds of dollars to meet their basic needs. Sometimes I feel resentful but I also worry that if something happens to my employment, not only will I not be able to take care of myself but I won't be able to support them.
Thank you. Australian here. For me, it was parents who were alcoholic, smokers, and gamblers. Mum gambled the rent money and we were homeless. Family, and then friend's familiy, thankfully took me in so I could finish my schooling. I wish this video was around 20 years ago so i could have "understood", where as i was so lost trying to recognise and understand my struggles as an adult compared to everyone else. I still struggle to integrate, but now learning to promote it as a strength to peers.
the biggest pill to swallow for me i think was hearing $60k/y be described as lower middle class. that's an unfathomably large amount of money to me. i guess you really don't know until you know.
I agree here in my rural mid/south Georgia county $60k a year for a household is considered living high on the hog!!!😂... I have 2 1/2 toddlers/kids and my wife and i make 50k a year combined!!! She is a county government worker and im a school janitor!!!
I live in NYC and make close to 60k and i cant afford to live without at least 2 other roommates. Its depressing as shit, esp when I saw the salary offer and thought I’d be able to at least afford a studio :/ nope im still in my college apartment 7 years out of school lmaoooo
Its huge here, im guessing americans have different taxes etc compared to france (even tho in shops america seems cheaper..) and if u get 3k a month (a lot btw, i would say most parents get 2000 or so) its 36k for the whole year. That's huge.. so hearing 60k is normal?? And my parents can afford trips abroad for school trips (500€)
I’m one of seven kids of dirt poor SE Asian immigrants after the Vietnam war. We were dirt poor, but I don’t ever remember being unhappy or thinking “damn, we’re poor”. A lot of my cousins and friends also off the same boat were all in the same situation. We would go around and collect cans and dumpster dive for them and cash them in. When I was 13, we would go with my parents to work 12 hours at the ginseng farms in central WI, weeding, picking seeds, root picking, all for $60 so I’d have money for back to school. But for me, that was normal and I was happy to have loving parents and had so many friends and family. Now I’m a college grad, 42, making 175K, we own multiple homes and own 1,000 acres of farmland outright that we rent out to farmers. We still live a very modest life, all my clothes are old navy and Target, grocery shop at Aldi, and I’ve been driving the same Honda I bought new in 2006.
I totally agree on the issue of uploading documents to apply for benefits! Its crazy how many documents you need to be able to easily access and upload every 6 months to keep your benefits going. This is even more of an issue when you realize that the federal government cut the program that provided free internet and cellphones to those who received benefits. *Yes, some people still recieve free cellphone data or internet but those programs are no longer accepting new applications.* My fathers cell phone bill was $275 a month! I had to cut his cellphone service to pay the utility bills. Also, i lease my car because i could not afford to buy one. I had to trade in my car for a new lease just a few months ago and im now paying $368/month for the essentially the same car where as my old lease was $267/month. I know leaseing is not very wise financially but i didnt have enough money for a down payment to finance or even buy a used car.
The privilege of a 2nd chance is so true. I was a correctional nurse at one point. It broke my heart a lot of people jail biggest crime was being poor. Its hard to do all the things society expects when you have a record. If you have money you can hire an attorney that can likely keep stuff off your record or at least get it removed. I know several inmates I truly believe were innocent but took a plea deal. Most of the time it because the jail conditions were so bad they would rather go to prison and just move on. Imagine being stuck in artificial light no access sunlight or fresh or frozen fruits and veggies. I hate our legal system. It so wrong and we as country should be ashamed. I think death is more human than some of our jails and prisons.
I love when TFD goes into these kind of topics. I know it's a bit of crossover with Pretty Privilege (my other guilty pleasure personal finance topic) - missing teeth and bad teeth is such a visible signifier of class in North America and I am sure it leads to people getting lower paid jobs/not getting hired. (Oddly in the UK where I live now bad teeth are something of a signifier of being upper class sometimes!)
US here. I have 100% been turned down for jobs I was qualified for because my clothes weren't good enough and my teeth weren't that hollywood smile. Many industries here operate as a good old boys club and most of our hiring is based on looks and personality with qualifications only coming second.
I can really relate to these experiences you mentioned. I came from a lower middle class in Canada, and an immigrant. My parents never owned a house. We always rented. We never had new cars. I had to stay at home and commute to my nearby university. I had to spend 8 years getting a B.A. while I worked. I took public transit until I was 39 years old. I finally got a better salary around 39. I finally got married at 39 and had my only child at 42. Not saying I couldn't start my domestic life earlier but I knew that it would be a bigger struggle to have a child on a low income and that all I would do is perpetuate the semi-poverty for my child. In fact, the only reason, I believe, I got out of the cycle is because I delayed marriage, and especially delaying having a child, but I also got lucky in meeting my now husband, who had a better job than me and a more established family. Unfortunately, it came with the sacrifice of not being able to grow my family. By the time I was 33 years old I realized that life for the majority of us is not like it is on TV and the movies. It's important to consider that those writing scripts for films and producing films more often than not, come from middle upper class upbringing. Therefore, displaying entitled "milestones" in movie/TV media is normalized for them...because it really IS normal for them.
I really felt that animosity statement at 34:00. Anyone going through that, go to therapy, really work on trying to let it go because it's so toxic to your life now. I could have had a much better 20s if I wasn't so upset at how much I missed out on in childhood. I'm only now, in my 30s, really starting to enjoy my current life and not constantly think about what could have been. I feel like my childhood was survival, my teens and 20s were bitterness and guilt at having made it out, and only now am I living.
Nah, hell with that. No matter where I end up, I’m not gonna respect people whose mummy and daddy bought them their lives/jobs/etc. The game was rigged from the start and there’s no reason not to look poorly on the people who win just by existing.
@@simplyharkonnen You must know that there's a huge difference between people who grew up in a higher class than someone and trust fund babies who have everything handed to them. For me, anyone who grew up feeling safe in their own home had a luxury I never had. I am currently bringing my daughter up in that luxury. Bitterness only hurts the bitter person, trust fund babies won't care if you respect them but being angry all the time hurts your blood pressure and standard of living in the present. It took me years to learn this but hopefully, someone reads my comment and takes some steps towards speeding up their own process.
I was reluctant to watch this video as I knew it would be triggering. I was poor all the way to my mid twenties, only people who have experienced it know how much it puts you at a disadvantage in every aspect of life and how this mentally impacts you especially if your parents have no interest in your life. Currently I have dropped back down, due to a poor financial decision which was waiting for the right job, I should of remembered that this is a privilege awarded to the middle class. Luckily I don't need to worry about older family members as they were so traumatised by poverty they hardly spent their disposable income and saved for their retirement.
One thing rarely talked about are the ones who make it, who don’t give others assistance as well. I know there are people who don’t want to work very hard and push themselves, but there are some who are driven and hard working who just need a boost or a connection, but a lot of times the ego of the one who made it gets in the way of seeing others who came from similar circumstances succeed as well.
They're always quick to criticize as well. Having that insight goes a long way. Even just a simple sign to point people in the right direction. But Americans always think they're too good to talk with "outsiders."
I have escaped from poverty several times and honestly it seems just like weight loss, very easy to do but, hard to make it stick. You can get a good job but it only takes one big thing going wrong to send you right back to poverty.
Not necessarily "very easy to do" more so "fluctuating" .. Much like losing weight people can see when ur broke and when ur not , people can see when ur losing weight and gaining weight
Yup, I can relate except in Australia. My parents divorced as I was entering high school. We all know the effects of divorce. Ended up at a very rough high school one of the lowest performing in the state. As soon as I could I got a job and moved out and sought higher education. That made it even harder working 3 jobs at one point with a full study load just to keep a roof over my head. I learnt so many bad habits. Spent 10 years paying off personal loans only to redraw. Much better off now though. 0 personal loan and credit card debt. My only debt is my home loan.
Anecdotal from my experience when I ask people who only buy brand new vehicles. The response was as a child we only had run down vehicles and I don't want that. Bad spending habits just because of trauma. Vehicles can be reliable without being brand new. Not knowing how to service your vehicle is a luxury.
@@magiclover9346 Not knowing how to service your vehicle is a luxury? Servicing your vehicle yourself is a luxury. Having knowledgeable individuals you could count on for support when learning how to service your vehicle is a luxury. Being able to service your vehicle in a timely fashion, in order to make it to work on time, is a luxury. Being able to get a ride when you serviced your vehicle and didn't have all of the necessary parts or tools, is a luxury. Poverty is being required to spend exorbitantly on expenses which the upper classes can reduce or negate. Replacing windows in your home is perhaps the most notable example. Servicing one's vehicle beyond a simple oil change is the arena of college education, and that is without getting into computerized diagnostics which requires licensing expensive software from the vendor. An oil change is one thing, but servicing your vehicle when you're poor can mean installing power steering, rebuilding alternators, reterminating battery terminals, changing tires after a mechanic used an air hammer. Beyond that, any "shade tree mechanic" work that can be done lowers the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the vehicle, if the repairs are reliable and do not require additional expenditures afterwards of taking it to a professional when your own skills prove inadequate and your boss doesn't have the patience for you to learn the hard way. Rich people build cars in their garage. Poor people take their cars to the mechanic.
@@claireconolly8355if they’d had to deal with chronic illness while relying on Medicare it would have been a nightmare. despite Medicare existing, outside of GP, you can only get timely care privately
Chelsea, I don’t think it’s because of living through two world wars. I think that in Europe, there are still class divides that prevail but it has little to do with money. It has more to do with old aristocracy, which the US does not have in its collective psyche. There aren’t people in the US that live off the government such as the royalty here and they do not get into the best schools and get their wealth passed down generation after generation. Europeans have actually dealt with unfair distributions of wealth before based on lineage alone. Even in modern day Western Europe, It is more about your family, which neighborhood you live in, and where you come from. They wont ask you what you do for a living, but they will ask what neighborhood you are from and that will tell them your politics and your likely income. Those class divides are still there.
I'm not sure where you're from but I'm British and mostly disagree. You always ask someone about what they do for a living. There are rich and poor parts of every country. Overall in most of Europe the standard of living is reasonable and poverty in the US is far worse. Using Royal families as an example is far too minimal to the point of irrelevant.
Y'know, I think maybe we do have some alternate version of the aristocracy you're describing. There are certainly entities if not specific beings that are able to collect and or protect disproportionate amounts of wealth from the government.
@@EKL-qu7ih Eh, as a fellow British person, I agree that royalty (and nobility) aren't culturally or socio-economically relevant. But inherited class is still a maaasssive deal, and I do think a person's job often doesn't tell the full story. Most Brits do 'notice' class markers outside of jobs (especially accent). Also speaking personally, I know people who are very well-off due to inherited assets (or will be once their parents pass away) who had international holidays, went to private schools, and will introduce themselves with the 'college conversation' (by which, I specifically mean talking about specific Oxford and Cambridge colleges, where they lived in Oxford/Cambridge and weird Oxbridge social conventions...it's a whole thing), but who have fairly standard middle-class-ish jobs (e.g. advertising, tech, acting, publishing..etc). I also read an interesting study that people with Anglo-Norman surnames (Venables, Darcy...etc) are significantly wealthier than people with trade-based surnames (e.g. Cooper, Baker), which realllllly speaks to how sticky class is.
@@merrymachiavelli2041 but inherited wealth is the same unfairness almost anywhere? In the USA you get into Colleges based on your income or if your parent did something notable then you'll likely get into an Ivy league college even if you're a bit dim. Accents here indicate where in the country you're from but apart from that very small pool of super posh individuals whose daddy owns somewhere in Pimlico, everyone else is just normal. We have a poorer class but little different from the poorer class in any country.
this video actually summs up exactly what I talk to my therapist weekly: that I have the burden to care financially for my whole family cause there is no inheritance and no one is seeking jobs. They expect me to be able to provide even if im not well positioned in the market yet. This gives me extreme anxiety and I cant live without high dosage medication to control it. This leads me to believe I wont be able to have kids as I will have to pay for my mom, my brother and I dont know who else but there wont be enough for me to have my own life.
I think there is something to be said about failure in this. A CEO fails to lead a company and they are given a severance package and pretty much have another job doing the same thing in a week. If a poor person fails it may follow them for years in Job searches. It's not even a second chance, it is not even worrying about failing at all.
attending university from a low-income background IS a huge culture shock. Realising your classmates had high school trips to Japan, Coding classes & enough funding for various niche sports team makes you realise how big of a gap the lower and middle class really is. Completely different worlds.
Currently going through this (I’m in my third-year now) and I’m having a hard time trying to cope even though I knew that I would experience the culture shock.
Even crazier is to learn that both low and middle classes are "worker classes". I cannot even imagine what kind of alien lifestyle the high society has. Are they just rotting on their bed? Surely not! They are human like us, but they are so detached from the rest of us and reality in general that I can't imagine what hell they live in...
Honestly though, the internet closed a lot of those gaps. I grew up in section 8 housing and learned to code by reading websites on an old computer that I pulled out of a dumpster that a local business threw away. It isn't easy but it is available...the hardest part isn't learning those things, its knowing that you need to know them in the first place. (and a school trip to Japan is just a waste of time. That's a luxury. Skill and network development are essential though)
I was in a lecture of over 300 where the lecturer asked if anyone took Latin. Internally I scoffed as I thought who does Latin nowdays. Well as over two thirds of these students went to private school many put up there hands. Despite all my hard work at school there was no way I could even try to compete with these people, my so called peers
@@cosmovyd Latin is a luxury class signal, not an indicator of future success. It's important not to conflate the two when trying to help people from the working class move up.
Building strong social networks with upwardly mobile people, developing the skills to be useful to people more successful than you, rapport building, understanding personal finance and investing, etc. Those are tools for climbing the socio-economic ladder.
One of the hardest pills to swallow was that “networking” is really a rich man’s game. During orientation at my first corporate job I remember overhearing a conversation between a few guys discussing their multiple semesters abroad, trips to Europe, what airlines they prefer, etc and thinking about how even in the same company, in the same role, these little break room conversations provide a clear divide that worsens these differences as you get further into your career.
Oh my gosh "what airlines they prefer." I had no idea such a concept even existed.
Yup, it is the same in academia. People sound like bon viveurs talking about what wines they prefer, the best schools for their kids, and all the traveling they did before the age of 18, and yes, semesters spent abroad. Although I went to a university that offered semesters abroad, I remember my parents refused to pay for any semesters abroad because it was too expensive.
What airlines they prefer! Oh I know these conversations. I'm in Europe, in Ireland, but I don't have a second home in Italy or Spain. For a while I thought, if I just get x job do up my house, send my daughter to x uni, eventually, I'll be included. Nope. I get it now. I always have to be the ORDINARY to their extraordinary.
Best answer as a rather upwardly mobile ex poor person is i do a lot of research online and then i lie my ass off
@@kevincampbell5923 And that means you're constantly under a pressure *they* never feel. Pressure and a constant insecurity.
So a few months ago, our vacuum cleaner died a horrible death (asphyxiated on dog hair, RIP). I was able to get in the car, drive to the store, and purchase a new one right away and that's when it hit me how much my husband and I have moved up in the world, financially speaking. A few years ago, we would have just. . . not had a vacuum until somebody was giving one away, or until we could find somewhere to cut back to save for one. I sat in the parking lot and thought about that for a long time before I went in.
I've had this sort of similar realisation, too.
Husband's niece kicked a ball into the TV and we got a new one within a week, and I cried. We got a small, not-big-brand TV from the department store and I cried because it was the most expensive thing I've bought in my life, but the fact we could get one... it was all a bit too much.
Congrats to the both of you!❤ That was honestly great to hear
@@glass-yuzuthat reminded me of when i moved out on my own. Everything i owned fit in two large boxes and two medium suitcases. It took me 6 years sleeping on a mattress pad on the floor before i was convinced by a friend who worked at sears to buy a discounted close out mattress. I wouldnt do it before because the idea of owning something i couldnt move terrified me.
I totally get this...I've been there as well.
But whatever you do, do NOT let those Kirby vacuum sales people your house!
one of the most depressing college experiences i had was everyone being told they MUST get summer internships, but I was not able to accept any offers bc they were unpaid and full time and I needed to work to stay housed & fed. The worst part was the lack of understanding my classmates and professors had. Sometimes I feel like people who grow up wealthy develop this mental block where they’re willfully incapable of putting themselves in a poor persons shoes.
i don't even think it's "willful incapability", they literally cannot step into your shoes because they've never even considered your situation possible.
it's privilege. it really does a number on some people, especially when paired with a lack of empathy.
You just reminded me when I was in university, I had a lecturer ask me why I never came to the lectures only to the tutorials and I straight up told her well the lectures are recorded I can catch up in my own time while the tutorials are when we go over all the material together so I make time for that so I understand the material. She told me I should make time for all. I told her that I needed to work otherwise I wouldn't be able to afford my rent or pay for food etc. It still astounds me to this day how she really didn't care, when I know for a fact multiple people in my class were in the exact same situation and other lecturers would take it into account. Later when she went on strike for pay and she stopped me to give out a flyer. I told her I wasn't interested in supporting them as I looked up their salary and it was 46k while the average in the UK was 26k. I didn't think they were struggling to keep the heating on or not being able to buy the needed food shop, unless they were living above their means. Luckily she wasn't my lecturer anymore or I probably would've gotten in trouble for that 😅.
@@Amelia-vk4jt Crazy how she hounded you for not showing up because you are literally having to make money and then she asked for help with money.... 🙃 The lack of awareness
@@coolm3th people can be very unsympathetic and hypocritical. Honestly I feel lucky that attendance didn't matter to your grade at the time, something tells me that's changed now, or I definitely would've failed, feel bad for kids nowadays having to choose between work and attendance, honestly don't see why it matters I got a degree with having barely gone to lectures.
This was something I noticed as a culture difference as soon as I moved from community college to the state university. At my local community college, they knew we all had jobs, I felt very supported and encouraged- and classes cost about a quarter of the cost of university classes, and they were just as good and challenging. In fact I’m in graduate school right now and I can still say the best professor I’ve ever had was at the community college!!!
Growing up poor, being poor, it all get the same attitude of “you’re so resilient” like stfu I’m tired of hard work burn out and going no where.
Mate. Exactly this
lol resilience. gtfo with that
Exactly. "You're so strong, you're so resilient, etc.". I don't want to be either of those. I want to rest.
I was told I was 'so strong!' From eight years old, and now I'm a burned-out 30 year old. We can be 'strong' and 'exceptional' forever.
@@caitlinmccloud7431 the problem is too, that when you do get a bit of money, you want to spend it on unimportant shit, just for the mental relief a frivolous purchase gives you.
the tax of being poor for me is not having as many volunteering hours for my graduate healthcare degree, and thus I have to work even harder in other aspects to prove that I am worthy. But how am I supposed to be doing volunteer work to the underserved communities when I am literally the underserved community that need paying jobs every hour to survive. Imagine giving free soup to the poor and realize you haven’t had anything to eat the whole day either…
yup
Yes, good point, so many times, I heard that "volunteer!" Ot made me cross. I had already volunteered. How long do you have to go on giving away your time?
Your volunteering place should include a meal for you too :/ I know most places don't, but I felt very lucky when a church I volunteered at offered us to have food among the other clients. You shouldn't assume that just because somebody is volunteering, they wouldn't appreciate the food
@@wen6519 The soup is a metaphor
Fr I had to do community service hours and volunteered at the same couple kitchen I would get my own food from
This is a great introduction into why the younger generations are choosing not to have kids. We experienced being an expense our parents couldn't afford. We can't afford to exist as adults either. All that our parents couldn't give us growing-up, we're giving ourselves now. This is a perception often overlooked.
Definitely me 🤚🏻 Why would I want to live my whole life just as broke as I grew up, now that I have the choice? With just myself to look after, I can keep my head above water. Having another person to feed/clothe/support who isn’t bringing money in would mean instant poverty.
This is a great point. I hadn't thought of it this way.
Agreed.
The world would be better if a lot of people didn’t have to juggle parenting with everything else life offers
A lot of them aren't built for it
Absolutely accurate assessment. One of the biggest reasons I chose to be child free and am still living in poverty even with a fancy college degree from a top university. I did not want to have children suffer the way I have.
Finances is a large reason why I don’t have kids. It’s already stressful enough with holding my breath on being able to afford things. Why make it worse by bringing children into this world, when they’ll feel like a financial burden (since kids are smart and aware of things)? Plus, when society as a whole, at least in my perspective, the societal gaps of rich and poor is only growing, setting any potential kids up for a hard adulthood.
Poverty isn't just an absence of money, it's an absence of hope. In fact, this absence of hope is really the hallmark of poverty. The poor are inundated with problems that cause them to abandon the dream they could have a better life. Poverty pushes people into survival mode. The health and mental health consequences, vulnerability to substance use, obesity, all of it, come from this. These people need support. They need a break and they certainly don't deserve to be judged.
This. I am so tired of being on survival mode all the time, knowing the only way it will change is with luck. No amount of work or effort on my part will change this
it is expensive to be poor. pulling oneself out of poverty requires luck. some rare circumstance or person crossing the path of a very determined person.
I feel you. I come from a family that took my earned babysitting money away from me to pay the family`s groceries.
@@jonmartin3220that's the problem , with no safety net you don't even think about long term gains , you just think of today :(
@jonmartin3220 risk have 10 to 100x the consequences for those in poverty.
One wrong move that has nothing to do with your efficiency in 99% of other life areas will also catapult everything else into the wrong direction.
Then you are judged in totality as a failed human
not as a person who "entered the market for coffee at the wrong time".
Poverty is treated like something you're guilty of rather than going through.
And it sucks when you get stuck in low wage jobs. People figure you can't do anything better and you don't get a chance to try.
"Poverty is treated like something you're guilty of rather than going through."
Exactly.
And you’re treated like you’re not trying at all if you’re still in low wage work. They see you as impotent. That you must’ve done it to yourself by not trying. So you’re guilty once again.
That’s really profound.
@@FitChickGlows My take: it's not your fault to be born poor, but having children when you're poor is your fault
This is such a great perspective
25, former welfare baby
If anyone were to tell me “growing up poor isn’t a disadvantage and this country has equal opportunity” I may be moved to unkind reactions.
And then on top of that some people try push the narrative that “welfare” was providing so much money that you were living rich.
"Moved to unkind reactions"
I agree ! I feel moved to violence when I hear this , But I know I cant win a legal battle
Kind words tbf
Those of us white folks who grew up gleaning and on food stamps, feel the same way when people insist that this difference must be only racial.
This feeling of needing to "perform your class" when you suddenly have money after a childhood of poverty is called "class anxiety". You perform your class by buying "class signifiers" like a nice car, nice clothes, fancy dinners, expensive appliances, etc. It is very expensive to perform your class, and entire industries make bank selling class signifiers to poverty-scarred middle-class people with class anxiety. The social shame of appearing poor is a very exploitable and profitable phenomenon, for the owner class.
I don't know about that. My upbringing did focus on frugality, to have class meant to only buy white dress shirts which could be utilized for every occasion. The soldiers in the military were admired for having dependable boots, and linen sheets that you could bounce a penny on. Material wealth as a signifier is heralded as a reward for discipline, but the discipline is what is heralded as the primary signifier of class. Keep the grass mowed.
A nice car was more about reliability, and not inheriting somebody else's problems. One member of my extended family had a rule that if a car ever broke down side of the road, it would be immediately placed up for sale and be replaced with a new vehicle.
Power windows, air conditioning, power steering, these are not considered to be "upper class". Though, the A/C is questionable, given that showing up to a function sweating is a faux pas. Dave Ramsey did push for moving away from brand new, and to single owner lightly used vehicles, but the principle of not getting somebody else's problems remains the strongest.
The class above me, often gets advertisements for upgrading to more energy efficient goods. Mostly windows in one's house, but the marketing materials are all about reducing the cost of living. Refinance your home with a fixed rate mortgage that may be lower than your current rate, etc.
Fancy dinners is simply not eating hot dogs and white rice. Or having meat instead of beans. Moving away from processed foods towards fresher foods, often from a Farmer's Market with a focus on weight loss and healthy living to reduce medical costs. At the very low scale, even moving away from microwave cooking to a stove/oven cooking is performing one's class. Microwave cooking is often associated with reduced fridge space, but it could be worse and a lack of storage and cooking equipment (i.e in a rented room) necessitates a dependency on cheap fast food.
Fancy dinners may be more common as business expenses, charged to one's employer, as a means of "wining and dining" a client. Performing your class is then done without any direct expense to the individuals themselves.
Perhaps, I have never been near the 1%, to worry about dressing for the job I want and not the job I have in a social setting outside of work. The notion of successful people being "soft" as to have no patience for an individual "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", is a bit foreign. The roots of my local city still remembers being a farm community. Being "soft" with air conditioning might be a thing, though.
Incredibly insightful. Thank you
I'm lucky my mother imparted her philosophies of "not giving a $hit over what other people think", "nobody pays my bills so I don't owe them nothing" and "if my old clothes bother them so much, they are welcome to gift me new ones", it really sent home the message that performing class is a stupid game to play.
On the other hand, you have the choice of “underperform your class”. Coming from a poor country has given me perspective in what is really needed to be happy in life. Many people here have enough material stuff but they are not satisfied with what they already have. Success in life are not the possessions, is the peace of mind and freedom that comes from not wanting too much and to have time to do the things that brings you joy. It is hard to save money if one chase “bigger and better” often . Just “downplay, underperform, and you will see the results 😊
I remember when I got my first "serious" paycheck and started overspending to "perform my class". girl, i was so anxious and I still felt like I looked like the poor kid. now i'm trying to get rid of the mountain of stuff i bought back then.
nowadays I "underperform" my class and live comfortably below my means. i'm lucky to be able to save money, but I don't think the fear of one day being back in that position will ever go away
The biggest issue with growing up generationally poor, from a background in crimes, uncountable divorces, families falling apart, and what you can grab is all you can have is this:
My parents knew I was smart. They couldn't afford to send me to a better school.
We knew I should go to college for STEM. Didn't know any engineers, scientists, etc to explain what those jobs were like, or even those fields.
Reading about a world you've never experienced to try to prepare to join it, is like reading a survival guide before crashlanding on an uninhabited island.
The lack of information about what we should be doing, who we should be talking to, how to prepare, etc was completely missing.
How am I supposed to ask for help to pass an interview when neither of my parents have done a technical interview?
I got really lucky I pushed through, but TL;DR
The biggest thing you are missing when being generationally poor, is information or connections to people with that information to dig yourself out of poverty
Yes yes yes, this!
I agree. It took my a long time to see my scholarships/fellowship as valuable to build that net work of information and mentorship. I was just so grateful for the 💰 that I didn't realize the longevity of support from mentors and peers was necessary to maintain the foundation that education could give me
I an so obsessed with how clean my home is and it took me a while to realize my obsession with organizing and cleanliness was because I grew up in a very disorganized home that was always in some form of disrepair. Holes in walls, cracking bathroom tile, splintering floor boards. I never wanted to invite friends over and was obsessed with my classmates' homes. Wall to Wall carpet, pools and hot tubs, even having a 2nd floor was wild to me! I panic when my home now starts to resemble my childhood home because of how ashamed I felt as a kid.
REAL
THIS THIS THIS THIS 😭😭😭😭
GOD ALMIGHTY, this still affects me now and I'm turning 40 soon. My husband never really understood until he visited my parent's house just before we married.
There with you! When I first started dating my now fiancee I basically didn't let him come over for the first year because my mom is extremely mentally ill, and I lived in a home I didn't have any control over. I couldn't throw away a candy wrapper without her freaking out. We've been living on our own for three years and I cannot live like my mother did because anything that reminds me of that brings in heavy waves of depression. For the first time in my life, feel like basics of my hierarchy of needs is finally fulfilled, and I'm able to focus way more on self actualizing. Maintaining a clean home and throwing out clutter heals me.
I grew up in a Victorian fixer upper, I understand this comment so much.
Oh my lord I feel this so much!! As a kid I never cared about cleaning because my mom did an amazing job of keeping a clean home, but when I was 16 I spent a year living with my older sister and her family, and it literally scarred me.
Despite being a solidly middle class family living in an objectively nice, brand new home, I hated being inside because they never cleaned and everything was disgusting all the time. They had a toddler, a newborn, and three inside dogs, and just… never cleaned anything.
If I wanted to cook something I had to sift through all the dirty dishes to find what I needed and clean it first. Laundry would be done and left out for weeks at a time until it was gathered up to be washed again because the dogs had trampled it enough for it to be dirty again. The couches were always covered in dog fur and mystery stains from the toddler. And don’t even get me started on the bathrooms. I once spent an entire 8-9 hours straight cleaning, and only managed to get through the living room and kitchen. They were the first family to live there, and by the time they sold the house and moved (after like, 4 years?) it was DESTROYED.
After living like that, even for just a year, I’m completely neurotic about my own home. If my husband puts dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher I have to hold myself back from yelling at him. If the trash isn’t taken out or I feel like the floors are too dirty, I start to feel claustrophobic and panicky. I simply can’t function anymore when I find myself in situations even remotely similar to what I lived with. The need to clean and change my surroundings has just become insane 🫠
I grew up lower middle class, and the am quite the opposite of her. After being financially unstable for so many years, I have a hard time spending money on things I don’t explicitly need. There is almost a level of guilt for me. Why spend money on frivolous things when I could use it to get out of debt faster and become more stable. Financial insecurity is tough. Even when you start to make more money, there is always a feeling of the shoe about to drop. Like something bad is going to happen and take it away
Worse, it's the *feeling* of financial insecurity in actual financial security.
1000% my husband and I are both type 1 diabetic and have paid dearly for that and it seems so unfair. One of our children has a rare heart defect (not related to our diabetes, literally a combination of all heart issues on both sides coming together) despite that (and due to some pretty intense work on our part) he is the picture of health at 18 (but potentially in need of a heart and liver transplant sometimes in the next 30 years as statistically that is a 100% haute tee with his heart issue) but the costs of those things has us so traumatized that when we go to buy back to school clothes for our kids and know as the teachers in the building we need to look decent but we both struggle to let that happen because what if…. It hovers over everything and is pretty toxic 😢
Yeah. That description of the shoe about to drop, I feel that.
It's also an apt description of the loss of safety one feels when traumatized.
Same. Its poverty mindset, but it benefits me in many way. I own 3 pieces of property and am looking at buying a fourth. That’s because as a middle class single mom I don’t buy shit I don’t need.
@@type1fun476I buy barely enough clothes to function. I topically have 6 outfits and I only replace them as they start to deteriorate.
It's funny, though, because I also picked up reckless spending habits (or should I say avoidance strategies) due to the same poverty. Awareness is sometimes so overwhelming that you spend money to avoid it, ironically causing the fears to become true.
In the late 90s as a homeschooled teenager, I loved going for a week to this Christian summer camp that my parents didn't fully object to. One evening in my cabin, one of my bunkmates told all of us that her family was struggling after her dad lost his job, and it was so bad that she had even had to pay for most of the $120 camper fee herself. I looked at her, astonished, and said that I have always had to come up with the camper fee myself from babysitting money or however else I could earn it. Looking around, it was clear that no one else in this cabin had been tasked with paying for camp herself.
Even if any of them did pay for it with their own money, it probably would have come from their "allowance" which they got whether or not they did anything to earn it. My allowance came from doing tasks like washing dishes after dinner (50 cents), vacuuming (50 cents), taking out the trash (25 cents), etc. I remember being at friends' houses where they whined about having to take the trash out to the curb, like 20 ft. They never had to go down 2 flights of stairs and through a hot parking lot to toss a bag more than half their size into a tall, stinky, overfilled dumpster shared by the whole apartment complex. But I didn't whine about it; I was happy to earn my 25 cents for it!
@kekica11 I didn't get an allowance, I had to do chores for free. I worked from the age of 10 at to pay for necessities like school fees, transport and clothes and my parents regularly stole and demanded money from my work.
@@kekica11 I washed the dishes and I was "allowed" to eat off clean dishes, I never knew any kid to actually get paid tbh. I got Christmas and birthday money in Dec, and that was my entire spending for the year, every club t shirt, every colored pencil, if I needed a new bow in Jan that was my spending for the whole year
I had to work to earn money for camp too. To this day I feel lucky to have had an experience that was mostly accessible only to the middle class and the wealthy.
My Christian summer camp had a program where you could memorize portions of the Bible, and the more you memorized the more would be knocked off your camper fee and that is how I funded summer camp (sometimes fully and sometimes partially). Luckily I am VERY good at memorizing things.
The animosity is real. My husband was talking about how hard it was that his dad was always on business trips during the week growing up and his dad got him and his sister a pager so they could communicate - late 90’s early 2000’s. I’m sitting there thinking about the calls and letters I would get from my dad in prison. I’m sure it was hard, but sometimes hearing about those experiences just makes you jealous that you didn’t get those things.
I feel you on this. I much rather have received a pager from my Dad to message with than what I received, which was letters and collect calls from my Dad in prison. Add to that being an African American male going to a predominantly white elementary and junior high school. So much embarrassment when other kids would ask about my Dad and I would say he’s currently in prison.
I naturally gravitated and still do to people’s lifestyles that are more the opposite of mine. I don’t want to forget my family by any means, and I love them dearly, but what I was exposed to as a child really sucked. All of it sucked. I see people glamorize single parenthood and I say it’s one of the worst things I ever experienced. I got the double whammy. Mom struggled financially and still does to this day, and my dad abandoned me after he got out of prison and I didn’t see or hear from him for 25 years before he died.
I’m 40 years old and it still bothers me today. I’ve had to tell friends the reason I don’t get to take risk, and my life is so heavily calculated, is because I grew up being exposed to taking risk, even slight ones, not only means we fail, but we also take two steps back financially and emotionally.
My Mom and Brother have both struggled financially the majority of their adult lives. It’s really sad honestly.
People don’t understand the shame that follows you for the rest of your life. It influences everything you do no matter how much time has passed and how much personal growth you go through. As someone who had a very similar experience, although Hispanic and not African American, I’m proud of us. We didn’t deserve the childhood we were dealt.
My dad was deported after he got out of prison and then passed away when I was 16. My mom struggled with finances significantly and recently filed for bankruptcy. There are 7 kids in my family and we all have moved on with our lives in different ways. I’m still in touch with most of my siblings, but there is a lot of trauma from our childhood to be worked through. I’m 27 now, and everything I do is because of what I learned from my parents mistakes.
Thank you for sharing this with me. It made me feel less alone in that terrible experience. The fact that we are both here means we came out of it strong. I hope you have found healing over the course of your life and continue to do so. 💚
Men failing their daughters so they can struggle in poverty and grow up with a dad in prison. Then when you grow up traumatized all the sudden you have "daddy issues" like it wasnt a man that failed you to begin with. Blah. What else is new? Sorry that happened to you.
I understand as well. My husband's parents divorced when he was 12 and his youngest siblings was 4. My parents didn't divorce until I was 17 and my brother was 12. That being said, his mother never worked and just his dad made more than both my parents ever did. He didn't have his 1st job until after HS, was given a first car, family could afford braces, he got to spend summers doing fun things. I got non of it and worked since 14.
I feel you. My partner grew up in an entirely different socioeconomic class than I did. They had international trips, his parents didn’t divorce until he was in university, etc. At a family gathering recently, everyone was reminiscing about how many different extracurriculars & music lessons all their kids had gone through: violin, clarinet, drums, trumpet… sports, riding lessons…- it was so hard to keep my mouth shut and not spill out how the one extracurricular I wanted to do as a kid, we couldn’t afford. Mom scrimped and saved to get a secondhand piano when I was a teenager, and I only got lessons because it was our pastor’s wife giving them at a discount. It was just me and my mom since I was in 4th grade. It’s so difficult to not let those differences seethe.
it’s a hard pill to swallow. Realizing your parents had you when they couldn’t even afford you and they sacrificed so much, but you still had a very less than ideal childhood and you were robbed of certain experiences. No child should have to get a job at 13 to help with bills.
Genuine question but why not? Sure it's preferable if the kid can be a kid but the idea of childhood we have is very modern and specifically western idea. Kids working is incredibly common.
@@apache8795Faulty logic, just because something is common somewhere or was common at sometime doesn't mean that it is in any way a good thing. The only reason why it is still common today is because most people around the world live in deplorable poverty and must send their young children to do unsuitable and potentially unsafe work just to get by
@@czcccc9627 Saying that because it's common isn't an argument either. It's good because it gives kids actual skills, teaches them to be self sufficient and develops discipline. Compare the kids that have these skills to first world kids. I'm not saying put the kids in the mines, but a child working on the family farm, business or a friends business is fine. Japan does something similar giving kids as young as 3 errands so they learn to be independent and reliable
@@apache8795 The implication of the original comment is that she had to work a job in order to help her struggling family to pay the bills. There's nothing wrong with kids helping out at a family business at a variety of ages depending on what they can safely do, but there is definitely something wrong about a 13yr old having to work at a regular job to make ends meet. Also the language used clearly indicates that the job wasn't at a family owned business either.
Japan has a variety of issues that I won't touch on here, but literally every recognised country has kids doing small amounts of work around the house and at school lmao
@@apache8795because when you can’t relate to other people, you feel ostracized
I had a really rough start in life due to being poor. The effects of poverty are one thing, such as the lack of access to healthcare or inability to participate in social events like summer camp, but poverty often goes hand in hand with mental illness in the family, abuse, and generational trauma. When you have a kid in an abusive environment who cannot afford access to mental healthcare or any other resources and is socially isolated due to not being able to afford social activities, it's a recipe for disaster. That kid had no chance in life.
I only got out due to being really, really smart and getting a scholarship and good degree. If not for that I'd be trapped with everyone else in a deadend town where everyone ends up either working retail, unemployed, arrested, or a single mom.
Also, a lot of poor kids get exposed to environmental health hazards like smoking parents, parents who abuse drugs, lead paint, contaminated water, low quality food and nutritional deficiencies, unclean air, no access to exercise, etc. and of course being poor prevents them from receiving healthcare, compounding that. so if you are a poor kid you get a graduation gift of lifelong medical issues that could have been prevented, corrected, or treated early if you'd been in a middle or upper class family. a lot of poor kids just live in pain and discomfort from untreated health issues. For example, my teeth were crooked which meant I got made fun of, turned down from good jobs, and experienced TMJD pain in my jaw because my parents couldn't afford orthodontics. Now as an adult I had to pay for my own orthodontics, which cost me $6k out of pocket. Rich kids got that paid for them, skipped all the pain and bullying, and didn't have that expense dropped on their lap as a young adult. And that's a small example that is easily solved, others have it way worse. Also, "you aren't ugly, you're just poor" so young people without mommy and daddy's money have their social life crushed and experience low self esteem because they can't afford contacts, or orthodontics, or acne treatment, makeup, good clothes, haircuts, etc. And anyone who says that is vain is being obtuse because it sets you up for a lifetime of lowered standards.
The ramifications of poverty are endless.
All of this. I feel like this channel often ignores the more complicated parts of poverty such as frequent involvement in the criminal justice system. (I've been both a public defender and prosecutor and have practiced law for almost 20 yrs.) A lot of it is systematic but, like everything, personal choices do actually matter. I see that in my own clients all the time. Glad you were able to pull yourself out.
@@BRBRidingMyHorseWow, I am soooo happy to live in a country with a functioning social system with a health care insurance for everyone. Yes, being lower class often shows (especially if the parents are caught in a generational cycle of neglect), but there’s access at least to proper health care and a basic income.
Thank you for sharing this perspective.
The last line !!!!!
@@BRBRidingMyHorse This is not true. There is enough research about school to prison pipeline, about how even schools are geared to further marginalised poor or minority kids. Individual choices come into play when a person has d choice to opt. Most poor kids lack d parenting, education , support systems to gain d wisdom to make better choices. Not to mention, d video talks about those kids who have not chosen a life of crime, n yet being poor sets dem up for a life of financial struggle n I'll health. The video focussed on how discipline, hard work n individual choices alone can't help a poor kid rise up in society, as there are too many systemic obstacles in place.
My brain chemistry changed the day I went to a friend's house and it was 2 stories in a nice neighborhood with a stuffed full fridge AND pantry. My 8 year old self was SHOCKED, and even more shocked when I said "I didn't know you were rich" and they said "We're not".
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this or even feels the same way. But I really don't like the glamorousation of side hustle as a means to become financially free on social media. For me, it's a slap in the face of people in poverty who have been doing this for decades just to survive. Side hustles are a second, third, or fourth job. Being told that if you don't make enough money to "get your side hustle on" is insulting. I worked hard educating myself so I could get a better paying non-phyical paying job. If I am not promoted or receiving a good raise, I will look for a better paying job. Or figure out it starting my own business is better for me. I would not just stay in a low paying job and look for another low paying job to double my income by working twice as hard. I tell my son and his friends to work smarter, not harder. In my opinion, promoting side hustles instead of educating is another tool to keep people in poverty.
The problem is the wages themselves. Even if YOU escaped those jobs, someone will still have to do it. There aren’t enough “good” jobs for everyone so we need to make sure the “bad” jobs at least pay enough for basic necessities and that one accident or health incident doesn’t make you homeless.
@@emmanarotzky6565this, it’s not only about escaping the legislated feedback loop on an individual level, it’s also about getting living wages for ALL jobs, somebody has to get the trash to landfills, somebody has to make the burger you get in the drive through. Those people deserve a comfortable life just as much as someone on the corporate ladder
Even overtime and multiple jobs got gentrified :/
@@emmanarotzky6565 exactly this. People always focus on the individual and tell them they need to improve their lives. But how does the world run with no janitors, no burger flippers, no waitresses? We need people in these jobs, so the only way to make people broadly happy is to make minimum wage work a viable lifestyle.
The true side hustles are just that- small amount of time invested for bigger rewards. Everything else is just a second job.
I will never forget when I talked to a teenager with rich parents about struggles
the boy was trying to tell me that rich people have depression too - and I told him: yes, they do. but what they don't go through is existential fear. they don't need to worry about if they can pay rent or not, afford to buy enough food or if they're able to replace one of their old socks. it just adds another type of struggle that higher income families don't have to think about. it was also arguably the biggest struggle my own family went through.
When I was school , I remember I kept secret everything was going on like packing my house hours before we got kicked out, in the freezing winter a week before my birthday, why I repeat the same clothes every week, and , or not having water or electricity because I lived in a , richer town, as a low class family. It was hell. I remember teachers MY FINANCE TEACHER FOR 7TH GRADERS used to make fun of the kids who wore the same clothes everyday… as a grown woman. 😐
@@mick6247 that is so vile and disgusting :/ sometimes I feel like that type of struggle is completely unknown to them...
Rich people have depression over the meaningless of life. If they're able to buy anything, money isn't an object, they've been there and done it all and ask themselves if they have everything, why do they feel nothing? Why are they so empty?
Meanwhile, poor people's existential dread is quite literally, "how will I survive this?" Death and ruin always just around the corner.
@@arianam6430 right, i agree. i think they're both existential, but for people in poverty it is very immediate. it about's life potentially ending early, plus being this struggle the whole time. for rich people, the existential threat is that they will have lived their entire life for nothing. it's not the same, but it comes from the same concern about wanting to live a worthwhile life.
@@mick6247 😮Now if she gets into a situation where she starts to struggle herself, that would be her KARMA. SMH so sad there's so many in the world like her.
The scarcity mindset from growing up poor and still being poor really hits.
Hugs. I'm always trying to work out whether when something happens financially whether I should freak out, or if things are ok. And I never really feel like I have enough money, even though I haven't been working paycheck to paycheck for a long time.
@@samanthaa.6055it also makes me irrationally cheap
I freak out over home repairs. Even though my husband knows my trigger, understands it, has a HEALTHY emergency fund set aside explicitly because of it... I still get absolutely irrational if a sink backs up or our dishwasher is making strange noises. Thanks Dad for never having an emergency fund and always refusing to hire someone to do household repairs so windows would remain broken, sinks would remain clogged, and we'd be stuck hauling wet laundry to the laundromat every January because the dryer wasn't working and we lived in MN ... 🤦🏻♀️
My boss grew up poor. I grew up poor. We had a company trip that was manditory. I told him I was going to have to quit because I couldn't afford it. He told me that the company paid for everything. After picking my jaw up off the floor, we went over the travel rules. One of them was to "try not to" have a meal more that $25 for one person. Neither of us could imagine WANTING to spend that much on a single meal. Heck, I felt guilty for putting a pack of AA batteries for my camera on the company card.
Yeah, it took me several years to get comfortable spending company funds without asking. It was a real culture shock.
I didn’t know I was “poor” until I was in college when all my friends had their tuitions paid for by their parents and I was one of the few in my group who had student loan debt and whose parents didn’t own a home at the time. It was a huge culture shock especially when friends would tell me “why cant I just ask my parents” whenever I’d tell them I didn’t have enough money to do things. Now it affects me in ways where I had to learn financial literacy later in life and how to save/invest. It feels like everyone’s miles ahead and I’m building my life from the ground up.
I had a similar experience in college. I think it's the first time I uttered the phrase "Must be nice to have money . . ." And I used it a lot. My family wasn't utterly destitute, but getting my dad to even consider buying things that weren't cheap crap was like pulling teeth. I didn't realize other families weren't like that until college.
I remember going to the student health center for birth control when I was in college and the doctor got on my ass really hard about being under weight. I asked her what she wanted me to do about it and she yelled “EAT MORE!!!” all exasperated and annoyed.
And that would have been rude if I was anorexic anyway. But I wasn’t. I couldnt afford to eat more. When I told her that, she was completely gobsmacked for a second, and then told me to “CALL YOUR PARENTS THEN!!”
sigh
We are truly from different worlds.
Not everyone’s parents are made of money or even give a shit about them, Rebecca…
Whenever I tell people I'm paying for college all by myself they look at me like I have 3 heads.
I'm 22 and this is my last semester to graduate with an asscosiates. I've had to take a gap year, then take part-time classes so I can be out and working to make enough to afford school and life.
Most of my age group has gotten a BA by now. I'm only just now getting my associates. I. HATE. THIS.
@@heyfella5217 Both my parents worked and supported themselves to get their BA's . Back then this was much more the norm. Of course, it was shortly after WW2 . And they grew up during the great depression!! Most people could earn enough to pay for all college expenses at state colleges.
@@youtubename7819 Yes, but there's still an assumption that if you're in college you probably come from a background that's at least comfortable.
Poverty and growing up with ADHD and autism undiagnosed for the majority of my life was hell. I wish it on no one. I hope many find their way and succeed in their escape from poverty.
Succeeding while neurodivergent, especially if you need more support, tends to require folks helping you with things like delivering things or you or cleaning for you, etc., without those, we burn out very easily trying to balance taking care of ourselvws, our homes, AND studying/working. Or we could just do only a little each day...
@@pinokosthewifeyes, as I’ve posted in other threads in this comment section I’m a mama five I am an AudHd woman and all of my kids are on the spectrum because their father’s on the spectrum and you know how genetics goes and I’m struggling big time. Just being able to get through the process of getting Social Security check or finding and daycare for them that will actually help their progress is been hell let alone being their mother was struggling with the exact same disabilities that they have. I feel your pain. Try to keep your head up as best as you can. 💜
I’m like you. This was hard to read, especially the part about not being able to enjoy your childhood or college years. I still struggle to have fun. I didn’t learn to swim, ski, or play most sports because we never had the money for lessons or fees to be on teams. Now as an adult, I can’t catch up to those who learned recreation. I only know how to work and avoid harm.
I feel this deeply. Ugh. Hoping for us to find a way to feel carefree enough to enjoy little things, even if it's for some moments in time.
This was me. I came to college with no support but my own. No money, no college dorm purchases bought by parents, worked. Took me 10yrs to finish between failing mental health (couldn't afford therapy). Another 6 to land a decent job
I was just reflecting on this. In my experience, it makes it hard to talk and connect with people at work because they're conversing about places they go skiing or rock climbing gyms. It truly is a challenge when networking involves so much of these recreational experiences.
"I only know how to work and avoid harm." Oof. You speak my thoughts and they are darker when I see the words from someone else.
I’m 28 and want to learn how to swim because I never had lessons
Some people dont just make good choices, they are only given good choices.
Insightful comment!
Like you ate that upp fr.
And some people can afford to make bad choices because my daddy has money
🎯🎯🎯
Keep telling yourself that since it seems that it makes you sleep well at night....
You’d be surprised how many people who “look rich” are drowned in debt trying to keep up the lifestyle.
A friend of mine jointly inherited his parent's house in Los Altos Hills with his sister as a roommate. He looks fucking homeless all the time, probably partially as a defense mechanism while primarily as a DGAF about impressing anyone.
We are poor too just lucked out in home ownership form a cheap house before the market went crazy, otherwise we aren’t much better off then my friends who can barely afford their own home and they did not luck out as us
That's essentially the middle class in a nutshell. I think this video is hinting at the real rich kids, the ones who go to Europe every summer and are guaranteed a spot at a school like Harvard/Yale.
That's how the rich live, though they have.Assets that aren't liquidated and then take loans out against that, and so long as they have good credit and keep it rolling, they live off their debts.It's literally a method
I am a nomad in my van, have worked the same two stable jobs for over 3 years now. During the day I chill around and at night I get to work, I'm sitting on my money to sling shot ahead. Other people call it homeless from their view. To me, I am living no different if not better in this van than I did growing up. And the money produced from this will allow me to get something really nice
Scarcity mindset sucks. It took me over a year to convince myself to buy a $15 book I'd wanted, just because it wasn't food, and for work, I needed a full stomach more than a full head. Wound up waiting for my birthday just so I could make an excuse, and I still wondered if I should have saved the money to buy gas. My sister looked like she wanted to cry when I mentioned it over dinner once.
Waiting until a birthday or holiday is so real, I'm doing this right now even though I've been repeatedly told that I can afford the thing. It is extremely expensive, though, and would be the most expensive thing I've ever bought (not including paying back student loans.)
I got that mindset. Unfortunately, I was about to be homeless and joined the military. Had tricare and never had to worry about a single medical bill during that time but I still saved any unused meds and tried to not take every pill (outside antibiotics) because I may need it later and was never able to go to drs as a kid. Even having that medical access I still couldn't break away from that possibility of needing and not getting.
Survivor's remorse hit me as a phrase. I feel this is sooo relevant, especially a feeling a guilt, obligation to give back, and even family alienation because they think you are "better" than them now that you have escaped poverty
im the gold sheep of the family as well.
The thing that I’ve also noticed is that growing up lower income also can lead to hoarding behavior. Keeping items that others might get rid of because “what if I need it” while also buying a lot of discounted items because “it’s a good deal”. It can be a lot to try to break out of that mindset and realize your “smart financial decisions” aren’t very good choices.
@lumensapace Yes! When I was growing up (1970s), my father earned about 15% of what my best friend's father earned (so little that I qualified for an equal opportunity college fund 😮). Every year for elementary, middle and high school, my parents would buy me *1 pair of shoes.* I got sneakers for gym every other year.
Fast forward, many decades later, I have dozens of sneakers and shoes that I hardly wear (plus over 70 wool and cashmere sweaters, too many shirts, pants, coats, jackets...) I have had multiple storage units, and then scheduled the salvation army to pick up the boxes to donate nearly everything... This has been a pattern for the past 25 years. I could have saved all that wasted $$$$ for a house down payment and probably pay off a good percentage. Self sabotage is a strong force in my life. 😟
This is my dad's behavior to a T. I think he learned it from his own father who lived through the Great Depression.
yup, and its a generational issue thats harder to escape than it seems. great grandma lived through the depression, grandma has a house with two useable rooms and the rest is piled with junk "so we can sell it during hard times". mom is the same way but is working on it (more by force than by choice. and the rise of online shopping and her lack of fulfilling hobbies isn't helping. but were getting there). I am trying SO hard to not be the same way but its hard to distinguish between what you NEED and what you think you need, to justify throwing something away and filling landfills with stuff youll have to buy again when you inevitably DO need it again, and not knowing if you will be ABLE to buy it again if you need to.
i feel constantly anxiety about the amount of STUFF i have taking up unnecessary space but every time i have a good ol "i need to get rid of EVERYTHING its too overwhelming" freak out and go through all of it... what do I get rid of? and how can i bare to throw it away when i remember all the things i threw away and then NEEDED shortly after?
That's my mom. We were always acquiring more junk from thrift stores, but never had enough money when I grew out of my shoes and needed a new pair. I still can't bring myself to replace a pair of shoes until they start to fall apart.
This is something I feel deeply, I'll add another layer (more specific to poor Americans) saving medication and trying to not take all of a medication if possible because you may need it in the future but know you can't go to the doctor again.
Income doesn’t equal wealth! And that’s a very important point that’s glossed over in this beautiful video. A person who makes 90k salary that comes from generational poverty vs 90k salary and come from the middle class family who already has wealth are two very different lives and wealth positions. Higher income doesn’t elevate you into a different class unless you really have the wealth to back it up. Wealth is ultimately more important than the incomes.
True its not equal, but higher income will start to elevate you eventually. At 90k most people have a good amount of money left over every month. Once you start living below your means you your savings will increase and so too will your investment opportunities. Your will be consistently building wealth.
@@jefflewis4basically you are building wealth for your offspring.
$90K doesn't elevate you to anything, quite honestly. That's drudge wages
@@willbass2869 point still stands.
@@willbass2869
This is highly location dependent but most places $90k is a pretty good wage for a single person and should be at least survivable for a small family… assuming no major financial issues like debt or needing to hire medical help.
$90k/year means $7.5k per month before taxes. Probably closer to 5.6k/month after taxes (I did the math at 25% tax rate).
That should be enough to pay rent, utilities and food, with some left over for replacing clothing, spending, and savings or debt repayment.
There may be a few locations where that is not enough, and debt may play some factor, but it is a far cry away from having to make the decision to eat this week or get winter clothing so you dont freeze.
That said, owning a home and making $90k/year is a significantly different situation than paying off a home and making $90k/year.
My poor tax was having no other option but joining the military to escape poverty. So i signed up. My price? PTSD, joint problems, nerve damage, TBI, died twice, nicotine addiction, and a really bad distrust of any authority.
I have all of that except nicotine addiction and I DIDNT join the military. Now what for us? 😔
@Annoyed_Human playing victim isn't cute; youre going to live a horrible life thinking youre somehow equal to a veteran
@@jtowensbyiii6018 we're all equal. No one is better or worse than me. We're different in many ways and the same in others
@ClarkyClark the guy who murders an entire family is not worth as much as you, don't bullshit me
@jtowensbyiii6018 those are actions. You don't know what I did while I was in. And the person above could be a great humanitarian. As a human, I believe all of us have equal value. It's our actions we should judge. And I don't think all reasons for joining the military are equally valid. A person that joins to escape poverty is different than one who joins to kill people. I've met both.
The resentment for being poor and not really experiencing a childhood while others did is so real
I was lower middle class, I had a roof over my head and food on the table and an internet connection, but I was always the poor friend, being the only one with divorced parents.
The worst was being the poor SIBLING. My two half siblings share the same father, and he was significantly richer than mine (their dad is a landlord with multiples properties...) I spent years watching my own brothers open gifts of laptops and TVs and a car, even housing!
Meanwhile in college I often skipped meals to save money.
Also remember that there are people with full siblings in that situation, I grew up in an apartment in the hood, my parents decided to get their shit together get a 2 story house, my siblings grew up in a house while I was struggling in college lol now there's a big disconnect
Wow, Jaciel speaking about his feelings of jealousy hit me. My husband and I (both late 20s) talk about this all the time since we grew up around people with a lot of generational wealth. It's hard not to feel extremely jealous when we watch our friends' parents buy them houses or get to retire comfortably, meanwhile we know we're our parents' retirement plans. We do well very for ourselves now, but it was against all odds.
indeed, my parents gave their savings to struggling (due to crap financial planning) sibling, now i need to support entire family, although i just want to focus on my kid instead.. while my friends are buying new property and investing in stock, i see all my savings immediately disappear into accounts of my family, my credit loan, etc... we might hang out in the same restaurant and drink same fancy cocktails, but we are NOT the same, for my luck feels forever temporary, one more bad decision of my family away from disaster, while they have limitless means and can take more chances, more risks, never having this crippling insecurity..
@@amistieldude, your comment and the original comment both hit! My husband and I both came from poverty and financial instability (although I had about ~6 years of financial stability before the age of 20, but the rest was lived in poverty), and we're doing ok now. But like you said, while we may eat at the same restaurants as our friends we are not at all the same. Our friends were able to graduate college debt free, but even with going to a cheap college we didn't have that option because we didn't have any kind of financial support from our parents, and we knew we couldn't ask (let alone expect) that from them. We're just hoping that our kids can be raised before either set of our parents can no longer work, because we absolutely are our parents requirement plan and are trying to plan our lives accordingly. Our friends don't have to make any kinds of plan like that, even the friends that grew up "poor", their parents always had a steady job and now have retirement.
It's hard when you have jealousy to your own husband 😅 I come from low middle class (for some time was poor) and he from upper middle class and it's hard to hear about his childhood going to resorts and getting new consoles. I'm working with this feeling, but it's not easy
SO felt. I was obviously devastated when my mom passed suddenly from covid in 2020, but there was a small part that was also a little relieved because she was in so much debt, no retirement fund, and I could not have afforded to care for her if she was not able to work. It's an awful feeling, and it's hard not to feel spiteful every time I talk to someone who DID get to retire, whose family WONT have to have that extra layer in their grief when their parents pass. I'm glad that don't, but it's hard not to be bitter for sure
The jealousy and resentment being unshakable bit was the part that hit hardest and is totally my reality. Hearing Jaciel express those feelings made me feel less alone. I grew up poor in an upper middle class town so I've always been hyper aware of what I had vs what my peers had. Now I live in an EHCOL city and work a public service job where my near six figure income is technically just below the middle-class line. I'm proud of what I've made of my life - I officially have no student loan debt thanks to 10 years of public service (yay PSLF), have an adequate emergency fund, fly a couple times a year and have travelled internationally twice, play ice hockey recreationally, and am throwing something at retirement. But everyday living in this EHCOL city feels like my childhood all over again ... non-stop comparing myself to others and pining after the things I can't afford (mostly a bigger place to rent).
The most toxic form my jealousy takes lately is silently directed towards friends or coworkers who can rely on their parents for childcare, wedding funds, house down payments, or really ANY kind of support as an adult (many of these things related to rites of passage). Not only do I not have that (and never will) but I am still providing support to my own parent and younger siblings. I'd like to have kids of my own, and that window is closing, but I'm terrified that I can't afford them, especially without family support.
I'm working on these feelings. I know they're toxic and unproductive. But damn is it hard to just let go.
A fashion RUclipsr I like made a video about fashion trends vs. what people wear IRL (by literally observing people on the train) and she said something that made me think. She said ''while in fashion vintage and distressed looks are fashionable people wear very clean and new clothing IRL'' and that's definitely true.
Wearing overly distressed or old looking stuff by choice is a rich people's thing. I even heard how British aristocrats will wear their decades old fancy wool clothing with holes and stuff like that. Or think Balenciaga or even wearing workwear for fashion. And the reason is that these people can do that because they ''don't have anything to prove to anyone''.
Working class people are judged on their clothing and it literally dictates how people will deal with you. My family had this obsession with pristine and pressed clothing (and getting something new as often as possible, even if low quality, and an aversion to thrift stores) for this same reason - to make sure we would be treated a little better.
That's unfortunate. There are some really good clothes in theift stores, whereas cheap new clothes fall apart pretty quickly, especially nowadays. I avoid department store clothes and mall clothes unless I need something for a specific occasion.
@@kaedatiger Yes, of course! I myself favour thrift stores nowadays, especially for the quality but the point still stands in my opinion. Wearing noticeable vintage stuff is very different if you are working class or a rich/middle class person with all the other signifiers of wealth apart from the clothing you wear on you.
@@shironerisilk That's very true. They're also usually wearing better brands even when it's shoddy clothes.
British aristocrats wearing old fancy wool clothing with holes is a bit of myth. I used to live in an area which had plenty of 'Old Money' types, and you could definitely tell those shirts and chinos were not from H&M. They might have some odd items in their wardrobe from their grandparents but they have plenty of new and often tailor made clothes, also young people. Also, whilst it's true that most of them don't wear flashy brands on everyday basis, the amount of Chanels, Hermes etc. on charity dinners or some other types of gathering frequented mainly by this type of people is absolutely staggering.
What youtuber are you talking about? I would live to listen to their videos
I'm 32 and grew up house poor. My parents made enough to buy a house that gave the illusion of wealth, but we never had money for vacations, back to school clothes, or... food, a lot of the time. I love my parents but they didn't know how to bridge the class gap. I really attribute my workaholism to this upbringing, and while I'm much more stable now I still feel I'm in constant danger of falling back into scarcity. If you do, by some miracle, make it out, you might be tasked with helping to stabilize the rest of your family as well. There's really no way out completely.
Amen I can totally relate to that
The thing about being tasked with stabilizing the rest of the family is a thing for sure. The problem with that is that some of them are poor because of poor choices, and no amount of my time and resources can overcome poor spending and saving habits.
I now have 2 grown children… and we are poor. I tried to hard. I was raised by my grandparents and we survived from their social security checks and payday loans. I joined the Army at 17 and went to nursing school.. assuming I had made it out of the poverty cycle… I had a baby and got sick… 18 years later I am back to a cycle similar to how I was raised. I was so close to a better life and it felt like it was ripped away. Hopelessness is what really does society in.
My parents never let me realize how "poor" we were. It wasn't until I went to college that I found out about all the things they had insulated me from.
But they taught me the value of money, how to build credit, and ensured that I never get in debt (like they were).
I had the same experience! My mom worked so hard to shield me from the potential statistic that I could’ve become, coming from a single mother, immigrant household. She tried to give me so much access to things that the people around me didn’t have, that I felt like one of the most privileged people. The moment I went to my PWI, I realized how abnormal most of my life was for others. And also just how dangerous where I grew up really was. It’s always interesting when you have that shift in perspective, once you’re put into a different environment.
And even that is a privilege. Poverty was coupled with abuse and extreme parentification in my childhood, which has definitely taken its toll both on my mental and physical health. That's why it's so important to understand that there are many variations on an experience and all are valid. Glad to hear you had parents like that.
I had the opposite experience. My parents constantly told me what we couldn't afford and we were "too poor." As an adult I recognize we were very middle class. It made me obsessed with money though, so I guess I can't be too annoyed by it.
Just a thought to consider.....
In the US & I imagine elsewhere the actual process of "building credit" is really about taking on debt and then repaying that debt, ON TIME, with interest.....IOW debt must precede "credit".
I know your parents meant well but try as hard as you can to avoid that trap.
Having "good credit" is about proving to someone you'll pay back *their* money they lent.....money you didn't have in the first place.
Good luck
@@churchofmarcussimilar experience but I'm pissed. I just grew up poor-ish with no financial education.
This was a hard watch for me. The anger and resentment from not having money to do sports, or other fun hobbies (like martial arts) still affects me. Now being in my mid twenties, I can finally afford to do the things I wanted to do as a child. But now I feel a little old to be starting things like ballet, and I’m a bit scared to see how “far behind” I am compared to others. I know I shouldn’t be. Growing up in poverty comes back to haunt me in the most random ways. Frequently.
The really wonderful thing is there are now classes specifically for beginner adults in things like that. The one I have noticed the most is figure skating which is an expensive sport and traditionally you have be young when you start. Where I live most figure skating clubs have started offering not just skating but figure skating lessons to adults which is so nice. So go take the ballet lessons! There will be others in the same situation as you.
Growing up poor and "making it" as an adult, the biggest carryover is the inability to connect with the middle class peer group. I cannot and never have been able to connect with my white collar peers. It's hard to pin point, but the we think, communicate, our values, concerns, aspirations, approach to problems etc. All entirely different on a core level. It just feels like constant friction.
My advice (from the middle class) is to make food your thing. Everyone eats, and you can be a food snob about your. Homemade food. Start bragging about how you've found a cheaper way to have the same high quality food (the middle class loves a deal) and that can carry a 5 min conversation. Idk, act like a child and every new experience can be a talking point. People love showing their friends new experiences, maybe they'll be so incredulous you've never had X, they'll want to take you to try it. That would be my angle at least.
@@M.M.Y.B Yeah not bad advice at all. I'm bad at small talk and I come off as kinda intense (again, growing up poor makes you rough around the edges) so middle class ppl tend to perceive me as an uncomfortable person lol.
Do you HAVE to connect with "them?" Just because a certain group of people are at a certain socially accepted form of success, it doesn't mean their ideas or ways of being are right or "better." If you thought like that, then the richest man in the world's behavior would be the most "correct." Don't kiss up to the snobs, their entire way of being is corrupt and twisted. They're heartless ghouls.
@@izzybennet.t The idea of preserving resources and living with less that comes from growing up poor takes on a whole new meaning in this climate change awareness era, speaking of that naively-selfish attitude lol.
Took me 20+ years after college to become “upper middle class.” I’ve moved up in life but never forgotten how hard it was. Income inequality is a real thing and unions are integral to fighting back against corporate greed. My kids attended “elite” top 10 colleges and both have become successful professionals, but we have hopefully made them aware of their privilege, with the intention they will always reach back to lend a helping hand.
For me, the biggest case of the "growing up poor tax" is the lack of opportunity I had in college to do things to get myself ahead. I had to work every day after class to be able to afford rent that my parents absolutely could not pay. Because I had to work, I could never take an unpaid internship which in my field were huge advantages, because I couldn't do the internships I got overlooked for scholarships and the paid opportunities. Since I had no money, I would sometimes skip classes or labs to pick up shifts/work special events that paid more money. This obviously lowered my grades since the amount I was working meant I couldn't study as hard or as much as a lot of my classmates. It really held me back from being the student I knew I could be when I didn't have to support myself. If I had never met my spouse who is from a family with modest generational wealth, I don't think I would have been able to make it on my own.
41:16 “Ultimately the biggest cost is time.” Exactly! Low-income workers are more likely to work long, underpaid hours, not including the unpaid labour of household chores, cooking etc. just to survive
When we were growing up my mom had to go to her parents to ask for money to buy toilet paper and some basic foods. This has led to 35 years later she still feels the intense need to have at least 3 packages of 24 rolls in the house at all times. The scarcity mindset is real and so often not understood by those who didn't live it. Also: we didn't run out in 2020 so...win ❤
You know, I never thought about the fact that my family having a closet full of paper towels, toilet paper, bar soap, hand soap… Was all based on a scarcity mindset, but it makes perfect sense. And it’s ironic because I grew up trying so hard to not have a cluttered house from hoarding, and it was probably because of knowing subconsciously that it came from my family growing up not having enough.
This hit home, as I feel compelled to have a pristine pack of toilet paper in the cupboard, as well as replacing the open pack of tp before using up the last 2 rolls.
That is coming from a challenging childhood when my birthmother would have us remove and successfully transport tp rolls from public restrooms with more than one roll. I began refusing to steal tp when I realized that it was stealing, not "borrowing."😮😢
I always went to what were considered inner city schools but a lot of us were high scoring students and thought we did fine. Like you mentioned, we were all around the same socioeconomic level so what we had was just the norm. It wasn't until we went to college that we realized just how many opportunities were available to those in better schools and areas, even in the same district as us. There was definitely a sense of jealousy sometimes and a lot of "what if-ing". Although we did good for the area we came from we did question if we could have done even better had we had more resources available. It was a rude awakening for a lot of us when we got to biology/chemistry and realized we had no idea how to use a microscope or any of the equipment because our school didn't have enough money to have a working science lab. Of course some people went above and beyond but it was wild to see how much more we had to do individually to get what had just been expected and handed to others.
This really speaks to me. I grew up bouncing between poor and lower middle class, lived for the first decade after high school in one of the most expensive cities in the world (Vancouver, Canada) where I worked minimum wage and tried to get a university degree. All I got from Vancouver was debt and realizing I will never be able to get ahead enough.
Now I’m married to someone who makes good money and I’m more stingy than when I was poor because I’m so scared of getting back to that life.
I am so like you! I delay replacing old stuff until they are very worn or broken.
This year I met a wonderful man. Handsome, smart, kind. He's doing well in his life and comes from a good family, and at the time I was and still am battling homelessness. I tried to cancel our first date because I didn't want to burden him w my dram but he insisted.
I enlisted in the military and intend to pay the price for a better life, but it kinda hurts my heart to realize that a lot of girls meet men like him all the time and go on dates Like that all the time.
He seems Like a prince to me, but many other girls my age consider him average. Deep down, I know there's nothing I can do to stop him from meeting someone with a better job, disposable income and more to offer who's just as nice and pretty as me.
I hope with the help from the army ill be able to have a stable, normal life. But things like getting married or getting to go to another country some day seem SO far away 😮😅😢
It's so EASY to make bad choices when all your opportunities are bad. It's so easy to make good choices when all your opportunities are good
It is a weird thing, but since my parents could only buy cheap plastic glasses for me when I was a kid, as an adult, I will spend the extra money (or now credit) to feel good about my appearance. I felt so ugly as a kid and did not like wearing my glasses.
Also, as an adult, before the pandemic I had a pretty good paying job (the most I've been paid at $65k), but I fell into a group of friends who made $110-130k salaries. They would freely spend $150 on a Christmas present, or other non-event presents. It was tough matching them. I now am still on a pandemic pay cut, and really can't afford friend anymore. it is also good to not be friends above your budget, because a $100 meal for them might not be a big deal, but it could be a lot for one's own budget.
I really hated as a kid living in a house of a bunch of broken things, so when I moved out, I tried to make sure my stuff (like a window screen, dishwasher, etc) worked. In the last years of the pandemic pay pinch, my house is in disrepair. My foundation is cracked, causing the front door to not open, plus the cracks in the wall. My microwave light needs to be replaced. My toilet squeaks. I guess I understand how when you can't afford to fix something, you just can't afford it.
Every day started with a hunt for clean socks in my memory. Socks are so cheap. Why were we put through this!? I have so many now.
I also had a lot more money before the pandemic…
I see it differently. Some of my friends are also high income, but they really don't mind hanging out with us. I know it is weird, but you are one of the people who are capable of "bringing the rich down". You gotta find ways to make them become comfortable with spending less and accept humble experiences. The longer they live in their wealthy bubble, the worse it becomes for themselves. On the other hand, if they are open about their struggles, you can also see more of what it takes to be human. Class segregation is, sadly, a psychological, instinctual thing... Sucks to be tribalist.
The only glasses covered by Medicaid were cheap child sized frames. It was so humiliating to be 16 and forced to wear glasses meant for prepubescent children. It was physically painful to wear and wore my skin down, but my vision was too poor to make it a choice.
If u can’t afford to have something fixed by someone else then yeah..u just do without but I grew up poor..oldest of 6 kids…yeah my parents had messed up priorities and shouldn’t have had so many damned kids and my being the oldest suffered the most because of the sacrifice I was expected to make so that my siblings could have what they wanted…meaning I didn’t go to the doctor or dentist unless it was an emergency…and even then I was treated like trash by the dentists…had an accident on the playground at 8 where one of my front teeth was busted in half, broke my nose and crushed my cheekbone and apparently caused head trauma…idk about it until I was 30 when I became chronically ill and X-rays showed I’d been in a severe accident …I never went to the doctor for it when I was a kid…cuz my parents couldn’t afford the bills and we didn’t qualify for welfare because my parents were married and white…..so when people talk about my white privilege…it pisses me off…even the church that hosted the school I was attending when the accident happened told my parents too bad…sue us. Leaving me disfigured for half my life….but that church has helped non parishioners who were colored skin pay bills and put deposits on rentals for them or paid Al their medical bills for them without question but wouldn’t help my parents pay for my medical bills at all…I honestly have seen the exact opposite of what’s being gaslit to believe
My point is…if u can’t afford to have it fixed…that’s when u say ok,…I’ll fix it myself…and u learn how to fix things…I’m a 5’ tall petite white woman and I’ve fixed my own central ac, roof, vehicles, I’ve even fixed the tv when it wouldn’t turn on…bad capacitors…I refuse to take no for an answer
Im a cis white male who grew up on welfare in a house afflicted with drug addiction issues in an incredibly low income portion of middle America and having to become a secondary "parent" for my younger siblings. Oof that was a mouthful.
This video sparked tears in my eyes thinking about how far I have come from that position in society. Thank you so much for this video. I will likely be rewatching multiple times and sharing with my friends and family. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'm an Asian-Canadian female but man, I can relate to your being a second parent for younger siblings. Poverty also sucks. If I see anyone else romanticising poverty again I shall throw a fit.
@@norikotheguardian it always hurts me seeing people act like being poor isn't that bad and is able to be rectified off an attitude change. My relationship with my siblings is something I would consider priceless but it came at a steep expense on my mental health and the feeling that I was "robbed" of parted of my childhood. Im sorry we both had to deal with being a secondary parent and poverty.
@@LordDestrus Ha! If I weren't so absurdly poor, I'd be putting my money to good use and helping as many people as I could. I'm always angry at rich people who spend all their money on partying, while I'm dirt poor and wish I just had enough to help those living on the bloody streets.
@@norikotheguardian i feel exactly the same.
Nobody deserves to be without food/water, shelter, education, public transportation & hygiene/healthcare.
I truly believe if these needs were met for society, we would all be in a much better place mentally & physically.
@@LordDestrus I have so much I want to offer the world but I'm trapped in survival mode myself. It makes me really really pissed. Sigh
The size differences between green spaces/parks depending on low or high-income housing environments is especially disastrous when you consider how green spaces help reduce ambient local temperature, runaway storm runoff, and improve wellness. You may think it would come down to a funding issue (less property tax value, etc.), but Strong Towns research has shown that, overwhelmingly, low-income neighborhoods are subsidizing the sprawl costs of suburbs (including their larger parks). Curious! "Blaming poor people for being poor" is not even a new concept either (there's commentary on this in a section of "Slaughterhouse Five"). With that in mind, I'm hopeful with the coming generations we really can start neutralizing this way of thinking.
I think a big factor is that with low income housing, the developers’ goal is to cram as much housing onto the lot as they can, leaving things like parks afterthoughts. The greedier the developers, the tighter the housing. And for publicly funded housing, again the goal is to fit as much housing as possible.
I work in architecture. You would be shocked at the new “luxury” studio apartments that are being built. They’re basically glorified subsidized housing with LVT and quartz countertops.
People are getting cheaper with their money and land and square footage is getting more expensive. The only people who can really afford to build nice things are the people with money. Unfortunately though, most of the housing being built is funded by greedy developers.
I agree with you, but what do you mean by subsidize? Like in which way? Just curious.
@@keashablew7728i would assume in terms of transportation and infrastructure, in an urban enviroment less infrastructure and especially transportation such as roads are needed, not to mention that gas in the USA I believe is subsidized, of which suburban teants use more of.
Love seeing people talk about Strongtowns, NJB etc. Urban design has such a huge impact on our lives and until recently has gone completely unremarked on.
@keashablew What they mean by subsidize is that wealthier areas don't/can't pay for themselves in tax revenue. Counterintuitively, the poorer areas tend to earn more money for the city and are effectively subsidizing the rich neighborhoods.
The reasons it works this way are complex but a few things are recurring themes - poorer areas have more density than richer areas (more houses per city block, more revenue); poorer areas are more likely to have mixed use zoning (commercial buildings get taxed higher than residential); poorer areas have more taxable structures than richer areas (more apartments, convenience stores, even light industry like auto shops, whereas rich areas are just single family homes and a lot of non-taxable infrastructure like roads, parks, boat docks, etc).
The tax you pay for being poor is fear. You are defined by a fear of lack, success, stability, money, etc. You are always reaching for a way to overcome that fear but it is always remain. What you have to learn is how to move forward carrying that fear with you.
This is a really good point.
Wow, this point really hit the nail on the head. I notice I'm always, ALWAYS anxious about my financial stability- or perceived stability, who knows really. One wrong misstep and it's back to clamouring for scraps of it, that thought is always somewhere at the back of my head. If you've managed to learn how to move forward while carrying that ever present fear, how did you manage to take the first step?
@@serah3521 Accepting the fear and using it to help me. I had to honest about what was important to me and not worry about what my friends and family thought.
thank you for sharing the video, it's a very important topic. I grew up very very poor: I was often told about how we don't have enough money to pay for electricity, I hated my birthday and Christmas because our gifts was food. slightly better food on those days. I still have unhealthy relationship with money:
while all my peers can ask their parents for help; while others have a home to come back to when it's hard, i have nothing to return to. i can only rely on myself.
I want to go on a nice vacation but i have this anxiety surrounding money: I need to save save save, what if I lose everything and have nothing left?
I watch other people around me and realize I'm so behind and I didn't even have a childhood. i had to grow up so early. I had to work three jobs in college so couldn't even enjoy my college years. I was thrown straight into adulthood
I absolutely feel you. I grew up with similar insecurities in a single mother household where she struggled to feed her three kids.
I felt humiliated going to college, I am a smart person and am now a scientist, but I struggled in classes. I blamed myself at first, like I somehow wasn't trying hard enough even though I was working full time and going to school full time and barely able to take care of myself. I realized later that almost all of the other students in the program didn't have to work because their parents were paying for everything. I did what I needed to to get by and it really hurt my self esteem at the time, but now in my career, I am shining.
My advice to you is, find people in your life other than family. My best friend and her family were there for me when I almost had to go live on the street for a year and a half. They couldn't provide much, but let me sleep in a spare bed without paying anything. I am so happy to have met my 'adopted' family.
Also, keep in mind with money-- once you have your safety fund, and you save up adequately for your vacation, that you'll be ok.
One thing that surprised me with all of my struggles is even as a broke college student, I still lived better and more stable than I ever did growing up in my broken home. Every time my husband freaks out about finances I am always able to tell him we're fine. We are able to afford our place and reliably have food on the table.
You deserve to be able to enjoy yourself and have worked incredibly hard. I wish you the best!
As someone who grew up in a very well-off family (still working full-time but never worrying about money), I definitely can see how I've come out on the other side of this. I have functionally no savings but feel comfortable enough to seriously consider going into debt for things as insignificant as "This backpack is bigger and somewhat inconvenient to fit under the seats on the train, I should buy a smaller laptop so I can carry my smaller backpack to work instead".
I'm not going to go into debt to buy that laptop as doing so is financially irresponsible, but it has been a significant eye-opener for me to become friends with people who have $10k in savings as a college freshman but refuse to spend $50 on extremely useful and necessary tools for their work.
The confidence that I will receive my next paycheck on time, that said paycheck is likely to grow in the near future, that I could find another comparably-paying job if I get fired, that I have family I could borrow money from or live with if needed, causes me to be SO much riskier with money than I am in almost every other area of life.
It's better not to look at other people or you get an unhealthy fantasy
I would like people to know (not that they care) that growing up in poverty is one of the most isolating and traumatizing experiences a child can go through. There are so many things that go along with being poor like mental illness, abuse of all kinds, neglect. The most memorable things is the pain of hunger. Being the poor kid in school with the mentally ill mom that disappeared all the time made it so that I didnt have a single friend as a child. I lived a quiet, sad, lonely, dirty painful life as a kid. Now I’m a poor adult with no friends or future just existing. Not for lack of trying to change my station in life. But I’ve resigned myself to a lonely life of poverty.
I bought my first "computer" at 16 years old with my own money. A tiny netbook from Wal-Mart for about $200, on sale. I was overjoyed.
I met a girl at a community dance who was from one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the city, and had an incredibly bizarre experience the first (and last!) time I went to her house: she had a Macbook that she broke in frustration when her reality show wouldn't play. I looked on incredulously. Now she had no computer! She just laughed and said her dad would replace it again, and that it'd be the third time.
I couldn't fathom that. And I used my little netbook until it no longer functioned at all. It was one of the most eye-opening experiences for me; I knew I would simply never be so reckless and carefree. My single mother could never have replaced the netbook, let alone a Macbook!
I've watched you for many years Chelsea. Just want to say that this is exactly the kind of honest talk that we need to be having. As someone who grew up a first-generation immigrant with no money, and now working a white collar job - these conversations are basically taboo in higher SES circles. No one wants to talk about them. And even their insinuation will lead to awkward silence. I've learnt to just not even bother having these types of conversations anymore with some people - but it's so good to see that the message is still getting out there somehow. Thanks Chelsea - keep doing what you're doing.
It is expensive to be poor. i changed my social class but i’ve been in crisis mode my entire life. i was laid off twice in the past 12 months, and my reaction was to plan on losing everything and live in a car like we did when i was 11 or 12.
oh gawd honey those fears actually left scars. i'm pushing 60 - who's gonna hire an "old man"? - and the same fears are all through me, too. i've survived this long, you will too. God bless. sure hope you eventually have a measure of peace in your heart.
What I also find hard is changing jobs.
I don’t live in the states, but I can imagine it to be equally hard if you chose the “wrong” education and wanting to change the field you work in to get to a higher income, it’ll take time and recourses you might not have or can’t afford, even if there is partial financial help from the state, program or scholarship.
And there is this giant difference between theory and practice. My education should allow me to work in certain places, but without a bachelor and/or masters degree you will never be able to get in.
Yep! I respec'd into a new career a few years out of college. Luckily the need was very high so I was able to earn as I paid tuition fees for my certification, but I would be in a very different financial situation if I had gotten the training as an undergrad. But, surprise, 19-year-old me who had never worked outside of janitorial work and fast food did not know what she wanted to do with her life. I just knew what classes I found interesting.
@@Kfroguar This speaks to one of the big flaws in our education system. People go through required schooling and then on to college if they're fortunate, and are expected to figure out what they want to do real quick, usually within the first two years as lots of colleges expect you to declare a major by then. There are lots of people who do know what they want to do early, but many more don't. And while I think any work experience is valuable, the jobs that are actually available to high schoolers and college students are often the sort that only motivate you to finish college because you never want to go back to those kinds of jobs.
@@ariwl1 Agreed! My high school did have opportunities to get hands-on job experience and training, but it was pretty much only for trades and it meant you were limited in what classes you could take due to time constraints. I don't regret the social science/language degree I got, as what I learned enriches my life and I use the skills I developed literally every day. And some of the things that led me to my current career had to be learned through experience (e.g. the pros/cons of working public sector vs. private). That said, having a year or two before starting university where I worked medium-term in an office and in a classroom and in a hospital etc. would have really helped me narrow down what I needed.
TL:DR I don't regret my own path, but I want it to be easier for the next person to find their academic and vocational passion.
@@Kfroguar Agreed. Life will always have its challenges, but our society delights in pushing some on our citizens that really don't need to be there.
No, you could definitely get in by networking, but the only way to get the networking is by having money in the first place...
The privilege of a second chance. Yupp. The pressure to get it right first time PARALYSED ME so i stayed safe.
facing this right now and it’s making me actively depressed
Yeah, I had one shot in getting good score in national exams to get into the university. My family hadn’t had the means to pay the - back then - 300 usd/year tuition.
We aren’t in the USA, but even that low of a tuition was impossible for us.
Second chances weren’t a thing for us
This is why I put off getting an education lol. I just got an amazing chance to further my studies and decided to take it after trying to get a higher paying job. All jobs (that I want to / can do) need a bachelors!
Wearing a $445 cardigan because growing up poor with next to no clothes that were either thrifted or stolen, I know having money now it was a dumb decision but for me it really was an "I made it" moment, I'm still not living in luxury but the fact I could afford it is huge for me.
I grew up middle class. I am lower middle class. My wedding dress cost little more than your cardigan and most of my clothes are from Vinted or Primark. Almost everything I own: appliances, electronics, furniture, car etc are second hand. But the only debt we have is a mortgage that we're paying off early. My purebred huskies can sit on their oxblood leather chesterfield in front of a marble fireplace because I didn't pay retail for any of it.
Yes, I bought a loewe hammock for my 50th, because finally, I could. I am back to saving and spending carefully again now😅
Right like. 😊 I just got done with my military training and I wa sao careful with the money I got paid. I put it in index funds ,HYS account and a Roth IRA. The test is carrying me through a job search.
But I felt like a STAR ❤🌟 when I got buy something at the Aritzia store like I'd always wanted
This is not a shade to you or anyone else who does this, but it’s amazing how much luxury purchasing among the working and middle classes has become normalized. This was not a thing 20 or 30 years ago like it is now.
@@pisceanbeauty2503 It's definitely got worse over the decades. We've gone from Nike/Adidas being the in thing to Burberry, to Chanel etc. The trendy brands are getting more expensive and exclusive. I blame credit cards and buy now pay later. People weren't always able to spend money they don't have so easily.
Touching on the scarcity mindset.
Even if you are able to work your way to a potential second chance, it's often later in life, and the stakes are higher. Bandwidth is limited. Compounded further by a sense disconnection to success from remediation of any knowledge gaps without much external structures to guide you.
yup. feeling this one right now.
Yeah, this is where I'm at right now. The lack of guidance through external structures is hard. I'm trying and doing better (mostly through luck, honestly) but it's like I have hit a wall and I don't know which way to turn..
One of the worst things I was ever told or even told myself was to be thankful I even have a job. If it wasn’t for always striving for better and improving my education and skills, I’d still be at near minimum wage. I now am in the trades at six figures owning my own home and don’t owe anything on my tundra truck.
A truck is useless and gets poor gas mileage 😢
@@victorbaird8220lol its easy to judge. But not everyone wants a eco car. Some people want a fun car. If you are concerned about gas prices, maybe avoid a car all together
Amazing! You’re a great example of meritocracy working out- your mindset and hard work paid off 😊
Unfortunately I am thankful for the measly job and hours I have cause if I do try to strive for more the government would take away my dads disability benefits and then my entire family would be worse off 😔 and it’s completely on the government and how the systems work
@@Cryinginthecloudssss you could always strive for much more so you don't have to rely on benefits that's a thought. Government support programs are designed to keep people broke.
I really appreciate you mentioning the military industrial complex. As a female veteran who was medically retired it took me years to become financially stable and it was largely due to sharing the expenses with my partner and exhusband. I'd love to see a video on the intersection of military's mispending (DOD has never passed an audit), predatory targeting, divorce rate, and poor education of soldiers on financial management.
To say nothing of the myriad towns which live and die on military spending. Lest we forget, the main character in the movie Falling Down was a defense industry engineer who, after the Cold War ended, saw his firm downsize.
I’m also a medically retired female vet and I feel like I could’ve written this, the way they will sell poor kids a dream and give them no kind of guidance for how the Real World™️ operates is sick!
@gxldrxsh444 The worst part is they do make you go to financial management classes! But the training and education is so bad you might as well not go.
@@NJGuy1973 Very true, we're sustaining our country's economy off military spending.
Comment on the Policing the Poor chapter- I lived in Spain and the city I was in took the exact opposite approach. Public transit and green spaces were purposefully built in low income and mostly immigrant areas. One housing project was built in the most desirable area in the city, between a botanical garden and the beach. It made me realize for the first time that these environmental features I always considered as a premium growing up in the U.S. can actually be accessible for everyone.
The discussion of poverty directly ties in to how current generations and the ones coming up are having fewer children, if they end up having any at all. There is a long list of reasons why someone may choose not to have kids, but feeling like they aren't financially stable enough to do so is one of the most prevalent. I recently watched a video that talked about this and, of course, the comment section was littered with people saying things like "If you're not having kids, it's because you haven't prioritized having them" and saying, I'm guessing not coincidentally, all the same things people use to derail the conversation every time we try to talk about the housing affordability problem. "You need to get a better job. Move where it's cheaper. Stop spending all your money on luxuries." etc. etc. These same commenters also assumed people weren't having kids because they couldn't provide them lavish childhoods, when what most of the childless were REALLY worried about was being able to have children in clean, safe, and stable housing and being able to afford their healthcare.
And if it wasn't that kind of just willful deflection, then they just made the case that growing up poor was...fine I guess? Essentially the argument was if the child made it to adulthood then all's well that ends well, completely denying that growing up in extreme poverty leaves a mark. I remember reading this interview of a man who grew up in poverty, as in literally sleeping on a dirt floor kind of poverty. He managed to get out and become successful, but even into his 50s he still had anxiety over money just up and vanishing on him some day (and he was a millionaire by this point).
I grew up lower middle-class in a developing country, and my family was poor for several years. I had classmates from rich families (they're not richie rich, but their parents earned a lot more than mine), and seeing them made me think about avoiding low waged jobs.
Long story short, I now work in a Nordic country. I have a decent salary to spoil myself even after sending some money home. I live in a nice basement apartment in a nice neighbourhood. It's a humble life by Nordic standard, but I'm living my childhood dream to have a bedroom as nice as the ones my rich friends had and live in a house as nice as the ones their parents had.
The trade-off is I'm childless at 35 and I don't think I'll ever have any kids
I think internships are one of the US's biggest scams. It's unpaid labour (the "u" should tell you I'm not in the US myself). I have never come across them anywhere else in the world. I recently retrained and took a six month internship. I was required to be paid minimum wage, but the company had a policy of paying a living wage (i.e. one that would cover rent, other living expenses and allow for a small amount of savings), so I counted myself very lucky.
I come from Poland, we also have unpaid internships. While you can actually gain some experience in some jobs, at the bank where I was 'hired' my main duty was getting lunch for full-time employees.
It's a way for the wealthy to gatekeep good careers, same reason our education is so overpriced and the good jobs require impossible levels of certifications and extra schooling. Poor kids cannot afford to go to medical school here. Unpaid internships are class violence.
Unpaid internships are a thing, sure, but they're illegal and don't help your career. The best internships pay. It's sad that this scam still works on people who don't have anyone to protect them.
Some unpaid internships are fine. When your internship is basically observing and making school assignments about what the job is like, it makes sense the company doesn't pay you for that. If you're basically an employee with employee responsibilities, you should be paid as an employee
Canadian, some internships are paid (engineering comes to mind) but many are not (social work, psychology, nursing, teaching)
being the only "high earner" in the family being a hamster wheel is so real. No matter how much i make, everyone always has a new emergency that's prevents me from being able moving forward in my own life
THIS
I was attempting to finish Itaewon Class recently (and failed) and remembered how touched I felt by the character of Soo-Ah, a girl who grew up in a group home (what we like to call orphanages) who escapes poverty by taking a chance to attend college with the funding of the villain of the story and then workingfor him. This character gets so much hate (much of it was due to her not bending over the male lead) because she took that opportunity. That character for me was the embodiment of the fear of knowing you will very likely not get another opportunity to escape your circumstances. That privilege of second chances is real. This fear for me manifests in aggressive saving and planning. Sounds great on paper but hop in this brain for a day...
I too have started thinking aggressively about saving money since I have started thinking about having a baby and buying a house. I am feeling like my life will only be about saving money so that I can have a home that I can pass to my children so they won't have to struggle in future since the inflation is only going to go up.
And since I started putting money in saving accounts and investing in market the phrase - money makes money ' has hit me so hard.
Chelsea, I suggest covering how the new FAFSA has just made college loans inaccessible to many in the middle and lower middle classes, ostensibly so that more poor people can qualify for financial aid, though that makes no sense at all since poor people already qualified, and a lot of poor people are getting LESS last year, despite having less income in 2022 than 2021. Especially families with two or more people in school-the EFC has been replaced by a “Student Aid Index,” which corresponds to how much a family is expected to pay for college…like the old EFC, only it’s no longer divided between students. It’s like if your EFC was $20k and two people were in school, rather than that $20k being divided to $10k each, it now being just $20k EACH, so $40k. There are other changes too that are really screwing people, like step-parent income is now seen as usable for school expenses, even if the parent and step-parent didn’t marry until a student was already 20. The SAI is so high for so many people-a full half, in some cases, with loans so hard to get and even Sallie Mae, with usurious interest rates, requiring very good credit and income now. They’re pushing these Parent PLUS loans, which are entirely inaccessible to independent students working on a bachelors.
College was already expensive, but it’s just gotten worse. And the sale is that middle and lower middle income people who complain are being accused of not wanting to help poor people. Stopping people from being able to go to school isn’t helping poor people. It’s just preventing more people from being able to go to school, which is likely to result in increased tuition, raising rates for those still going. I’m halfway to a degree, and since we were given no heads up, had no chance to save the thousands of dollars it’ll take. I had to drop my degree. I know a lot of people in this position. And as far as this being to help the poor who already qualified for max grants and loans? Not only have those limits not even gone up, many are qualifying for less. A friend of mine, whose income dropped in 2022 from 2021 AND had another kid, she’s getting a full $3,000 less.
You should email this to them.
This is the first I’d heard of this. Thank you for taking the time to describe this situation.
Hate this system. My parents are old and retired and have a good amount of money in the bank. They do not want me to go to college because it's against their beliefs. I am not getting any of their money. I live on my own and have for a good while, I've been working since I got my license. I worked my ass off trying to make money and get good grades for scholarships. I graduated hs with above a 4.5 gpa. Took all the AP/Dual Credit courses I physically could.
Wanna guess how much money I get from the FAFSA?
$840
Wanna guess how much I get in scholarships?
$8,000
All together, it's quite a bit. It's a good 9k. And I'm thankful for that. It's still less than a third of my yearly tuition, but yk it is what it is.
What gets me is the fact that, if I, someone from a more "privileged" background, is having this difficulty, HOW TF DO THEY EXPECT PEOPLE IN WORSE SITUATIONS TO DO THIS
Oh shit my son still got over a decade before we can consider college but if things don’t change by the time he is I will have to stir him from college bc I’m still paying off debt and it was a waste of time for me
I am a twin. I will be going to college at the exact same time as my twin. College is bad enough with one kid at a time. Even a year or two age difference would have lightened the financial burden, but it still would be rough. The fact that they no longer take siblings into account is definitely a burden for my family. There was no way for my parents to predict the change to the FAFSA almost two decades into the future and prepare for it. My family isn’t poor, but we are certainly not rich enough to not worry and not have to plan for saving for college. My parents can’t double our college savings overnight. I may have to change my plans for college based on this tbh. Inevitably, there will be people who will be at a disadvantage because of the changes, and that happens to be my family. I will have to wait and see how my financial aid is though before completely panicking. I hope at the very least low-income people overall get more benefits, but it seems like your friend hasn’t 😢.
I grew up poor, and often went to bed hungry. I knew exactly how many calories I needed to still function, and for how long. Being hungry was just a normal state of existence for me. Needless to say I was skinny. As an adult I made sure to always have enough food so I would never go hungry again. But here what I didn't realize, I didn't actually know what being full was supposed to feel like. It was even an emotionally triggering experience as I dealt with 1. The anger at never being properly fed/cared for as a child. 2. The anxiety it brings bc I'm worried I just ate all the food and now I won't have any. 3. The fear that bc I'm full I won't be able to run away from danger fast enough. It literally took me until my mid 30's to finally learn how to eat. How to eat enough to feel full, and not just enough to keep moving. I've gained about 20lbs, which my doctor says is very healthy. The dizzy spells have gone away, and I look much healthier. So even after leaving my abusive, poverty stricken childhood home, there are still many random things that I have to learn, like how to eat.
In college Sociology class I learned that when you grow up poor , schools don't push for advanced classes for you and put you on the "dumb track" . It puts you at a disadvantage even in your education. Not to mention tax brackets affect the funding schools get. Poor folks like me don't even get a chance to start out on equal footing with an education .
lol I grew up poor and I was placed in gifted classes. Your sociology class is r-worded
@LB-yg2br it's not I'm white and I've lived in poor neighborhoods under the poverty line. Le gasp! There are poor white folks too!
@LB-yg2br I'm having to fight getting my son into the gifted classes for 2 years. He's to smart and bored.
@@HosCreates Not sure what you are going on about "there are poor white folks too". I literally just told you that I grew up poor. Yes I am white. You don't sound terribly swift yourself...
@@HosCreates lol you may not be the best judge of who is smart...given your posts...
Such a relatable video! Once you have experienced financial instability, that fear never leaves you. We live in very uncertain and unstable times, too, and that doesn’t help. I grew up poor with parents who did not have any financial savvy, so a double disadvantage. Hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don’t possess boots.
Growing up poor is something else. I've got my MBA and was able to take the last 2 years off dealing with burnout but have started running out of cash and competing to get a job in this market sucks...still I have nightmares of the bottom and if it weren't for my fiancé covering everything, I would easily be on the streets. No one talks about how burnout is also deadly for us that had to work 3 jobs our entire college and masters years only to burnout 5+ years into your career. Had I not had the opportunity to take this time off, I don't know what I would do. I've spent this time studying, getting certs, planning our wedding, helping my parents and extended family, and re-planning my financial life for the upcoming 20 years. It's insane...no one taught me this but thank God for RUclips University. Finance gurus literally changed the way I think of my finances and how to invest in my future.
Poor people are great for business, and this is why they want to ban abortions and then prevent any sort of paid family leave, subsidize childcare, etc, and tell people that single-income families are the ideal. If they truly cared about family and about children, lifting people out of poverty would be a priority, rather than keeping them impoverished with children they/we can't afford.
Something I learned from Harry Truman’s bio is that in the mid and late 1800’s it was extremely common for poor farmers to have 10-13 children each. They had much less than we did.
@@sarahuber8567 And? How is this relevant at all?
@@b3thamphetamine Very relevant it shows the amount of items in life which have been monetized and the rralities of the treasury inflating the value of money away by printing it. It shows that there were more accessible resources in bygone era where grit and hard work would take a person somewhere.
@@sarahuber8567 You may want to sit down for this, but it's 2024, not the 1800's, we don't live in an agrarian society anymore where we all produce most of our own food on our own land, our infant mortality rate isn't 30% anymore, and the only farmers who continue to do this are Amish.
Spot on.
This happened in my country a few decades ago.
The dictatorship outlawed not just abortions but contraceptives too. They didn’t bother to pretend it was a moral (or religious) issue, they came right out and said the country needs cheap labour.
They also closed the borders so nobody could go get abortions or contraceptives abroad.
The result: thousands of dead women (from unsafe amateur abortions) and thousands of abandoned babies (unwanted or orphaned).
Plus other aspects of a dictatorship: secret police, kidnappings, torture, poor living conditions, rationing, having to queue for food, no heat in the winter etc.
The dictator was eventually overthrown and executed by firing squad.
Family planning is legal now and widely practiced.
Living conditions are much better than in the old days. Not perfect, but definitely an improvement.
Societies that treat their poor this badly are making a choice to do so. They don’t NEED to treat them quite this badly. Even if they’re given a genuine living wage (and their labour is only slightly exploited), there will still be plenty of wealth anyway. What’s happening now stems from greed, not necessity.
I'm only 7 minutes in and already shocked how much I relate to your story. I too came from a weird mix of being lower class and simultaneously 'middle class' which led to a lot of problems for me growing up and even as an adult my social circle is pretty small because middle class people get to know me and think I am a lowlife or a disappointment once they catch wind of my true background, and working class people perceive me as overly formal or even accuse me of lying about my class background all the time because I 'act' so middle class. It's like you just can't win.
It was eye opening to see, from the perspective of someone who grew up quite poor, that the rich (millionaires not billionaires) struggled financially too, it just looks different. I ‘married’ into a wealthy family with wealthy lifestyles and I felt completely unmoored. Like, hearing people complain about loosing 100k on investments, buying a tiger, being in elite universities with secret underground societies, it all felt so obviously fake. The little reevaluations were the worst, like texting with proper grammar & punctuation, and keeping up with the high level of knowledge literally everyone around you has. When I was happy about such minuscule things, like a great find at a thrift shop, sharing that with friend groups always resulted in laughing or bemusement.
I have a thing for texting with proper grammar and spelling. I grew up lower middle class, but texting wasn't even a thing until I was older. People who use "textspeak" or bad grammar always come off as stupid or immature to me.
These takes always confused me. Do you also think people look immature when they use acronyms? Why should a message sent via smartphone in a nonprofessional setting look like you're writing a thesis statement in order to be seen as mature and literate? It's a text message not a dissertation.@@andreacook7431 Usually i use a mix of text speak and proper grammar lmao, it's more fun that way!
I come from a low income "trailer trash" background and I've been really lucky to have been able to go to college and then enter into a lucrative industry (IT), but even though I make a really good salary I still feel like I'm having to dig myself out of a pit of intergenerational poverty, and I'm not even having to take care of family members.
But it does feel like I am having to pay for things that a lot of my friends who come from middle class families either got a discount on or didn't have to pay at all. Like a car, for example. A lot of my friends got their cars second-hand and in decent condition from their family, or their parents just literally bought them a new car. Meanwhile I spend about $650 a month (on average) on my car loan, car insurance, gas, car maintenance, and toll road fees. I also can't go without a car where I currently live.
I wouldn't say I'm living paycheck to paycheck, but I do feel incredibly frustrated because all of the little things add up and I'm not able to save nearly as much money as I feel like I should be able to save and just like when I was poorer, there's still accidents and emergencies that happen that suck up any money I have been able to save and I'm just so tired of it.
In my experience, Information Technology being "lucrative" is false advertising. A degree, and experience growing up with a family computer repair business, only resulted in $11 per hour. Jobs on a nearby military base were sought by nearly the entire community, with the line of potential applicants looping around multiple times outdoors. Air conditioned desk jobs, high supply low demand, means low wages. The military weighs active service applicants higher, existing government employees higher, disabled members higher, and diversity applicants higher.
Software has been moving perpetually licensed thick clients, to cloud based subscription services in an effort eliminate local I.T. positions.
The smart phone market has not been friendly to the repair community, Loius Rossman has remarked that the path he took to success is no longer viable.
The entire industry is noted for obsoleting entire careers overnight. You are then overqualified and subject to age discrimination for general I.T. positions, while not qualified for specializations within the I.T. field/industry.
I thought I could avoid my career experience and skills becoming obsolete, but smart phones are a world apart from ATX computers. Microsoft Intune is unfamiliar to an old Active Directory guy before Azure became Entra. Batch scripting isn't quite Powershell scripting. Broadcom has been pushing the industry away from VMWare, so who knows how valuable VMWare cluster administration skills will be in a few years.
I worked for a company for 8 years, which includes the company going through a "7 year itch" which resulted in mass turnover of experienced individuals and management. Ambitious individuals have goals, and remaining with one employer may lead to stagnation. However, the support vacuum left behind results in higher risk exposure, and thus decreased job security. A new Chief Information Officer informed me that promotions would now include the same new hire probationary periods, which would result in termination. A promotion was now a means of firing tenured employees to reduce payroll costs.
A week ago, when my 3rd pair of shoes that I bought this month came in, I started to think, why always mid to late summer i get obsessed with buying shoes and always buy 2-3 pairs. Oh right, because I only would get 1 pair of shoes a year, and half the year they had holes in them. The same reason why my brother buys a pack of socks every week (I also buy too many socks). We don't want holes in our shoes or socks
Being born poor has made me wish I wasn’t born since I was 15 years old. Now I’m 25
have you improved your views in the last 10 years?
Yep, same! Poverty sucks!
Being born in poor pathological family with alcohol problems made me want to flee home and find better parents when I was 5
@@alexandrafuchs6482Same
0:56 I grew up homeless with my mother (who had me at 16) and 4 siblings. This speaks to me so much. My mother didn't finish high school. I am a first generation high school graduate, first generation college grad, and am the only member of my family to buy my own home. I cannot over state how much joining the military helped me get out of poverty.
There was a long stretch in my 20s where I made every financial mistake you can make tho. Looking back, I think I found comfort in having things when I should have been saving.
I grew up without parties, sleepovers, sports, or extracurricular activities. Thankfully, I had church and was a voracious reader, so I didn't feel deprived. I'm paranoid about being poor and homeless, so I avoid overspending. But I'm grateful for my experiences because I see the impact of debt on others and couldn't live that way myself!
Thank you for having a financial therapist on this! Feelings of defeat or being threatened (even when we're doing well) is so real and hearing it is helpful/healing to affirm where it's coming from.
I'm a CPA that specializes in affordable housing, NONE of these programs work together. You can make too much for healthcare but still be able to have housing, or if there's housing the waiting list is 6 years, it's all a mess. We need an all encompassing approach that doesn't leave people in the lurch.
The feeling of obligation to help family is not limited to immigrants. I think it is a poor people thing. I am ADOS ( just s descriptor, not politically) and often find myself feeling guilty that I am doing better than my family and I am constantly kicking out money. I am making more money than I ever have in my life but I am still afraid of big ticket purchases. I am single and child free, but I feel like I always has to have money liquid at all times in case my mom or sister needs something. Investing freaks me out because at any moment I may need to send them hundreds of dollars to meet their basic needs. Sometimes I feel resentful but I also worry that if something happens to my employment, not only will I not be able to take care of myself but I won't be able to support them.
I feel the same
Thank you. Australian here. For me, it was parents who were alcoholic, smokers, and gamblers. Mum gambled the rent money and we were homeless. Family, and then friend's familiy, thankfully took me in so I could finish my schooling. I wish this video was around 20 years ago so i could have "understood", where as i was so lost trying to recognise and understand my struggles as an adult compared to everyone else. I still struggle to integrate, but now learning to promote it as a strength to peers.
the biggest pill to swallow for me i think was hearing $60k/y be described as lower middle class. that's an unfathomably large amount of money to me. i guess you really don't know until you know.
I agree here in my rural mid/south Georgia county $60k a year for a household is considered living high on the hog!!!😂... I have 2 1/2 toddlers/kids and my wife and i make 50k a year combined!!! She is a county government worker and im a school janitor!!!
I live in NYC and make close to 60k and i cant afford to live without at least 2 other roommates. Its depressing as shit, esp when I saw the salary offer and thought I’d be able to at least afford a studio :/ nope im still in my college apartment 7 years out of school lmaoooo
60k to me would lower sooo much stress 😬, 😅 It blows my mind.
I made less than $11k last year in California. Not even enough to do taxes. This is shocking and scary
Its huge here, im guessing americans have different taxes etc compared to france (even tho in shops america seems cheaper..) and if u get 3k a month (a lot btw, i would say most parents get 2000 or so) its 36k for the whole year. That's huge.. so hearing 60k is normal??
And my parents can afford trips abroad for school trips (500€)
I’m one of seven kids of dirt poor SE Asian immigrants after the Vietnam war. We were dirt poor, but I don’t ever remember being unhappy or thinking “damn, we’re poor”. A lot of my cousins and friends also off the same boat were all in the same situation. We would go around and collect cans and dumpster dive for them and cash them in. When I was 13, we would go with my parents to work 12 hours at the ginseng farms in central WI, weeding, picking seeds, root picking, all for $60 so I’d have money for back to school. But for me, that was normal and I was happy to have loving parents and had so many friends and family. Now I’m a college grad, 42, making 175K, we own multiple homes and own 1,000 acres of farmland outright that we rent out to farmers. We still live a very modest life, all my clothes are old navy and Target, grocery shop at Aldi, and I’ve been driving the same Honda I bought new in 2006.
I totally agree on the issue of uploading documents to apply for benefits! Its crazy how many documents you need to be able to easily access and upload every 6 months to keep your benefits going. This is even more of an issue when you realize that the federal government cut the program that provided free internet and cellphones to those who received benefits. *Yes, some people still recieve free cellphone data or internet but those programs are no longer accepting new applications.* My fathers cell phone bill was $275 a month! I had to cut his cellphone service to pay the utility bills. Also, i lease my car because i could not afford to buy one. I had to trade in my car for a new lease just a few months ago and im now paying $368/month for the essentially the same car where as my old lease was $267/month. I know leaseing is not very wise financially but i didnt have enough money for a down payment to finance or even buy a used car.
Poor hygiene, dirty clothes , chronic starvation,neglect, abuse, exploitation,poor speech, being a loner.
I feel like I just got out of therapy. Damn, this was a good one.
Totally, all my recurring thoughts that they mention were kind of cathartic
The privilege of a 2nd chance is so true. I was a correctional nurse at one point. It broke my heart a lot of people jail biggest crime was being poor. Its hard to do all the things society expects when you have a record. If you have money you can hire an attorney that can likely keep stuff off your record or at least get it removed. I know several inmates I truly believe were innocent but took a plea deal. Most of the time it because the jail conditions were so bad they would rather go to prison and just move on. Imagine being stuck in artificial light no access sunlight or fresh or frozen fruits and veggies. I hate our legal system. It so wrong and we as country should be ashamed. I think death is more human than some of our jails and prisons.
I love when TFD goes into these kind of topics. I know it's a bit of crossover with Pretty Privilege (my other guilty pleasure personal finance topic) - missing teeth and bad teeth is such a visible signifier of class in North America and I am sure it leads to people getting lower paid jobs/not getting hired. (Oddly in the UK where I live now bad teeth are something of a signifier of being upper class sometimes!)
US here. I have 100% been turned down for jobs I was qualified for because my clothes weren't good enough and my teeth weren't that hollywood smile. Many industries here operate as a good old boys club and most of our hiring is based on looks and personality with qualifications only coming second.
I can really relate to these experiences you mentioned. I came from a lower middle class in Canada, and an immigrant. My parents never owned a house. We always rented. We never had new cars. I had to stay at home and commute to my nearby university. I had to spend 8 years getting a B.A. while I worked. I took public transit until I was 39 years old. I finally got a better salary around 39. I finally got married at 39 and had my only child at 42. Not saying I couldn't start my domestic life earlier but I knew that it would be a bigger struggle to have a child on a low income and that all I would do is perpetuate the semi-poverty for my child. In fact, the only reason, I believe, I got out of the cycle is because I delayed marriage, and especially delaying having a child, but I also got lucky in meeting my now husband, who had a better job than me and a more established family. Unfortunately, it came with the sacrifice of not being able to grow my family. By the time I was 33 years old I realized that life for the majority of us is not like it is on TV and the movies. It's important to consider that those writing scripts for films and producing films more often than not, come from middle upper class upbringing. Therefore, displaying entitled "milestones" in movie/TV media is normalized for them...because it really IS normal for them.
I really felt that animosity statement at 34:00. Anyone going through that, go to therapy, really work on trying to let it go because it's so toxic to your life now. I could have had a much better 20s if I wasn't so upset at how much I missed out on in childhood. I'm only now, in my 30s, really starting to enjoy my current life and not constantly think about what could have been. I feel like my childhood was survival, my teens and 20s were bitterness and guilt at having made it out, and only now am I living.
Nah, hell with that. No matter where I end up, I’m not gonna respect people whose mummy and daddy bought them their lives/jobs/etc. The game was rigged from the start and there’s no reason not to look poorly on the people who win just by existing.
@@simplyharkonnen You must know that there's a huge difference between people who grew up in a higher class than someone and trust fund babies who have everything handed to them. For me, anyone who grew up feeling safe in their own home had a luxury I never had. I am currently bringing my daughter up in that luxury. Bitterness only hurts the bitter person, trust fund babies won't care if you respect them but being angry all the time hurts your blood pressure and standard of living in the present. It took me years to learn this but hopefully, someone reads my comment and takes some steps towards speeding up their own process.
I was reluctant to watch this video as I knew it would be triggering. I was poor all the way to my mid twenties, only people who have experienced it know how much it puts you at a disadvantage in every aspect of life and how this mentally impacts you especially if your parents have no interest in your life. Currently I have dropped back down, due to a poor financial decision which was waiting for the right job, I should of remembered that this is a privilege awarded to the middle class. Luckily I don't need to worry about older family members as they were so traumatised by poverty they hardly spent their disposable income and saved for their retirement.
One thing rarely talked about are the ones who make it, who don’t give others assistance as well. I know there are people who don’t want to work very hard and push themselves, but there are some who are driven and hard working who just need a boost or a connection, but a lot of times the ego of the one who made it gets in the way of seeing others who came from similar circumstances succeed as well.
They're always quick to criticize as well.
Having that insight goes a long way. Even just a simple sign to point people in the right direction.
But Americans always think they're too good to talk with "outsiders."
I have escaped from poverty several times and honestly it seems just like weight loss, very easy to do but, hard to make it stick. You can get a good job but it only takes one big thing going wrong to send you right back to poverty.
"very easy to do" Yeah, right…
Depending on how I do it can be lol I lost over 20lbs in two weeks but it was obviously unhealthy and unsustainable to stick
Not necessarily "very easy to do" more so "fluctuating" ..
Much like losing weight people can see when ur broke and when ur not , people can see when ur losing weight and gaining weight
Yup, I can relate except in Australia. My parents divorced as I was entering high school. We all know the effects of divorce. Ended up at a very rough high school one of the lowest performing in the state. As soon as I could I got a job and moved out and sought higher education. That made it even harder working 3 jobs at one point with a full study load just to keep a roof over my head. I learnt so many bad habits. Spent 10 years paying off personal loans only to redraw. Much better off now though. 0 personal loan and credit card debt. My only debt is my home loan.
Anecdotal from my experience when I ask people who only buy brand new vehicles. The response was as a child we only had run down vehicles and I don't want that. Bad spending habits just because of trauma. Vehicles can be reliable without being brand new. Not knowing how to service your vehicle is a luxury.
At least in Aus you had Medicare whilst all that was going on 🙏 so nice to hear you've done so well 😊
@@magiclover9346 Not knowing how to service your vehicle is a luxury? Servicing your vehicle yourself is a luxury. Having knowledgeable individuals you could count on for support when learning how to service your vehicle is a luxury. Being able to service your vehicle in a timely fashion, in order to make it to work on time, is a luxury. Being able to get a ride when you serviced your vehicle and didn't have all of the necessary parts or tools, is a luxury.
Poverty is being required to spend exorbitantly on expenses which the upper classes can reduce or negate. Replacing windows in your home is perhaps the most notable example. Servicing one's vehicle beyond a simple oil change is the arena of college education, and that is without getting into computerized diagnostics which requires licensing expensive software from the vendor.
An oil change is one thing, but servicing your vehicle when you're poor can mean installing power steering, rebuilding alternators, reterminating battery terminals, changing tires after a mechanic used an air hammer. Beyond that, any "shade tree mechanic" work that can be done lowers the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the vehicle, if the repairs are reliable and do not require additional expenditures afterwards of taking it to a professional when your own skills prove inadequate and your boss doesn't have the patience for you to learn the hard way. Rich people build cars in their garage. Poor people take their cars to the mechanic.
@@claireconolly8355if they’d had to deal with chronic illness while relying on Medicare it would have been a nightmare. despite Medicare existing, outside of GP, you can only get timely care privately
Chelsea, I don’t think it’s because of living through two world wars. I think that in Europe, there are still class divides that prevail but it has little to do with money. It has more to do with old aristocracy, which the US does not have in its collective psyche. There aren’t people in the US that live off the government such as the royalty here and they do not get into the best schools and get their wealth passed down generation after generation. Europeans have actually dealt with unfair distributions of wealth before based on lineage alone. Even in modern day Western Europe, It is more about your family, which neighborhood you live in, and where you come from. They wont ask you what you do for a living, but they will ask what neighborhood you are from and that will tell them your politics and your likely income. Those class divides are still there.
I'm not sure where you're from but I'm British and mostly disagree. You always ask someone about what they do for a living. There are rich and poor parts of every country. Overall in most of Europe the standard of living is reasonable and poverty in the US is far worse. Using Royal families as an example is far too minimal to the point of irrelevant.
Y'know, I think maybe we do have some alternate version of the aristocracy you're describing. There are certainly entities if not specific beings that are able to collect and or protect disproportionate amounts of wealth from the government.
@@EKL-qu7ih Eh, as a fellow British person, I agree that royalty (and nobility) aren't culturally or socio-economically relevant. But inherited class is still a maaasssive deal, and I do think a person's job often doesn't tell the full story. Most Brits do 'notice' class markers outside of jobs (especially accent). Also speaking personally, I know people who are very well-off due to inherited assets (or will be once their parents pass away) who had international holidays, went to private schools, and will introduce themselves with the 'college conversation' (by which, I specifically mean talking about specific Oxford and Cambridge colleges, where they lived in Oxford/Cambridge and weird Oxbridge social conventions...it's a whole thing), but who have fairly standard middle-class-ish jobs (e.g. advertising, tech, acting, publishing..etc).
I also read an interesting study that people with Anglo-Norman surnames (Venables, Darcy...etc) are significantly wealthier than people with trade-based surnames (e.g. Cooper, Baker), which realllllly speaks to how sticky class is.
@@merrymachiavelli2041 but inherited wealth is the same unfairness almost anywhere? In the USA you get into Colleges based on your income or if your parent did something notable then you'll likely get into an Ivy league college even if you're a bit dim. Accents here indicate where in the country you're from but apart from that very small pool of super posh individuals whose daddy owns somewhere in Pimlico, everyone else is just normal. We have a poorer class but little different from the poorer class in any country.
Youre obviously not a fucking American if you don't know politicians are a family industry
this video actually summs up exactly what I talk to my therapist weekly: that I have the burden to care financially for my whole family cause there is no inheritance and no one is seeking jobs. They expect me to be able to provide even if im not well positioned in the market yet. This gives me extreme anxiety and I cant live without high dosage medication to control it. This leads me to believe I wont be able to have kids as I will have to pay for my mom, my brother and I dont know who else but there wont be enough for me to have my own life.
I think there is something to be said about failure in this. A CEO fails to lead a company and they are given a severance package and pretty much have another job doing the same thing in a week. If a poor person fails it may follow them for years in Job searches. It's not even a second chance, it is not even worrying about failing at all.