About mid-way through high school the family business went bankrupt and all assumptions about how I would go to college evaporated. So instead I ended up going to an electronics trade school on a student loan.
I did not have to pay tuition until after graduation, but I did have to pay all my living expenses myself. Had a minimum wage part time job from which to make rent, bills and food. Could barely afford to eat.
Got turned onto a store called WareMart that sold mega size boxes of really cheap products. A fellow poor schoolmate showed how to buy a huge brick of fake Velveeta cheese, giant tub of margarine and a potato-sack-size bag of elbow macaroni to make super cheap mac-n-cheese. The secret was to boil the macaroni for a long time so it would absorb a lot of water and get huge, then add a scoop of margarine and slab of cheese. You could eat for weeks on one purchase.
It was disgusting. But I lived, and finished school.
Upon graduation I had three offers at weekly salaries for more money than I had ever held in my hands. When I cashed my first paycheck I went to the grocery story and filled the basket with steaks and grilled one every night. Man, what a feeling. Despite making tons more in later years I have never felt so rich as when I spent that first paycheck.
To anyone who is still getting through it: avoid margarine and cheap process cheese. Trans fats and bargain-basement seed oils will jam you up.
My lunch + dinner of choice when I was stupid poor was mujaddara: it's lentils, rice, onion, oil, salt, and spices if you like that kind of thing.
Complete protein, adequate macro balance, and it's all real food. I'd call it "cheap as chips" but it's cheaper than that. You're better off spending a bit extra on olive oil and butter over the cheapest possible seed oils, if you can.
There were two thresholds that I remember distinctly: the first one was crossing from "poor" to "ok", when I could go shop for groceries and buy most things (though still looking at the price tags, to avoid the expensive stuff). That was a big step up from buying the bare necessities.
The second threshold, "rich", was when I realized I don't have to worry about the prices in my local grocery store. I can just buy whatever I want.
In the grand scheme of things, this isn't "rich" by any means, but it is enough to provide immense comfort and ease of living. I think many people who have this comfort are unable to appreciate what they have.
Not to mention that, from all I've seen and heard, European poor is also quite better off than US poor.
US poor means poor && deemed as a personal and moral failure && left socially unsupported && looked down upon in a class-aware way that's even worse than UK's traditional classism && getting into much more dangerous situations with much more crazies around, some of which will even be armed.
And as US poor, you also remain the one segment of society people can freely joke around and look down upon. They might pretend to support blacks, gays etc. in the asbstract, but could not care less if those are also dirt poor. As for the white poor, they don't even have the redeeming token minority status qualities so are open season for everybody - you could call them "white trash" with impunity.
Welfare supports are very patchy, mostly run at the state level. As a general rule of thumb, long-term cash benefits are almost impossible to access, and "in-kind" benefits like subsidized housing like subsidized housing tend to have long waiting lists.
"Food stamps" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assista...) are one of the larger broadly-available benefits.
I am annoyed waiting behind food stamp people at the grocery store making decisions between juice boxes and crackers at the checkout. Meanwhile I am too frugal to buy either of those.
My wife is treated like crap by Medicaid patients significantly more often than other patients.
There's a stigma that will exist regardless of the welfare state.
My girlfriend doesn't like homeless people and I don't get it, bcause they have harder life than we do. Irregardless whether they "deserve it" or not.
I was born in a Latin America country, middle class family, 375 USD monthly income for a house of 6 people.
Although I never went a full day without eating at least two meals, it wasn't rare to go sleep hungry.
My mom still managed to buy a PC for us, and that alone changed everything: I discovered programming in my early teens through a MMO game and learned web development, and since then I never stopped.
I'm now on my mid-twenties, but because I started so early with programming, I kinda hacked my career growth: to this day I already have 10 years of experience with JavaScript, as I was still a teen on my first internships. Started a CS bachelor but dropped as it was waste of time for me.
Today I work as the principal software engineer for a US startup remotely, and make 40x of my country's minimum wage.
Living through this gave me an empathy that I believe it's really hard to develop if you were born rich (definition of rich here: >upper middle class). There are so much things people take for granted, and they aren't available for people in lower classes at all. Geography is the biggest inequality in the world by a large margin.
The idea of growing up in a city/metro area where you could know someone local working for such companies sounded like sci-fi.
I go to bed hungry every night, not because I can't afford food, but because that's how I control my weight.
This board is always a bit parochial, but there's no excuse for it when people are clear about where they are.
Yes, it is my choice. I also noticed that my food bill went down substantially when I started this.
Thanks for sharing!
(In college my discretionary budget was $5 a week, so going to the movies meant going without something else.)
I also set up a home theater in the basement. The HD projector was somewhere around $3xx from Amazon. The big screen was $50 from Amazon, and about $50 of lumber to make a frame for it. The sound system was $40 from the thrift store.
It's as good as seeing a movie in the theater!
Nowdays, even with a comfortable income, I still use a bike, and get very often free food at the end of markets, I try to pay whenever possible, or give back
How would you fare if she lost that job though?
It's your business, so a rhetorical question really, but a "few years" at a high income rarely produces any lasting fortune.
2. If somehow it didn't, we'd go back to being poorish. Or I'd get a regular job or be a contractor. Either way, we'd live.
Too rich to get free money for college, too poor for my parents to have saved me anything. I was paycheck to paycheck for 3 years undergrad, and 3 years of wife's grad school.
Paycheck to paycheck doesn't even accurately define it. I didn't buy any luxuries like fast food or alcohol. Homemade everything.
We were nowhere near as poor as some people, and it was only for a few years, and it was self-inflicted to some extent because I was starting a startup while my wife was getting reeducated. So I don't know what it's like to be really poor. Those stories on HN from people who, 20 years past lifting themselves out of poverty, still hold on to every old sock, that's not me.
But at the same time, having been somewhat poor: damn it rocks to be rich! We became rich overnight a few years ago when my wife got a job, and every time I buy a sandwich without worrying about the cost, I get excited mentally. There's always this "Omg can we afford th- oh haha we're rich! Of course we can, woohoo!" process going on in my mind and it's super awesome. I feel so decadent, so lavish! I'm buying a sandwich!
To me, that's the definition of "rich". Buying a sandwich that someone else made, anytime I want.
If you're rich enough to be able to buy whatever at the supermarket, or get your favorite sandwich for lunch without worrying about the cost, cherish that. I don't really believe anything from here to private jets is going to make me much happier in practice, but I never want to be below that bar again.