My closest and longest friendship is a guy with a very similar background to me. We both grew up really poor in a small town and it took us a big chunk of our adult lives to achieve some stability. We both would have up and downs financially speaking, luckily almost never at the same time and over the years it was very common for one of them saving the other when the other was down. We never kept a balance of who owed how much to the other but we always knew we could count on each other.

Fast forward a lot of years we both now live comfortable lives and it has been a good number of years since we last had to help each other.

Sometimes I miss the struggling years though. I think that showing off each other our new German cars is not as good a foundation for a good friendship and love as helping each other and laughing about being saved by the other at the last moment from some dramatic stuff like an eviction or bankruptcy