Rural poor checking in.

I’ve lived in a camper, and then in the back of a convenience store my patents ran. Eventually upgraded to a doublewide. But I went to a rural school with like 40 kids that were all also poor. One kid and his family were miners living in a series of vans upon blocks by the mine. My best friend and his family lived in a half used rundown motel, the other half too broken down to bother living in. The richest kid was a rancher’s family that lived in a barndominium.

So every family on TV was rich to me, but it was TV, so I figured it was all fantasy land anyway. Star Trek wasnt real, either. I had seen a “normal” school before 3rd grade, but by high school and college, people that thought Nickelodeon (which I didn’t see until college anyway) shows were relatable at all just seemed like space aliens to me. I was likely more the space alien to them.

I think when someone is making a movie or TV show they don’t want to have anything that distracts from the story, so they only show clean lines, clear surfaces, and new enough items that their disrepair or dirtiness is not taking away from the story.

My experience was pretty poor compared to my peers, but I was actually homeless for a period so I think I was legitimately below the standard of the time. That said, rich people pay cleaners to make their house look good. They have good storage solutions, new items, and throw away and replace anything that looks bad.

I have only ever lived in slums and ghettos except for the two years I spent living with my mother after her second divorce. There was also a half a year spent at my exes family’s summer home. Never felt so free as being able to wake up, go outside and see nothing but trees and hills in every direction.

Other than those two spots, it’s been shitty landlords and inconsiderate neighbors all the way through. Color me surprised if I ever find myself with enough money for more than food and housing.

Even a laptop in hs seemed like an incredible luxury to me. Only “rich” kids got that stuff, from my perspective back then. All my toys except a single gameboy color and two pokemon games were gifted to me by my far better off cousins/aunt and uncle.

The way things are going in my country, I don’t expect this to change before I die. Money and the comfort it can bring are a pipedream for people like me, who grew up in dirt, now still live in dirt, and can only imagine a life above all the grubs and crawlers down here in the dusty, dusty dirt. Oh well 🤷‍♀️

I grew up in a lower middle class family. I know there were times when money was tight (like the couple of times my dad was laid off) but we lived in a relatively nice house in a quiet neighborhood and I never worried about where my next meal was coming from.

My wife, on the other hand, grew up dirt poor in rural Missouri. They lived in run down trailers or houses with no AC and ate lots of venison – from deer her dad shot – with hamburger helper. She never had a lot of toys and spent most of her time playing by herself. Her childhood sounds very lonely to me but I think she learned to be comfortable being alone. In fact, being alone with a book is one of her favorite ways to relax.

If you don’t have access to a vehicle out there then you’re stranded because there is a whole lot of nothing for miles in any direction. So, when she turned 16, she got her GED and went to work full time so she could buy her own vehicle and get around. She’s pretty frugal, which I appreciate about her. But she will NOT eat venison or hamburger helper.

Not ghetto but simply very basic, rural living. The house I grew up in did not have indoor plumbing. The toilet was outside in an outhouse, just a plank with a hole in the middle above a cesspit. My parents were split up and my mother got the absolute minimum pay and my father wasted his wages on alcohol and women. So there were few luxuries during my youth.

Today I’m 41 and I’m BARELY above that level of poverty. If I lose my job for whatever reason it’s back to that kind of life.

That was in the '80s in Western Europe, by the way. Today this situation has become a lot more rare but it’s not gone yet.

My parents split when I was a baby and my mom always seemed to end up with some asshole who didn’t make much money and she didn’t work. I’d get yelled at for using a whole can of tuna and pasta was pretty much a nightly dinner. The only time we had things like Burger King was when they’d have their $1 whopper deals.

Now, I work in a factory and live in someone’s garage but at least I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. I can buy what I want within reason but with my upbringing it’s pretty hard to ever justify spending more than $500 on a single item. Upgrading my computer is the only time I spend that kind of money and I can justify it because it’s my main source of entertainment.

I lived in a neighborhood that some would consider a bad neighborhood but actually it was pretty nice. Saw a drug raid across the street from me but never had any issues with theft, violence. There was a nice path behind the house that went to a local park. The only issues we had there were with the police ticketing us for parking cars on the lawn, when there was nowhere else to park them.

Growing up, I lived a lower middle class life. Now, I can only eat once or twice a day and still pay my bills. My parents are in the process of a divorce and selling the house and when that’s done I’ll be homeless.

My life has never been like the image of poverty, but money has been very tight my whole life. We live in a rundown and neglected suburb, but it’s certainly not a ghetto or slum. I did get some toys growing up and played in sport leagues and very rarely went on trips to places. After I turned 10, money got way tighter for my family and most of my comfort and luxury has come from working and buying my own stuff. Luckily my parents are too prideful to shake me down for money which is normal for other poor parents to do to their kids around here.

I don’t think there’s too much a middle class person has experienced that I haven’t, but I’ve spent my adult life so far by spending as little on my day to day as possible so I can afford to go out and enjoy life. Last week, I went to a fancy indoor gokart place and ate at a restaurant after with some friends and another day I went to street festival. This week, I’ve eaten 7 times total and haven’t gone anywhere. Eventually I’ll leave this overpriced shit hole, but I’m trying to hunker down and not shake anything up while The Orange Emperor reigns.

I’m in my 30’s and though I’m the most stable and financially well off that I’ve ever been, I’m still not well off enough to stop checking over furniture left on the curb. I’ll likely never have the money to buy anything without doing math first. No matter my efforts, my only retirement option is a serious workplace injury with a big pay out. The most lavish purchase I make every month is the internet bill, which I literally need to do my online schooling.

My parents fled rural hometowns in other states to a suburb of Dallas. It was a pretty small town when we moved there but slowly turned into a very affluent city.

My parents always worked and always had cars, and I would say my home life was somewhere in between. I saw both neighbors in extreme poverty with messy houses, and by the time I got to high school, friends that had moved into new huge beautiful clean houses. Most of the time, both parents were college educated in these houses, and my parents were not, but they worked hard.

The parties at the rich kids’ houses were nicer, but the parties in the fields with the poor kids were more fun. The rich kids were nice to your faces and assholes behind your back. The rich kids were boring, the poor kids had better stories and were more resourceful.

I’m now college educated and live in a new house, but I still don’t like hanging out with the rich kids.

I’ve probably posted about it here before, but I lived in more than one trailer park and once stayed the night at a friend’s trailer in a completely different trailer park. While outside, boys from the other side of the trailer park came over and started picking a fight with my friend’s side of the trailer park and then a pinecone war ensued.

I also lived in a very ghetto house that produced my fear of cockroaches. I can’t even. All kinds of stuff happened there, but most to the point, years after we moved out, there was a murder-suicide, then it got struck by lightning and mostly burned. I drove by as an adult and part of the tree in the yard had fallen on it. I guess it wasn’t all bad, maybe, if I think back. Nobody ever sees my basketball skills coming, for example.

I’ve never experienced real poverty. Poorest I’ve been was the first month working at my first job. I had spent most of my money moving there and I think I had about 200€ on my bank account at the beginning of the month. Had to be frugal for a while but it was manageable.

computers are like a decade old

I feel called out lol! To be fair, I’ve wanted to upgrade for quite awhile, but most of my spare money has been going to vet bills for stray cats, which is a little more important to me than upgrading my pc.

I grew up in a large working class family (7 kids) and the best example I could give for it is the main character of caddy shack where you can see the house in start. It was not really that hectic though as you had older kids and younger kids and parents had different schedules but my mom was a bit of a horder so you would need to fill it up more like the rosanne house. I say working class and from my understanding of it is its a bit between poor and middle class. Its like you have a roof over your head and food in your belly and your getting to school but you can’t really have much “luxury” unless your parents want to risk their future solvency. This is why various addicitons can easily drop it down to poverty. Gambling, alcohol, drugs, etc. The lifestyle is adequate but can’t take to many challenges.

I prefer the low income parts because, generally speaking, poor people are better humans than rich people.