The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: arebelspy on March 31, 2017, 06:55:47 PM
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I'm putting this in Off Topic, though it clearly is related to money.
The closest subforum we have, I suppose, is Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy, as these stories are fairly Antimustachian, in that they're about people bad with money, but it doesn't quite fit there, as you'll see below.
I've been feeling a lot more empathy as of late, in general, and especially for people struggling with money.
Here on the MMM forums, we often "facepunch" those who make money mistakes (see: Antimustachian subforum), but I think there's a clear difference between people who currently have lavish amounts of wealth and are blowing it in ridiculous ways (though you might feel bad for them in other ways), and people who are currently genuinely struggling to get by (yes, even if they were previously some of the former, and are in the situation they're in due to their own choices).
I find it hard to feel anything but empathy for people struggling, and reading these money stories from the poor helps me get some perspective and gratitude for what I have. I enjoy reading them, even if they make me uncomfortable. I hope you might enjoy them as well, and perhaps share some of your own, either anecdotes, or links to longer stories.
With that in mind, I present two true narratives that I've recently read.
1) A Shot In The Arm (https://longreads.com/2017/02/09/a-shot-in-the-arm/). In this story, a tenure-track professor has massive student loans and begins to sell his plasma as a side-gig to help pay his rent.
2) Falling (http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2014_Fall_McPherson.php). A Pultzer-winning Washington Post book critic talks about descending into poverty as he ages.
Please refrain from mocking or making excuses why these people "deserve" it, or anything to that effect. Feel free to start an Antimustachian thread about them, if you desire, but that is not the purpose of this thread. Cheers!
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I grew up in poverty and survived childhood thanks to government welfare programs. It was a very difficult way to live and a lot of people didn't have empathy for me. I got my first job at 14, which is the earliest you are allowed to legally work in the United States, and I have worked ever since. I've never been unemployed longer than six months. Only recently, however, was I able to join the middle class. For some reason, most people seem to need to personally experience poverty to be able to understand the struggle of it. Not knowing how to save yourself. Not having opportunities or even being able to understand those opportunities when a miracle arrives. The hopelessness and despair that sap your will to improve your life or sometimes even your will to live.
I feel badly for the kids like myself who were mocked for having holes in their shoes or having to eat free school lunch, because their parents couldn't or didn't provide better for them. It's terrible to be shamed for something you really can't do much about. When I was a teenager, I ended up buying my own clothes and food, but that didn't leave a lot left for trying to build a future for myself when I only earned minimum wage.
Thank God for student loans. That ended up being the golden ticket that allowed me to escape from being poor. I'm one of the lucky ones.
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ARS, I was just saying to a visiting forum friend that I have witnessed your empathy develop over the past while, and that this has been a beautiful experience for me :)
My life and work have made clear to me that countless variables can result in real poverty -even in "developed" regions- and that poverty can be very tricky to get out of. It certainly CAN be done -we see that on the forum all the time- but depending on the factors that created it in the first place, it can require a weird amount of navigating to pull off such an exit and then to maintain that security.
On this topic, the book Scarcity (Shafir +) is groovy.
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My current job (teacher at a school for students who have experienced trauma and will not attend other schools, or have been expelled) puts me in contact with extreme poverty daily.
It's lazy to say that people in this situation are there because of their choices. When their lives have literally affected their brain development (for the worse) it's a very haughty and slovenly attitude that families in extreme poverty could make more of their situation. Especially when drug, alcohol and generation violence are a part of the picture.
Commend for you A'spy, you get it fam.
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I too have empathy for the poor, but these 2 stories about people with huge debts and graduate degrees confound me. People seem to equate higher education with success, no matter the cost. I have an Associate degree, basically a trade school diploma, and will make 100k this year from my W-2 job. Neither of my sons have anything beyond that yet one of them makes in the 250k range each year, and the other will make ~150k. The higher paid one is a rig welder and the lower paid one is a pipe fitter. My daughter is an RN. She makes about 80k. Good money for our area, and she is engaged to a man who is self employed doing things like baling hay, building metal buildings and fences and he makes damn good money too.
I see the years and dollars spent reaching for the brass ring of a PhD only to have the ring snatched from their hands and a millstone dropped around their neck and all I can do is shake my head and feel pity.
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These stories always make me struggle between empathy and wanting to shake sense into people. While I feel bad for the people in the situation (and of course children who have no say in the matter), I have a lot of difficulty with people often profiled in stories like these who are struggling and taking handouts and claiming how "impossible it is to get ahead" while simultaneously smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, buying cases of beer every week, tapping things into their new iPhone7, etc. I don't know where to draw the line between empathy + help, and forcing people to take some responsibility for their lives.
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I hear ya, DoubleDown.
For figuring out that line, I like the models presented by the codependency field. Never a simple answer of what action to take or not take, but the lens helps me make my decisions as I go along.
For one neighbour -hard working, no alcohol, etc, spends infinitely less than the norm in our wealthy region yet much more than I do- I gave emergency cash and/or food in two instances, and subsequently have offered to support her in (a) writing up a budget and (b) navigating help-agencies. No more material gifts, per my awareness of her spending patterns.
This week I really struggled to not give a near-stranger $1000. He too is awesome, hardworking, good, clean-living, has saved up money...and circumstances meant he would ideally have a bit of transitional funding. On the other hand, does providing that prevent him from saving more for his needs? Does not providing that help him make some hard decisions? Dunno!
For me, the empathy is the easy part. Determining what actions to take, not so much! But yeah, the codependency filters help me somewhat with this.
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maybe we need to initiate a sympathy facepunch for those who need a correction, but don't deserve a nosebleed? I mean, i have full sympathy/empathy for people who are struggling to survive and really just have no idea what they are doing with money and are suffering for that. They aren't lazy, entitled, or purposely making bad life choices just because they don't want to sacrifice a luxury. They are just trying to get by... sometimes in horrible situations.
I have done volunteer work for years doing money classes in Wilm, DE for the "unbanked" population. I give them a lot of information, i feel like 5% of it gets through to 1% of the attendees. That's ok, it's enough to keep me doing it, even if the results are low, but i feel like I could do more. We could do more. Maybe the mustacian community in general can crowdsource ideas to get the message out to people in poverty? Free classes? A manual that can be distributed at foodbanks or something?
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^ I wrote a book! :) Linked to in signature. Case advocacy, workshops, then this have been my big efforts.
Love your bar for where the classes remain worth it for you to keep teaching, MrsStubble! I feel like most of my own financial evolution (from the streets) was a result of exactly that -people finding the "1% of the 5%" worth working for. I think I was one of those people, and it was most certainly lifechanging. I've done heaps to try to pay that forward :) So, on behalf of those you are gifting, thank you!!
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I am completely with you ARS. As someone who managed to get herself 100k in student loan debt, I know that it is really easy for otherwise smart, good people to end up in difficult financial circumstances. All it takes is a few naïve mistakes – like going to that prestigious college, or getting that graduate degree that everyone tells you will definitely pay off. Academia is a financial minefield and NO ONE tells young people that. I can honestly say from personal experience, it is REALLY difficult to dig out from massive student debt on a 40-50k/yr gross income, even if you are super frugal and don’t have a car, or buy anything nice. I was able to eliminate my debt in 5 years….as a DINK and with a husband who made way more than me and routinely received generous bonuses and raises due to his lucrative industry position. The truth is, most of the money that paid off that debt came from my husband, not me. On my own, or even with a partner who made less, such rapid repayment never would have been possible.
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^ I wrote a book! :) Linked to in signature. Case advocacy, workshops, then this have been my big efforts.
Love your bar for where the classes remain worth it for you to keep teaching, MrsStubble! I feel like most of my own financial evolution (from the streets) was a result of exactly that -people finding the "1% of the 5%" worth working for. I think I was one of those people, and it was most certainly lifechanging. I've done heaps to try to pay that forward :) So, on behalf of those you are gifting, thank you!!
Jooniflorisploo thanks! "Hey read this book it changed my life" is how i got started too. Someone gave this poor immigrant's kid working in Barnes & Noble to pay for community college a tip to read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" which opened the door for me. It took me years and lots of help to figure it out from there, but I was the same way! I teach to pay it forward as well. I will check your book out!
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My husband and I are in the minority of our classmates who do not have advanced degrees- and we are definitely in better financial shape then most of them. I have a classmate who at age 55 finally landed a tenure track job. Another is pushing 60 and still trying to land one. We live in a very capitalistic society that is not forgiving of mistakes.
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This thread reminds me of that old joke that experience is the thing you don't get until just after you need it.
On one hand, I feel like it'd be easy to blame the people in these stories for their financial misfortune. They're smart, well-educated, middle-class people who should have known full well what they were getting into. How could anyone have believed that taking on this much debt for a humanities degree was a good idea? What jobs and salaries were they expecting to get? Did they ever run the numbers?
On the other hand: Was I any better than them with money when I went to college? Not really. My CS degree has a higher ROI, but that's not why I picked it, I picked it because I liked computers and programming seemed like it would be fun. I happened to graduate in a time and place where those skills were in demand and led to a good job, but if I'm being honest, that was good luck, not foresight.
If you've never had to balance a checkbook or stick to a household budget, a debt total is just a number on a sheet of paper. How could anyone be expected to know, at the age of 18, the concrete ways it will impact their life for the next few decades? It's scarily easy to go through life never learning this stuff. That's all the more true considering the way we drum into young people's heads that higher education is never a bad investment and that you can't go wrong in life if you've got that degree.
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My biggest takeaway from reading all the posts is that giving money doesn't solve the problem. Educating people on how to manage their money or solve their own problems solves problems.
It's really about broadening people's world views and letting them know there is another way to think about the world. That, and a bit of luck, because some of the people I've met here have been plain unlucky. I can't really fault someone for being poor if there are genuinely no opportunities here for some people.
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This thread reminds me of that old joke that experience is the thing you don't get until just after you need it.
On one hand, I feel like it'd be easy to blame the people in these stories for their financial misfortune. They're smart, well-educated, middle-class people who should have known full well what they were getting into. How could anyone have believed that taking on this much debt for a humanities degree was a good idea? What jobs and salaries were they expecting to get? Did they ever run the numbers?
On the other hand: Was I any better than them with money when I went to college? Not really. My CS degree has a higher ROI, but that's not why I picked it, I picked it because I liked computers and programming seemed like it would be fun. I happened to graduate in a time and place where those skills were in demand and led to a good job, but if I'm being honest, that was good luck, not foresight.
If you've never had to balance a checkbook or stick to a household budget, a debt total is just a number on a sheet of paper. How could anyone be expected to know, at the age of 18, the concrete ways it will impact their life for the next few decades? It's scarily easy to go through life never learning this stuff. That's all the more true considering the way we drum into young people's heads that higher education is never a bad investment and that you can't go wrong in life if you've got that degree.
I think this is the key piece of it….20 year olds are actually not that great at thinking through really long term consequences. The brain is still developing it’s analytic capacity during the traditional college years, and it is unreasonable to expect an 18-20yr old to have the same type of foresight as a 30 year old, especially if they have not been taught personal finance and good habits from their own parents. People who say “well they should have just KNOWN” are missing a key point – just because you know something intellectually (someone told you, you read it, etc), doesn’t mean you fully absorb that information intuitively and can successfully navigate all the possible long term consequences that might flow from such a decision. A typical 18 year old college student knows 100k in debt is a big number and a scary number…but they don’t know what it can MEAN for them at 25 or 30 years old - not getting the wedding or home you want, not being able to save for retirement, financial instability, etc.
I made the decision to go to grad school and fund it with loans at the age of 21. I knew that I should keep the loan amount as low as possible, and that I should work to pay for expenses, and that I would need to be diligent about paying them back. I thought I was being financially responsible by only taking out the minimum I needed for tuition, getting some scholarships, and using a patchwork of part time jobs to cover my living expenses. But I didn’t really comprehend just how big of an impact those tuition loans could have on my future self, and my lack of awareness was not helped by all the people I trusted (family, friends, professors) who were urging me to go. I suspect the vast majority of kids at that age are in a similar boat.
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I think we would do our youth a big favor if we did more education in finance in high schools and also more career counseling. So many kids are not aware of all the career and education options are out there for them. Most of them only think of what their parents and grandparents do for a living.
I would also like to see schools bring back Home Economics to teach cooking and budgeting.
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I have done volunteer work for years doing money classes in Wilm, DE for the "unbanked" population. I give them a lot of information, i feel like 5% of it gets through to 1% of the attendees. That's ok, it's enough to keep me doing it, even if the results are low, but i feel like I could do more. We could do more. Maybe the mustacian community in general can crowdsource ideas to get the message out to people in poverty? Free classes? A manual that can be distributed at foodbanks or something?
I was a newly married, 20 year old, full-time college student & full-time waitress barely scraping by (as in "I need $30 bucks in tips tonight to make rent tomorrow" and I 'borrowed' extra toilet paper rolls from the university stalls!). Hubbie and I tried to apply for a car loan at the credit union affiliated with my university. The lady processing our loan application took extra time out of her day to explain to us why we didn't qualify for their loan, she brought to my attention the 2 credit cards I had opened a year before in a different state and didn't even realize I had (probably opened them for a free t-shirt or something and then moved away before the actual card arrived in the mail.), she talked about credit scores and gaining access to 3 free annual credit scores, she walked me through how I could contact the credit card companies about my mystery credit cards.
We didn't get a loan at that credit union. We ended up getting fleeced by Wells Fargo instead with a $3k loan that had something like $1500 of fees. It was a learning experience and because of that one conversation with the helpful bank officer I followed up on my credit cards and I started learning about credit scores and how to qualify for loans. It was the beginning of my journey to personal finance knowledge and I tried to look up that loan officer a few years later to let her know how that one simple conversation had ended up changing our financial direction. I never found her. If she were to remember us it would probably be as one of those 'lost cause' couples. But we weren't!
So maybe you are helping more than 5% of people. Or maybe you're putting a bug in their ear that they will follow up on sometime later.
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I would like to contribute pointers to two childhood-memoir books about living with less joyfully and incredibly resourcefully:
* Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
* Little Britches and sequel Man of the Family by Ralph Moody
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Thinking about this some more, one change in the law that would really help would be to make it possible to wipe out student loans through bankruptcy. That's pretty much impossible right now.
From the lender's perspective, I see why that makes sense. You can't repossess an education. There shouldn't be an incentive for a young person with no assets to graduate and then file for an immediate strategic default.
But that just creates a bad incentive in the other direction. If you can never get free of student loans, the lenders have no reason not to aid and abet youthful ignorance and irresponsibility. They'll happily give you as much money as you want with no concern for the cost or earning potential of your degree. Not our problem that someone took on six figures of debt to attend the cool college with the rock-climbing wall and the pool tables!
If student loans could be discharged through bankruptcy, even if it were difficult, the lenders would have to be more cautious. They'd start denying loans for excessive tuition bills that offer bad value. Colleges would have to charge less for degrees with less earning power. They'd be forced to cut down on bureaucratic deadwood and lavish campus amenities. Bottom-feeder for-profit schools would go out of business entirely, and good riddance. Best of all, tuition costs would have to fall in line with the actual expected lifetime value of the degree.
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I too have empathy for the poor, but these 2 stories about people with huge debts and graduate degrees confound me. People seem to equate higher education with success, no matter the cost. I have an Associate degree, basically a trade school diploma, and will make 100k this year from my W-2 job. Neither of my sons have anything beyond that yet one of them makes in the 250k range each year, and the other will make ~150k. The higher paid one is a rig welder and the lower paid one is a pipe fitter. My daughter is an RN. She makes about 80k. Good money for our area, and she is engaged to a man who is self employed doing things like baling hay, building metal buildings and fences and he makes damn good money too.
I see the years and dollars spent reaching for the brass ring of a PhD only to have the ring snatched from their hands and a millstone dropped around their neck and all I can do is shake my head and feel pity.
I have a son who is a welder. When I told him about this, he wants to know if your rig-welder son is on an oil rig? Or does he have his own rig? And are they hiring?
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Firelane, love it!!!
In a related vein, I like what's happening here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-private-colleges-students-conditions-jobs-1.4039896
Before enrolling for certain programs at some private colleges, students must sign letters acknowledging they may have to move away to find employment, or that they don't even need the course to get a job in their desired line of work.
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My mother is one of these stories. It is really heart breaking, and while a lot of my mom's story is about making some bad choices, I really believe that trauma complicates everything and can make it tremendously difficult to walk the right path, even with the best natural gifts and a lot of hard work.
My mom was repeatedly physically and sexually abused by a family member as a child. She was also extremely bright and ambitious. She made it out of her home environment and went to college, getting a degree in Medical Technology (essentially a masters level degree). She worked really hard and had a successful career. Her home life was not so easy. She married my father, who suffered from depression and was an alcoholic. My mother was also depressed, and so the two of them were a bad combination, and they divorced when I was 5. My mother met a man who was almost the direct opposite of personality to my father, but he was verbally and psychologically abusive. My mother began to suffer bouts of severe depression and later self medicated with alcohol. She was able to remain high functioning and continue to advance her career to management level. By the time she was my age, she was managing the blood lab at one of the world's best hospitals. At the same time, she was essentially being terrorized at home, and went to for multiple stays in mental institutions for a week or so at a time for suicide attempts. (Very little of this was known to me at the time as I was in high school and college and it was hidden - I was told my mom was on business trips).
My mom was under complete control of my stepfather, and was convinced to leave her career and travel with him to the caribbean to charter boats (Boating was one of their hobbies). For a variety of reasons, this failed disastrously and they lost all of their money and savings. When she came back to the states, she was able to get a job very quickly. She ended up supporting my step-father who as an attorney had a harder time establishing himself. Also, he began suffering mental health issues of his own. Eventually, after some very high drama antics on her part, I helped her obtain a divorce.
Being naive, and not ever really seeing my mom without my step-fathers problems to overshadow her own, I thought that now that she was free of him, she would begin to finally enjoy her life and things would get better. She had a good job, and seemed to be doing well, but the self medicating with alcohol had, without my knowledge, become worse. She got fired from one job, got another, kept it for a year, got fired, and then could not find another job. She was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, and she was placed on disability.
For whatever reason, and I have never really been able to get much out of her, she has absolutely nothing saved from 40 years of working. She seems really embarrassed about it, and I haven't pushed her very hard to explain why. My guess is she thought that she either didn't need to save since my stepfather made a lot of money as an attorney when they were married, or maybe she took loans out. But either way, now she lives on a few thousand in disability payments a month plus a little left over from her when her mother passed on. Her health has rapidly deteriorated and she had a major health scare last year when she had a clot in her aorta that nearly killed her. She is a shell, physically, emotionally and spiritually of the woman she once was.
To see someone go from being fully functional and seemingly strong in youth and middle age to decline to this point is very troubling. If you were to ask me if it was because she made poor decisions, I would say "Yes". If you were to ask me if it was due to forces beyond her control I would also say "Yes".
Sometimes, I breeze through these forums and I sense a certain amount of fear and denial. People desperately WANT to believe (see avatar) that their lives are fully in their control, and that nothing could ever happen, that they can run away from the demons of the past that haunt them, but I can tell you that sometimes they never really go away, and re emerge in ways that you can't anticipate. When stuff happens to you in childhood, it shapes who you are, and makes you have gut reactions to situations before your brain kicks in and gives you time to think it through. It makes you seek out people that aren't necessarily good for you, and makes decisions that seem to be completely irrational to others make sense to your brain.
So my advice to most people when it comes to finances is that most of the time, your financial temperament is rooted in your personality and experiences. Get to know and understand the feelings behind what you spend your money on, and really reflect on that. Poverty is such a hard problem because it isn't a money problem, it's a people problem.
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(((golden1))) ....phenomenal post!
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I grew up in poverty and survived childhood thanks to government welfare programs. It was a very difficult way to live and a lot of people didn't have empathy for me. I got my first job at 14, which is the earliest you are allowed to legally work in the United States, and I have worked ever since. I've never been unemployed longer than six months. Only recently, however, was I able to join the middle class. For some reason, most people seem to need to personally experience poverty to be able to understand the struggle of it. Not knowing how to save yourself. Not having opportunities or even being able to understand those opportunities when a miracle arrives. The hopelessness and despair that sap your will to improve your life or sometimes even your will to live.
I feel badly for the kids like myself who were mocked for having holes in their shoes or having to eat free school lunch, because their parents couldn't or didn't provide better for them. It's terrible to be shamed for something you really can't do much about. When I was a teenager, I ended up buying my own clothes and food, but that didn't leave a lot left for trying to build a future for myself when I only earned minimum wage.
Thank God for student loans. That ended up being the golden ticket that allowed me to escape from being poor. I'm one of the lucky ones.
Congrats on getting out of poverty. Your story is more inspirational because of how far you came. I hope you are able to stay in the middle class and raise your children in better conditions than you experienced.
A couple of years ago I was at the bank once in a HCOL area, filled with wealthy Americans. The woman in front of me was the only other customer in the bank. She was talking about the charity work that she was doing in some far-off country, to help people get out of poverty. And, she made an aside that struck with me, 'In America we don't care about the poor.' Meaning, we Americans care more about the poor in another country than we do about the poor people next door.
I grew up in a LCOL area filled with poor people, and I knew instinctively that she was right. I'd never heard it vocalized quite like that, though.
And, to me this thread about poverty just re-inforces that statement.
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I would like to contribute pointers to two childhood-memoir books about living with less joyfully and incredibly resourcefully:
* Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
* Little Britches and sequel Man of the Family by Ralph Moody
Little Heathens describes my father's childhood on a farm. Different times for sure. He would be nearly 100 if still alive. I don't know how much of that is relevant today but , but some of it is.
That is the book where the mom had an insight that stuck with me. She never sent her kids in a group of 3 to do any chore because two always gang up on one. This is sticking in my head today because
I have two foster/rescue dogs here and they have formed a coalition against my own dog. Prior to dog #3 coming in, my dog and Rescue #2 got along fine.
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What an educational experience this forum is. I am thankful.
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Profile of a child living in NYC's shelter system:
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/#/?chapt=0
Long heart-breaking read.
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I too have empathy for the poor, but these 2 stories about people with huge debts and graduate degrees confound me. People seem to equate higher education with success, no matter the cost. I have an Associate degree, basically a trade school diploma, and will make 100k this year from my W-2 job. Neither of my sons have anything beyond that yet one of them makes in the 250k range each year, and the other will make ~150k. The higher paid one is a rig welder and the lower paid one is a pipe fitter. My daughter is an RN. She makes about 80k. Good money for our area, and she is engaged to a man who is self employed doing things like baling hay, building metal buildings and fences and he makes damn good money too.
I see the years and dollars spent reaching for the brass ring of a PhD only to have the ring snatched from their hands and a millstone dropped around their neck and all I can do is shake my head and feel pity.
I have a son who is a welder. When I told him about this, he wants to know if your rig-welder son is on an oil rig? Or does he have his own rig? And are they hiring?
He has his own rig, a 1 ton truck with an SA300 welder and all the tools in the back. He works on various projects around the country. Rarely on an oil well site, but lots of refineries and food processing plants. If your son wants to do the same he needs to be able to pass a 6G tests and other things I don't remember. Like being able to do a root and cap tig weld? It may take a while to get a reputation, but once he does, it's usually easy to find work.
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This is a wonderful thread, and I'm so happy to see all the empathy here. I came so close to many of these stories, and still could wind up that way. And the friends I know who slid a little too far down the path have taken ownership of their situations, but can't always climb out.
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It is interesting to read the stories ARS posted. Intelligent people who make a series of bad decisions. Getting into a hole is easier than getting out of one. I can't help but notice that simple mustachian lifestyle choices would turn around the situation for the almost tenured professor in Maine. Some intelligent lifestyle choices would make his situation much better in short order.
I wonder how far empathy would go. ARS, you are a landlord. You may very well at some point have a tenant in this type of situation. If you were aware of the issues, would you accommodate the tenant by accepting delayed or temporarily reduced rent payments? Maybe forego a rent increase? Not evict the tenant because of non payment of rent because they will be homeless? But that would have an impact on your own FIRE position. Would empathy affect your decisions as a landlord? I am not trying to judge you. Rather, I wonder how empathy for a fellow human being would influence your personal actions. In my professional career, I have made concessions to people in financial distress. Maybe the beneficiaries were the most effective at eliciting empathy. I know I have been taken by people who were financially well off, but were very persuasive story tellers of sob stories. It really is complicated because you can't help everybody who needs help.
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I was poor because of divorce and the 1980's mentality of boomers (can you tell I am a bitter Xer?)
anyway, nowadays I am doing great. I would just like to take a minute and thank 3 things;
a good public school education
PELL grants for poor kids to go to college
US Navy and GI Bill
I have a lot but I always remember where I came from.
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I saw this thread shortly after reading this recent post by Joshua Becker.
"Here’s to All of You Trying to Make the Most of a Bad Situation"
http://www.becomingminimalist.com/bad-situation/
Both has a similar tone, so I thought I would include the link.
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I have a former student who I've kept in touch with for years. She moved back to the area after college and is now living with several roommates working as an intern journalist at an awesome independent news website for Honolulu.
I'm so proud of this girl; we had her over for dinner a few weeks ago and it was a treat to talk to her. The conversation turned to "adulting"--she's 22 and living on her own for the first time. She started asking questions about frugal skills like cooking for yourself and keeping a grocery bill low, and I realized that the start-up costs to frugality can actually be high. I recommended getting a crockpot from craigslist and investing in a set of basic knives and spices.
People in roommate living situations who don't have a car to get to Costco and don't have a big freezer to store things and don't have quality pots and pans or a set of spices or good kitchen knives or room to store bulk goods have to deal with less optimized spending.
I remember back when I was in that place--living with roommates, no freezer, etc.--and how it just seemed easier and even cheaper to get takeout all the time. It's funny how frugality actually takes some money, and I think that fact is why it can be really hard to scratch one's way out of poverty.
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It's funny how frugality actually takes some money, and I think that fact is why it can be really hard to scratch one's way out of poverty.
Well said!
And, every time I see a TV show or Youtube vandweller video of a person chopping veggies with a paring knife, and lifting it off for each cut, I think, "No wonder people think cooking takes so much time and effort!" A quality chef's knife for every teen and up on the planet, please!
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The book Evicted was really eye-opening for me. The people in it have made mistakes, sometimes dreadful one. One person had gotten frostbite on a crack binge and lost both his feet, for instance. But they come across as... people. Mothers, fathers, sons. The deck is stacked against them in every conceivable way.
I compare that to my situation. I am a level of poor. I have CICP (a health care relief program) but not Medicaid; my kids are on reduced but not free lunch and my preschooler qualified for free tuition.
But I'm just newly-divorced, under-employed poor--situational poverty. My grandfather bought me a car. My mother covers most of the cost if I come on a family vacation. My friends from college asked if I needed money. I am awash in supportive resources. I have only sympathy for those with less money (at least I have good health insurance at my part-time job) and no one to buy them a reliable used car.
Incidentally, getting CICP--which has saved me several thousand dollars on my deductibles as my kids have both had stitches--was really difficult. If I wasn't an overeducated middle-class white woman with reliable transportation and a supportive employer,* I might well have given up.
*I was 15 minutes late for the first appointment because parking was much, much harder than I expected and I was told I would have to reschedule. So it took two trips.
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I have a former student who I've kept in touch with for years. She moved back to the area after college and is now living with several roommates working as an intern journalist at an awesome independent news website for Honolulu.
I'm so proud of this girl; we had her over for dinner a few weeks ago and it was a treat to talk to her. The conversation turned to "adulting"--she's 22 and living on her own for the first time. She started asking questions about frugal skills like cooking for yourself and keeping a grocery bill low, and I realized that the start-up costs to frugality can actually be high. I recommended getting a crockpot from craigslist and investing in a set of basic knives and spices.
People in roommate living situations who don't have a car to get to Costco and don't have a big freezer to store things and don't have quality pots and pans or a set of spices or good kitchen knives or room to store bulk goods have to deal with less optimized spending.
I remember back when I was in that place--living with roommates, no freezer, etc.--and how it just seemed easier and even cheaper to get takeout all the time. It's funny how frugality actually takes some money, and I think that fact is why it can be really hard to scratch one's way out of poverty.
In no place, in no time, did I ever think that take out was "even cheaper" even when I didn't eat especially well. I do remember buying low end cheap frozen dinners, but take out, no way.
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The book Evicted was really eye-opening for me. The people in it have made mistakes, sometimes dreadful one. One person had gotten frostbite on a crack binge and lost both his feet, for instance. But they come across as... people. Mothers, fathers, sons. The deck is stacked against them in every conceivable way.
I compare that to my situation. I am a level of poor. I have CICP (a health care relief program) but not Medicaid; my kids are on reduced but not free lunch and my preschooler qualified for free tuition.
But I'm just newly-divorced, under-employed poor--situational poverty. My grandfather bought me a car. My mother covers most of the cost if I come on a family vacation. My friends from college asked if I needed money. I am awash in supportive resources. I have only sympathy for those with less money (at least I have good health insurance at my part-time job) and no one to buy them a reliable used car.
Incidentally, getting CICP--which has saved me several thousand dollars on my deductibles as my kids have both had stitches--was really difficult. If I wasn't an overeducated middle-class white woman with reliable transportation and a supportive employer,* I might well have given up.
*I was 15 minutes late for the first appointment because parking was much, much harder than I expected and I was told I would have to reschedule. So it took two trips.
I was on the wait list for Evicted and set it back in the hold que. But I do want to read it.
My bottom line is this: I always had parents who would provide a room and food if I fell on very hard times. If health issues, for sure they would have stepped forward. But they always made it clear that they would not be taking me in with child.
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...
My bottom line is this: I always had parents who would provide a room and food if I fell on very hard times. If health issues, for sure they would have stepped forward. But they always made it clear that they would not be taking me in with child.
My parents would not take me in with an able-bodied spouse. With child(ren)? They would. I mean, not forever, but they would absolutely offer me space in their basement while I regrouped. If I had wanted to go that route after my divorce, for instance. There are a variety of reasons why I prefer sleeping on the couch (well, daybed) in a one-bedroom apartment to my parents' basement, but the option was there.
I think their siblings feel similarly. A married cousin of mine and her husband fell on hard times when her two children were small. She asked her parents if she and her family could move in with her mom. Mom said that (Cousin) and her boys were always welcome. Implied: If your husband is a wastrel, he can fend for himself.
If I came from poverty, I would not have parents with a basement that I could go live in if push came to shove.
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I have a former student who I've kept in touch with for years. She moved back to the area after college and is now living with several roommates working as an intern journalist at an awesome independent news website for Honolulu.
I'm so proud of this girl; we had her over for dinner a few weeks ago and it was a treat to talk to her. The conversation turned to "adulting"--she's 22 and living on her own for the first time. She started asking questions about frugal skills like cooking for yourself and keeping a grocery bill low, and I realized that the start-up costs to frugality can actually be high. I recommended getting a crockpot from craigslist and investing in a set of basic knives and spices.
People in roommate living situations who don't have a car to get to Costco and don't have a big freezer to store things and don't have quality pots and pans or a set of spices or good kitchen knives or room to store bulk goods have to deal with less optimized spending.
I remember back when I was in that place--living with roommates, no freezer, etc.--and how it just seemed easier and even cheaper to get takeout all the time. It's funny how frugality actually takes some money, and I think that fact is why it can be really hard to scratch one's way out of poverty.
The book Independence Days by Sharon Astyk includes some very good advice on how to build a food stockpile/pantry even if you have no money. I outlined the gist of it in this thread:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachian-book-club/independence-days-sustainable-food-storage-preservation-by-sharon-astyk/
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I have really enjoyed the different links others have posted. Good reading. I read Evicted last fall and it was really interesting for me. Exposed me to problems that I had no idea existed.
My mom once told me that having parents with means was the equivalent of starting the game of life on third base. It's so true. Even if your parents can't pay for college tuition, just having someone who could provide a bag of groceries, a tank of gas, a few bucks, a ride or a temporary roof over your head is a huge help. Which makes me wonder why we can't offer more people simple services like that.
And why do we make obtaining services like Medicaid, or housing vouchers so difficult? It seems like it actually gets in the way of working. And how big of a problem access to transportation is. It's almost a vicious circle.
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I have really enjoyed the different links others have posted. Good reading. I read Evicted last fall and it was really interesting for me. Exposed me to problems that I had no idea existed.
My mom once told me that having parents with means was the equivalent of starting the game of life on third base. It's so true. Even if your parents can't pay for college tuition, just having someone who could provide a bag of groceries, a tank of gas, a few bucks, a ride or a temporary roof over your head is a huge help. Which makes me wonder why we can't offer more people simple services like that.
And why do we make obtaining services like Medicaid, or housing vouchers so difficult? It seems like it actually gets in the way of working. And how big of a problem access to transportation is. It's almost a vicious circle.
It has been pointed out many times that the working poor have a tougher time of it than parents on the dole no kidding, they have even less time to jump through the hoops of govern,net handouts.
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I do wonder if a universal basic income would be part of the solution.
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BeanCounter, you put it all so well, and I LOVE what your mama said! Right on.
I've been trying to position myself so that my kid is as close to third base as possible, given all our tricky circumstances. I can't create perfection given our respective starting points, but this is definitely my guide. I do hope he stays aware and empathetic enough to share from that position with others who didn't/don't have that.
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I stumbled upon this today and found it heartbreaking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/she-had-a-newborn-and-no-money-signing-up-for-uber-drove-her-into-debt/2017/04/07/b5ee9510-05d1-11e7-b9fa-ed727b644a0b_story.html?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na&utm_term=.522d92e6c979
Honestly, reading this from Europe where parental leave is just as given as I don' know, being buried if you die, it sounds downright barbaric and I honestly feel I could facepunch any person who would even attempt to make an argument for this kind of a system.
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^ An awful post-partum situation indeed. She sounds hardworking, smart, commited, and creative. Her debts were minimal. But those aren't enough to navigate certain situations and come out free and clear.
With those qualities, though, she is likely to come out on top, so long as no tragedy strikes to knock her over.
In Canada, I too had no leave when I (sole parent) gave birth, so I worked right through, with him on my lap. (My luck was that my work was from home, online.) Before that, when my work was home support, the industry got an exemption to the government requirement for minimum hours. When most jobs had to pay for at least four hours, we were guaranteed only two. So, I could set aside day after day, and get a a bunch of two-hour shifts, while most other fields automatically paid a minimum of four. So many ways stuff doesn't work.
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It's very sad when a society has no compassion or understanding, and shies aways from putting their money where their mouth is.
How much better the world would be if everyone was able to help their neighbour.
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This is an amazing thread, and I'm happy I clicked on it!
I grew up in poverty, as well as being neglected and moving around a lot after my mom died and my dad turned to drugs and alcohol. Before my mom died, we were middle class, and our grandparents were middle class, too, but this trauma hit our family and we never really recovered from it to move forward in a positive direction. We kind of imploded.
For whatever reason, I always knew this way of life was something I could and would get out of, and I did, even though it took me maybe 10 years of being an adult before I figured out how to operate with money.
My brother and sister are still quite poor, though. Some of it I'm sure is due to the trauma we went through as kids -- and I know I was protected from some of that because I was the baby of the family -- and some of it is just getting into some bad habits and not ever getting out of them. I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for both of them, though I have also chosen to stay out of my sister's life and not to get involved with my brother financially, though we do have a pretty good relationship emotionally. I have tried to educate my brother on money and other adulting skills, but he's always kind of just ... seemed like he gave up on trying for anything better a long time ago, you know? It bums me out, because he's a brilliant guy in so many ways. But I can't force him to do anything. And I'm his baby sister, which I guess makes it hard for him to hear me in an advisory role sometimes.
I have been extraordinarily lucky but I will never forget the feeling of being made fun of for wearing ugly clothes and eating free lunch and having dirty hair and skin rashes because no one made me bathe. I feel so grateful for the confluence of factors that allowed me to create something different in my adult life -- the luck to be born with a sturdy constitution, the curiosity that led me to educate myself about money and such.
I resonated with the poster above who said that public schooling was one of the best things that ever happened to them. Same here. Hard same. I shudder to think where I'd be without public schools because school is where I got almost all of my validation and structure as a kid.
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^ Yesterday I listened to a podcast on CBC radio called School Saved My Life. It was an adult's story of post-secondary, but same idea. His circumstances sucked to an extreme, and he tells of the same benefits, madgeylou.
For me, school was so awful -the place I was bullied even more, etc, just with no avenue of escape. But I can appreciate that any given option may be good for one person and sucky for another, depending on the details.
For me, salvation was nature and my dog. If I could be left alone to those, I was okay :)
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^ Yesterday I listened to a podcast on CBC radio called School Saved My Life. It was an adult's story of post-secondary, but same idea. His circumstances sucked to an extreme, and he tells of the same benefits, madgeylou.
For me, school was so awful -the place I was bullied even more, etc, just with no avenue of escape. But I can appreciate that any given option may be good for one person and sucky for another, depending on the details.
For me, salvation was nature and my dog. If I could be left alone to those, I was okay :)
I can totally see school being an awful place for some kids. Ironically I think moving around so much helped me out here, because I could only be bullied by someone for a few months at a time, and there was no sense of being entrenched in any one situation. Also the way my brain works was a good fit for school, and I know that's not the case with a lot of kids.
Sigh. The income inequality in the US, the crazy housing market all over the place, the lack of critical thinking skills -- I just don't know how we turn the corner with all of this in play. How do we make things more fair, so that more people have a chance?
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What is “lunch shaming?” It happens when a child can’t pay a school lunch bill.
In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt. Other schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it in the trash if he doesn’t have the money to pay for it.
In what its supporters say is the first such legislation in the country, New Mexico has outlawed shaming children whose parents are behind on school lunch payments.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/well/family/new-mexico-outlaws-school-lunch-shaming.html
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Yes, in many situations takeout has been cheaper for me than groceries. I currently buy groceries because I can afford the luxury of prioritizing health, but it's definitely not cheaper for me :)
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Yeah, I'm in Honolulu, and because of various thrifty living situations, there was a ten year period in which I didn't have access to a freezer. So I didn't have the option of frozen pizza or freezing leftovers. I actually would keep frozen meals in my friends' freezers and come over and eat my food at their places, which in hindsight I realize was really nice of them.
It's funny how much stuff I have that enables frugality and how it took years for me to acquire this stuff and learn to put it to good use. Financial gurus always tout the need for personal finance education in high school, but I think a good home-ec class is just as important. Which appliances are really necessary? Which recipes are thriftiest and fastest to make? How do you make a quick sewing repair to make clothes last longer? All very important skills that actually don't come that easy or cheap.
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If you were ever curious about how SNAP (food stamps in the US) works, here's a very readable Q&A:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/04/what-many-americans-get-wrong-about-food-stamps-according-to-an-economist
Also, this was amusing to me. I didn't grow up poor, but my parents did. As a result, my mother, despite her middle class pretensions, would buy us name brand shoes two sizes too big.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-unexpected-side-effects-being-poor/
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/
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It's very sad when a society has no compassion or understanding, and shies aways from putting their money where their mouth is.
How much better the world would be if everyone was able to help their neighbour.
What drives me crazy is how our gov't in the USA spends money so friggin' freely on certain things but won't spend money on people's needs. Trump spent ~$60M on missiles plus Navy ship gas money last week that shutdown a Syrian military airport for 24 hours? He and his spends ~$5M every weekend to fly to FL where some more money is spent for him to "relax".
How about the gov't buy fewer bombs and bullets and take care of Americans?
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^ Yesterday I listened to a podcast on CBC radio called School Saved My Life. It was an adult's story of post-secondary, but same idea. His circumstances sucked to an extreme, and he tells of the same benefits, madgeylou.
For me, school was so awful -the place I was bullied even more, etc, just with no avenue of escape. But I can appreciate that any given option may be good for one person and sucky for another, depending on the details.
For me, salvation was nature and my dog. If I could be left alone to those, I was okay :)
You just described my childhood too. No financial woes within our family. I was just an awkward kid for reasons I think I understand better now as an adult. Give me the freedom to wander with the family dog alone - and I was good. Send me to school - and I wasn't happy at all. Mix in a pair of parents who loved their high school experiences and thought high school grades defined your entire future - and there wasn't much relief except for wandering around with my dog.
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https://longform.org/posts/the-longform-guide-to-debt--3
This is about debt, not poverty per se, but some informative pieces nonetheless.
Several years earlier, one of my sons played on a mainly Hispanic soccer team in Bell Gardens, a working class Hispanic suburb of Los Angeles. I got to know one of the fathers quite well. He was from Guatemala City.
“What’s Guatemala City like?” I asked him one day.
“The days are very long in Guatemala City,” he said.
That was all he said about his life there. And that would probably be the best description of life as a homeless person. The days are very long.
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I've been thinking lately about how at school, we tell all poor children that we think are remotely able to go to university because it will be their golden ticket to a better life. As the tenure-track professor in the link in the first post shows, academia does not make you rich. However, we never tell rich children to consider becoming a plumber or a bricklayer. Why is it that a genuinely wide range of career options are only pushed for bright poor children, whereas rich children (bright or not) only have the option of going to university and aiming for a professional job?
I grew up (upper) middle class, and I have friends who grew up surrounded by maids and nannies and cleaners. You don't do chores when you live like that because you don't need to, so you don't learn - so of course you dig yourself into debt as an adult. Because life skills are only for poor children. But then Mummy and Daddy can bail them out as many times as they need.
I don't mean to be all "woe is me, I grew up too rich" about this, but what I'm getting at is that in a society obsessed with upward social mobility, we are forgetting that some people will move down too, and they need to be prepared for that. But when will Eton and Harrow start offering cooking, cleaning and budgeting classes? When hell freezes over.
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From the first article:
When I was an undergraduate contemplating going to graduate school, my favorite professor encouraged me by saying, “If there’s anything worth going big-time in debt for, it’s education.” I never questioned her.
At this time I just want to shout a big "thank you!" to my former boss, Larry. When I was finished up undergrad, and working part time for Larry, he asked me about graduate school and I explained that I had a small stipend but that I was eligible to take out loans, so that was how I would float my living expenses. He looked at me for a moment, then said "Just remember, you will have to pay that money back. It sucks!"
And so for the duration of graduate school I resisted loans as much as I could and worked a part time job at night. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Larry!
That first piece still really resonated with me. There are fewer and fewer "normal" jobs in academia. The Lords and Ladies who have those few coveted "normal" academic jobs by and large treat everyone else like shit, although they will never admit this. At my current place of employment, an extremely wealthy institution, I ended up initially taking a job teaching (in STEM) for $30K . . . It was 2009, and there were simply no other jobs. After the first year, they told me they were laying me off. And then, a few months later, they changed their mind and gave me a big raise instead. They needed someone to do the actual work, it turned out, and I was still their cheapest and best option.
I will never forget how my employer treated me. How they grossly underpaid me because "they could get away with it" due to the economy at the time. How disposable I am to them despite what I am repeatedly now told is my spectacular performance. It was what led me to this site.
I am acutely aware of how easy it would have been to fall into poverty.
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^ I'm likewise eternally grateful to the school/academic counsellors who suggested school/graduation was not necessary, and pointed me to unschooling waaaaaaaaaay back before that had become common; the employment training program that urged me to get out and become self-employed (and then sent me all their overflow clients); and the employment counsellor that urged me not to spend my time working at entry level jobs like McDonald's.
How I got all these groovy people, who saw how vulnerable I was to everything yucky, I don't know! One after another actively and explicitly taught and encouraged me to ninja this fucked up system built to keep certain people down.
Awesome!! I remember each of those people, including two by name, and am forever grateful.
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I've been thinking lately about how at school, we tell all poor children that we think are remotely able to go to university because it will be their golden ticket to a better life. As the tenure-track professor in the link in the first post shows, academia does not make you rich. However, we never tell rich children to consider becoming a plumber or a bricklayer. Why is it that a genuinely wide range of career options are only pushed for bright poor children, whereas rich children (bright or not) only have the option of going to university and aiming for a professional job?
I grew up (upper) middle class, and I have friends who grew up surrounded by maids and nannies and cleaners. You don't do chores when you live like that because you don't need to, so you don't learn - so of course you dig yourself into debt as an adult. Because life skills are only for poor children. But then Mummy and Daddy can bail them out as many times as they need.
I don't mean to be all "woe is me, I grew up too rich" about this, but what I'm getting at is that in a society obsessed with upward social mobility, we are forgetting that some people will move down too, and they need to be prepared for that. But when will Eton and Harrow start offering cooking, cleaning and budgeting classes? When hell freezes over.
If their parents want them to learn cooking or cleaning couldn't they job shadow the cook or maid?
Downward mobility is a lot easier than upwards. The problem is that when people move down they refuse to adjust; regardless of what they know. How often do you hear about someone getting laid off and keeping cable, maid service, dining out and car payments? Knowledge isn't the problem so much as the willingness to accept the situation.
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Moving up or down in social class you may find yourself out of your element.
I grew up solidly middle class and took for granted health insurance and doctor visits whenever needed. When I got out on my own and didn't have such things I didn't know how to navigate the world. I lived for 4 years in a small town never seeing the doctor until an emergency situation forced me to go in - and then we were referred to the free medical clinic. Ha! I could have used that medical clinic for years if I had known such things existed. (Question 17 below)
Here's an interesting link (I can check off all the middle class boxes but practically none of the poverty or upper class items).
http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/introtosociology/Documents/Hidden%20Rules%20of%20Social%20Class.htm
Surviving in Poverty
_____1. I know which churches and sections of town have the best rummage sales.
_____2. I know where the nearest food bank is and when it is open.
_____3. I know which grocery stores garbage bins can be accessed for thrown-away food.
_____4. I know how to get someone out of jail.
_____5. I know how to physically fight and can defend myself if necessary.
_____6. I know how a person can get a gun even if they have a police record.
_____7. I know how to keep my clothes from being stolen at the Laundromat.
_____8. I know what problems to look for in a used car.
_____9. I know how to live without a checking account.
_____10. I know how to get by without electricity and without a phone.
_____11. I know how to use a knife as scissors.
_____12. I can entertain a group of friends with my personality and my stories.
_____13. I know what to do when I don't have the money to pay my bills.
_____14. I know how to move my residence in less than a day.
_____15. I know how to feed 8 people for 5 days on $100.
_____16. I know how to get and use food stamps.
_____17. I know where the free medical clinics are and when they are open.
_____18. I am very good at trading and bartering.
_____19. I know how to get around without a car.
_____20. I know what day of the month welfare and social security checks arrive.
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Interesting TED Talk here: https://www.ted.com/talks/j_d_vance_america_s_forgotten_working_class/transcript?language=en
it's sometimes hard to even know what those choices are when you grow up in a community like I did. I didn't know, for example, that you had to go to law school to be a lawyer. I didn't know that elite universities, as research consistently tells us, are cheaper for low-income kids because these universities have bigger endowments, can offer more generous financial aid. I remember I learned this when I got the financial aid letter from Yale for myself, tens of thousands of dollars in need-based aid, which is a term I had never heard before. But I turned to my aunt when I got that letter and said, "You know, I think this just means that for the first time in my life, being poor has paid really well."
So I didn't have access to that information because the social networks around me didn't have access to that information. I learned from my community how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well. I learned how to make a damn good biscuit recipe. The trick, by the way, is frozen butter, not warm butter. But I didn't learn how to get ahead.
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I grew up in an interesting juxtaposition of poverty and middle class. My father is a minister. The church is on an Indian Reservation. The generational poverty on the rez is... well just that. It is so ingrained that a fair number of folks know how to get services, but do not know how to work. I know families where the parents are deliberately not married so that the non working parent can claim to be a single parent to increase their benefits.
I grew up with my folks doing foster care, and having new kids randomly show up at our house to stay for extended lengths of time. As a kid I actually couldn't differentiate which ones were living with us or were being babysat, and that lead to some odd discussions with my mom in recent years. A fair number of the ones who stayed a while had food hoarding issues. Some of them were so afraid of men they couldn't speak in front of my dad. But except my brother, they all left again.
Mom grew up solidly middle class. Dad, not so much. The pains we exprience as children really do haunt us as adults. I had a pair of shoes I adored, they were canvas and had a small hole in the side. It was barely noticeable, and the soles weren't worn, so I kept wearing them. My dad flipped about the shoes, and threw them away. I got new shoes, mostly because when he was my age, he couldn't.
There are foods my dad won't eat for the same reasons. No citrus fruits, no cherries, and certainly no plums. No bologna.
All of the fruits were fruits he gleaned as a child and teen, when my grandparents were divorced. He ate bologna sandwiches for years. As a kid he worked in his uncle's plum orchard. That branch of the family makes prunes for a living. You don't eat the plums.
I honestly feel like I should be doing foster care. But I'm not in the right house for that yet. Every kid deserves a look at a healthy homelife. I firmly believe that there are quite a few that will never actually see a healthy home ever, and that makes me a bit sad.
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I grew up in an interesting juxtaposition of poverty and middle class. My father is a minister. The church is on an Indian Reservation. The generational poverty on the rez is... well just that. It is so ingrained that a fair number of folks know how to get services, but do not know how to work. I know families where the parents are deliberately not married so that the non working parent can claim to be a single parent to increase their benefits.
I grew up with my folks doing foster care, and having new kids randomly show up at our house to stay for extended lengths of time. As a kid I actually couldn't differentiate which ones were living with us or were being babysat, and that lead to some odd discussions with my mom in recent years. A fair number of the ones who stayed a while had food hoarding issues. Some of them were so afraid of men they couldn't speak in front of my dad. But except my brother, they all left again.
Mom grew up solidly middle class. Dad, not so much. The pains we exprience as children really do haunt us as adults. I had a pair of shoes I adored, they were canvas and had a small hole in the side. It was barely noticeable, and the soles weren't worn, so I kept wearing them. My dad flipped about the shoes, and threw them away. I got new shoes, mostly because when he was my age, he couldn't.
There are foods my dad won't eat for the same reasons. No citrus fruits, no cherries, and certainly no plums. No bologna.
All of the fruits were fruits he gleaned as a child and teen, when my grandparents were divorced. He ate bologna sandwiches for years. As a kid he worked in his uncle's plum orchard. That branch of the family makes prunes for a living. You don't eat the plums.
Thanks for taking the time to share this, SEAKSR. Very touching and sad about the little foster kids hoarding food and being so scared of men. A friend of mine's upbringing was similar to your dad's - he avoids raspberries/raspberry jam etc because wild ones were the only fruit they had at times when he was a kid.
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SEAKSR, my parents didn't grow up super poor (both had stable housing, etc) but both have similar idiocyncracies like the shoe thing.
My dad, as an adult, owns an absurd number of coats and is constantly buying new expensive ones. He is not otherwise a hoarder. He never had a warm coat as a kid.
My mom buys my children almost all their shoes, and nice ones, because shoes were always an extremely stressful expense for her.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economic-inequality/524610/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economic-inequality/524610/)
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[snip]
I honestly feel like I should be doing foster care. But I'm not in the right house for that yet. Every kid deserves a look at a healthy homelife. I firmly believe that there are quite a few that will never actually see a healthy home ever, and that makes me a bit sad.
there's nothing like the realization that not all kids are constantly thinking where their next meal is coming from to help you realize you are poor and/or abused. i used to share a moment w the one other girl who had been in foster care at my college dorm when the middle class/rich kids were 'joking' about being hungry or 'surviving' off free pizza.
and i'm in the same place about wanting to foster, but it's better to take the time to get settled than try too soon. for you and the kid.
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a funny to me story:
one of the nicer foster homes i was in had nice home cooked meals, really great. but one of the common ways we had rice was this instant 'rice pilaf' so rice with little oblong bits of almond.
i refused to eat the almonds.
the foster family, not knowing why i was eating around these bits, was very confused. plain white rice: i ate normally. brown rice: also ate normally. just this one type of rice: i ate slowly after carefully sorting. this observation of my weird meticulous habit continued for about two months. finally, they broke down and asked me.
the almond bits reminded me of when i'd had to eat rice with larva in it bc in my birth family home we didn't have anything else in the house and couldn't afford to throw the rice away without eating it.
when i tell this story outside of foster care context, ppl do not understand that it was humorous. it's a lot of little weird habits that build up when you're poor and you don't realize how strange they are until you are exposed to something different. even then, it can be nearly impossible to break all of the habits, be they around eating or how you think of spending money.
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My mother is one of these stories. It is really heart breaking, and while a lot of my mom's story is about making some bad choices, I really believe that trauma complicates everything and can make it tremendously difficult to walk the right path, even with the best natural gifts and a lot of hard work......
One of the best posts I've read on MMM. Thank you.
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a funny to me story:
one of the nicer foster homes i was in had nice home cooked meals, really great. but one of the common ways we had rice was this instant 'rice pilaf' so rice with little oblong bits of almond.
i refused to eat the almonds.
the foster family, not knowing why i was eating around these bits, was very confused. plain white rice: i ate normally. brown rice: also ate normally. just this one type of rice: i ate slowly after carefully sorting. this observation of my weird meticulous habit continued for about two months. finally, they broke down and asked me.
the almond bits reminded me of when i'd had to eat rice with larva in it bc in my birth family home we didn't have anything else in the house and couldn't afford to throw the rice away without eating it.
when i tell this story outside of foster care context, ppl do not understand that it was humorous. it's a lot of little weird habits that build up when you're poor and you don't realize how strange they are until you are exposed to something different. even then, it can be nearly impossible to break all of the habits, be they around eating or how you think of spending money.
Are we related? I have done something similar at mealtimes and for the same reason.
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a funny to me story:
one of the nicer foster homes i was in had nice home cooked meals, really great. but one of the common ways we had rice was this instant 'rice pilaf' so rice with little oblong bits of almond.
i refused to eat the almonds.
the foster family, not knowing why i was eating around these bits, was very confused. plain white rice: i ate normally. brown rice: also ate normally. just this one type of rice: i ate slowly after carefully sorting. this observation of my weird meticulous habit continued for about two months. finally, they broke down and asked me.
the almond bits reminded me of when i'd had to eat rice with larva in it bc in my birth family home we didn't have anything else in the house and couldn't afford to throw the rice away without eating it.
when i tell this story outside of foster care context, ppl do not understand that it was humorous. it's a lot of little weird habits that build up when you're poor and you don't realize how strange they are until you are exposed to something different. even then, it can be nearly impossible to break all of the habits, be they around eating or how you think of spending money.
One of my oldest friends wrote a poem describing the exact feeling of being served bollwievlle (sp?) rice. And, I see how it's funny, but it might be that context isn't needed in my case.
One of my sisters graduated from college with her BA in Business yesterday. She did it all on her own, working full time and raising her daughter. She started out 18, pregnant and freshly dumped. She posted a picture of her old foodstamp card today, that she keeps so she will always remember where she started. I'm so proud of her, I don't know what else to say. She is the first college graduate in her biological family ever, and there was never any reason to believe she would amount to anything, certainly not her background. But she did it. Determination is strong with that one.
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My current job (teacher at a school for students who have experienced trauma and will not attend other schools, or have been expelled) puts me in contact with extreme poverty daily.
It's lazy to say that people in this situation are there because of their choices. When their lives have literally affected their brain development (for the worse) it's a very haughty and slovenly attitude that families in extreme poverty could make more of their situation. Especially when drug, alcohol and generation violence are a part of the picture.
Commend for you A'spy, you get it fam.
This thread is great. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I also teach in a high poverty area and sometimes see "choices" that I don't understand, but the constant trauma of growing up in poverty actually harms brain development. Also, I don't think anyone on this thread mentioned scarcity mindset yet? It's the idea that when you are used to financial scarcity, used to constant financial stress, and haven't experienced the benefits of delayed gratification, your decision making changes. You are more likely to seek immediate gratification by spending because you don't know when you will have the extra money again. A few links...
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/02/259082836/how-scarcity-mentaly-affects-our-thinking-behavior
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21584303-those-too-little-have-lot-their-mind-days-late-dollars-short
I do wish the professor mentioned in one of the original links would come on this site and post a case study! I have empathy for his situation (I'm the kid of a humanities academic so I know the challenges) but I also think there are lots of other directions he could explore before selling plasma!
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This thread is so interesting and has inspired me with so much gratitude. My heart breaks for children growing up lacking in so many things that I think of as basic human rights. Food, shelter, personal safety, Love and affection. I have never missed a meal in my life. I have never not had the love and support of family and extended family. I can't even begin to imagine how people navigate these circumstance. I am a university graduate, with RRSP, RESPs, savings accounts and the rest, and I still struggle to stay out of the red sometimes. I think that it is so easy to judge people by their poor decisions, like is it the best idea to spend your diaper money on take out pizza, likely not. But the temptation to feel, if only for a moment that, that life is abundant and joyous and easy is trumps the abstract idea of 'the future'. I know that feeling myself. Stories like these are why I still donate to charity despite my lack of early retirement...
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I think a lot of people that grew up middle class don't realize how much better off they are than the poor. The middle class child (and young adult) see/have a clear path to being successful in our society. To get off that path you have to screw up.
So we see people screw up, become poor due to bad choices and then generalize that to all poor people. Maybe not consciously, but subconsciously that's certainly in play.
I know I felt that way for a long time. I don't any more, because I see now, how much the deck is stacked against young people growing up in poverty. They don't have an easy path to success like I did.
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I think a lot of people that grew up middle class don't realize how much better off they are than the poor.
+1. A moment for me was hearing a young, shiny middle-class woman declare herself "broke...I only have $15,000..." ?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! It was almost insulting, her absolute lack of awareness in terms of the group of people she was saying this to. We'd all been eating out of dumpsters (not by choice), because we had literally zero dollars and no safe way of getting any on most days.
I recently heard an argument between a broke person and a wealthy one, in which the wealthy one tried to empathize with the broke one's homeless parenting saying "I know, I've had my challenges too..." Um. I don't think they're in the same dimension.
It's okay to not be able to know, sympathize, even empathize. Sometimes the best we can do is believe, accept, step up.
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I think a lot of people that grew up middle class don't realize how much better off they are than the poor. The middle class child (and young adult) see/have a clear path to being successful in our society. To get off that path you have to screw up.
So we see people screw up, become poor due to bad choices and then generalize that to all poor people. Maybe not consciously, but subconsciously that's certainly in play.
I know I felt that way for a long time. I don't any more, because I see now, how much the deck is stacked against young people growing up in poverty. They don't have an easy path to success like I did.
Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how easy it is to be poor if you're really middle class. Like me. I was raised to trust people in authority and to see minor bureaucrats as my social equals. Not to mention useful skills like grocery shopping from a list and menu planning and how to use a bank.
Those are skills that make it really easy to do things like apply for reduced lunch at my kids' school, apply for health benefits, come BACK to apply AGAIN after they turned me away the first time for being 15 minutes late, and serve my children fruits and vegetables on a low grocery budget.
Plus, if I ran out of money, I COULD just ask my mom. I mean, not my first choice, but the option is there in a real emergency. Hell, I have friends from college who've asked if I need money. There is a lot standing between my low-income self and actual destitution.
It takes a certain amount of time, energy, and organization to be an effective poor person, three things that are hard to come by in generational poverty.
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Great thread.
I grew up working class until I was nine. My father was killed in a motorcycle accident, and my mother spent the next 18 months in the hospital recovering from her injuries. She sustained brain injuries which prevent forming short-term memories - having a conversation with her, she will say the same thing about 20 times over the course of a meal.
My grandmother looked after my sister and I for that time, but when my Mom came home they fought terribly, and then we were on our own. On the day of my father's funeral, my grandfather told me, "You are the man of the house now." I had to grow up fast, and managed our house budget from age ten, doing the grocery shopping, paying the bills, budgeting. We survived on food stamps (SNAP today), SSDI payments, a small life insurance policy, government cheese, and the kindness of churches and community groups (we got some good prices at a co-op in exchange for cleaning the facility, which my six year old sister, crippled mother, and I did every week).
I was fortunate in that I had all the training I needed for success by the time I was nine. My Dad was an entrepreneur and worked incessantly, showing me the value and joy of hard work by example. In addition to his full time job as a tractor mechanic, he hunted and trapped, selling the furs; raised 30 hives of honeybees, selling up to a ton of honey per year; and grew marijuana in the bee fields, selling to his friends. He taught me to read when I was four, and bestowed a lifetime love of learning and curiosity.
I benefited from the social safety net. Without that, I am not sure how I would have fed my family. I still suffer from the scarcity mindset; no amount of savings is ever going to be "enough." I have a hard time releasing things, because I remember when the simplest things meant so much to me. And I benefited from a really progressive public school system with a gifted education program that exposed me to a semester's worth of college credits by the time I graduated, allowing me to work full time and graduate in three and a half years.
Burning in the crucible of poverty has given me things that my middle class peers can't get. I take wild career risks that sometimes pay off. I'm not afraid of failure, because I've been poor before. I learned persistence. Last year, my business made $540k in net profits. That would not have been possible with a traditional middle class upbringing.
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I have noticed when talking to friends and aquaintences that the more insecure their upbringing, the more risk tolerant that are, and Axe I think I now understand a bit better why. Thank you for articulating what so many have difficulty conveying. I've tried to articulate a legitimate reason someone would say pursue dealing drugs, and the nothing to loose argument usually falls flat with most middle class folks.
I have so many friends who are genuinely good people who did NOT learn a useful trade or skill growing up, who literally only learned how to steal, fill out forms, part out a kilo, and drive. Most can't cook, not don't or won't, but can't. Throw in a life of drug use/abuse, and the associated insecurity that goes along with those environments, and it's no wonder kids grow up assuming they will go to jail at some point in their lives.
All that said it's no wonder I didn't find orange is the new black very funny.
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_____4. I know how to get someone out of jail.
Yeah I've always been curious about the mechanics of posting bail. If I want to release someone for say $5,000, how do I go about that? I've got money but I don't have $5,000 to be withdrawn from an ATM in the middle of the night. Can I request an emergency wire transfer, or what?
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All that said it's no wonder I didn't find orange is the new black very funny.
I don't think it's supposed to be funny?
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I have noticed when talking to friends and aquaintences that the more insecure their upbringing, the more risk tolerant that are, and Axe I think I now understand a bit better why.
Interesting. I had a pretty chaotic childhood -- mom died when I was 5, dad drank a lot, we moved three or four times every year and I ate a lot of potato chips for dinner -- and I think that I am not super risk-tolerant when it comes to money. I have always had a day job or money in the bank to back any risk-taking. I just ... know what it looks like to be 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 and be as poor as a church mouse and I really don't want that for myself. So, yes, I've taken some risks, but not that many. I crave calm in my life, including with finances. I like that steady paycheck coming in twice a month...
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Yesterday morning, I spent two hours on the phone, stuck in a cycle of bureaucratic insanity related to a house move. The gist of it is that I need a visitors parking permit for the moving van to move us in, but I can't get a visitors parking permit unless I can prove my address, and I can't prove my address until after I've moved in... but I can't move in until I have the visitors parking permit for the moving van. In the end I gave up and decided the moving van could just get a damn parking ticket and I would just pay it for them. I came off the phone so profoundly grateful that:
1. I am literate enough to decode the epic webpage about how to navigate the visitor parking permit system.
2. I have enough free time to spend two hours on the phone.
3. I have enough money to have a phone plan that accommodate two extra hours of phone calls.
4. I think it's appropriate to ask administrators to go and find things out for me, and argue with them if their answer doesn't suit me.
5. I have enough money to think, "I'll just pay the damn parking ticket."
I can see how someone could feel totally overwhelmed and helpless in my situation. I mean, heck, I felt pretty overwhelmed even with all my advantages.
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See - that's one of those things that would drive me nuts - having to deal with city regulations. Thus I don't live in a city.
DW and I have both witnessed people around us being prosperous long enough that they have lost sight of what it means to be poor - and how this shapes their outlook and opinion on so many things. They are insulated. So easy to see how wealthy politicians can't truly relate to their constituency.
We don't want our kids to get too comfortable and assume that prosperity is automatic.
We've discussed with them how we've met our financial and career goals (now coasting) and how that's enabled us rehab our house and some of our things after 20 years of making the frugal choices. It was not like that for a long time.
Eldest is just entering the teenager job economy (job, license, car, drive thrus, dates). Last night his car started making a noise. Yeah - that's going to cost you. We can fix it but you still need to buy parts.
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I just caught up on the last few months of this thread.
Thank you to everyone who contributed!
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Posting to follow. Lots of interesting stories here.
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I was just thinking today about how grateful I am for the help I have received in my life that allowed me to escape from poverty. I'm grateful for the student loans from the government that allowed me to get an education and work certifications, the food assistance I had as a child (free school lunches, WIC, food stamps, etc.), the church food pantry and clothing drives, the Christmas gift-giving drives in my community, unemployment insurance, free trainings over the internet, etc. I know a lot of people out there think these types of assistance are wastes of money and create dependence for the poor, but at least in my case, they helped me survive and become a good productive, tax-paying citizen. I wish more people heard about the success stories that come from these programs.
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+1 to WTC's. (Except my receiving was adulthood.)
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Great thread! I appreciate all the stories people have shared.
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As with all things in life, it's all relative. I imagine if you're living in Dubai, you're probably near poverty because your kids have to share an ipad. In the states the poverty level is just under $12000. I'm from South Africa, where the state pension is around $120 a month.
Many grandparents people raise their grandkids on that as the parents have either passed away or don't have incomes. It's really not easy. I travel a lot for work, to really poor countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi etc. They can't even fathom the fact that the South African government gives people money for nothing, let alone a fortune like $120 a month which is more than double the average monthly wage for the unskilled.
Even though i understand everything is relative, it hits me harder when I see old people struggling because they don't have the asset of time to help themselves. They're often poor and homeless and have been that way their entire lives.
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I was just thinking today about how grateful I am for the help I have received in my life that allowed me to escape from poverty. I'm grateful for the student loans from the government that allowed me to get an education and work certifications, the food assistance I had as a child (free school lunches, WIC, food stamps, etc.), the church food pantry and clothing drives, the Christmas gift-giving drives in my community, unemployment insurance, free trainings over the internet, etc. I know a lot of people out there think these types of assistance are wastes of money and create dependence for the poor, but at least in my case, they helped me survive and become a good productive, tax-paying citizen. I wish more people heard about the success stories that come from these programs.
I wish we heard more success stories, too, as well as more big Thank Yous to the citizens of the country who pay for these programs. Look, I kNOW there are many struggling families out there helped by social services. Unless you (the generic you) work directly withh them, you dont see it.
Instead, the dominent media message I hear is "we dont help people, the controbutions made by the taxpayers are miserly, you rich people are arrogent and mean (using the word 'mean' in both senses), anyone who does not wish to pay more is an ogre" and etc.
Fortunately in my retired state I have a low income and couldnt be considered "rich"when the common measure is income.
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Heartbreaking stories but also very interesting and well written. Thanks for sharing!
One of the things we need to own as a society is what William McPherson, the author of the Falling article, called "the spell of magical thinking." A common theme in many stories involving middle- or even upper-class folks who've plunged into poverty is a sense that it was okay, even laudable, to pursue a dream or ideal without considering the financial consequences. It's not their fault for buying into this because mentors and people they trust are usually telling them this nonsense.
Of course it's not surprising that companies are all too eager to promote this through advertising. Makes me quite angry when universities, which profit from people going into massive debt to obtain degrees that likely have negative ROI, engage in this behavior.
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Unless you (the generic you) work directly withh them, you dont see it.
There are many, many more ways to hang with folks receiving services, and then you too get to hear the happy gratitudes :) I hear some cranky complainypants, for sure, and I have no patience for them, but mostly I hear incredible gratefulness, even for $10 here or a bowl of soup there.
I don't fret about the "taxpaying" part. I pay taxes and am happy to, and see it only as a redistribution of an extreme imbalance. i.e., Taxes schmaxes, what's ridiculous is some people being paid $150k and others being paid $20k for essential services. I like where social service programs smooths that imbalance out a teeny tiny bit (because that's better than not smoothing it out one iota).
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As with all things in life, it's all relative. I imagine if you're living in Dubai, you're probably near poverty because your kids have to share an ipad. In the states the poverty level is just under $12000. I'm from South Africa, where the state pension is around $120 a month.
Many grandparents people raise their grandkids on that as the parents have either passed away or don't have incomes. It's really not easy. I travel a lot for work, to really poor countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi etc. They can't even fathom the fact that the South African government gives people money for nothing, let alone a fortune like $120 a month which is more than double the average monthly wage for the unskilled.
Even though i understand everything is relative, it hits me harder when I see old people struggling because they don't have the asset of time to help themselves. They're often poor and homeless and have been that way their entire lives.
My mother used to tell me when I was child that we weren't really poor because poor people have distended bellies from malnutrition and flies on their face. That never really seemed accurate to me when my stomach was rumbling. Like most poor people, she was just ashamed of what we were, because American society says that poor people are immoral and deserve every bit of suffering that they get.
I suppose there will always be people who say the poor actually have it easy, because poverty is frightening and a lot of people worry that they will catch it like a disease. It's probably comforting to be able to rationalize it as a character flaw, because then you don't have to have bad feelings about encountering it. If people are really just whiny and lazy when they are cold and hungry, then you don't have to feel bad about not wanting to help them do better.
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Like WTC and dear Jooni, I am also super grateful for all the help my family and I received when I was a kid, and as an adult, too.
- Food stamps / WIC
- Social Security payments after my mom died
- Lunches and financial assistance at school
- Pell grants
- Student loans
And more than anything else, I am grateful for public education in this country. Without the attention and support and vision I received from my many teachers over the years, I have no idea where I'd be now.
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Like WTC and dear Jooni, I am also super grateful for all the help my family and I received when I was a kid, and as an adult, too.
- Food stamps / WIC
- Social Security payments after my mom died
- Lunches and financial assistance at school
- Pell grants
- Student loans
And more than anything else, I am grateful for public education in this country. Without the attention and support and vision I received from my many teachers over the years, I have no idea where I'd be now.
this^. plus i acknowledge that the school assistance i got was multiplied by being in a nicer area, even if that eventually was super tenuous. i think the other stories that are helpful are about how (presumably) well intended people can shame kids on assistance. i assume the (middle class) school officials were thinking, 'this kid must be forgetting to tell their parents. if we stamp them, then the parents will see for sure!' not anything malicious. but that intent can still cause bullying and make it hard for the kids to focus and learn.
http://www.today.com/food/school-stamped-kids-lunch-money-when-account-was-low-t110073 (http://www.today.com/food/school-stamped-kids-lunch-money-when-account-was-low-t110073)
i was on assisted school lunches. i'd scrimp the portion my mom gave me so that once a week i could buy an item that wasn't covered by the assistance program. that way other kids would sometimes see me eating a 'fancy' food, trying to signal that i wasn't poor and shouldn't be bullied. kids are super smart and poor kids have an eye for what can make it hard for them to learn or get by because of their meaner peers.
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I don't ever remember being going hungry but definitely lived in some weird situations... I was born in Ukraine and moved here because my mom married an American. I was 6. I barely remember Ukraine but it was far from glamorous. I think we had break-ins and such pretty often.
He turned out to be abusive and we ended up living in a women's shelter for a bit, then back with him again when he was apologetic (no idea why!?!). Eventually got out and lived in a facility for brain injury rehabilitation, but before it was actually open to patients. I'm not really sure of the details of how we were able to live there. I know we hitch-hiked a lot which people would probably think is crazy nowadays. Sometimes in tractor trailers which was really cool as a kid! I don't really remember if we were getting benefits during this time, we were only greencard holders so maybe not even eligible? I do remember free school lunches.
She ended up online dating again and remarried when I was about 9, but I was still the only one living in a trailer/mobile home in school so it was a bit different even if we weren't actually poor anymore. We had cows, chickens, and geese which was a bit different from the norm even though everyone lived in a pretty rural area. People thought I lived on a farm if I mentioned it...nope we just had some cows.
It was strange getting to college and meeting people who grew up rich or in really nice houses. I don't think I met a single person who had cows growing up. I particularly was jealous of how everyone seemed to get to go on cool vacations, disney world, cruises, etc. This seemed like an uber rich person thing, or maybe just a city/suburb thing since I grew up in a rural area. In my experience, people in rural areas aren't interested in vacations like that and might go to the mountains in the same state, but that's about it.
I didn't know what a garbage disposal was until college and never used a dishwasher until my first college apartment. It was weird living in a MUCH nicer place in college than I ever have my whole life. And that's with renting one of the cheaper apartments in the area!
It still blows my mind how I'm able to take vacations pretty much anywhere I want now.
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my other poor friends from college had a similar experience to marielle, mainly around having to move around a lot and dodging abusive people.
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Thank you all for your stories.
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Chippewa, my story is remarkably similar to yours, but for what it's worth, I'll add it just the same.
When my mother in her early twenties she lost her two-year-old son to SIDS, and it destroyed her life. She self-medicated with cocaine, which was popular at that time in that region. She divorced, married again, went on to have two more children (me and my brother) and divorced again. She lost her career in the USMC, and found part-time work as a cashier in a gas station. Her addiction made it impossible to keep her customer facing job and she found employment through less conventional means. We moved all the time, staying with family, friends, anyone who would rent to my mother. These years were shitty but that's another story for another time. For now, I'll stick to those which speak to our then financial situation.
When I was 7 I remember learning the word millionaire in school. I went home to ask my mother if we would ever be millionaires. She laughed and told me no. I asked her if we would ever be thousandaires having obviously no concept of money at this age. I don't remember exactly how she responded, but I do remember that her pause before answering told me not to press the issue. The next year I learned through PSAs on PBS of all places that my home was not a safe one. When I confronted my mother about it, she laughed again and asked if I wanted to call the cops. The confrontation must have hurt her though because the next day she emptied the savings accounts our grandmother made for us and took us to the grocery store and told us we could get whatever we wanted. We bought $80 worth of flavored freezer pops and pizza. We brought the food home, she walked away and never came back. CPS was called 3 months later when my brother told his classmate that our mom couldn't pick him up from their house because our mom wasn't home. The story of how we survived those three months is a long one and probably doesn't belong here. In short, we stole and squatted.
I was raised in foster homes from ages 9 to 18. Saving came naturally because I never developed a habit of spending money. When I was 18, I made the decision to move halfway across the country, leaving my foster siblings behind. I saw what staying in that circle did to my friends and I didn't want any of it, so I left. In many regards, I am very successful today. I have a BA, I have a good job, and a stable, supportive relationship, but I know I am the exception rather than the rule. I have watched my friends and family lose their own children to the system and end up homeless, and it is truly heartbreaking. ARS if you're reading this, the cycle perpetuates itself from a lot of systemic angles.
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Whoa, SomatoseVisions. All I can think is, "I'm so glad you're alive, that you survived all that."
I also appreciate your compassionate understanding of your mother's original heartbreak, the thing she could not recover from :(
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As many before me on this thread have noted, I benefited greatly from public assistance from PBS to foster care, free lunches, and Pell Grants. No man is an island.
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Whoa, SomatoseVisions. All I can think is, "I'm so glad you're alive, that you survived all that."
I also appreciate your compassionate understanding of your mother's original heartbreak, the thing she could not recover from :(
+1
Also, SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is, by definition, for babies under 12 months old. Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (over 12 months old) is very rare. I wonder if your brother died from another cause that your mother couldn't bring herself to admit or discuss.
I'm sad and sorry you didn't have the parents and childhood everyone should have. Thank you for sharing your story.
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Chippewa, my story is remarkably similar to yours, but for what it's worth, I'll add it just the same.
[snip]
i can't believe that we have 3 college educated foster care alumni. we should make a special club
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Chippewa, my story is remarkably similar to yours, but for what it's worth, I'll add it just the same.
[snip]
i can't believe that we have 3 college educated foster care alumni. we should make a special club
High five to all of us who have squeezed out of the average stats for those from foster care.
Sometimes I think some universal energy must have had my back, because multiple times I can recount how I almost didn't make it out. I picture an old black & white cartoon of a plane having a bouncy take off but eventually sores above.
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Chippewa, my story is remarkably similar to yours, but for what it's worth, I'll add it just the same.
When my mother in her early twenties she lost her two-year-old son to SIDS, and it destroyed her life. She self-medicated with cocaine, which was popular at that time in that region. She divorced, married again, went on to have two more children (me and my brother) and divorced again. She lost her career in the USMC, and found part-time work as a cashier in a gas station. Her addiction made it impossible to keep her customer facing job and she found employment through less conventional means. We moved all the time, staying with family, friends, anyone who would rent to my mother. These years were shitty but that's another story for another time. For now, I'll stick to those which speak to our then financial situation.
When I was 7 I remember learning the word millionaire in school. I went home to ask my mother if we would ever be millionaires. She laughed and told me no. I asked her if we would ever be thousandaires having obviously no concept of money at this age. I don't remember exactly how she responded, but I do remember that her pause before answering told me not to press the issue. The next year I learned through PSAs on PBS of all places that my home was not a safe one. When I confronted my mother about it, she laughed again and asked if I wanted to call the cops. The confrontation must have hurt her though because the next day she emptied the savings accounts our grandmother made for us and took us to the grocery store and told us we could get whatever we wanted. We bought $80 worth of flavored freezer pops and pizza. We brought the food home, she walked away and never came back. CPS was called 3 months later when my brother told his classmate that our mom couldn't pick him up from their house because our mom wasn't home. The story of how we survived those three months is a long one and probably doesn't belong here. In short, we stole and squatted.
I was raised in foster homes from ages 9 to 18. Saving came naturally because I never developed a habit of spending money. When I was 18, I made the decision to move halfway across the country, leaving my foster siblings behind. I saw what staying in that circle did to my friends and I didn't want any of it, so I left. In many regards, I am very successful today. I have a BA, I have a good job, and a stable, supportive relationship, but I know I am the exception rather than the rule. I have watched my friends and family lose their own children to the system and end up homeless, and it is truly heartbreaking. ARS if you're reading this, the cycle perpetuates itself from a lot of systemic angles.
Thank you so much for your story. You must be so proud of yourself for having survived this and thrived. This is a testament to human will power. It would be great if you can post the story of your survival. I am just trying to picture an 8 year old girl surviving the streets of the United States and living to tell the tale. Please tell us more.
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As many before me on this thread have noted, I benefited greatly from public assistance from PBS to foster care, free lunches, and Pell Grants. No man is an island.
How is your mother doing today? Have you been able to reconcile?
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@Letj,
I think part of what makes my story seem remarkable is that people picture themselves at that age (or an 8 year old close to them) in that situation. Based on my limited experiences, most 8 year olds who had caregivers who weren't able to provide for them for some reason also learned to be independent from a very young age. The step from their stories to mine is not as large as you might think. In many cases I was fortunate because I didn't have to assume responsibility for a toddler or a parent.
I don't want to redirect the attention of this thread to my story when there are so many others that deserve to be voiced. Feel free to PM me with questions and I'd be happy to answer them. To address your second question, I met my mother again 5 years ago. She is remarried and according to some sources sober now. She is in denial of how our years together passed and that may be for the best. I wouldn't consider us reconciled but we each know the other is okay.
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@Letj,
I think part of what makes my story seem remarkable is that people picture themselves at that age (or an 8 year old close to them) in that situation. Based on my limited experiences, most 8 year olds who had caregivers who weren't able to provide for them for some reason also learned to be independent from a very young age. The step from their stories to mine is not as large as you might think. In many cases I was fortunate because I didn't have to assume responsibility for a toddler or a parent.
I don't want to redirect the attention of this thread to my story when there are so many others that deserve to be voiced. Feel free to PM me with questions and I'd be happy to answer them. To address your second question, I met my mother again 5 years ago. She is remarried and according to some sources sober now. She is in denial of how our years together passed and that may be for the best. I wouldn't consider us reconciled but we each know the other is okay.
Thanks for sharing and enlightening me.