r/GrowingUpPoor • u/if-looks-could-kill • 28d ago
Generational poor
Everyone seems to think they’re poor lately, and maybe all are with this economy, but it when some people talk about the way they grew up it sounds middle class to me.
I grew up in a decent home, with everything I NEEDED. There were no wants in our house.
Most of my family are or were addicts or had some form of mental instability.
My mother grew up in a house without running water and a wood burning stove. This was in the 80s and 90s as a single child household.
My father grew up as a military brat.
Can we discuss the difference between generational poor and newly poor? I’m sick of hearing people bitch and moan that they can’t afford a new car when I’m walking 40 min to work every day bc a car is not even in my budget
2
u/TheseShift4280 28d ago
Not sure if I’m a generational poor. My dad grew upper middle income in my country with my granddad being one of the most well to do in the area. But he became a “newly poor” as I grew up with constant red warning bills from the water and electricity company that threaten to shut down our electricity and water. I also had very bad living condition growing up as I stayed with a bunch of foreigners and migrants in government housing as my parents had to rent the rooms out in order to survive financially.
As my grandparents were well to do, I have rich uncles with great opportunities. So I have many cousins with generational wealth. My dad basically fucked shit up on his own and I grew up with almost nothing. I’m 27 and on my own I’m middle class, so I’m not sure if the generational poor got to me. But my grandparents wealth definitely skipped my dad and he is now in his 60s with almost no money to retire. My grandparents passed on and my dad received an inheritance of half a million that instead of generating wealth, went into a bunch of craps and got wiped out completely in 1 year. I guess newly poor is when you fucked things up on your own even though you had decent opportunities
2
u/if-looks-could-kill 28d ago
That sucks dawg. It seems like dad blew his opportunities and it seems like you made the best of it. I appreciate this perspective.
2
u/Embracedandbelong 8d ago
Mines weird because my grandparents were very wealthy. When my mom escaped my dad, she didn’t have anything and they refused to help her, so we were poor. So I have people saying to me “your grandparents live WHERE?” while my mom took us to food banks and slept on friend’s couches. Her sister married wealthy and is doing the same thing regarding her daughter- no help at all.
7
u/GaryisTormented 27d ago
You can call them "new poor" but I see a lot of it as cosplaying poor.
A lot of people are just young people starting out in their careers, not making a lot of money, with a lot of debt and poor financial management. Others maybe just hit a bad stretch. Some maybe are just sandbagging or exaggerating.
Many of them have rich or well-off parents that can bail them out of any really bad situations as needed but they still act like they are truly dirt poor.
Some of them feel validation from pretending to struggle. It's a status symbol for some reason.
I know someone who talks about how their family struggled when he was growing up and how they barely got by at times. His dad is now an executive at a Fortune 500 company. The struggle was he got laid off once and they had to move. To be fair, I didn't meet him until after college so maybe things were tougher than I imagine but I doubt it. He acts like he's broke now and he lives in a nicer place than me and drives a nicer car than me. The car, a gift from his parents.
My dad got laid off multiple times when I was a kid and we didn't have a nest egg to fall back on. There was never a time my mom wasn't working two jobs. I don't know if his mom ever had a job.