Someone Wondered “What’s A Sign That Someone Grew Up Poor?” And 30 Folks Online Delivered
According to the World bank, the number of people living below the poverty line in the world is gradually decreasing, but this is still far from enough to say there's been a serious improvement in the situation. On the other hand, several decades ago, everything was much, much worse.
Yes, if today in the world less than 10% of the population live below $2.15 a day, then forty years ago there were more than 40% of such people. In other words, almost half of the modern population of the globe grew in poverty. And, according to people in this recent viral thread, there are special behavioral patterns and signs by which such a person can be recognized.
More info: Reddit
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In USMC recruit training we had a dude in our platoon who was homeless for an extended period of time before enlisting.
Every morning at zero dark thirty the DIs would come in turn the light on, screaming, total chaos to wake us all up…. Every single morning for the first thirty days or so of basic this dude slept right through it 😂. Kid said he was so comfortable in his little rack and hadn’t slept so good in a long long time. He was always exclaiming how good the food was at the chow hall. It put a lot of things in perspective for me.
For me, I have what I call "poverty mentality", while I can afford new shoes and clothes, they have to be falling apart for me to replace.
I didn’t grow up super poor, but I still do this. My favorite pair of vans, had em for three years. Super glued the sole together , hand sewed the crease together a few times. Finnaly bought a new pair of shoes lmao. Idk why I do this but it saved me money for three years. EDIT:Wow, I’m honored, Finnaly been on BP long enough to get a spam bot reply lmao
Never buying clothing at full price. It just feels illegal.
They are normally more generous than people who grew up in rich families.
This is absolutely true, as pizza delivery drivers have many stories about poor people who tip (when they can) and rich people who tip a little or nothing at all. A good example is NY Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, who lives in a big-a*s mansion in Texas. He and his wife both reportedly tip $1
The mental struggle to buy anything and not feel guilty.
Oof. I have a $50 bill in my wallet from Christmas. I am 39 and still in the process of convincing myself to buy the stupid video game I want. Cleary it is a gift so it's ok but man have I been resistant to buying anything with it
Will eat all of the food on their plate, even after feeling full because they can't waste food.
having a vast skill set! trust me, when you cant afford a repair man/hairdresser/seamstress/builder/roofer/welder/mechanic etc, you learn yourself.
I'm really surprised I haven't seen "condiment drawer" here. When eating out, you save all of the unused condiments in a drawer. It took me until I was about 40 to finally recognize and stop hoarding ketchup and sauce packets.
I don't like chili sauce so when I eat two minute noodles, I just cut around that packet and store it in the pantry. For no good reason
A personal anecdote:
For backstory, I'm the primary financial provider for my wife and I, but I really don't care what she does with our money. If our bills are paid and we have food to eat, I'm fine.
I grew up fairly poor, so I never really bought anything for myself, or asked for anything to be bought for me. A few months ago a video game I had wanted to play was on sale for like.... $2.50, and I said to my wife "hey, can I buy this?"
Not really because I wanted "permission" but because I hadn't logged in to check our financial state and didn't know if the money was already set aside for bills. But she looked at me and said "did you just ask permission to buy a $2.50 game with your own money?...."
So I'd say the hesitance to buy anything for yourself, regardless of how stupidly cheap it was.
My late husband did this, always asked if he could buy something (he was also the mayonnaise jar hoarder)
I grew up poor and my husband grew up middle class. Whenever we have guests, I am constantly asking people if they got ENOUGH food. "Is anyone still hungry? I can make something else!"
My husband will inquire about the quality of the food and if it is to everyone's liking.
I think when you grow up poor, food is very much quantity over quality.
I went without food sometimes when I was growing up. It took a long time before I stopped hoarding food once I could afford it. My husband always commented on how long it would take me to go through the chocolate he would bring back from his international trips. I was always afraid it would be the last time we could get it and would make it last as long as humanly possible. I am quick to shut down spending and I am much better at saving money than my husband. I also keep our heat set at 63 for the day and I am usually the last in the neighborhood to turn on our air conditioning. I still shop sales and I don’t understand things like renovating a perfectly fine kitchen just because you don’t like the color of the countertop or cabinets.
One of my nephews was adopted into our family when he was three. My SIL said it took him a long time to stop hoarding food and realize he would get fed at the next meal.
Lack of exposure to cultural events. missing out on experiences that others may take for granted, such as attending concerts, traveling, or participating in extracurricular activities.
I tried out to be a cheerleader and made the squad. I was shocked and had to back out. I lied, saying that i'd hurt myself and my doctor has told me not to join, but the truth was that my parents could barely afford a pizza now and then, much less several hundred dollars worth the cheerleading gear. I never told them.
When I was in elementary school a girl asked me why all my shirts were just solid color and not brand name logo shirts. Made me feel insecure. So im going to go with an obvious answer here, clothing and style. I still wear my clothes until they have holes and stains. I have the money to buy new brand name clothes, but why. I'm not trying to impress anyone.
Odd hoarding behaviours of things you probably should have gotten rid of out of fear you won’t be able to replace them easily. I keep a stack of boxes broken down because there’s still this fear in the back of my mind that I’ll have to move again at a moment’s notice. I make a decent salary now and have lived where I am for nearly 7 years, but I still can’t part with those boxes despite the space they take up. Under the bed, behind the chest of drawers… Yeah. I still have ‘em.
Mayonnaise jars, or any jar that has a good lid. Have to go on a jar purge every 6 months or so.
Enjoying cinnamon, sugar, and butter on a slice of bread because we couldn't afford sweet treats 🥲 it low-key slapped though
I'm a foster kid. I was always poor and pretty much had nothing. These are habits I have.
I hoard food. They're still edible if they're past their expiration date as long as it's not mouldy or something. My basement is stocked for a zombie apocalypse.
I never throw out old containers unless they're mouldy or something, clean that s**t out, good as new.
I also always have leftovers. I never waste food and eat everything on my plate.
I feel guilty when I buy something I don't necessarily need.
I add water to "empty" soap containers so they're full.
I cut "empty" toothpaste tubes so I get every last drop.
I reuse a lot of stuff. The "disposable" stuff don't need to be disposed most of the time. You can reuse them.
You should get one of those paint rollers. You stick the end of toothpaste or pain tube and it rolls it up all tight so you get every last drop. Saves me a lot of time and is so much more convenient than cutting them open.
Scanning the menu for the cheapest options possible when at a restaurant. “It’s ok the soup is really enough for me”
- Being hypersensitive to any light left on, door left open, opening the fridge too much, running water too long, etc, because you’re trained to minimize utilities.
- Never pouring more than 1/2 a glass of any drink when at someone else’s house (except water) because you don’t want to be seen as wasteful/gluttonous.
- Making weird snacks out of food that isn’t supposed to be a snack - ex. Eating dry ramen noodles like chips, koolaid with sugar and your finger to make your own fun dip, eating Kraft cheese slices/cold hotdogs/other things that are normally just a part of a meal.
"Eating dry ramen noodles like chips, koolaid with sugar" are some of my favorite things but I didn't grow up poor.
In the US I’d say poor dental history or teeth - dental work is a luxury
Overall, I’d say many hoarders grew up poor because they are so afraid of not having something if they’ll need it so they keep everything
My dad was like that. Grew up in the Depression, the son of a widow. Never threw out any scrap piece of metal or wood. I've inherited that trait too.
Sentimentality. Not that wealthier people can't be sentimental.
But my dad, whose parents grew up in the rural South during the great depression, wants to keep every little thing of my mom's. Everything.
He would prefer to keep her bedroom as is.
I always wondered why he wanted to keep it like that. But then I realized, the only thing we have left is my mom's ashes in an urn.
There was no funeral, no memorial, (she didn't want any and there was no one to come anyways) no tombstone. Nothing that feels tangible, personal, etc.
We don't have the luxury of beautiful personal mausoleums, or headstones, or anything else in the Western death culture.
My mom's bedroom, and all her stuff is the closest we will ever have to a memorial for my mom. It's a tomb, without a body in it.
I was told recently I was crazy for using bread instead of hot dog buns. That's just something I always did as it's what we had. Burgers, hotdogs all bread fellas.
There's quite a bit, I didn't see them in myself until I was an adult and went to therapy.
1. Lack of basic wellness, e.g. no primary care doctor or dentist. Rationalizing this because there's a "financial cost" to it.
2. Serious guilt from buying anything you don't absolutely need. It's a feeling of "you don't deserve this" or "you're being stupid to ever want something".
3. Working yourself to death because of a serious insecurity about "returning to poverty"; my therapist called this the "never again" work ethic, it's toxic.
4. Eating your food so fast like you will never have another meal again. It's a sign of food insecurity growing up. My fiance pointed this out to me that I did this, and it clicked when I talked with my therapist about it. It's very common
5. General anti establishment beliefs. The system failed you, so it's hard to trust something that put you through abuse. This can manifest in bad financial literacy, or lack of belief in banks/stock market, etc.
I have ”poverty toes”. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up so shoes were worn until they died, regardless of fit. My toes are curled and with prominent knuckles from being scrunched into too-small shoes.
Only shopping in the clearance sections even after I grew up and started making good money.
Having duplicates of essentials. You develop a prepper mentality for every “just in case” situation.
Someone asked me if my kid was going to do dance or gymnastics. I was confused as to why. Their response was didn’t you do it as a kid. No I that cost money. I was lucky to play with a knockoff Barbie.
Realizing I wanted to have the house that all my kids friends came over to hang out at because that wasn't really an option for big chunks of my childhood.
I felt that. I still kinda want to be able to have friends at my house. ... But that's just me.
Still being marveled by an ice maker and side by side doors
I hate side by side doors unless they both go to the refrigerator portion, and the freezer is a separate portion. The more cubic a compartment is, the more volume. Side by side freezer/fridge always feels like there isn't enough room in either.
Even when they have money to burn, they’ll still be frugal as f**k.
Note: this post originally had 37 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Mom worked for New York Telephone in the '70s, but we lived in a town with an independent phone company, which meant she would have had to pay for phone service, so instead we had a cheap Radio Shack intercom and if somebody wanted to talk to us, they'd call the neighbors and the neighbors would call us on the intercom. We also didn't have a color TV till about 1978, but even that was an improvement from around 1970 when we had a little TV with picture but no sound sitting on top of a big TV with sound but no picture and we had to turn both on to watch and listen to a show
Wow. LOL... I look at most of these and think "Uhh.. I thought that was just growing up Asian". Seriously - my whole group of friends/acquaintances growing up (all a bunch of East Asian kids, most of them Chinese) we did SO much of this stuff just as part of daily life (Don't waste food, make sure your guests have MORE than enough to eat, if it ain't broke you don't need a new one, etc) - and I wouldn't really call any of us as having grown up 'poor'... and some of them were downright stupid wealthy.
I wonder if that had anything to do with how prevalent Confucian thinking is in China and East Asia in general. It developed during the chaotic Warring States Period in China, and so is focused on order and tradition to maintain harmony (kinda like an inherent "never again" mindset).
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My mother has always scraped out eggs with her finger when she cracks them open. She said years ago an acquaintance saw her do that and asked her if she grew up poor.
An older woman told me once that prospective MIL's would watch their potential DIL's to see if they did that because it was a sign that they would be a good homemaker - scraping out that bit of egg. I do it, b/c not doing it is wasteful.
Load More Replies... Mom worked for New York Telephone in the '70s, but we lived in a town with an independent phone company, which meant she would have had to pay for phone service, so instead we had a cheap Radio Shack intercom and if somebody wanted to talk to us, they'd call the neighbors and the neighbors would call us on the intercom. We also didn't have a color TV till about 1978, but even that was an improvement from around 1970 when we had a little TV with picture but no sound sitting on top of a big TV with sound but no picture and we had to turn both on to watch and listen to a show
Wow. LOL... I look at most of these and think "Uhh.. I thought that was just growing up Asian". Seriously - my whole group of friends/acquaintances growing up (all a bunch of East Asian kids, most of them Chinese) we did SO much of this stuff just as part of daily life (Don't waste food, make sure your guests have MORE than enough to eat, if it ain't broke you don't need a new one, etc) - and I wouldn't really call any of us as having grown up 'poor'... and some of them were downright stupid wealthy.
I wonder if that had anything to do with how prevalent Confucian thinking is in China and East Asia in general. It developed during the chaotic Warring States Period in China, and so is focused on order and tradition to maintain harmony (kinda like an inherent "never again" mindset).
Load More Replies... My mother has always scraped out eggs with her finger when she cracks them open. She said years ago an acquaintance saw her do that and asked her if she grew up poor.
An older woman told me once that prospective MIL's would watch their potential DIL's to see if they did that because it was a sign that they would be a good homemaker - scraping out that bit of egg. I do it, b/c not doing it is wasteful.
Load More Replies...