30 Luxuries That Are Apparently Necessities, According To These Former Poor People Online
“In a world where only the strong survive, only the strong survive,” — Starship Amazing.
Despite the comical nature of the song title by the chiptune synthpop duo from Anchorage, Alaska, you can’t but see the truth in it. Living entails a lot of struggle in order to survive.
And it doesn’t matter where you live—living in a progressive and civilized part of the world doesn’t save people from being poor and living in poverty. But not all hope is lost.
Redditors have been discussing this, in the form of an r/AskReddit thread where user u/Metforming[Runs] asked those who used to be poor, but have managed to make it big(ger) in life, to share products, activities, or just things that they can now afford, but ones that made them realize they should be available to all, regardless of financial status, like a human right.
One modest handful of upvotes later, the post drew some attention and generated enough good points to get the internet talking about the things that actually matter.
Bored Panda invites you to read though the best responses from the AskReddit thread, upvote the ones you loved the most, ponder life, share your thoughts, ponder some more and (optional) share some more in that order. Or just share the things you think should be in this list in the comment section below!
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This is a little TMI but I just noticed how many "fancy" pads I use now that I can afford them. When I was making barely enough to afford rent, I would buy the cheapest pads and try to wear them for as long as possible. Female hygiene wasn't really taught well to me and my feminine health was just never taken seriously.
So I think I used maybe 3 pads a day? I didn't realize that I was allergic to the material and had a lot of skin issues because of that, as well. I just thought it was part of the "pain of having a period." Never even tried the fancy pads.
The first thing I bought when I had more money were the "fancy" pads.. just to try them. The kind made with special, hypoallergenic material and has no bleach. I go through like 10 a day just because I want a clean one every hour. It's f*****g insane how much my experience with a period has changed.
Oh, and good f*****g toilet paper.
Some companies and schools make hygiene products available for free to those in need, but that's a drop in the ocean still. "Period poverty" is a real thing!
Dr_Julian_Helisent said:
Space. I grew up sharing beds and bedroom with three other sisters. Imagine four kids shoved into a queen bed. Now I have a 1500sqft home and only share my bedroom/bed with my husband because I want to. It's so freeing
Blackrose06 replied:
As an introvert, having my own space for the first time felt like the biggest luxury. It was a small one bedroom apartment but it was luxury to have it all to myself.
I love living alone I definitely need my personal space. I've got the best situation because I am in a relationship with a man who lives in my building; we don't live together. We spend time together when we want to be together, and time apart when we want to be apart and it works d
My dog got hurt last week. Rushed her to the emergency vet. She got some stitches. The bill came to $800.
As I slipped our debit card in the pinpad, I turned to my husband and said “honestly, I can’t believe that’s our bank card and we’re not scrambling to check if we can split it between our remaining Discover balances.”
Puppy is doing fine now :)
Vet bills are the equivalent of dental bills - how come it's so expensive?
The biggest thing for me is just free time. At one point I was working 7days a week. My weekday job barely paid enough to pay my bills. I needed the weekend job so I could afford groceries, gasoline, and other necessities. It was brutal there for a bit; the only days off I had were when one of my jobs was closed for a holiday. There’s a lot more detail about this but to keep a long story short, I was hired by a job that pays me enough that I only need the one. Having time on my weekends back has done so much to increase my quality of life.
Being able to buy higher quality items That last 4x longer. I remember grocery shopping and I could get double the amount of food for 20% more which would be so cost effective but just couldn’t afford that extra 20%
Poor people aren’t bad with money, they just don’t have enough to make the ‘smart’ financial choices. We know that it’s cost effective to spend a few more dollars, we just don’t have the dollars.
I grew up poor and spent most of my adult life there as well. My husband did not. Our financial situation now is closer to what mine was (not near as bad, but definitely tighter than what my husband is used to). I keep trying to explain this concept to him and he just can't seem to grasp why Costco is NOT a good idea for us. It's a budget breaker for us and there is no space in this tiny house either, but he insists it is cheaper and therefore better. So we have a 5yr supply of aluminum foil, but no fresh veggies this week. Or a 24 pack of microwave Mac n cheese bowls for the kids instead of a 4 pack AND lunch meat AND a bag of apples.
Dizzy_Sprinkles_9294 said:
Dental care. And happiness.
dragongrrrrrl replied:
DENTAL CARE!!! It is so important! The more I learn about how much dental care is connected to physical health problems…it just blows my mind. Plus, your teeth are like the one part of your body that can’t fix itself even a little bit.
Why is it so damn expensive too? I am not asking for a diamond implant there, just glue the hole, man.
A social life….
That sounds dramatic but I was paying for my own toiletries and clothing by the time I was 12. I remember looking around at my classmates in highschool and thinking they were “silly” and “immature” because I left at noon to go work at McDonald’s and help feed my family. I wasn’t in clubs, I didn’t go to my prom, I just worked.
Now I graduated college and have a decent job and for the first time ever I can regularly hang out with friends or just read a book or something. Rest and Fun are not luxuries. They are necessities.
Ha-bah-bah said:
Being warm and being able to eat till your full
Used to freeze all night, had tensions in the shoulders/back because I would shake most of the time.
lolarent replied:
On the flip side, I love the luxury of not having to eat every last bite because "food is expensive, you need to eat it all up!". If I'm full, I will stop eating now.
whattheefftiff replied:
Yes, HEAT! We’d frequently have stretches without heat growing up and now I’m like “I don’t care what the bill is, I am gonna prance around this house in shorts and a tank even when it’s 10 degrees out”
msstark said:
Healthy food. I’d go weeks on frozen meals and grilled cheese, and was severely underweight.
Animasylvania replied:
Seriously. I just realized today that the reason I might have gotten so ridiculously sick from a common virus when I was a teenager was because I was being neglected and didn't have the food I needed.
It really messed me up and I still have health problems from back then... I just think it's wild how much growing up in poverty/neglect can impact the rest of your life.
Sorry to ramble. I just put this together today and I'm kind of pissed.
Quality frozen meals cost more than veggies. $1 frozen meal. 25 cent Ramen. Or $1/lb for many veggies, and the price goes up from there.
HeidiFree said:
Good shoes. Such a difference in how your feet and legs feel. Sad they are at least 100 dollars these days.
Agonist28 replied:
Not always having holes in my shoes is new for me now. I still get the $30sh dollar ones but I can buy a new pair every couple of years instead of every 5 or so.
It took a long time to not brace for impact when it started raining or if the sidewalk was wet. Walking with warm dry feet in the rain still feels like magic.
I still remember having enough money to buy a second pair of shoes. We only got replacements in April when the tax return check came. You had to wear them regardless of what condition they were in. I've walked through many a layer of duck tape.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet is items in bulk. Buying in bulk saves you money but the problem is having that “extra” money to buy everything in mass quantities. It’s so helpful when you have multiple people using supplies and eating food but not everyone can front that extra in order to buy more to save money. So they have to spend more to get less. It’s a vicious cycle and I hate it. I buy everything I can in bulk from feminine products, toilet paper, and certain foods. It saves so much and you also have to have the space to store it all…..Which leads to someone else’s comment about having more space.
EDIT: to add, when I was growing up we were too poor to afford to buy in bulk at places like Costco and Sam’s Club so this stuck out to me. I use to by my clothing at the dollar store, so no big bag of toilet paper for us.
I agree but reckon there's another obstacle here too. Cold storage and freezer space. It really hurts if you luck out at the supermarket and find half a dozen steaks for £1 each because they're short dated, only to realise that your shoebox-sized freezer compartment can accommodate two and no more.
Going to a boutique (not mall brand) bra shop and getting properly fitted for a bra.
So many women wear the wrong size. I was one of them. I wore what sorta fit and was cheap. The amount I was “off” on my sizing was astonishing.
The first time I did this, I could only afford a single bra. And that was the best fitting bra I had ever owned to that point. Seemed like such a “luxury” to do this but now see that it is/was absolutely worth it to spend a few more $ on a proper bra in my proper size.
I love this...I've found a brand and type that fits me and now I don't want any other. Wasted so many years and an awful amount of money in bras that don't feel right.Won't do it any longer. Brexit just made this a bit difficult, but shop I am going for them had fantastic women in it and I am willing to wait months for the right one.
I grew up in poverty in the north of England. My dad couldn’t afford feminine hygiene products so I would have to improvise, and he couldn’t afford to keep the house stocked with food.
I now love having access to feminine hygiene products whenever I need them, and full cupboards. I made do with what I could before, I was very young when my dad’s financial struggles started and just accepted that we couldn’t afford to do certain things.
It’s very, very different to how I grew up. The heating is a big one too. If I’m cold, I can put the heating on. More often than not there would be no money on the metre at home to do that when I was young.
That is one of the most dastardly injustices of modern society. If you can afford a monthly payment, you can access cheaper energy tariffs through direct debit. If you can't, then you are stuck with a prepayment meter which you must be in credit on in order to access energy. You pay the highest rate on the market for that little privilege, too.
I’ve said this to my friends several times. But my luxury is knowing that the bills are paid and I don’t have to juggle money. Having the weight of all that worry and anxiety removed from your shoulders is so liberating.
Yeah. My bio dad stopped paying his mandatory $1000 a month child support and we are struggling big time. Pretty sure we won't make mortgage this month and we haven't gone grocery shopping. I have a part time job but I don't think my parents will let me help out, even though we desperately need it. We can't take our Great Pyrenees to get groomed and get her nails cut because we can't exactly do it ourselves.(her hair and nails are super thick and she hates us cutting her nails) I am going to try and stay at my current job until I reach a year and maybe go to a higher paying one. What is worse is that my mom has health issues but she is fortunate to work from home for a health care company, so they aren't total shitheads.
groovy_woovy said:
I'm not even "middle class", but easy access to laundry. I'm not even talking having an in-unit washer/dryer (which seems like a pipe dream, lmao), but even having a washer/dryer in the same building is vital.
cstaylor6 replied:
Having a in home w/d is seriously a whole life changer. My washer leaks but even with the clean up it’s way easier than going to the Mat.
Friday-Cat replied:
God yes! I used to take my underwear into the shower with me and wash them and anything else I could hand wash because I didn’t have laundry and and had to take everything out to the laundromat, which I did as infrequently as possible. I would re-wear pants and skirts several times and probably I smelled. I now was pretty much everything after a single use and having unlimited access to laundry has been life changing.
Raindrops_on_r0ses said:
Medicines (like Tylenol or Pepcid)! Growing up they were unnecessary because you can tough it out.
Metformin[Runs] replied:
Woah, this is such a big one. When I had to go to the doctor a few years ago.. she looked at me like I was crazy for not taking any pain medication for what I was going through.
She said, and I quote, "You don't have to live your life unmedicated. When you finally get medicine, you'll see the massive difference."
Depends if you have insurance or not. At least in the US it does. Many times I toughed it out due to not being able to afford medical treatment.
samjski said:
Going to the grocery store and not having to budget, put things back or decide between two items.
patpatpat_pat replied:
When my wife and I were in our early 20's, not married yet, barely scrounging every penny to barely (and not always) get by, we had to budget groceries to a fucking T. We lived next to 4 different grocery stores, and we knew how much certain groceries cost at each one. Keep in mind, this is based on 2013 pricing, but we would have to get produce at the 99 cents store (basically an ultra dollar store that had groceries), meat at Albertsons (cheaper there for some reason), certain condiments and drinks at Kroger w/ our card, and the rest at Winco or Walmart. We were having to feed both of us for about $150/mo and we weren't getting assistance (idk why, we should have).
I often forget about this type of thing and the absolute convenience it is to walk into whatever grocery store I have the willpower to get myself to and just.... get what I need. I don't even really splurge. Those days scarred me. I'm not even rich now, just mid/upper middle class. I take this for granted so much. I remember how we would have arguments because a brand name (that half the time was the same thing), wasn't as good, and we couldn't budget the extra .75 cents for the real thing.
When you get to the till and know you're close to your available balance, and put your card in.... the scariest word in the world appears: Authorising... I swear there is a direct correlation between how little money you have and how long it takes to 'approve'. It's almost as though it's physically counting out every single penny in your account before delivering it's verdict. I'm ok financially now but those little machines have scarred me. I still break out in a sweat even though I know there's money there.
Being able to use water just once. I grew up I'm the Arizona desert and we didn't have a well. So, we had to haul water from a business that would let us use their well for a fee. So, ever drop had to be used multiple times. Washing water was used to flush the toilet with a bucket or water the garden, etc. Toilets weren't flushed until they were almost overfill. Not having to worry about whether there will be water to drink or wash with is huge.
If this horrifying drought doesn't end soon, this will be the reality for everyone who lives in the American Southwest. Maybe even by next year.
Quality healthcare providers, dental and eye care, my own place, not worrying about having to choose between food or my health, ability to relax and not be in survival mode all the time, buying new clothes and shoes, being able to take off work, escaping abusive situations.
Being able to escape abusive situations. My older sister's used to berate my Mum for not leaving our abusive father before he left. But where was she supposed to go? With four young kids, no welfare, no women's refuge, no family...
- New beds and pillows : ours had been passed down since my mother was a child.
- an education: I worked instead of going to school so my parents wouldn’t lose our house. I regret it daily and would never subject my children to that. But let’s be honest, I’m not having children.
- doctors appointments : like not just for emergencies, which we rarely went to unless it got out of control or we were dying, but I mean check ups, shots, antibiotics for infections etc. we typically healed but I have some lifelong damage from others.
- the freaking dentist : this was a luxury in our house. We could not afford check ups let alone braces or root canals. So I was 27 before I went to my first dentist. It took eight weeks of every Monday going in for them to work on a new area of teeth. Cost me thousands to fix but thankfully it was fixable for the most part.
- fruits and veggies : a human needs to eat more than the least expensive canned food and microwave meals. My parents both worked two jobs with 9 kids between the two of them. They couldn’t do better. Thankfully they’re much more well off now that we’re all adults and out of the home. But my mom still finds eating veggies difficult. They mess with her stomach. It changed how her body breaks down food. Thankfully I love them because they’re like candy, something I never got at as a kid but really wanted.
- new shoes every six months to a year until you’re an adult. Kids feet grow too quickly not to. I have messed up feet now. We all scrunched into what we could and passed down what we could. We made it work and only the eldest got new after a long struggle trying desperately not to need new shoes.
If I think of any more I’ll add an edit. I’m one of 9 and only two of us escaped poverty. “Anyone can escape poverty but not everyone can.”
Thank goodness contraceptives are widely available. Hopefully in this day and age people won't have kids they can't afford. But I can really see why a lot of people who grew up in abject poverty choose not to have children.
Altruistic_Peach_791 said:
A bathroom I don’t share with 4 other people.
fkntiredbtch replied:
Shared a house with 11 people growing up. When my husband and I got married I told him I would only share a bathroom with him if there were two sinks, otherwise his bathroom would be the guest bathroom.
I was the youngest of 13 children and there were two bathrooms in our house. One was in my parent's bedroom and was off limits. When I moved out and finally had my own bathroom, I thought I had hit the jackpot.
phonehome186 said:
Warm clothes for winter and a good wintercoat.
tvp204 replied:
I bought myself a new coat last year when I was 26. First new coat since I was 11 or 12. I’m so much warmer now it’s not even funny.
MyLife-is-a-diceRoll replied:
Postmark has literally saved my freezing a&s the past couple winters.
I just picked up a used higher end ski jacket for dirt cheap to replace the snowboarding parka I managed to find a couple years ago.
Our local shelters are always accepting winter wear and other donations. It's such a necessity when temperatures can get dangerously low with brutal wind chills. I've seen people out in the dead of winter layered up in sweaters and runners. Not even a toque and scarf. I know how intolerably cold it can get when you do dress warm. I just don't know how they manage.
Just having three meals a day, I can now buy/eat whatever I want. Venezuela 2014-2016 was tough. Another I can think of, are haircuts and proper outfits. Is hard to adapt to whatever the cheapest clothing is
I remember reading and watching documentaries about that situation, I actually felt scared for the everyday people. But that maybe the UK in 2023. I swear the government is trying to make us kill ourselves.
Car insurance. I was able to buy a beater after years of savings but spending $70 a month was damn near impossible. I drove like a little old lady and still have a fear of traffic cops even when I’m doing nothing wrong.
Even more important if you crash - repair can be ridiculously expensive
Having clothes that fit. Growing up most of our clothes came from yard sales or stores that sold “irregular” clothing. My bras never ever fit and most days I would have welts in my skin from wearing them all day. I didn’t have new clothes until I started making my own money.
When kids grow up like that, I'm sure it leaves a permanent anxiety in their mind
Hair conditioner & body wash.
Growing up in poverty meant only having access to cheap drugstore shampoo at best, or dish soap at worst… my skin and hair is much happier for having the extra products these days!
The ability to pay an expert to do things for me. For instance, my sink broke recently and I was able to pay a plumber to come replace it instead of having to do it myself. I picked the sink I wanted and within an hour it was installed and everything was cleaned up. It would have taken me a day or two to figure everything out myself to make the repairs, and the work wouldn't have been done as well. There are so many things I learned to do because I couldn't afford to have an expert do them and being able to trust a professional to install things is such a huge relief. There are a lot of tweaks I want to make to my house, and I can plan and budget to have a professional build a pantry or install drywall, and the results will be so much faster and nicer than if I have to do it myself. It's a huge change from being poor and having to do things clumsily with the cheapest possible materials and hating the results.
a good, high quality jacket. it seems a little silly but going from sweatshirts to many years later, a high end jacket to keep me warm in the winter honestly made me sad how I wasn’t able to afford one when I was younger because I could’ve been so much warmer.
alas, I’m incredibly thankful I have one now
House cleaners. Even just once a month if that’s all you can afford but especially if you want to live in a clean home but are too overloaded mentally to clean.
Not only is it a time saver, allowing you to spend time on other things, but often they clean things you don’t get to because you’re so busy trying to keep up. Also a lot of mental health issues get in the way of cleaning. My house cleaners add to my mental well being.
I get you on the mental health issues with cleaning. Just getting it together enough to do that, but also we often don’t notice things. I don’t know why, but we don’t notice things others may. Glad if I get to move to a much smaller space. Will be much easier.
Having a car. I no longer need to walk 10 blocks to get groceries and then carry everything back with my bare hands.
My personal "I've made it, I'm financially safe" was being able to buy a car that didn't need an MOT. In the UK, cars over a certain age have to pass an examination of roadworthiness, and you can't get insurance without an MOT pass, and driving without insurance is illegal. When I was younger, my car was always old and a bit beaten up, cheap to buy but expensive to maintain-I used to have to save for months before the MOT was due because I knew I'd need major remedial work for it to pass. When I finally could afford to buy a much newer car, I realised that its actually cheaper-the initial outlay was more, but running costs were far, far less and overall, the newer car worked out cheaper.
Note: this post originally had 35 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
One I hated. I was raising 4 boys by myself so money was always tight. Right before school starts, took them all shopping, all got coats and new shoes then divide what was left and get them pants and shirts. Never much but at least all got something new. Then about third week of school, basketball coach has a parent meeting. Kids who got free lunches also got sports fees paid for. The coach starts out all jolly, good boys, good schedule. Then he says "We are going to something a bit differently this year. We have decided that the entire team is going to be wearing a 'TEAM SHOE'! Then he proceeds to hold up the very most expensive new Nike Michael Jordan shoes, that all team members will have to wear or they will not be able to play. I wish they understood how cruel that was. For us, grandma would come through But.how did other families do it.
Good shoes. Being able to buy a really good pair of shoes. Cue Same Vimes Boots Theory of Economics. I love comfy shoes that fit. It's an indulgence but also, IMO, a necessity. Happy feet are happy knees!
Having an emergency fund. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, with no reserve, a single unplanned expense can tip you over the edge from barely-managing, to in-debt, and with interest costs and the poverty penalty, that can be a downward spiral. With cost of living increases, this is going to start to bite for more people. I'm immensely relieved to know I have a safety buffer, small as it is, and I wish everyone else did too.
I knew this before but this BP/reddit post really highlights how expensive it is to be poor.
I feel for people who can not go to bed and still be hungry for maybe not eating cause they didnt have money.
I live in the UK, the government from next April is reversing the help they're giving us for heating. My fuel bills will be more expensive than my rent.
I can relate to so many of these, and I didn’t even grow up POOR poor, just struggling. I am now doing well, far from wealthy but comfortable, and it’s mind boggling to me how so many people take so much for granted. Just the fact that I can afford to have a car repair done without sacrificing paying the electric bill is such a big deal.
most of these things i went through in my lte 20s early 30s, but then later, realized even though i CAN afford better, WAIT! HOLYCRAP! RETIREMENT is coming and now i am beginning to revert back to shopping like a poor person.
My younger sister and I grew up like this, but the younger set of siblings had everything that they could ever want. College was free for them. They both got new cars upon graduation. Our parents told my sister and me that we could have had a car if we graduated college, but our parents made too much money for us to be able to qualify for any kind of financial aid and wouldn't help us pay for it because they still had kids to raise. My sister and I are doing okay for ourselves considering what we had to start adult life with.
One I hated. I was raising 4 boys by myself so money was always tight. Right before school starts, took them all shopping, all got coats and new shoes then divide what was left and get them pants and shirts. Never much but at least all got something new. Then about third week of school, basketball coach has a parent meeting. Kids who got free lunches also got sports fees paid for. The coach starts out all jolly, good boys, good schedule. Then he says "We are going to something a bit differently this year. We have decided that the entire team is going to be wearing a 'TEAM SHOE'! Then he proceeds to hold up the very most expensive new Nike Michael Jordan shoes, that all team members will have to wear or they will not be able to play. I wish they understood how cruel that was. For us, grandma would come through But.how did other families do it.
Good shoes. Being able to buy a really good pair of shoes. Cue Same Vimes Boots Theory of Economics. I love comfy shoes that fit. It's an indulgence but also, IMO, a necessity. Happy feet are happy knees!
Having an emergency fund. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, with no reserve, a single unplanned expense can tip you over the edge from barely-managing, to in-debt, and with interest costs and the poverty penalty, that can be a downward spiral. With cost of living increases, this is going to start to bite for more people. I'm immensely relieved to know I have a safety buffer, small as it is, and I wish everyone else did too.
I knew this before but this BP/reddit post really highlights how expensive it is to be poor.
I feel for people who can not go to bed and still be hungry for maybe not eating cause they didnt have money.
I live in the UK, the government from next April is reversing the help they're giving us for heating. My fuel bills will be more expensive than my rent.
I can relate to so many of these, and I didn’t even grow up POOR poor, just struggling. I am now doing well, far from wealthy but comfortable, and it’s mind boggling to me how so many people take so much for granted. Just the fact that I can afford to have a car repair done without sacrificing paying the electric bill is such a big deal.
most of these things i went through in my lte 20s early 30s, but then later, realized even though i CAN afford better, WAIT! HOLYCRAP! RETIREMENT is coming and now i am beginning to revert back to shopping like a poor person.
My younger sister and I grew up like this, but the younger set of siblings had everything that they could ever want. College was free for them. They both got new cars upon graduation. Our parents told my sister and me that we could have had a car if we graduated college, but our parents made too much money for us to be able to qualify for any kind of financial aid and wouldn't help us pay for it because they still had kids to raise. My sister and I are doing okay for ourselves considering what we had to start adult life with.
