John Cheese at Cracked posted a list called The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, but also pointed out that they are perfectly rational from the vantage point of someone who does not have the choices that come with financial solvency. They would seem stupid to anyone who hasn't been there, done that. For example, the food you grew up eating was determined by price and preservatives.
This is not the humorous Cracked article you may expect, but the text is still NSFW. Link
Forget about fresh produce or fresh baked goods or fresh anything. Canned vegetables are as cheap as a gang tattoo, and every poor person I knew (including myself) had them as a staple of their diet. Fruit was the same way. Canned peaches could be split between three kids for half the cost of fresh ones, and at the end you had the extra surprise of pure, liquefied sugar to push you into full-blown hyperglycemia.
If it wasn't canned, it was frozen. TV dinners, pot pies, chicken nuggets ... meals that can be frozen forever, and preparation isn't more complicated than "Remove from box. Nuke. Eat." Because of that, by week two, half of everything we bought would be freezer burned. Just like with the canned food, you grow up thinking that this is the way it's supposed to taste. It's not that you grow to like it, necessarily, but you do grow to expect it.
This is not the humorous Cracked article you may expect, but the text is still NSFW. Link
A salute to all those working class brits who grew up in the 80's, you knew it was a celebration because mum would splash out with a bottle of blue nun and a viennetta!
I wish I could finally convince myself to start spending some of my money on real food that doesn't make me ugly and sick.
Though I finally got money, I'm still learning how to spend it on actual life quality. And this takes ages.
And the clothes problem, man. I've been wearing the same crap for weeks, possibly months again and didn't even notice and I hope that nobody else did.
That's one reason why, as Cheese points out, the poor often overspend on gifts. It's an attempt to reinforce relationships.
I'm not poor anymore, more upper-middle class in my geographical area. But, some of this stuff never goes away. I still know where every penny of my money goes. I still like store brand mac and cheese with the powder. I never was one to blow all my money once I started making enough to put some back and I still shop for deals by until cost instead of the sticker price.
Growing up like that can make you or break you. It made me into a person who never wants to live like that again and I do what I can to insure my financial security because of it.
I personally like number 6: "Never throw anything out." My parents both grew up poor. Both parents are pre-boomers from working class families who actually remember the war years and, in my dad's case, the Depression. They never throw anything out. Our garage was full of leaky garden hoses, old carpet remnants, and wooden pallets that came into the house and never left.
Amazing how much gasoline and his truck intrude in those descriptions. Poor quality food? Can't afford to drive to the store weekly for fresh food. Why have we designed our cities to prevent walking?
After finishing my peaches I would crumble vanilla sandwich cookies into the juice. That seemed to add a nice finish.