[llaolleh]

People who have not grown up poor can't really understand it. It's not only about the money. It's about the constant stress and fear whether or not you're going to make it.

Just work hard in school to get out is actually pretty hard. Learning is like swimming through molasses because of the constant stress. It gives you a lifetime of trauma and damage.

[madaxe_again]

It’s also a trauma that gets handed down. My parents, when they had me, were by absolutely no means poor - in fact, they were relatively wealthy - but my mother, and her parents before her, grew up in absolutely grinding poverty, and she has been fundamentally shaped by her experiences to the extent that I inherited much of her mindset. My father came from a family that had been wealthy in the colonies, and suddenly found themselves penniless in Portsmouth. The shame, the fear, the what will people think, the make do and mend, the “oh that’s not for me, that’s for real people” attitude. They’d send me to boarding school with no pocket money, which was utterly quixotic to me as a kid - they could afford thousands a term on my schooling, but not £10 a term for me to not be a social outcast? I had to beg, borrow, or steal to pay for field trips, books, and uniform. It screwed them both up. It screwed me up, as while they’d gotten free of the financial poverty trap, they were still there in their minds. I worked out of school like I had the fires of hell on my heels, and kept grinding until, bar the apocalypse, I do not need to worry about money. I still make do and mend. I still feel like an imposter practically everywhere. I still see brown letters and feel the sweat prick down my spine.

It took me a long time to understand where it came from in myself - until I spent time with folks who themselves grew up in actual poverty, and had similar experiences to mine.

[angarg12]

I work in a big tech company making > 5 times the average salary. People think I'm really fortunate, rich, and that I got it easy.

What they don't see is how I spent half of my career working for a poverty level wage. Making a top 5% income now doesn't erase years of dread every morning going to work, stress of choosing which bill you will and won't pay this month, or constant fear of having an unexpected expense.