There’s nothing fun about growing up poor, and people who lived such a childhood will probably tell you that. As of 2022, 11.5% of the American population lived in poverty. But you can live above the poverty line and not have a comfortable life. In fact, 29% of working people in the U.S. say they struggle to cover basic needs.
The life of a person who lifted themselves from poverty can change noticeably, and sometimes in ways they don’t expect. One person online was curious to hear from the formerly poor, so they asked: “Redditors who grew [up] in poverty and are now rich, what’s the biggest shock about rich people you [have learned]?”
#1
That rich people can afford to do things that save them money. Better health insurance and car insurance with lower deductibles. Higher quality food that keeps them healthy. Gym membership preventing future health incidences. Prompt car maintenance to avoid big repair costs down the line. Higher ed for better paying job….. the list goes on and on.
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#2
How much easier it is. *everything* is easier. So much stress is reduced. You are never one paycheck away from being homeless. Something breaks? Replace it. Need something? Get it. Car always starts. Heat always runs. Bill comes I pay it. Kid needs something for school I get it. Hungry? Eat. Anywhere. Someone else cleans my house, fixes my plumbing, mows my lawn, and works on the appliances if needed. Everything is easier. I didn't recognize how much mental capacity these things take and how much stress it causes until I had enough money that they went away.
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#3
The freedom it provides.
Freedom to not spend hours mowing their lawn, laundry, cleaning their own car, grocery shopping... Freedom to eat healthy, freedom to prioritize exercise, endless list..
Those of us that don't enjoy this freedom sacrifice our few hours on earth performing these mundane tasks.
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#4
It's expensive to be poor. Much cheaper to be rich.
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#5
Ok so I got a job as a software engineer, I didn't win the lottery or marry into old money or anything, but:
The first few years of working in a well paid career, I felt like I was going insane. It's hard to relate to your new co-workers when your hobbies are watching tv shows with friends and writing songs on a guitar your mentor gave you, and their hobbies are international travel, credit card hacking, and investing.
My former boss once mentioned off-hand that she pays all the travel costs for her family and then her husband pays her his half once a year, and they had traveled a lot that year and he was sort of shocked to find out that his half for that year was FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Which he did have available to pay her.
At that time I'd been in tech for 6 months and was very proud that I'd scraped together a $2k emergency fund for the first time in my life.
Also, you get so much stuff for free as soon as you don't need it. My job paid for my monthly bus pass, my health insurance, even my morning coffee. That first job, they had a coffee shop in the lobby with two full time baristas that was totally free. Honestly, some of the best espresso of my life, and even when I had no money I was a coffee nerd. Two of my coworkers bought coffee at the coffee shop down the street every day anyway because they liked that coffee shop a little better. It was infuriating to be given all these perks that would have been life changing the second I was also paid enough to afford them without it being a struggle.
Something worth noting: if you work in a well paid field like that, watch out for the people transitioning out of poverty. They were massively underpaying me and I technically knew that, but it was still so much more than I had ever made in my life that I couldn't bring myself to believe the actual numbers for entry level tech jobs. If it weren't for the unofficial women in tech group, who did a salary sharing spreadsheet and helped a ton of people advocate for raises and eventually got salary bands implemented, I would never have been brave enough to ask for what I was worth, and since raises are percentages that can impact your pay for the rest of your career. I try to pay it forward now.
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#6
The richer you are, the more free stuff you get. Your account balances are so big that maintenance and overdraft fees are waived, and you occasionally get large bonuses simply for transferring some of your money from one account to another. Companies that are eager to do business with you provide you with free samples or even trips to their exotic locales.
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#7
Your poor friends will kind of resent you for it. Never ever ever tell anybody how much money you have. It will only bring sadness and misery.
Also, the desire to become rich can be a kind of mental illness the is the result of being raised in poverty. I am not super rich. My net worth puts me in the top 10%. I have enough to retire and live the rest of my life in comfort if I chose to stop working. But I still feel this constant anxiety that I don't have enough or something is going to happen and I will lose it all and be homeless.
I think what we are experiencing in the US today is that the ultra wealthy billionaires have become mentally ill. I mean if someone is worth a billion dollars they could spend $100,000 a day for 30 years and still die with money. But all they can think about is 'how can I get 2 billion." These mental patients would rather destroy democracy than to have to pay taxes. It is madness what they will destroy to do it.
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#8
When we had our first children (twins) we were poor. We went through the process and had two healthy boys.
A few years later I had a stable job with medical insurance when we had our third child.
Everything was nicer. They didn't push us out of the hospital so fast. All the basic care was the same, but I was shocked at how much better we were treated with insurance.
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#9
I grew up pretty poor. My wife insanely rich. In my house, your car breaks down, you fix it, or, take it to a mechanic to fix it. In her house, they would buy a new car. This dawned on me when our washing machine broke and I ordered the part on Amazon and an hour later saw she had ordered a new washer from Lowe’s. She’s gotten better, but her first impulse is just to buy a new one of whatever is broken.
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#10
Rich people eat a different meal for every meal and just like, throw out leftovers. Growing up, my mom would make a giant pot of tomato sauce and we ate it until it was gone. Breakfast lunch and dinner.
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#11
I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, and it might not be a shock to others. But going on vacation. When I was a kid we just stayed home every summer. Never went anywhere, stayed generally within the same 200km radius of where I live. We didn't have a lot of money.
Now I go on vacation twice a year and I've been all over the world. 17 year old me would be in awe.
Image credits: Phlurble
#12
I'm not rich, but I spent the first half of my life working class poor, the second half destitutely poor, and now am comfortably middle class (wow that is wild to think).
Many upper middle class and up folks genuinely believe they are working class or middle class or just getting by. I've had people getting 50k kitchen renos done by interior designers tell me they're poor. Or people with brand new cars they bought in cash. Or people who travel to Europe for weeks at a time, several times a year.
They will say things like "well I bought the car in cash but I had to save for several years to afford it" not realizing that a working class family could try and save forever, they aren't ever going to be able to afford a 75k vehicle in cash. Or "well the kitchen before was so disgusting and was falling apart, it had to be upgraded" not realizing that for actual poor or working class people, they just keep the disgusting kitchen.
I used to argue with these people when I was poor because I would get so angry at how clueless they were. Now I still get annoyed, but I've learned to just smile and nod politely and let them live in their "woe is me" world.
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#13
Shock is a strong word, but I didn't realize the social safety net rich people have. Growing up poor, we lived absolutely paycheque to paycheque (more accurately we lived borrowing against future paycheques) and it felt like we were never far from homelessness. One job loss, one prolonged serious illness, and we would not have been able to pay the rent and would have been evicted. All of my parents' family and friends were similarly struggling, so if we needed help, they would not have had much to give.
Now, as an adult with more money than my parents could have imagined having, we not only have substantial personal savings, but we also know so many people who could help us if things got bad. If worst came to worst, we have multiple friends with vacation properties that they barely use that we could move into. Not that I think it will ever come to that, but life is dramatically different never having to worry financially about a job loss, illness, unexpected car expense, etc.
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#14
I went from my family being on welfare as a child, not having enough money for food when times were hard, to now; I may make 7 figures next year and close to that this year. (Most of my money I make in real estate). A couple things I’ve noticed:
1. It’s absurdly easy to make money when you have money. All rich people are essentially using a cheat code. They don’t necessarily work harder, they don’t necessarily work smarter, it’s just way easier to make money. The system is truly truly rigged in 10,000 different ways. The only hard thing is making your first million.
2. Time is the ultimate wealth.
3. Nothing is more expensive than being poor.
4. Do whatever you have to in order make enough money to be secure and comfortable and have investments. In the long run it is so worth it. Work a second job, go back to school, whatever you have to do. Save enough money for down payment and buy a house, just work like a smart demon for five years and buy that house with an extra unit you can rent out, things will get so much easier. Life is super long and it will be worth it I promise.
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#15
They don’t work for their money; their money works for them.
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#16
More like lower-middle class to upper-middle class, but it blew my mind when I realized many people I know now frequently pay to have their house cleaned, and grew up thinking that the cleaners being over was just a routine part of life. I was probably in my late 20s the first time I ever paid someone to clean.
Same with things like moving, painting, house maintenance, stuff like that. I'm at a place where it makes more sense to save my time and pay for many of those things, but anytime I talk to my mom and mention it she assumes it's something I'm doing myself, because it never would have occurred to her to spend money on that and for most of her life she couldn't afford it.
It's a pretty interesting divide just between the strata within middle class. .
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#17
The doors and Ivy League education opens. The relatives who went to Yale could retire early, the friends whose law degrees come from state schools are DAs, struggling in private practice and low level corporate attorneys.
Also, custom designed homes don’t really cost that much more than other new homes if you have cash on hand.
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#18
They almost have a very different understanding of how the world works (and often more accurate) comparing to ordinary people.
It's like the world is a game. And they simply have a far better understanding of the rules and hacks.
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#19
While I wouldn’t call us rich, my husband and I are now both high earners so we definitely have way more money than I did growing up.
My mom was always good at making do and I didn’t really realize we had no money until I was in high school. Some of her ways of grocery shopping on a strict budget and making things when you can instead of buying them are still things I do. But we now get to do things like go on nice vacations. When our kids were younger we could pay for all their various activities instead of limiting them to one or two, buy them new gear instead of used, now we pay for their college tuition. The best part is the peace of mind- we don’t stress about emergency maintenance to our house or what if the car breaks down. We pay people to do yard work and have time and money for our own hobbies. We both still work full time but at jobs that give a lot of paid vacation time. I’m very grateful that I have been able to spend more time with my kids and with far less stress than my Mom did, but my mom is definitely a super woman and a lot of why I have what I have is because of how I grew up and how she raised me.
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#20
I grew up in poverty and I'm now "comfortable" and surrounded by people who grew up in a different world to me. My colleagues don't understand why I still have a lot of anxiety about being able to afford food.
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#21
I grew up with qualifying for free lunch in school, so below poverty line. My dad did everything from fixing the cars, changing oil, building the house, buying everything used, growing his own food etc. At a certain income level, it makes less sense do anything other than work. Rich people make so much more than everyone else, they just pay people to do everything. .
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