Does being poor naturally drive someone to being frugal? Or are you naturally frugal and happen to be poor? And does frugality only naturally occur in people who aren’t rich? Or does frugality leave you as gain wealth an no longer have to practice being frugal?
I believe that being poor can have two effects. It can either drive you to become frugal and stay that way. Or it can push you into frugality for a period of time, then when you are better off you go in the other direction and become a free spender, forgetting your frugal habits.
I believe that I am more frugal than I would be if I had grown up middle class. I worry all the time about going back to being poor. I think personally I worry way more than my DH because he grew up middle class. He never worried about money. He had two working parents, I had one. My mom would worry and talk about being fiscally responsible and independent from men.
So personally I think being poor has driven my frugality. Granted I am not as frugal as I could be and not as frugal as I learned at my grandma’s knee, but I believe I’m more cautious about spending money than average.
But I’ve meet people who feel that having been poor, you can’t take it with you. And I can understand why they feel that way. Sometimes I feel a great desire to have everything everyone else has. The opportunity to keep up with the Joneses is hard to suppress. Especially because when you are poor, truth is that one of the biggest problems is NOT fitting in. It’s hard to wear only second hand clothes or boy clothes when you are a girl.
It’s hard to realize that you don’t have all the toys and ability to participate in as many activities as your friends because you don’t have the money. Then as an adult you can. And the chance to fit is is very, very hard to pass up. Maybe I’m weird, but sometimes growing up I just wanted to fit in.
Having not fit in though I believe made me who I am today. Someone who doesn’t care what people think about what I wear or what I drive. It doesn’t define me. But I can understand why people who also grew up on modest means would try to keep up with the Joneses.
So where are you? Did you grow up poor or rich? Did you fit in? Did how you were raised affect your frugality now?
19 responses so far ↓
1 Amber C // Oct 31, 2008 at 10:13 am
I grew up middle class but my friends were wealthy on the outside. Years later I found out some of the parents filed bankruptcy and had lots of money problems. I hung out at the country club all summer although it wasn’t something my parents could afford. I think at the time I wished I had what they had but as we have gotten older, I’m probably the most “successful” with money. Although if you look at my debt totals it may not look like it. Truth is I don’t feel the need to have all the stuff that they had or still have. Also, I don’t have the stress that they grew up with or are still carrying because they have an expectation of what types of things they should have.
2 Kristy // Oct 31, 2008 at 10:38 am
I grew up poor and like you I never want to go back. I think that’s why I like to have no debt and plenty of savings for emergencies. I worry all the time about money and we have it. I can’t imagine ever being poor again
Like you I don’t care about the car I drive or the clothes I wear (outside of work). I care more about my retirement account and how much I am saving every month.
It can be difficult because there are time that I want the same things my friends have. Once in a while I think how nice it would be to drive a nice car….then I think of the payments and I revert back to my old way of thinking.
3 Pooja Sood // Oct 31, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I am reading your blogs from so long now. I think I never related with any of other piece written by anyone then I have related with this one. I always longed for fitting in. I have lost great deal of friends because I just cudn’t fit in. But that all made me very strong. Today, I hardly care abt what others think of me. I have survuved in exactly the same way.
4 frugal zeitgeist // Oct 31, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I grew up middle class, but my parents grew up in the Great Depression. I learned a tremendous amount about frugality from them, but it didn’t really kick in until I was a starving grad student in New York. That experience, combined with my background, did a great deal to shape my attitudes about money and personal finance today.
5 Mary@SimplyForties // Nov 1, 2008 at 12:29 am
I grew up in an upper middle class family in a very affluent area. My parents were, and still are, very frugal. My four brothers and sisters are pretty fugal too. I was always a big spender and only began my frugal lifestyle fairly recently. Who knows what aspects of a person’s upbringing cause one person to be a spendthrift and another not? My example is not much help!
6 suzanne // Nov 1, 2008 at 12:35 am
I grew up well off believing that I was poor (yeah… my family has a messed up relationship with money). What I am concerned about is the idea that as an adult people suddenly become middle class. There are soooo many people in the world who live in poverty and never get out of it and never will, no matter how hard they work. The depths that poverty reaches sometimes I don’t think even qualifies a person to BE frugal – it’s hard to be frugal when you don’t have enough money to eat the next day or only have two sets of clothes. That’s not being frugal – that’s just trying to survive. I am seeing that now in my work as a teacher and it is so difficult to see.
7 LivingAlmostLarge // Nov 1, 2008 at 11:01 am
Suzanne, definitely. Middle class is what most people feel though because if you are working, not on food stamps, and surviving, then you are middle class.
So I would quantify us as middle class when we making 1/3 what we make now. Now, we’re borderline. But we made substantially below the median income of the US, so maybe we were poor.
I knew a family of 5 making $30k where we lived and surviving. Poor, to many.
But definitely I can understand why you think being poor and frugal can’t go hand in hand. I think it depends where in poor you are. Like the family of 5, they were frugal. They had no choice to survive. But we were frugal but not as much. We still could choose.
8 Fabulously Broke // Nov 2, 2008 at 11:26 am
I grew up lower middle class, and while my dad was thrifty/frugal, my mom wasn’t really… and they never taught me any PF basics or principles other than to NEVER carry a balance on your credit card.
I pretty much learned everything else on my own, and the hard way (getting $53k in debt for example when I may have been able to squeeze by on $40k)
9 LivingAlmostLarge // Nov 3, 2008 at 11:57 am
Say la vie Fabulous.
13 jc // Nov 6, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Interestingly, sociological evidence tells us the opposite, depending how you define frugal. The very rich are more likely to use coupons and shop at Costco, whereas the very poor are more likely to buy “affluence indicators” like logoed bags when they cannot afford them.
Indeed, my super wealthy relatives are the ones who are secret discount shoppers who will save up rather than put on credit and never steal from the allocated ’savings’ amount of the cheque whereas my often poor relatives are more likely to spend half a paycheque on a big screen TV.
Many genuinely rich people are simply better at concealing frugality and figuring out where it matters versus expending a lot of energy on “making their own dish soap.” My financial position is very good because I’m ’secretly frugal’. HOWEVER, the magic combination is (a) general wealth, partly self made, combined with (b) a period of having very limited resources, allowing you to develop methods you retain when you return to a ‘rich’ period.
14 karla (threadbndr) // Nov 6, 2008 at 6:43 pm
As I was growing up, I always realized that my (middle class) family was more frugal than most. My dad was the son of a small town preacher, my mom the daughter of a rancher – they were both educators, but remembered their poorer roots.
I always knew that they made careful spending decisions so that we could afford to have a nice house and vacations without going into debt. For my birth family, wealth was about education and culture; it was more important to have a membership to the symphony than to the country club.
My late husband came from a poor background; he was the first member of his immediate family to finish a tradition high school, let alone go on to any college. He had a very poor sense of frugality, though. He was all about ’spend it now, it might not be there tomorrow’.
So I don’t think frugality corolated all that well with income in my case.
Interesting topic, though.
15 LivingAlmostLarge // Nov 6, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I think that wealthy depends on how it’s defined. By some I’m sure I’m wealthy because of income. BUT not in terms of assets or age.
So I don’t feel frugal, but I know I am more frugal than someone the same age and income because of a fear of being poor.
16 Christine // Nov 6, 2008 at 11:30 pm
I grew up pretty poor but we always had a roof over our heads, food and enough clothing. I made a lot of my own toys. My $1 barbie doll wore an old sock and lived in a shoe box.
I paid my way through college making less than $7 an hour. I was bringing home $900 a month when I first started out in insurance during the 90s, but this was sufficient. I worked my way up but never breached the $30k threshhold, EVER. I am now disabled with a small part-time job. I get enough from disability to pay the mortgage, keep the utilities on and feed myself. I have used the food pantry, soup kitchen, free coat handout and clothing charity. I buy food at Walmart, toiletries and cleaning at Dollar Tree, meat at Angel Food Ministries and clothing and housewares at Goodwill.
I am comfortable and can afford some furry babies. I am involved in my community. I can indulge my hobbies. Life is pretty good and pretty low stress now!
17 LivingAlmostLarge // Nov 7, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I’m impressed that you never made over $30k. Good job.
18 Moneymonk // Nov 7, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I grew up having our basic needs, i did not realize we were poor.
However, I really think it comes down to how we watch our parents with money. Depending on their style we quite inherit their money styles
I wrote a post similiar to this
19 jeffrey // Jan 4, 2009 at 12:06 am
I GREW UP POOR . YOU KNOW WHEN I WAS A BOY CLOTHES WERE HANDED DOWN. I GUESS FOR A WHILE WHEN I WAS OLDER I SPENT A LITTLE MORE MONEY THAN MAYBE SOME WOULD. I CONSIDER MYSELF RATHER FRUGAL TODAY. IF I WERE POOR AGAIN THUGH IT WOULD BE NO PROBLEM. I COULD PROBLEY DEAL WITH IT
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