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It's fun to read stories like yours and others here. A lot of us probably have similar. I think I enjoy telling mine because each time I retell it I get a little bit of that great feeling again of suddenly being able to buy what I want at the grocery store.

About mid-way through high school the family business went bankrupt and all assumptions about how I would go to college evaporated. So instead I ended up going to an electronics trade school on a student loan.

I did not have to pay tuition until after graduation, but I did have to pay all my living expenses myself. Had a minimum wage part time job from which to make rent, bills and food. Could barely afford to eat.

Got turned onto a store called WareMart that sold mega size boxes of really cheap products. A fellow poor schoolmate showed how to buy a huge brick of fake Velveeta cheese, giant tub of margarine and a potato-sack-size bag of elbow macaroni to make super cheap mac-n-cheese. The secret was to boil the macaroni for a long time so it would absorb a lot of water and get huge, then add a scoop of margarine and slab of cheese. You could eat for weeks on one purchase.

It was disgusting. But I lived, and finished school.

Upon graduation I had three offers at weekly salaries for more money than I had ever held in my hands. When I cashed my first paycheck I went to the grocery story and filled the basket with steaks and grilled one every night. Man, what a feeling. Despite making tons more in later years I have never felt so rich as when I spent that first paycheck.

Congratulations on getting through it!

To anyone who is still getting through it: avoid margarine and cheap process cheese. Trans fats and bargain-basement seed oils will jam you up.

My lunch + dinner of choice when I was stupid poor was mujaddara: it's lentils, rice, onion, oil, salt, and spices if you like that kind of thing.

Complete protein, adequate macro balance, and it's all real food. I'd call it "cheap as chips" but it's cheaper than that. You're better off spending a bit extra on olive oil and butter over the cheapest possible seed oils, if you can.

I've never been really poor, but similarly to you, there were periods in life when I at least earned some respect and appreciation for money. Going to the grocery store and buying the absolute minimum necessary, while picking the cheapest products.

There were two thresholds that I remember distinctly: the first one was crossing from "poor" to "ok", when I could go shop for groceries and buy most things (though still looking at the price tags, to avoid the expensive stuff). That was a big step up from buying the bare necessities.

The second threshold, "rich", was when I realized I don't have to worry about the prices in my local grocery store. I can just buy whatever I want.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't "rich" by any means, but it is enough to provide immense comfort and ease of living. I think many people who have this comfort are unable to appreciate what they have.

>We were nowhere near as poor as some people, and it was only for a few years, and it was self-inflicted to some extent because I was starting a startup while my wife was getting reeducated. So I don't know what it's like to be really poor.

Not to mention that, from all I've seen and heard, European poor is also quite better off than US poor.

US poor means poor && deemed as a personal and moral failure && left socially unsupported && looked down upon in a class-aware way that's even worse than UK's traditional classism && getting into much more dangerous situations with much more crazies around, some of which will even be armed.

And as US poor, you also remain the one segment of society people can freely joke around and look down upon. They might pretend to support blacks, gays etc. in the asbstract, but could not care less if those are also dirt poor. As for the white poor, they don't even have the redeeming token minority status qualities so are open season for everybody - you could call them "white trash" with impunity.

Aren't there welfare programs in the US?

That doesn't reduce the stigma.

I am annoyed waiting behind food stamp people at the grocery store making decisions between juice boxes and crackers at the checkout. Meanwhile I am too frugal to buy either of those.

My wife is treated like crap by Medicaid patients significantly more often than other patients.

There's a stigma that will exist regardless of the welfare state.

JK Rowling was on food stamps.

My girlfriend doesn't like homeless people and I don't get it, bcause they have harder life than we do. Irregardless whether they "deserve it" or not.

> Aren't there welfare programs in the US?

Welfare supports are very patchy, mostly run at the state level. As a general rule of thumb, long-term cash benefits are almost impossible to access, and "in-kind" benefits like subsidized housing like subsidized housing tend to have long waiting lists.

"Food stamps" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assista...) are one of the larger broadly-available benefits.

The difference in Europe is smaller I think. 80% of salaries fall within a fairly narrow band.

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/visualisaties/income-distribution

The main difference in Europe is that healthcare is free. So if you're working a crappy job that doesn't offer healthcare, you can still go to the doctor. In the US, you can't afford to go, the small problem snowballs into a huge problem, and either you end up with an ER bill that permanently destroys your credit or you end up so sick you become unemployable, creating a downward spiral to misery.

Thanks for sharing this. I saw myself so much on your comment talking about the sandwich that I decided to share my story too.

I was born in a Latin America country, middle class family, 375 USD monthly income for a house of 6 people.

Although I never went a full day without eating at least two meals, it wasn't rare to go sleep hungry.

My mom still managed to buy a PC for us, and that alone changed everything: I discovered programming in my early teens through a MMO game and learned web development, and since then I never stopped.

I'm now on my mid-twenties, but because I started so early with programming, I kinda hacked my career growth: to this day I already have 10 years of experience with JavaScript, as I was still a teen on my first internships. Started a CS bachelor but dropped as it was waste of time for me.

Today I work as the principal software engineer for a US startup remotely, and make 40x of my country's minimum wage.

Living through this gave me an empathy that I believe it's really hard to develop if you were born rich (definition of rich here: >upper middle class). There are so much things people take for granted, and they aren't available for people in lower classes at all. Geography is the biggest inequality in the world by a large margin.

> Although I never went a full day without eating at least two meals, it wasn't rare to go sleep hungry.

I go to bed hungry every night, not because I can't afford food, but because that's how I control my weight.

Thats a great thing to do voluntarily for your health if you have extra fat to spend (IMO)! But no so much when you are underweight and don't have means to procure another meal.

In America, obesity is epidemic among the poor, not underweight-ness.

The person you're replying to is in the part of the Americas where this isn't true.

This board is always a bit parochial, but there's no excuse for it when people are clear about where they are.

I did clearly say "In America".

But it is your choice.

At last! Someone on HN agrees that people have choices!

Yes, it is my choice. I also noticed that my food bill went down substantially when I started this.

I felt the geography factor myself (despite being born in a developed country) when colleagues were telling about getting internships or junior positions out of highschool or when still living at home - there were little to no local (=same country) jobs or companies in my industry when I was young (the situation is better now, but I emigrated almost 20 years ago).

The idea of growing up in a city/metro area where you could know someone local working for such companies sounded like sci-fi.

I never saw this feeling expressed by anyone else. Had a period in my life where I was "heating got turned off"-poor. It took me quite some time after financially recovering until I felt comfortable spending money on anything other than the most basic food/clothing/etc. But now sometimes it just clicks and I realize that I can buy whatever I want (within reason, e.g. expensive foodstuff in the supermarket). Great feeling.

So true! Your background mirrors mine almost to the letter. My personal bar was never having to think about any purchase below €50. Mind you, do purchases like that all day and you’ll be poor pretty quickly ;-) But just knowing that you don’t have to think about it. So freeing.

Thanks for sharing!

I used to go to the movies a lot. One day I realized I could go to the movies as much as I wanted, and it had no impact on my financial condition. It was a nice feeling.

(In college my discretionary budget was $5 a week, so going to the movies meant going without something else.)

I never go to the movies at all any more or buy media, rather I bought an HD projector and I avidly torrent films. The problem is that the canon of great cinema is so many titles that people in my Eastern European country couldn’t realistically afford it, even if they have become squarely middle class. For example, just the classic films from the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. the French New Wave, Kurosawa, Ozu, Ray, etc.) already add up to over 600 titles. At a cost of, say, 15€ per DVD/Blu-ray, that makes 9000€, about a year’s salary for me.

I have the Bluray plan on Netflix, and the local public library has lots more DVDs I can borrow for free. In addition, the local cable has TCM which runs older classic movies. Between the three of them, I am able to see pretty much whatever I want.

I also set up a home theater in the basement. The HD projector was somewhere around $3xx from Amazon. The big screen was $50 from Amazon, and about $50 of lumber to make a frame for it. The sound system was $40 from the thrift store.

It's as good as seeing a movie in the theater!

Very recognizable. I had that thought literally yesterday while doing the shopping. It always makes me happy I can afford the animal products where they’re treated a bit better; grab the nice IPA beers if I want to; even like you say, buying any sandwich I want. It is lasting joy coming from little money to having a lot.

I learned in my 20s to save bucks on food (doing end of markets, leftover food here and there..)

Nowdays, even with a comfortable income, I still use a bike, and get very often free food at the end of markets, I try to pay whenever possible, or give back

Can you explain the term "end of markets?" I've never heard it before, and I like to save money on groceries. Thanks!

I think it's probably close to the time the market closes, so they give away food cheaper that they would have to throw away otherwise.

I imagine it's when a market closes and they often give away food or sell it for cheap. I used to do it all the time and it was amazing how much free food I'd get!

> We became rich overnight a few years ago when my wife got a job

How would you fare if she lost that job though?

It's your business, so a rhetorical question really, but a "few years" at a high income rarely produces any lasting fortune.

Wouldn't that be moving the goalpost? They are rich now (by their definition, which happens to be mine also). Many people stop being rich. Doesn't mean they weren't so in the first place.

1. My startup is doing pretty well now

2. If somehow it didn't, we'd go back to being poorish. Or I'd get a regular job or be a contractor. Either way, we'd live.

Same. Grew up generic middle class with frugal parents.

Too rich to get free money for college, too poor for my parents to have saved me anything. I was paycheck to paycheck for 3 years undergrad, and 3 years of wife's grad school.

Paycheck to paycheck doesn't even accurately define it. I didn't buy any luxuries like fast food or alcohol. Homemade everything.