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A close friend grew up in first-world poverty (meaning, warm house, state-supported education, health care) but experienced no luxuries. To this day, they will buy themselves a tub of ice-cream or chocolate and eat it all completely alone, almost hoarding it, because growing up they had to share everything with the many siblings. It's crazy how weird pathologies we humans have.

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Money psychology is interesting in that people often end up being traumatized by their parents into behaving identically when the circumstances no longer warrant it, OR have a knee-jerk reaction living their life completely the opposite way because growing up that way drove them insane.

A similar thing happens with children of parents who came out of war zones or famines. Sometimes the children are explicitly taught that violence or starvation can come at any moment. Often they learn to feel under threat implicitly by picking up their parents’ affect, without any message or lesson being clearly stated.

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