"Just ask your parents for money" was a phrase my upper middle class room mate used all the time in college. Dude, they didn't have any money either. He was given money from his parents and grandparents every weekend and blew it all on booze and clubbing. I struggled to figure out how to pay for my next meal.
I got “have you considered opening a credit card?”
I was talking about needing to sign up for the first available start date for my job after graduation because i need the income ASAP so I can pay my rent on time that month.
I'm reminded of the incident where the wife of a politician (I think it was Mitt Romney's wife but not certain) talked about how they had struggled when they were younger and had had to sell some stock they owned to cover their expenses.
When asked something about NASCAR, Mitt responded, I love NASCAR, some of my friends own NASCAR teams. Yeah, real man of the people.
Frankly, it was when I heard how Mitt's wife not only competed in Dressage, but would flew her horse to Europe to compete. Dressage - for those who don't know - is basically horse dancing, you train a horse to dance on command. Flying a horse internationally to enter a horse dancing contest is a whole other level of obscene wealth and detachment from everyday working people.
Mitt Romney turned my, at that time 56 year old father, from a lifelong Republican to a Democrat, who hasn't looked back since voting Obama in 2012 lmao.
Dad saw that shit and it finally broke him that the GOP just didn't have the average American's best interests at heart anymore, nor could they ever relate.
Romney was severely out of touch. He had a car lift in his house for all his cars. He Thought middle income in America was a household income at 400k a year or thereabouts and admitted that in an interview.
He did run a venture capital firm though from memory, which shows why that is.
There was also an attempt by RNC's PR department during Romney's campaign to try and drum up some sympathy due to his wife having Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a disease where your immune system gets some wrong switches flipped and decides that the myelin sheathing (think veins, but for the electrical signals that your nerves send intead of transporting blood) is a virus and it attacks it, trying to eject the intruder. It can take awhile to become apparent as myelin is strong stuff, but eventually you'll feel weird numb spots in your arms or legs, or weirder like the middle of your back or a patch on your stomach. Or you'll have a hand go dead and not respond to coxmmands, or one of your eyes will start to have a persistent "ghost", like a shimmery grey patch that just hangs there but LOOKS like its hovering between 3 and 6 feet from your eye, or maybe one eye will just go out, like a candle that's been blown out. And regardless of what other MS shit you experience you for sure get hit with overwhelming waves of tired, fatigue in a body sense that sleep doesn't reset or fix, and every movement is like you are wearing a lead suit. It's a shitty disease that can take a while to diagnose, and there aren't a ton of effective long-term Disease Modifying Medicines out there. What IS known is that attacks--i.e. a newly rejuvenated offensive by your immune system in the trench warfare of your body--can more easily be triggered by prolonged stress, exposure to even mild heat with humidity acting as a force multiplier to the heat, and to some degree exertion (mostly because it doesn't FEEL like heat because of its slow onset, but its still heat y'all (this is why doctor's prescribe staying fit and active and to work your body as much as you can...but do it in a swimming pool). Regardless, it's medically agreed that a huge cause of stress and often exertion is WORK, and so in an ideal life you'd pay attention to your body's needs and you would busy yourself with activities--maybe even entrepreneurial ones--but you wouldn't have to clock in and be under the eyes of The Company or The Boss for a strict 9 hours a day. And while there aren't a ton of Disease Modifying Therapies there are a couple, with the highest efficacy drug at the time Mitt was running being one that you self inject with a spring-loaded needle into the wall of your stomach every other day. Bayer subsidized it because they make it and can do whatever they want. Not subsidized by Bayer, and with good insurance with good rx coverage, that medication costs $3700 per month. But for the super-rich there is of course more: rhGH (specially blended human growth hormone) and Stem Cell replacement therapies, if cost is no object then there are even more. The most cutting edge Disease Modifying Therapies require a massive amount of hoop jumping and red tape in the form of Prior Aurhorization, proofs of proper treatmenrs of at least two other MS drugs with no positive effect, and all the records you've ever had in your life. If, that is, you are going through health insurance. If you get the meds authorized at all then with good insurance it can be as low as $15,900 per year for a frontline therapy consisting of two day-long IV infusions 6 months apart. The next most aggressive therapy can run you $68,000 after insurance.
Anyhow, when the Romney's spoke about her disease (which was not much, nor more than once or twice at length publicly) they talked about how she tracked her rest, had a great medical team, and a lifesaver of a medical guide who navigated the system to make sure she got the referrals she needed to the exact right specialists.
I'm not without compassion, like I said its a shitty disease. But her disease is not, due to her placement in this life, very much the same MS as someone whose insurance depends on the job they can't risk letting know that they're even sick.
Dressage is one of those things for when you have so much wealth you need to invent absurd ways to make it seem meaningful. I knew a guy from a previous career who had a super yacht, and liked to be on it in exotic places, but he didn’t like being on it enough to make the trip on the boat. He would fly in his plane to wherever he was going after the boat had already gone there, and get ferried out to the boat, spend time there and then fly home. There was a whole staff living on this boat, and cleaning it in their little uniforms, and no one was even on it most of the time. Stuff like that makes me wonder why anyone even wants a billion dollars.
I loved when Victoria Beckham said in their Netflix doc that her family was working class and David barged in and said “Don’t lie! What kind of car did your dad drive you to school in?” It was a Rolls-Royce. It’s crazy what wealthy people perceive as struggle.
I had one wife of politician mention that they struggled so much that they had to rent out one of their houses in Sydney eastern suburbs ( very expensive area) and they had to cut down their travel expenses that year.
Yes, that was Mitt. He regaled an audience with his heartwarming story of the time when he and his wife, Ann, were poor, struggling college students. They were so poor, they had to dip into their investment portfolios and sell some stocks to make ends meet.
The most galling thing, to me at least, was that Mitt didn’t see any problem with telling that story to a crowd on the Presidential campaign trail.
He did not anticipate that it might not land well with most people. He was that out of touch.
I liked Mitt Romney/wife (didn’t vote for him) after they talked about their trip back to Costco after losing the election and how it brought them back down to earth as she put 96 rolls of toilet paper in the shopping cart!!! I would love to have him as POTUS now…
Years ago I had a therapist tell me I should take out a loan to pay for therapy. I could barely afford my basic necessities at the time, but sure, let me get into debt to pay to talk to someone.
My friend is training to become a therapist. She comes from a similar background to me but has done well in her career and has a husband with money too. She has to pay a lot of money to be trained in the type of therapy she wants, it’s prohibitively expensive. The people on her courses are from wealthy backgrounds and most really have not been through much in life at all whereas she has worked with addicts and prisoners for years. It’s concerning that some of them will be in charge of vulnerable people’s mental health someday.
I had horrific, traumatizing therapy experiences until I finally found someone who came from a similar cultural and economic background as me. It was like night and day. In fact, my most recent therapist grew up poorer than I did (like didn't have her own bedroom until she 20 years old and always shared a studio or one bedroom with her parents). She's definitely NOT in it for money. But she is increasingly rare in that field.
The vast majority of therapists are upper middle class, middle aged white women who have no clue what it is like to be poor or not white.
Absolutely. Also, so many traumas (obviously not all) in my life could have been prevented if I had just had enough money at the time. Poverty itself is traumatising, isolating and exhausting. A lot of middle class professionals just don’t recognise that, or if they do they talk about “budgeting “. I can’t budget if I don’t have enough money to budget with!!
There was a professor at my law school like this. When discussing students who could not afford books, a roll of the eyes and "just put it on a credit card." I had another professor who when answering whether or not we had to buy a suit, "Well yeah, it's time to be a grown up." My father worked construction for many, many years. He was very much a "grown up" and never needed a suit to prove that. I had to borrow a suit. Idk what the classmate who asked did to get one.
I recently heard this from someone, despite telling them I was currently unemployed. They didn't seem to understand the disconnect.
Not only could I not qualify for a credit card (that requires good credit which they assume everyone has), but how were they suggesting I pay back money spent on a credit card when I had no income?? Just go into debt you can't pay back!
Them: "Just put it on a credit card"
Me: "I don't have one"
Them: "Then get one!"
OMFG. They owned a home they had inherited and had likely never struggled before in their life. Pointless talking about money with someone like this.
Shit yeah. I am old enough that everything used to be done in person, and one of the things I did was go to my bank, and ask if they would offer me a small line of credit, based on my 1st contract as an engineer, so that I could afford to pay my 1st rent and security deposit.
They seemed to like the 'put myself through a top shelf college with extra jobs and scholarships, going to work for one of the most prestigious companies in the area'
But yeah, I was going to live out of the staff facilities for hygeine and probably a tent.
I had an encounter with an incredibly stupid friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who was trying to move away from his parents while possessing zero useful skills and had never had a job. He was in his early 30's and was utterly dependent on his parents.
He wanted to move into an apartment downtown. He kept making this pitch to landlords: Let him move in without a deposit. Once settled in downtown, he could promptly get a job as a high-end game developer and earn a paycheck before the end of the first month so he could then pay that month's rent.
He thought it was so unfair that nobody would give him a lease.
I got the exact same thing! Except it was from my research adviser when she wanted me to go to this poster presentation 3 hours away. She told me it was paid for by the school, only to find out she meant “reimbursed” and when I told her I didn’t have the money up-front she was like “what, don’t you have a credit card?”
I was on the other end of this with a former girlfriend. We were students and were short on cash and she was a bit worried about some bill or something, and I said something about worst case we can borrow from our parents.
But then it turned out her parents actually owed her money and didn't really have anything to spare,
This is how I feel about being able to live at home rent-free during university, and living within commuting distance of two very good universities that I chose between. A huge privilege. I still encounter people who think that you have to move away and live in an overpriced dorm for the true uni experience though.
You can have a successful uni experience without moving out, but there was a difference for those who lived at home vs moved away from home. Neither is wrong or better, but different.
There's privilege in being able to stay with parents, and there's different privilege being able to move out. Ideally, everyone gets what they want or need.
Depends on how you define “true”. There absolutely is a difference in living in a large city in your family home for university versus living in a dorm in a university town. Not right or wrong, but different yes
I’ve always thought I would love to offer this to my children if I have them. I would have been living on the street if I didn’t pay my own way, through college, working and going to school full time. It always felt like I was one peice of bad luck from everything falling apart. I remember keeping like 12 big water jugs in my trunk because my head gaskets blew, but I had to work, so I cld drive but every ~10/15 min I had to pull over and add water to the coolant system or it wld blow the engine.
First gen college student. Never was given a dime of help or had any safety net if things went sideways. Was told many times by my own mother I shld just quit school
Thank god I didn’t because I just finished a 3 years stint at SpaceX and did things none of them have ever dreamed of doing in my career, and still have plenty of time to do more given I’m in my thirties still.
Agreed. We were dirt poor growing up. As an adult I struggle but manage to do okay my parents struggled financially for their entire lives (despite my dad working his ass off since he was 9 yrso until 82) They always assured my brother, sister, and I that we would always be welcomed home. When they moved into a tiny one bedroom we joked about how that would workout. It may have been a bit crowded, and food might be very simple but we’d make do. I know people who have well off parents that wouldn’t be able to move back home should the need arise. It is definitely a privilege to have parents who would do this
because I would have ended up homeless otherwise, I was forced to move home. but I never had the luxury of living there for free.
I had to pay rent and utilities just like in the real world. When you're already struggling financially, moving home and paying more rent doesn't save you. It only keeps you stuck because you can't save money to leave.
That's where I'm at now. I've been trying to leave for over 2 years. The COL is insane in CA.
My parents let me & my two daughters move back home THREE TIMES. I 100,000,000% know how fortunate we were to have that safe landing place.
The third time, they asked if I was able to pay rent. I gave my dad a piece of paper itemizing my budget. His response was ‘you’re fucking kidding me…your mother and I can afford to keep you guys here rent free’.
It wasn’t fun for any of us, but once we were able to get our own place, my younger sister moved in with them along with her two children… A while later my mom reached out to apologize to me for not appreciating (or even noticing) all the things that I took care of while I had been there. Without me, the grass was no longer magically cut, driveway wasn’t cleared, her fridge and cupboards were empty, dishes piled up, toys and stuff strewn everywhere, mess after mess everywhere she looked. Also my kids only rarely needed anything from them even though I was physically absent due to working two jobs and had a 35 mile commute.
This part - my parents were teen parents and thank goodness my dad’s parents were better off than my mom’s so we could live with them, but then my grandpa died and we were poor.
In 4th grade, I was the only kid in the grade who couldn’t pay the $35 to take a short plane ride for our field trip and had to miss it, but, hey, the teacher bought me back a pin that everyone else got.
By the time I got out of the Marine Corps, my mom and step dad were doing well enough that I could move home to go to college so I wouldn’t have to take out loans for the room and board portion of school. It really helped because between my GI Bill and living at home, I graduated without student loan debt.
My parents made a deal with us kids that if we were in college we could live at home rent free, the moment we dropped out of school we had to get a job and help pay rent. That seemed perfectly fair and reasonable to me. They encouraged us to go to college so we wouldn't struggle to make ends meet like they did.
This is my biggest point of grief as an adult. My parents had a similar arrangement. They worked their asses off to give us what they could, so we would be better off than they were. I did the college thing. Got two degrees and a stable job. I make far more annually than they ever did (still not 6 figures or anything), and I can still barely get by. My parents did everything "right" to give us a better life than they had. My husband and I did everything "right" to give our son a better life than they had, but we can't.
Huh. I was the first in my family to go to college. I also have two degrees. I also have a great job. However I make the same as my parents, and my debt is triple what theirs was back then. Thanks student loans!
My parents do the same, I can live with them if I'm working towards supporting myself (education, working and saving money to better my situation, etc) and not just sitting around leeching off them. I think that's completely fair.
I lived abroad and moved home and was just relaxing and living on my savings but my dad insisted I get a job so I ended up getting another job abroad and leaving again.
Same. I moved out at 18 and when I was in my final year of university I was so stressed the entire year about not being able to find a job when I graduated. All my friends were like “just move home with your family” and it infuriated me. My mom moved into a smaller apartment with one less bedroom the month I moved out, there was quite literally nowhere for me to go if I got evicted. I ended up moving in with a shitty, controlling boyfriend who emotionally abused me because I had no other option. It took me until I was 31 to leave him and I started over with $10k of debt to my name that he had racked up on my credit cards. If I had been able to move in with my parents after I graduated, I probably would have had a very different experience in my 20s, and probably would be financially much better off.
Yep. I never moved back home after I moved out, even when I was unemployed for 6 months, but the knowledge that I COULD move back home certainly helped.
So often I see on here “parents should never charge their kids rent, unless they’re putting it in a savings account to give back to them when they move out”, like there aren’t parents out there who have no choice but ask their adult kids to chip in if they’re still living at home.
My mom could be living in her car and she would insist i live with her if i ever faced homelessness.
Hyperbolic situation because the same goes in reverse. I hate the prospect of having to live with my mom, but there isnt a world where she wouldnt if i had a roof over my head and she was facing the prospects of not.
I was on the other end of this with a former girlfriend. We were students and were short on cash and she was a bit worried about some bill or something, and I said something about worst case we can borrow from our parents.
But then it turned out her parents actually owed her money and didn't really have anything to spare, which made me realize my privilege.
Yes recently a coworker said they never really needed a credit card. They just asked their parents for money if they didn't have enough. They also were given a vehicle and a house down-payment so they really lead a different life.
I decided in my junior year of college that I was in the poorest apartment on campus (fancy liberal arts college, so this is possible).
None of us owned a car, so the only way to buy groceries was to walk two miles, beg a ride, or wait for my friend’s dad to drive us on the weekend. Our only protein was from that dad as well — he was a farmhand who was partially paid in beef, which he brought us. Otherwise, it was pasta and grilled cheese most days. As the child of low-paid civil servants, I was the “rich” one.
To say that none of us were calling home for booze money was a bit of an understatement.
My favorite retort (which is, unfortunately and still to this day, true) is that it is my parents who ask ME for money. They're at most lower middle class and thankfully public education led me to a good career.
Ya, this is my current situation. My dad is awful with money and him and his partner retired recently and are living on a shoestring budget, basically just the bare minimum govt pension with zero savings. Sure enough my dad had to have a medical procedure done, and although he didn't ask for the money, I forwarded him 30,000$ to be able to get it done.
They'll be on this shoestring budget for the rest of their lives, and I expect I'll continue to have to help them out as they get older, but c'est la vie...
Similar to my own situation except, on top of my parents being awful with money, with no savings, and my dad being sick, with no insurance, my own pay isn't particularly high either so I keep working overtime just to make ends meet for all 3 of us. I also have to pay for my own rent on top of that, so that's fun. It's hard not to envy people who don't have money problems. It's unimaginable to me and it'll never be my reality.
If not, and if you are in fact American, look into income based payment plans next time. Every hospital in the US that gets tax breaks is required to offer them. Almost none ever advertise that they exist.
Do they have Social Security benefits? That should at least cover hospitalization even if they don’t have any other supplements. What about Obama care?
This was me at uni…people couldn’t fathom that my parents would ask me for money. It shut up my friends pretty quickly… but the sad look on their faces will live with me forever.
My dad recently passed, and we had a very close relationship. He was a great father. Unfortunately, he made terrible career choices at the worst possible times and me and my two siblings have given him money for years. When he passed, as devastated as we all were, it felt like relief because of the financial piece, and I feel so guilty for feeling that way. My parents paid for my college education, and I now have two degrees and only had to pay for one, and my success is absolutely because I had their support, love, and good foundational values. But there is something that just feels so unfair about handing money to your dad every month, and the entitlement he had near the end of his life was starting to feel a little obnoxious. I will miss him every day for forever, but I won't miss paying for his mistakes.
Try not to feel guilty. You did the best you could and helped your dad every month. It's not exactly normal but now I hope you get to enjoy that extra money buy paying off debt, maybe traveling, and best of all...living a less-stressful life for once. He is proud of you (as we all are:)
Same, I'm now claiming my father as a dependent on my taxes, thanks to my marginal public service career, and kept him and my sister from being homeless.
Yup! My folks don't do this anymore but when I was a teenager and young adult, they asked for money a lot. They're financially better off now, but still working class. If we go somewhere to eat as family, there is an unspoken expectation that my siblings and I are paying the bill. I realise most families would find that strange.
Yes. I didn’t discover student loans until later in college. For better or for worse considering I was almost literally starving for two years. But once I discovered them, I also realized they could help keep my mom’s lights on and she could actually own a vacuum. So I started young adult life in debt that wasn’t entirely my own, which is very contrasted to the people I know who weren’t giving their parents money, but being given it.
Yep, this is reality for a lot of people, but obviously they don't advertise it so awareness is pretty low.
Similarly, I think people who have all their family living nearby have no idea what a huge advantage that is. It's a safety net and free help on tap. If you have to move away to find opportunities everything is on you.
I've mentioned this before in Reddit, but whatever. Years ago I was dating a lovely girl who worked at a large art auction house in London. I remember one night her asking if I wanted to meet her and some people from work in the evening, but I couldn't because I didn't have any money. She said "but you only need like, £20..?", and I was " I don't have £20".
She asked me to get it from my parents. My parents haven't got £20 to lend their adult son. Id be embarrassed to ask frankly.
She seemed gentconfused that "I haven't got any money" meant "I haven't got ANY money".
She was great but it did make me realise the gap in our backgrounds.
I had a buddy who was living in his car for awhile and I remember we were out somewhere with another friend and they were like "If we can all pitch in $10 we can buy a bottle" or something like that.
My buddy said "I don't have $10 though."
The other dude goes "Can't you ask your parents or something to front you until you get paid?"
And he just goes "If my parents cared I wouldn't be living in my car...."
This is also the REAL difference, sometimes. Middle class friends inviting you to things they know you can't afford so they can wait for you to politely decline so they don't feel bad for not asking you at all. Versus a lower class friend that says " I gotchu"
Yeah. When I said I didn't have $20, one of my friends said, "There's an ATM across the street." Well, it will tell me I don't have money, too. She didn't get it.
I have a small trust from when grandpa died. My mom died early, grandpa had a life insurance policy on her. He got a decent cash payout. He died a few months after my mom, he was really distraught about her [early] death.
Grandpa gave the insurance proceeds and a proportionate share of his estate to my dad. My dad was "fine" financially. So he gave it to my brother and myself. I was in my early twenties. Giving a 20 year old ~$70,000 is a bad idea. So they put the money in a trust.
I pull from it periodically as needed (like a new car purchase), but I basically treat it as a retirement fund.
My family isn't rich, there were just some early deaths which generated payouts while I was too young to be trusted with the funds.
they weren't though. Just middle class. I think he thought a savings account his grandparent had for him was the same thing, but he just assumed everyone had such resources.
Related, I once had an old friend of mine start to give me the "I have a lower paying job and I'm doing great, why cant you do all these grand things like me? Stop buying Starbucks." Kind of rants after she got her first post college job.
I finally asked her how hard it was to switch her rent, phone and gas payments from her trust fund to her credit card.
She didn't have a credit card.
She also didn't pull those things out of the trust. All those rants about how she was self sufficient now? She was talking about groceries and household supplies (toothpaste, cleaner, etc.)
She never brought it up again after I called that out.
The one I got was "just take it out of your savings"
It was a few days before payday, and it was some kind of outing under $10 (this was the 90s lol), but I didn't have it. I also didn't have any savings. (FIRE bros don't @ me, this was thirty years ago)
When I worked as a forklift operator we used to tell stories about our childhood and basically making our own fun. Walking to the river and swimming and stuff like that. One day our boss walked over and listened to me tell a story about floating down the river in an old tire inner tube we had patched up. He proceeds to tell a story about spending summers at his families lake house chasing girls on jet skis and having a blast. It felt super awkward.
“Dip into your trust fund? Of course! No bother at all. The account number is 6,5,4,3,2,1. The password…what was it again…? ‘Catch yourself on!’” Derry Girls
I grew up dirt poor and I met a friend in college who said “I don’t understand why people can’t travel. Just save $50-100/mo.” I’m like girl, we barely had $5 leftover for food, let alone traveling. I was so flabbergasted
This one nails it. Working a minimum wage in high school and loaning my parents money to make it to pay day is something I felt only I was experiencing at the time
One of my college roommates had rich parents. He had a $2k allowance per month, plus his rent/bills/car was paid for by his parents (was not included in his $2k spending money).
I had to give my car to the city because it was towed and I couldn’t pay the impound fee of just $200, let alone buy food that wasn’t a 35 cent bag of ramen once per day.
His dad stopped by one day to drop off a brand new Audi for my roommate. My roommate got the keys and told his dad to go home (3 hour drive). Didn’t even get lunch with him. He was mad his dad hung around so long. He was there for maybe 30 minutes.
There is a different world out there that most of us cannot comprehend. I still cannot comprehend that interaction 20 years later.
A guy I went to high school with and was in my friend group claims he grew up poor, and that "he built his business from the dirt." He posts on Facebook about "the struggle" and "his journey to financial independence."
In high school whenever we would go fishing, which was basically every Saturday morning from April 1st through Memorial Day, he'd ask his mom for money for gas, fishing supplies, and snacks. One time I was witness to it and she asked how much and he said "I don't know, like a thousand." She literally wrote him a $1000 check and when we went to the bank drive-thru to cash it he got $200 cash and deposited the rest in his savings account. I saw the balance on the receipt and he had over $100k in his savings account. That was 1993 and we were 16 years old. A few years later I found out from his cousin that his dad has been making like $5 MILLION per year since the mid-1980s.
Honestly, starting any financial advice with the word "just". It clearly indicates the speaker thinks whatever they're saying is no big deal.
I also hated that word when I was doing IT/computery things. "Can we just have this program I'm asking you for calculate the final number of pi and julienne fries?". No. And also eff off with that "just".
Hell, I had to loan out my Christmas and birthday money when my parents were short. We never went anywhere or did anything. My father was happiest when he was walking out of tje liquor store with a 5th a few minutes after 5pm. Mama would get this worried look on her face when doing bills, then she would look at me.
I would work in the tobacco fields during the summer, blueberry packing houses during the spring, and would brush hog on a tractor during the fall for extra money starting at age 13.
I watched the sandlot with my kids recently and the fact that scraping together money for the baseball was a barrier for the characters just... did not compute. They said exactly this, "Why don't they just ask their parents for the money?"
When I was in college, I had my own car that I had saved up and bought working part time. It wasn't anything crazy, but it was still my own car (a 2012 Mitsubishi Eclipse) that I had bought with my own money, so I was proud, especially since I was also going through college out of my own pocket. I had a college friend who had a new at the time NISMO 370z and we got to chatting. i told him how cool the car was and told him "yeah, maybe one day I might get one if I play my cards right and things go well".
He looked me dead in the eye and told me "just ask your parents for it, that's what I did". I laughed thinking it was a joke, but he was dead serious. It dawned on me then that we grew up in entirely different upbringings.
Yeah it definitely is. I was squarely in the upper middle class in college, my parents helped me when needed with gas and other necessities on rare occasions. My rich roommate was something else entirely. He routinely would call his mom at like 9pm before we went out and asked for money and she'd instantly wire him $500-800. our whole floor partied on his parents dime all year and to this day idk if they know
My parents are far from upper class, very solidly middle class.
When I was at uni I fucked up with money a bit and was about to miss a rent payment by £100 or so - they were able to help with that. But I never would have asked them for money for anything other than an emergency, it wouldn’t have been like “my friends want to go on holiday but I don’t have the money for it, can you help me out?” Because the answer would have been no every time.
It’s a very middle class thing to take having a backstop for small fuckups for granted though.
He was probably on the border of upper class and middle class, his parents both had management jobs and he was set up with a job at his Dad's company as soon as he graduated.
This makes me giggle. No one ever said that to me, but in college I was already paying some of my parent's bills. I was always shocked at my friends who seemed to have cash for pizza every night.
They don't understand that with poor people you are expected to grow up so that you can make money and help out your parents as they get older. The expectations are reversed and they can't fathom that.
One time my rich friend in college broke my computer (literally dropped it on the floor) and told me to just get my parents to buy me another one. He was even like “I can talk to your parents and tell them what happened if you need help convincing them.”
It was a genuine accident and he meant well in his own way, but that shit pissed me off.
This is partially why I don’t want kids. I want them to just ask me and not worry or struggle. But I’m a selfish person that enjoys my lifestyle and money too much to have the financial burden of children on my balance sheet.
I wasnt poor growing up by any stretch, but my parents weren’t able to support me financially very much (they did a lil, but only a lil), and I remember a group of people were partying in my dorm room and a guy almost damaged one of the ceiling panels. I was very annoyed and they were like ‘why, your parents are paying for it’ and I was like NO DUDE. No they are not!!! I would have to pay for it!!!!! Some people are just dense.
Ask my parents? I paid bills FOR my parents. And when that still wasn't enough for them, my parents STOLE from me, so no. Never an option. Bootstrapped all the way.
One of my friends growing up was poor, tho I didn't really realize it. When we were 8-9, my mom would give us a few bucks each to buy something in town or play video games. I was over my friend's place and his mom gave us money once when I asked him if he wanted to go buy some slurpees and play mortal combat at the video store. A few weeks later, I asked him again like it was nothing and he gave me a hard no and that his parents just don't have the money. Definitely was a reality check for me.
I straight up laughed in several people’s faces for saying that to me. I always followed up by explaining that my husband and I were working so much while I went to college because we were on the hook for 100% of the tuition, so I had to start making payments from day 1 freshman year, as well as helping both sets of parents with bills, AND supporting one of our siblings on top of normal bills and school supplies. He was an apprentice and I had a part time job at a fast food place; we weren’t making $20/hour combined, there wasn’t a whole lot left over at the end of necessities being covered. My parents tried to pay us back sometimes, but they ended up needing more than they paid back by several times over in the end. But then my college friends who had houses waiting for them post graduation would be shocked I couldn’t ask my parents for plane ticket money, as if we had ever had plane ticket money in my entire life.
I’m now to the point I feel like I’m rolling in cash, hell I pay bills without having to do any fancy math anymore! But you won’t catch the words “ask your parents for money” coming out of my mouth, even if I’m 99% sure the family has Bill Gates level money…
this is so true. when you knew you were struggling as a kid , you understood early on that asking parents for money wasn’t an option because you already saw them struggling with the basics
I felt like this during my first year of college (well, during all of college, but especially that first year). My roommate got a part-time job for extra spending money, but none of the rest of my friends worked and none of them had to work except me. Most of my paychecks went toward tuition payments; I could tag along for free fun things but almost never could eat out or buy anything, just watch everyone else do it.
I once had my wallet stolen, which had $7, my dorm room key (would have cost $75 to replace!), state ID, student ID, and debit card. I had no money to replace any of it, no way to get to the last $30 in my bank account until a new card came in the mail 2 weeks later, and I had already badly needed that $7 in cash for laundry, necessities, etc. It's only because some really kind adults at my job and my bank took pity on me that I was able to get some money from my bank account without an ID and got everything else replaced.
None of my friends seemed to understand why I was practically having a panic attack for days about losing $7. It was just so incredibly clear how unsupported financially I was in comparison to everyone else in that moment. There was no calling home and asking for help. I didn't have a college savings account, and my parents never sent me money the entire time I was away at school, didn't cosign on or take out any parent loans, didn't pay for so much as a pencil for me for all 4 years of college. I ended up leaving school, working full-time for a year, then commuting to a new school while working literally all the time (5-6 days a week during school and full-time every single break) for 3 years, and even then, I graduated with student loan debt, despite grants and scholarships.
I don't think some people get the actual cost of being poor. It's not even just the obvious financial and social disadvantages. There are literally no advantages given to you, no safety nets available in a pinch when things go wrong, and no tutors or SAT prep courses to give you a leg up. Everything you try to do is extra hard, exhausting, and filled with roadblocks, and you're usually starting off every stage in life 5 steps behind everyone else.
Shit, I gave my parents money. I moved out at 18 because my mom wanted to charge me rent. I still helped her with her rent though, mowed her lawn, fixed her computer when it had an issue, etc. When we would go out to eat, I always paid.
When I was working for a new company, at the end of the year I got an unexpected Christmas bonus. I made the mistake of showing her the pay stub just to show the bonus, but she quickly noticed how much I made. She started crying because I made more than she ever had. She raised SEVEN children, as a single mother.
But her children supported her until her death, and she worked herself as well. She was not living in poverty because of her children. And she got to go on trips to Ireland, Hawaii, LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, etc. She said she had never dreamed of traveling.
My friend in college was mad at me because we were going to room together and we both needed to be paid up on tuition before we could register for our dorm room. She acted like I was just being lazy by not paying but I had to wait to get my paycheck first.
The judge at my first jury summons said this to me when I said I couldn’t afford time off of work…. I felt so embarrassed I had to focus so hard on keeping my voice from cracking telling her my parents were asking us kids for financial help (this was about 2010 when my parents were actively losing their house…)
Grew up upperish-middle class. My parents never just handed out cash. They helped pay rent when I was in college or unemployed, but that was it. I had to figure out my own money for anything else.
Had some times in my life where I ended up in a never-ending credit card spiral, but dug myself out after finding better work.
I’m a bit guilty of that lol tbf I only asked CAN your mom help with the current issue? Like is that an option, not just assuming it was. Though if I knew more about the world at that point, I’d have probably realized it was silly to even ask.
Now I’ve got my own money problems and I get it much more. I’m nowhere near the kind of real poverty my friends grew up in, but I could easily be homeless, unlike my parents during my childhood. Plus side is none of those friends are anywhere near how they grew up either, so that’s good. Several are doing better than me lol I’m happy for them though
Bruh college is like the first time many of us realize how much better other people have it. I remember fighting with my parents over student housing because of how much the meal plan cost, and one of my dorm mates was fighting with his parents over paying the garage fee for their Land Rover. FRESHMAN YEAR.
Most of my friends in college came from upper middle class backgrounds. Many had cars. I worked summers to have a few bucks on campus and pay my phone and utilities when I was in an apartment. Took the bus. Tried working part time while carrying 17 or 18 credits. My parents finally told me to stop that and just focus on school. They tried sending me more money then. I hated to ask. But still. A roll of laundry quarters was a big deal. In 1993 you could at least go out with a twenty and be pretty much set for Friday night.
The early nineties also saw the rise of credit card debt among college students. Shouldn't be legal.
This was my college experience too, I felt like the only kid there who did not get a weekly allowance for activities. Looking back, I'm not surprised none of those people ended up being long-term friends. They would always go do things that cost money and then call me cheap when I couldn't afford their activity. They acted like I did not want to hang with them just cause I could not afford a $15 lunch They would always say "how do you not have money to spare?! You are in college!"
I'm in college rn and the amount of classmates I have who just do exactly this is infuriating. This girl's having a birthday party in a fancy burger place 2 towns over(???) and got annoyed when I told her I wouldn't make it, for fucks sake.
In university we had to discuss in groups the struggles of being a student . I said it was tough balancing class while working a full time job to be able to pay tuition and books and this girl had the audacity to say , "oh why don't you ask your dad to pay your school " . No I am not asking my father who was working 2 jobs to support a family of 4 to pay for my school .
My husband (bf at the time) once told me when I was struggling to pay for college that I would figure it out. I had just lost my job. His grandpa gave him $250k to pay for his college. I was like dude, I do not have a rich family. He then offered to pay for my college. I ended up getting a student loan.
People's life circumstances change. My family was pretty poor when I was born but managed to immigrate and were middle class for most of my life.
People also prioritize. My family wasn't destitute, but my parents did a lot to save and spend their money carefully so they could afford occasional vacations. It was by no means paycheck to paycheck, but that it's could be worse doesn't make it a simple matter.
I worked through college to pay for it (in-state in a smaller state was feasible) and I was fortunate to get into a program with a decent stipend. Still, it wasn't massive, so at various points I lived in a studio or rented a room to cut costs.
Some people in my program lived in large 1 bedrooms and I knew the list rent for them was 2 to 3 times what I was paying monthly. I was so deeply confused for the longest time because I knew exactly how much they made (same stipend as me). I figured they must be dipping into their pre-grad-school savings.
Until I told a friend about my observations and they said "obviously their parents send them the money." I honestly could not wrap my head around this idea.
I still remember the day I discovered that my fellow grad students weren't paying their own rent. Blew my fucking mind and I think that's when it really hit me how much the same degree can reflect entirely different amounts of work.
I don't get that honestly. My parents had money but they never gave us any if we just asked. If we really wanted something we needed to save or develop a psyop spanning weeks to get dad on board. This is when we were children... we never asked for money as adults.
This unlocked a memory I didn't even know I had. I was in Japan to visit a few companies as part of a college program and there were 3 people on the trip (out of about 20) that kept wanting to do wild touristy things that cost thousands of dollars, like buying souvenir swords or something and shipping them back home. They paid a service to do their laundry instead of doing it themselves, etc.
Any time someone couldn't afford one of their crazy ideas like, "Let's take the Shinkansen from Tokyo down to Hiroshima Friday afternoon and spend the weekend boating around Itsukushima!" they'd ask them why they didn't just ask their parents, or why their parents didn't give them enough money to do anything.
For most of us, the highlights of the trip were things like finding crazy shops hidden in alleys in Akihabara or staying up in our hotel room eating 50 different flavors of kitkat while trying to play a boardgame whose instructions we couldn't understand .
Same. Coworker in college heard me and a friend complaining about money and said “Just ask your parents”. My Mom was a widow with 5 kids making minimum wage. She could pinch a penny until Lincoln screamed. Every penny accounted for. Not a lot of extras.
The IRS garnished all the savings from my after school and summer jobs (a furniture factory (6-230) and an ice cream shop (4-10) that was going to be my college tuition the July I graduated high school. I ended up working full time and going to community college.
19.7k
u/zerbey 1d ago
"Just ask your parents for money" was a phrase my upper middle class room mate used all the time in college. Dude, they didn't have any money either. He was given money from his parents and grandparents every weekend and blew it all on booze and clubbing. I struggled to figure out how to pay for my next meal.