Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We weren’t totally poor but lived paycheck to paycheck and had little left for non-essentials. The biggest thing that shocks me now is travel. We never traveled as a kid, and the rare times we did it was in the car and to the Comfort Inn. My kids are in ES and have no concept of what it’s like to not travel regularly by air. It bothers me - they are nice kids but don’t know how fortunate they are. We tell them, but they don’t “get it.”

There is a way to control this. Skip a vacation or 2 just bc. On 1 vacation stay at a Hampton Inn instead of your usual 5 star. Take a road trip or 2. That shows that travel isn't a requirement and fancy travel is a luxury. But let me guess you can't do this bc YOU don't want to be inconvenienced or slumming it -- so instead you're just lecture your kids and hope they get it which 99.9% of the time, they don't.

I agree with this. We take our kid on very nice European vacations, but we also take road trips where we stay in random dump hotels and eat at roadside cafes and barbecue joints. First, I want my kid to see all of America, and second, I don't want him to think he's too good for that. I want him to be comfortable with people from all walks of life. It amuses me how many people on this board are so adamant that their kid be exposed to "diversity," but that really just means they know rich people of many different ethnicities.

Ah yes. Guilty conscience tourism. That will teach kids how to be grateful. Not. Staying at a Hampton inn or eating at a roadside BBQ is not teaching your kid anything about how the other half lives. And visiting a place you can leave is not diversity either.

Everybody needs to do what they need to do, but don't kid yourself you're any better than the people you're chiding because you're not

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t grow up poor, but with way less than my kids have. We went to Build a Bear and spent an obscene $120 getting the kids their animals and my mom commented how much we had begged them to take us there when we were kids and how they really wanted to but didn’t have the money. The funny thing is that I have no recollection of this and had a very happy childhood even though my parents didn’t have a ton of money.

Build a Bear was founded in 1997. Are you a teen mom who wanted a build a Bear in 2007?

Or PP begged at 10. She is now 30 with very little kids.

If she begged at 10 (2007) she’d be 21 today

Um, or she was 10 in 1997?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t grow up poor, but with way less than my kids have. We went to Build a Bear and spent an obscene $120 getting the kids their animals and my mom commented how much we had begged them to take us there when we were kids and how they really wanted to but didn’t have the money. The funny thing is that I have no recollection of this and had a very happy childhood even though my parents didn’t have a ton of money.

Build a Bear was founded in 1997. Are you a teen mom who wanted a build a Bear in 2007?

Or PP begged at 10. She is now 30 with very little kids.

If she begged at 10 (2007) she’d be 21 today

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t grow up poor, but with way less than my kids have. We went to Build a Bear and spent an obscene $120 getting the kids their animals and my mom commented how much we had begged them to take us there when we were kids and how they really wanted to but didn’t have the money. The funny thing is that I have no recollection of this and had a very happy childhood even though my parents didn’t have a ton of money.

Build a Bear was founded in 1997. Are you a teen mom who wanted a build a Bear in 2007?

Or PP begged at 10. She is now 30 with very little kids.

If she begged at 10 (2007) she’d be 21 today

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t grow up poor, but with way less than my kids have. We went to Build a Bear and spent an obscene $120 getting the kids their animals and my mom commented how much we had begged them to take us there when we were kids and how they really wanted to but didn’t have the money. The funny thing is that I have no recollection of this and had a very happy childhood even though my parents didn’t have a ton of money.

Build a Bear was founded in 1997. Are you a teen mom who wanted a build a Bear in 2007?

Or PP begged at 10. She is now 30 with very little kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We weren’t totally poor but lived paycheck to paycheck and had little left for non-essentials. The biggest thing that shocks me now is travel. We never traveled as a kid, and the rare times we did it was in the car and to the Comfort Inn. My kids are in ES and have no concept of what it’s like to not travel regularly by air. It bothers me - they are nice kids but don’t know how fortunate they are. We tell them, but they don’t “get it.”

There is a way to control this. Skip a vacation or 2 just bc. On 1 vacation stay at a Hampton Inn instead of your usual 5 star. Take a road trip or 2. That shows that travel isn't a requirement and fancy travel is a luxury. But let me guess you can't do this bc YOU don't want to be inconvenienced or slumming it -- so instead you're just lecture your kids and hope they get it which 99.9% of the time, they don't.

I agree with this. We take our kid on very nice European vacations, but we also take road trips where we stay in random dump hotels and eat at roadside cafes and barbecue joints. First, I want my kid to see all of America, and second, I don't want him to think he's too good for that. I want him to be comfortable with people from all walks of life. It amuses me how many people on this board are so adamant that their kid be exposed to "diversity," but that really just means they know rich people of many different ethnicities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t grow up poor, but with way less than my kids have. We went to Build a Bear and spent an obscene $120 getting the kids their animals and my mom commented how much we had begged them to take us there when we were kids and how they really wanted to but didn’t have the money. The funny thing is that I have no recollection of this and had a very happy childhood even though my parents didn’t have a ton of money.

Build a Bear was founded in 1997. Are you a teen mom who wanted a build a Bear in 2007?

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t grow up poor, but with way less than my kids have. We went to Build a Bear and spent an obscene $120 getting the kids their animals and my mom commented how much we had begged them to take us there when we were kids and how they really wanted to but didn’t have the money. The funny thing is that I have no recollection of this and had a very happy childhood even though my parents didn’t have a ton of money.

Anonymous wrote:We were never food insecure but I remember things like: Using one pad for a whole day because they were expensive, using the same cheap razor for weeks, tissues and shaving cream and non bar soaps were luxury items. Threadbare towels, hand me downs.

Now I spend money on stupid shit like fee credit cards so I can access airport lounges. Concierge medicine. Fancy gyms and Pilates classes. Meal service.

It’s still very hard for me to buy clothes at full price, though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not shocked at what I spend money on, but that I can easily afford every day expenses: new clothes, shoes, field trips, lunch money, etc. I honestly don't even budget for it; if my kids need something they get it. They do not have to find odd jobs, save and scrap to buy school clothes or sports uniform items.

I am so happy to be able to send my son to Peru with his Spanish Club. I so badly wanted to travel with my high school friends, but it was simply too expensive.

Do you worry about what that will do to them though, in terms of learning to provide for themselves? Or are you pretty much setting them up for life financially, so if they aren't able to support themselves, they have a nice little safety net?

Not that PP, but buying kids what they need is very different than making sure they know how to provide for themselves as an adult. My parents did not always supply my needs. I had three pairs of shoes all of HS. I often walked 90 min or more to save the bus fare. So when it rained or snowed, I had to wrap trash bags around my feet. This caused me a lot of anxiety and distracted me from school work.

Yeah, same here. Sometimes I get angry at the mental energy I used to spend on stupid decisions all because of being poor.

My parents gave me lunch money at the beginning of the week and I remember saving it so that I could buy some necessities later. I remember planning out my underwear so that I would have something that I hadn’t outgrown on PE days. I cried when I started getting boobs and realized how expensive bras were. I used toilet paper instead of pads during my period. Spending money on necessities that nobody would see felt wasteful, just like skipping spending on food felt normal.