40 Things People Considered Luxuries For The Rich Until They Realized They Just Grew Up Broke

I grew up eating Blue Bonnet margarine. I tasted real butter at a friend's house and it was a revelation, and ever since, the taste of margarine makes me feel gaggy. My mother said butter was too expensive, and it absolutely was for a family on food stamps. I worked at my neighborhood grocery store in high school, and bought individual sticks of butter for my personal use as a treat on Wonder bread, carefully rationing it. I have not bought margarine ever since, and even if a recipe calls for it, I use butter, and I don't care one bit if my cookies spread out more than they should because I did.

Aw! My best friend was very poor growing up. I routinely used my allowance every week to buy her food and clothes, ( shoes, boots, winter coat, socks, undies) as well as buy her food at school, dinners at restaurants out. Her mother was a raging alcoholic on welfare that turned tricks. They lived in a cockroach infested main floor apartment, she didn’t even have blinds for her bedroom windows!!! Got and installed window blinds as well as window bars. When I met her she had one pair of socks. Brought her on vacations with us.

I bought shampoo with my first paycheck. Real, as seen in commercials, shampoo and not the cheap stuff that mom had to buy. I spent the first week marveling at how it made my hair feel, and how nice it smelled. Once I could afford it I started leaving shampoo and soap in her bathroom telling her to use them. It felt really good to be able to give her that small luxury.

**Not from concentrate.** Anything else isn’t worth drinking, after growing up on Tang.

I remember discovering how the Tropicana brand of orange juice tasted soooo much better than the frozen store brand of orange juice!

THIS and schools still FORCE kids to buy their lunch from the cafeteria unless they brought their own or they don't have the money to eat that day. A lot of the times my parents will buy me lunchables but I don't really like them, so my friend has been the main one buying me food and I've been giving my lunchables to them in turn, for us it's a win-win situation and we are lucky to have this agreement, but it doesn't change the fact that a fair amount of my school doesn't eat every day.

This is very real.

damn

When the school decides that what you brought is not up to "STANDARDS" and tosses it. And you can't afford to buy their s**t lunch....

We had a rule at our house. The littlest ones eat first. As the oldest, I understood that a good number of days, my only meal was school lunch.

When I was little in my country, milk would come sold in bags, and the fat was floating on top. My job was to scoop off the fat, and make the butter. Just add a sprinkle of salt, then stir it with a fork as fast as you can until your arm is about to fall out of it's socket. So good that way. You can do the same thing with heavy cream.

Same! I refuse to use margerine.

Try sea salted butter and you'll never go back.... That's ultimate butter.

Kerry Gold is the dreamiest butter.

What´s wrong with margarine? That is all I ever eat on bread, way simpler that waiting for the damn butter to soften until it can be spread on the bread. And don´t get me started on those " spreadable right out of the fridge" brands. That´s a lie. I only have butter in the house when I had to buy it for a recipe I wanted to try.

For me it was a fancy finished basement. Big tv, big couch, etc.

A house of any kind. I grew up in apartments. Kids with backyards were "rich".

Especially if you lived in the southern United States, not very many two-story homes when I grew up in Florida in the 60s and 70s and basements were unheard of!

Ok, I officially love the house in this pic! 💖

I grew up in a 2 story house we definitely were not rich lol

I've only until a few years back had one pair of shoes. I still only have one coat. Not poor but I have a hard time buying things for myself. I'm the type woman who gets a toaster on her b-day and loves it. I buy my Christmas gifts and last year got a microwave and crochet books. I tend to get things that the house needs. It works.

my mom would always spend money on shoes for me knowing i wouldn't wear (i only wore the one pair i liked, i have autism and it was a routine thing, still wear shoes till they break before switching)... i never understood it because when i actually needed something we "couldn't afford it"

Your dad is a rock ⭐

I had just three. A pair for play(old shoes), school, and church.

I had one pair of school/Sunday shoes and a cheap pair of sneakers.

Fast fashion is despicable. So wasteful, and so often unethically made and sourced. I wish it was ridiculed and not coveted.

I wasn't even allowed to keep the new clothes my dad bought /sent me. He was in the British army and was stationed abroad so I rarely saw him. His parents also sent new clothes for me and my sisters, one full sister, 2 half sisters. They were allowed to keep their new clothes. Mine always got sold for beer money. My dad came to visit us early December and I didn't have a winter coat or anything warm so he took me shopping and bought me a lovely warm duffel coat. I loved being warm. Next day when I got up for school it was gone. As I walked to school I saw one of the neighbours kid wearing it. Mother had sold it. She also lied to my dad and his parents that it was me who sold them for alcohol and drugs. Eh I was 8?!

Nothing bad about second hand clothes. My kids only ever had hand me downs. Not because we could not afford new stuff, but because it is just ridiculous to buy everything new when you outgrow it in a few months anyway. The only thing we buy new is shoes. My husband insists on that. Those are expensive enough.

One thing that always sets my Dad off about modern fashions is the trend of slashed/ripped jeans, because as the youngest sibling, most of his clothes were worn out & patched hand-me-downs. He got teased a lot in school for never having new clothes, and it seems nuts to him that now people are doing that to their clothes *on purpose*.

I remember when I started the 8th grade my mom took me to KMart...it was still Kresge back then...and spent 80 dollars for new clothes to wear to school. I was so excited because before then I always wore hand me downs from my sister or clothes my mom made. 😎

When my parents divorced my dad took my oldest sister to Disney World. Just her, leaving me and my other sister at home. I will always be bitter about that.

I remember a family camping trip to the mountains near Ventura, CA. We finally made to camp and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Those who wanted to sleep outside had their sleeping area set up under the station wagon. Or we could choose to sleep in the car. I loved sleeping under the car. It was so adventurous.

My Dad took us on many "car trips." I'm from Philadelphia, PA and we went all over to Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Western PA... and we had a blast doing sometimes weekend trips and several week excursions. We had a nice family blast and by the time I was 19... I literally knew my way around the eastern US and even took MY family to these places.

We went to the lake, 20 minutes away every weekend.

This comment has been deleted.