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40 Things People Considered Luxuries For The Rich Until They Realized They Just Grew Up Broke
As kids, many of us fantasized about what we would do if we had all the money in the world. “I would fill up an entire swimming pool with chocolate!” “Well, I would buy the newest and greatest gaming system!” But some kids who grew up with a bit less money just dreamed of seeing orange juice on the table at breakfast or being able to participate in after-school activities.
Earlier this week, Reddit user Ekudar invited people who grew up broke to share the things they assumed only rich people could afford (until they got older and realized that everyone should have access to those “luxuries”). We’ve gathered some of the most thought-provoking responses down below that might hit close to home if you also grew up in a low-income household, or that might remind you to never take your privilege for granted if you had all of these things available to you as a child.
Keep reading to also find interviews I was lucky enough to receive from two people who know the experience of growing up poor all too well, Amy Saunders and Assad Abderemane. Be sure to upvote the responses that break your heart or resonate with you, and let us know in the comments what other things you considered luxuries for the rich when you were a child. Then, if you’d like to read another Bored Panda article on the same topic, check out this story next.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Orange juice.
As a kid, I vowed to be able to afford as much orange juice as I wanted when I got older. Started working in high school and used my first paycheck to buy a gallon of orange juice. I drank it all in one day and got horrible diarrhea.
To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to Amy Saunders, founder and CEO of AlphaPR. Amy has discussed her humble background on her blog before, so we asked if she could shine some light on what it was like growing up poor. "I think growing up poor, or without a sense of financial security, skews your relationship with money," Amy shared. "I didn’t have money growing up so I didn’t know how to HAVE money when I did get it. When I began running my own company in my twenties and began making a livable income, it was like it was time to celebrate by blowing it all. Suddenly, I was making close to six figures, but ended up racking up an even higher debt."
"Of course, I wasn’t taught financial literacy, or even how to save when I was younger," Amy explained. "And that lack of literacy spilled into my late twenties and early thirties. Having grown up poor, I only knew how to stay poor, even when I had money."
But Amy shared that there was no definitive moment when she realized she had grown up poor. "I just always knew that we went without. I think the bigger realization came when I was older, and had to work through my financial trauma in order to build a financially stable life for myself."
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#3
Butter. My mother only bought margarine because we couldn't afford butter. I only tasted it in high school when I got my first job and would occasionally go out to eat with friends.
I promised my self that I would only have real butter when I got my own place.
50 years later I have 2 GRADES of butter at all times. Kirkland to cook and bake with, and Kerry Gold to eat on bread, potatoes, etc.
It makes me feel like Mrs. Gotrocks!
K.A. Hansen 2 years ago
I grew up eating Blue Bonnet margarine. When I tasted real butter at a friend's house, 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.
We also asked Amy if she could share any of the things she had always considered luxuries for rich people until she got older. "Good water pressure in the shower is a big one," she told Bored Panda. "I had a friend who lived near me, in a low income neighborhood, and one time when my power was out, I went to her place to take a shower. I remember how shocked I was by the way the water hit me in her shower. She had actual water pressure. I was 19, and I had never used a good shower before."
"I also always thought having your own room, your parents owning a house or a car - these were rich people things," Amy noted. "I never got my driver's license until I was 32. In my mind, I wasn’t rich, so I would never afford a car anyway. So what was the point?"
#5
Not entirely in line with the question, but:
Two pairs of shoes. I thought only rich kids had more than one pair of shoes. I didn't realize we weren't poor, and when I told my dad, "I want another pair of shoes but I know we can't afford it" he IMMEDIATELY took me to the shoe store and bought me a pair so I could be "rich" lol
#6
New clothes for no reason. I was so confused when I got to highschool and girls would just suddenly have the new trend piece, I didn't understand why they were just allowed to have them.
Cicada Droid 2 years ago
I had one pair of trousers for 1-2 years (or as long as they last). Even now, while I can afford it, I feel immense guilt buying clothes.
Amy also noted that the topic of food can be a whole separate conversation when it comes to growing up poor. "The quality of food you eat when you're poor is vastly different than what you eat when you have some money - but it’s not all about affordability," she noted. "Growing up, my mom worked three or four jobs, sometimes all in a day. By the time she got home, she wasn’t about to cook a lovely, big, healthy home cooked meal. We were getting frozen dinners in front of the TV. Perhaps we could have afforded fresh veggies to make big stews and chilis and meals, but when you’re poor and working to make ends meet, you don’t have the time." It's no surprise how many responses on this list have to do with food, beverages, eating out and having access to snacks.
#7
Vacations. Like actually going somewhere. We'd go on car trips once in awhile.
Headless Roach 2 years ago
Not sure what OP means by "car trips", because car trips can be absolutely phenomenal. Not everything has the be about flying to the Seychelles, right?
#8
Travelling by plane. As a kid I never been in an airplane, I always thought that was for extremely rich people.
#9
There was a rich kid in highschool that complained about me wearing the same five sets of clothes every week... I said 'if it bothers you that much, why don't you buy some' and he said 'tell your parents to' and laughed like it was a burn or something. That was when I realized Greg S. from AHHS class of '02 was a complete piece of s**t lacking in empathy, but to answer the question: nice clothes.
We also asked Amy about some of these things she previously considered luxuries that have now become normal to her. "I have a car now, and I think about doing groceries as a kid and pushing the broken down cart full of food all the way home, or in the snow in the wintertime," she shared. "It reminds me that when you’re poor, your 24 hours in a day are different than the 24 hours in a day of someone with money. Lugging groceries home is something normal people do every day, but not something I have to do now that I have a car, which also feels very normal."
And over time Amy has found a way to change her perspective and understand that she does deserve access to these things. "Things began to shift once I worked on addressing my unconscious beliefs about money, wealth, and my deservedness of money," she explained. "It was exceptionally painful to shift this perspective. I used to cry every time I got a piece of mail from the bank or the government about my taxes."
"Now, my husband and I make nice, fresh, healthy meals. I haven’t eaten peas out of a can, or a TV frozen dinner, since I was a teenager," Amy told Bored Panda. "I also own a house, but as a millennial, I still consider that a luxury in today's market. That and, my shower actually works these days."
#10
Takeaway food.
My first experience of it was having a sleepover at a friends house. We were, apparently, set to have Chinese food that evening.
I was asked what I wanted. I had no clue. So the parents just recommended something. I just said OK.
I was staggered to NOT see the mother cooking. She was just mooching around the house doing *f*k all*. Where was this food? Why wasnt she preparing it?
Then a knock on the door. And some person delivered a box of food. With more boxes in it. One box was for me...
Madness.
Such wealth to get people to make and deliver your food. That display of *vast wealth* stayed with me for a very long time...
Karl Baxter 2 years ago
I had my first takeaway a couple of months after starting my first proper job at 18. I felt like a sophisticated man-about-town going to the local Chinese and ordering my portion of Peking Style Spare Ribs.
#12
Going out to a sit down restaurant
Karl Baxter 2 years ago (edited)
We rarely did this as my dad didn’t trust anything my Ma didn’t cook but, if we did, it was somewhere that served sausages and chips or as similar to my Ma’s cooking as possible. When I first met my wife and offered to take her out for a meal, it was the first time I’d ever eaten in a proper restaurant - and the first pizza I’d ever eaten!
Despite Amy's humble beginnings, she still wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that we don't all have the same opportunities. "I have privilege as a white woman. I recognize that people still experience many of these things as luxuries, and escaping poverty when you come from a historically marginalized community is harder than escaping poverty when you’re white," she shared. "I carry a lot of privilege, and I think that is something important to recognize when it comes to discussions about poverty, wealth, and financial trauma. It is not an equal playing field."
If you'd like to hear more wise words from Amy, you can find her blog right here or follow her on Instagram right here.
#13
Kitchen islands
N Miller 2 years ago
To me this is more about what the island represents - that you have enough spare floor space to put an entire additional counter (bonus points for it being where the stove or sink is located). I wouldn't say we are that far into the lower income bracket (certainly afford going to the cinema, flying somewhere and more than one pair of new shoes), but we definitely do not have the room for a kitchen island, so this is still on our "richer than us" list.
#14
Going to the movies
#15
Having actual tissues instead of toilet paper to blow your nose.
Kerry Andrew 2 years ago
And matching socks in good condition with no holes or stretched cuffs, ahh what could be better than a clean nose and comfortable put together socks
We also reached out to writer Assad Abderemane to hear his thoughts on this topic, as he has a poignant essay on Medium discussing similar themes. Assad opened up with Bored Panda about how growing up poor impacted his relationship with spending money. "Spending money for food, some clothes, and a roof over our heads? Of course, we need to survive. Spending money on things we didn't absolutely need like a new TV or a bigger fridge was always for special occasions, like, when the old TV stopped working or a new sibling came along," he explained. "But spending money on experiences like going to the cinema or a concert? That was useless, a waste of money. I used to silently judge friends who'd pay so much money to go see a singer they already listened to every single day on Spotify. Then they'd complain about being low on cash in the middle of the month?! That was ridiculous to me."
But Assad was not always keenly aware of the fact that he was poor. "I think it really dawned on me that I'd grown up poor when I stopped being good at math," he shared. "In the 8th grade, they started adding letters to math, and suddenly all of it was too abstract for me. From the first grade to the seventh, I was always top of my class at mental math. I'd been doing mental math for my mom every time we'd go grocery shopping. I was a walking percentage calculator during sales season. We couldn't afford to pay too much for groceries, so I took my mental math missions pretty seriously."
#17
My husband thinks it's really strange that I ask for new clothes for Christmas. Not even fancy clothes, just stuff like pyjamas. He thinks that's an everyday expense. I see it as kind of special as that is the only time I ever got a new piece of clothing as a child. Any other time I had to sew and patch up old clothes or receive hand me down clothes. Also I just learned to wear oversized hand-me-down clothes and shoes until I grew into them.
#18
Not me but my parents.
They quite literally had a rags to riches story, they lived in the most run-down house available in the Philippines.
After years of gaining money, my grandpa and grandma managed to move the entire family into a condo. And that’s where my mum and dad come in, once they had me they gave me a life that they didn’t have. Toys, proper food and generally a better life then what they had. I’m forever thankful.
Rigor Moreno 2 years ago
I'm upvoting for the word Philippines, that's where I'm from too... :D
Assad also touched on some of the things he had previously assumed were only for rich people. "I thought only rich people could wear different sets of clothes day after day," he told Bored Panda. "Hashtag OOTDs (outfit of the day) became popular when I was at the age where you expressed yourself through fashion. But I was like an anime character - I wore the same clothes every day."
"Shopping for new clothes and new shoes only happened before the beginning of a school year," Assad explained. "I'd be teased by, apparently, significantly wealthier friends at the beginning of a school year like, 'Aaayooo he's got some new kicks and a new hoodie! New socks next week or am I too optimistic?' Turns out they weren't that much wealthier than me and got a lot of hand-me-downs - I'm the oldest sibling, so I never got that 'luxury'."
"I very much could relate to a lot of what was said in the Reddit post. Going on vacation really hit me," Assad noted. "The first time I went on vacation with my family I was 15, and that was most definitely because we could stay at an uncle's dingy apartment - I remember us having some of the most fun we'd ever had."
#19
Things at the book fair. You could probably buy a good hoard of stuff from the book fair for 30-50 dollars looking back. I was given $7 one year to buy something and I couldn’t afford a book.
#21
Retirement savings
Paula Pattison 2 years ago
My dad was clearly weird among poor parents, we were poor (everybody was where I lived) but two things my dad insisted on was paying into a pension and holidays (not abroad, I am old hardly anyone went abroad, even rich people).
We were also curious how Assad's relationship with money has changed over the years. "I spend money on experiences now. I don't splurge or anything, but I let myself have some fun every now and again," he told Bored Panda. "I can't say I never think about how much money I could have saved if I hadn't spent money on some stuff I didn't absolutely need. But I work now. Until two months ago, I'd been juggling two jobs while trying to graduate with a Master's degree. I tell myself I deserve to spend money I've worked hard to obtain."
"I'm still a product of my childhood, so I don't think the guilt ever really goes away, but I'm also a product of my own experiences after growing up poor," Assad explained. "And I think landing squarely in the middle should be the goal every person who's grown up poor should strive for - don't forget where you come from, but be kind to yourself because, sometimes, money spent is well worth it."
If you'd like to hear more wise words from Assad or learn more about his journey, be sure to check out his Medium profile right here, and you can find his essay on growing up poor right here.
#22
Anything that required money at school. If anything required bringing money to school I just took it as something I’ll have no part of. Thankfully, I had friends that were much the same, so we got through it well.
#23
Target clothes. Apparently clothes from Target are considered cheap? I grew up thinking that's where my rich classmates got clothes.
I'm Kid A 2 years ago
To be honest, some of their clothes are actually a little overpriced for what their actual value is... That being said, I have one Target-brand jacket from a thrift store that will get me compliments every. single. time. It's definitely a "statement piece". It reminds me of a 70's smoking jacket and I've created several outfits around it. Target is simultaneously cheap and overpriced.
#24
Filling up the whole gas tank
Laura Kelly 2 years ago
I can't believe how comfortable I have become driving with the gas light on.
In a perfect world, we would all have access to fresh, healthy foods, our own beds, hot water with excellent pressure and new clothes when we need them. They should not be considered luxuries, and it's heartbreaking to realize how many people out there have to grow up, or even live their adult lives, without them. Keep upvoting the posts that resonate with you, and if you also grew up in a low-income household, feel free to share your experiences with your fellow pandas down below. Then if you'd like to check out another Bored Panda article discussing normal things that are sadly seen as luxuries by some of us, you can find that right here.
#25
Jam/Nutella spread all over your bread. I grow up with a spread that can only cover half of my bread and is very thin in an undeveloped country. After I move to a developed country and got my first paycheck, I legit buy 5 nutella jars and spread it like a madman on my bread.
Jas Brozka 2 years ago
You should really let your hair down and attack that bad boy with a spoon! Pure decadence!
#26
Participation in school activities.
I wanted to be part of color guard so badly.
Headless Roach 2 years ago (edited)
Did 'participation in colour guard' require funding? Anyone can explain please? EDIT: Many thanks for all responses... that honestly paint a mostly disturbing picture of how that works.
#27
Enough bedrooms for all the kids.
Caiman 94920 2 years ago
13 kids in my family, was overjoyed just to have a bed to myself, no thought of having a room to myself
#29
Clothes that didn’t come from the thrift store or cousins.
Caiman 94920 2 years ago
I taught myself how to sew because I couldn't stand the hand-me-downs my mother's friend sent us, her daughter was very fair and liked pastels, plaid yuppy skirts and tailored blouses. I have dark skin, hair and eyes and wanted bright colors, peasant blouses and bell bottoms, a neighbor gave me an ancient sewing machine and I figured it out.
#30
Fast food. A lot of the food we ate growing up came from our garden or hunting. We did a lot of canning.
My dad inherited a house from his step father and it came with this pantry full of canned green beans. We ate green beans for dinner 5 days a week for probably about 4 years straight. I still won't eat green beans.
Must Be Bored Again 2 years ago
My mom took me for a visit to my uncle's. On way we stopped at Burger King. Never seen as big of burger as the original whopper. Did not even know if we were going to be able to eat it all. My gosh, that first ever Whopper was the best thing in the world!!
#32
Ordering an appetizer with your entree for dinner or ordering take out regularly
#33
I will just say that I still feel really guilty buying new clothes or going out to eat.
#34
Name brand cereal! I was looked at crazy in first grade when I said an off brand name cereal was my favorite.
#35
Grapes and Doritos. I was 16 and in my first apartment. Lived off of Craft Mac & Cheese made with margarine and no milk cause it was all I could afford at 28 cents a box. My neighbor was 13 years older than me and would invite me over and feed me treats. It was heaven and she was a true angel!
#36
Soda. We never had it in our house. Over at my best friend’s house they had cases of it in their garage. You could drink it like water when you were over there.
Headless Roach 2 years ago
Questionable diet choice, but yeah - different times, different perspective
#37
Remember those electric car things kids use to have ? Anybody know what I’m talking about
#40
Mechanical pencils
What do you think ?
Jan Bowyer 2 years ago
First time eating at a friend's house. We were allowed more than one piece of chicken.
Roman Hans 2 years ago
First time trying salad dressing at a friend's house: "What is this magic lettuce liquid?"
Load More Replies...
Mary Jeffries 2 years ago
I’m sure my kids think we don’t have money because I talk about the cost of things a lot. When they waste food, when they break things, how much everything costs. Not eating out often. I really want them to be aware of exactly how much carelessness can cost.
Jan Bowyer 2 years ago
First time eating at a friend's house. We were allowed more than one piece of chicken.
Roman Hans 2 years ago
First time trying salad dressing at a friend's house: "What is this magic lettuce liquid?"
Load More Replies... Mary Jeffries 2 years ago
I’m sure my kids think we don’t have money because I talk about the cost of things a lot. When they waste food, when they break things, how much everything costs. Not eating out often. I really want them to be aware of exactly how much carelessness can cost.
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