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My sister and I grew up with a single mother earning $10 per hour with tips, in the late 80’s early90’s. She struggled for years raising 2 kids and paying rent on $400 a week, but we were always fed and always had a roof over our heads even if we bounced around a lot.
While that was difficult, I never knew what poor was until I moved out of the house at 18 because my mom moved to the “bush” and I didn’t want to leave my friends. (Dumb looking back but it made me who I am now, both mentally and financially.)
I spent the first 3 months out of the family home couch surfing friends places, while either working or looking for work to pay for my first year of college. At one particularly difficult point I was out of work and using my unemployment insurance check to pay for school, while living in my car in a friends aunts driveway.
Obviously I kept it together, and I was able to get a job at nights and on weekends parking cars at a local horse racetrack to get myself out of my car. My self and a friend I met at work got a cheap old rental apartment and clambered ourselves out of poverty and into broke ass student status. Lol. It was way better.
Fast forward almost 27 years later and I am married, with a 15yr old, with 5 years left on my mortgage in stupidly expensive suburb of the most expensive city in our country, money in the bank, money in retirement plans, a pension, and a couple of fun cars and bikes.
I made some good decisions in those hard points of life, had a lot of luck, and had some opportunity given to me that made the most difference. I am just happy that my son won’t have to deal with that........if he doesn’t choose to.
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