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People on here talk a lot about poverty but less about how a family legacy of poverty makes it fucking hard to save money or spend it wisely and I notice that.
I had to unlearn habits I picked up from my mom, who grew up actually poor, and from my own childhood (basically, somewhat food and housing insecure, but not terrible). And like, those habits weren’t “save every penny and buy the cheapest thing.”
You spend money when you have it and you buy more nice things than you can afford when you can because life is fucking short and someone might take the money away. And it takes a lot of work to unlearn that.
Saving money and frugality requires a belief that the money is gonna mean something, later. It doesn’t make sense in certain contexts.
i think they finally circled back to this in pysch with that bullshit marshmellow delayed gratification experiment? poor kids take the fucking cookie, which means nothing except that it makes total sense for them to do that.
anyway, i was thinking about when i sold all my decent shoes and clothes and bags & was working 3ish jobs after i graduated my phd program today
& how my mom in that period kept sending me lavish gift certificates for places like Tiffany's, which I sold for grocery money at a loss. generational poverty! it's a party! (i am fine now; she married into money late in life &...yeah, see the above thread)
