“Living Poor”

          There are many positive clichés and mottos parents use to inspire their children…we buy them little plaques that say things like “live big” and “make every moment count” or we give them cards that say, “live like this was your last day”. While these are all good nuggets of advice there is one bit of important knowledge most of us, including myself, have failed to pass on to our kids.

          “Living Poor” is a phrase my mom used and one that I learned to understand first-hand. I often think back to my childhood and compare it to the one my children have today. There are stark differences.

          For one, my family rarely ate a meal outside of our home and if we did it was ‘Burger Chef’ and my siblings and I would be ecstatic. My mother also shopped at a second hand store in our town known as ‘The Clothes Closet’. There were a few name brand items there and when she was lucky enough to run across a pair of Levis or Lee blue jeans that were too faded for her liking, she would pick up a pack of Ritz dye on her way home. The jeans always turned out a purplely color though and the name brand tag on the back would be purple as well. I remember having a friend at church who was an only child with a big heart. I would be so excited on those Sunday mornings when she would enter the church foyer toting a big bag of clothes she had outgrown. She would smile, set them aside, give me a wink and I would be unable to concentrate on a thing the pastor was saying after that. I couldn’t wait to get into that bag. All our clothes weren’t hand me downs though, from time to time we would get brand new things, but those occasions were usually limited to Christmas and Birthdays.

          When I was old enough to get a driver’s license my number one goal was to get a job. My first boss use to tease me that he could set his clock every Monday morning by the time I would be calling to ‘check on my application’. I knew I was bugging the poor guy to death but I had to have a job. I wanted things and I knew that working was the only way I’d ever get them.

          My first car was a Ford Pinto and cost $275. It was affectionately nicknamed the ‘putty wagon’ by my friends. The driver’s door did not open, the radiator leaked and there was a tooth broken off the flywheel. My dad gave me strict instructions on how to make it work.

          “You need to carry a couple gallons of water with you all the time,” he said. “Fill up the radiator before you go to work and before you leave work. Oh, and you’ll have to use this wrench to turn the flywheel like this (he demonstrated) so it will start.”

          That’s how you lived poor.

          Then he and mom sent me off without another thought.

          I remember once when I needed tires my best friend’s dad bought them for me. I hadn’t asked or even realized that mine were bald, he just noticed and did it because he cared. I’ll never forget him for that.

          Today my kids are clueless. They think eating out twice a day is normal and ‘free’ by the way they order the $5 dessert every time!

          My 18 year old has a very nice used Acura with all the trimmings including heated seats. If she needs tires, her dad buys them. If the roads are too snowy he drives her to school and picks her up. She thinks Hollister and American Eagle have ‘good deals’ and that Victoria’s Secret is the only place that sells bras. I’ve watched her spend a whole paycheck on a purse and consider a matching wallet that costs twice amount of the purse. She doesn’t understand why I “MAKE” her work when “all she needs is gas money and clothes and I can just buy them”! After all…“no one else in high school has to work”— (strange however I see many high school kids working all over town).

          I find myself some days secretly wishing I was her. She’s so lucky and doesn’t even know it (yet). I can’t imagine her pouring water into a leaky radiator or lifting the hood of her car to manually turn the flywheel (if cars still have flywheels), and honestly I wouldn’t want her to have to. But I would like to know she could if she had to.    So maybe I’m the lucky one…I know how to live poor and that’s a valuable piece of knowledge that’s hard to transfer to someone else. It almost has to come from actually ‘living’ that way.

          Looking back I wish I had taught her to ‘live poor’ just a little bit, instead of teaching her to, ‘live big’ so much! I can’t believe I bought into the ‘give your kids everything you didn’t have’ philosophy. It’s the things I didn’t have that made me the person I am today and I wouldn’t trade that for all the money on Wall Street, which incidentally could use a lesson in ‘living poor’ as well.