I was embarrassingly old by the time I realized the privilege I was born into. My parents are nowhere near Beyonce rich, but I went to private schools and I had friends who’s parents were Beyonce rich, so I had myself classified as snugly middle class for a very long time. (I wasn’t, we were pretty well off)

I’ve noticed that it’s only well-off people who tend to shy away from talking about money. I’ll tell y’all exactly how much I make. 30,000 a year. I found out my cousin was making really good money simply by virtue of the fact that he wouldn’t tell me. What the hell is that??!

Oh, I dunno, college, because my dad is wildly irresponsible and tells the same lies to everyone else as he does to himself and my mom enables his shit.

Well done! Don’t underestimate your accomplishments, this is no small feat.

I went to private school in Manhattan, and I assumed I was poor because we lived in a 2 bedroom apartment and every birthday party I went to was at million dollar brownstones or insanely large apartments on Park Avenue with live-in help.

I grew up completely comfortably, but when I was first out on my own and married to my abusive first husband, we got real broke real quick. He wouldn’t/couldn’t work without getting fired all the time for being a crazy dick, and my job as a secretary wasn’t enough to pay for my commute to our apartment in the suburbs…

I remember the first time I was told that there was NOT enough money for something was when I wanted to go to Space Camp when I was 11 or 12. That itself speaks to my privilege, I think. My parents both worked and my dad was a doctor, but because dad preferred research to seeing patients, we never had as much money…

Yeah, but nobody thinks that they’re “rich rich.”

Grew up in WA state. Didn’t realize we had less money than most of my friends until it was discovered that I was the only one who’d never (a) been to California/Disneyland, (b) been on an airplane or (c) been skiing. And everyone acted like it was crazy weird. (But, I’d had more sex than all of those prudes so I…

Reduced lunch is so, so important (as someone who always had them!). The fact that people exist who are against kids getting food is beyond me. It must be nice to have so much money that you never worry about that being your kids.

Ohhhh, darlin’ I hear you. I remember sneaking into the school cafeteria kitchen after hours to steal slices of Kilpatrick’s bread; just stuffing the thick white slices into my mouth before getting caught. But, you know what? Now, I treasure every delicious morsel of food and drink that crosses my mouth. If I never…

It really hit me when we had to do class projects in 3rd grade and I did mine on the Titanic because the movie had just come out so it was easy to obtain magazines and information about it. I made a replica Titanic out of a empty plastic cat food container because that’s all there was around my house. At the time I…

Yep.

My sis and I were the richest of the poor kids when we went to city public school. Then my parents wanted us to have a better education and moved us out to Snooty Snootsburg and we very quickly realized where we fit in on the social scale. Still grateful for the good education.

I believe it was Jesus himself who said “yay, fucketh the small children, and let them starve, for they are fat nowadays anyways...”

We are very secure and comfortable financially, and I am constantly telling my kids that we can’t afford things. It’s because they have no sense and constantly ask me to buy things! Just because we are comfortable doesn’t mean that we can afford everything we want.

I was 9 when I realised my parents were seriously struggling for money. I was about 14 when I realised we’d had a drop from upper middle class to working class over the generations. We had some seriously nice shit in the house and the cultural markers that signified money meant that none of the local rich kids…

I learned from a very young age that I wasn’t ever going to get what I wanted. Not because we were poor, but because my parents always told me ‘no’ (because we were poor). Eventually I just learned to stop wanting things.

So weird you should pose this question, b/c it’s one of the handful of memories that my mind regurgitates from time to time and it feels as if it just happened today (although it happened way back in the early 70s). I realized my family was poor in sixth grade. It was the first day back to school after Christmas and I…

Second grade. Opened my lunchbox midyear to find half a bologna sandwich, a gherkin pickle, and an empty cup to get water from the fountain. I was like, “Huh. We’re POOR.” Then I shrugged and hightailed it to the playground.