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Like musicfan1965, supersavercalistox went to work early. "I started baby-sitting at 10, and this supplemented the household when we didn't have enough food to eat." Life got easier after Mom graduated and landed a teaching job, but then Dad "took up smoking and drinking and drugs in order to 'fight the pain' and we began to spiral down again. My mom took up two part-time jobs along with her full-time job of teaching."
Supersavercalistox credits that determined, hard-working mother for inspiration and a never-give-up attitude.
"My mom is my role model, and whenever I think times are hard for my (son) and I, I think that I can sacrifice the money now in order to have a better life later. Now I am doing so much better because I started saving for retirement at 19. At that time I was making $800 a month, but I still contributed. I am now 25 and have the option of retirement at 50. Thanks Mom!"
Living in a camper
"SmarterThanEver" has less-than-positive feelings about a mother who abandoned her and two siblings."All of us were under 5 years of age, so we weren't old enough for school yet. . . . My dad couldn't work -- he had no real job skills, no education, and then he was stuck watching his three kids since he couldn't even afford state-subsidized childcare.
"Anyway, we ended up living in someone's travel trailer in someone's back yard. Not a big one, mind you. One of those small things that fit snugly in the bed of a pickup truck. There was one bed in the trailer (right over the cab of the truck), and all four of us slept in it. No heat or air conditioning, no running water. I can remember being really, really hungry but wouldn't say anything to Dad because I didn't want him to feel worse than he already did."
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After a year of living like this, her father's parents let the family move in with them. "We were still poor, but we at least had heat and running water. My aunt bought us clothes at garage sales. We got our shoes from Payless and later Wal-Mart when it came to town (one pair, and it had to last a full year)."
Unfortunately, Dad became a gambler "and all his 'spare' money went to playing bingo and going to Indian casinos instead of buying us kids clothes or shoes that fit. I never once owned an article of clothing that came from anywhere other than Wal-Mart, garage sales or the Salvation Army. I never had more than one pair of shoes at a time. I never had a coat that fit or that kept me warm."
Then Dad remarried "an abusive and evil woman" with three kids and moved them all into a ramshackle, two-bedroom house he bought for $3,000.
"There were huge holes in the floor, which we tried to cover up with particle board, but still leaked the cold. The place was infested with cockroaches. . . . The plumbing needed to be fixed, but Dad lost all motivation to fix it (and he wasn't about to pay someone to do it), so we relieved ourselves in a 5-gallon paint bucket and had to take turns dumping it outside (yes, it stunk). We hardly had any furniture. We all slept on the cold floor wrapped in layers of cheap blankets. We didn't have dressers or chests of drawers --everything was either hung up in the closet or folded in piles. We didn't have a refrigerator, so we never ate eggs or bought gallons of milk (we used powdered milk for our cereal). Everything we ate was canned.
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"Oh, and then there was school. In high school, I was on the speech/debate teams and in the theater program. And I was very good. Going to competitions cost money, which we didn't have, so my high school guidance counselor paid all my expenses (she also paid for my prom). I didn't even have an outfit to wear to the contests, so my counselor gave me one of her daughter's dresses and matching shoes. The shoes were 1.5 sizes too small, but I shoved my feet into them anyway, trying to ignore the pain as I competed against (generally) well-to-do kids from wealthy school districts.
"I won the state championship in shoes that were too small."
At 15, SmarterThanEver had enough and moved out on her own. "Even at 15, making minimum wage, I managed to live better on my own than I had ever living with my parents."
Continued: 5 lessons learned from poverty
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