What do you! class as being poor??

In a Western Industrial country like most of the English-speaking world and Europe, very few people are really poor, just relatively poor compared with others.

So poverty is an attitude I believe. Most of us of 'gran' age are perfectly capable of managing on little, and making the most out of life. This is not poverty.

Some people have lots of money coming in, but are never satisfied, ignore their kids, live in squalor, take drugs or drink to excess, and have no ambition, shame, social conscience, or decency.

They are truly poor, as they have removed themselves from everything good in life. Such people were out in force the other day, burning, looting, and hurting people.

A lot of people believe they are poor because they don't have the latest electronic gadget or can't afford a holiday abroad. When I married we had two second hand chairs and a formica table, a bed and a cooker. I washed every item of household linen by hand because I didn't have a washing machine until my first child was over a year old. My husband worked all day in a shipyard and drove taxis at night so we could pay the mortgage.

When we where little mum made all our dresses and I alway's felt sorry for my third sister because she had the same Easter dress for three years after me and my second sister had outgrown them,mum made all our ribbons to match and put our long hair in rags for ringlets every night,she could make money stretch like no one else
I have ever known.I still knit for my youngest DGC and have made
some nice curtain's etc instead of buying them.
We are very secure now the DCs are grown up but I still shop
carefully,never buy BOGOF offers only buy for daily menu plan's now
that there are only two of us.
Being poor in this country does not relate to what people in other
far off countries have to deal with,ie.no fresh water,healthy food
and shelter,being poor in this country means not having the latest trainers or the latest phone or a 50in TV on the wall.I did work in the
poor parts of New York in the early 70s and helped treat people who could not afford to go to the hospital for care and helped misplaced people who had no roof over their head,thats what I relate to as being poor

I still use the Pauper's Cookbook by Jocasta Innes and lend it out when people say they are short-it's on amazon still for [mumontherun]. I was a child of the 60s but on a grant-because my father had died . My nextdoor neighbour won some money on the pools when I had small children and she gave me her ancient washer wringer-brilliant -no more hand washing of nappies. We are comfortable now -touch wood-but I still have trouble buying anything that isn't reduced and always search the reduced section in the supermarkets. We have extravagent holidays and make a serious effort to save.

When I was little I was pestering my mum for sweets. She showed me the inside of her purse. One tiny gold safety pin was all there was in it.

We weren't really poor though. We never went hungry.

There are definitely people poorer than that today.

Is owning a smart phone ...the latest fashion ...helping yourself to other's property and selling it on ...having no moral code!

being poor is rampaging around London getting your own back because you have no future worth having

being rich is being a banker (spelt with a W) and still wanting more, and actually believing you deserve it

The trouble is magazines, television etc make possessions important. Some people feel these are a 'must have' in order to be accepted in society and it's true, that some people do look down on those who don't have the latest in whatever is fashionable and this encourages their children to do the same.

The result is people spend money they haven't got, for things they don't need and end up in debt rather than be happy. The countryside in many areas is no longer on our doorstep for us to enjoy - buildings have taken over and peer pressure has crept in; or has it always been there? If we all ignored the 'Joneses' and were proud of what we have, would we be able to influence the 'Joneses' in the long term? As I write this I see it as a mental health issue - why aren't we happy with what we have?

So right, joan! My parents taught us the real value of education — being able to think for yourself and resist profit-imposed 'trends' — and that's what makes the difference in the end. I remember my father's talks about drugs to this day, and he was equally convincing when trying to get us to be 'immune' to advertisements — TV ones in particular, but also others. If all one wants to do is have more possessions, life must be very shallow and contentment hard to find.

As a baby boomer, born 1945, I as brought up in hard times, and trained by Mum how to manage on very little, how to buy carefully, how to avoid debt, avoid drugs, even prescribed ones, how to make my own clothes, and how to be strong in adversity and blame no-one but myself if it all went wrong. It didn't all take of course, but the general training was there, entrenched in my psyche.

How would you manage if you had none of this - no example to follow, nothing but what is on the telly - mindless adverts to spend spend spend, and consume without thought? If your examples were more Paris Hilton than my Mum? If you thought life on the telly was normal and real? If life was so empty and chaotic that the only escape, the only peace, was though drugs and alcohol?

We had it hard in some ways, but easy in others, in that everyone, well most of us anyway were in the same boat, struggling but just managing.

I think modern life creates poverty in many ways.

The very low wages are one thing: we don't have that problem in Australia as the minimum wage is enough to live on, but from what I read it is a very real problem in Britain and the USA. And of course it exists here if there is a drinker and/or gambler in the family.The tales of the rich and shameless which inundate the media are another thing, giving vulnerable or naive people entirely the wrong examples.

I wish I knew the answer, but how do you change the Zeitgeist?

It's interesting how many of these posts are to do with lack of money.
Yes my family was financial poor ...but we were rich in so many other ways.

I know of many of today's children ...with both parents working ...that have a television, computer in their own room, that have all the latest 'must' have gizmos, top notch clothes etc ...but ...are latch key children, who never sit to eat as a family, often taking their 'ready' meals to their rooms ...to play the latest electronic games etc.

I know which 'poor' I would rather have!

My mum always wanted one of those ash trays that were on a stand.

Joan a large proportion of the poverty in this country is experienced by families trying to live on the minimum wage. A lot of people (legally) claiming social security are on the minimum wage. What does that say about minimum wage? Can it be morally right that the minimum wage be so low that living on the minimum wage means poverty? Should employers be allowed to pay a worker less than s/he needs to live on? A lot of questions!

PS About what we thought were signs of being rich - I too thought a bay window was the ultimate in poshness - then we moved into a house with a bay window, but unlike our previous house, this one had an outside lav!! Maybe it was a very good lesson about appearance v reality!!

I though everyone in story books and on the radio were rich: after all, the dads worked in offices and had a car, and the mums stayed home and looked after everyone. Our reality was dad rode a push bike to the mill, mum worked part time as a cleaner, and the phone was in a red box at the end of the street.

The books and radio made me feel our lives were unimportant.

Well, we all know the difference between relative poverty in our world, and absolute poverty in the third world, but my son had this brought home to him when he served wit the army in East Timor. Of course, he knew about this beforehand, but seeing it really brought it home to him how well off we are in western democracies. But are we really?

I'm horrified that there are pockets of poverty verging on the third world level in England. I've read about this in America, but you expect it there, as they have a poor welfare system, no or low levels of minimum wage, and no national health etc.

You have to ask what went wrong with such families. Is it drinking and gambling? Is it inherited disadvantage? Is it pure bad luck? How can it happen in this day and age?

When my dad was a child riches, to him, meant having jam right to the edge of your bread, and bay windows. One of his ambitions was to have a bay window when he grew up.

Sharing the world's wealth more fairly has always been difficult, and probably always will be. I'm honestly not as cynical as that sounds, but I am a realist.

I've just been skipping through this thread and notice that nearly all the posts are about gransnet people's own personal experiences of not having plenty of money (let's [ut it that way). What about the real poor who won't be writing on gransnet because they don't have a computer and in any case have far more pressing problems to deal with than grumpy old women on the internet (myself included)?
What do I class as being poor? When my daughter is in tears on the phone because she has just realised just how poor some of the families are who have children in my grandson's school/class. You can read as much as you want about poverty but it does not really sink home until you are actually confronted by the real thing, and see how real people, in real life, in this country, are affected by it. I think you also must take into consideration the time factor: some of these people have lived like this all their lives and have no hopes for the future or their children's future.
I suppose being poor and poverty are different things?

How about a different slant. What makes someone rich?
When I was a child it was carpet in the bathroom and a leather cover for the Radio Times!!!!

joan, good for your husband! And good for you for supporting him!

Well that old Tory did die before his time, so I guess that is a consolation. He knew he had been seen to be dishonourable, as his employees all found out about that dodgy buy-out to protect his investments. He sacked others too, people who had worked there decades, so he knew he was hated by them, and was seen to have betrayed them.

The best is that my husband was able to get a good degree. I remember when that started. He was in hospital having a growth removed from his back (non cancerous - it was a forgotten piece of shrapnel that had suddenly gone wrong), and I decided that enough was enough. No more suffering for him, no more job knock-backs. I asked what he would really have liked to do with his life, and he said he regretted never going to university. I made some enquiries and found out that Open University was not only free, you didn't need any qualifications to get in.

He enrolled for anthropology and ancient history and got good results. He got borrowing priviledges from the University of Queensland, and the librarian persuaded him to apply to continue his degree there. He was convinced they wouldn't have him, but he was welcomed. He loved it there, and got a good job out of it. Of course, it was too late to buy another house - too old for a mortgage.

Joan - that's awful. There are no words to describe the person who did this to your family. Whether you believe in 'Karma' or not, hopefully somehow this man received his comeuppance.

Joan that is a really terrible story. Somehow we in Eurpope never think that Australia could be like that. This black balling of people is thought to be an American thing. I suspect that Australia leans more to the US than to the UK.

I'm glad you are happy now even though poorer, and your sons have done so well. Many parents would be glad to say that of their own offspring.

Maggie, you said:

But I had hope and the expectation that things would become better. This is missing today. The poor today can watch TV and see how the other half lives. We were spared that. We didn't have to walk past cafés and car parks filled with big cars and supermarket trolleys piled high.

You are absolutely right, especially about hope that things can become better. The thing is, they did get better back then if, as you say, you were willing to work.

Here in Australia we worked hard and got our own home etc, but lost it all when my husband lost his job, was blacked (unknown to us), and couldn't get another one. There is no unemployment benefit here when the spouse works, and a clerk's wage is not enough to pay a mortgage, put two teenagers through high school, and feed four people. So we had to sell the house.

The excuse to make him redundant was 'necessary cost cutting' where he worked, though everyone wondered why it was him, the hardest working and most capable. The reason was that management knew he was a Labour supporter, and in 1993 Labour unexpectedly won the election. The boss was a top Tory, and Terry had openly talked politics.

The reason the firm was short of money was that most of the directors were directors of another firm going broke. They bought it out to save their investments, and let redundancies pay for it. Sheer badness made the boss have him blacked. We thought it was just ageism that he couldn't get another job, but later the boss sacked his personnel manager and she rang my husband and told him. She had no proof - they blocked her access to the records when they sacked her. It was too late by then anyway; he had given up and gone to university. (In the end he got a BA degree in Political Science from the University of Queensland, and worked for a State Government Minister for a while)

I've told this story to illustrate how business dishonesty, right wing politics, and their politicians hurt people nowadays far more than in the past.

We are quite happy in our council house in a quiet friendly area; our sons never suffered when we were having the bad times, and now both have degrees and good jobs. In a way, that Tory boss did us a favour because my husband had always regretted not having a good education, and he got into a good university after doing well in a few units of Open University. But I will never forgive that Tory for the hell that my husband went through during that time, and I honestly can't see that sort of thing happening like that in the 60s and 70s.

PS
The Tory is dead now, and my youngest son swears he's going to find his grave and p*ss on it.

I think being poor these days means not having the spare cash for a coffee, because the streets here in Germany are packed with people sitting in cafés, eating pizza or icecreams. It must be awful to walk past them everyday and not to be able to afford an icecream for a child.

We were poor before we went to Germany, the removal took all my savings and we had a flat but no furniture, 2 bikes but no car. I remember selling the furniture of my mother's council house. I put a card in the local Post office and people came in those days ready to take everything for a few pounds.

On the last day when there was only one bed left and a camp bed for our daughter and an alarm clock to wake me to get to the station on time for my 24hour train jouney to Munich. I rolled up a carpet which would be collected later and found a £5 note which my mother had been saving for something, probably Xmas. I was never happier than when I found it.

But I had hope and the expectation that things would become better. This is missing today. The poor today can watch TV and see how the other half lives. We were spared that. We didn't have to walk past cafés and car parks filled with big cars and supermarket trolleys piled high.

We are no longer poor, far from it. Everyone who was willing to work could make a good living. Germany was booming, and we boomed with it. Sometimes I feel I am in the wrong film! Being so poor if only for a few years is somethng I shall never forget.

We wait until we have the money to buy things even though we do have some savings. I always think if I haven't got the money I have to do without until I do have the money ! My children though, buy whatever they want on credit cards and won't wait for anything. They replace furniture because they are fed up with it rather than because the stuff is worn out.
I stopped my son putting a never been used Duvet in his car to take to the tip with some other 'rubbish' - I rescued a few things that day and gave them to a charity shop.
Outside influences must be strong because he did not learn that from me !

All mine had terry narries and I used napisan,nothing better than a row of white's
blowing in the wind,I boiled mine on top of the stove and rinsed out in a big bucket in the sink,the same sink that was used to bathe the DCs until they where
old enough to go in the bath with me,we also had a twin tub washing machine
later on and I used to fill it with hot water first and do all the whites then the
coloured's and lastly all the really dirty stuff ie.DHs work clothe's he worked in a lab at Lever's and came home covered in all sorts of gunge,that washing machine
was the best that I have ever owned,I used to put a table cloth on it in the kitchen and use it during the day as a table.We never really came into having any spare fund's DS2 left school and then we slowly got everything replaced as
and when needed,just because we are now ok with regard to funds we still
only buy something we really need and alway's cash purchase's