Did You Grow Up Rich, Poor or Middle Class?
 

Did You Grow Up Rich, Poor or Middle Class? How did that effect you in terms of being driven and determined in business? Most rich kids I knew had problems later in life having a reall passion. :upsidedow

middle class.

I've been rich I've been poor..

Going through a low spot right now.

I'm working on that though ;)

yeah me too...When did you consider yourself "rich" ?

rich..then down to--> middle..then up to--> upper middle...and now just trying to go back where my family was

95,96,97,00,01,02,03


when I had lots of money :thumbsup

I blame the crappy economy for my situation right now.. ( cop out )
Even though I could probably go a little harder and change things up.

what about you?

Middle, still middle right now, working my way up.

grew up dirt poor... my mom worked 2 jobs and barely slept to support my sis & i

when i say dirt poor i'm talking about i had to buy lemons from the corner store with food stamps to get change for the bus to go to school... my mom slept on the couch for 22 years because there was no other bedrooms & she would never take one of our rooms, she'd skip breakfast & dinner soemtimes because there wasn't enough food or she needed the money to get to work (she didn't drive)

i guess that taught me to be ambitious... when i was little i used to sell things for profit in school (like candy) just so i could buy more

when i got older (16ish) i used to drive by the big huge mansions in the bay area all alone maybe like twice a week, radio off.. just thinking about what it must be like.. i did this for years

anyway, by the time i turned 22 i bought my own & moved out...

http://jenna.525i.net/598006.jpg

now i'm 26 and house hunting with my mom to get her the house she always wanted in a nice & sunny area further south & out of the ghetto

so much more to this story but that pretty much sums it up, my mom is selfless & did everything for me & my sister... she came to this country with no money or family & became a US citizen... my shitbag father left when i was around 3 and she never met another man... her whole focus after that was her kids

thats a real fucking parent & i'd give me eyes up for her

Great story, that is a great parent right there.

I was 6 in '82 when we went through the economic crisis (Mexico). My dad had left the corporation one year before that and he ended up unemployed most of the time. The few jobs he landed on were odd jobs earning little, so I grew up being poor as a kid. Now I consider myself middle class, but I definitely relate to poor people.

I value money, but more than that (way more than that), I value people.

I've been everywhere
And that helps me a lot now

very touchy story man, very!
my mother is the same, she was making everything she can so i can live normal.......and right now my biggest joy in life is to make her happy!!!!!!!!!!

Great job, tical!

I grew up poor/middle class... By that I mean everyone else on my street had a pool, a boat and toys up the ass... We didn't... We didn't live in a project... but socially it felt like it...

I remember using sticks, fern leaves and other shit to create a city. The other kids loved it and we used the matchbox cars and shit in it... They would tell me how cool it was that my dad would allow me to tear up the yard like that. Here I am thinking they are so cool because they could be doing this shit with legos in their air conditioned houses and here they are thinking I am cool doing shit the old school way...

Now my parents are always telling me I shouldn't have done something.. it is too expensive...

I took them to the Angels vs Tigers game and put them right behind the Tigers dugout so my dad could see their players without wearing glasses. He liked that part but kept bugging me about "doing all that"... "You shouldn't spend so much money like this...."

Crazy people...

I pretty much spent a good portion of my life poor until I found GFY (actually Chris Mallick found it for me). My kids have no idea what I went through as a kid... Doing chores for money..... shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!

Best quote of the day

"I value money, but more than that (way more than that), I value people."

The thing about growing up poor, is that sometimes you have no horizions. You just don't know any better until something or someone comes along to enlighten you. I lived with grandparents. Went to the outhouse, (smelly with spiders) no hot water in the house, coal stove with hot bricks to keep your feet warm at night. no car, walked everywhere or caught the bus. - Then when I was a teenager, someone came into my life and taught me that "you can be whatever you want to be, or have whatever you want - if you are willing to pay the price." I never looked back! But, I do appreciate EVERYTHING that I have today, which was more than I ever dreamed:-)

Grew up middle class... and I was never driven by money that much, but more by accomplishing / beeing part of thigns others couldn't.

middle class... never poor.

Lower middle class.

I grew up middle class until my father became sick and had to go on disability.

growing up lived in a 10,000 square foot house, never really experienced the hard ships that i see around today.

Very nice tical! Really good stuff.

I grew up upper-middle class, but that all changed when my father died very young.

I was teaching myself programming and online applications by the early 90's (working BBS's and such) and I KNEW there was money just waiting to be made. Ironically, we were about to lose the family house because my brothers had all moved away and I absolutely had to find more work to try to stop forclosure. Was able to fend it off for a few years, although we had a month or so with no electricity which sucked bad. Plus they repossesed my mothers car during that time.

It's been a struggle for most of my life, because something just seems to always crop up to suck the savings away. My dream home is for sale right now, but the amount I need to put down is exactly the same as the amount I owe for medical bills. I make good money and save every penny, but STILL murphy's law found a way to bend me over..again.

Always something to keep the pressure on I guess. Whether it's a blessing or a curse is a good underlying question.. but in the end, having your bills 100% paid plus good investing/savings beats owing bills and having no savings anyday.

was born lower middle class as time we went to upper middle class.my dad is a driven guy started in the mailroom and worked his way up to vp of a large international bank.this was in the days you could do that with only a high school diploma.

middle class - maybe upper middle, not sure what the definition of 'upper middle class' is.

i never had a lot of ambition cuz i'm pretty much an existentialist.

i grew in the middle class ..middle because, money was never an issue to us..if we have anything we want to buy then we bought it..if we want to eat in an expensive restaurant then will go for it..though we have that money before, we're not that rich..until one time, my father got sick and he needs to be hospitalized he was diagnose with cancer..that was the time that we have to sold our garment business..almost everything got sold for him to have his operation..chemotherapy and cobalt..he have experienced everything...right now, he's still sick because of another health problem. now is his prostate....we're very much down, almost all of our relatives gave us money for him..but it's really too tight..we have lots of things to consider, the studies of my 2 sisters, our foods everyday, the bill of our water and electricity..that's why im working so hard for my family, specially to may parents...i want to give them the life that they were longing for...

My dad was making $50K plus in 1973, so we were upper middle class.
Then my parents got divorced in 1976, my mother did everything she could to destroy his credit before she left...not to mention the divorce was rather costly.

My dad let his business go to shit and we were dirt poor for about 4 or 5 years...then we were middle class for the most part.

I lived in a goat barn went to the outhouse ate warm goats milk on my grape nuts on the way to school.. I was content as i did not know there was anything else.

The real goal in life for me is to be content...

I am still working on that.

my parents were inbetween poor/middle-class. and what motivated me the most was some of my ex-bosses who where milionnaires. (one was worth about 50 millions USD in 2000).

i don't classify my situation according to the amount of money I make or how expensive/luxurious my car or house are.

money is useful yes, but is useless if you either blow it at once or if you feel that you can never have enough of it. we grow up learning to be dissatisfed with the things we have and with the amount of money we make... After all, when was the last time you said 'i'm fine right now, I don't need more money'

no company ever says 'this year we generated equal income as last year, we are doing great! let's do the same next year...'

For the last 3 years I've been making pretty good money, as in: I can pay my bills and have money to spend on THINGS whenever I want to.

I grew up poor, but now I am just relaxed and satisfied ;-)

Great story man.. and just so you know it would've been just as great a story if you didn't end up getting the mansion.

You're probably joking.. but I really did live on a hill on a small farm in an old house with an outhouse out near the barn. Goat's milk was usually the only milk we drank. I liked it.

middle to upper middle to lower middle

grew up in the middle class...still in middle class but i am not working to be rich. Just working to pay the bills :winkwink:

Grew up lower middle class or upper lower class. not sure which.

Middle class, But now my Family is poor, Working my way up to the middle class to help them, Returning the Hard work they gave to us by our Parents.

My father work so hard for us to graduate from college, And i think its time for him to take a little break from work. When my job gets stable I will do the best I can to make them happy.

I used to do that all the time. I still do it with some of the bigger ones when I need some inspiration/motivation.

Rich I guess in my standards, my mom didn't work and my dad made around 500k a year

nice stories guys...well, I grew up in middle class...though there were hard times we still manage to do, buy whatever it is that we wanted.