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Growing up poor can make you grateful for little things others take for granted

Even years after gaining financial stability, being able to afford "small luxuries" still feels surreal.

flowers, fresh flowers, growing up poor, small luxuries
Photo credit: Canva

Fresh flowers are a huge splurge for many people.

People who grow up with financial stability—not necessarily wealthy or well-off, just financially comfortable—may not have any clue what it's like to truly worry about money. Not being able to afford everything you want is vastly different from not being able to afford everything you need, and those in the latter category have experiences and relationships with money that are unique to being poor.

In fact, as a thread on X shows growing up poor can create a lifelong perspective on spending money that ultimately leads to gratitude for things others often take for granted. A post asked people who grew up poor but are now financially stable to share small luxuries that still feel surreal, and the answers are eye-opening. Those who didn't grow up poor might expect answers like "being able to buy name brand shoes" or "being able to afford a concert ticket," but the "small luxuries" are a lot less luxurious than that.

"Real food storage containers, not the used margarine and cool whip tubs!" shared one person. While some people might choose to recycle food containers that way for environmental reasons, storing food in recycled plastic containers that aren't meant for that purpose can be unhealthy. Having a set of dedicated food storage containers is a big deal.

Another response was "Just having bills on autopay." People who aren't struggling to make ends meet each month can put their bills on autopay and not worry about whether the money to pay them will be in the account on the withdrawal date. People who are struggling often have to carefully track and and manage dates and amounts so as to not overdraw their account, which leads to more fees.

Many people talked about having a reliable car:

"Having a reliable car. AC works. Tires are good and under a warranty. Seats are heated or cooled front and back. Steering wheel is heated. With a remote start so it can be warmed up or cooled off by the time I get to it. And if something does go wrong AAA will come and save me."

"Affording safe tires and vehicle repairs."

"Running AC in my car without worrying about the car overheating. When I was a kid, our cars would overheat and we had to blast the heater in the middle of summer to cool it down."

And simply filling up the gas tank? Priceless.

getting gas, gas pump, gas station, car, luxuryFilling your tank with gas feels like a luxury for many.Giphy GIF by Andrew W. K.

"Just pulling up to a gas pump and allowing the fuel to pump as I go in and buy a drink, all while not calculating how that will impact my month!"

"Getting a full tank of gas. My mom would get $3 at a time. I didn’t understand as a child. As an adult, I always fill up the tank. That’s a privilege."

"Being able to fill my gas tank instead of wondering how far my $10 in change would actually get me."

"Filling up the gas tank without doing math first feels rich when you grew up in a '$4 on pump 3' household."

Another luxury? Prescription sunglasses.

"Every time I put them on I'm like 'Ahhh I made it.'" wrote one person.

"I’ve had thick prescriptions since I was a kid. Never had sunglasses until well into adulthood," another share. "It’s a good feeling."

Many people shared that being able to go out to eat at a restaurant and not having to order the cheapest thing on the menu still tickles them. But perhaps the most repeated answer was about grocery shopping without calculating your way through it.

"The most common response, and also my answer, is grocery shopping without checking the prices and being able to purchase 'options.' Growing up, we had about a five year period where every meal was rice and beans or whatever we had canned from the garden harvest from the previous fall."

"Biggest thing for me is shopping for food and not really worrying about the prices. Buying my Ribeyes and coming home to enjoy cooking them in my nice whole set of iron skillets, being able to curl up in beautiful blankets, watch TV, sit in my porch rocking chair, it's the peace."

grocery shopping, food budget, buying groceries, money, luxuriesGrocery shopping is more enjoyable than stressful when you're not having to calculate every penny.Photo credit: Canva

"Grocery shopping with no set budget. Still feels great after 40 years."

"Going to the grocery store without using a calculator the whole time."

Other things like buying fresh flowers, ordering an appetizer, having a refrigerator in the garage, or not having to stress about home repairs were mentioned, all of which drove home the point: When you grow up poor, you gain an appreciation for little things that people with means just consider normal living.

money, wallet, spending, cash, financial stability, financesOpening your wallet without worry is a small luxury.Photo credit: Canva

As one person wrote:

"It’s not the designer clothes. It’s walking into a room and not hearing debt breathing down your neck. It’s opening the fridge and not seeing struggle staring back. It’s buying two of something just because you f-ing can. People born rich will never understand the godlike power of:

- Filling your gas tank without checking your bank app

- Buying your mom that thing she never asked for

- Ordering food without scanning the right side of the menu

- Sleeping without fear gnawing at your chest."

No one should have to understand the fear that comes with being poor, especially children, but the one silver lining of growing up in financial struggle is the wonder and gratitude that sticks with you when you're finally able to let that fear go.

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Why didn't people smile in old-timey photographs? A smile meant something different back then.

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s.

via Public Domain

Photos from the 1800s were so serious.

If you've ever perused photographs from the 19th and early 20th century, you've likely noticed how serious everyone looked. If there's a hint of a smile at all, it's oh-so-slight, but more often than not, our ancestors looked like they were sitting for a sepia-toned mug shot or being held for ransom or something. Why didn't people smile in photographs? Was life just so hard back then that nobody smiled? Were dour, sour expressions just the norm?

Most often, people's serious faces in old photographs are blamed on the long exposure time of early cameras, and that's true. Taking a photo was not an instant event like it is now; people had to sit still for many minutes in the 1800s to have their photo taken.

Ever try holding a smile for only one full minute? It's surprisingly difficult and very quickly becomes unnatural. A smile is a quick reaction, not a constant state of expression. Even people we think of as "smiley" aren't toting around full-toothed smiles for minutes on end. When you had to be still for several minutes to get your photo taken, there was just no way you were going to hold a smile for that long.

But there are other reasons besides long exposure times that people didn't smile in early photographs.


mona lisa, leonardo da vinci, classic paintings, famous smiles, art"Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, painted in 1503Public domain

The non-smiling precedent had already been set by centuries of painted portraits

The long exposure times for early photos may have contributed to serious facial expressions, but so did the painted portraits that came before them. Look at all of the portraits of famous people throughout history prior to cameras. Sitting to be painted took hours, so smiling was out of the question. Other than the smallest of lip curls like the Mona Lisa, people didn't smile for painted portraits, so why would people suddenly think it normal to flash their pearly whites (which were not at all pearly white back then) for a photographed one? It simply wasn't how it was done.

A smirk? Sometimes. A full-on smile? Practically never.

old photos, black and white photos, algerian immigrant, turban, Algerian immigrant to the United States. Photographed on Ellis Island by Augustus F. Sherman.via William Williams/Wikimedia Commons

Smiling usually indicated that you were a fool or a drunkard

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s. In explaining why smiling was considered taboo in portraits and early photos, art historian Nicholas Jeeves wrote in Public Domain Review:

"Smiling also has a large number of discrete cultural and historical significances, few of them in line with our modern perceptions of it being a physical signal of warmth, enjoyment, or indeed of happiness. By the 17th century in Europe it was a well-established fact that the only people who smiled broadly, in life and in art, were the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment […] Showing the teeth was for the upper classes a more-or-less formal breach of etiquette."

drunks, classic painting, owls, malle babbe, paintings"Malle Babbe" by Frans Hals, sometime between 1640 and 1646Public domain


In other words, to the Western sensibility, smiling was seen as undignified. If a painter did put a smile on the subject of a portrait, it was a notable departure from the norm, a deliberate stylistic choice that conveyed something about the artist or the subject.

Even the artists who attempted it had less-than-ideal results. It turns out that smiling is such a lively, fleeting expression that the artistically static nature of painted portraits didn't lend itself well to showcasing it. Paintings that did have subjects smiling made them look weird or disturbing or drunk. Simply put, painting a genuine, natural smile didn't work well in portraits of old.

As a result, the perception that smiling was an indication of lewdness or impropriety stuck for quite a while, even after Kodak created snapshot cameras that didn't have the long exposure time problem. Even happy occasions had people nary a hint of joy in the photographs that documented them.

Another reason why people didn't smile in old photos is that dental hygiene wasn't the same as it is today, and people may have been self-conscious about their teeth. “People had lousy teeth, if they had teeth at all, which militated against opening your mouth in social settings,” Angus Trumble, the director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia, and author of A Brief History of the Smile, said, according to Time.


wedding party photo, wedding, old weddings, black and white, serious photos, no smilesEven wedding party photos didn't appear to be joyful occasions.Wikimedia Commons


Then along came movies, which may have changed the whole picture

So how did we end up coming around to grinning ear to ear for photos? Interestingly enough, it may have been the advent of motion pictures that pushed us towards smiling being the norm.

Photos could have captured people's natural smiles earlier—we had the technology for taking instant photos—but culturally, smiling wasn't widely favored for photos until the 1920s. One theory about that timing is that the explosion of movies enabled us to see emotions of all kinds playing out on screen, documenting the fleeting expressions that portraits had failed to capture. Culturally, it became normalized to capture, display and see all kind of emotions on people's faces. As we got more used to that, photo portraits began portraying people in a range of expression rather than trying to create a neutral image of a person's face.

Changing our own perceptions of old photo portraits to view them as neutral rather than grumpy or serious can help us remember that people back then were not a bunch of sourpusses, but people who experienced as wide a range of emotion as we do, including joy and mirth. Unfortunately, we just rarely get to see them in that state before the 1920s.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Mom breaks down in tears after another parent called her about her daughter's lunch

Small gestures can mean so much.

Photo by Katerina Holmes|Canva

Mom in tears after another parent calls about daughter's lunch

People say having children is like having your heart walk around outside of your body. You send them off to school, practices, or playdates and hope that the world treats them kindly because when they hurt, you hurt. Inevitably, there will be times when your child's feelings are hurt, so you do your best to prepare for that day.

But what prepares you for when the child you love so much winds up accidentally healing your inner child. A mom on TikTok, who goes by Soogia posted a video explaining a phone call she received from a parent in her daughter's classroom. The mom called to inform Soogia that their kids had been sharing lunch with each other.

Soogia wasn't prepared for what came next. The classmate's mother informed her that her son loves the food Soogia's daughter brings to school and wanted to learn how to cook it, too. "I was like, 'thank you for my food'? Like, what is she talking about? Did she find my TikTok? 'F**k, I"m mortified.' But that wasn't the case," Soogia recalled, hardly being able to get the story out through her tears.

That may seem like a small thing to some, but the small gesture healed a little bit of Soogia's inner child. Growing up as a Korean kid in California, Soogia's experience was a bit different than what her children are now experiencing.

kids lunch, school lunch, children sharing lunch, lunch table, apples, carrotsChildren eating lunch together.Photo via Canva/Photos

"I guess I just never thought that my kids would be the generation of kids that could go to school and not only just proudly eat, but share their food with other kids that were just so open and accepting to it," Soogia says through tears. "Knowing that they don't sit there eating their food, feeling ashamed and wishing that their fried rice was a bagel instead, or something like that. And I know, it sounds so small and it sounds so stupid, but knowing their experience at school is so different from mine in such a positive way is just so hopeful."



At the end of the video, she vowed to send extra food in her daughter's lunch every day so she could share her culture with the other kids.


@soogia1

These kids, man. They’re really something else. #culturalappreciation #breakingbread #sharing #

Soogia's tearful video pulled on the heartstrings of her viewers who shared their thoughts in the comments.

"Soogia! It will never be small. Your culture is beautiful & the littles are seeing that every day. You've even taught me so much. I'm grateful for you," one person says.

"Beautiful! I can see your inner child healing in so many ways," another writes.

"Welp. Now I'm sobbing at the airport. This is beautiful," someone reveals.

"These Gen Alpha babies really are a different, kinder generation. I love them so much," one commenter gushes.

Ultimately, the story is a wonderful reminder that everyone has a backstory and that a simple gesture like appreciating someone's culture or history can mean far more to them than you'll ever know.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Pop Culture

Brit shares the one-word 'dead giveaway' that American actors can't do an English accent

“There is one word that is a dead giveaway that an English character in a movie or a TV show is being played by an American."

via Warner Bros Discovery

Peter Dinklage on "Game of Thrones"?

When it comes to actors doing accents across the pond, some Americans are known for their great British accents, such as Natalie Portman ("The Other Boleyn Girl"), Robert Downey, Jr. ("Sherlock Holmes"), and Meryl Streep ("The Iron Lady"). Some have taken a lot of heat for their cartoonish or just plain weird-sounding British accents, Dick Van Dyke ("Mary Poppins"), Kevin Costner ("Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves") and Keanu Reeves ("Bram Stoker's Dracula").

Some actors, such as Tom Hardy (“The Drop”) and Hugh Laurie (“House”), have American accents so good that people have no idea they are British. Benedict Townsend, a London-based comedian and host of the “Scroll Deep” podcast, says there is one word that American actors playing characters with a British accent never get right. And no, it’s not the word “Schedule,” which British people pronounce the entire first 3 letters, and Americans boil down to 2. And it’s not “aluminum,” which British and American people seem to pronounce every stinking letter differently.


@benedicttown The one word American actors aways get wrong when doing an English accent
♬ original sound - Benedict Townsend

What word do American actors always get wrong when they do British accents?

“There is one word that is a dead giveaway that an English character in a movie or a TV show is being played by an American. One word that always trips them up. And once you notice it, you can't stop noticing it,” Townsend says. “You would see this lot in ‘Game of Thrones’ and the word that would always trip them up was ‘daughter.’”

Townsend adds that when British people say “daughter,” they pronounce it like the word “door” or “door-tah.” Meanwhile, Americans, even when they are putting on a British accent, say it like “dah-ter.”

“So top tip if you are an actor trying to do an English accent, daughter like a door. Like you're opening a door,” Townsend says.


What word do British actors always get wrong when doing American accents?

Some American commenters returned the favor by sharing the word that British actors never get right when using American accents: “Anything.”

"I can always tell a Brit playing an American by the word anything. An American would say en-ee-thing. Brits say it ena-thing,” Dreaming_of_Gaea wrote. "The dead giveaway for English people playing Americans: ‘Anything.’ Brits always say ‘EH-nuh-thin,’” marliemagill added. "I can always tell an actor is English playing an American when they say ‘anything.’ English people always say it like ‘enny-thin,’” mkmason wrote.


What is the cot-caught merger?

One commenter noted that the problem goes back to the cot-caught merger, when Americans in the western US and Canadians began to merge different sounds into one. People on the East Coast and in Britain pronounce them as different sounds.

“Depending on where you live, you might be thinking one of two things right now: Of course, ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ sound exactly the same! or "There’s no way that ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ sound the same!” Laura McGrath writes at DoYouReadMe. “As a result, although the different spellings remain, the vowel sounds in the words cot/caught, nod/gnawed, stock/stalk are identical for some English speakers and not for others.” For example, a person from New Jersey would pronounce cot and catch it as "caht" and "cawt," while someone from Los Angeles may pronounce them as "caht" and "caht."

To get a better idea of the big difference in how "caught" and "cot" are pronounced in the U.S., you can take a look at the educational video below, produced for a college course on linguistics.


- YouTubeyoutu.be

American actors owe Townsend a debt of gratitude for pointing out the one thing that even the best can’t seem to get right. For some actors, it could mean the difference between a great performance and one that has people scratching their heads. He should also give the commenters a tip of the cap for sharing the big word that British people have trouble with when doing an American accent. Now, if we could just get through to Ewan McGregor and tell him that even though he is fantastic in so many films, his American accent still needs a lot of work.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Movies

The real-life love story of Maria and Georg Von Trapp we didn't see in 'The Sound of Music'

"I really and truly was not in love."

Photo credit: Public domain

Maria Von Trapp was not in love with Georg when they got married, but that changed.

The Sound of Music has been beloved for generations, partially for the music (and Julie Andrews' angelic voice), partially for the historical storyline, and partially for the love story between Maria and Georg Von Trapp. The idea of a nun-in-training softening the heart of a curmudgeonly widower, falling in love with him, and ultimately becoming a big, happy family is just an irresistible love story.

But it turns out the real love story behind their union is even more fascinating.

maria von trapp, georg von trapp, the sound of music, love story, historyMaria Von Trapp (left) was played by Julie Andrews and her husband Georg was played by Christopher Plummer in "The Sound of Music."Photo credit: Public domain

The National Archives has collected information about what's fact and what's fiction in The Sound of Music, which is based on a real family in Austria named Von Trapp. The film was generally based on the first section of Maria Von Trapp's 1949 autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, with some of the details being true and others fictionalized for a movie audience.

For instance, Maria was actually hired on as a tutor for just one of Georg's children, not as a governess for all of them. The children, whose names, ages and sexes were changed, were already musically inclined before Maria arrived. Georg was not the cold, grumpy dad he was portrayed as in the beginning of the film, but rather a warm and involved parent who enjoyed making music with his kids. Maria and Georg were married 11 years before leaving Austria, not right before the Nazi takeover. The Von Trapps left by train, not in a secret excursion over the mountains.

But perhaps the most intriguing detail? Maria was not in love with Georg at all when they got married.

gif, the sound of music, von trapp family, movie, true eventsSound Of Music Flag GIF by The Rodgers & Hammerstein OrganizationGiphy

It doesn't initially make for a great Hollywood romance, but the Von Trapp love story began with marriage for other reasons and evolved into a genuine love story. Maria wrote that she fell in love with Georg's children at first sight, but she wasn't sure about leaving her religious calling when Georg asked her to marry him. The nuns urged her to do God's will and marry him, but for Maria it was all about the children, not him. When Georg proposed, he asked her to stay with him and become a second mother to his children. "God must have made him word it that way," Maria wrote, "because if he had only asked me to marry him I might not have said yes."

"I really and truly was not in love," she wrote. "I liked him but didn't love him. However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children."

However, she shared that her feelings for Georg changed over time. "…[B]y and by I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The idea of marrying someone you don't love is antithetical to every romantic notion our society celebrates, yet the evolution of Maria's love for Georg has been a common occurrence across many cultures throughout history. Romantic love was not always the primary impetus for marriage. It was more often an economic proposition and communal arrangement that united families and peoples, formed the basis of alliances, and enabled individuals to rise through social ranks. Some cultures still practice arranged marriage, which limited research has found has outcomes identical to love-first marriage in reports of passionate love, companionate love, satisfaction, and commitment. The idea of marrying someone you don't already love is anathema to modern Western sensibilities, but the reality is that people have married over the centuries for many reasons, only one of which is falling in love.

Maria's marriage to Georg actually was about falling in love, but not with him. She loved his children and wanted to be with them. It definitely helped that she liked the guy, but she wasn't swept off her feet by him, there were no moonlit confessions of love a la "Something Good," and their happily ever after love story didn't come until much later.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Ultimately, Maria and Georg's love story was one for the ages, just not one that fits the Hollywood film trope. And it's a compelling reminder that our unwritten rules and social norms determining what love and marriage should look like aren't set in stone. Do marriages for reasons other than love always evolve into genuine love? No. Do marriages based on falling in love first always last? Also no. Should a marriage that starts with "like" and develops into to a genuine, deep love over years be considered "true love" in the way we usually think of it? Who can say? Lots to ponder over in this love story.

But Maria's description of learning "to love him more than I have ever loved before or after" is a pretty high bar, so clearly it worked for them. The Von Trapps were married for 20 years and had three more children together before Georg died of lung cancer in 1947. Maria would live another four decades and never remarried. She died in 1987 at age 82 and is buried next to Georg on the family's property in Vermont.

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Gen Zer shares 5 incredible things that happened after quitting social media 4 years ago

"You cherish your day-to-day life."

via Canva/Photos

A teenage girl stares at her phone at night.

Quynh Van, 26, a UX designer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, gave herself the ultimate challenge for a Gen Zer four years ago: she vowed to quit social media. Now, she has returned to social media on TikTok to share the big difference the sabbatical made in her life.

"I quit social media four years ago, and it completely changed my life," Van said in the video. "For background, I deleted everything—Instagram, Twitter, everything—back in the beginning of 2021. It is now 2025, and I just started TikTok a month ago, and this is the only social media I have."

In a video that has received over 800,000 views, she shares the massive impact that leaving social media had on her life.

What does it feel like to quit social media?

@quynhxvan

one of the best decisions I’ve made #slowliving #digitaldetox #selfgrowth #selfdevelopment #mentalhealth #tiktokdiary #advice #selfimprovement #mindfulness #meditation #peace #peaceful #nature #socialmedia

1. She became her authentic self

“You're just a much more interesting person because you're not consuming what other people are wearing, what they're thinking, what they're saying. And you just have space for your own thoughts. You have space for learning new hobbies, reading new books, reading articles. So you just become much more interesting because you're present in your actual self.”

2. She has more time

“It's just so productive and it's so freeing. Life just stops disappearing into a scroll. My days would feel longer. I would feel more fulfilled. I would fill it with so much stuff. Learning, reflecting, moving. I was actually doing things and I was building a life instead of just watching one go by and like, looking up from my phone and seeing that four hours had passed.”

social media, smartphones, social media addiction, teens smart phones, screentimeSad teenage girl staring at her phone. via Canva/Photos

3. She stopped comparing herself to others

“I just think it's a natural tendency for humans to compare. You're always going to compare value A to value B. That's just a natural human tendency. You don't need to try and shut it down completely. But it's not normal for us to have a window into everyone's lives at all times. I think that has broken our brains a little bit.”

4. She got in touch with her emotions

“You can't inoculate yourself with dopamine hits and avoid the painful emotions anymore with social media. You have to learn to sit in the discomfort. You have to learn to face yourself and learn to sit with your difficult emotions. I wasn't able to escape my feelings anymore and that really changed everything. Made me stronger, it made me more emotionally resilient, and I was able to gain peace in my own head. Like my brain just felt like green. It's a forest of peace. It was amazing.”

social media, smartphones, social media addiction, teens smart phones, screentime, teens phonesA group of teens staring at their phones. via Canva/Photos

5. Better relationships

“You just show up differently, and people can feel that you're more present, you listen better. You're just so in the present that you really see people when you're with them, and they can feel that, and you feel that with yourself. You feel so present with yourself, and you cherish them more because you just cherish your day-to-day life.”

For some, quitting social media may seem impossible. It’s how most people keep up with their friends these days. Further, the platforms are engineered to control our brain chemistry so much that taking a break feels like detoxing from an addictive substance. But Van wants to remind everyone that it’s possible, even when it may not feel that way.

“Honestly, the biggest thing about deleting my social media was knowing that I can live without it,” she said at the end of her video. “At the time, I felt like I couldn't live without it, and now I know that I can and I'm better for it.”

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