I’ve Never Been Poor, But I’ll Never Be Far From It
Two missed paychecks from disaster.
Almost three years ago, I wrote a piece entitled “I’ve Never Been Poor: Growing Up Middle Class and the Grocery Store Test.” In that article, I talk about my experiences growing up in the middle class, and eventually in the upper-middle class, in the context of a trip to the grocery store.
You see, there is a particular test that many people use to figure out if they’ve ever been poor, and that’s grocery shopping. For a person like me, who has never had the experience of being poor, I can go off my list and get the occasional splurge. Picking up a tub of ice cream on a whim isn’t going to destroy my budget.
For a lot of people, though, grocery shopping is a complicated math problem. You have to make every penny count at the grocery store, since going just a dollar or two over your budget could potentially mean a $35 overdraft fee. A carton of eggs going up in price by 30 cents could mean putting something else back because that’s just not tenable to your budget.
As I have said, I have personally never had this particular experience, and for that I feel incredibly lucky. More and more people these days are counting their pennies at the grocery store. These days, discount grocers are exploding, Walmart is doing well, and…
