People Who Grew Up With Limited Funds Explain Which Items Always Felt Like A Luxury

New clothes. I had so many hand me downs and thrift store clothes... new seemed like a dream.

Anxiety

"After growing up in a home where every unexpected problem was a financial emergency, my idea of wealthy became 'I just want enough money that if something breaks I don't get anxiety about how to deal with it.'"

Obiwan_ca_bl**me

Literature

"Getting to buy something from the scholastic book fair."

Rich*itch3232

"My school, at the end of it a bunch of books were 'donated' and then spread out on a table in the library. We all got to go pick one book. So even if kids didn’t get to purchase a book, in the end they had a chance to still get a book. It’s actually how I got my first Harry Potter book. Was a cool idea for any school staff or parents active in their kids’ schools."

glass_pillow

Christmas

"Getting new clothes at Christmas from relatives. I don't know if that is exactly a luxury or the kind of answer you are looking for, but we never had a lot of money when I was in middle school. I went an entire year wearing the same pants everyday. The funny thing was my parents didn't even buy them for me."

"I got them for Christmas from my Grandparents. All the kids use to give me so much sh*t for wearing the same pants everyday. I always told them that I had 5 of the same pair which made me feel good inside and kind of made them ease off even though I know they didn't believe me."

"I remember I fell on the school bus one day and the jagged floor cut a hole right in the knee cap and the panic that went over me was just insane. It was one of the worst feelings of my whole life because I knew that I didn't have any other pants to wear and that now all of the kids in my school were going to know that I only had 1 pair. Needless to say I could not wait for the last month of school to end."

themagicman_1231

I'm Away

"Summer camp, or basically any school trips that had to be paid for. At my school the kids who couldn't afford to go on trips that happened during school hours still had to come to the school, we just sat in a room and did extra work like it was detention."

Helpful_Yams

"I was lucky. If you taught at the day camp your kid could go for free. That was just day camp though not sleepaway camp. My mom found a camp teacher who had no kids of his own and he signed me up as his kid so I could get free day camp. Did that all through elementary school."

randtcouple

Big Deals

"Going out for pizza was a big deal. Those free mini pizzas for reading books were huge."

Shroom4Yoshi

Food is always an issue when you're broke.

Damage

"Being able to turn on the heat in the cold and pay a professional to fix damaged appliances, plumbing, and other issues."

Liggettef

Spoiled

"When my grandma would come pick me up and spoil me. My parents didn't have much money and were addicts so when my grandma would come get me I would come back with new clothes, video games, toys, etc. I used to think my grandma was rich but she actually just had a stable income."

nawlepen

"I was in this position when I was younger. I always thought my grandma had SO much money… but all she did was go to work everyday. Always made sure I had clothes and all my school supplies. I miss her pretty bad."

Keywork29

Water

"I am from a small island in the Pacific. While I mostly still take cold showers, I have always felt that a hot shower is the finest luxury one can experience. I had my first hot shower when I was 22 years old and I can never forget it."

FSMPIO

"This is the kind of luxury I think people take for granted, I always avoided showers in the winter as a kid since most of the time they where cold showers and the temperature here was around 12c° during those times."

PowerfullDio

Showerware

"Towels. Honestly, I was almost 10 When I realized people didn’t just put back on their dirty clothes after a shower because my family was so large (12 kids total including myself) and extremely poor. I thought towels were just for hotels or were maybe a prop on television. I went to a friends house and she asked for my help folding her towels. I remember laughing and thinking she must be rich."

"Long story short, I wasn’t sure which way to fold the towels, and begged my mom to buy them after I revealed that my friend, Simone, had them. She bought a box of used ones from a local auction and I walked around with them on my head feeling like a frigging empress after that, even though—-let’s be clear… these were second hand towels!"

shakezula1025

Or BK...

"Grew up poor and when I was a kid I used to think you were rich if you had a dishwasher and a millionaire if you had one of those refrigerators that have a button for ice. McDonalds was also a luxury, a couple times a year on our birthdays."

chinderellab*tch

Warmth

"Having the heating on. We used to go to bed in our sleeping bags in winter which was really cool back then, pretty depressing now."

pm_me_boooba

"Oh absolutely, I don't think i could ever forget the feeling of when we’d wake up at 5am freezing and trying to keep as much warmth under the blanket as possible."

ooobats

Clear Sips

"Drinking clean (and enough) water and just having a decent meal, not just a piece of dry bread and tea! Yes, I come from Yemen, where we did not have a sufficient amount of water (for drinking or cleaning) and did not necessarily have three meals a day. I remember that we would not have random plants in our garden to water, that would be a waste of water. If you watch Dune, we kinda had (and still have) a similar situation!"

REDDIT

Let's get fruity...

"At the end of the season, sometimes the grocery store would have peck baskets of peaches on sale for a dime to clear them out before they went bad. And if Mom had a spare dime, she'd buy them and tell us to eat all we wanted - normally fruit was limited to one a day if there was any at all. Man, we'd hit those peaches like a plague of locusts."

HowdyDoobie

Everything!

"Kraft Macaroni and Cheese as opposed to store brand. Soda out of a can. Any restaurant where you sit down and get a menu. Having the AC on in the car."

Senseisntsocommon

Cooldown

"Air conditioning. Whether in a house or vehicle."

fondoftheforge

"We were lucky we had a car that ran. A/C would have been heaven. We fought for window seat rights, but as the eldest of six kids I usually won. Sometimes I would bestow my won seat on whichever sibling I was fond of at the time."

"We didn’t have A/C in the house, but we did have huge air ducts and vents for forced hot air heating. As the furnace was off during the summer, my dad put a large box fan in the basement by the intake vent - blowing cooler basement air into the upstairs bedrooms at night. A slight respite from hot summer nights."

DadsRGR8

"dirty punk"

"New clothes. Pretty much had to make everything last and while I'm not proud of it I did a lot of shoplifting as young teen. I always look back and think how I really lucked out that the 'dirty punk' look was super in when I was a teen. I basically based my whole style around it and people thought I was just being fashionable but I was just really f**king poor lmao."

de_jim

Splurge

"I grew up broke and am incredibly fortunate to have money as an adult. Meals out when I was a kid were huge, I think I only really remember three in my whole childhood, so as an adult who does largely whatever I like, going out to dinner still thrills me, always get dressed up, make the most of it etc."

Vegetable-Ad-647

Fun Times

"Going to a fair, a concert, or a similar event, and buying food. Unthinkable when I was a child. Clearly people go to the summer fair just to enjoy the aroma of fried dough."

ABadFeeling

Must Haves

"Dental and medical care. Dental insurance was a huge luxury. I didn't have an employer that offered that until I was in my late 20's. Needless to say, I spent a fortune on my teeth. I made sure my kids always had dental care from them on."

iRunthesehills

Everyone should have access to all of these things. Why is life unfair?