Ask Lemmy

I was not born rich, but my parents are extremely hard workers who managed to move our family from lower to upper middle class.

My Dad graduated HS with a D average. And he only did that well because the California school system at the time flatly refused to fail any students. Ever.

At the time I was born he worked at a Levolor factory, making blinds. Later, he became an upholsterer at La-Z-Boy. For the time, he was making crazy good money - $14/hr! (And this is in 1980s dollars, equivalent to around $50/hr today!)

But... He didn't much like it. Six years sfter swearing off school forever, Dad decided to go back to college. And not just to get his GE's. Nope, Dad decided to become a friggen lawyer. (I guess he decided if he was going back to school, he was going to do All The School.)

For the next several years, he studied during the morning, slept all day, then worked graves overnight. I saw him for literal minutes a day, when he got home from school and when he left again for work.

I was four when he started and eleven when he graduated. Through that time, the sweet money he'd made before seemed like crazy wealth. More than once, our family ran out of food. And more than once, our neighbors (who themselves were only just making do on welfare) would "secretly" leave enough groceries on the doorstep for us to eat for another week.

Of course, there was no money for childcare. My mom took care of us, while doing what she could to earn money. She taught piano and guitar lessons, arranged an underground daycare for our neighbors, and whatever other odd jobs she could do from home.

I grew up in that struggle. We never went completely hungry, though I did skip a few lunches to make sure my younger sibs didn't need to.

And eventually, Dad graduated and became an attorney. And suddenly... We had money.

We bought real milk, instead of powdered milk.

We could eat at McDonald's - an amazing luxury.

We lived in a house with actual walls instead of painted cinderblock.

We started going to the dentist and doctor more often.

We didn't buy a new car. My Dad had an 81 Toyota Tercel that he ultimately put 300K miles on before hitting a deer finally totaled it in Feb 2000.

A couple times, we even went to Disneyland.

...

So that's what changed when my family suddenly became "rich".