How poor were you?

It's all relative isn't it ? Our expectations were not as great and most of our friends and neighbours were in the same boat.
My parents were comfortably off so I had all I wanted. It was a different story when I got married ( in haste tut tut ) no time to save for a house or furniture etc. Rented flat to start with then we saved for a small terrace house at £14 per month mortgage.It was so cold, ice on the inside of the windows, coke fire ugh. Remember my brother in law getting married, my mother bought me an outfit and my husband bought a new suit with the rebate from the electricity meter. Happy days - not always.

My upbringing was I suppose lower middle class. My Mum was a SAHM and Dad was a customs officer. But things were very different and money was not overflowing.

Winters were hard - like many of you I remember cracking the ice on the inside of the windows and ghastly cold lino floors. We did have a fire in the lounge and a back boiler in the dining room,but the bedrooms were very cold indeed. Eventually my Dad designed and built a central heating system by himself although he knew nothing about it - enterprising fellow!

What I do remember,that I so not see in children now, was chilblains - how they hurt!

And I remember using old dress patterns as toilet paper when it ran out!!

Of course we got rapped over the knuckles with rulers in school.

I traveled to school on two buses from the age of5 -on my own!

We were not seriously poor in any way - but I would have traded in any comforts we had for parents who were happily married.

I also grew up in a council house which my parents found luxurious after the tiny mill workers houses they grew up in (now demolished). My dad grew vegetables in the large back garden. I mostly remember cabbages and lettuces full of caterpillars.
Both of my parents worked and left the house at seven, dad on his bike, mum on the bus. Neither of them ever learned to drive. We went to a neighbour for breakfast taking our cereals with us. She was a widow and Mum paid her to look after us.
We played out all the time until bedtime, we called for friends knocking on the door but never getting asked in. Friends parents were always addressed politely as Mr and Mrs.
Lovely thread morethan.

Very rural location until I was 5 with gas lighting, no electricity at all. Tin bath in front of the fire! Just a cold water tap in the kitchen. My grandparents had gas lighting for some years after us, some of the 'museum houses' have some gas lighting and the smell takes me straight back. We weren't well off financially, but always had loads of vegetables to eat as Dad was a farm worker on an arable farm. There was a coal fire in one room for heat, the farm lorry for transport, it was often cold in the winter, anything available on top of the bedding to keep me toasty in bed. Dad changed jobs and a new farm lorry came to transport us and our 'stuff' to the new location. I've still got the confirmatory letter, Dad had kept it. Our children and grandchildren would be horrified I think but it wasn't at all unusual and I never felt deprived, I wish now I had talked with my townie Mum about how she coped, it must have been very hard for her.

Yes,we were brought up on a council estate and we were poor,my dad worked in the dockyard,a very different kind of poor than today.No benefits then,{if there was,my dad wouldn't have claimed any} he was very old school,funny enough though,we were very happy,we did other things like sitting round the table doing a jigsaw,mum would talk about the old days,we loved that.One of my sisters {who's no longer with us}used to make us laugh,she was up to all sorts.and there always seem to have been kids in our family.Theres ten years between my two older sisters and us two younger ones,so we had it easier than them,

As a child our family were very comfortably well off, although we never ever had any holidays. We never wanted for anything, we were the first family to have a tv in our road.

When I got married in the 60s it was a hard struggle with a young baby and nigh impossible to make ends meet. I remember one time we had run out of gas and electric and I had to warm the babies milk in a small saucepan over a lighted candle! My dad came to see us every Wednesday after work with food and a couple of quid until my husbands pay day. One thing I never did was to get into debt and I till this day I never have.

My upbringing was rich compared to yours morethan
I grew up on a newly built council estate in a 3 bed semi. I wasn't aware of a struggle to make ends meet. The only heating was the coal fire in the back room, we never seemed to be short of coal. The front room was for 'best'. We did have old coats on the bed but blankets too. We always had enough to eat. Though pretty basic. Sunday lunch was followed by the treat of a milk pudding another treat was tinned fruit and carnation milk, something out of reach of many.
My Christmas present one year was a secondhand push bike and years later a second hand portable record player Luxuries indeed to some.
H grew up sharing a large 4 story London house with his aunt's and another family. There was no bathroom and the three families shared one toilet. Nearly all H's and his two sisters clothes were hand made by their father who worked as a ladies tailor. He says they had enough to eat and he wasn't aware of being poor but of "getting by"