Proud Of My White Trash Roots

Growing up on welfare can be a difficult proposition, especially when everyone else around you seems to have so much. You spend your youth living from cheque to cheque frequently learning to live without while all your friends have everything – it can kind of make you feel inadequate. The worst thing is this feeling of inadequacy can follow you into adulthood and seriously affect your decision-making, financial situation and ability to earn a good living.

It’s kind of silly but as a child it’s hard to see everyone around you get lots of stuff for Christmas while you get nothing. You can kind of feel less as a person or you feel that you did something to deserve it. I guess, at the time, we’re still too young to realize that ‘stuff’ doesn’t mean anything … but more on that later.

Fast forward to adulthood and these feelings that you don’t deserve anything can haunt you and affect everything you do, from going to school to the jobs you end up accepting. I think that you get two types of people – the first type never overcomes these feeling and sometimes don’t live the life they’re supposed to live, and the other type who ends up overcompensating.

Those that overcompensate spend their adult lives always trying to prove something. They buy the best stuff because they feel it will help distance themselves from their poor upbringing. Somehow, putting on this image of being successful – with the toys to match – seems to be the way to prove that they are in fact successful and belong with the upper class. I think people like this are a marketer’s dream!

I have to wonder if this is problematic, though.

All of the fancy clothes and cars cannot erase the inner welfare child, who still doesn’t feel quite as good as everyone around them. Worse, their debts spiral out of control because it is very expensive to put on that image of being super successful.

Worse, you spend your adult life running FROM these memories or moving AWAY from things. Is this healthy?

I tend to think not. I think it’s much healthier to move TOWARDS something. Part of this process is letting go of the baggage. People that run away from things tend to hold onto this baggage, which I think can seriously affect their ability to be successful and wealthy.

They end up making decisions based on fear, sadness, jealously, hate ... the list goes on. I don't think this is a good base to make sounds decisions.

So, I embraced my white trash roots a long time ago. I accepted myself and made peace and left the baggage back in one of the many cheap rental houses we lived in. In retrospect, I think my childhood has made me the person I am today – along with all the mistakes I have made in adulthood.

I wonder how many people trade their time and their lives for expensive goods, just to prove that they’re ‘successful’. At the end of the day, they still don’t feel good about themselves and it just becomes a vicious cycle of shopping and racking up those credit cards.

Don’t get me wrong, I like clothing, electronics, nice restaurants and going out … but it is not my priority and a huge part of my life. I learned relatively early that expensive stuff does not define who I am. In turn, I don’t waste a lot of money on such items … although I would love an iPhone! :)

My priority is wealth building - I’d rather direct my money towards wealth building and ultimately, getting complete control over that scarce asset … known as time.