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No worries. I don't think its fair to say I'm traumatized. Just standard immigrant stories. We weren't rich, or comfortable, but never skipped a meal. Therefore we were actually very fortunate.

My wife, on the other hand, is from an ex commie country. She could write a book of her insane stories.

Why not? Why pick on teachers? how having a NASA software engineer make $50k/year then?

the iPhone SE was new for $400. iPhones can be bought refurbished, be a hand-me-down, or on a long term contract (which really is a non-issue given the length of the contracts). Also they last much longer than competitors (still holding on to my SE).

So iPhones are very affordable, certainly comparable to Android (for a non-PoS phone) and are hardly a good metric to judge someone by.

I grew up with certain privileges. Dad's an engineer and a go-getter, mom has a masters. But we were a one income family (my mom's work doesn't cross intl. borders) with a bit of job insecurity when we first moved to N. America.

Most of my childhood anxiety was due to my parents being too honest with me (my dad got laid of twice in the early 90s' recessions, I was seven).

I remember every month I would lend my mom my savings (about 200) to help her get us get to the end of the month. Since my mom depended on this being available, I asked very solemnly when I used it to buy a CD burner. To this day I ask permission to my wife to buy most anything (she has a similar background and does the same).

I remember looking at a $20 and all the power it held. A tank of gas. Several days of food. Again, similar story for my wife - she lived on a $5/day food budget.

I remember that, on long drives, we'd fit the five of us into a two door car with four seat belts. My mom's $1000 k-car had unreliable breaks. An issue on the freeway. My father never drove faster than 50 mph on the freeway (the limit was 60 at the time)

I remember my dad joking about feeding the "black hole" our non-mortgage household debt. I have deep aversion to any type of debt.

Eventually my dad moved up the ranks and all this went away. When I entered college things changed and we ended up quite well off, to the point where I have no student debt thanks to my parents.

Trough all of this, though, my parents were very clear that no matter how "difficult" (they labeled us as "poor") things were, people were much worse off than us.

Thank you for that story. The people who run these shelters are angels.

My wife escaped her ex by seeking shelter at a battered women's place. I owe her life to them.

There my wife met women of a completely different background. My wife is white, at the time already well educated, and very type A [0]. Her only "disadvantage" was that she was a recent immigrant to the US, with all the difficulties of being a recent immigrant. So the shelter is the only place in the past decade where she met people you never meet in the US; the others. She has very powerful memories of the people she met there.

They have one fundamental rule: you don't tell any men where it's located. Although I'm filled with curiosity (partially lack of discipline, partially to send them a cheque), I've never asked her where this place is; I don't want to put her in that position. Not to the place to which I owe her life.

[0] It's funny. She's very type-A, very much in charge, yet it took her manager, a black man, to force her to seek help. He told her either to go stay at a shelter or not come to work the next day.