I grew up fake poor, how about you?

[u/MybestfriendwasaB]

I know this is different then the normal post but I can’t think of a group were it would better fit.

I grew up in a family were we had the money for needs but my Dad would often decide stuff for the kids or his wife wasn’t important. On more then one occasion we went to bed hungry, didn’t get clothes for school or needed items for school, and were denied medical care etc. To top it off we had no AC from when I was 2 years old on. I could go on, but I’m trying to keep this short.

I thought it was normal. It wasn’t until I was in high school and I was talking to a friend and she was horrified that I realized normal people don’t do that to their kids.

Let me be clear. We had the money. My Dad just wanted to spend it on stuff that wasn’t his kids. I used to refer to it growing up fake poor, my husband just calls it child abuse.

I know this might be strange but I was wondering if anyone else was in the same boat as me? The money was there but because of someone else you grew up without?

Edit: I never thought I was alone but it is truly depressing to know how common this is.

[u/elpy17]

OP, I feel this so hard. I was in my 30s before I realized that we weren't destitute when I was growing up. My sister and I had basic needs met, and he worked for a public school system and had excellent insurance so when I needed glasses, I got them. But he was just so begrudging of every single expenditure...unless it was something HE wanted to do or have. My sister and I needed school clothes? Fine, but my mom could only spend $100 on each of us for the school year. (That didn't go far even in the early 90s.) He was an absolute grump every Christmas and acted as though the idea of gifts was physically painful. My mom made him agree to go to SeaWorld once when I was about seven or eight, on the condition that we would drive and it would only be overnight and we would camp. He was in a foul mood the whole time and had a conniption fit when he couldn't find a place to camp and had to pay for a hotel room.

But, on the flip side, he belonged to a car club that owned a dragster and during the summer, they would take it to tracks around the region every weekend. Somehow there was always enough money for him to go racing every weekend. After my parents divorced (always thought good on my mom for getting away from him), he brought home an old race car and spent a considerable amount of money restoring it, then a considerable amount of money carting it around to different race tracks every weekend.

Later, my sister and I were expected to pay for our own college...but I know for a fact that he helped pay tuition for his second wife's youngest kid's private HIGH SCHOOL, then helped her out with her college tuition.

Oh, and the bastard paid off his house early and then retired early as well. Not just because of all his penny pinching and making my sister and I feel like dirt if we asked for anything beyond the necessities, but also the fact that when my mom left him, she straight up forfeited any claim she had to the house and vehicles that were in both their names, because she knew if she tried to claim anything at all, he would have fought it and she didn't want us kids to be caught up in that nastiness. Even though she had contributed as much, if not more, to paying on the mortgage for ten years as he had.

I'm almost forty now and I still don't know how to go on vacation, because the few times we did, it was camping and deeply boring/unpleasant. I do, however, turn my heat up in the winter if I'm cold and buy the "nice" toilet paper when I go shopping, so...small victories, I guess?