Seven years ago, I was married. We owned a home, and had two cars.  We took vacations.  We bought name brand products, and went out to dinner.  We bought what we needed, when we needed it.  And, very often, we bought what we didn’t need, simply because we could.  Seven years ago, I became poor.  I got a divorce; I became a single parent, who shared custody of my daughters with my ex.  I moved from my home of 17 years, to a 2 bedroom apartment.  My kids shared a room for the first time in their lives.  I made $20,000 a year, got no child support or state assistance.  Suddenly, I was poor and I was terrified.  I was lost, totally out of my element, and didn’t know what to expect from one day to the next. My daughter getting sick and needing Benadryl from the pharmacy literally would break me.  I would spend my very last pennies on getting the medication she needed, or the colored pencils from the dollar store for her homework, or gas for my car.  I wondered how in the hell I would ever make this work… I absolutely went through desperate times.  I brainstormed how to make money, cash, fast.  Escort service?  Drugs?  Sell plasma?  I would Google  “What organs can I sell?”, and constantly check Craigslist for job postings.  But, I never did any of those things.  Call it pride, fear or humility… doesn’t really matter.  Either way, I was poor.  And I had to figure it out.

As a child, I grew up in an affluent town on the coast of Maine.  My father has the strongest work ethic of anyone I’ve ever met; he worked 16 hour days, 6 days a week for the Postal Service. Although he worked long days, he was home every night for dinner.  He was present and active in our lives. He came to our games and school concerts, he helped us with our school projects.  He was a good provider and an excellent role model.  Our mother was a homemaker; a stay at home Mom who ran the house.  She did all the chores, cooked, cleaned, mowed the lawn, maintained the household budget, brought us our homework or lunch at school when we forgot them.  Things were lean and tight in our house, but we never wanted for anything.  Anything we needed was provided for us; a new field hockey stick? Done.  Money to go to the movies? Done.  Family vacation to the White Mountains?  Every July.  I definitely lived a life of privilege. However, my Dad worked for the post office, and my mom didn’t work.  A single income household.  My friends from school had parents who were lawyers and doctors, sometimes one of each in the home.  They took family vacations to Florida or Mexico.  They went to Sugarloaf every weekend.  It was only natural to feel envious of the other kids.  It’s only now, at 43, that I really see what sacrifices my parents made for us, but we were nowhere near keeping up with the Kardashians of my town.  I automatically began to identify with those who lived a life of struggle – albeit at a safe and comfortable distance.  I never had childhood dreams of being rich or going to expensive schools.  My life’s ambition until I was 10 was to be a waitress or work at K-Mart.  My parents never corrected me, or prompted me to aspire to more, why would they?  Working in a restaurant or working retail were both respectable and hard working professions.  Nothing wrong with that.

I remember reading my Beverly Cleary books and relating so much to the struggles of growing up in a middle class family.  I knew many of my classmates had no idea how that felt. When I was in 5th grade, I so desperately wanted a pair of designer jeans!  At $80 a pair, it just wasn’t happening for me, and my Dad and I had an argument about it in the middle of Filene’s.   The next weekend we went to a flea market at Scarborough Downs and one of the vendors was selling knock off designer sweatshirts. He bought me this horrible green Guess sweatshirt for $20.  I could not have been happier. I wore it so much that I was bullied by some of the Mean Girls for wearing the same clothes every day. Middle school girls are the worst. Seriously.

Things changed for me in the 90’s… it became cool to shop at Salvation Army and Goodwill and to buy hoodies at Kmart. Things turned around, it was my turn to look down on the Mean Girls for not being authentic enough in their grunge… fake fans.  As I’ve gotten older I have realized it’s all relative.  Some people are just assholes. No matter how much money they have or don’t have.  Money doesn’t make you a good person, your behavior does. 

Keep in mind, poor is a generalized term.  I’m actually what you would call low income.  I have a great job, working 40 hours a week. I have health insurance and an HSA account. I have a college degree. For the majority of my post divorce adulthood, I’ve worked two jobs in order to make ends meet. Every single penny of my paycheck is spent before it even hits the bank.  Every 2 weeks, half of my pay goes to rent.  I don’t want to get into the absurd costs of housing in the Greater Portland area, but let’s just say, it’s insane.  I’m pretty sure I have the cheapest 3 bedroom apartment in South Portland.  And yet, half of my paycheck goes to rent every single payday.  Sometimes, I will splurge a little, and buy myself something.  But, mostly I pay for the cost of living and taking care of my girls. That’s it.  Being poor truly makes you appreciate the little things.  

Yesterday I was at a friends house and brought two loads of laundry with me.  Having free access to a washer and dryer is the luxury I miss the most.  I couldn’t thank her enough, it was like the equivalent of putting $20 in my pocket.  Wow! Thank you! When a friend buys me a cup of coffee, when there is peanut butter and jelly and bread in the breakroom at work, when my sister gives me a gift card to get my eyebrows done… OMG!  Thank you, SO MUCH!  

It’s the little things that mean the most, and I truly feel the most genuine and heartfelt gratitude.  For me, that appreciation for the little things in life goes far beyond material possessions.  I have come to appreciate ALL of lifes’ small gifts.  The full Moon, when the lilacs are in bloom, finding a sand dollar on the beach, listening to really good music, having game night with friends, having friends at all!  For all this and so much more, I feel gratitude much more now than ever. I’ve learned  Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff. Or, something like that.

Not having much disposable income forces you to have a modest lifestyle.  In doing that, I have inadvertently lowered my environmental impact.  My carbon footprint is smaller than most others. Producing less greenhouse gasses is important but it’s not my primary motivation.  My primary motivation is cold hard cash.  I use less electricity than the average 3 person household.  I keep my heat set to 65 degrees in the winter, or if it’s a particularly cold day I may turn it up to 68.  Here in Maine, this is a game us natives love to play… how long will I wait before I turn my heat on? Bundle up!  Grab a hoodie and a blanket, and don’t touch the thermostat!

When I owned a home with a washer and dryer, I did laundry almost every day.  Now, I will go weeks without washing a pair of jeans and I hardly ever wash bulky items, like jackets, sweatshirts and sweaters.  The laundromat is EXPENSIVE, $3.00 a load to wash and another couple bucks to dry.  And, it’s time consuming.  Because laundry rarely makes the round one budget cuts, my water consumption is lower than average.  Most high efficiency washers use between 15-30 gallons of water per wash.  Simple math tells me I have decreased my water consumption from 120 gallons per week to 30 gallons per week in just laundry. 

Being poor teaches you so much, like budgeting. Services other people pay for, I’ve learned to do myself.  Let’s talk about food for a moment. This is a tough one, I want to be healthy and provide nourishment to my family.  But, junk food is much cheaper, and mostly easy to prepare, and quite honestly is marketed to low income individuals.  Don’t believe me?  I challenge you to walk into any dollar store and go straight to the back where the frozen section is.  See, you didn’t even know that dollar stores sell more than cheap gift wrap, seasonal items and stocking stuffers! The back half of the store is generally where you can find the dry food items and freezer section. Pull literally anything out of that freezer and look at the back.  Read the ingredients, the nutritional information and the cooking instructions, and then we can talk.  I’m not going to lie, there have been weeks that I have purchased 90% of my weekly grocery list at the Dollar General (or as I like to call it, the wine store).  However, I was feeding my two growing girls. So, I had to learn to cook.  Pancakes, sausage and eggs, pasta and homemade sauce, tuna casserole, rice and beans, burritos, chili, pizza, and sometimes if I scored big time I could make pasta alfredo with broccoli and shrimp. For fresh produce, I try to utilize local farm stands as much as possible. They are extremely affordable and just overall way better than the grocery store. Food is valuable. Therefore, I have less waste.  I recycle almost everything because then I don’t use as many trash bags.  I reuse baggies. I have glass food storage containers. I don’t have much single use plastic in my home, and I honestly don’t miss it. I rarely use paper plates or cups. My lifestyle is inherently green, which saves me money in the long run.

I have loved growing up and raising my family in Greater Portland.  I wouldn’t change it for the world.  We have access to so many amazing things. Sights and sounds that people travel from all over to see are quite literally in my backyard.  We have a sense of community that people in Manhattan or Los Angeles don’t necessarily experience.  Interestingly enough, I’ve found that being poor has been a catalyst for experiencing things in our community that I may not have otherwise done.  Summers in Portland offer activities that are free or very inexpensive almost every night of the week.  The First Friday art walk happens once a month, and you can spend a whole evening “in town” for little more than the cost of a coffee.  There are free outdoor movies, access to museums and art galleries and free outdoor music and theater productions.  And let’s not forget our seemingly endless access to State Parks, beaches and historical sites.  It can take some digging and some planning, but you can plan something to do almost every day of summer vacation with your children. FOR FREE!  In that sense, I’ve found being poor has increased my community involvement, which in turn creates a richer and more diverse culture.  My little city is pretty great, and I’ve learned to appreciate it in so many ways. (There is that gratitude again!)  

Being a single Mom is hard.  No two ways about it.  But, when you are a single Mom with two jobs, you level up. It’s REALLY hard.  There were many days that I didn’t get home from work until 11-12 at night.  My kids were on their own to get home from school or practice, feed themselves, do homework, and go to bed.  When I got home, I did the dishes, picked up the house, took the dog for a walk and maybe took a few moments for myself before going to bed.  At 7:00, I got up and took the kids to school, came home and had coffee and then I made dinner for that night, or if I had food prepped on my day off, I would go do laundry or errands until I had to go to work at 1 pm.  Rinse, repeat.  Let me tell you, there is something SO unappealing about making eggplant and sauce while you drink your coffee in the morning. It’s just wrong on so many levels.  But, If I made eggplant and sauce at 8 am then I knew my kids would be eating a healthy homecooked dinner, even if I wasn’t there to eat it with them.  Mom guilt is a very real and very powerful force.  Sounds terrible, right? Here’s the thing, there are two types of single parent guilt. There is the parent who caters and spoils their child out of guilt.  One who tries to replace the something missing with material objects, and never EVER says no.  Then, there are parents like me who cannot afford to do that, even if they wanted to. Well, here is what ended up happening; when I had time to spend with the girls, we enjoyed each other’s company.  We hung out together.  We went to the beach or went hiking,  watched movies and trash tv and colored under a blanket. My kids, who were on the verge of becoming young adults, had to grow up a little bit. They had to know what to do when the circuit breaker tripped and they were alone in the dark. I relied on them.  They absolutely needed to be able to handle the amount of freedom they were given at Mom’s house.  Did they have friends or boyfriends over unsupervised? Of course they did.  Did they sometimes do stupid stuff or not eat, or flood the bathroom? 100% yes. Did they resent me for not being home and never being around to drive them to the mall, also yes. “Nevermind, I will just ask Dad” is a phrase I heard A LOT and often it would cut me to my core. But now, they are 18 and 20 year old mature young women.  They know how to take care of themselves.  They entered adulthood with more life skills than 90% of the kids they went to school with. And, they both have very strong work ethics, make their own money and pay their own way in life.  Criticize my method, but I call that Mothering with a capital M.

These days, life is a lot easier.  The girls are older, and independent of me financially (for the most part). I am in a relationship and have help doing the things I used to do alone, and I don’t have to work two jobs anymore.  I have become comfortable with my lifestyle.  However, the things I’ve learned will remain with me for the rest of my life.  I am so happy with the way I live my life, and the journey it’s been to get here.  Sure, I’m happy I don’t have to write bad checks at Shaw’s anymore, and I have a crazy amount of debt that I’m working on getting on top of.  But, don’t most people live this way?  The older I get, the more I see how alike we all are. Being poor has made me a better person, and it’s only getting better from here.