Fantasizing about what it’s like to be rich is something plenty of people do, especially if you’d classify yourself as poor. People make lists of the things they’d buy or businesses they’d start if they won the lottery, even if they don’t play. But being poor comes with ingenuity.
Because you have little access to funds, which equates to little access to necessities, you get creative in ways to stretch a dollar. It also becomes glaringly obvious when someone didn’t struggle with poverty by what they say or the things they do. Things that seem normal to them seem strange to you or vise versa.
In a compilation video posted on YouTube by TikTok News, a man wrapped in a blanket poses the question, “What’s an unwritten poor person rule that rich people wouldn’t understand.” The replies didn’t disappoint and if you grew up poor some of these will have you nodding your head in agreement. If you didn’t, then you may be in for a bit of a surprise.
The very first video response to the question immediately shows that rich people live vastly different lives than the average person. A woman who works near a hair salon reveals that the majority of her customers that stopped by her place of employment didn’t even own shampoo and conditioner.
Wild, right? It’s not that they don’t wash their hair, it’s just that they go to the salon every couple of days to get it washed and styled. Contrast that to the original guy mentioning poor people adding water to their shampoo to make it stretch and its a bit flabbergasting.
In a different response to the question, one man pointed out the multi-purposing that happens to keep costs down. He explains that ovens are used to heat homes, grocery bags are used as trash bags and he’s wearing his grandfather’s hand-me-down pants.
“I still have my grandfather’s old pants, I wear them now to this day, right. You never want to get rid of clothes,” the man says. “Also, gift cards. If you ever wanted a free subscription to anything and they need a card on file, you put an old gift card in so that when they try to charge the card, they don’t charge the gift card.”
The entire video is full of things people may not realize poor people do to get by. Like the man who said when his friends offer to treat him to a restaurant, he only orders what he can afford just in case they decide not to pay.
“Saving bacon grease, because butter is expensive, so you save bacon grease to cook eggs and put on top of biscuits before you put them into the oven,” another person said.
Watch the video below, maybe you’ll learn some new tricks to stretch your paycheck or you’ll get a glimpse into the lives of people living on a tight budget.