The Advantages of Being Born into a Poor Family
To be born poor is unfortunate, there is no sugarcoating it, however, there are a few interesting life lessons and advantages that being poor teaches you.
John was born to a poor family. There were no visits to Disneyland and no fancy holiday trips to choice locations, all holidays, if there were any, were to his relatives or grandparents. Most material comfort he wished for were out of reach – only accessible to him through the fading pictures of discarded catalogues.
This reality is valid for a significant proportion of the world’s population. In America, 1 in 10 children spent their childhood in poverty. To further compound the situation, the majority of these kids won’t go to college and thus end up as economically disadvantaged as their parents.
However, some people born into poor families use these deprivations to fuel their stratospheric rise to the top and, ultimately, financial success. There are multiple examples of famous people that grew up poor but are now rich, and some are even now billionaires today.
An example is Oprah Winfrey, (If you’re an Oprah fan like me, hit the like button) she was raised by a single mom in relative poverty, but she’s now worth more than $3billion today. Also, Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba, the largest e-commerce company in China, was born poor. The success of these individuals offers hope, but for many poor people including John, hope is all they have. It’s tough breaking out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
In the light of these, you wonder if there are any benefits to being born into poverty. Poverty sucks, but with the right perspective, by dint of hard work and guts, it can be a springboard for exceptional achievements in some instances. So here are reasons why being born poor is not such a bad thing.
1. You Are Alive and Healthy
Although John struggles financially, he’s grateful to be alive and in good health. Poverty can create despair and make it difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish your dreams. Despite this, being alive is a good enough reason to be grateful. Also, underprivileged people sometimes enjoy better health than their wealthier peers. White-collar jobs are the higher-paying, more sedentary jobs, and these jobs are usually occupied by people that are wealthy or at least financially stable. John and a lot of the poor typically hold jobs that require intensive physical labour. While these jobs do come with their health hazards, they are usually less dangerous and common than problems like obesity, high blood pressure, and heart diseases that are associated with working long hours seated in place.
2. You Will Be Street-Smart
When John was growing up, poverty made it mandatory that he adapt to survive. When you find it hard to make ends meet, you will develop life skills that wealthy people never get the opportunity to learn. John learned how to balance a schedule that involves multiple jobs, how to cook his own food on a tight budget, how to make basic repairs himself, and most importantly, how to develop strong ties with his local community since he depended on them for lots of things he can’t get on his own. These situations make you street-smart, and you will be equipped to handle adversity since you have been through hell, and you survived it.
3. You Will Be Resilient
When John was poor, he reached a point where life can’t get harder unless he died. He learned how to survive on limited resources. He made meals out of leftovers, he survived having his electricity and water cut off because he couldn’t afford to pay the bills, and he also he faced just about any challenges that life can throw at him and survived.
A life without money is undoubtedly difficult, and you need a thick skin to survive and even triumph over such an existence. It is not easy when people make fun of you for being poor, and it’s even harder when other people take the seemingly simple things for granted, such as transportation, food and a roof over your head, but you can’t. This sort of life is harsh; however, the experience helps you develop the thick skin you need to face life’s challenges.
When you finally break out of poverty and probably made lots of money, you won’t be terrified of losing all your wealth. Because even if you do, you will live as you had always lived, when you had nothing. It won’t be a strange place for you, since you’ve been there before, and so it won’t break you. You’ll be in a better frame of mind to deal with the situation and rise again.
4. There Is Less Stress
Poverty comes with a lot of despair, but if you look at it from another perspective, you actually have a lot less to worry about than rich people do. More money doesn’t necessarily buy you more freedom. Instead, it takes away a considerable part of your autonomy. Rich people have to worry about multiple taxes, keeping their assets safe from theft, money to pay their expensive advisers and assistants, college tuition, and of course keeping up with the Joneses. As the popular rap lyrics goes – the more money we come across, the more problem we see…
Also, contrary to popular belief, the rich worry a lot about losing their wealth, and they often work longer hours to sustain their lifestyle. You get your first million or billion, you want more, and that means getting only a few hours of sleep most nights plus keeping an eye on a wide range of interests.
5. You Will Have More Real Friends and Unconditional Love
For the rich, it’s often difficult to know which friends are real, and which friends are fair-weather friends. But if you are poor, the concept of fair-weather friends is non-existent.
For John, even when he didn’t have much to spare, his friends and people he knew still stuck with him. They would often come in aid when he needed help or be available when he needed company. They genuinely showed they cared about him, with no strings attached. These are the people that will see through your lack and poverty, to the real person underneath.
The poor are more likely to have real friends who care about the essential things of life that have nothing to do with money.
6. You Will Get a Lot of Help
Poor people get a lot of assistance from the local community, religious institutions, and the government. These entities can help you out with cash handouts, subsidized accommodation, food, and much more. There are government agencies in most countries that run programs to aid financially disadvantaged people. They give out monthly stipends, food stamps, and run social services programs.
Some other advantages may include free education, free school lunch for your kids, earned income credit, and free medical services. Although some of these may also be available to the rich, they prefer to pay obscene amounts of money for exclusive “quality services” than to bring themselves to the level of someone that gets free assistance from others.
7. You Will Be Creative and Ingenious
The poor don’t really have a choice but to continuously solve their own problems, because they can’t afford to outsource them. This, however, nurtures their creativity. For example, John would fix his own electrical appliances, or maybe call a friend for help. He would do his own car maintenance and other tasks that the well-off will just call a guy to fix.
Over time, you become a jack of all trades. You become an amateur mechanic, electrician, gardener, plumber, and anything you need to be. It teaches you to become very good at taking advantage of lucrative side hustles and to do just about anything for money. You’ll walk dogs, mow lawns, shovel snow, run a lemonade stand, clean homes, and anything you need to do to make money to survive. This experience will boost your intelligence, and if you are lucky enough to overcome poverty, the skills you learn will stay with you. You will have the edge over other people that have always had it easy in life. This experience can also lead to an entrepreneurial mindset.
8. You Will be Driven to Become Rich
If you need some encouragement, you should know that poverty actually gives you the drive and the skillset you need to achieve financial independence and wealth. The statistics back up this point of view. 86% of millionaires today built their wealth from the ground up, and this makes a lot of sense. Hardship teaches you how to scrape to survive, the value of a dollar, how to become resourceful and to discipline yourself and your spending, which, not surprising, are some of the key skills needed to build wealth.
People who have overcome poverty and achieved financial success share several traits: they are hungry for success, disciplined, thrifty with their finances, hardworking, and very good at building networks. This probably explains why the fortunes of many wealthy families in America don’t last more than three generations if they are that lucky. It’s the first generation that builds the wealth from nothing that will be financially savvy and disciplined. The second generation likely lived part of their lives in relative poverty and the other part in abundance, so they are more concerned with preserving the wealth. The third generation, on the other hand, knows nothing except wealth. They’ve never experienced poverty, so they don’t know what it feels like to have nothing, thus they never prepare for it. Often, it is this third generation that will dissipate the family wealth.
However, if you are born poor, you have the advantage of starting afresh and building wealth from the ground up. You’ll appreciate what you have because you understand how difficult it was to get it, and you will be able to instill the right values in your children.
An example of a poor person who was striving to become a billionaire is Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz. He said the shame of living in government-subsidized housing deeply affected him, and it inspired him to create a better life for himself. According to him, his father was a nobody who worked menial jobs that brought no respect to his family. This underprivileged upbringing motivated him to build the type of company that his father didn’t get the chance to work for. Today, he is worth more than $2 billion, and he’s the founder of a company that has stores in 73 countries across the globe.
9. The Only Way Is Up
If you have reached rock bottom, the only way you can go is up. You don’t really have much to lose, you have faced hardship, and you survived it, this makes you daring and ready to take the risks that are necessary to help you build wealth. Your past will prepare you for difficulties. And any challenge that life throws at you, you will simply shrug it off and say to yourself – “I have faced worse.” You may lack the finer things of life at the moment, but that should give you the determination you need to build a better life for yourself and your kids so that they will never have to go through the hardships you went through.
This explains why many migrants to the United States can build better lives for themselves. In the USA, Asians constitute the highest income earners in the country. Many of them came into the country with nothing, but they brought a culture of hard work and determination with them, and they have leveraged that to build better lives for themselves.
So in conclusion, being born into humble circumstances is tough. But it’s not the end of the world, it can give you that extra inspiration you need to build an abundant life. In Howard Schultz, the Starbucks founder’s case, the desire for a better life gave him the inspiration to fight for a better life. The majority of the world’s billionaires didn’t have wealth transferred to them. They built it all from nothing. And you can, too.
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