Transcript for:
Experiences of Wealth Disparities Between Couples

rich people of Reddit who married someone significantly poorer what surprised you about their previous way of life story one not rich but with a partner who was raised by a Teen Mom and grew up poor sometimes I just want rice and vegetables for dinner that's a no from her she won't go back story two I was adopted at age seven it lived in extreme poverty and then all of a sudden I lived with a doctor who brought gifts for birthdays and Christmas I didn't know that was a thing I didn't know you could go to the store to get food I just thought you went to the church and had to pray before they gave you a bag of food Story three sandwiches when I made him a sandwich I only put one thin slice of meat in it he couldn't believe that was how I had sandwiches growing up story 4. I fell in love with my uni best friend who really didn't have any money when I got a job for my birthday I decided to plan a holiday and offered to bring him along he doesn't know I'm in love with him at all but maybe I should tell him Story five my husband grew up in a family where they were comfortable but on a strict budget six kids and Mom and disability my family had no budget one day we were at the grocery store and he always insists on walking up and down every aisle I finally lost it because he was taking so long and asked him why he did it growing up we could only spend a hundred dollars a week in groceries for all of us I always had to put what I wanted back because we couldn't afford it now I can afford whatever I want so I like to look at everything I could have took him 10 years to tell me this I felt like a terrible person story six my wife genuinely thought and her family still does that there was a direct relationship between someone's net worth and the labels they purchase if someone doesn't have a Gucci bag or a Rolex watch why it's because they can't afford it my wife was astonished when I first told her that people exist that are ultra wealthy and yet Drive old cars and wear clothes without labels story seven I was with a girl for a while who grew up in a pretty broken home still surprises me just how bad her spending habits are she racks up credit card debt like it's nothing Story 8 hamburger helper she hates it because it would be her meal five times a week growing up I had never seen Hamburger Helper before I went to college and loved that stuff 10 for 10 deals are awesome story nine differences in our childhoods Disneyland me went to Disneyland often part of the experience was eating the expensive food there her did not go often brought in food birthdays and Christmas me had big parties with lots of friends gifts her no gifts didn't really celebrate expectations and disappointments me because I was never constantly growing up in disappointments I didn't care if something didn't work out as I expected I take a chance anyways her constant disappointment so as a defense mechanism she never expected Much Anymore out of fear of disappointment storytelling more of a funny incident but I was the poor one my husband at the time still my boyfriend took me out to a very nice restaurant waiter asked if I wanted pepper on my Caesar salad that was just made tableside I said sure and he went about it the thing is I didn't know he had to say stop my husband slowly realizes this but decides to see it play out it did eventually say that I need to say stop I just thought a Caesar was this way as it was my first time even eating a salad that wasn't just Iceberg and ranch dressing it tasted fine just a little bit too much pepper story 11. my significant other said today I made rent today I've earned enough for accumulated enough to pay the rent I realized this is a monthly accomplishment to someone with no fixed income or salary 12 when the family had people over for dinner if they ended the prayer before the meal with fhb amen it was a signal to let the children know that they don't have enough food for everyone so take smaller servings and let the guests get a regular serving fhb means family hold back they're always generous to their friends and didn't let their lack of funds embarrass themselves when doing so story 13. honestly food insecurity when we were first married she would get visibly and easy if the food in the house was running low she never overeats or anything she was just always concerned about it a lot of times when she was younger she went hungry on the humorous side though she hates camping her answer is always the same I camped because it was fun she can't because they couldn't afford hotels just a quick side now to feel like a Content love listening to our stories please press the Subscribe button and turn on the notification Bell so you'll get updated for our future uploads and back to the stories story 14. she and her mother lived with her grandfather to not be homeless because her grandfather owned a house she was putting Community College payments and her credit card and building debt with it it paid off her credit cards when we were dating and she cried at me for being so nice it was only like a thousand and three hundred bucks I bought a condo we got married that we bought a house and never really considered myself Rich until I started dating her and learned that a trip to Wendy's was a treat I grew up middle class and we were currently middle class story 15. my wife was born and raised in the Soviet Union she still goes crazy for fresh fruit like it's the most extravagant luxury Story 16. the prevailing mindset in his community growing up was that insurance was something only rich people had not health insurance mind you well not just health insurance auto insurance going without it was a way of life for almost everyone he knew story 17 credit cards were avoided for me growing up we were encouraged to get a credit card in our name and use it as much as possible in order to build credit there was always money to pay off each month so it made sense to number one build credit number two collect airline miles or whatever the reward was back in the day when we got together she always used cash or a debit card she had a credit card for emergencies and avoided using it otherwise it took a long time to get over her aversion or skepticism we were fortunate to have two good paying jobs that would also taught me a healthy appreciation for what it means to have a financial question story 18. I didn't marry this woman but when we started dating she always wanted to chill in my place never hers which was fine but she gained 35 pounds in just like a few months of dating she was 100 pounds when we started dating not that it was a bad thing number one I'm a chubby man number two I was just glad she wasn't pregnant anyway it turns out her family couldn't afford dinner sometimes so suddenly she had a place to eat every night and gorged herself story 19. she lived in the desert without air conditioning story 20. my dad was the opposite grew up quite poor and built a business up and ended up doing quite well still eats like there's only 25 cents in his checking account left alone he would gladly eat ramen every day and his go-to meals rice porridge we went to hysteria francescana in Modena a few years ago literally named the best restaurant in the world we all went for the tasting menu but he asked to order a la carte and he wanted to order just buttered fettuccine he only agreed to the tasting menu when they insisted that the whole table had to do it if some of us were doing it he'll even insist on eating things that have been burned or drink milk that's just starting to turn story 21 not super rich by any means but my husband said he'll always be surprised about the following how I lived off of 13k in 2011 resiliency to survive financially and pursue my dreams of being the first college graduate how I didn't know what spinach was or tasted like until our first few dates in addition to Hell other leafy greens story 22 one of my exes could pull in a lot of money easily twice or Thrice than I could he was so incredibly bad at saving his money down to say setting himself up as a company to avoid paying higher rates of tax but then paying a large amount each month to an accounting company to handle his taxes which he do himself anyway because he didn't trust them to get it right he'd pay for taxis from one end of the city to another or higher cars rather than use public transport flights canceled book new ones never bothered a claim back on insurance buy a sports car wreck it sell it for scrap it'd wear contracts and then take time off to work on his own startup but spend every weekend just going out and buying substances in booze I thought it was really fun and wild at first aha money really means nothing to you but when we became a long-term couple we started feeling like his mother man will you not just fill out the insurance paperwork story 23 about to marry him we met in college and my parents paid for everything while he had student loans and a part-time job to pay for everything else if he was really hurting his parents would transfer 40 into his account but that was pretty rare they'd give him hell if he asked it was always very anxious about spending money and never bought name brands he would also buy Essentials like toilet paper and two rolls at a time one ply only didn't really realize that buying so little every few days was wasting money rather than buying in bulk when we booked our first vacation cheap road trip to Georgia he couldn't pay for anything and was worried the whole time the anxiety that would keep him up at night made me so sad he still never fills up his gas tank all the way only ten dollars at a time drives me nuts but now we both have great full-time jobs and he rarely has any anxiety never has to worry about money anymore it is so much happier as a result story 24 my wife earned many times more than I did when I was a high school teacher back when we were dating she sometimes would drive my 10 year old primer black stick shift Honda Civic that my cousin lent me until I could buy another car she was blown away by how aggressively mean people are to you when you drive an ugly old car and she got out of the car the spell lifted I got a lot of respect from her for that she seemed to think it was a saint for not turning Sarah over it I was constantly getting pulled over by cops and let go targeted by road rage and also pedestrians felt too comfortable engaging with me I drive a newer Honda one year old now and it is so different I drive the same but probably drive a bit more aggressively now that I can't hear the wind roaring when I'm going over 40 miles per hour I haven't been pulled over and haven't had a negative interaction on the road in a long time also my wife now enjoys trading cars with me Story 25 my experience is from the opposite perspective I was the poor one it absolutely floored me how my wife acts when something breaks like a car appliances clothes Etc as a child living below the poverty line replacing a tire are the Necessities was a disaster requiring tricky trade-offs in the budget or just plan acceptance or just how boned you were and my wife's phone broke I went into full panic mode while she Shrugged and said we can just get a new one this afternoon and then we did story 26 a partner and I are both poor but different kinds of poor she's never been homeless or not had enough to eat while I have she's extremely Frugal and hates buying anything we don't need I feel the desperate need to stock up if we have any extra money and it's a fight for me not to fill our house with canned and Dry Goods in case we don't have enough money to buy food next month for some reason it makes no sense but my instinct is to hoard food because there was just never enough of it around growing up story 27 making financial decisions based around the three paycheck months if you're paid every two weeks most months you get two paychecks and all of your monthly bills and budgeting is based on those two paychecks but twice a year there are three paydays in a month and that's when you can actually solve problems that's when you can get the car registered or fix the dryer or get the cats prayed the other 10 months you're doing maintenance and trying to scrape by three paycheck months you can actually try to fix problems story 28 I'm not dating her but she's a good friend of mine and her parents are definitely into one percent I told her I had to work this summer to save up for a graduation trip and that money was going to be tied for the next year but I'd love to go on a safari after graduation if I managed to save enough mind you I'm solidly upper middle class her parents paid for it just because they'd helped her move into her apartment it's not like that's what friends are for or anything I dated a one percenter briefly she was surprised it willingly went inside fast food restaurants story 29 he was making good money but came from a poor family one thing that surprised me was the lack of budgeting no knowledge of a 401k or Roth IRA retirement seemed like something that he'd never get to do so even though he made good money he was starting to rack up credit card debt and he's much better at it than I am he adores budgeting and looks forward to fire story 30. long-term dating pets I was always surprised by the number of pets she and her family had living in the trailer and how much of a share of their income they spent on them well Pats give you unconditional love that's important when you don't have much else also much better than substances story 31 my love of camping started from growing up poor the only family vacations my single mom and brother and I had were family reunion events several states away it involved long road trips in a car with no AC we got to camp in tents and get a break from reality we also ate a lot better over a campfire than me making Hamburger Helper for my brother well my mom went to bed early she worked hard to support us and battled with depression and treated for years until she could afford medication those strips were good for all of us story 32 my foster daughter dislikes pasta she ate so much of it before we got her that she hated it the first meal I made for her on her first night with us pasta she didn't say a word and ate her dinner but later I found out she didn't like pasta because of how much of it she had eaten before I always took a grocery shopping so she could pick out stuff she liked after that she was shocked when she found out Red Delicious apples weren't the only variety out there I think she overrated on honeycrisp apples when I first introduced them to her story 33 I'm not well off though my stepfather is I was raised by a single mom who spent money on everything and bills were always behind she just couldn't manage her money at all in her 50s she met and married a multi-millionaire we are in Middle America so that goes further than maybe in a lot of areas they've given themselves a ten thousand dollar a month budget to live on living on interest on their own home anyway once my mom met him and they got all our finances situated and paid off she won't spend a penny he spends like it is going out of style he's actually begged me to take her shopping to get clothes and accessories she won't do it she spent more when she was a single mom with nothing makes no sense to me at least buy a new outfit she's hell-bent to not using a penny of his money they barely even have any groceries if they have anything it is because he buys it for them she's a retired nurse that gets a retirement in SS but she won't spend anything she lives poorer now than any other time in her life story 34. I'm not rich at all but my husband came from a very poor Mexican Village he told me he used to shower outside because there was no in-house plumbing and use leaves as toilet paper I mean there's poor and there's my husband's previous life poor he's been living in the U.S for 12 years now but when we first met it was so interesting seeing life through his childlike eyes going to the cinema was a huge event for him heating up food in a microwave is a totally foreign concept and staying at fancy hotels when we went on vacations like whoa I still see him surprised by things now and then and it just reminds me how much I take middle status class for granted story 35 I came from a relatively wealthy Family new money my dad started his own business and grew up poor and my wife came from a lower income blue-collar family we got married out of college and neither made much money in the beginning the biggest surprise was how she wanted to spend money she was shocked when my mom bought her a 100 plus dollar pair of jeans for her birthday she couldn't wrap her mind around spending that much in jeans but she wanted a motorcycle for me which I don't ride in the first place and then a new furniture set and then a new bed then a new car she wasn't concerned about savings or retirement but she never wanted my parents money for any of it we're both way too proud of that it took a long time for her to come around to having an emergency savings account focusing on debt not needing the other stuff she eventually realized that her parents wouldn't be in such a terrible situation because their spending habits are horrible we recently paid off my car and she immediately thought I should get a new car story 36 both came from poor backgrounds hubby an hour and six figures I still buy me clothes from a charity shop because I cannot ever fathom why you'd spend 400 pounds in shoes and bags for a season you can buy designer clothes in a charity shop if you know what you're looking for I think m s and waitrose are just overpriced when you can get a trolley full of fresh food and eat like kings at Aldi for a hundred pounds I don't do take away food funny story though when we first got together I was making a spaghetti dinner and grabbed a bottle of red wine off his shelf to add to the sauce I didn't know what a 45 pound bottle of wine was and still think it tasted pretty ordinary and I drink a lot of wine story 37 I come from a family just a bit higher than the top one percent I was walking out of my ex's garage and I saw a lawnmower I asked her why they owned their own lawnmower if they weren't in the landscaping business that was the day I learned most people don't hire other people to mow their lawns story 38. I about fell out of my chair the first time we went out to eat and he ordered an appetizer in addition to his entree that's when I knew story 39 I was shocked at how many tools her family could replace with a butter knife I was also surprised how they used the same cup for everything each person's cup was used for everything from coffee to Wine to milk to beer have come to appreciate many aspects of my wife's previous lifestyle I find them much less stress now knowing how unimportant material things are one thing I can't accept though is how she used to put safety second for example no outlet covers and Outlets no railing on stairs standing on a makeshift ladder to grab things from high shelves Etc I should add I'm not what most would consider Rich however I was absolutely comparatively Rich I'm also proud to say my wife now makes more than me get it girl story 40. me and my girlfriend aren't Rich at all but she's got a nice fancy job now and makes 20 an hour where I only make 10. the other day we went out and we shop at Goodwill almost exclusively since we're both poor I thought she was taking me to Goodwill to find shorts because I only have one pair in The Ripped but instead proudly holding her new paycheck she took me to Target and got me a few much-needed pairs of shorts I thought it would stop there but she then took me to GameStop and got me the anime figure had been dying to have in a t-shirt it was 40 for both and I almost had a heart attack but she just laughed I know it doesn't exactly count but I think this is the most I think either of us ever really had and I can't tell you how shocked it was to get something new and out of the box I love her so much I could cry story 41 I had an ax that must have made six figures as a specialty electrician of some sort but legitimately had no clue how much because his work would pay for things for him I have no idea how it all worked out but his work paid for all of his lodging and recurring bills cable utilities weekly made service so he had no idea how much any of that stuff was even after that he ate out drank and smoked constantly had multiple state-of-the-art Entertainment Systems played hockey had Yankee season tickets ten thousand dollars plus and kept envelopes of cash from cash paychecks around his house I asked once how he does his taxes company handled it if you enjoyed this video make sure to check out this next video the YouTube algorithm really thinks you like it