Like My Friend Paula, Most Americans Today Are Considered Poor and No Longer Middle Class

PomeroySays
7 min readJul 22, 2024

Growing up, I knew my family was lower middle class. My dad always had a job but we lived hand to mouth at times.

Some of the memories from the 80s/early 90s, I have blocked out, but some came to the surface recently:

  • Holes in shoes. Using duct tape to repair them
  • Empty fridge. I got in a strange habit of rearranging the existing food (usually mustard, milk, apples) to make it look like there was more food than there was. I did this the other day. My husband asked what I was doing. Then I realized I had gone back to that time when food was scarce.
  • We couldn’t get new school clothes. If we did, it was from Salvation Army or Kmart.
  • My father washing plastic wrap, after using it so he could reuse it
  • Staying home when classmates were going on summer vacation. The school I went to did a lot of field trips, so I was able to travel a little like to Boston, NYC, etc.
  • Getting made fun of in school for not having the right clothes
  • Because we couldn’t afford a computer or word processor, I used an old typewriter to type my school papers.

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PomeroySays

New England born- now living in the Midwest. Blogger, author, influencer, and history addict. Say hi on KoFi- https://ko-fi.com/pomeroysays/