Drew Burnett Gregory (Autostraddle)I could respond to every sign of immense privilege with reasons why I still had less than the people around me. I mean, do wealthy people grow up hearing their parents worry about money? I thought, of course not. The real answer is, of course. Everyone worries about money! My parents would argue they had to take loans out to pay for my college and rich people can pay out of pocket. But the truth is there are just levels to being rich.
I really liked the way this post used personal experience and a couple of movies to remind us that there are different levels of rich and of privilege. I had the exact same struggles as the author when in business school: many of my peers were going to all the fancy open-champagne skiing events, while I was constantly skipping things and working finding new ways to monetize my blog to make sure the following month’s food expenses would be covered, and I felt poor. And then I’d go home for the holidays and go skiing with my parents, which was very different from the fancy skiing others did, of course.
Articles on the difference between broke and poor always strikes a chord with me. I wish I had known that distinction when I was young and conservative and broke, and hadn’t slipped so eagerly into the oppression olympics game to cringe at the thought of it ten years later.