I'm not sure what you mean by this.
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Like I said, I have spent the majority of my life in what one would call the "poor house". Thus I grew up with and was raised around other kids and their families who were in much the same boat as my family. I'm still friends with many of them. Now many of them live in the same situation they grew up in, that I grew up in. When my wife and I were first married, we lived below the poverty line. We still had a one bedroom apartment, basic cable and internet access. We didn't have the luxury of cell phones, video games, flat panel TVs, nor could we afford to go out to a nice dinner. Our treat was spending $8 once a week on the Wendy's dollar menu. But we were smart enough to not have kids during this time, for exercise we went running outside(free) instead thinking of going to a gym, and for $5 I fashioned a homemade pullup bar. Throw in push ups and crunches and we kept ourselves healthy for cheap. We had one credit card, and we did not max it out. Saved it for emergencies, for which we thankfully had very little. Neither of us smoked, did drugs, nor did we buy alcohol during this time.
We planned for the future and took steps to direct us towards that. She got her nursing degree and I took a job in insurance. For a couple of years we made good money (from my perspective) that landed us in middle class status. But I was unhappy with working in insurance, so we decided to tough it out on her job alone while I went back to school to find a career I would enjoy. We then moved back into a lower middle-class income, considering we now had 1 kid and one on the way. This is where we are now, except I have just started my new career so within the next year we will be back to a more regular middle class amount of money. So from my low-middle class spot in life, I type this post on a laptop computer with high speed internet access, while I watch ESPN through my direcTV satelitte provider on my 42" flat panel TV. no, its not 1080p, I don't have HD programming, and I don't have all the movie channels. I have had to live with not ordering UFC PPVs, and I have missed out on the first 4 iphone releases, and their competitive counterparts. But life isn't bad. In fact, I can't think of anything that I "need" as a lower middle class person. My needs have been met 10 fold. Yes there I things I want, but I have the patience and the forethought to pursue them only when I can afford it. My wife and I have never had a honeymoon, but we know that one day the timing and the money will be right and we can choose to pursue it at that time.
Some of my friends that I grew up with, in the same situation, with the same public education I had, have been kicked out of their trailer homes because they wanted to spend their rent money on Packers tickets, drink and smoke heavily, get fired from a multitude of jobs because they drank too much the night before and missed too many days, had cars repossessed because they wanted to smoke weed instead of pay their car payments, etc... But they have a social safety net they can fall back on. So they never change their priorities, because the state will allow them to continue to fail and then prop them up. We can't say I came from greater means and thus had greater opportunities. They all had the same choices in life to make as I did, and the same lack of resources to start with. The difference is priorities. Yes, it is rare for the poor man to rise up to become a powerful business mogul. That is why I don't point to those examples. However, it is not impossible nor even that difficult for a poor man/woman to be able to navigate successfully in our country, provided they have their priorities right.
No, my life hasn't been the most exciting and colorful. Many would call it boring. I like to think of it as my life being a train, and the lives of my friends as a rollercoaster. Their lives are centered on entertainment and pleasure. They have many twists and turns, ups and downs. But theirs is a circular life that keeps repeating itself.
