"I think you're rich."

That was a comment made to me by a client last week, and it has been on my mind for a while now. I can't figure out what makes her think that, and I can't figure out why the comment bothers me. So maybe by putting my thoughts out here, I can flush it out and figure out what's going on in my head.

I remember when I was a child, there was this house that always fascinated me. It was on a busy street and I would go past it often, whenever we went anywhere that involved going south on Pulaski. This house was kind of by itself, there were stores and a strip mall across the street, but nothing on that side that I can remember except that house for about a block on each side. This house was abandoned, but at one point it was probably a nice house for someone, but nothing extravagant. I remember wondering why someone would leave their home and why no one had ever moved in to it and taken care of it. Keep in mind, I was a child, and knew nothing about finances and the complications of owning a home. I don't think I had ever heard the word foreclosure  and I certainly wouldn't have understood it if I did hear it. The house just always fascinated me, and I thought about the people who might have lived there and why no one lived there anymore. Although I did not know anything about mortgages or escrow or home loans, I did know that if you did not pay your bills, you couldn't live in your house anymore. So I thought that they must not have been able to pay their bills, and I thought that was sad. I don't know anything about the strength of the people who ever lived in the home, but the strength of that house was pretty amazing. In my earliest memories of this house, there were no windows left, and no doors. Eventually some of the walls started to fall apart, and you could see into the house. Floorboards were falling apart and drywall was rotting inside. I remember seeing this house for years, even after we moved out of the area to another suburb, because we had family that direction and best friends there that I wanted to visit a lot. The state of this house deteriorated over the years, but I was always surprised that the house was still standing as the years passed. I don't remember how old I was, but I do remember that it had finally fallen down and then eventually it was cleared away. The house is now gone, but my memories are still very clear.

I attribute that house to my interest in poverty. My social stratification class was one of my favorite classes in college and I feel like I learned so much in that class about social status and how it works. I went to college in a town that has a great deal of poverty. I just did a quick search and it turns out that the median income there in 2009 was about $24, 000. That's not much to live on for a year, especially since that is the median household income. So families with kids are living somewhere around that level.

I have worked in non-profit for the majority of my grown up life, first at Planned Parenthood and now in a rural area counseling kids. I have never gotten paid much due to this. I spent time being "college poor", where I ate a lot of Ramen and not much else, but I still had a roof over my head and family to support me, although they didn't have a ton to spare either. I lived off excess of student loans and whatever I could make at a part time job. I have also been "newlywed poor", which is probably the poorest I have ever been. We didn't have much to spare for anything, and I can distinctly remember doing our taxes that first year and looking at each other wondering how we even kept our electricity on. I know that I was not rich growing up, but I never heard a lot about money and my parents always kept me thinking that we were fine. Our utilities never got shut off and we never got kicked out of our house, but I know there wasn't a lot of extra to go around. Now? Well, I certainly am not the breadwinner, that's for sure. But we are definitely comfortable, and as I told my client when she said she thought I was rich, my bills can all be paid. And this was definitely not always the case.

I guess I feel like by saying that I am rich, it is assuming I have not had to struggle. I have not had the same struggles that some of my clients and their families have had, and I am not going to pretend I have. But I have had to choose which bills get paid first, and which I can get behind on before they will shut it off. I have lived for a little while on money that I got from selling CDs to the used music and movie store in town. And I have definitely had times where a trip to Wal Mart was a luxury, not a necessity. But I also admit that my life has certainly not been that hard. I have had my own struggles, monetarily and not.

So am I rich? Well, I have wonderful friends that I love. I am in love with my husband and I glad every day that he continues to put up with me and be glad to spend the rest of his life with me. I have a job, which is more than a lot of people have right now, and most of the time, I enjoy this job. I have two degrees, paid for by student loans, but I still have two degrees. I have a wonderful dog, who is well taken care of. And if I want to buy new shoes, most of the time I can without worrying about it (except the crap that the aforementioned husband will give me about yet another pair of shoes). And, as I told my client, I can pay the bills and still have some left for fun and occasionally spoiling people I love. So I guess, if that makes me rich, then yes, I am. But I still appreciate the struggle people have and work to help people who have this struggle.