Personal Essay: Extreme Poverty In 18 Years Of My Life

In my eighteen years of life so far, my family and I have lived in extreme poverty and over the years have gradually worked our way up to middle class. I have seen hands on how the rules of the poverty class as well as the middle class play a huge role in society. The middle class is not perfect by any means, but it is much more comfortable that poverty. As someone who grew up in poverty, I can say that there are many luxuries my family and I had to get by without, such as bank accounts, access to our own personal transportation, and even electricity at times.
Not everyone has bank accounts, especially people in poverty. Throughout my entire childhood, neither of my parents had ever had a bank account. I knew of family friends who had credit cards and debit cards and always wondered why my family did not have them. It did not bother me when I was younger, but as I got older I became …show more content…
Electricity is something that many people take for granted and would not know how to survive without. There were several times within my childhood that I can recall having to use a flashlight to get around the house at night. At the time, I had just figured that every household had the problem of their power being shut off for a few days, I was wrong. I remember once when I was around eight years old, my family went without electricity for six days. My sister had broken her arm at a church camp earlier that week and our insurance did not cover the hospital bill. My family was already struggling financially as it was. With the extra expenses we had, my parents income had come short of being able to cover the electric bill on time. Since I was still a child, it did not bother me as much that there were no lights in the house, or that we had to go over to my aunt 's house to shower. It is now a critical necessity for most of society to have electricity, gas, and water in their