we fell pretty hard a couple of years back.
my dad suddenly didn't want to go to work. i thought we were fine because i knew my dad would never go unemployed was just a "long vacation". so there we were, i went off to an expensive school, asking my parents to pay rent and all that shit, and my siblings would visit my other sister abroad whenever they felt like it. we lived off of whatever my dad saved up for about 2 years.
then i get a phone call from my mom that we might be losing our house. i thought -- pfft. my parents could figure their way out of this.
i even flew out to see my sister thinking, hey, it might be cool to stay here for a while!
fucking hell, my parents paid for her rent too.
so there we were, all my siblings and i abroad, totally oblivious to whats going on with our parents... until they couldn't send rent money.
fucking landlord hounded us, and it was embarrassing. one time, we left our youngest sister at home, and she said our power was shut off (because we werent able to pay) and she was just laying on the floor with a flashlight crying because she never thought this would happen to us.
i was the eldest and was desperately trying to find a job put there and also find a new place because they gave us a few days to move out.
we had to move from a nice condo to a shitty apartment with a housemate, we had to throw out most of our stuff and leave them behind, and i had to beg the owner to let the 4 of us stay because that was all we could afford and if they didn't take us in... we'd be homeless.
my parents couldn't buy us plane tickets home. even if they could, we werent going to leave our sister alone out there.
my boyfriend would send me money. that was embarrassing. him and my sister's boyfriend also helped out with rent downpayment.
when we could find enough coins, i'd go out for job interviews. or buy better food than ramen and eggs.
we thought -- okay, we figured this out. we're good.
nope. back home, we were losing our house. we had to go home and help out. i've never seen my parents so heartbroken, and them breaking the news to us was one thing i will never ever fucking forget.
so we lose our house, i remember us packing up plates, and we were all like --- you know what, this kind of feels... good. we're letting go of things.
not sure if my siblings meant it as well as i did, or if they were just saying that to make our parents feel better.
now, okay, this is going to sound stupid compared to real poverty stories:
but we had a small condo to move into. it was 1 bedroom. my parents, 4 of kids -- and oh, in the midst of all our drama, theres my brother's pregnant girlfriend whos about to pop living with us.
tbh, that was fun. it was like this big sleepover and eating shitty food and we have not, in a long ass time, shared a TV.
didn't want to crowd the place, so i left and lived with my boyfriend. my sister and i hardly went home because we just didn't want to crowd the place.
So... baby comes in, and that kind of just brought good luck and happiness.
looking back, i think my dad fell into depression and they never told us. when his first grandkid came in, he got back up almost immediately.
on his first paycheck, he took us out for breakfast. i almost cried looking at that menu. will never forget that too. we could order anything again, and i was staring at it thinking... this pancake stack costs as much as 2 days food, this plate of ribs was dinner for all of us for a week... and why are scrambled eggs this expensive?!
we bounced back and things are a lot better for us now. parents got a nicer house, everyone got jobs, nobody asks them for money anymore.
funny na lang ang stories namin na -- hey, remember when all we had to eat was a can of fruit cocktail for 2 days? remember when we had to stretch out a box of mac and cheese and made it into soup?
TL;DR: bratty kids lose money. learns the value of everything. stops being brats.