Our family income is 55k a year.We live simply, do not borrow money for things we do not have cash for, we have a manufactured home with a good finished basement, heat with wood, have 5 acres, we eat very well, never buy new cars, do not go shopping for clothes and wait for birthdays and Christmas for new ones, we care for our animals, goats, chickens, dogs (2) and cats (3). the bills are paid every month, no, we dont all own phones, my son has one, we all have computers though, and have a wide choice of things to stream, we have tools, we have a pantry full of storable food, drink from artisan well water that will never dry out, bought a small 12 ft aluminum boat to take to the lakes to go fishing. I have gardens I have hand dug and grown food on for 25 years. There are 4 of us and 2 dependents, we make our living by working in human services for Developmentally Disabled adults, one of those persons live with us and we care for him well, it is almost a 24/7 job, he is part of the family but requires full care, autism and cp. We ARE NOT living in poverty, we live within our means. We have an abundant life full of God's blessings and good ness. I look out the window while I am washing dishes,(by hand) to a beautiful Valley. On the weekends we BBQ and enjoy craft local beer. It was hard scraping and a lot of hours of work before I got a small cabin on an acre in rural Vermont 35 years ago, overtime we put the house in and paid off the site work, added 4 acres. Teach your children to "live poor" and to make do or do without, use it up and wear it out. We have a life second to none. No, the furniture is not new, no, we dont remodel for cosmetics, these old kitchen counters hold a cutting board and appliances just fine, they do not have to be "granite", they are shabby, but their purpose functions. In the evening we sit outside in the gardens that are blooming with perrenials I put in over the years, listening to birds and wind.We work for our money, there is nothing substandard here, but if we allowed materialism to take over, sure, I guess we would feel that way. We get zero benefits, dont need them. The people living on welfare around here are multi generational welfare recipients, they all have drug and mental health problems, and yes, they all have i phones and smoke ciggerettes that cost as much as a steak, they screw around and have loser baby daddys who run and hide when the housing inspectors show up. They get free childcare, hit up the food pantry, and the women are toothless and burnt out by the age of 30. White people most of them, no excuses for being in the position they are in except for feeling entitled to all the amenities hard work has to offer. But please dont think you have to live a substandard life because of a yearly income, that is brainwashing to keep up mindless consumption of lifestyles of a certain kind. I tell my son, when he would see people with shiny new cars and brand name clothes going away on fancy vacations, I would remind him that all of things did not mean that some people were rich, it meant that some people had a lot of debt, and I refused to do that for us. We literally own everything we have, it has been paid for.Oh , yeah, I am a single Mom who never thought that the State was responsible for my beautiful son. Not planned that way, my spouse decided to leave the marriage when my boy was 7. We were better off without him, trust me.