A good way to know whether or not you have middle class privilege is if your family had a large stock of food staples just lying around.

I mean at any given time you’ve got a huge box of cans of tomato sauce, a huge bag of rice, a bunch of spices in your cupboard, a bunch of noodles and pasta just kicking around, and several cans of soup and frozen dinners for when you’re feeling lazy.

When one of my cousins moved out for the first time my aunt got her stocked up on staples. Flour, canned veggies, spices, sugar, rice, anything that doesn’t go bad in a few days. All that cost over $400 upfront.

After that initial investment in all that stuff though, living gets a lot cheaper. All your staples almost never run out all at once. So in one week you probably just buy some perishables like meat and veggies and maybe buy another giant bag of rice because your current one is sort of getting low.

So when people on the internet tell you that they can teach you how to make gourmet ramen for less than $3 they’re technically right but they’re also assuming that you just have a lot of these staples lying around and can afford to buy in bulk. Maybe the amount of miso paste you used only amounts to 10¢ but the entire bag cost $12.

If I only had 20$ to eat this week I’d already have a bunch of canned stuff and grains in my cupboard and I could probably afford to buy some cheap vegetables and meat. But if someone couldn’t afford to pay $400 to fill their cupboards up the first time they can’t rely on there already being rice when they only have $20 at the end of the month. They need to buy food as they want to use it. So in their situation it makes sense to buy a $1 hamburger from McDonald’s or a box of Mac n cheese and some milk to cook it with. Not vegetables that cost just as much as that box of Mac and cheese and won’t feed nearly as many people.

My dad and his siblings spent a good chunk of their childhoods being poor after their dad’s business went under and something they often tell me is that “the poor can’t afford to be thrifty.”

So anyways if you’re poor you probably already knew this but if you grew up lower to central middle class like I did you might not. And you might’ve wondered why people often get so mad in the comments of those videos that claim to make meals that cost less than a dollar. It’s because that bulk bag of rice from Costco you’re pulling from costs way more than a dollar and those videos don’t take that into account. They assume that everyone watching can afford to be thrifty.