"we're poor, too"

"Yeah, we're poor, too," blurted out of my mouth before I could stop myself. The conversation meandered on without much thought to my thoughtless comment, but I couldn't keep my mind from dwelling on it. We're poor too spoken to a girl who could only fantasize about leaving her country for a trip to London until she decided to serve a mission for the LDS church. A girl who really knew what it was to be poor. We're poor too when we live in London, study at a prestigious and fairly expensive university, and take weekend trips more often that we should. In reality, this is care of one large government student loan, without which we would probably not even be here, but still. 

We're poor too when I've never gone hungry, really hungry for want of money. There have been some lean times over the years and long stretches of more ramen noodles than could possibly be healthy, and one or two serendipitous moments where an unexpected insurance refund (or Trav's mom) saved the day. Yet we've still been able to travel around the world, live in respectable places, have moderately decent clothing, own more than one vehicle at a time, and pay cash for 4 other university degrees. Poor? Hardly. 

But I need a reminder every now and then. It's frustrating being seriously underemployed and mostly living off a student loan. I had a different set of expectations of what our life would be like in London. Mainly that I'd have a real job and we'd be able to finance more elaborate adventures in farther flung corners of Europe (our willingness to sleep in grubby hostel dorm rooms, visit mostly free sights, and subsist on bread, cheese, and carrots whilst traveling has definitely allowed us to see more than one might expect). 

Regardless of our situation at this moment, we have what a lot of truly poor people don't have. We know that at the end of this "poor" year that isn't really that poor at all, we'll go back to our normal lives with normal jobs. We'll pay off our student loan and continue traveling and living life and not being poor. I have no right to claim "poor" when there are people who don't have smart phones, or reliable electricity, or jobs, or education, or healthy food, or any food. We feel poor these days because of the privileged life we're used to and the lifestyles of our peers. But our poor is relative. Our "poor" is a privileged kind of poor which means not poor at all.