My Story
My Dad was roughly the equivalent of a Public Middle School Teacher, my Mum worked as a shop assistant. We probably were not poor enough to be really low income. We never went hungry or had trouble with housing. New Zealand, where I lived, has a great social welfare system, so that took care of medical expenses. When I went to university I lived at home and rode the bus and later rode a used 350cc motorcycle, paid for with a vehicle loan, with money from summer jobs. I had jobs every summer that helped out a lot with my expenses, and made life really quite OK. I was lucky in that at the time I went to university in New Zealand in the late 1970s it was free if you passed the entrance exams, and even paid a small stipend to all students, but less than the National unemployment benefit at the time!
