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I have mixed opinions about upper middle class people shopping at second hand stores, especially for clothing.
On one hand, I applaud these people for being frugal and for encouraging recycling via purchases.
On the other hand, most of the clothes are polyester crap and stay on the racks for months. So the nice clothes in natural fibers with quality construction should be available to poor people before the upper middle class come in. That cannot be controlled, of course.
There is one thrift store nearby that has nice things because it benefits a hospital and the women workers and male workers' wives donate nice things. The shoes, especially, are of good quality. Some of the fixed income retired women in my community shopped there almost exclusively. A few years ago, the manager decided to price items as high as possible. Now blouses and slippers can be $30 or more. Low income people can no longer shop there.
The local Value Village often has fancy cars of recent manufacture in the parking lot. I kind of hate seeing them there.
10 years ago when my kids were young and we were struggling on a $80k income in a very HCOL area w/ extremely high daycare and housing costs, we bought EVERYTHING on craigslist and got tons of hand me downs from friends. now our income has doubled, zero housing and zero daycare costs (house is paid off) and i would still never buy new furniture (except a mattress) and i belong to several free facebook groups and it's fabulous. we also have an excellent used clothing store near us where i get designer clothes for my kids for $2-5. the thought of walking into macy's and buying a $30 t shirt seems crazy now. pretty sure if our income tripled even, i would still buy clothes and other things like sporting items, dishware, from thrift stores.
It also depends on one' definition of poor. Often poor is of course, as the OP alluded to, lower income, but many middle and even higher income people are also poor imo.
It is true that a lot of poor people of course have lower income, but also many 'poor' people are poor because they spend too much money on frivolous things instead of saving and investing their money, having zero wealth and are thus also poor.
It is common for lower income or even moderate or at times higher income people to have no idea how to manage their money and waste it on new or higher end products, often giving the appearance of wealth. Of course this isn't the case 100% of the time, but I have seen it often.
10 years ago when my kids were young and we were struggling on a $80k income in a very HCOL area w/ extremely high daycare and housing costs, we bought EVERYTHING on craigslist and got tons of hand me downs from friends. now our income has doubled, zero housing and zero daycare costs (house is paid off) and i would still never buy new furniture (except a mattress) and i belong to several free facebook groups and it's fabulous. we also have an excellent used clothing store near us where i get designer clothes for my kids for $2-5. the thought of walking into macy's and buying a $30 t shirt seems crazy now. pretty sure if our income tripled even, i would still buy clothes and other things like sporting items, dishware, from thrift stores.
you still get or buy used furniture in this day and age of bed bugs ???? I'm too scared of bringing in something into my home I could not get rid of sorry but no more used furniture for me . a lot of my people and friends have stopped buying used furniture too they also worry about nastiness and bugs ...eww.
My parents never shop at thrift store maybe they don't know what that store is. They took us shopping at swap meet where mom bargained with sellers. She was very good. All my clothes were from swap meet throughout graduation.
All sectors of the population shop at thrifts. Parents may seek furnishings for a drug dependent, far into adulthood, child. Or inexpensive toys for grandkids. They then whisk away in a BMW. What their economic situation is never crossed my mind. Being employed/retired meant they were productive to a family and were not a drain on society. Possibly they dropped off a trunk-load of donations before entering the store.
Some are on the hunt for a thrift store score. Educating themselves for specific goods that have high resale value on the secondary market is proof that knowledge is power. My view of individuals as this does not label them as dumb or not worthy of being a customer. In some cases sharp dressed people, with observant eyes, are part of administration. Or board members seeing, first hand, how a possible complaint of management is being handled/safety matters being addressed. Labeling or harboring negative thoughts on how a typical patron should look has far too many sharp edges.
They need a bit of polish to be better rounded.
All sectors of the population shop at thrifts. Parents may seek furnishings for a drug dependent, far into adulthood, child. Or inexpensive toys for grandkids. They then whisk away in a BMW. What their economic situation is never crossed my mind. Being employed/retired meant they were productive to a family and were not a drain on society. Possibly they dropped off a trunk-load of donations before entering the store.
Some are on the hunt for a thrift store score. Educating themselves for specific goods that have high resale value on the secondary market is proof that knowledge is power. My view of individuals as this does not label them as dumb or not worthy of being a customer. In some cases sharp dressed people, with observant eyes, are part of administration. Or board members seeing, first hand, how a possible complaint of management is being handled/safety matters being addressed. Labeling or harboring negative thoughts on how a typical patron should look has far too many sharp edges.
They need a bit of polish to be better rounded.
I think you are missing the point of this thread. No one is criticizing anyone for thrift store shopping. They are saying that there are self-selected people who choose not to go there, and discussing some of the reasons behind that.
And I think it's not inaccurate to say that there is a group of people who fear being considered "poor" with all the negative implications that has, so they choose to not use thrift shops, whereas there are plenty of people who might have more money who consider it a good thing to score a thrift shop bargain.
^ Having one of three paid positions at a central Florida ARC resale store, my 15 month employment (30 some senior volunteers) offered a keen inside look at how stores as this operate.
After a dozen or so posts comments tend to sway away from point OP mentions. Following this path results in interesting reactions. Handicapped by this I did not mean to detail inaccurate reasoning.
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