You could also say being poor in childhood teaches you how to be frugal. I regard this as a healthy habit and better discipline I wish I had with money (coming from a middle-class family).
Another way to look at frugality is just an aversion to spending money on whatever it is that society or mass media tell you you have to buy, an important and healthy attitude one can have, IMO.
A term I've seen bandied about for the collective symptoms is having a Scarcity mindset and it's based on insecurity/fear of unexpectedly running out of money (which was a frequent event in childhood)
John Scalzi's classic "Being Poor" blog post[1] details the effects of poverty in detail.
Never been poor; me and my whole family have always done this. I just forced them to get rid of their standalone DVD player. They have remote controls for devices going back to the 90's.
The cellphone example is even better; you'd be a fool to immediately dump your old phone. It's small and easy to store, and if your new phone craps out or gets lost or stolen you may very well have a use for another phone that works right now. I have phones going back 2 generations.
This is just frugality and contingency planning.
Scarcity mindset is more like, "I have $300, I need to spend it before it goes away". That's what keeps people poor.
So what basis do you have for commenting on the experience of it?
> me and my whole family have always done this.
I'm sure there are other things that both your family and poor families have done, but that doesn't have explanatory value.
You don't have to be/(have been) poor to be a hoarder. On the old cellphone, my emphasis was a drawer full of backup-to-a-backup-to-a-backup devices that are now 10 years old and is running Android 2 and are potentially a fire hazard while charging and are not fit for use - they are emotional support devices. Keeping one generation of backup device is rational, 3+ means there's something to unpack.
I'm curious about how your family tradition came to be: a high number of people who experienced the great depressions in their formative years are/were compulsive hoarders in latter years.
Being poor is what keeps poor people poor; costs of necessities go down the richer you get; being poor is expensive
Second order frugality: Buy it for life. Quality over quantity.
Third order frugality: This inert matter is not nearly as interesting as the people who wish to sell it to us want us to believe.
This of course after having spent too much on high quality "stuff" with little use.
It's definitely happened to me multiple times. And I don't think it's just a coincidence, with any new hobby or skill you will start out improving very quickly and then eventually hit a plateau. The first thing you think when you hit the plateau is "I would be a little bit better/have a little bit more fun with this if I had better gear", and it's usually true and you do get a slight boost. But then a little while after that you hit a sustained plateau anyway and that's the point where you'll often lose interest.
You are also right in that there are plenty of people who are high earners, but never get to actually build wealth because they spend it all. This can often be the curse of living in a high cost of living area. You see all the wealthy people driving in nice cars and living in luxury homes, and this makes it difficult to consciously deny yourself these things and live (relatively) modestly but build long term wealth instead.
You could say anything, but what's true is that it's not frugality. Where do you get that?
It's a traumatic experience with lifelong consequences. I know that from many people who have experienced it.
That turns out to be the opposite of frugality.