It’s not my fault I was poor

Doucefleur

This week we'll catch up with a former guest who struggled with class anxiety. Plus, an excerpt from Marketplace's newest podcast, "Financially Inclined"!

When we first spoke to Wen Wen Yang in 2019, she was looking for help with a question that plagued her adult life: How do you be middle class? Is there some sort of guidebook for figuring it out? Yang had grown up in a lower-income family, and even though she was now earning a comfortably middle-class income, she felt like she would always be an outsider. She told our host, Reema Khrais, “I’m probably always going to be like an anthropologist wherever I am, being like, ‘Oh this is a new thing, and I’m learning about it.’”

On this week’s episode, we check in with Yang to find out how she’s handling that class anxiety these days. She’s just as observant as she was before, well aware of the markers of class that surround us every day. But those markers no longer bring her the sense of shame that they used to. She shared that, even though it was hard not to internalize all the biases around poverty she’d come across earlier in life, “I feel like I have encountered so much more language around the fact that, no, there are systems that are hurting us, and things are built up against us.”

That’s a huge shift in perspective, but it doesn’t mean everything has changed. In a candid discussion with “This Is Uncomfortable,” Yang shares how her upbringing still informs some of her financial decisions and the hurdles she hopes to overcome.

We’ll also hear an excerpt from Marketplace’s newest show, “Financially Inclined,” featuring a conversation with host Yanely Espinal and our very own Reema Khrais!

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