As an immigrant this is a problem that plagued my family.
We moved from Burma to Singapore, so we were really poor (the kyat to the Singaporean dollar rate was terrible) and basically it was awful for my family. There was this huge stigma for being poor - we'd walk instead of taking the bus and we lived in a tiny one-room flat for a long time (4 people squeezed in). But the whole time, it was really important to sound rich, to buy gifts for visiting relatives, to show off in front of friends, etc. Like buying dinner for your friends, that kind of thing. The whole time we're eating ramen noodles or nothing at all.
Now that I've moved from Singapore to America it's a little better - I'm a hermit so I don't feel the need to show off to my friends, but every now and then I have huge freakouts about how shitty my apartment must look or how worn out my shoes are or something equally stupid.
We moved from Burma to Singapore, so we were really poor (the kyat to the Singaporean dollar rate was terrible) and basically it was awful for my family. There was this huge stigma for being poor - we'd walk instead of taking the bus and we lived in a tiny one-room flat for a long time (4 people squeezed in). But the whole time, it was really important to sound rich, to buy gifts for visiting relatives, to show off in front of friends, etc. Like buying dinner for your friends, that kind of thing. The whole time we're eating ramen noodles or nothing at all.
Now that I've moved from Singapore to America it's a little better - I'm a hermit so I don't feel the need to show off to my friends, but every now and then I have huge freakouts about how shitty my apartment must look or how worn out my shoes are or something equally stupid.