• What Is OWN?
    Watch the preview!
    GO
  • Money News
    Advice and tools to manage your money
    GO

Shifting Social Classes

Haley talks about living at poverty level.
Haley says she was solidly middle class growing up. Her parents worked to send her to a prestigious college, where she became involved in extracurricular activities and completed three internships.

After graduation, Haley got a job with an interior design firm in Chicago, but a few months into her career, she received an unexpected blow. Like millions of Americans before her, Haley was laid off.

Watch other college grads discuss education and debt. Watch

"I was shocked," she says. "I thought I had done everything right."

Since then, Haley says she's dropped in social class and is now living at poverty level. "I never had to deal with being poor," she says. "It's humiliating."
Related Resources

From The Oprah Winfrey Show The Taboo Topic: What Social Class Are You Now?