How Polygamous Families Survive Financially

hey everyone welcome back my name is sam and i'm melissa today we want to talk a little bit about finances uh how in the world did we survive we got a lot of questions with people asking like how on earth do you support a household that big especially if there's a lot of stay-at-home mothers like how can one father support 34 children or you know even 15 to 20 in a household at a time and so i guess what can i start with that like i know that um most of the mothers stayed at home but did any mothers work outside the house yes so father's first wife uh she actually uh was she had she got an education before they met and she was a special ed teacher in fact she she owned a school out there she was the the owner of the school that taught special ed children so it was actually it was actually a a great thing that i got to be a part of a little bit here and there and uh yeah it was great so so she did work and i believe if i'm if i remember correctly she worked for a full-time job okay and so did just the other mothers like help with the kids when she was at work or how did that work yeah so during the time that well by the time i came around all of her children were out of well the youngest was still in the house but the rest were out of the house and her youngest was uh i mean he's much older than i am so you have to remember there's big age gaps like sam's oldest sibling is did we did we figure out they're older the same age as my parents uh uh probably a little bit older so sam's oldest biological sibling is older than my parents are if that gives you an idea of like the huge age gap that there is between each mother's children it's kind of big but yeah this that was actually actually another question someone had is how how big was the age gap so i'll answer this really quick my my oldest uh sibling she i believe is in her oh my goodness i just i don't have should be in early i don't have all of these memorized late 50s early 60s right around there and my youngest sibling would now be how old would he be i see when i moved out he was so probably right around 15 15 years old so anyway very very big big gap from range of uh ages so anyway but back to the finances back to the finances so first mother worked but then the other mothers were staying home but um when it comes to finances there's a couple things out there that are a little bit unique and don't necessarily apply to sam's family but um because polygamy has been illegal in utah um it only the first mother was legally married right and then all the other mothers were just married within the church meaning there's like no actual legal binding to them at all and so all the other mothers can all claim being single mothers to a ton of children and so a lot of families use state welfare programs or state programs to be able to get food or money from the government and because again you know single mothers with 12 children get government assistance and there was definitely problems i can't remember who it was but there was problems with like fraud there were some families out there that uh that were abusing the system and definitely uh working their way around that to get extra money that they weren't illegally entitled to entitled to and so they got in trouble for that in fact some people spent time in prison for that some of the leaders of the church that were encouraging that um that type of behavior so yeah as far as you know did any did your family as far as i am aware and i so this this uh this thing this i guess abuse of money have started happening after i left as far as i'm aware nothing like this was happening especially with my family uh during the time that i was out there gotcha that's not how uh it's it's it's tough to say if it did if it did or didn't happen at all in my family i don't know for sure uh but if as far as i'm aware they didn't and if it did they were hiding it so how did your family let's assume that they didn't yes let's assume that they didn't how did your family survive having that many children in such a large household well uh a lot of us worked and started working at a young age uh and and we would all pitch in so in fact it was expected of us for those of us that worked uh especially those of us that work full-time jobs to pay a certain amount to father or to the family each month to to help provide for the family so where you started working if you haven't seen the video on sam starting construction work like full time when he was 12 years old then definitely go check out that video um but so starting at 12 like did you have to start paying then so at that really young age i wasn't making much it was more i was out there helping i was out there helping my brothers you know on the on the construction so it wasn't like an official full-time job right but shortly after that i don't know exactly how much time a couple years or so but shortly after that when i was making a fair amount of money yes i would i was expected to pay a certain amount each month do you remember how much it was um a few hundred it just it depends it depended on how much the person was making so if you were making more money more was expected if you know it was it was more or less depending on what uh the amount of money you were making gotcha but i can see that adding up fast like if every teenage boy is working and everybody's contributing and like covering the cost of their own food right in their own yeah you know some of their own expenses that would go a long way really quick yeah yeah and i know that some of my older brothers as well that were no longer living in the house they would sometimes help out here and there as well so if they had any extra money or something they would you know pitch in a little bit to help out so because father i mean he he was a mayor he was the mayor out there for years i mean over 40 years and uh you know he he was paid decent for his job but he wasn't making near enough to provide for a family that big and you know so did the fact that like the church because the church gives property to people right so does the cost of living is the cost of living a little bit lower in the sense that like you know i don't know if you guys have seen the video about like them building houses for people quickly like coming together as a community so when they're situations like that that probably helps with the cost of living as well it did yes so as far as the you know paying for the taxes and all that for the property that you own and for the property property you're living on the church owned all the property and they would basically say okay now you get this home and you get this home and you can build on this piece of land and that type of thing so um it was it was definitely less expensive but i but we still had to pay for all of the normal things like electricity and water and all the utilities yes and in fact i remember growing up the electricity was a big topic in our house in fact we would get sat down as a family to have discussions on okay we're using way too much electricity this this this month we spent hundreds of dollars on electricity let's see if we can bring it down to only this amount because we don't we can't afford this much electricity so we would have big uh you know talks on make sure every time you walk out of a room you turn the light off and you probably notice that i still have that still have that habit i cannot leave a room and leave the light on like it which is good it's not bad i can't imagine keeping on top of 15 children trying to make sure they always turn off the lights after themselves so that must have been a chore all on its own and you know having so many people in the house you know all the time i mean the lights were almost i mean on and off i mean it was like yeah you know flashing lights in the house all day long people walking in and out of rooms but but that was a big thing that we were required to do turn the lights off if you're not using them and anything else if you're not using it turn it off uh to save electricity yeah gotcha yeah with all that okay so i just really thought of another question that i don't think i've ever asked you but how was the situation like with cars then because i mean financially cars cost a lot and a lot of parents save up like for a long time to get their kids cars and with that many kids like i just can't imagine like that would just be a crazy expense did you guys buy your own cars or how did that work no no child was given a car period no child was helped to pay for a car nothing in fact when i was uh 16 i went to my father and i asked him if i could get a driver's license and he was like why why do you need a driver's license and so i had to you know build a case on why i needed my driver's license and ended up in fact i got my driver's permit uh when i was out there but i didn't actually get my driver's license until after i moved out so when he was 18. i was 18 i moved out and then i realized oh i actually you know i can't ride my bike everywhere anymore so i need to get my license so i went i went and got that but but so it was it was all if you wanted a car you go figure it out and buy yourself a car if you want a bike whatever it is you figure it out you buy it uh so there was there was nothing there but as soon as we you know we're starting working and all that at a young age and especially in construction if you don't have a lot of other expanses you can make good money and uh so we it didn't take us long to save up and be able to get a vehicle and have that so and sometimes there were a lot you know with such a big family the older siblings would pass down their vehicles and so the younger siblings would get hand-me-downs and all that um i mean they were still the hand-me-downs were still really really nice vehicles because that's the that's what we spend our money on nice nice vehicle so if it for anybody who hasn't lived in utah or lived around any polygamous families i i grew up in a small town well not as small as what he did but right outside of it and we always knew when the polygamous boys were in town because they all have these huge lifted trucks with super dark tint and it was like if you saw a really nice truck like an 80 000 truck with these amazing rims and all tinted out we knew that it was the we knew that it was a polygamous and so well you know why we had to have a dark kid right why if we ever had a girl in our truck you know no no no no no no one could know you know we get in big trouble i think it was just a fad i don't know people people thought it was cool to have dark tint and uh living in that area and this it was hot and sunny so it was nice to have the extra tint anyway but yeah well and like you said like you don't have a lot of things to spend your money on as a teenage boy like well i mean just like any other teenage boys teenage boys like cars trucks i often i often say if i could go back and save the money that i wasted as a teenager i'm sure i'm sure not i'm not the only person that says this but oh man i mean i just i spent it on the the silliest i just wanted the most expensive the nicest of everything so i mean the watch i had the the jackets i had the anyway and the same thing with vehicles we would always put thousands of dollars extra into these vehicles to make them look and be the most powerful and be the best so anyway it was a it was a lot of money towards that kind of stuff but that's just a little bit on what it was like for finances but mostly just everyone kind of chipped in and everyone helped out and as far as the children go we were required to uh if we wanted something to pay for it uh aside from food we were we were you know taken care of we were taken care of but if we wanted any fancy food we had to get that on our own as well you know yeah you know that we we had a lot of rice and beans and and that kind of thing growing up to save on money which i mean it's understandable yeah that's a lot of people to feed got a table with 20 people on it i mean it's a lot of food so yeah that'd be a lot of money yeah we did a lot of potatoes and things that was it was easy to just make a lot of it all at once so yeah makes sense but if you want to hear more about what it was like for sam to grow up in polygamy and more stories or if you have any questions please leave your questions in the comments below we love answering questions like this for you guys and thank you for all of your questions yeah getting a ton of them so thank you so much thank you so much and we will talk to you all soon we'll talk to you soon

Channel: Growing Up in Polygamy

Views: 63,776

Keywords: polygamy, polygamist, flds, lds, mormon, sister wives, growing up in polygamy, escaping polygamy, warren jeffs, hildale, colorado city, finances

Id: gPH15l1sCv8

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021