In Ann Romney's speech last night she discussed how they "struggled" to get by:
We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, ate a
lot of pasta and Tuna fish. Our just was a door propped up on
saw horses, our dining room table was a fold down ironing board
in the kitchen. But those were the best days
Well that was 42 years ago. I survived.
Yes, she survived. By the skin of her and Mitt's teeth? Not quite.
In a 1994 interview with the Boston Globe Ann discussed those times at length...
They were not easy years. You have to understand, I was raised in a lovely neighborhood, as was Mitt, and at BYU, we moved into a $62-a-month basement apartment with a cement floor and lived there two years as students with no income.
...
We were happy, studying hard. Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time.
How convenient. Where did this stock come from anyway?
The stock came from Mitt’s father. When he took over American Motors, the stock was worth nothing. But he invested Mitt’s birthday money year to year — it wasn’t much, a few thousand, but he put it into American Motors because he believed in himself. Five years later, stock that had been $6 a share was $96 and Mitt cashed it so we could live and pay for education.
I do not for one second begrudge a father who has become successful sharing his good fortune with his son. What I do take exception with is trying to ignore that fact in selling yourself as working so hard to survive.
As Andrew Sabl notes:
By Ann’s own account, the stock amounted to “a few thousand” dollars when bought, but it had gone up by a factor of sixteen. So let’s conservatively say that they got through five years as students—neither one of them working—only by “chipping away at” assets of $60,000 in 1969 dollars (about $377,000 today).
So while they didn't live extravagantly they also don't have a lifetime of student loan debt, they didn't have to juggle a job and schoolwork, they didn't have to worry how they were going to get by week-to-week. They may have lived meagerly(-ish), but they did not struggle, they had no worries about money, no concerns about the future, whether there would be a job waiting for them (or at least Mitt).
And that is the point, living on Top Ramen and using a sawhorse to prop open a door is inconvenient at worst. Stressing on a daily basis about school, money and the future....that is a real struggle, that I am not sure she really understands.