I had a friend who lived down the street from me as a kid and we played street hockey at least once a week.
While his parents had the money to drive him 45 minutes down the road to hockey games and practices multiple times a week, my parents did not.
Honestly, I can’t imagine how my single mother could have done more than she did. I love her immensely and she would have done anything to see me in hockey leagues if it had been at all reasonable. In my friend’s case, he had both parents in the same household and each of them had a decent job. With combined incomes, they were comfortable but obviously still middle class by all estimates. One thing about their house that made me extremely jealous was their gorgeous in-ground swimming pool. Despite having access to a pool at all times, my friend rarely wanted to use it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend who owned a pool and used it less than that old childhood friend of mine back in the day. For decades I wanted a swimming pool, but my impatience caused me to cut a ton of corners when it finally came time to put in the pool. The first mistake I made was not hiring a professional pool company to build it for me. They would have known that the groundwater this close to the beach is extremely salty and prone to corroding any steel rebar used to reinforce the concrete in my swimming pool. They probably would have used galvanized steel rebar tie wire instead of the black bar steel rebar that I used by mistake.