Despite a vast literature investigating the effects of childhood living conditions, there are few studies that investigate the significance of the timing of economic hardship during childhood. This study used the 1987 Finnish Birth Cohort - including all children born in Finland in 1987 (N=59,476) to explore the patterns of childhood economic hardship. Sequence analysis was utilized to extract the patterns of economic hardship, measured as social assistance recipiency (SA). This resulted in five clusters: No SA at all; Occasional SA; Occasional SA, more during early 2000’s; Occasional SA, more during the 1990’s, and Moderate to heavy SA throughout. We then examined the relationship between childhood economic hardship patterns and five different later adolescence and early adulthood outcomes: Cohort members own adulthood SA recipiency, Psychiatric care, Criminal convictions, Early school leaving and Teenage pregnancy (for girls). We found strong relationships between all these outcomes and childhood economic hardship patterns. For example, regression analyses with No SA at all as a reference category showed large OR, especially regarding cohort members own adulthood SA. It seemed also that later childhood economic hardship was more harmful than the earlier economic hardship regarding adulthood SA recipiency.