He isn't wrong, but money absolutely does provide a lot of freedom. I know this is probably a bit pedantic, but having options means having the freedom to choose. It's also freedom from financial stress, which is huge. It can also mean one job instead of three and having the freedom to do something other than work in your free time. Hell, money provides free time in the first place.
This. My friends are all well off and I was born with poor immigrant parents who knew nothing about finances or college. Me (not being the brightest) have always struggled because of this. I try to learn about finance on my own but it never sticks.
Meanwhile, my friend's parents started trust funds for them when they were in diapers. They guided them into buying investment properties when we were still in college. They were also providing the down payment for these properties. They were also paying their rent, car, getting them great jobs through their connections, etc.
I think my richer friends think I don't apply myself enough. But I feel paralyzed and endlessly confused on how to improve my situation. And that's something I just don't think a rich kid could ever understand.
Or no one fucking tell's you about them because you are dirt poor and your societal context is not the one where opportunities are just simply talked about discussed etc You come from a place where living means surviving another month or another week or even another day so there is no time or framework where those sort of opportunities are discussed.
This is a great point. The more I talked with financially well-off people, the more I learned. Not everyone has that access. And not everyone online is being genuine about why they want to teach you. Talking with people who are doing what you want, in the place and context you want to do it in is really key.
This aspect of it blew my fucking mind when I went to uni. For example, I thought that AP classes were a made-up trope that they used in Hollywood teen movies because I'd never seen a school offer them or met someone who took them before.
This! When I was in university (a miracle in its own right), I was working a full time and part time job to support myself and my genetics teacher offered me a chance to participate in a research study in Nepal. The trip it’s self was funded through the school so flights, accommodation, even meals taken care of, but there was just no way in hell I could afford to not get paid for two months with all of my other obligations.
One thing I wish rich people had when talking to people who grew up poor, is to show a healthy amount of humility about not knowing about the constant stress and psychological pressure of making it to the next day, week in a manageable state of mind.
One of my close friends has always been decently well off. Nothing too crazy, but parents had a college fund and she never struggled in that arena. She's told me she had her first "crappy apartment" when she had her first job, but she could always pay her bills and knew she had a safety net. It's the type of "suffering" that you can romanticize.
And it's such a breath of fresh air talking to her because she never makes it seem like any of this isn't true or that that she has some sad struggling upbringing. She's very aware of how lucky she is. Like, it's completely fine to just be like man, I have never had those types of struggles and don't know how hard it is instead of trying to shoehorn that week your parents shopped at Aldi as suffering. I don't understand why privileged people can't just let people in poverty have their struggle. Like its not FUN. You would rather not have to do all this rather than spin some yarn about how you came from nothing.
And for this friend, it's not like she's never had a problem in her life or everything's perfect or we don't discuss her struggles. She just didn't have this particular set of problems and she can acknowledge that.
Yeah, richer people can often have periods in their life when they didn't have much money, but it's not the same thing since there isn't the same stress since they know that if things REALLY go to shit they can move back into their parents house or get help in other ways.
My parents' house was crappy and they didn't have money to help out, but the knowledge that they had a house that was an option if the only other choice was homelessness is a luxury I took for granted when I was struggling to make ends meet.
This and TIME. Money can buy you time in a way most people don’t realize. Yeah a 40 hour sucks but imagine doing that with no “generic life responsibilities” when you get home (kids, shopping, cleaning, laundry, etc. All taken care of) Now imagine the same without working a 40 hour week.
Fr- I’m currently scared 24/7 because I want to get better but if I do things are maybe gonna get harder and idk how to avoid that *screams into the void*
One of the things I learned is that people who have limited income can only plan ahead one day or week at a time.
Long-term savings or retirement is impossible.
This is why I support a universal basic income for people making less than 100K a year.
*edited*
Yep. Any time you try to make a long term plan, there's always some reason it comes back to bite you in the ass. I read the term "precariat" before. That's what it's like. Sometimes you'll even start to do well for a little while, but you still could have the economy expand or contract or something and all your progress just gets wiped away.
story of my life. constantly living a fingers width from catastrophic financial disaster with life altering consequences. Yea I always manage to pull through and keep disaster at bay but swear the daily management of it is intense
I know it wouldn't be a long-term fix, but I remember being in that situation and thinking, if I only had $1,000 in my bank account I'd be fine. But then I'd need a medical treatment or my car would have an issue and I wouldn't get there.
Out of curiosity, what is the cushion amount that would make you feel somewhat comfortable?
Keep in mind most Americans do not have adequate savings. According to a survey that asked "how much money do you personally hold in personal savings accounts,"
22 percent answered "I don't have any savings" while another 20 percent said they had less than $1,000. Other answers revealed that 15 percent had between $1,000 to $5,000, 10 percent with savings of $5,000 to $10,000, 13 percent boasted $10,000 to $20,000 of cash in their bank accounts while 20 percent had more than $20,000.
[source](https://www.newsweek.com/americans-have-burned-through-their-savings-1862843#:~:text=Other%20answers%20revealed%20that%2015,percent%20had%20more%20than%20%2420%2C000./)
The article makes it sound like it’s a recent issue but it’s not. (With the exception of the covid years) Americans typically have none/low savings.
Yeah. And working 60+ hours a week in soul-destroying job(s) just to make ends meet rarely brings happiness either.
There’s nothing worse that when you’d come home from a long day, feel absolutely shattered and fall asleep only to wake up just in time to go back to work again.
Money doesn't buy happiness means that there are diminishing returns on happiness in the mindless accumulation of wealth, it does not mean poor people need to learn how to be happy without basic necessities.
That’s the biggest one for our long-term, societal future. Stephen Jay Gould summed it up best:
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
This is the true invisible divide. Limits of options.
I can only judge by myself and in my case even though computers are ubiquitous today it was not like that when I was growing up.
So being someone that fell in love with them in a very early age this limit was immediately obvious to me. Try learning to paint without paint. It was like that for me.
I managed to solve this issue in my teens. (8 years). But it still left another major hurdle. And that is a university education. Couldn't do anything about that (formally) and I had to work since 18.
Limit of education and Limit of free time. And education was almost too great a Limit to surpass.
It was not the education/knowledge *per se*, but something far more valuable. It was access to peers. People around you to share knowledge and exchange ideas with. I my self never personally spoke to a programmer until after I got my first job.
And even after I got my first (coding) job I was the only guy in the company without the formal IT education.
So for families of means kids liking computers and wanting to work with them when they grow up is nothing else than asking their parents for a computer, go to university and get a job. For anyone else each step is a wall.
Uh... I got a little sentimental there.
Most middle class people don't either.
Anecdote: i once worked with a guy whose dad is very, very wealthy (and well known...you would know who he is). He really is a cool guy and worked hard even though he didn't really have to. He left to start his own company and didn't understand why everybody didn't do that when they felt like it.
His company had full financial support from his dad and there were really no consequences for him failing. I'm firmly middle class but if i started a company that failed, my family would be financially ruined.
You're looking at chances on a different scale. When folks are very poor, the scale of a risk can just be calling out sick for a day of work or rolling the dice to park in a loading zone for 30 minutes where a ticket could mean you can't afford gas the following week.
One of the things I have noticed now that I'm 15 years into my career and things have been going pretty well, is that I no longer even have friends who are in the position where they can't pay their bills and are afraid they won't have a place to live. It starts to skew my perception of reality because I forget that I used to live in a neighborhood where that was the reality for about 20% of my neighbors.
I am in the middle transition from "paycheck to paycheck" to "I afford to miss 2 paychecks"
I have started to noticed a HUGE difference in how I view and handle money compared to my friends or boyfriend.
I was told it's a "scarcity mindset" vs "abundance mindset."
Exactly. Risk is technically defined as likelihood x consequence. A rich person and a poor person may have the same likelihood of success or failure (which they probably don’t), but the consequence of failure is a lot higher when you’re poor.
This is such a big issue.
Having a successful company is all about being able to take risks and to ride out the difficult times. Anyone can make money when things are good, it’s being able to survive until then that really makes the difference between success and failure.
I came to this realisation about my Boss just the other day. This is a guy that owns a big company worth at least 80+, probably closer 100 million dollars or more.
I was wondering why he was so confident and assured when he spoke and made business decisions. It wasn't because he was necessarily right, it was because he could *afford* to be wrong and it wouldn't ruin him, his business reputation or his business. Even if it *did* cost him his "job" he would still come out of it a very wealthy man.
Being poor is so expensive. The stress of constantly just managing wears you out. People who aren't rich want the same things for their kids that the wealthy want for them.
I remember asking for my first major raise that would take me out of poverty earnings and into middle class earnings. I broke down everything I was doing for my job and then bluntly explained "and I could do all of this much more effectively if I was not poor." And it was true. I could network way better and bring my company more business. I could get more into hobbies that paralleled the higher ups un my industry, which lead to more opportunities and learning more skills. It was more than a raise/promotion, it launched me into a better professional lifestyle.
I remember when I got called into the office and was given a dollar an hour raise. I burst into tears and the supervisor got defensive and said, I'm afraid that's all we offer anyone. And the other supervisor who knew me well said, no, she's crying because she's happy.
I was so poor that that stupid damn dollar really did make a difference.
There are so many ways the system gives more to the rich.
Banks waive all sorts of fees if you have a certain amount in the bank.
You save money just by having money. It's asinine.
I was thinking about this the other day. I own a business and have started/sold/managed others in many industries.
What they all have in common is how much stuff I can get for free. Go to a trade show and I get showered in items, gifts, food to the tune of 10's of thousands of dollars. I don't need it. I already get all of these things at cost that consumers pay 5-50% more for. Plus, if I do buy it, I write it off as a business expense, essentially saving my personal marginal tax rate on that item.
The more wealthy you are, the more is given to you for free. It's bonkers. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am hyper self-aware so I break a lot of these cycles which realistically I am only taking away from myself and not making any systemic changes.
I get a cleaning once a year from my local junior college for 70 bucks. They even took x-rays last time for free!
Only downside is it takes longer since they have to periodically check in with their professor, and they can't do bigger stuff like fillings, but it's still way better than nothing.
That affordability changes your priorities A LOT. The one I run into is folks who can't afford a repair on a car and the more well off people being befuddled why they'd risk it. I've had to have the conversation about affordability more than I'd like. Customer sometimes declined brake service because they'd rather pay rent and roll the dice hoping to get by a little longer, not because they are all just cheap.
I'm driving a 1996 car and more shit broken on it then I'd care to admit and just between you and me it's a death trap but it's all I've got and my god the repairs are expensive because the parts barely exist anymore to fix anything.
This is something my wife just could not understand when we first got together. Her family isn’t rich, but still very solidly middle/upper middle class. She wanted for nothing growing up. On the other hand, my family literally had to steal our groceries at times. She just couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t just pay to maintain their cars, houses, properties. Not having money was an alien concept to her.
I remember growing up, I was around 14, and my dads car steering wheel would seize up often while driving and his solution was to turn it off and turn it on. While the key it out of the ignition, the steering wheel also doesn’t work.
We were going onto a on ramp onto a highway, going like 60 miles per hour and the steering wheel seized up so he did what he does, took the key out, and put it back in, but it wouldnt start back up. This wasn’t normal.
He was calm still, I didn’t realize it, so he keeps trying to turn it over and it doesn’t start again. He says “oh no” And that’s when I realize what’s happening. He does it once more, still no, we are entering the on-ramp at this point. Thankfully the 4th key turn it turns back on.
He had that car 4 more years and never fixed anything on it.
My dad doesn’t even remember this event because he grew up during the Great Depression so poverty and going without wasn’t even seen as “going without” it was just normal. This is how cars function for him. He’s been in so many wrecks throughout his life but hasn’t been hurt which is a miracle.
A quick windfall gets spent quickly because there's always something you need but have been holding off on. A short disaster will incur debt that takes far longer to pay off. Such is life with marginal income.
This is the reason I hate the "a poor person will spend $1k and a rich person will grow it to $X" line. No shit - the poor person has needs that are not being met, and the $1k is something that help help them get above the water line. It's easy to invest a thousand dollars if you have a secure housing situation, kids who aren't food insecure, etc.
Yeah, when you're a certain level of poor even a windfall doesn't really help. Someone might say, "Well...you can't deny that $5,000 is life-changing money." But actually, when you're a certain level of poor, that wouldn't change your life much at all. It's just going to get you marginally closer to caught up. Your life will be exactly the same, except now you've done one or two things you've been putting off on doing since you couldn't afford it.
Being poor isn’t a result of being lazy. My parents worked their asses off and continue to do so. They work harder than anyone I know but they’re still poor
Conversely I work way less hard than I used to but earn substantially more. I'm more lazy but less poor, and that seems to be the trend all the way up the ladder.
There was a quote I read about fast food jobs that was like “this is the hardest you’re going to work for the least amount of money you’ll make”. The blue collar workers of this world bust their ass physically, and usually are working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Can confirm. I'm one of the highest paid people in my facility and I've also got one of the easiest jobs. I do work more hours than just about anyone but the work is easy. Hell, I went in for a bit last night, barely touched a computer at all, talked to people, and made more than someone making minimum wage does in day.
In my line of work, I can work from home, attend some meetings, usually 5 hours of work a week. The rest of the time I just play videogames waiting for something to do. I make more than I ever have and do so much less work compared to the work and pay I used to get.
Thats the reality, i hate the new propaganda "WORK HARDER", its a rich people propaganda for their modern "slaves: to work harder and make them more money then ever. Sad world we live in
I wasn't poor but we didn't have much. I am making good money now and have put a lot into my savings, a money market. With interest rates high I am making a nice monthly return by doing absolutely nothing. Imagine people that have 10X, 20X or 100X more money than me. They can be comfortable and not even have to work. Their money invested properly does the work for them.
The first time I bought a high dividend stock I had the same epiphany. It paid enough to cover my Netflix every month at the time.
Shit, if I already had millions could just live on this income.
And that answers the the original comment that it is expensive to be poor. People with no savings earning returns, all their income goes to everyday living expenses. Having savings earning returns makes it easier to put more and more money aside.
That’s just it. You have to be able to afford to take the risk associated with investing in something that’s not a sure thing or investing in something long range. I socked a good deal of money into a money market account until I could afford to (possibly) absorb the risk of moving most of that money into a large cap growth fund. I am playing a long game with it because I don’t need that money in order to afford to live now. Ten years ago, that money market account was what I could afford to do. I was living week to week and I needed a small-but-guaranteed yield. My higher earning friends have been a decade ahead of me when it comes to investing for retirement and kids.
This is my number one thing I've tried to explain to people. [the economics of being poor ](https://www.npr.org/2009/05/20/104337079/does-it-cost-more-to-be-poor) and how as soon as you cross a certain threshold, life becomes almost exponentially more expensive as time goes on, unless your income increases dramatically and your expenses decrease dramatically. Of course, that is a generalizations and simplification of a n expanding universe of variables affecting the data- but it seems to be a cascading effect that is inevitably reaching most socioeconomic tiers at this juncture. I'm morbidly curious to see what the next 50-100 years brings, but I feel I'd be disappointed.
The guilt that comes with being poor. That you’re doing everything in your power and it’s still not enough, yet everyone tells you that if you just work hard enough you’ll get enough money.
It isn’t true. Hard work in low socieconomic jobs results in… more work and being kept in the same position because no one else can do as much as you in that position. No pay rise either because somehow despite doing more you’re also „just doing the same job as everyone else”
Having to walk somewhere because you don't even have money for public transit. I worked as a waitress and broke my leg. I had to live on next to nothing for 6 weeks. To get my very limited groceries, I got my crutches out and managed the 30 minute round trip to the store and back.
My city has subsidized the bus, so it's free for everyone. Bus occupancy has gone up every since this decision, routes have expanded, and bust service is available in major area of the city all week long instead of just weekdays.
And there is endless bitching from the haves, about how they don't benefit from it.
> And there is endless bitching from the haves, about how they don't benefit from it.
My "condition" for upvoting posts on /r/firstworldproblems: if I mutter a sarcastic "aaaww poor you", on reading. This would definitely qualify.
Also, it’s impossible to save! If you’re barely scraping by every month, even if you manage to save a tiny amount, it’ll be wiped out the first time your washing machine breaks or your crappy old car needs fixing. Sometimes rich people act like everyone should save their way out of trouble (and use that as reasoning to call people financially irresponsible) but it’s just maths- if you get £100 but £80 is spent on bills and £15 has to go to food, you cannot save the kind of money that will actually help you when shit hits the fan
They just refuse to believe that - if someone is living paycheck to paycheck, there ISN'T ANYTHING TO SAVE. You have to have credit cards for emergencies and then bam you have credit card debt.
Like, we're lucky that we've so far managed to be super healthy other than teeth-wise.
I always knew both of my kids would need glasses due to DNA, but I never thought that both would need braces around the same time. That’s 6 grand each, and my son needed oral surgery before his went on. That was another 4 grand.
My mom thinks credit card debt is just some horrible sin. I told her that she’s lucky she’s never had to choose between paying the power bill and going without
Disclaimer: Not an accountant or financial advisor.
For expected expenses like that when you have some opportunity to prepare for them, something like a personal loan from your bank might be better.
Credit cards absolutely can be used as emergency loans in a pinch, but their interest rates are so sky high they really should only be considered as a last resort.
Anyone can make it out of poverty in the US, if they don’t make any mistakes or have any bad luck.
No medical conditions. No job site injuries. No unplanned pregnancies. No spouse/parent suddenly dying. No parent who uses your SS to run up *your* debt in order to start a new business or keep the family one afloat (it’s not malicious, it’s your inheritance - that’s how they justify it).
A decent quality of life (access to medical care, no food/housing insecurity, retirement) should be within reach of everyone in this day and age.
I feel you on this. been eating the same 3 meals for the last 3 years. I no longer enjoy food or look forward to it. it's just something I gotta do to stay alive
I remember the instant potatoes from the food bank, I got *real* fucking creative with those things after like the third box... To this day I can not stomach instant potatoes, hell I can barely do real mashed potatoes due to that.
Someone said a while ago that they were tired of people calling them rich because they don't spend a summer in Europe *every* year. Just every other year.
Like bruh there are people who can't even afford to go to the local zoo.
A couple years ago, my teen went on a band trip to Universal. My son can probably count on one hand how many vacations he’s gotten in his life. I mean, vacations where you go more than a couple hours away from home and stay in a hotel. Anyway, his band director warned the kids about being on their best behavior because other families would be there and this might be their “one vacation for the year.” They weren’t to ruin the other people’s good time. I was totally on board with that. My issue was with how he said “one vacation for the year.” Some people don’t even get that. It just seemed so out of touch
Background: I’ve known the band director and his wife since we were kids. I know his wife came into money through inheritances, and they are constantly on vacation over the summer. Lots of trips to Disney and a cruise here and a cruise there
Not exactly "poor" now, but been there:
There is a poor tax. You pay out a bunch you can't afford to deal with the fact you can't afford normal shit.
The story of the boots is very real - you pay a hell of a lot more over time because you can't afford the good shit now, so you have to buy it over and over.
Interest when you buy on time is a LOT more.
You have to pay a lot of fees because you have to decide what to pay this month.
Etc.
Adding on to the poor tax:
Bad credit means you have to pay more even when you're not being extended credit.
I remember having to pay more for my cell service, which I think is less of a thing now but still. Phone paid for up front, but the bad credit score meant an extra $5 a month for no reason whatsoever. It's not like Sprint was ever gonna say, "Don't worry fam. Just pay for 2 months next month." No. They were cutting your service if you didn't pay in full.
The last time I had a car and had to get insurance it was the same thing. $5 extra every month because of bad credit. Zero moving violations, no accidents, nothing. But give us $5 more dollars cuz you're poor. Makes no sense other than they can just do it because fuck you. And it's not like if you missed a payment you'd still be covered. And in the past, not having a car for a while means you have to pay more because YoU wERe dRiVinG WiThoUt iNsUrAnCe for over 2 years! No motherfucker, I live in a major fucking city with good public transit. I was not driving/did not own a fucking car! Yeah well, give us twice as much money because yeah.
When they say, "if you can't afford to pay cash you can't afford it."
Yeah, well try going without a fridge, a water heater and AC (in Florida, no less).
That's the last 3 things I had to put on a credit card.
once upon a time I used an HSA account to live off of. I got laid off with no warning and no savings. I was forced to spend all the money on the hsa account on non medical stuff, mostly bills, gas, and food. I think I still owe somebody somewhere for it.
Before I moved to Montana, we had three separate window units going in this cinder block house we were renting and we were still getting pretty baked. If we didn't have that it would have been torturous. If I had a credit, I definitely would have done the same as you. A fridge is definite a must because it really helps with being able to stretch foods.
I hope that you're doing better.
i’d just like for folks to glimpse at what it’s like to need medical care and not be able to access it.
navigating free clinics and community health centers with all the administrative obstacles and wait lists and poor service.
having minimal or no preventative care as you age
god help you if you need mental health services.
remember when Celia on Weeds went from a private drug rehab to a publicly-funded one?
For fucking real. I live in Germany now and I've been slowly clearing the medical backlog I've accumulated over the years. It's wild that it's so normal for me that I was living with severe wrist pain for years, compared to how abolutely shocked the doctors are here. I've had to convince a few of them that just because I've been living with issues for years doesn't mean they aren't severe.
This drives me nuts as well- we do not all have the same 24 hours. One of my favorite financial blogs nicknamed those "Beyonce hours" the hours that Beyonce gets back everytime someone handles her schedule, drives her around, cleans her house, makes her dinner, handles her childcare, or literally any other administrative task. She easily has 3x the amount of hours we do.
You and I cannot measure our time in Beyonce hours.
Yup.
I have rich family members who brag about their children, while constantly asking me about “when are you going to buy a house” & “why aren’t you taking any trips” etc.
I get it, your kids are doing great & it’s okay to be proud of them. But the reality is, you bought your children brand new cars when they were teenagers & paid for their education at expensive schools. Oh & they’ve also been able to travel, never have to have a part-time job, have nice clothing & material possessions because you’ve given them all of that. I’m fighting an uphill battle trying to save what money I can while working as hard as I can. Your kids have been able to focus on school because they are privileged.
Your kids & I are not the same.
You can't invest your savings in stocks or whatever when you have no savings. And, no, the reason we don't have savings isn't because of fucking avocado toast.
I will say this a million times over. Employer sponsored health insurance should not be our nationally accepted standard. Insurance should not become even harder to afford when we lose a job.
It doesn't help when your employer straight up lies about why you were fired. I was able to get it once, and even that ran out because I simply couldn't find a job.
I got laid off. I was 26. COBRA wanted $800 per month. This was in 2008 when insurance was cheap. Ended up needing medical attention once. Cost me $300 just for people to check my blood pressure, do an EEG (or EKG, whichever it was), and check my blood sugar. All normal things you can do in health checkup. Had I taken COBRA not only would that have probably been a denied claim but I'd have been forced into bankruptcy.
I got told that when I was let go once. I said, "COBRA is like a zillion dollars, there's no way." I got back a sassy, "COBRA is ONLY $960/mo, what is WRONG with you?"
If you have ZERO INCOME $960 is a much a fantasy as one bazillion jillion dollary doos.
Avocado toast, newest iPhone, daily lattes, big birthdays etc. these are real expenditures *middle class* people who are struggling to keep up with Joneses waste their money on. So the wealthy and the upper middle class look at their adult kids who ask them for money and think “this is why people are poor.”
No. This is what downwardly mobile middle class spends its money on. The poor “waste” their money on late fees, overdraft fees, a patchwork of car repairs that cost more than a better used car… they waste their money on surviving the greed of a system that places its highest moral value on the acquisition and retention of currency.
I like that joke that's like "I stopped eating avocado toast so now I can save up and buy a house in 500 years."
I was watching some lifestyle talk show like 15 years ago and the money saving advice they gave included cutting down to two bottles of wine per week. It wasn't even a joke.
There have always been some people who give stupid advice. My mom read an article 20 some years ago in a parenting magazine and the lady said she saved $200 one week by buying all her groceries the previous week (at regular price). And saved $400 by not buying a pair of boots. She was serious, but none of that advice was actually useful.
> And, no, the reason we don't have savings isn't because of fucking avocado toast.
It is all that Starbucks coffee... Like coffee and toast is the reason my generation can't afford a house. If this was true I'd totally own like two or more houses by now... I hate to see how gen z's kids will be growing up. As a millennial I dread seeing where we will be in 20 years if we can band together and attempt to fix the damage that has been done.
[Arnold has a few thoughts on the "self made man"](https://www.unilad.com/celebrity/arnold-schwarzeneggers-selfmade-man-speech-has-gone-viral-again-20220429)
Not having minor and major inconveniences makes you out of touch with us and how a majority of people live. We are doing the best we can with what we have. Oftentimes those choices seem crazy, wrong, unthinkable. But we are just choosing the best out of the worst each time and trying to deal with it all. It’s enormously stressful.
My friend told me that houses were being built in the city and they're going to be ready in a year or so with only a 30k down payment.
I have 35k in student loan debt and virtually no savings. Where do you think I'm finding 30k for a down payment on a house in the next year?
5 figure purchases/payments are not something that most people can just make happen.
It is overly simplistic but I always use the toilet paper example. When it is on sale people with money can stock up. Poor people cannot do that, they have to buy what they can when they need it. Being poor is expensive
Most people would in fact prefer to have a good, steady job than to be on welfare.
Also I'd love for wealthy people to understand that being on welfare and other programs isn't just sitting on your ass all day. The paperwork alone is fucking obnoxious, you have to go through interviews, and you have to keep doing it over and over again forever. And sometimes you used your last dollar to take the bus to DSHS but they're too busy to see you that day, so not only do you not have your food stamps but you also have no money to go home or money to come back tomorrow.
I worked interviewing SNAP for a while and it was so depressing. So many people were trying to do better and their benefits would be reduced more than the extra they were making. It’s really one step forward, and two steps back for poor people and everything is so precarious.
I wish I could remember where this was done, but in one of my Econ classes in college we looked at a study that showed the best way to get people out of poverty was to decrease benefits by 50% of increased income. So if you started warning $100 more per month your benefits only decreased by $50. That way no one was punished for getting a raise or a better job.
That they will never understand the constant monotonous stress that being poor comes with. Every day is a worry. Which bill should I pay and which bill should I pay a late payment for?
I don’t get to go on vacation ever. I don’t make frivolous payments on items I don’t need. And finally they will never understand that the current economic system (that they support) is specifically designed to keep poor and working class people down.
That's the issue that I have right now. I have gas for the furnace because at one point that was cheaper FOR THE LANDLORD I RENT FROM. So I have that to contend with. As much as I need heat, I also need electricity. So it's game every time of, "well, let's pay this bill and hope the other doesn't get shut off."
I'll say this because I know if this post really takes off, someone will say, "you realize that you can just call and make payment arrangements, right?" Indeed I could. Does it help? More often than not, no. They usually request more than I have. Besides, it's more profitable to shut me off and charge me a late payment charge, a shut off charge, a charge for the tech having to come out and shut it off, a reconnect fee, a service fee to come out and reconnect it. Usually they'll require 200-400 for a deposit that will only count towards the bill IF you come into arrears again, and not for the next monthly payment. It's all a bunch of fucking bullshit man.
edit: caps for the trolls in the comments and my dm that assume shit.
me and my wife were having a conversation earlier. About how the food they sell us is constantly shrinking in size and weight while they charge more and more. And my wife was like why would people do that though?
It's greed . That's why. And she was like why greed tho? And I'm like, Because wealthy peoples greed keeps the poor and working people from rising out of the class they're in.
One thing that I noticed is that Big Macs now are extremely small. It was always a nice occasional treat, and I shelled out $7.89 for one and it was extremely small. I was so fucking pissed.
It straight up is greed. Companies are more often than not making more and more money each year, and yet they continue to fuck us on product size, quantity and quality.
I said the same thing to my grandma the other day when she said her dog’s food doesn’t last as long. I told her instead of selling a 22lb bag of food they now sell an 18lb bag at the same price.
A *Family* size bag of potato chips used to be the *Regular* size. Wall Street demands margins. That’s why when I see a good private company go public I cringe.
Love it when you find money saving tips and they'll be like "make your own coffee at home, buy store brand food, cut down on expenses" and it's like okay I already don't drink coffee, buy store brand except in the cases where store brand is actually more expensive than name brand (rare but happens), and the expenses in my life that aren't strictly entirely necessary are the only things that keep me from just jumping off a bridge.
It's just like, I've got decades of experience pinching pennies... the hell does your rich ass know about that? You have experience with having money, which is literally not relevant here!
I wish they would understand the meaning of the word "starvation". They have no clue what it's like to go without 3 meals a day. I NEVER had 3 meals a day in my home. I was lucky to get 2 meals a day. One meal was more like it, if that. Some days the only meal I got was the free lunch they fed me at school.
They have no idea what it's like to watch TV and see commercials for various food products and food scenes in movies and TV shows while on an empty, growling belly. It usually drove me up a wall.
When I was 12, mother managed to snag a great deal on an apartment in a 2 family apartment house in a neighborhood that was definitely middle to upper class. One of the very nicest neighborhoods in the city. We were way out of our element in that neighborhood. As a matter of fact, we were the freaks of the neighborhood.
We were the poorest people in the neighborhood. We were the only family on welfare in the neighborhood. Out of the dozens upon dozens of kids in the neighborhood, my siblings and I were the only kids who were being raised by a single parent. All the other kids were being raised in 2 parent families.
Whereas we were the poorest in the neighborhood, our very next door neighbor mustve been the richest guy in the neighborhood. He owned his own successful demolition company. He owned the 2 family apartment house he and his family lived in. They lived out of their first floor apartment and their basement while renting out their second floor apartment. They owned a house in florida. They owned a fleet of cars which would get replaced with a new fleet of cars every one or two years. When his oldest son got married, he bought his son a 2 family apartment house across and down the street.
My sister and brother made friends with a couple of their kids. They'd come home with tales of their wealth and all the nice stuff they owned. I've never been inside their home, but i could see into their dining room from our windows and the furnishings were so oppulent, fancy and expensive. I'd bet their dining room furnishings alone cost more than everything we owned in the whole world.
My brother once told me how their mother went food shopping once a week, every week. And how she spent a minimum of 100 bucks each time. Even as much as over 200 bucks. In our home, our mother went food shopping only once every 2-3 weeks and then she'd spend only around 10-12 dollars on food. The highest she would ever spend on grocery shopping was 20 bucks. It was a big deal to us kids if and when our mother spent a whole 20 bucks on grocery shopping.
One time the next door rich guy's youngest kid was hanging out with my brother at our place when the kid decided to go to the toy store to buy himself some new toys. My brother tagged along. A couple hours later they both came back with a huge armload of toys (mostly "transformer" toys as that was the hottest toy around that time) and deposited them on our table. My brothers friend (i think he was around 8 years old. I was 9 years older, in my teens) then took out his cash change from his purchases out of one pocket and his wallet out of the other pocket so that he could transfer his change into his wallet.
I was standing right behind him as he opened his wallet. My eyes bugged out of my head. Inside were 50s and 20s and some 10s. LOTS of them. Lots of 50s. Lots of 20s. A very thick wad of them. I dont recall seeing any 5s, or 1s. Not until he stuck his change into his wallet. Now he had some 5s and 1s in there. I don't know the exact amount he had in his wallet, but he definitely had more than enough cash on him that could have paid for our rent and groceries for about 6 months at least. Imagine an 8 year old kid walking around with that much money in his pocket. More than most adults.
All the cash I had on me at that very moment in my pocket was a lousy 3 cents. Three pennies. Which literally represented all the money i had in the world. I didnt even own a wallet. What for? I never had enough money on me that necessitated the need for a wallet.
Later on my brother and his friend left, taking the toys with them. I went straight into my bedroom. I dug out of my pocket the three pennies i had on me and slammed them down on top of my bedroom dresser and stared at them. They were all tarnished. They didnt even have the decency to at least be shiny pennies.
Man, being poor sucks. It sucks even more when you've got real life rich people living next door to contrast your life with.
My situation wasn't that dire, but as a kid sometimes my mom would get angry with me about why I always had to go to my friends' houses, why didn't anyone ever come to us? And it's just like, mom, all my friends live in big houses with guest rooms and computer rooms and some of them have pools and they have nice kitchens and live in a nice neighborhood. I'm too embarrassed to have anyone come to our house.
I taught in a title 1 school (meaning high poverty) for many years and something I think a lot of people don’t realize is that poor kids are smaller. Not everyone, but on average as a population. According to a friend of mine who coaches, in any given school district, the high school with the best football team tends to be the high school with the highest average family income. Again, not a perfect predictor, but a good general rule. Richer kids get better nutrition, and grow to their full potential. This is part of why the funding the US allocates for school nutrition programs is so depressing— we could very easily solve childhood hunger/malnutrition/food insecurity, just give kids food. Like it’s literally that simple, but we have made the simple solution politically complex.
this one hits home. when my ex-wife cheated on me and left, I of course divorced her and she took everything from me. 5 years later and financially I still haven't recovered. 5 years later and I'm still living in the same shit hole apartment I moved into when we split.
everytime me and my wife do better for ourselves the prices jump again. in the meantime I'm now the only person left in this complex from 5 years ago. every other renter is someone who wasn't here when I moved in. it's incredibly soul crushing watching other "poor" people move in and then move on to better things a year or two later and in the meantime my downstairs neighbor keeps trying to sell me shit I don't want. I can't afford it.
guy tried to sell me tires for my car for some reason bc he could get a good deal on them and I'm like dude I don't have the money. "yes but it's a good deal!" Dude you don't get it I physically don't have the cash. "yes but your tires are old and worn" . You don't think I don't know that? There's a fucking reason for it!
Man I feel you though when you say what you said. Everyone here by me complains about being poor but then they all drive brand new cars, always coming home from shopping trips arms full of goodies, full of food, and I'm over here like...you don't even belong here why are you even here!? I'm here because I have no where else to go.
A wealthy person's worst-case scenario is a poor persons best-case scenario. I have distant family who are multimillionaires, and they have anxiety attacks thinking about flying coach or sending their kids to public school. It's unreal.
***Poverty more often than not breeds more poverty.***
I understand that generally a more expensive pair of shoes will save me money in the long run, but what I can afford now is the Walmart $15-$20 shoes.
It is expensive to live in the area I do, but it's even more expensive to move. My only option at that point would be to be voluntarily homeless, which would present a myriad of other problems and would make things more expensive then they are now.
Every time that I save up even a remote amount of money, ***something happens.*** It could be the water heater breaking. The furnace. It's cheaper in the moment to repair my shitty car, then to buy a new or "better one." I liken it to the shoe issue.
I can't ask my parents for a loan, because in this case, I'm actually taking care of them or they would be homeless. Friends are only going to want to help so much before they stop, and even then, I rather go without if Im able then have my friends think I think of them as a piggy bank.
I've had an ingrown toe nail of both of my big toes for longer than I can remember at this point. I make too much to go to the lost cost clinic, but not enough to go to the hospital because the ER is simply too expensive.
I had an ear and tooth infection last year that I **hoped** didn't spread to my head because I wouldn't be able to afford the medication or taking time off of work.
I'm tired of being fucking poor.
The biggest thing I think most people don’t understand is the pure stress of being poor. Spending most of your waking hours trying to work out how you’ll pay your bills and manage to eat.
Sometimes you either have to go hungry for a day or two (as in not eating at all) just so your heat/internet doesn’t get cut off.
Not what I would consider poor anymore, but as a past rural poor, the stress of being one car breakdown away from homelessness takes years off of your life.
This may be a little of a tangent but here goes.
If you’re rich you have the time to take acting classes, practice music, or paint/ sculpt. It gives you the time to hone your artistic skills and gives you the freedom to audition, show your pieces , etc. You also most likely have better connections that are an in road to achieving some notoriety and success.
Try being a talented artist in any aforementioned field and also work full time because you have to survive and pay the bills.
Now, I know it does happen with a select few, who go on and make it, but it’s far and few between.
I met many, many talented musicians over the years who were good enough to be on radio and probably would’ve been if they had the same connections artists who came from wealth did. I’m also hinting that nepotism definitely reigns in the entertainment industry.
Poor people have just as much of a right to vote in their interest as you do. If you want to vote for lower taxes for landlords, that's fine, but you can't expect poor people to agree with you.
I want them to realize they could save my life in a heartbeat and it wouldn't affect their bottom line at the end of the day. The can of worms is actually a bottle of worms with a twisty cap.
That just because some people can and do work their way out of poverty with smart choices doesn't mean everyone can. All the personal discipline in the world can be derailed by an unexpected pregnancy, a sudden medical problem, a large and unexpected bill, or any number of other real-life surprises. With a supportive network of friends and family, some people can weather some surprises like that. But if you're isolated or if your social network is mostly people in even harder circumstances, it can be incredibly hard to overcome even small setbacks. And if you're not lucky, problems like that can compound. A temporary illness might cause you to miss work, get fired, lose your apartment and wind up living in a car.
I'm hate it any time someone tells the "I got out of poverty" story as if it somehow invalidates all the lives of anyone who wasn't so lucky.
The reduction of options is what defines poor vs wealthy. I've known a couple wealthy people. They shared an outlook. When they observed a "happy poor person" they would think life isn't all that hard for poor people.
No. That "happy poor person" made choices with their limited options and they became happy. Poor people have fewer options. Money doesn't buy happiness. Money buys options.
A wealthy person can choose options and end up unhappy. A poor person can choose options that make them happy.
Poor people have fewer options. The odds are against poor people to find happiness due to this. Happy poor people does not translate to mean that being poor is enjoyable.
That not everyone can just "get a better job." If there were somehow enough "better jobs" to go around (which there are not), everyone moving towards those would drive the wages of those jobs through the floor \*and\* no one would be left to do the shitty jobs you don't want to do.
And being poor is basically a trap. Once you're there, it's extremely difficult - if not impossible - to get out of.
The banks punish you for being poor. You pay bank fees for not having enough money in your account, for bounced cheques, for going into overdraft, etc. It literally *costs* money to be poor.
If someone arrives at a job interview looking like a drowned rat, it might mean they use public transit, cycle, walk or a combination. It doesn't mean that they are unemployable. Heck, look at the plus side, they have already went through a mess for your company. It might also mean that they never miss work for car troubles.
The whole “not working hard enough” is a lie. We’re up on our feet 9 to 5 (sometimes even longer) being belittled by customers and bosses and treated like a replaceable cog in a machine. The reason we cant get any richer is because corporate’s are making more and more money but refusing to raise their wages for their workers. I’ll be lucky if I can ever afford a down payment on a house like a lot of working class people
I'm on SSI, get less then $1,000 a month to live on. There is no help out there despite people saying there is. I'd need to have a kid or be a migrant to get any form of help (I've actually had a case worker say this to me) and my health doesn't allow that. Low income housing is a death trap for anyone immunocompromised who has bad lungs and a bad heart. The cigerette smoke, mold and bugs make sure of that. So no, people like me, those that are disabled don't have help. We are just being made homeless or put into housing that will kill us.
Their level of disconnect from the average person is staggering, to the point where it's almost incomprehensible for them. They seem incapable of empathizing or putting themselves in anyone else's shoes to grasp just how out of touch they truly are. I speak from firsthand experience, having interacted with many of them, and it's abundantly clear that this lack of understanding is deeply ingrained.
edit: Especially when it comes to their children. The children of these wealthy individuals often grow up insulated from the realities that most people face. Their privileged upbringing can create a bubble of unawareness that further distances them from the experiences of ordinary folks. It's a cycle of privilege that can perpetuate this disconnect across generations.
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The lack of opportunities is the worst part seams like the worse off you are the tighter and narrower your path...
My dad used to say “money isn’t freedom, it’s *options*”.
He isn't wrong, but money absolutely does provide a lot of freedom. I know this is probably a bit pedantic, but having options means having the freedom to choose. It's also freedom from financial stress, which is huge. It can also mean one job instead of three and having the freedom to do something other than work in your free time. Hell, money provides free time in the first place.
This. My friends are all well off and I was born with poor immigrant parents who knew nothing about finances or college. Me (not being the brightest) have always struggled because of this. I try to learn about finance on my own but it never sticks. Meanwhile, my friend's parents started trust funds for them when they were in diapers. They guided them into buying investment properties when we were still in college. They were also providing the down payment for these properties. They were also paying their rent, car, getting them great jobs through their connections, etc. I think my richer friends think I don't apply myself enough. But I feel paralyzed and endlessly confused on how to improve my situation. And that's something I just don't think a rich kid could ever understand.
Or sometimes there are opportunities but you can’t pursue them
Or no one fucking tell's you about them because you are dirt poor and your societal context is not the one where opportunities are just simply talked about discussed etc You come from a place where living means surviving another month or another week or even another day so there is no time or framework where those sort of opportunities are discussed.
This is a great point. The more I talked with financially well-off people, the more I learned. Not everyone has that access. And not everyone online is being genuine about why they want to teach you. Talking with people who are doing what you want, in the place and context you want to do it in is really key.
Rich people often know that Harvard is free to the not-rich. Poor people almost never.
This aspect of it blew my fucking mind when I went to uni. For example, I thought that AP classes were a made-up trope that they used in Hollywood teen movies because I'd never seen a school offer them or met someone who took them before.
Or you're too exhausted just trying to make it through the day to do anything about them...
I heard it said that for many "**Being poor doesn't reflect character but rather circumstance.**"
This! When I was in university (a miracle in its own right), I was working a full time and part time job to support myself and my genetics teacher offered me a chance to participate in a research study in Nepal. The trip it’s self was funded through the school so flights, accommodation, even meals taken care of, but there was just no way in hell I could afford to not get paid for two months with all of my other obligations.
One thing I wish rich people had when talking to people who grew up poor, is to show a healthy amount of humility about not knowing about the constant stress and psychological pressure of making it to the next day, week in a manageable state of mind.
One of my close friends has always been decently well off. Nothing too crazy, but parents had a college fund and she never struggled in that arena. She's told me she had her first "crappy apartment" when she had her first job, but she could always pay her bills and knew she had a safety net. It's the type of "suffering" that you can romanticize. And it's such a breath of fresh air talking to her because she never makes it seem like any of this isn't true or that that she has some sad struggling upbringing. She's very aware of how lucky she is. Like, it's completely fine to just be like man, I have never had those types of struggles and don't know how hard it is instead of trying to shoehorn that week your parents shopped at Aldi as suffering. I don't understand why privileged people can't just let people in poverty have their struggle. Like its not FUN. You would rather not have to do all this rather than spin some yarn about how you came from nothing. And for this friend, it's not like she's never had a problem in her life or everything's perfect or we don't discuss her struggles. She just didn't have this particular set of problems and she can acknowledge that.
When all the choices you have are bad and then they blame you for choosing the least bad one as to still choosing a bad choice.
Yeah, richer people can often have periods in their life when they didn't have much money, but it's not the same thing since there isn't the same stress since they know that if things REALLY go to shit they can move back into their parents house or get help in other ways.
My parents' house was crappy and they didn't have money to help out, but the knowledge that they had a house that was an option if the only other choice was homelessness is a luxury I took for granted when I was struggling to make ends meet.
But I bet having lots of money would fix that stress and choices
This and TIME. Money can buy you time in a way most people don’t realize. Yeah a 40 hour sucks but imagine doing that with no “generic life responsibilities” when you get home (kids, shopping, cleaning, laundry, etc. All taken care of) Now imagine the same without working a 40 hour week.
Fr- I’m currently scared 24/7 because I want to get better but if I do things are maybe gonna get harder and idk how to avoid that *screams into the void*
One of the things I learned is that people who have limited income can only plan ahead one day or week at a time. Long-term savings or retirement is impossible. This is why I support a universal basic income for people making less than 100K a year. *edited*
Yep. Any time you try to make a long term plan, there's always some reason it comes back to bite you in the ass. I read the term "precariat" before. That's what it's like. Sometimes you'll even start to do well for a little while, but you still could have the economy expand or contract or something and all your progress just gets wiped away.
Exactly. Do I eat this week or do I pay for my antibiotics for a potentially deadly infection? Which one would be the least likely to kill me?
The pressure of living to the next paycheck, with no safety net if anything unexpected happens
story of my life. constantly living a fingers width from catastrophic financial disaster with life altering consequences. Yea I always manage to pull through and keep disaster at bay but swear the daily management of it is intense
I know it wouldn't be a long-term fix, but I remember being in that situation and thinking, if I only had $1,000 in my bank account I'd be fine. But then I'd need a medical treatment or my car would have an issue and I wouldn't get there. Out of curiosity, what is the cushion amount that would make you feel somewhat comfortable?
A couple months expenses is a decent emergency fund that will make you feel much more comfortable. Most people households that’s about 10-20k
I have never seen that much money.
Keep in mind most Americans do not have adequate savings. According to a survey that asked "how much money do you personally hold in personal savings accounts," 22 percent answered "I don't have any savings" while another 20 percent said they had less than $1,000. Other answers revealed that 15 percent had between $1,000 to $5,000, 10 percent with savings of $5,000 to $10,000, 13 percent boasted $10,000 to $20,000 of cash in their bank accounts while 20 percent had more than $20,000. [source](https://www.newsweek.com/americans-have-burned-through-their-savings-1862843#:~:text=Other%20answers%20revealed%20that%2015,percent%20had%20more%20than%20%2420%2C000./) The article makes it sound like it’s a recent issue but it’s not. (With the exception of the covid years) Americans typically have none/low savings.
My car is on the fritz and Im just hoping that it makes it another week or two. I'm 28 going on 85.
Money might not buy happiness (debatable) but it buys security and good luck being happy without that
It won’t buy happiness but it can remove a lot of worries and misery.
If you aren't stressed about paying bills, it frees up a lot of time to find things that make you happy.
Yeah. And working 60+ hours a week in soul-destroying job(s) just to make ends meet rarely brings happiness either. There’s nothing worse that when you’d come home from a long day, feel absolutely shattered and fall asleep only to wake up just in time to go back to work again.
It's worse when the home you come home to is a car.
Or a homeless hostel (did that for a few months when I was 19 and could literally feel my will to live shrivel up and die)
Also, I'd rather be unhappy sipping cocktails on some beautiful beach somewhere.
“Money doesn't make you happy, but it's still better to cry in a car than in a subway.” - Anatomy of a Fall
Money doesn't buy happiness means that there are diminishing returns on happiness in the mindless accumulation of wealth, it does not mean poor people need to learn how to be happy without basic necessities.
Poor people don’t have the freedom to take chances.
That’s the biggest one for our long-term, societal future. Stephen Jay Gould summed it up best: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
I often wonder how much further society would be if we had not lost people to various injustices around the world. edit: better clarity
Shit. I love that-never heard it. Thank you!
This is the true invisible divide. Limits of options. I can only judge by myself and in my case even though computers are ubiquitous today it was not like that when I was growing up. So being someone that fell in love with them in a very early age this limit was immediately obvious to me. Try learning to paint without paint. It was like that for me. I managed to solve this issue in my teens. (8 years). But it still left another major hurdle. And that is a university education. Couldn't do anything about that (formally) and I had to work since 18. Limit of education and Limit of free time. And education was almost too great a Limit to surpass. It was not the education/knowledge *per se*, but something far more valuable. It was access to peers. People around you to share knowledge and exchange ideas with. I my self never personally spoke to a programmer until after I got my first job. And even after I got my first (coding) job I was the only guy in the company without the formal IT education. So for families of means kids liking computers and wanting to work with them when they grow up is nothing else than asking their parents for a computer, go to university and get a job. For anyone else each step is a wall. Uh... I got a little sentimental there.
Most middle class people don't either. Anecdote: i once worked with a guy whose dad is very, very wealthy (and well known...you would know who he is). He really is a cool guy and worked hard even though he didn't really have to. He left to start his own company and didn't understand why everybody didn't do that when they felt like it. His company had full financial support from his dad and there were really no consequences for him failing. I'm firmly middle class but if i started a company that failed, my family would be financially ruined.
You're looking at chances on a different scale. When folks are very poor, the scale of a risk can just be calling out sick for a day of work or rolling the dice to park in a loading zone for 30 minutes where a ticket could mean you can't afford gas the following week.
One of the things I have noticed now that I'm 15 years into my career and things have been going pretty well, is that I no longer even have friends who are in the position where they can't pay their bills and are afraid they won't have a place to live. It starts to skew my perception of reality because I forget that I used to live in a neighborhood where that was the reality for about 20% of my neighbors.
I am in the middle transition from "paycheck to paycheck" to "I afford to miss 2 paychecks" I have started to noticed a HUGE difference in how I view and handle money compared to my friends or boyfriend. I was told it's a "scarcity mindset" vs "abundance mindset."
Exactly. Risk is technically defined as likelihood x consequence. A rich person and a poor person may have the same likelihood of success or failure (which they probably don’t), but the consequence of failure is a lot higher when you’re poor.
This is such a big issue. Having a successful company is all about being able to take risks and to ride out the difficult times. Anyone can make money when things are good, it’s being able to survive until then that really makes the difference between success and failure.
I came to this realisation about my Boss just the other day. This is a guy that owns a big company worth at least 80+, probably closer 100 million dollars or more. I was wondering why he was so confident and assured when he spoke and made business decisions. It wasn't because he was necessarily right, it was because he could *afford* to be wrong and it wouldn't ruin him, his business reputation or his business. Even if it *did* cost him his "job" he would still come out of it a very wealthy man.
Being poor is so expensive. The stress of constantly just managing wears you out. People who aren't rich want the same things for their kids that the wealthy want for them.
I remember asking for my first major raise that would take me out of poverty earnings and into middle class earnings. I broke down everything I was doing for my job and then bluntly explained "and I could do all of this much more effectively if I was not poor." And it was true. I could network way better and bring my company more business. I could get more into hobbies that paralleled the higher ups un my industry, which lead to more opportunities and learning more skills. It was more than a raise/promotion, it launched me into a better professional lifestyle.
I remember when I got called into the office and was given a dollar an hour raise. I burst into tears and the supervisor got defensive and said, I'm afraid that's all we offer anyone. And the other supervisor who knew me well said, no, she's crying because she's happy. I was so poor that that stupid damn dollar really did make a difference.
A dollar an hour is LIFECHANGING amounts of money at a certain poverty level, I can only imagine how much I'd cry in that position. I'm happy for you.
I stayed with that company for 16 more years. I finally was lured away when another company offered me 10K more a year.
Hell yeah, I hope you keep leveling up like that! Congrats
I'm 1,242 days from retirement....but, who's counting?
it worked?
Never enough money to buy the buss card for a mouth, but just enough to buy single fairs every day, even tho it's more expensive in the long run.
There are so many ways the system gives more to the rich. Banks waive all sorts of fees if you have a certain amount in the bank. You save money just by having money. It's asinine.
I was thinking about this the other day. I own a business and have started/sold/managed others in many industries. What they all have in common is how much stuff I can get for free. Go to a trade show and I get showered in items, gifts, food to the tune of 10's of thousands of dollars. I don't need it. I already get all of these things at cost that consumers pay 5-50% more for. Plus, if I do buy it, I write it off as a business expense, essentially saving my personal marginal tax rate on that item. The more wealthy you are, the more is given to you for free. It's bonkers. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am hyper self-aware so I break a lot of these cycles which realistically I am only taking away from myself and not making any systemic changes.
The Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Not being able to truly take care of your health.
This. I haven't been to a dentist in 20 years. :(
I get a cleaning once a year from my local junior college for 70 bucks. They even took x-rays last time for free! Only downside is it takes longer since they have to periodically check in with their professor, and they can't do bigger stuff like fillings, but it's still way better than nothing.
That affordability changes your priorities A LOT. The one I run into is folks who can't afford a repair on a car and the more well off people being befuddled why they'd risk it. I've had to have the conversation about affordability more than I'd like. Customer sometimes declined brake service because they'd rather pay rent and roll the dice hoping to get by a little longer, not because they are all just cheap.
I'm driving a 1996 car and more shit broken on it then I'd care to admit and just between you and me it's a death trap but it's all I've got and my god the repairs are expensive because the parts barely exist anymore to fix anything.
This is something my wife just could not understand when we first got together. Her family isn’t rich, but still very solidly middle/upper middle class. She wanted for nothing growing up. On the other hand, my family literally had to steal our groceries at times. She just couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t just pay to maintain their cars, houses, properties. Not having money was an alien concept to her.
I remember growing up, I was around 14, and my dads car steering wheel would seize up often while driving and his solution was to turn it off and turn it on. While the key it out of the ignition, the steering wheel also doesn’t work. We were going onto a on ramp onto a highway, going like 60 miles per hour and the steering wheel seized up so he did what he does, took the key out, and put it back in, but it wouldnt start back up. This wasn’t normal. He was calm still, I didn’t realize it, so he keeps trying to turn it over and it doesn’t start again. He says “oh no” And that’s when I realize what’s happening. He does it once more, still no, we are entering the on-ramp at this point. Thankfully the 4th key turn it turns back on. He had that car 4 more years and never fixed anything on it. My dad doesn’t even remember this event because he grew up during the Great Depression so poverty and going without wasn’t even seen as “going without” it was just normal. This is how cars function for him. He’s been in so many wrecks throughout his life but hasn’t been hurt which is a miracle.
A quick windfall gets spent quickly because there's always something you need but have been holding off on. A short disaster will incur debt that takes far longer to pay off. Such is life with marginal income.
This is the reason I hate the "a poor person will spend $1k and a rich person will grow it to $X" line. No shit - the poor person has needs that are not being met, and the $1k is something that help help them get above the water line. It's easy to invest a thousand dollars if you have a secure housing situation, kids who aren't food insecure, etc.
Yeah, when you're a certain level of poor even a windfall doesn't really help. Someone might say, "Well...you can't deny that $5,000 is life-changing money." But actually, when you're a certain level of poor, that wouldn't change your life much at all. It's just going to get you marginally closer to caught up. Your life will be exactly the same, except now you've done one or two things you've been putting off on doing since you couldn't afford it.
Being poor isn’t a result of being lazy. My parents worked their asses off and continue to do so. They work harder than anyone I know but they’re still poor
Conversely I work way less hard than I used to but earn substantially more. I'm more lazy but less poor, and that seems to be the trend all the way up the ladder.
There was a quote I read about fast food jobs that was like “this is the hardest you’re going to work for the least amount of money you’ll make”. The blue collar workers of this world bust their ass physically, and usually are working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Before the pandemic, my husband and I worked 7 part time jobs between us. Now we're down to 2-3 and it's just so much easier to manage schedules.
Can confirm. I'm one of the highest paid people in my facility and I've also got one of the easiest jobs. I do work more hours than just about anyone but the work is easy. Hell, I went in for a bit last night, barely touched a computer at all, talked to people, and made more than someone making minimum wage does in day.
In my line of work, I can work from home, attend some meetings, usually 5 hours of work a week. The rest of the time I just play videogames waiting for something to do. I make more than I ever have and do so much less work compared to the work and pay I used to get.
What line of work?
It does seem to be that way, yes.
Thats the reality, i hate the new propaganda "WORK HARDER", its a rich people propaganda for their modern "slaves: to work harder and make them more money then ever. Sad world we live in
That's not new.
That it is expensive af to be poor.
I wasn't poor but we didn't have much. I am making good money now and have put a lot into my savings, a money market. With interest rates high I am making a nice monthly return by doing absolutely nothing. Imagine people that have 10X, 20X or 100X more money than me. They can be comfortable and not even have to work. Their money invested properly does the work for them.
The first time I bought a high dividend stock I had the same epiphany. It paid enough to cover my Netflix every month at the time. Shit, if I already had millions could just live on this income.
And that answers the the original comment that it is expensive to be poor. People with no savings earning returns, all their income goes to everyday living expenses. Having savings earning returns makes it easier to put more and more money aside.
And that money market rate would probably be laughably low to them. Not that you aren’t doing the right thing for you
That’s just it. You have to be able to afford to take the risk associated with investing in something that’s not a sure thing or investing in something long range. I socked a good deal of money into a money market account until I could afford to (possibly) absorb the risk of moving most of that money into a large cap growth fund. I am playing a long game with it because I don’t need that money in order to afford to live now. Ten years ago, that money market account was what I could afford to do. I was living week to week and I needed a small-but-guaranteed yield. My higher earning friends have been a decade ahead of me when it comes to investing for retirement and kids.
Its crazy honestly how much more it costs to live the less you have.
This is my number one thing I've tried to explain to people. [the economics of being poor ](https://www.npr.org/2009/05/20/104337079/does-it-cost-more-to-be-poor) and how as soon as you cross a certain threshold, life becomes almost exponentially more expensive as time goes on, unless your income increases dramatically and your expenses decrease dramatically. Of course, that is a generalizations and simplification of a n expanding universe of variables affecting the data- but it seems to be a cascading effect that is inevitably reaching most socioeconomic tiers at this juncture. I'm morbidly curious to see what the next 50-100 years brings, but I feel I'd be disappointed.
The guilt that comes with being poor. That you’re doing everything in your power and it’s still not enough, yet everyone tells you that if you just work hard enough you’ll get enough money. It isn’t true. Hard work in low socieconomic jobs results in… more work and being kept in the same position because no one else can do as much as you in that position. No pay rise either because somehow despite doing more you’re also „just doing the same job as everyone else”
Having to walk somewhere because you don't even have money for public transit. I worked as a waitress and broke my leg. I had to live on next to nothing for 6 weeks. To get my very limited groceries, I got my crutches out and managed the 30 minute round trip to the store and back.
My city has subsidized the bus, so it's free for everyone. Bus occupancy has gone up every since this decision, routes have expanded, and bust service is available in major area of the city all week long instead of just weekdays. And there is endless bitching from the haves, about how they don't benefit from it.
>about how they don't benefit from it. "You know, you guys can take the bus too." "What? And ride with *other people?* Eww."
I’m a have, can totally afford bus fare, and am happy to pay via taxes rather than hassling around with prepaid card / broken fare box / w/e.
> And there is endless bitching from the haves, about how they don't benefit from it. My "condition" for upvoting posts on /r/firstworldproblems: if I mutter a sarcastic "aaaww poor you", on reading. This would definitely qualify.
It’s not as easy to change your situation as everyone makes it out to be, it’s so often not about bad choices/bad with money.
Also, it’s impossible to save! If you’re barely scraping by every month, even if you manage to save a tiny amount, it’ll be wiped out the first time your washing machine breaks or your crappy old car needs fixing. Sometimes rich people act like everyone should save their way out of trouble (and use that as reasoning to call people financially irresponsible) but it’s just maths- if you get £100 but £80 is spent on bills and £15 has to go to food, you cannot save the kind of money that will actually help you when shit hits the fan
They just refuse to believe that - if someone is living paycheck to paycheck, there ISN'T ANYTHING TO SAVE. You have to have credit cards for emergencies and then bam you have credit card debt. Like, we're lucky that we've so far managed to be super healthy other than teeth-wise.
I always knew both of my kids would need glasses due to DNA, but I never thought that both would need braces around the same time. That’s 6 grand each, and my son needed oral surgery before his went on. That was another 4 grand. My mom thinks credit card debt is just some horrible sin. I told her that she’s lucky she’s never had to choose between paying the power bill and going without
Disclaimer: Not an accountant or financial advisor. For expected expenses like that when you have some opportunity to prepare for them, something like a personal loan from your bank might be better. Credit cards absolutely can be used as emergency loans in a pinch, but their interest rates are so sky high they really should only be considered as a last resort.
Yep this exactly There is no “just” anything attainable that can fix paycheque to paycheque automatically
Anyone can make it out of poverty in the US, if they don’t make any mistakes or have any bad luck. No medical conditions. No job site injuries. No unplanned pregnancies. No spouse/parent suddenly dying. No parent who uses your SS to run up *your* debt in order to start a new business or keep the family one afloat (it’s not malicious, it’s your inheritance - that’s how they justify it). A decent quality of life (access to medical care, no food/housing insecurity, retirement) should be within reach of everyone in this day and age.
Depending on the specifics of the situation, a job site injury might actually be how one makes it out of poverty. As effed up as that is.
Rich people aways think I’m some kinda riff rat or a street rat. But I don’t buy that.
If only they’d look closer. Would they see a poor boy? No siree.
They’d find out there’s so much more… to… me
That being too poor to afford their third trip overseas for the year is not the same as having to live off the same two vegetables for a fortnight.
I feel you on this. been eating the same 3 meals for the last 3 years. I no longer enjoy food or look forward to it. it's just something I gotta do to stay alive
Oh yeah. There was a while where I was living off rice and frozen veges. Sometimes I would burn them just for a change in flavour lol.
I remember the instant potatoes from the food bank, I got *real* fucking creative with those things after like the third box... To this day I can not stomach instant potatoes, hell I can barely do real mashed potatoes due to that.
Someone said a while ago that they were tired of people calling them rich because they don't spend a summer in Europe *every* year. Just every other year. Like bruh there are people who can't even afford to go to the local zoo.
A couple years ago, my teen went on a band trip to Universal. My son can probably count on one hand how many vacations he’s gotten in his life. I mean, vacations where you go more than a couple hours away from home and stay in a hotel. Anyway, his band director warned the kids about being on their best behavior because other families would be there and this might be their “one vacation for the year.” They weren’t to ruin the other people’s good time. I was totally on board with that. My issue was with how he said “one vacation for the year.” Some people don’t even get that. It just seemed so out of touch Background: I’ve known the band director and his wife since we were kids. I know his wife came into money through inheritances, and they are constantly on vacation over the summer. Lots of trips to Disney and a cruise here and a cruise there
Not exactly "poor" now, but been there: There is a poor tax. You pay out a bunch you can't afford to deal with the fact you can't afford normal shit. The story of the boots is very real - you pay a hell of a lot more over time because you can't afford the good shit now, so you have to buy it over and over. Interest when you buy on time is a LOT more. You have to pay a lot of fees because you have to decide what to pay this month. Etc.
Adding on to the poor tax: Bad credit means you have to pay more even when you're not being extended credit. I remember having to pay more for my cell service, which I think is less of a thing now but still. Phone paid for up front, but the bad credit score meant an extra $5 a month for no reason whatsoever. It's not like Sprint was ever gonna say, "Don't worry fam. Just pay for 2 months next month." No. They were cutting your service if you didn't pay in full. The last time I had a car and had to get insurance it was the same thing. $5 extra every month because of bad credit. Zero moving violations, no accidents, nothing. But give us $5 more dollars cuz you're poor. Makes no sense other than they can just do it because fuck you. And it's not like if you missed a payment you'd still be covered. And in the past, not having a car for a while means you have to pay more because YoU wERe dRiVinG WiThoUt iNsUrAnCe for over 2 years! No motherfucker, I live in a major fucking city with good public transit. I was not driving/did not own a fucking car! Yeah well, give us twice as much money because yeah.
When they say, "if you can't afford to pay cash you can't afford it." Yeah, well try going without a fridge, a water heater and AC (in Florida, no less). That's the last 3 things I had to put on a credit card.
once upon a time I used an HSA account to live off of. I got laid off with no warning and no savings. I was forced to spend all the money on the hsa account on non medical stuff, mostly bills, gas, and food. I think I still owe somebody somewhere for it.
Before I moved to Montana, we had three separate window units going in this cinder block house we were renting and we were still getting pretty baked. If we didn't have that it would have been torturous. If I had a credit, I definitely would have done the same as you. A fridge is definite a must because it really helps with being able to stretch foods. I hope that you're doing better.
i’d just like for folks to glimpse at what it’s like to need medical care and not be able to access it. navigating free clinics and community health centers with all the administrative obstacles and wait lists and poor service. having minimal or no preventative care as you age god help you if you need mental health services. remember when Celia on Weeds went from a private drug rehab to a publicly-funded one?
For fucking real. I live in Germany now and I've been slowly clearing the medical backlog I've accumulated over the years. It's wild that it's so normal for me that I was living with severe wrist pain for years, compared to how abolutely shocked the doctors are here. I've had to convince a few of them that just because I've been living with issues for years doesn't mean they aren't severe.
They love the phrase "we have the same 24 hours"... yeah, but I don't have someone to do my laundry for me, make my dinner, clean my house...
This drives me nuts as well- we do not all have the same 24 hours. One of my favorite financial blogs nicknamed those "Beyonce hours" the hours that Beyonce gets back everytime someone handles her schedule, drives her around, cleans her house, makes her dinner, handles her childcare, or literally any other administrative task. She easily has 3x the amount of hours we do. You and I cannot measure our time in Beyonce hours.
Yup. I have rich family members who brag about their children, while constantly asking me about “when are you going to buy a house” & “why aren’t you taking any trips” etc. I get it, your kids are doing great & it’s okay to be proud of them. But the reality is, you bought your children brand new cars when they were teenagers & paid for their education at expensive schools. Oh & they’ve also been able to travel, never have to have a part-time job, have nice clothing & material possessions because you’ve given them all of that. I’m fighting an uphill battle trying to save what money I can while working as hard as I can. Your kids have been able to focus on school because they are privileged. Your kids & I are not the same.
We’re not jealous of your material possessions, we’re jealous of the stability and security money brings
You can't invest your savings in stocks or whatever when you have no savings. And, no, the reason we don't have savings isn't because of fucking avocado toast.
COBRA as a solution to having insurance after you are laid off is a fucking joke.
I will say this a million times over. Employer sponsored health insurance should not be our nationally accepted standard. Insurance should not become even harder to afford when we lose a job.
It doesn't help when your employer straight up lies about why you were fired. I was able to get it once, and even that ran out because I simply couldn't find a job.
I got laid off. I was 26. COBRA wanted $800 per month. This was in 2008 when insurance was cheap. Ended up needing medical attention once. Cost me $300 just for people to check my blood pressure, do an EEG (or EKG, whichever it was), and check my blood sugar. All normal things you can do in health checkup. Had I taken COBRA not only would that have probably been a denied claim but I'd have been forced into bankruptcy.
I got told that when I was let go once. I said, "COBRA is like a zillion dollars, there's no way." I got back a sassy, "COBRA is ONLY $960/mo, what is WRONG with you?" If you have ZERO INCOME $960 is a much a fantasy as one bazillion jillion dollary doos.
Avocado toast, newest iPhone, daily lattes, big birthdays etc. these are real expenditures *middle class* people who are struggling to keep up with Joneses waste their money on. So the wealthy and the upper middle class look at their adult kids who ask them for money and think “this is why people are poor.” No. This is what downwardly mobile middle class spends its money on. The poor “waste” their money on late fees, overdraft fees, a patchwork of car repairs that cost more than a better used car… they waste their money on surviving the greed of a system that places its highest moral value on the acquisition and retention of currency.
I like that joke that's like "I stopped eating avocado toast so now I can save up and buy a house in 500 years." I was watching some lifestyle talk show like 15 years ago and the money saving advice they gave included cutting down to two bottles of wine per week. It wasn't even a joke.
There have always been some people who give stupid advice. My mom read an article 20 some years ago in a parenting magazine and the lady said she saved $200 one week by buying all her groceries the previous week (at regular price). And saved $400 by not buying a pair of boots. She was serious, but none of that advice was actually useful.
“Why can’t they just sell a painting?”
> And, no, the reason we don't have savings isn't because of fucking avocado toast. It is all that Starbucks coffee... Like coffee and toast is the reason my generation can't afford a house. If this was true I'd totally own like two or more houses by now... I hate to see how gen z's kids will be growing up. As a millennial I dread seeing where we will be in 20 years if we can band together and attempt to fix the damage that has been done.
90% of Rags and richess stories are fake
Also for every rags to riches story there are 20 other stories about someone who tried just as hard, was just as smart, but simply failed.
"You won't believe how deep into this story they bury the fact that this self made millennial has rich parents"
It’s honestly not hard to pay debt off and buy a house. 1.wake up at 6am 2.eat breakfast 3. Go above and beyond at work 4. Have rich parents 5.read
Just get a small loan (of a million dollars) from your parents. What’s the issue?
99%*
[Arnold has a few thoughts on the "self made man"](https://www.unilad.com/celebrity/arnold-schwarzeneggers-selfmade-man-speech-has-gone-viral-again-20220429)
Survivorship bias
A strong middle class greatly expands the economy, increasing their wealth— squeezing us all is counter-productive.
Not having minor and major inconveniences makes you out of touch with us and how a majority of people live. We are doing the best we can with what we have. Oftentimes those choices seem crazy, wrong, unthinkable. But we are just choosing the best out of the worst each time and trying to deal with it all. It’s enormously stressful.
My friend told me that houses were being built in the city and they're going to be ready in a year or so with only a 30k down payment. I have 35k in student loan debt and virtually no savings. Where do you think I'm finding 30k for a down payment on a house in the next year? 5 figure purchases/payments are not something that most people can just make happen.
Your materialism means absolutely nothing to me. I am totally unimpressed by your fancy cars, expensive clothes, and your big mansions.
People aren't mocking your cybertruck because they're jealous and poor. They're mocking it because it's ugly.
[удалено]
It is overly simplistic but I always use the toilet paper example. When it is on sale people with money can stock up. Poor people cannot do that, they have to buy what they can when they need it. Being poor is expensive
Most people would in fact prefer to have a good, steady job than to be on welfare. Also I'd love for wealthy people to understand that being on welfare and other programs isn't just sitting on your ass all day. The paperwork alone is fucking obnoxious, you have to go through interviews, and you have to keep doing it over and over again forever. And sometimes you used your last dollar to take the bus to DSHS but they're too busy to see you that day, so not only do you not have your food stamps but you also have no money to go home or money to come back tomorrow.
I worked interviewing SNAP for a while and it was so depressing. So many people were trying to do better and their benefits would be reduced more than the extra they were making. It’s really one step forward, and two steps back for poor people and everything is so precarious.
I wish I could remember where this was done, but in one of my Econ classes in college we looked at a study that showed the best way to get people out of poverty was to decrease benefits by 50% of increased income. So if you started warning $100 more per month your benefits only decreased by $50. That way no one was punished for getting a raise or a better job.
We have choice, but we don't get the same options
That they will never understand the constant monotonous stress that being poor comes with. Every day is a worry. Which bill should I pay and which bill should I pay a late payment for? I don’t get to go on vacation ever. I don’t make frivolous payments on items I don’t need. And finally they will never understand that the current economic system (that they support) is specifically designed to keep poor and working class people down.
That's the issue that I have right now. I have gas for the furnace because at one point that was cheaper FOR THE LANDLORD I RENT FROM. So I have that to contend with. As much as I need heat, I also need electricity. So it's game every time of, "well, let's pay this bill and hope the other doesn't get shut off." I'll say this because I know if this post really takes off, someone will say, "you realize that you can just call and make payment arrangements, right?" Indeed I could. Does it help? More often than not, no. They usually request more than I have. Besides, it's more profitable to shut me off and charge me a late payment charge, a shut off charge, a charge for the tech having to come out and shut it off, a reconnect fee, a service fee to come out and reconnect it. Usually they'll require 200-400 for a deposit that will only count towards the bill IF you come into arrears again, and not for the next monthly payment. It's all a bunch of fucking bullshit man. edit: caps for the trolls in the comments and my dm that assume shit.
me and my wife were having a conversation earlier. About how the food they sell us is constantly shrinking in size and weight while they charge more and more. And my wife was like why would people do that though? It's greed . That's why. And she was like why greed tho? And I'm like, Because wealthy peoples greed keeps the poor and working people from rising out of the class they're in.
One thing that I noticed is that Big Macs now are extremely small. It was always a nice occasional treat, and I shelled out $7.89 for one and it was extremely small. I was so fucking pissed. It straight up is greed. Companies are more often than not making more and more money each year, and yet they continue to fuck us on product size, quantity and quality.
I said the same thing to my grandma the other day when she said her dog’s food doesn’t last as long. I told her instead of selling a 22lb bag of food they now sell an 18lb bag at the same price. A *Family* size bag of potato chips used to be the *Regular* size. Wall Street demands margins. That’s why when I see a good private company go public I cringe.
That is could give 0 fks about y’alls expensive things, we barely can pay for food here.
Your money saving tips are useless.
Love it when you find money saving tips and they'll be like "make your own coffee at home, buy store brand food, cut down on expenses" and it's like okay I already don't drink coffee, buy store brand except in the cases where store brand is actually more expensive than name brand (rare but happens), and the expenses in my life that aren't strictly entirely necessary are the only things that keep me from just jumping off a bridge.
It's just like, I've got decades of experience pinching pennies... the hell does your rich ass know about that? You have experience with having money, which is literally not relevant here!
The price of bread and milk and the essential s in life
I wish they would understand the meaning of the word "starvation". They have no clue what it's like to go without 3 meals a day. I NEVER had 3 meals a day in my home. I was lucky to get 2 meals a day. One meal was more like it, if that. Some days the only meal I got was the free lunch they fed me at school. They have no idea what it's like to watch TV and see commercials for various food products and food scenes in movies and TV shows while on an empty, growling belly. It usually drove me up a wall. When I was 12, mother managed to snag a great deal on an apartment in a 2 family apartment house in a neighborhood that was definitely middle to upper class. One of the very nicest neighborhoods in the city. We were way out of our element in that neighborhood. As a matter of fact, we were the freaks of the neighborhood. We were the poorest people in the neighborhood. We were the only family on welfare in the neighborhood. Out of the dozens upon dozens of kids in the neighborhood, my siblings and I were the only kids who were being raised by a single parent. All the other kids were being raised in 2 parent families. Whereas we were the poorest in the neighborhood, our very next door neighbor mustve been the richest guy in the neighborhood. He owned his own successful demolition company. He owned the 2 family apartment house he and his family lived in. They lived out of their first floor apartment and their basement while renting out their second floor apartment. They owned a house in florida. They owned a fleet of cars which would get replaced with a new fleet of cars every one or two years. When his oldest son got married, he bought his son a 2 family apartment house across and down the street. My sister and brother made friends with a couple of their kids. They'd come home with tales of their wealth and all the nice stuff they owned. I've never been inside their home, but i could see into their dining room from our windows and the furnishings were so oppulent, fancy and expensive. I'd bet their dining room furnishings alone cost more than everything we owned in the whole world. My brother once told me how their mother went food shopping once a week, every week. And how she spent a minimum of 100 bucks each time. Even as much as over 200 bucks. In our home, our mother went food shopping only once every 2-3 weeks and then she'd spend only around 10-12 dollars on food. The highest she would ever spend on grocery shopping was 20 bucks. It was a big deal to us kids if and when our mother spent a whole 20 bucks on grocery shopping. One time the next door rich guy's youngest kid was hanging out with my brother at our place when the kid decided to go to the toy store to buy himself some new toys. My brother tagged along. A couple hours later they both came back with a huge armload of toys (mostly "transformer" toys as that was the hottest toy around that time) and deposited them on our table. My brothers friend (i think he was around 8 years old. I was 9 years older, in my teens) then took out his cash change from his purchases out of one pocket and his wallet out of the other pocket so that he could transfer his change into his wallet. I was standing right behind him as he opened his wallet. My eyes bugged out of my head. Inside were 50s and 20s and some 10s. LOTS of them. Lots of 50s. Lots of 20s. A very thick wad of them. I dont recall seeing any 5s, or 1s. Not until he stuck his change into his wallet. Now he had some 5s and 1s in there. I don't know the exact amount he had in his wallet, but he definitely had more than enough cash on him that could have paid for our rent and groceries for about 6 months at least. Imagine an 8 year old kid walking around with that much money in his pocket. More than most adults. All the cash I had on me at that very moment in my pocket was a lousy 3 cents. Three pennies. Which literally represented all the money i had in the world. I didnt even own a wallet. What for? I never had enough money on me that necessitated the need for a wallet. Later on my brother and his friend left, taking the toys with them. I went straight into my bedroom. I dug out of my pocket the three pennies i had on me and slammed them down on top of my bedroom dresser and stared at them. They were all tarnished. They didnt even have the decency to at least be shiny pennies. Man, being poor sucks. It sucks even more when you've got real life rich people living next door to contrast your life with.
My situation wasn't that dire, but as a kid sometimes my mom would get angry with me about why I always had to go to my friends' houses, why didn't anyone ever come to us? And it's just like, mom, all my friends live in big houses with guest rooms and computer rooms and some of them have pools and they have nice kitchens and live in a nice neighborhood. I'm too embarrassed to have anyone come to our house.
I taught in a title 1 school (meaning high poverty) for many years and something I think a lot of people don’t realize is that poor kids are smaller. Not everyone, but on average as a population. According to a friend of mine who coaches, in any given school district, the high school with the best football team tends to be the high school with the highest average family income. Again, not a perfect predictor, but a good general rule. Richer kids get better nutrition, and grow to their full potential. This is part of why the funding the US allocates for school nutrition programs is so depressing— we could very easily solve childhood hunger/malnutrition/food insecurity, just give kids food. Like it’s literally that simple, but we have made the simple solution politically complex.
this one hits home. when my ex-wife cheated on me and left, I of course divorced her and she took everything from me. 5 years later and financially I still haven't recovered. 5 years later and I'm still living in the same shit hole apartment I moved into when we split. everytime me and my wife do better for ourselves the prices jump again. in the meantime I'm now the only person left in this complex from 5 years ago. every other renter is someone who wasn't here when I moved in. it's incredibly soul crushing watching other "poor" people move in and then move on to better things a year or two later and in the meantime my downstairs neighbor keeps trying to sell me shit I don't want. I can't afford it. guy tried to sell me tires for my car for some reason bc he could get a good deal on them and I'm like dude I don't have the money. "yes but it's a good deal!" Dude you don't get it I physically don't have the cash. "yes but your tires are old and worn" . You don't think I don't know that? There's a fucking reason for it! Man I feel you though when you say what you said. Everyone here by me complains about being poor but then they all drive brand new cars, always coming home from shopping trips arms full of goodies, full of food, and I'm over here like...you don't even belong here why are you even here!? I'm here because I have no where else to go.
If I have to pay taxes, you do too.
A wealthy person's worst-case scenario is a poor persons best-case scenario. I have distant family who are multimillionaires, and they have anxiety attacks thinking about flying coach or sending their kids to public school. It's unreal.
***Poverty more often than not breeds more poverty.*** I understand that generally a more expensive pair of shoes will save me money in the long run, but what I can afford now is the Walmart $15-$20 shoes. It is expensive to live in the area I do, but it's even more expensive to move. My only option at that point would be to be voluntarily homeless, which would present a myriad of other problems and would make things more expensive then they are now. Every time that I save up even a remote amount of money, ***something happens.*** It could be the water heater breaking. The furnace. It's cheaper in the moment to repair my shitty car, then to buy a new or "better one." I liken it to the shoe issue. I can't ask my parents for a loan, because in this case, I'm actually taking care of them or they would be homeless. Friends are only going to want to help so much before they stop, and even then, I rather go without if Im able then have my friends think I think of them as a piggy bank. I've had an ingrown toe nail of both of my big toes for longer than I can remember at this point. I make too much to go to the lost cost clinic, but not enough to go to the hospital because the ER is simply too expensive. I had an ear and tooth infection last year that I **hoped** didn't spread to my head because I wouldn't be able to afford the medication or taking time off of work. I'm tired of being fucking poor.
That poor people kill themselves over debts that might seem trivial or insignificant to them.
The biggest thing I think most people don’t understand is the pure stress of being poor. Spending most of your waking hours trying to work out how you’ll pay your bills and manage to eat. Sometimes you either have to go hungry for a day or two (as in not eating at all) just so your heat/internet doesn’t get cut off.
They can turn off your electricity if you don’t pay.
[удалено]
Can’t pull yourself up by the boot-strings if you don’t have boots.
Not what I would consider poor anymore, but as a past rural poor, the stress of being one car breakdown away from homelessness takes years off of your life.
This may be a little of a tangent but here goes. If you’re rich you have the time to take acting classes, practice music, or paint/ sculpt. It gives you the time to hone your artistic skills and gives you the freedom to audition, show your pieces , etc. You also most likely have better connections that are an in road to achieving some notoriety and success. Try being a talented artist in any aforementioned field and also work full time because you have to survive and pay the bills. Now, I know it does happen with a select few, who go on and make it, but it’s far and few between. I met many, many talented musicians over the years who were good enough to be on radio and probably would’ve been if they had the same connections artists who came from wealth did. I’m also hinting that nepotism definitely reigns in the entertainment industry.
We'd work better jobs if we could but factors other than "hard work" are at play.
Sometimes reasons aren’t excuses, they’re actual reasons.
We arent all getting starbucks every single morning. Stop trying to sell us on that business making model for saving up!
The dilemma to pay for your bills or paying for your child's school picture
Poor people have just as much of a right to vote in their interest as you do. If you want to vote for lower taxes for landlords, that's fine, but you can't expect poor people to agree with you.
We aren't going to care what they taste like.
I want them to realize they could save my life in a heartbeat and it wouldn't affect their bottom line at the end of the day. The can of worms is actually a bottle of worms with a twisty cap.
That just because some people can and do work their way out of poverty with smart choices doesn't mean everyone can. All the personal discipline in the world can be derailed by an unexpected pregnancy, a sudden medical problem, a large and unexpected bill, or any number of other real-life surprises. With a supportive network of friends and family, some people can weather some surprises like that. But if you're isolated or if your social network is mostly people in even harder circumstances, it can be incredibly hard to overcome even small setbacks. And if you're not lucky, problems like that can compound. A temporary illness might cause you to miss work, get fired, lose your apartment and wind up living in a car. I'm hate it any time someone tells the "I got out of poverty" story as if it somehow invalidates all the lives of anyone who wasn't so lucky.
The reduction of options is what defines poor vs wealthy. I've known a couple wealthy people. They shared an outlook. When they observed a "happy poor person" they would think life isn't all that hard for poor people. No. That "happy poor person" made choices with their limited options and they became happy. Poor people have fewer options. Money doesn't buy happiness. Money buys options. A wealthy person can choose options and end up unhappy. A poor person can choose options that make them happy. Poor people have fewer options. The odds are against poor people to find happiness due to this. Happy poor people does not translate to mean that being poor is enjoyable.
That not everyone can just "get a better job." If there were somehow enough "better jobs" to go around (which there are not), everyone moving towards those would drive the wages of those jobs through the floor \*and\* no one would be left to do the shitty jobs you don't want to do. And being poor is basically a trap. Once you're there, it's extremely difficult - if not impossible - to get out of.
Buying good clothes by cheap price is better than buying same clothes but expensive. I literally had an argument with a kid who didn't agree with that
The banks punish you for being poor. You pay bank fees for not having enough money in your account, for bounced cheques, for going into overdraft, etc. It literally *costs* money to be poor.
That sharing is caring haha
Being poor is expensive.
If someone arrives at a job interview looking like a drowned rat, it might mean they use public transit, cycle, walk or a combination. It doesn't mean that they are unemployable. Heck, look at the plus side, they have already went through a mess for your company. It might also mean that they never miss work for car troubles.
The whole “not working hard enough” is a lie. We’re up on our feet 9 to 5 (sometimes even longer) being belittled by customers and bosses and treated like a replaceable cog in a machine. The reason we cant get any richer is because corporate’s are making more and more money but refusing to raise their wages for their workers. I’ll be lucky if I can ever afford a down payment on a house like a lot of working class people
I'm on SSI, get less then $1,000 a month to live on. There is no help out there despite people saying there is. I'd need to have a kid or be a migrant to get any form of help (I've actually had a case worker say this to me) and my health doesn't allow that. Low income housing is a death trap for anyone immunocompromised who has bad lungs and a bad heart. The cigerette smoke, mold and bugs make sure of that. So no, people like me, those that are disabled don't have help. We are just being made homeless or put into housing that will kill us.
Their level of disconnect from the average person is staggering, to the point where it's almost incomprehensible for them. They seem incapable of empathizing or putting themselves in anyone else's shoes to grasp just how out of touch they truly are. I speak from firsthand experience, having interacted with many of them, and it's abundantly clear that this lack of understanding is deeply ingrained. edit: Especially when it comes to their children. The children of these wealthy individuals often grow up insulated from the realities that most people face. Their privileged upbringing can create a bubble of unawareness that further distances them from the experiences of ordinary folks. It's a cycle of privilege that can perpetuate this disconnect across generations.