5 ms·

$30 is big upfront costs? Seriously? Of course, that may be a bigger sum in 3rd world countries. But they don't have Amazon there at all and probably don't use

by mantas 9y ago

$30 is big upfront costs? Seriously? Of course, that may be a bigger sum in 3rd world countries. But they don't have Amazon there at all and probably don't use diapers either.

j4kp07 9y ago
Don't you get it? Anecdotes and hypotheticals trump logic and common sense.
- zbentley 9y ago
  How about statistics instead of anecdotes? This article is pretty well sourced, and, while not all of the math checks out, the preponderance of evidence seems to point towards "yes, that is a regular choice that poor people in the US make": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05...
war1025 9y ago
When you are making minimum wage, which I believe is ~$7.50/hr, and are most likely not working full time, that is a good chunk of a day's pay. Granted, if you are in that situation, you are probably getting some government assistance. Also, some people are just terrible at managing money.
- mantas 9y ago
  Let's say small packs cost $85/mo (as per $1k/year). Big monthly pack is $30. So weekly supplies in small packs are barely cheaper than buying in bulk for a month. Unless you pay day's diapers every day.. Do you think poor people are stupid and can't plan even a week ahead? They're getting paid weekly or monthly in most cases after all. In my experience, poor people are much better at managing money than better off folks. I could see plenty of people who couldn't bother to order bulk of diapers and then store them somewhere. But poor people usually go the extra mile even for couple bucks.
  - war1025 9y ago
    My comment wasn't about poor people being dumb. My comment was attempting to point out that, when you are poor, small amounts of money matter a lot more. I may have worded it poorly or misread the context of the comment I was replying to, but the point I was trying to get across is that when you don't have much money, you have to be much more conscious about how you spend it. And if you aren't, then you go broke and don't eat for a while. It's an easy thing for well-off people to lose sight of.
    - mantas 9y ago
      Exactly, they're much m ore conscious about how they spend it. Thus putting aside $30 is no brainer vs buying in small packs. Most people, poor or not, get paid weekly or monthly. It's not that hard to buy $30 worth of goods after getting paid vs spending $10 every few days...
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    It's usually not that they are stupid, it's often that they literally don't have the money to pay the upfront cost of the bigger pack because they are living paycheck to paycheck.
    - mantas 9y ago
      How big is paycheck? Probably more than $30. When buying in bulk for 2 months is cheaper than buying weekly for 1 month, it's kinda nobrainer. And they'd need even more from one paycheck to another to get supplies in smaller packs. Unless they're getting paid weekly. But even then, $30 is not that much of a stretch. especially if you buy food in bulk one week, diapers in bulk another week. Your point would be correct for bigger hundreds-or-thousands-of-dollars purchases though. But $30... Come on?
      - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
        Someone in that situation likely isn't going to be able to get a single full time job because employers are cheap and don't want to pay for benefits. Getting paid multiple paychecks in a two-week period is not at all unrealistic. If they are working non-formal employment they could easily getting paid for a single day of work some times. Some one who manages to get 40 hours a week of work at minimum wage of $7.25 minus 7.65% for FICA taxes is getting $1,116 a month. Take out rent, transportation and food and there is not going to be much left over for buying things that you don't need right away. You seem to be completely out of touch with the way people in poverty live if you think people aren't living paycheck to paycheck and have money left over after paying essential expenses.
- GordonS 9y ago
  I think the latter is the bigger of the issues. 360 nappies will generally last for 2 months. If you can't afford a mere $30 for that, then it's a case of your priorities being wrong (e.g. buying alcohol, tobacco, Netflix etc before thinking about your kids' needs) - in which case you should probably give serious consideration over whether you should bring kids into the world.
  - rgovostes 9y ago
    Did you read the article before writing this presumptive and judgmental comment? She had a difficult pregnancy and thought this would be her only chance to have a child. She left her job to avoid being exposed to harsh chemicals that could jeopardize her pregnancy. On welfare, she was allotted only $180/mo for necessities beside food. When her partner got a job, she was disqualified for the assistance—he had to work 18 hours a month just to make up the aid they no longer received. She struggled to find a job herself but ultimately got one. The article notes that the average diaper is $0.25, so your 360 would cost $90 on average, 1/4 of her monthly assistance on one item alone—assuming she only needs 6 diapers per day, which sounds like a low estimate. She did proactively seek out coupons and discounts, and decreased the frequency of changes—which had minor medical consequences. The article is about the plight of a mother who faced adversity in providing for her son, but persevered the best she could. I defy you to justify your claim that her priorities were wrong, or that she was unfit to be a parent. Perhaps the only disqualifying attribute for parenthood is the utter lack of empathy for another human being.
    - mantas 9y ago
      The whole discussion started about buying diapers in bulk to save a ton. Nobody is saying that $90/mo for diapers is reasonable. But $30 for 2 months worth of diapers (as OP claimed) is kinda reasonable. And if she is getting 180/mo allowance, she definitely has that $30 on hand to buy in bulk.
    - raiyu 9y ago
      Well technically speaking, you kind of pointed out yourself how the mother is sort of an unfit parent. Parenting is to provide for the child, not just emotionally, which I'm sure this mother does a tremendous job of, given how much she has sacrificed for the child's well being, but also to provide physically as well. It seems like the couple were on the border of poverty before the child was conceived, so it wasn't a wise financial decision to do so. Yes it's a rough situation, but as many commenters have pointed out you can do cloth diapers, more tedious to clean, but saves you supposed $1,000. As others have also pointed out you can goto Church or various other organizations that provide support. And more importantly you could have budgeted and realized, though you want to have a child, this is probably a bad decision. Kids get more expensive as they grow up, not less, so if there are already issues around diapers, the situation will only get worse as time goes on. Just saying, this isn't an unwanted pregnancy, this was a predetermined choice, so certainly some accounting and pre-planning could have been involved to show, this is definitely a bad decision before hand and will create a tremendous amount of strain on the parents as well as eventually on the child.
- GordonS 9y ago
  It's not $30/day, it's $30 for 360 nappies that will last around 2 months. Even if you're making minimum wage, you can afford that if you've got your priorities right.
  - war1025 9y ago
    But when you are bringing in $50 / day, you have a lot less money to work with. That's the point I was trying to make. $30 is inconsequential to me, but 4 hours of pay is.
    - mantas 9y ago
      And that $30 is for 2 months of diapers. Roughly $0.50/day. It's not like those people are getting paid daily. And I'm pretty sure they're good enough at math to realise that buying in bulk is cheaper. Unless they lack social skills or have addictions, which is totally different can of worms. And not exclusive to poor people. Even if they're working illegally and getting paid daily, they probably get monthly welfare.
    - GordonS 9y ago
      I get what you mean, and when bringing in $50 a day $30 is definately not inconsequential - but it's still perfectly manageable.
m_eiman 9y ago
Try one of the poverty simulators, here's one: http://playspent.org/html/ http://playspent.org/html/
- mantas 9y ago
  I'm more than enough familiar with poverty. In my country, $30 is a day's wage. Let's say small packs cost $85/mo (as per $1k/year). Big monthly pack is $30. So weekly supplies in small packs are barely cheaper than buying in bulk for a month. Do you really think poor people are that stupid? That's flat out insulting. In my experience, poor people are fuckin great at managing money they got. Of course, some of them are barely functioning in a society due to illnesses or addictions. But there're plenty of well-off people who don't know jack shit about budgeting and live paycheck-to-paycheck.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Are there realistic poverty simulators? This one has a catastrophe happen every day, cars breaking down, teeth needing treatment, plumbing problems, traffic fines, credit card bills for expenses that happen before the game starts... You're set up to fail.
  - mantas 9y ago
    It's a stupid asshole, not a poor simulator. Maybe US is different, but in Europe most poors wouldn't get credit card to begin with. Even payday loans are strictly regulated. Many of them will know how to fix common plumbing problems too..
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    >This one has a catastrophe happen every day, cars breaking down, teeth needing treatment, plumbing problems, traffic fines, credit card bills for expenses that happen before the game starts... I see the issue more about it being a moralistic simulator. (or if you prefer a simulator with a political agenda behind) The kid needs $15 to go with a school excursion, I don't have them, the kid remains in school and the stupid simulator doesn't miss the occasion to remark this. And surely my kid won't get them $100 sneakers! And my family pet is not going to suffer, because I have NO family pets, I can't afford them. By behaving as a total bastard, including having my pet suffering, having the kid become hungry because he is too proud to get the free lunch and deciding to ignore everything else including the medical check for chest pain, I can get to the end of the month. But a number of questions and answers are clearly targeted to inducing the player into anti-consummerism (which maybe is a good thing) while on the other hand hard pressing on completely senseless society stigmas. This: "You chose to live farther away from your job, so your rent is lower. But your gas costs are higher. In fact, for every dollar a working family saves on housing, they spend an additional 77 cents on transportation." could have been written as: "Congratulations, you know how to move a slider left and right, and choose the combination that costs less, between $855 living nearer and $760 living further you chose to save $95 per month or around 8% of your net income"

by mantas 9y ago

$30 is big upfront costs? Seriously? Of course, that may be a bigger sum in 3rd world countries. But they don't have Amazon there at all and probably don't use diapers either.

j4kp07 9y ago

Don't you get it? Anecdotes and hypotheticals trump logic and common sense.

zbentley 9y ago
How about statistics instead of anecdotes? This article is pretty well sourced, and, while not all of the math checks out, the preponderance of evidence seems to point towards "yes, that is a regular choice that poor people in the US make": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05...

war1025 9y ago

When you are making minimum wage, which I believe is ~$7.50/hr, and are most likely not working full time, that is a good chunk of a day's pay. Granted, if you are in that situation, you are probably getting some government assistance. Also, some people are just terrible at managing money.

mantas 9y ago
Let's say small packs cost $85/mo (as per $1k/year). Big monthly pack is $30. So weekly supplies in small packs are barely cheaper than buying in bulk for a month. Unless you pay day's diapers every day.. Do you think poor people are stupid and can't plan even a week ahead? They're getting paid weekly or monthly in most cases after all. In my experience, poor people are much better at managing money than better off folks. I could see plenty of people who couldn't bother to order bulk of diapers and then store them somewhere. But poor people usually go the extra mile even for couple bucks.
- war1025 9y ago
  My comment wasn't about poor people being dumb. My comment was attempting to point out that, when you are poor, small amounts of money matter a lot more. I may have worded it poorly or misread the context of the comment I was replying to, but the point I was trying to get across is that when you don't have much money, you have to be much more conscious about how you spend it. And if you aren't, then you go broke and don't eat for a while. It's an easy thing for well-off people to lose sight of.
  - mantas 9y ago
    Exactly, they're much m ore conscious about how they spend it. Thus putting aside $30 is no brainer vs buying in small packs. Most people, poor or not, get paid weekly or monthly. It's not that hard to buy $30 worth of goods after getting paid vs spending $10 every few days...
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  It's usually not that they are stupid, it's often that they literally don't have the money to pay the upfront cost of the bigger pack because they are living paycheck to paycheck.
  - mantas 9y ago
    How big is paycheck? Probably more than $30. When buying in bulk for 2 months is cheaper than buying weekly for 1 month, it's kinda nobrainer. And they'd need even more from one paycheck to another to get supplies in smaller packs. Unless they're getting paid weekly. But even then, $30 is not that much of a stretch. especially if you buy food in bulk one week, diapers in bulk another week. Your point would be correct for bigger hundreds-or-thousands-of-dollars purchases though. But $30... Come on?
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      Someone in that situation likely isn't going to be able to get a single full time job because employers are cheap and don't want to pay for benefits. Getting paid multiple paychecks in a two-week period is not at all unrealistic. If they are working non-formal employment they could easily getting paid for a single day of work some times. Some one who manages to get 40 hours a week of work at minimum wage of $7.25 minus 7.65% for FICA taxes is getting $1,116 a month. Take out rent, transportation and food and there is not going to be much left over for buying things that you don't need right away. You seem to be completely out of touch with the way people in poverty live if you think people aren't living paycheck to paycheck and have money left over after paying essential expenses.
GordonS 9y ago
I think the latter is the bigger of the issues. 360 nappies will generally last for 2 months. If you can't afford a mere $30 for that, then it's a case of your priorities being wrong (e.g. buying alcohol, tobacco, Netflix etc before thinking about your kids' needs) - in which case you should probably give serious consideration over whether you should bring kids into the world.
- rgovostes 9y ago
  Did you read the article before writing this presumptive and judgmental comment? She had a difficult pregnancy and thought this would be her only chance to have a child. She left her job to avoid being exposed to harsh chemicals that could jeopardize her pregnancy. On welfare, she was allotted only $180/mo for necessities beside food. When her partner got a job, she was disqualified for the assistance—he had to work 18 hours a month just to make up the aid they no longer received. She struggled to find a job herself but ultimately got one. The article notes that the average diaper is $0.25, so your 360 would cost $90 on average, 1/4 of her monthly assistance on one item alone—assuming she only needs 6 diapers per day, which sounds like a low estimate. She did proactively seek out coupons and discounts, and decreased the frequency of changes—which had minor medical consequences. The article is about the plight of a mother who faced adversity in providing for her son, but persevered the best she could. I defy you to justify your claim that her priorities were wrong, or that she was unfit to be a parent. Perhaps the only disqualifying attribute for parenthood is the utter lack of empathy for another human being.
  - mantas 9y ago
    The whole discussion started about buying diapers in bulk to save a ton. Nobody is saying that $90/mo for diapers is reasonable. But $30 for 2 months worth of diapers (as OP claimed) is kinda reasonable. And if she is getting 180/mo allowance, she definitely has that $30 on hand to buy in bulk.
  - raiyu 9y ago
    Well technically speaking, you kind of pointed out yourself how the mother is sort of an unfit parent. Parenting is to provide for the child, not just emotionally, which I'm sure this mother does a tremendous job of, given how much she has sacrificed for the child's well being, but also to provide physically as well. It seems like the couple were on the border of poverty before the child was conceived, so it wasn't a wise financial decision to do so. Yes it's a rough situation, but as many commenters have pointed out you can do cloth diapers, more tedious to clean, but saves you supposed $1,000. As others have also pointed out you can goto Church or various other organizations that provide support. And more importantly you could have budgeted and realized, though you want to have a child, this is probably a bad decision. Kids get more expensive as they grow up, not less, so if there are already issues around diapers, the situation will only get worse as time goes on. Just saying, this isn't an unwanted pregnancy, this was a predetermined choice, so certainly some accounting and pre-planning could have been involved to show, this is definitely a bad decision before hand and will create a tremendous amount of strain on the parents as well as eventually on the child.
GordonS 9y ago
It's not $30/day, it's $30 for 360 nappies that will last around 2 months. Even if you're making minimum wage, you can afford that if you've got your priorities right.
- war1025 9y ago
  But when you are bringing in $50 / day, you have a lot less money to work with. That's the point I was trying to make. $30 is inconsequential to me, but 4 hours of pay is.
  - mantas 9y ago
    And that $30 is for 2 months of diapers. Roughly $0.50/day. It's not like those people are getting paid daily. And I'm pretty sure they're good enough at math to realise that buying in bulk is cheaper. Unless they lack social skills or have addictions, which is totally different can of worms. And not exclusive to poor people. Even if they're working illegally and getting paid daily, they probably get monthly welfare.
  - GordonS 9y ago
    I get what you mean, and when bringing in $50 a day $30 is definately not inconsequential - but it's still perfectly manageable.

m_eiman 9y ago

Try one of the poverty simulators, here's one: http://playspent.org/html/ http://playspent.org/html/

mantas 9y ago
I'm more than enough familiar with poverty. In my country, $30 is a day's wage. Let's say small packs cost $85/mo (as per $1k/year). Big monthly pack is $30. So weekly supplies in small packs are barely cheaper than buying in bulk for a month. Do you really think poor people are that stupid? That's flat out insulting. In my experience, poor people are fuckin great at managing money they got. Of course, some of them are barely functioning in a society due to illnesses or addictions. But there're plenty of well-off people who don't know jack shit about budgeting and live paycheck-to-paycheck.
adrianN 9y ago
Are there realistic poverty simulators? This one has a catastrophe happen every day, cars breaking down, teeth needing treatment, plumbing problems, traffic fines, credit card bills for expenses that happen before the game starts... You're set up to fail.
- mantas 9y ago
  It's a stupid asshole, not a poor simulator. Maybe US is different, but in Europe most poors wouldn't get credit card to begin with. Even payday loans are strictly regulated. Many of them will know how to fix common plumbing problems too..
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >This one has a catastrophe happen every day, cars breaking down, teeth needing treatment, plumbing problems, traffic fines, credit card bills for expenses that happen before the game starts... I see the issue more about it being a moralistic simulator. (or if you prefer a simulator with a political agenda behind) The kid needs $15 to go with a school excursion, I don't have them, the kid remains in school and the stupid simulator doesn't miss the occasion to remark this. And surely my kid won't get them $100 sneakers! And my family pet is not going to suffer, because I have NO family pets, I can't afford them. By behaving as a total bastard, including having my pet suffering, having the kid become hungry because he is too proud to get the free lunch and deciding to ignore everything else including the medical check for chest pain, I can get to the end of the month. But a number of questions and answers are clearly targeted to inducing the player into anti-consummerism (which maybe is a good thing) while on the other hand hard pressing on completely senseless society stigmas. This: "You chose to live farther away from your job, so your rent is lower. But your gas costs are higher. In fact, for every dollar a working family saves on housing, they spend an additional 77 cents on transportation." could have been written as: "Congratulations, you know how to move a slider left and right, and choose the combination that costs less, between $855 living nearer and $760 living further you chose to save $95 per month or around 8% of your net income"