There's a lot more to being poor than not having money. Being poor and healthy is not the same as being poor and unhealthy, as the most obvious example. Being p

There's a lot more to being poor than not having money. Being poor and healthy is not the same as being poor and unhealthy, as the most obvious example. Being poor but healthy, smart and/or educated, non-addicted, connected to family and friends who will keep you off that last step to oblivion is different than being poor and none of those things. Poor nutrition and sleep and being cold all the time can really do a number on your brain. So can the stress of not knowing where your - or your children's - next meal is coming from. The isolation and despair and distrust that come with spending any time at all in that condition can stay with you for years. So yeah, poor people follow a very different decision process, which might not seem rational to people who have only ever been poor in the low-bank-balance sense (if that). Don't tell someone who's already deprived to deprive themselves further. Those small indulgences might be the only thing keeping people from giving up entirely. To the extent that the truly poor need advice from the less poor at all, it's advice on how to secure the most basic of needs in the short to medium term. Only then, only when the most severe psychological effects of being poor have been dealt with, is it rational to expect that people will start looking further up Maslow's pyramid to things like longer-term financial security.