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On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

• data_ders 6y ago
  The car talk resonated with me. I'm always irked to hear someone bragging about their Volvo that's lasted them 20 years or whatever. To me, there's nothing to be proud of, you bought a luxury car and likely had it maintained by a trained mechanic regularly.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    As a former used-car flipper I call it the "4Runner vs Grand Caravan" effect. And I mostly call it that because it gets under the skin of certain people. The 4Runner starts its life in the hands of someone who can afford whatever maintenance is needs, whenever it needs it. The Grand Caravan starts its life in the hands of someone who needs the cheapest minivan and can barely afford it let alone afford following the maintenance schedule in the manual. The 4Runner will haul two kids and occasionally a youth soccer team. The Grand Caravan will haul five kids and occasionally 1800lb of paver bricks. The 4Runner will be towed behind a motorhome. The Grand Caravan will try and tow a motorhome.
• simonh 6y ago
  A while ago I read about a study that surveyed people with inherited wealth. IIRC they ranged from having inherited tens to hundreds of millions. No matter how much they had inherited, when asked how much they would need to have inherited to feel financially secure and not have to worry about money, they said they would need something like half again to double. I may be misremembering the details, but that was the gist of it but I couldn't find the article again. I suppose expectations scale up with means. On the other hand discovering people they know are actually very wealthy seems to have a massive negative effect on people's levels of empathy. Wealthy people who have suffered bereavement or personal tragedy report people who are less wealthy than themselves rarely offer sympathy and they often get comments along the lines of 'knowing what it's like for the rest of us now', or 'what it's like to have a problem you can't buy your way out of'.
  • deepstack 6y ago
    It is never about how much money you have, rather what situation you are in, what you are expecting and what others around you have.
    • ajsnigrutin 6y ago
      Yep! As someone from a former socialist country, I can confirm. Situation has got a lot better in the last ~30 years, people have alot more, but since a few people got even more than that, some complain a lot. Average worker family has gone from bicicyles and maybe one yugo (or a "fico" - even smaller/cheaper) to two, maybe three european-mid-range cars + all the modern extras, but are not happy, because their neighbor has as 100k€ mercedes.
      • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
        Comparison is the thief of joy. Theodore Roosevelt
        • deepstack 6y ago
          Indeed. Comparison is not bad as that is what current academia is based on. However also be aware comparison is NOT the ONLY way to experience life. One of the effect of comparison is that it diminishes one thing over another. I often find new the thing when I just experience one thing for itself without comparing against a pre-existing experience and thing.
      • chii 6y ago
        it makes some evolutionary sense tho - because objective wellbeing is only part of the competition. Relative wellbeing is what "counts" for real, esp. when competing for scarce resources.
        • ajsnigrutin 6y ago
          Well, this is ok when you work more, to get more for yourself... ...out here, people want their neighbours to have less.
• TheButlerian 6y ago
  What a loser.
• carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  As another ex-poor person: some of this is OK and some of it doesn't really ring true. E.g. > That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”. I don't think this is true, and why would it be? Unless you're in an area where the housing market is cliffed for some legislative or regulatory reason. But most places, no, I've not seen this. You might have to put effort in to find nicer places on a budget, research areas, etc. but isn't that true of any purchase? It's true that when you're poor you never get close to those naive 'this is how much of your income to spend on rent' suggestions, but there are places that cover the whole spectrum. > Whichever you choose, a person of less-than-intermediate income has to be prepared to stick with the rental long-term, should things not go well. This is because apartments at both of these levels quite accurately assume that you can’t afford a lawyer - while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth of rent as a security deposit, it’s much less normal to get it back; the apartment complex has no reason to give back thousands of dollars they can simply keep. This means every time you move, you pay something like a third to a month’s wages for the privilege. Since breaking a lease often means you lose your privilege to live anywhere non-hellish, this means if you don’t have cash reserves (more on these later*) at the exact right time of year, you might end up in the same place for another full year whether you like it or not. You stick with a rental longer term because of overheads, yeah, but I wouldn't go into a rental contract expecting with certainty to lose 100% of my deposit. Rather what happens is you get good at doing minor legal research and writing terse emails about it. Maybe many are scummy by default, but most roll when they see you've got even a little knowledge about what you're entitled to. That's a valuable skill for life in general, so it's something you should be learning to do regardless. > a person’s pay is determined by how rare their skills are and how much demand there is for those skills. The value of their work doesn’t factor in as much What's the value of a person's work that isn't just determined by the first part? What does the author think drives demand, if not the prospective value you provide to the various companies in the labor market?
  • simiones 6y ago
    > > a person’s pay is determined by how rare their skills are and how much demand there is for those skills. The value of their work doesn’t factor in as much > What's the value of a person's work that isn't just determined by the first part? What does the author think drives demand, if not the prospective value you provide to the various companies in the labor market? The value of your work is "how much money would the company lose if no one did the exact job I am doing". This generally has 0 correlation to your wage, because in general a company will think in terms of "how much money would the company lose if anyone else did the job this employee is doing", which is a very different question. This is how it happens that many absolutely essential jobs, without which society would simply stop functioning, are also among the lowest payed. Probably one of the best examples is nurses, but also warehouse workers, transport people, construction workers, farm hands.
• fallingknife 6y ago
  I'm surprised he doesn't know not to pay rent for the last month and make them use the deposit for it. That's what I always did when I was poor. No way they're gonna evict you in 30 days, especially if they know you're leaving anyway. Also his car cost is way off: https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/cheapest-lease-deals https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/cheapest-lease-deals
  • choeger 6y ago
    That came to my mind as well. If I don't expect the deposit back and cannot afford to claim it, let's just turn the tables and make them claim something from me.
    • gambiting 6y ago
      Here in the UK that would destroy any chances of renting anything decent in the future. Any agency/landlord will always ask for references from your current landlord, if you dick them over like this you can forget ever renting something that isn't a slum where people don't care about references. Also deposits are always(by law) held by a third party in escrow, and it's actually a bit of a pain to claim any money from that as a landlord, so it's really rare that people lose their deposits unless the place is absolutely wrecked.
      • Hard_Space 6y ago
        In reality (in the UK), those references precede your current landlord getting to check your apartment's condition out. By the time the landlord has ascertained the state of the property, the reference has usually been given.
      • bluGill 6y ago
        In the US you can sue for anything. Smart landlords only confirm that someone lived there, and other easily verifiable information, since if they sometimes give a good reference and sometimes neutral that means neutral references are bad and they can be sued for that. If you get a anything more as reference from a landlord it is because you were bad enough that the landlord sued and won (it is safe to assume this never happens, though there are exceptions) Don't confuse suing with winning. You can sue someone and lose, but the lawyers will still cost both sides a lot of money.
• ImaCake 6y ago
  >while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth of rent as a security deposit, it’s much less normal to get it back This looks insane to an Australian. I have moved house 4 times in the past 5 years and I have never not got all of my bond back. Some states here have a rule that the bond money is held by the state so that the landowner doesn't just take that money for themselves. How can the poor ever break the cycle if no one is willing to help protect them from shitty rent-seekers?
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I don’t know the statistics, but I live in the US, and had rented for 10+ years with 5 of 6 different landlords in 3 cities, and I always got my deposit back, and I don’t know anyone who was stiffed either. But I wasn’t staying in the worst places, but not the best either. One was an informal cash transaction rental from a Craigslist ad and it worked out.
    • irjustin 6y ago
      Stay in a slum and you'll find those who are more than happy to break the rules if they know they can. You probably have the mental fortitude to figure out how to fight back on your own. To read the docs, know your position, agreements, and how to take a landlord to court to win. In low income, people don't know their rights nor do they ever believe that the system could ever be on their side. And, they're not unjustified in that thinking.
    • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
      Through 3 landlords I only got a security deposit back once. Both times it was claimed they needed the money to repaint the apartment (I didn't damage the walls or even put anything up on them).
    • paxys 6y ago
      A lot depends on state and local laws. In San Francisco, for example, I get interest on the security deposit my landlord is holding credited to my rent every year. They cannot charge for reasonable wear and tear. So even though the deposit is large, I expect ~100% of it back when I leave. If not, there is a strong tenants union that will support my case.
• domano 6y ago
  Living in a country where there is a better social net in place, but coming from a refugee background, i regularly notice a disconnect with my peers. I do understand their financial worries and sympathize, but only because i am aware of my perspective. Oftentimes i have to remind myself that for others it is actually stressful to think about not being able to comfortably buy a house vs renting it. Meanwhile i worry about my mothers retirement, how i can get her out of this shady living situation and how i can pay back everything she has done to bring me up despite circumstances. Actually i wish for others that were better off their whole life to have my perspective for some time, since i think that it would really make them less stressed about their future.
  • varjag 6y ago
    Seriously, some responses here are mildly bewildering in the extent people can't relate their life experience to actual poverty.
    • myself248 6y ago
      What's jarring to me is the author's characterization of car repair as "poor-people skills". Knowing how to use tools can be part of being poor, or it can be part of being an engineer who designs things that can actually be manufactured and assembled. Either that or I'm a lot poorer than I think I am!
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        > What's jarring to me is the author's characterization of car repair as "poor-people skills". Car repair is a skill of economic importance of you are poor or employed in auto repair. Otherwise, it's obviously a skill someone might have, but far less critical.
    • sorisos 6y ago
      Comforting to here someone else react to these "alienated" commenters. I feel they made this the most depressing HN thread I have ever read.
  • 6y ago
• teddyh 6y ago
  Related: 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, May 27, 2011: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-being-poor/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about...) The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, January 19, 2012: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-deve...) 4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People, February 21, 2013: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-understand-about-poor-people/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never...)
• ourmandave 6y ago
  SciFi author John Scalzi did a couple blog posts on being poor. (His readership added some he'd missed.) https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/09/03/being-poor-ten-years-on/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/09/03/being-poor-ten-years-...
• ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  I have a possibly stupid question... Parts of america have really really high housing costs... like really high... and a bunch of people want to live there, and a lot of people there are poor (atleast compared to housing prices). Why the hell do you still build single family houses, or one/two floor buildings in areas where you need to fit a bunch of people (eg. both photos in the article)? I'm from a former socialist country, and housing for working families back then looked (still does) like this: https://i.imgur.com/pmpcaOL.png https://i.imgur.com/pmpcaOL.png https://i.imgur.com/YowiKVe.png https://i.imgur.com/YowiKVe.png Modern buildings look a bit better, with ground floors for commercial use, and underground parking, but still: https://i.imgur.com/AFpUiuX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AFpUiuX.jpg I understand single or two floor buildings if you're building something in rural alabama... there's a lot of space there, and the land is cheap.... But places like san francisco? That, I don't get.
  • dagw 6y ago
    But places like san francisco? That, I don't get. Short answer. The people who already live there don't want to be neighbors with those sorts of buildings and any politician that suggests it will be voted out of office.
    • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      A counterpoint - You then get jerry built high rises built to minimum standards and smaller rooms which leads to tragedy's like Grenfell tower. Also with covid and the rise of home working you know what people realy realy want? a second room for an office and a Garden (Yard).
      • ajsnigrutin 6y ago
        > A counterpoint - You then get jerry built high rises built to minimum standards and smaller rooms which leads to tragedy's like Grenfell tower. The old socialist buildings are made form reinforced (rebar) concrete... even the inside walls... and outside walls.. and sometimes even balcony ledges. Even occasional gas explosions usually just blow out some windows.
• yibg 6y ago
  I grew up poor (first gen immigrant family, the poor kind), so I empathize with the points raised. At the same time I don't really understand how some / a family can be (outside of some circumstances like health issues, disabilities etc) repeatedly behind on water bills or other necessities. For the first few years my family had an income of ~$1000 / month (back in the 90s). My mother wasn't legally allowed to work and my father was on a stipend. The whole family lived in a studio apartment, that 900 sq ft place in the article would've been huge for us. Our car was a $1200 tiny little rust bucket, but it ran. Sometimes I see documentaries about people living in poverty and going pay check to pay check, yet the kids are wearing Nikes and playing on iphones. Being poor was definitely stressful though, and I'm definitely grateful that stress isn't part of my life anymore.
  • telesilla 6y ago
    Being poor is doable as long as there are no disasters or gross unfairness. Every student who gets buy without parental help will attest.
    • yibg 6y ago
      I think it's also about trade offs that are made. For example, TV dinners (from an article in another thread here) for us was not a staple, it was a luxury. They kept for a long time, but they were also high cost to calorie ratio. We got the cheapest cut of meat we can in bulk and frozen it.
      • tstrimple 6y ago
        While I'm not suggesting your method isn't more economically efficient, it also requires time and money investment. When I was "poor", my parents would often both work late and it wasn't uncommon to not see them until later in the night if at all before bed. Many nights my brother and I would make our own dinners. Dealing with large cuts of frozen meat takes planning and skill that microwaveable dinners do not.
        • 6y ago
• Ensorceled 6y ago
  This article should have been titled "On being Poor-ish in Phoenix" ... I don't think many of these issues apply to being poor in, say, a small town/a smaller city/a city with transit or in a country with a better social net.
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    There's definitely an American perspective there, where few cities have decent transit, let alone good transit. But you're not gonna escape the car problems in the states by moving to a smaller town. If anything, that usually makes things worse.
• telesilla 6y ago
  Sorry we missed you does a superb job of showing the cycle of poverty and how it affects families. The accuracy of the film stems from interviews while director Ken Loach was filming I, Daniel Blake in Newcastle.
  • robtherobber 6y ago
    I can wholeheartedly recommend that film (and Ken Loach's filmns in general). The following review excerpt [1] is telling and heartbreaking: The stakes of the film are simultaneously huge and small. The Turners don’t need much. Some stability; a steady income, of course; more time would be a dream. Really, though, the most precious thing they have is each other. But there’s no time for that because then there’d be no money. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/movies/sorry-we-missed-you-review.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/movies/sorry-we-missed-yo...
    • sethammons 6y ago
      There were a couple of years where I saw my wife for approximately 3 minutes a day. She worked nights and I worked days (plus school) and we saw each other as we handed off the kid as I walked in the door and she walked out. I was asleep when she got home and she was asleep when I left in tue morning.
      • robtherobber 6y ago
        That sounds terrible. Although I agree that life is complex enough to require sacrifices at times - it's simply unavoidable sometimes, I find it hard to swallow that people are required to go through this. Because you shouldn't have to go through this if we would've done a better job and organising society and economy.
• mudita 6y ago
  I was poor for some time after deciding to quit my computer science phd for a career in art. I guess I still am compared to others, but it does not feel that way any more. When I was really poor, worrying about money and how to pay the next rent was a regular source of stress for me, which took quite a lot of emotional energy. Now I still have much lower income than people, who have regular well-paying jobs, but I do not feel poor. I have no savings and there are some things, which feel totally out of reach like owning a car or house, but I do not have to worry about money and I can afford a lot of luxuries like visiting theatres very often and eating out. Regarding housing: I remember living in a tiny room in a shared flat in the worst part of town, above a brothel, a shady car dealer and a Hookah lounge (which was often very loud, very late into the night). Sometimes I had problems paying rent, but there just was no cheaper less-quality alternative. Regarding transportation: I am so glad, that I live in a place, where you can live very comfortably without a car. Similarly with health care. I think the US is just an especially bad place to be poor in compared to Europe. Financially switching from computer science to art has been a very bad decision, but overall it was the best decision in my life. It really helped me deal with my tendencies for depressions, because it allows me to feel more meaning in my life and suits me better. I do not think that I would have dared this switch in the US. I don’t know what would have happened if I had lived in the states, if I would have found other ways to cope with depression or if I would have slipped into deeper and deeper depressive episodes without a way out, but I am glad that I did not have to find out.
  • sql_monkey 6y ago
    Thank you for sharing. Your comment highlights something important I believe when talking about poverty. One common argument against any type of government help is that poor people should just work harder and pull themselves by the bootstrap. However the situation you describe above shows the many side-effects of being poor which impede life in general: lack of proper sleep (because you live in a noisy area with no other choice), constant stress (paying rent, maybe dangerous neighborhood, etc.), probably not affording good quality food, etc. etc. Add these side-effects up and one quickly understand that getting out of poverty is an herculean task and I personally couldn't blame someone for not making it.
• fergie 6y ago
  See also the follow-up article: https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/being-poor-ish-revisited-reader-questions https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/being-poor-ish-rev...
• tester34 6y ago
  Poority adds a lot of "over_head" The more over_head you have, then it's harder to get out of it. You're unlikely to put your free time into math / computer science when you're after exhausting 8 / 12h shift in warehouse Also your "environment" may not help you too. Before I worked at gov't-ish job and my parents tried hard to convince me that "this is the greatest thing because gov't jobs offer ""safety"" and "decent salary"". Thanks god that I had access to the internet and knew the reality.
• airhead969 6y ago
  They don't know the meaning of poor. And, who cares about some absolutely privileged, greedy, manipulative idiots who "can't live" on $200k/yr and take from people who make way less than them. Shame on them! --- If you can count your money, you're poor. If you can count your money and it fits in your pockets, you're very poor. If you can count your money and it fits in your left pocket with room to spare, you're extremely poor. If you're wondering whether to buy food or gas with the money you have left, you're broke. If you wish you could buy food or gas, you're absolutely destitute.
  • skohan 6y ago
    I always thought of “broke” as the transitory status of not having money, while “poor” is a socioeconomic status. I.e. a university student could be too broke to buy beer before their next stipend comes in, but that doesn’t make them poor if they can still go home and drive mom & dad’s Tesla on the weekend.
    • airhead969 6y ago
      I think of those words interchangeably. "Poor" is also ambiguous, i.e., "the poor" (economic class status) and "are poor" (having little money, orthogonal to any time period). Examples: "My grandparents grew-up poor, but became middle-class." and "Alms for the poor." And, there are only so many relative modifiers, so one has to use synonyms to make a point. ;)
      • skohan 6y ago
        I still think the meanings are distinct. For instance, you could say: "I can't get a home loan because I'm poor", "I qualify for food stamps because I am poor", but attributing these things to being broke sounds a bit funny. By the same token, you wouldn't say "My grandparents grew up broke, but became middle-class"
    • irjustin 6y ago
      Context changes the meaning as you rightfully point out. Being a broke college student and being a broke adult are wildly different in almost every respect.
• deleted 6y ago
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• SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
  > it's best to spend no more than 30% of your monthly gross income on housing-related expenses, including rent and utilities Everyone who lives in London, NYC, or many other large cities, will at that this point laugh loudly and stop taking the article seriously.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• bregma 6y ago
  This is interesting. My wife is a case worker for the county welfare office. She deals with "those" people for a living and sees first-hand every day all the real and imagined shit spouted by righteous ideologues. She tells me that amongst those living in poverty, wealth is measured in terms of friends and family. Any money you come into is spent immediately, often on gifts to build status within your social network. It's only when you move into the middle classes that wealth starts to be measured in terms of money. Budgeting, saving, trying to get more and planning for a future when you have none is not something someone in poverty does: it's something someone not in poverty does when they have no money. Trying to climb the social ladder by accumulating more money marks you as middle class. The third layer has enough money (but of course always try to get more because that's the game). Their concept of wealth tends to be oriented towards legacy: collecting artworks, donating to cultural or research endeavours, political involvement. Wealth is measured by what you leave behind, and money is wasted if it just goes to trust funds or taxes. When I was a student, and for many years after, I had no money. I had enough to keep a squalid roof over my head and three square meals a week. I had no money and no savings but I did not live in poverty because I had a plan to earn and save and move up in the world. I had no money but I did not live in poverty. I think it's important for people who are trying to leave their legacy by getting politically involved in eliminating poverty to understand that their world is not the world. They need to understand how the definition of wealth for those in poverty is not the same as their definition of wealth, and without understanding that difference they are bound for failure from the start.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    The reason you spend money as soon as you get it when you're poor is 1) because when you're poor you accumulate debts, both formal and informal, and 2) when you're poor you know other people who are poor and who need things. Thinking poor people like being poor because they value what's really important - friends and family - is like poverty version of the "magical negro" trope. Poor people value friends and family because they need each other to survive. People with no money problems don't need anyone. edit: I honestly believe in a harsher version of this, in that for me the difference between friend and acquaintance is that a friend has sacrificed their comfort or safety for yours when they didn't have to. A friend is an acquaintance that has been tested by your bad circumstances and passed. If you're wealthy, you are rarely in truly bad circumstances, so when they happen, you might find yourself surrounded by acquaintances. Poor people know who to trust because they've had to trust them before.
• EliRivers 6y ago
  The car. As he says, the car. The goddamned car. Every time you get into it, hoping that it will start. And not just when it's been sat outside your house for a while. When you stop for petrol (gas), or in the car park after buying food, sitting behind the wheel and hoping it starts again. The restrictions that get placed on you when you just can't rely on the car always starting. For your life, a mostly-starts car is in theory better than no car, but for mental health it's corrosive. Every plan you make carries the rider "unless the car doesn't start" and you end up restricting where you drive to places that, if you were suddenly carless, you could still get home from. Any time you're outside the safety zone, there is the constant fear "what if it doesn't start?" Being afraid, having that stress, all the time is just mentally corrosive. If a better job comes up and it's not near public transport, every day is a gamble on being able to get to work, and get home again. Spending your evening worrying about whether you'll be able to get to work in the morning is a horrible way to live; perpetually unable to relax. At least once I simply sold it for scrap and gave up entirely on doing anything that needed a car. Such a relief, but I was in the privileged position of being able to live and work without one.
  • sandworm101 6y ago
    This ties into covid too. Low paid jobs are more likely...scratch that. Low paid jobs always require physical presence, most often at strange hours not served by public transportation. There are no work-from-home days for tradespeople, for cleaners, for food workers.
  • issamehh 6y ago
    This has been my problem for years now. I'm in the middle of nowhere and I can't count on the thing. I don't know how many times I've been stuck and also almost towed because I couldn't move it. I've luckily managed to avoid it so far but I'd not be able to do much about it if it happened.
    • Phillips126 6y ago
      I once was interviewing at a company for a graphic designer position. My previous job was paying me just below $30,000 and I desperately needed to increase my income to keep up with my bills (college loans, rent, food, electric, etc.). My vehicle (1987 Chevy Blazer) was not very reliable (in ~2010) and wouldn't you know it - I broke down immediately after parking in a lot directly in front of a sign that said "2 Hour Parking, Vehicle Will Be Towed At Owners Expense". I'll never forget the embarrassment I felt after a pretty underwhelming interview explaining that my car was broken down outside in their lot and asked they notify their security so that I was not hit with more expensive fees. I've had some pretty significant financial hardships - some much worse than this, but this moment in particular really had a lasting effect on me.
• bezout 6y ago
  There’s also a difference in the way people handle money once they improve their financial situation. They tend to be cautious, and save money instead of spending it. There are exceptions, of course.
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    I've heard just as many people express the opposite. That because they were used to "having extra money to spend" being a fleeting thing, they threw caution to the wind and overspent after attaining a substantially higher income. That they had never learned about saving before (because they didn't consistently have extra to save), so it never became a habit. It'd be interesting to see real data on which outcome is actually more common.
    • dagw 6y ago
      Anecdotally it seems to depend a lot on how they got the money. Based purely on people I've known; people who become rich after working long hours for 20+ years building up company or similar tended to be very frugal for the rest of their lives despite retiring millionaires. People who 'lucked' into a lot of money tended to wildly overspend and never achieve financial stability.
• RickJWagner 6y ago
  Craigslist, bah. Facebook marketplace is where it's at. A really enjoyable article, though. Thanks to the author.
• fallingfrog 6y ago
  The whole car section brings back memories of when I used to drive a car with one flat tire, but I would pump it up with a foot pump on the way out every morning and it would stay inflated just long enough to get to work, then the same on the way back. I used to get stressed out waiting at red lights, thinking, that air is leaking out..
  • aembleton 6y ago
    I remember my first car having an oil leak as well as a bunch of other problems. During the winter I used to commute, 30 mins each way without any oil. It was just about cold enough that it could make it. I didn't get it fixed because I was putting money together to buy a newer car that didn't leak. Worked out in the end.
• 1-more 6y ago
  The benefits cliff of health insurance is so real, and those cliffs exist all over the place (an example is in the SUNY system for tuition). Universal programs without means testing seem like such a better way to run things. If you have a somewhat right wing philosophy: it allows the truly exceptional individuals of every cohort to reach their potential. For left wingers: it is giving equally to everyone's shared needs from society as a whole.
• MontyCarloHall 6y ago
  > a pretty bottom-barrel ford leases for 300-400 a month Ford leases seem to be expensive for some reason, and not indicative of the overall market. For instance, a base model Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic can be leased for $160/month, with $0 down. With $1000 down, these figures are close to $100/month. > A company is looking to pay a person as little as they can and keep them, so a person’s pay is determined by how rare their skills are and how much demand there is for those skills > I mentioned this before, but I can work on cars, and I’m able to do anything less complex than a full engine or transmission rebuild I’m sure becoming a mechanic has crossed the author’s mind at some point. I’d love to hear their thoughts on this.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Ever notice how those ads say something like "qualifying customers". If your credit score is in the toilet you're not getting any of those prices. The domestics, koreans, nissan and mistu will lease to anyone with a pulse but if your credit is bad the monthly rate or requireed uprfront payment is gonna climb quickly. You might as well need the president of the local yacht club write you a recommendation to get a sub-$200 lease on a Toyota, Honda or other middle class "look how financially prudent I am" status symbol. Anyone who doesn't have good credit AND the ability to put a good chunk of the lease down up front is going to be paying a "this is our polite way of telling to you to drag across the street to the Nissan dealer" price. Also, those promotional rates are just that, promotional rates. Often times the details work out such that taking a higher rate on a lease and putting less down up front results in a lower cost per duration of ownership.
    • MontyCarloHall 6y ago
      Yeah, fair enough, I hadn’t thought about that. Underscores exactly why articles like this are good reading.
  • aembleton 6y ago
    > Honda Civic can be leased for $160/month, with $0 down Is that available to people without a good credit rating?
• rob74 6y ago
  And what boggles the mind even more than this sorry state of affairs in the USA is that a significant part of these "working poor" are voting for a party that angrily rejects any notion of a European-style welfare system that would help improve this situation as "socialism"...
  • refurb 6y ago
    Agreed. Not only are they poor but apparently quite stupid! I mean, who vote against a European-style welfare system? Who doesn’t want to be just like Europe?
• throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  I think this article was well written but stopped just short of where it needed to be in a few places. >If you came from a family that did pretty well financially, went to college and then immediately started to do pretty well yourself, it’s hard to get any kind of context for what life is like at lower income levels. I would have gone further and said most of the advice given about any topic people who haven't lived it is crap and shouldn't be listened do. Some yuppie with an engineering job has zero useful advice when it comes to telling a forklift driver how to get ahead. Someone who manages a $100 restaurant in downtown NYC is going to have little useful advice for a truck-stop diner owner. > is that it’s usually assumed that the quality of things has a pretty linear association to the price. They assume it because they have enough money to insulate them from having any good reason to tell the difference. How often have you heard something like "I've only replaced the gears in my Kithenaid mixer 3x and the frame on my Tacoma 4x" and then the people saying it turn around and defend those things as worth the price premium as though doing so isn't lunacy with a side of stockholm syndrome. At a certain point you can afford to get ripped off. It's like a form of conspicuous consumption where instead of being overt you pretend to be hapless. >That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”. Author neglects to mention that through personal behavior you can largely avoid being affected by the worst parts of stabville and that when you know you can do so at little cost the extra $300/mo for "peace of mind" is kind of hard to justify and you need to use "but kids" type logic to do so. >I am always consistently shocked by how little people living at a decent-to-great income level fear their cars... (I'm not gonna bother quoting the full paragraph) The author should have rounded out this paragraph with "eventually you accrue enough tools and experience you don't need to worry about anything anymore because you understand the mechanical state of your car" and a lecture about how a car's utility lets you save money. Try buying used appliances or furniture CL with a bus pass. It just doesn't work. If it's a legitimately good deal you couldn't get it in the time it takes to arrange a rental. >I think this is a fairly accurate way to look at pay, but it applies to other aspects of the job. If you got sick more often....(once again, not gonna quote the whole thing). This is very much a two way street. If you're the guy on your shift who saves the line manager a whole lot of pain in the butt (e.g. transportation arrangements make it trivial for you to show up early as needed) they're gonna wink and nod and let you get away with some off the books allowances because they know that you can get another McJob elsewhere just as easily as they can replace you and that your replacement likely won't have whatever value-add you do.
• scandox 6y ago
  Talleyrand related a story about Bourienne, who missed out on becoming the Prefect of Police of Paris and 200,000 a year because he travelled from Hamburg in a broken down carriage and lost 24 hours reaching the city to grab the opportunity: "It shows why one should never be a poor devil" And this is exactly why the rich get richer: they're in a position to take opportunity and to do so in a calm, orderly fashion. https://books.google.ie/books?id=0djR6fbrIEYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=memoires+baron+vitrolles&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQkcyVnY_vAhXhrnEKHYaGCxIQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=diable&f=false https://books.google.ie/books?id=0djR6fbrIEYC&printsec=front...
• Havoc 6y ago
  TIL US actually turns off your water if you don't pay. More used to flow restrictions. i.e. You'll have water to keep you alive but good luck showering with 10% the normal pressure.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    This is highly refined (I'm gonna stop just short of calling if "pure") FUD. In practice nobody gets their utilities shut off except people who were intending to pay their bill and slip through the bureaucratic cracks (elderly with kids managing it is a common scenario) or the person paying the bill doesn't live there and stopped paying (e.g. landlord in foreclosure so they stopped paying). I can't speak for literally every municipality but there are defined timelines and it takes months to shut utilities off. By the time they get around to shutting off your water or electricity you've already missed god knows how many payments on your rent and been through the full eviction proceedings. I've also never seen a utility provider that won't accept minimum payments. Providing some sort of financial assistance services, payment plans and doing everything possible to not shut people's utilities off is generally a requirement of getting a government granted utility monopoly in the first place. Anyone who has to choose between utilities and something else should choose the something else. Utilities tend to be incredibly forgiving and willing to work with you if your financial situation doesn't permit payment in full. In some jurisdictions the debt doesn't even get reported (they just keep trying to collect)
    • objectivetruth 6y ago
      I'm willing to use my real account, not a throwaway, to say that the original article is correct and YOU are wrong. For one thing, in a country the size of the US with tens of thousands of jurisdiction/utility-provider combos, there's no possible way you can authoritatively declare what happens "in practice," as you acknowledge in the next sentence. Here's another: I have had this happen to me, 30 days after a missed payment. Multiple times. So has the author, apparently. Just wanted to make sure the HN readership, which skews anti-poor and anti-empathy, doesn't use your post as more ammo without at least SOME counter.
  • 6y ago
• sethammons 6y ago
  > You are also more or less forced to learn to do mechanic work. You are forced to do all your own work, unless the landlord will help. I am no longer poor and broke, but I spent roughly my first three decades there. I recall a colleague saying they were redoing their walk way; it blew my mind they paid someone to do it — the concept of paying someone to do something for you is not something I experienced growing up. I now can afford contractors and it still is not my first (or second or third) thought when I need work done.
  • Terretta 6y ago
    The article touches on this with “don’t by a spatula from Craigslist”. No matter your income, what you’re really doing is trading time for goods and services, the money is just a token. When “doing your own work”, be mindful of the opportunity cost of your time. What’s your rate versus the handyman’s rate? If you fix the porch, are you less able to pick up that overtime shift? This needs to be genuine trade off, not aspirational. For example, one lots of folks don’t consider: what’s the cost of your commute time, and if you could live significantly closer for a little more rent or mortgage, could you and would you put that time to a use with payback/upside? In a recent datascience article, the author analyzed rents and locations to save a few pounds, tolerating a 50 minute commute. What could they generate with an extra 40 hours of productive time a month, and would they do that or watch the telly? Reframe as: what can you do with your tradeoffs on time that adds pay-it-forward energy to your financial flywheel?
    • Taylor_OD 6y ago
      At some point though time doesnt really equal money. For many we can find a way to make money with that time. But if you are working a low income job that does not allow for overtime pay and you don't have skills you can use to generate income on the side... money is money and time is time.
      • Terretta 6y ago
        That’s the gist of my second to last paragraph. For this time value to be real, could you and would you be able to redeploy the time? This scenario was premised on having the skills to do your own repair work. To be clear, I’m acknowledging your position, but hold that it is, by and large, a trap to believe that time cannot be leveraged. For instance, can you fix someone else’s porch for more than you’d save by fixing your own? Probably. What works to low end income advantage here is that if you’re at the left end of the income bell curve, there are many more people to the right of you who can compensate you for your time to free up theirs, while those still lower than you can be leveraged to free up yours. Not saying it’s easy to find one’s ratchet, but odds are high a ratchet is there.
• Havoc 6y ago
  Never been poor, but happened to have a car that was unreliable AF. It's anxiety inducing to say the least when every time you start it feels like a roll of the dice. Especially when others are with you.
• offtop5 6y ago
  The part about cars is pretty spot on, I'm upper middle class and I've been able to save so much money by getting rid of my car. On the low end you're going to hit 300 to 500 dollars a month for the privilege of driving. The problem here is America simply isn't built for public transit. But since cars are a status symbol, people still go down to Toyota, or Honda and as long as they can make that first down payment they get to drive a new car. I was talking to a rather brash car salesman and he laughed about how he can tell who's going to get their car repoed. Cars are the single biggest reason why so many people can't get ahead. You also have a gargantuan maze of cascading consequences when you really can't afford a car. You don't have insurance because you can't afford it, you get in an accident and lose your license. As the article states that doesn't stop you from needing to drive. Then you get pulled over and risk getting arrested. I'm very lucky in that I don't need to drive a car, even when you can afford one driving to work every day can be a truly hellish experience.
  • sandworm101 6y ago
    >> I'm upper middle class and I've been able to save so much money by getting rid of my car. Because you probably have job at a desk with a computer. You don't physically do much and so your per-minute presence at work isn't mandatory. If you are a few minutes late the world is not going to end and your workday rarely starts before 5am. You can handle the ins and outs of public transportation and/or you can afford to live close enough to walk/bike. I have a job that, while it pays well enough I have to be physically present (military, long story). While I am paid well enough I will get into real trouble if I am not on time every day. Sometimes I'm on call and have to get to work within 30-minutes of receiving a phonecall. I'd like to ditch the car, but I don't see any other reliable 24/7/365 transpiration options. Some of the people who work under me, and earn considerably less, are lobbying for "have own car" and "have own cellphone" to be listed work requirements. That might make at least some associated costs tax deductible.
    • acdha 6y ago
      I think the rest of their post after the part you quoted agrees with your point. So much of the US was designed or redesigned to only work for people who own cars but we still love to talk about them as if they were voluntary expenses ignoring the number of people who are one breakdown or accident away from unemployment & lack of access to healthcare.
• cryptica 6y ago
  The hardest part for me was convincing my partner that price is not equal to value. It took me a decade of arguments and constant proofs to even begin to convince my partner that you can almost always find much better value for much less money. Marketing does such an incredible job at convincing people that price and value are the same thing that it takes tremendous mental effort for people to acknowledge that it's not like that at all. People refuse to acknowledge how powerful advertising is at distorting our own perceptions. People think things like "I'm not that kind of person to use product x or drive car y or live in country z, I'm better than that" - These people are misguided. Usually you have to move to a different country to get better value. You don't want to buy a house in a neighborhood next to money launderers who get easy money (you don't want your hard-earned money competing on the same playing field as their big easy-earned money). You want to buy a house somewhere where people work hard for their money. Sometimes these places don't have a very good reputation but the reality often has nothing to do with the marketing. People also get caught up in group think. I was saying for years that the best value real estate was outside of big cities including in the surrounding areas. Nobody agreed with me, I often heard arguments like "We don't want to live next to the kinds of people who live there." The great irony is that "these people" are probably the best kinds when you judge them based on their character and personal values. Again, this is due to people confusing price with value. They think that people who earn a lot of money are better people, smarter people but there is no correlation - They are just lucky people with huge egos; in many ways they are more primitive. Since the pandemic now all the rich suckers suddenly decided all at once that they want to live outside the cities... I'm thinking to move even further out.
  • DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    To me everything I see an ad for is automatically tainted forever. If I'm not paying attention, I won't even consider buying anything I've ever seen on TV because it automatically registers as "too expensive". With certain things I've trained myself that "I can afford this easily now", but those are exceptions.
• throw1234651234 6y ago
  The thing that most people, including those in this thread, don't understand about poverty, is that the side-effects don't magically go away after you are an adult. Reading the replies here, I do get the typical sense of "well, they are people who made poor choices, sort of feel sorry for them, can't relate." In reality, many poor adults were poor children. The funny thing, is that in the glorious US of A, the main distinction is worse than in other countries - if you are poor, you go to a school district where 95% don't go to college and you get stabbed and hooked on something. That aside - no one tells you to study for the SATs, no one tells you to brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush and floss, while not drinking pop which destroys your enamel. No one tells you to do your cardio and no one evaluates your postural imbalances. No one has you studying Deutsch and Fancaise. No one takes you swimming, and you probably don't do a martial art unless you get lucky enough to get into a ghetto boxing gym. So, by the time you are 18, you have ruined health and an under-developed mind, and then everyone looks at you and thinks - what a careless, lazy, adult. He/she isn't even going to college - what an embarrassment. And while there is the military, the poor don't even get properly told about that and what's available.
  • spicymaki 6y ago
    > That aside - no one tells you to study for the SAT This is so true. When you are truly poor, nobody is grooming you to succeed in a competitive environment. Actually the people in your life don't even know how to prepare you, even if they wanted to. When I see people on HN talk about IQ this and GPA that, superior this and inferior that, I can tell they are in a bubble.
  • alexashka 6y ago
    > everyone looks at you and thinks - what a careless, lazy, adult. He/she isn't even going to college - what an embarrassment. How do you know anyone is thinking that? Here's what I think about poor/homeless/rich/whatever people in general: nothing. They don't exist in my mind, I'm thinking about my own life.
• sethammons 6y ago
  Queue my first truck. My uncle gave it to me. S-15. The bench seat didn’t lock, it slid forward and back when breaking or accelerating. Hard left hand turn and the keys would fly from the ignition and land on tue floorboard of the passenger seat (this did not turn off the truck). During the same hard left, some electrical thing would connect or un-short and my radio would temporarily turn on until the end of the turn. It ate oil and did not have a dip stick; thus you estimated how much oil to add daily. If the headlights were on, the gas gauge was zero. Oh, and it could only be pop-started (meaning I had to always park on a hill and get the thing rolling to get the ignition to pop start - it did not always work). A boyfriend of my mom’s showed me how to arc the starter bolts with a screwdriver- and I could now start it on flat surfaces! That was great. I eventually didn’t add enough oil and seized the engine. This is Southern California fwiw.
  • aembleton 6y ago
    Does the US or California not have some sort of annual check to ensure that cars on the road are roadworthy? Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test
    • sethammons 6y ago
      You have, in California, a thing called Smog Check. An attempt to remove old, polluting cars - you can’t register your car without it. Lots of these check centers will let you pay under the table to let them hook up a better car to falsify your results. If a car is obviously not road safe, a cop can pull you over.
    • buescher 6y ago
      In the US vehicle registration and vehicle inspection are state-by-state. California, while known for its strict emissions requirements, has no other vehicle inspection. Surprised me when I moved there!
    • leetcrew 6y ago
      in maryland you can just pay a nominal fee/fine each month to defer your emissions test. it adds up, but it takes a long time to equal the cost of replacing a catalytic converter.
• burlesona 6y ago
  This is a great write-up, and as someone who spent time being poor-ish, it really resonated. What I realized from my own life experience: the US sawed the bottom rungs off the ladder in the 1950s when it suburbanized. There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area, and virtually every societal problem we deal with either stems from this or is made worse by it. Then the healthcare disaster is the cherry on top. The US is a great place to live and work with tremendous upward mobility —— but only if you can stay above the event horizon which is reliable car ownership and insurance coverage (health, home/renters, auto). If you fall under that, you will need help or a lot of good luck to get back out.
  • skohan 6y ago
    I sometimes wonder if that event horizon is encroaching higher and higher up the economic ladder over time. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I think increased stratification in terms of lifestyle and opportunity is not good long term for social cohesion or political stability.
    • ReptileMan 6y ago
      It is called cost disease. Staying above is getting harder and harder.
    • bradleyjg 6y ago
      Politicians all of a sudden care a lot when problems start to hit the second quintile.
    • blaser-waffle 6y ago
      That event horizon is shifting: "K-shaped recovery" -- you're either moving on up or moving on down.
    • hardwaregeek 6y ago
• throwaway-0987 6y ago
  Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade school, then got into college (full Pell Grant because I was so poor) and came out with a few degrees. Everything I own is fully paid for. House, cars, etc. because I'm always afraid I'm going to be poor again. Of course, I only own modest things. Nothing fancy. If you have never been poor, you may not realize how awesome Small houses and Toyota Corollas are. My fears about being poor again drive my wife and kids crazy. They think I'm nuts and say I need counseling. I probably do. Anyway, people think I'm 'privileged' now because I earn a lot of money, but they have no idea that I used to sleep on the floor and eat in soup lines. I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone.
  • syops 6y ago
    I very much enjoyed reading your post. You made a statement that, taken literally, I disagree with and wonder if you care to elaborate more on it. I made it and you can too. It seems to me that luck plays a huge role in each success story like yours. My wife had a similar trajectory and makes quite a bit of money. However, along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way. She's smart and ambitious and quite lucky.
    • vorpalhex 6y ago
      I didn't have it as hard as the parent, but I remember choosing between bus fare and meals quite a few times. My first paycheck was spent on white bread and a tube of sausage, and now I live a pretty comfortable life. Most everyone in my orbit has improved their situation too. Sometimes that was with help from a family member, but generally things have gotten better for friends who were in the same circumstances I was. The two exceptions are those who got into drugs and never got out (a few folks I know seemed to never have issues, but they're the exception and not the rule) and a single friend who has some non-drug problems that probably need counseling work.
• nchelluri 6y ago
  I read about half of this post and I've paused there. It screams to me "Let's have a Universal Basic Income" already. > And one day your wife calls you and tells you the water is off, and there’s nothing you can do; maybe some family member can help you out, or maybe you live without utilities for a week or so until you get paid and start the next pay cycle that much more behind. These are people with children we are talking about. Why can't there be simple equity for these beings who are facing their demise through no fault of their own? Like seriously, WTF? I want to support: - sustainable electronics - living wages - right to repair - removal of slave labor from any supply chain I am involved in What do I have to do to make this happen? -- > When I’m trying to explain to my sons how a company decides what to pay someone, it usually goes something like this: A company is looking to pay a person as little as they can and keep them, so a person’s pay is determined by how rare their skills are and how much demand there is for those skills. > [...] > This isn’t evil on anyone’s part, and you shouldn’t feel bad about it - I’ve made a lot of choices in my life that led to this point and I have a lot of responsibility in terms of where I find myself. _Yes it is evil._ I'm sure we cannot exist as a fundamentally secure, sane, healthy, fair, equitable, respectful, productive, diverse, healthy, robust society until this rot is done away with once and for all.
  • aembleton 6y ago
    > What do I have to do to make this happen? Choose one of those and focus on it. Make a campaign around it, create a Facebook group. Study the topic and argue for it and finally try and get elected to make a change.
  • woofcat 6y ago
    >It screams to me "Let's have a Universal Basic Income" already. I don't think people want poor people to exist. However no-one has solved the supply side of "Give everyone free money". Every time I ask if someone has actually figured out how to do this that isn't 3-4 times the current Federal Budget you get a bunch of hand waving. Handing everyone $10,000/year (not even UBI levels) requires gathering $10,000/year in either service cuts, or increased taxation. Even if we presume everyone over the poverty line gets $10,000 added to their taxes to cancel the benefit out. That still leaves us with a $10,000 hole for every person under the poverty line. 12.5% of American's live below the poverty line. That's 41,025,000 people. Which is an insane number. The $10,000 a year would be around $410 billion per year. So if America eliminated the Military budget, they could pay for $10,000 to each person below the poverty line... however odds are laying off 70% of the Military would result in more people living below the poverty line. It's possible, however no-one wants to highlight what 410 billion dollars a year can be cut from a budget, or who wants to pay 410 billion dollars a year in extra taxes.. additionally that number is based on a _very_ low amount of $10,000. If you wanted to hand out top ups to the poverty line in America it would cost even more money.
• fasteddie31003 6y ago
  I've spanned the economic ladder from making $25k, to having enough money that I could retire before age 35. It wasn't that bad making $25k. I actually moved into my friend's large closet for 3 months. Life was more like the show Friends back then. I definitely made more stories and friends in that time period too. Now on the other side of the spectrum, life is more stressful and kinda boring. Maybe that is part of the pandemic's fault. My money is tied up in assets that I worry about at night. Part of me just wants to liquidate a lot of things and move into a nice van and tour the country.
  • finnthehuman 6y ago
    I've heard that sentiment quite a bit that life is more interesting when you're just getting by and I agree with it to some extent. There's also an element of aging out of it. I'm saving so aggressively that my budget is tighter than when I was just starting out and renting a room at a stereotypical recent-grad party house, but my life is a lot more quiet and boring these days. I've had a few friends go van life. Some went in head first, but you can always buy the van and just use it for weekends/holidays to see how deep you want to go.
• ckemere 6y ago
  It's really interesting to read this and think about public policy. As someone on the left of center axis, I often imagine what an efficient government intervention would be. (I suppose a more right-wing person might imagine a charity-based solution? I'm not sure.) In this case, the author (who clearly is skilled as a writer and communicator) indirectly identifies a few "public goods" that I think are worth highlighting: (1) Efficient public transportation that enables commutes on par with driving (2) Health and dental care (3) Improved policing/security (in the case of the neighborhoods that he describes as scary) What else?
  • flumpcakes 6y ago
    I think those issues (apart from 3) are directly reflections on American society. People don't value better public transport and universal healthcare because they are seen as the antithesis of the "American dream" and the idea that working hard brings you wealth. Unfortunnately we're not in the 1950s and the uncapped growth isn't a thing any more (outside of cryptocurrencies perhaps). I expect things to probably get worse. It seems everyone is concentrating on social awareness like trying to get women and black people into more high paying jobs, which is a good thing. However this doesn't actually stop the poverty cycle for the other millions of people (including the aforementioned groups). I think it requires reframing what social care and living in a society means for meaningful change to happen. I think people need to stop seeing wealth as some entrepreneurial thing they can mine for themselves. This "spirit" doesn't improve anyone else's lives, Apart from the select charities and issues they choose to support which aligns with their own social agenda. I do believe a billionaire shouldn't exist. Or a half a billionaire. That kind of wealth doesn't solve any issues for real people. A wealth tax on the ultra wealthy to pay something towards a healthcare for all (like most western countries have already) might help people though.
• skinkestek 6y ago
  > it seems like they hardly lie awake at night thinking about their iffy alternator much, if at all. Sometimes someone can help someone and score big at the same time. Here's a story that I heard from someone who was there: There was a small company that was in a position where they made money but not a lot so they saved on everything. At one point the owner caught whiff that one of the employees, - a master craftsman in his traditional craft - was struggling extra because of the car. So the ownwr told them to lease a brand new car to this particular employee. Accounting said wait-a-bit, we are considering each and every expense twice and you want to lease a car for this guy to use off work. Owner said yes. Doing that gave him two things: - his specialist stopped worrying about the car at work - he stayed there for a long time No, this time it is not a management-feel-good-story, I know the company and my friend was in the room arguing against the decision. Of course this might backfire (jealousy from other employees, people who stop caring anyway etc) which is why it should be used with caution.
  • jschwartzi 6y ago
    The employees who would be jealous are operating with a different definition of "fair." The common definition is that everyone gets the same thing, but a more humane definition is that everyone gets what they need. And if you switch from the former to the latter then the owner's decision becomes very fair. Everyone benefits from having the specialist focused on work. And the specialist gets what he needs too.
• piokoch 6y ago
  This is really touching. My impression was that in the US government is not going to step out to help the poor, but there is a lot of private charity that helps people. Isn't that the case? I guess I might have idealized picture of American society, but I always though that giving back to the others was consider to be some kind of duty?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• DataWorker 6y ago
  Many live in daily terror of becoming homeless or worse. I feel like social isolation matters more than wealth in making people feel secure. Many homeless people had money, good jobs, education, but most lacked community. Some say they find a family on the streets, for better or worse. It’s not all social, neither is it all financial.
• endoelenar58 6y ago
  Many people are just doomed to failure from the start. All that motivational talk and grooming goes to nothing if you came form impoverished background.
• flumpcakes 6y ago
  I share this sentiment from the author. I speak "normally", as in to say I don't have a regional accent, and have "white collar" jobs working in IT. Many people assume I am a good middle class person. I often get told I am naive, or stupid for saying things like "rent prices are too expensive" and that when the median income people cannot afford the median priced house we're just growing another bubble. I had a playstation 1 and the original xbox as a child/teenager. That sounds like I must have been lucky/middle class and not poor? Surely! All of my adult friends didn't know me as a child. My mother left when I wasn an infant and since then until his death my father never worked another day in his life. We lived off approximately £100 ($150?) a week for a family of three while my sister was sent to live with a relative. There was also summers where I ate only bread and jam, cooked on a portable gas heater, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner 7 days a week. Our gas had mostly been shut off and so we couldn't use a cooker, or the central heating, and didn't have any money other than a few £ for bread & jam. When I was at school I had free school lunches. Sometimes there wouldn't be any food for dinner when I got home. I lived below the poverty line until I was 19 and went to University. After which I moved to a city and got a job in IT. I am the wealthiest I have ever been, but my actual expenses are close to nothing: after rent and utility bills my only monthly expenses are my phone contract (£8) and audiable (£8). I don't buy clothes or shoes or any anything really unless there is a direct need to (i.e. my shoes have a large hole in them). Because of my upbringing (the lack of food etc.) I probably have an eating disorder, and most of my monthly outgoings is probably on takeaway foods. That is still probably a maximum of £200 a month. I probably spend £100-£200 a month on normal food shopping (milk, bread, cereal, cheese, meat, ready meals, chocolate, etc.) Everything else is shared with my partner out of a joint savings account (Netflix, Disney+, Car insurance paid yearly). My partner didn't grow up in the level of poverty I did - but now I earn twice as much as her she feels poor and "unworthy" compared to the amount of money I contribute to our savings. My father ended up with MS and killed himself a year ago. He was living on disability allowance so his income was probably the highest he had ever lived on, but is equivalent to minimum wage. He killed himself when the current conservative government (UK) were following through with their disability reassements which meant his income would have dropped by hundreds of pounds a month. I don't want to derail the conversation, but I do get frustrated when people call out my "white male IT privledgedness". I think I have more in common with any marginalised group than I do with the "normal white middle class" everyone assumes I am. I currently have saved about £30,000 to go towards my first flat. This money has been saved by myself and my partner only. This will be the first property ever owned in my immediate family. (I was the second to go to university, after my sister a few years ahead of me.) I will not/have not inhereited anything from any of my family. My brother, who had the exact same upbringing as me and is approximately one year younger than me currently rents a room from a family for £400 a month and works full time at McDonalds "flipping burgers". His future prospects aren't high. Breaking the cycle of poverty is a hard thing.
• Taylor_OD 6y ago
  I grew up poorish. Father made less than 100 dollars a week for a good chunk of my childhood. However we lived in a low cost of living area and it was relatively safe. My parents were, and still are, cheap despite making much more money now. They did an incredible job not letting us realize we were poor. I thought we were upper middle class until I was in high school. Raising a family while poor is hard. I can't even imagine the life I would have had if I grew up in a higher cost of living or more dangerous place.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  His point on housing is so important, and its adjacent to a lot of other poverty-related issues. It's one of the reasons advocates for the poor often seem to speak a different language to their opposition. If you live in median-and-above-land, you think of all costs existing on a spectrum. Fancy dinners for $100 on one end. Rice and beans for pennies at the other. This is true for clothes, smartphones, furniture... lots of things. There's a spectrum with options all along it. It is not true for housing, transport and a lot of other, unavoidable expenses. Housing is the extreme example. Say an average smartphone is $350. $700 buys a luxury phone. $175 gets you an decent phone. Say median rent is $1500. Going above $3k will get you a palace and $750 probably doesn't get you anything. Quality, below median prices is on an extremely steep curve. Household economics are just completely different below and above a certain threshold... and this has gotten more pronounced over the last generation or two. Ireland has/had a whole literary genre of stories about miserable poverty-stricken childhoods. They paint a very vivid picture. If you compare it to poverty today, besides being less harsh, it's quite different. They had housing. It was basic, often insecure, but they did have housing. Food was scarce. That's no longer the case. Stuff though... they had no stuff. No bed, no mugs, no shoes, no pencils. Getting these things was an epic mission and served as a landmark. That is all changed now. Stuff is extremely abundant. Basics like housing and transport are almost as scarce as they were in the bad old days. The upshot of all this is that we underestimate how poor poor is.
  • hinkley 6y ago
    I wonder if the availability of stuff has informed the price inflation of housing. What else do people have in their lives that they can bid up with whatever money they have left over from other concerns?
    • therealdrag0 6y ago
      It's not just that it's bid up, it's that the govmnt has paternalized what sort of housing-should be legal. The housing that the poor could get back in the day is now illegal because it's "inhumane". There's regulations around square footage, fixtures, etc. Of course the "unintended consequence" is those people sleep in their cars or outside/tents, which is obviously worse than a shitty apartment that has a roof and walls. Maybe the closest thing to the old way is renting a room on Craig's list. But limited supply is also a big problem.
• jancsika 6y ago
  > The value of their work doesn’t factor in as much - An administrative assistant might touch every department in the company every day and facilitate a massive amount of work, but they still don’t get paid much - it’s hard to justify when you could hire and train up someone to do the same thing nearly as well with very little difficulty. This seems like it exposes a bias toward thinking in terms of large businesses. (That may be a reasonable bias, at least in the U.S. where it seems like big organizations are only getting bigger and small ones are going out of business.) In a small business there is less likelihood that the administrative work is meticulously spec'd out. So if an administrative assistant in a small business touching every department, and they are good, chances are work has been offloaded onto them in a way that moves them further from "assisting" and closer to "inexpendable employee who is constantly fleshing out an underspecified business model and iteratively improving it." I can think of examples where a small business didn't realize this (and some where they went out of business for that reason). But only a handful few where this didn't happen. If competent administrative assistants in small businesses had any idea of their true value, they'd demand their salary be doubled. Same logic wrt sales reps. Although in that case, companies at least seem to have realized it and responded by the weirdo pattern of a) providing incentives to attract the best reps, and then b) firing the best reps after a few years on the grounds it's too expensive to keep paying them for consistently hitting their goals and collecting the incentives!
• dionidium 6y ago
  I was glad to see a large section on cars. When I was poor this was a constant issue for me and it wasn't until the very end of my time in poverty that I realized I could just not have one. Obviously, you can't "just not have a car" while not changing anything else about your life. My realization was that I should change literally anything and everything about my life to maximize my ability to survive without owning a car. That is to say, owning a car for a poor person is far more onerous than changing your life around to not need one. This means choosing housing, employment, child care and everything else around the decision not to own a car. This decision was life-changing. Cars are very expensive. If you are poor, you cannot afford to own one. Full stop. Think of basically anything else that costs as much as a car costs and then ask yourself if a poor person should buy that thing. Your answer will be no. It should also be "no" with respect to a car. The writer of course highlights the relevant tradeoffs. Owning a car is very convenient, so most poor people think, well, however hard it is to own this thing it's still a net win. My experience tells me this is wrong. It was not a net win and I wish I'd have figured that out sooner.
• rvn1045 6y ago
  Low income people in the U.S still have a chance of improving their station in life, although it is very hard. It’s nearly impossible in other countries where poor takes on a whole new meaning.
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    We just need to make sure we don’t get “used to it” in the USA, lest we become a place where class becomes ossified in daily life, or descend into the aristocracy class hierarchy that plagued much of early European history.
• nickelcitymario 6y ago
  I completely relate to this. I was raised in a middle-class family. My parents worked their way through school. Our first homes were in social housing (or co-ops... I honestly have no idea whether they were publicly funded or not). Then a tiny apartment. Then a house in a tiny town way up north -- the only place they could both find work. It paid off for them. They retired comfortably. But it took a lot of work to get there. I took every advantage for granted and didn't leverage any of it. Didn't go to school, didn't develop my social network. Had kids in my early 20s. By the time I realized I was poor (and broke!), I was way over my head and working near-minimum-wage jobs. It just caught me off guard. But once my kids showed up, I realized I needed to do better and changed things. I'm pushing 40 and have finally reached the point where I've cross the income threshold. I'm still not rich, and I've got money problems like everyone else, but I'm no longer wondering if I can pay my utilities bill. I have a mortgage, not rent. I have a reasonably decent vehicle that I can afford to take to a mechanic twice a year for basic maintenance. And the result is that life is WAY less stressful. I rarely worry about the basic necessities anymore, and instead get to worry about the future, like whether my kids will be able to go to college. But it was a struggle and a half to get to this point. (Even buying a house was only viable because it was cheaper than renting a place big enough for my whole family. It required some financial ninjutsu to pull off.) That small house and a Toyota Corolla? Absolutely freaking outstanding. Now I get to complain about things like "I really don't feel like going to work today" instead of "I really don't have gas money to make it to work today". TL;DR: I experienced both a lower and middle class childhood, then due entirely to my own life choices, experienced both of them all over again. I agree with the author. There really is a threshold, a tipping point, when it comes to income. Below that threshold, it feels like the entire economy is against you. Above that threshold, I wouldn't say the economy is working FOR me, but I at least feel like I'm a part of it.
• deleted 6y ago
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• dakial1 6y ago
  I never was poorish, but thanks to the boyscouts (when I was young) and an NGO I helped that worked with housing in Brazilians slums, I had great in depth exposure to what a poorer life was. And the very first thing to notice is that even if those people live in very modest conditions they still managed to be happy and that is because they had no reference of what a richer life was. Usually their wealth targets were very close to what they had, they were always poor/modest so their reality was that. The greater problem is when people live the wealthier life and makes the the movement to a poorer situation, something that seems to be happening in the US (I don't live there, so I don't have first hand experience). So people who had a taste of a better, more comfortable life, are suffering because of that. That is the reason I live well under what my wealth can pay, it is still considered a mid-upper class but I'm avoiding at all costs the "quality of life trap". If were we (my family) are is comfortable, then all the extra money I get will go to savings) investments to allow us to keep this life as long as possible, not on luxury items or a bigger house/car/TV. Speaking to americans, I get that this is not a mindset that they have.
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  This is an awesome write-up. I am not rich. I have never been rich, and it's likely that I never will be, but this: > At the same time, I’m mostly happy. I have a wonderful wife who is very satisfying to be near, two kids who are about as custom-fit to my personality as possible, and dozens of friends online and off who would take a bullet for me, and vice versa. describes my life pretty well. I have lived low on the hog for almost my entire life, and that allowed me to save up enough, so that I can live in a fashion that is comfortable to me, while I do the kind of work I love (the kind that could make other people millions, but not so much for me). I just love doing this stuff. I'm living the dream (which I once described as "My dream is to one day, work for free"). I also grew up overseas (mostly Africa), and know what real poverty is like. It has had a huge effect on my outlook. And, for my entire adult life, I have worked intimately with people that are on the shit end of the stick. I am constantly hearing (and seeing) what living rough is like. Helps me to stay grateful.
• Mc_Big_G 6y ago
  I've been "counting couch change for food" poor and "maybe I can retire early" rich and the thing that strikes me the most about both is how many facets of society are geared to punish the poor. Your car broke down on the side of the road and you needed a week to get the money to fix it? Now you have a fine and an exorbitant ransom on your vehicle from a towing company. Your employer made a mistake with your paycheck and it didn't arrive on time? Cool, now you have an overdraft fee, a bounced check fee and late fees for every monthly payment that hit at the wrong time. There goes your paycheck. You need a loan for a car to get to work? No problem, you'll just need to pay 21% interest and insane late fees if you miss a payment. You need to buy boots for work? Payless has $10 boots but they'll only last a few months, so you can rebuy them 5 times a year or maybe just destroy your feet instead. Meanwhile, my insurance company will tow my car for free, I have a buffer in the bank such that nothing could possibly bounce and even if it did they would forgive me, I have a 5 year, zero interest rate loan on my car, points back on credit cards for buying things I'd buy anyway, free money for getting a new credit card or bank account, etc...
• TrackerFF 6y ago
  I think the biggest threat to poor people, would be the ridiculous housing market. It's not just in big expensive cities, it's pretty much everywhere. Only places that are being spared, are those in destitute areas with some serious emigration problems - but those things happen for a reason (no work). In my country (Norway), the housing market has appreciated around 5.5% ANNUALLY, compared to annual wage increase of some 2.5%. In some cities, that growth is much higher - almost 8% We have a very decent welfare system, but a spread like that will surely create a hard class-divide between owners and renters. Renters will be forced further away from the cities, having to rely on longer commutes. Some places it's already that bad. Certain normal salaried professions can not, and will probably never, be able to own even "starter" homes (as in small apartments), because they need to spend more and more time on saving for the down-payment (15% here) - and once they've reached their original goal, the goalpost have been moved. I'm talking about professions like teachers, nurses, etc. Not even legit poor people! Having been raised by a poor-ish single mother, I can remember that at least in the 80s/90s, there was a lot less debt around. At least here, credit cards and consumer debt wasn't being handed out like free candy, back then. You had to rely on your salary, and then either get help from family/friends, or the welfare office. My mother had too much pride for that, even though my dads side were loaded. These days, it seems like poor people are also getting trapped in debt. Everything is driven by debt, and every bill you fall behind on, is compounded by some fee, which is applied the second you're overdue. I can absolutely understand why many poor people feel complete helplessness and apathy.
  • huevosabio 6y ago
    You can't have an eternally appreciating housing market and affordable housing [0], one has to give. Our current housing market appreciation comes from systematic housing shortage. Rognlie finds out that the increase in return to capital (vs return to labor) observed by Piketty comes largely from the residential real estate sector [1]. It turns out, Henry George was right. We need to tax the value of land such that we capture all of the economic rent that rightfully belongs to the community and distribute it to the community as a dividend. The same tax will spur a more efficient use of land and, thus, more housing supply. The dividend will serve as a cash-based safety net for the community members. Additionally, at some point we have to make the switch that Japan did in how we view housing: as a depreciating asset. [0] Note that the only sustainable way to have affordable housing is if market-rate housing is affordable. Publicly owned/built/subsidized housing is useful for handling exceptions, but not for your main point of supply. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-rise-in-the-net-capital-share/ https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/deciphering-the-fall...
• pokot0 6y ago
  European pro life tip: if you make 200.000/yr don't let anyone lend you money. Buy your car cash, no cc debt. Mortgage would be the only exception. I honestly find it crazy how most american are ok with living on someone else money and pay the interests just to have a current year car...
  • trynumber9 6y ago
    Often you can get no interest loans for new cars. In that case, it is cheaper to invest the cash and pay off the loan with less valuable money over the next few years. Of course the car is still depreciating rapidly so I question the wisdom of buying a current year car at all. But it is comforting to have a newer car covered by warranty.
    • pokot0 6y ago
      Yes, I agree with you. Specifically is the idea of considering the car a monthly cost instead of a capital investment is all in favour of financial and car companies. You will get a new model if your monthly cost does not change. In my experience, all of my cars were a great value if you own and hold onto them for 10 yrs or more (the first 10 years cars need almost 0 maintenance)
  • dnautics 6y ago
    is it crazy? If you can get terms on low enough interest rate and long enough time horizon (aka, you're rich) it's not a bad choice because you are (safely) gambling that your earnings potential will go up over time, in both real and nominal terms, letting the cost of the debt decrease over time. Moreover, the opportunity cost of that cash not being invested and used for purchases is real.
    • pokot0 6y ago
      You assume people are investing that money. What I see is people having a lifestyle that is only possible with lended money. Those are expenses and not investments and put you in a position where a minor change in your expected income growth will deeply affect your lifestyle.
• protomyth 6y ago
  You end up with some things that stick with you even if they make no sense anymore and are a lot more suspicious of people's motives because you've seen how parts of society get away with some crap. I still won't eat fish willingly. In the USA, Check where police checkpoints are setup on the morning of the 1st in your area. Notice what is on-sale and what the displays are in the grocery stores on the 1st. Check the EBT signs in your local gas station. Just some examples of the odd things most people don't notice.
• dnautics 6y ago
  I've had the experiences of: 1. being on the high end of poor while being oblivious and in a socially highbrow environment (STEM grad school, $26k/yr salary, high cost-of-living city). I also felt privileged because i lived in a "foreign postdoc ghetto" where my neighbors were a single family on a postdoc salary (probably somewhere between 27-30k) living in a one-bedroom with two kids. 2. the experience of being "service-collar" middle-class while having peers that have mostly emerged from being poor (Lyft driver, $56k/yr earnings) Now I'm a dev, on the lower end of the pay scale for bay area devs but one thing is I'm pretty fearless about winding up poor again because I know I can hack it and still live happily. Now I'm a dev, probably on the lower end of the spectrum for the bay area
  • selimthegrim 6y ago
    Believe me some places like New Orleans would love to have a foreign postdoc ghetto if it meant educated people would stick around.
• throwaway271818 6y ago
  Another throwaway because I don't want friends to know, but another thing about being poor that people who are not don't really understand is how much family can keep you down. If you are the only person in your family to go to college/make lots of $$$, there's this overwhelming feeling to want to help your immediate or even extended family as much as you can. Sending them a large chunk of your salary eats into your ability to save and reinvest that money into more wealth. It's kinda like having someone in the family who is a drug addict and is incapable of keeping a decent job and providing for themselves. Except instead of drugs they're just trying to survive, and instead of it being a single person you can easily dismiss for being an "addict", it's your whole family.
• foolinaround 6y ago
  I was reading a post from etsy folks on 'blameless portmortem' and thats something places I worked in never did, but it would helped so much! Reading this post, I could'nt help but think what if a person who was on hard times (quite often there is some role to be played by him, but also actors around him ) - if social orgs could come around, analyze the situation, encourage him to make better choices, or work around some obstacles, etc, it would make such a difference... A new re-think of what our social services would be -- a mix of help, with a dose of fresh opportunities as well. Currently, the alternatives seem to be between black and white..
• u678u 6y ago
  > If you came from a family that did pretty well financially, went to college and then immediately started to do pretty well yourself, it’s hard to get any kind of context for what life is like at lower income levels. America is hugely segregated by wealth and class. Where I come from you wouldn't need to read an article to describe what its like to be poor as there would be enough examples in your neighborhood, church or school. Americans live in these bubbles. Its a problem where I would rather live in a working class neighborhood and send my kids to public schools when all my colleagues live in fancy towns with fancy schools. I like to keep my kids real but maybe I'm capping them.
• JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  I had no money and no resources as a child. I lived in a family of 8. We went clothes shopping once a year. Being one of the youngest, I just got hand-me-downs mostly. The first time I got a new sweater I was 14. We had 3 books in the house growing up, all gifts from our 'city cousins' at Christmas. We had no TV until Dad brought one home from the TV repair shop - a 10-inch black and white deal. It smoked and dripped plastic on the floor first time we turned it on. Dad took it back and they gave us another one, which actually worked sort of. We did not live on a bus route, have any parks to play in, or any public library. Were we poor? I suppose we might think so today. But all our neighbors were in about the same situation. We were happy, and didn't consider ourselves deprived in any way. What made us content? We lived on a farm. There was always meat in the freezer and food on the table. We had the entire outdoors to play in including an ancient barn, a shop with tools and a workbench. Chickens and pigs and calves and cats and kittens. Tree swings and trees I could climb so high, I could see clear to the horizon. Creeks with frogs and fish and tadpoles. I see folks living in cement boxes in crowded towns, kids who's entire life is the sidewalk and the mall. Parents working so hard you never see them. People next door so isolated you can't really call them neighbors. When I grew up and went to college (full student loans, qualified for everything they had) and got a job in town and got married, I told my wife we had to raise the kids outside of town. Out of all that cement and worry. And we did. We gave them a shop and motorized vehicles to maintain (mower, tractor, carts, bikes). Gardens to tend and cats to feed. Neighbors to visit and chores to do. It was different from my growing up. They had hundreds of books and an unlimited budget for new ones. They had good schools and involved parents. But it also had the advantages I had. They could run heedless through the wide boundaries we set. They could spend a summer day on projects or books or Scouts or building something. Or just wander the creek and collect tadpoles. I worry most of us are confused about what's important, and spend so much time pursuing somebody else's goals we forget to have any of our own.
• Ccecil 6y ago
  I have tried to explain this very thing to many people I have encountered in the past decade. The easiest way I can explain it is "Broke doesn't mean you can't buy a boat this year...it means you can't afford a coffee this week"
• jmdeon 6y ago
  I just watched episode 4 of Atlanta last night and Donald Glover's character had a really good monologue about being poor after finding out his friend had helped him turn 190$ into 2000$ but that it wouldn't be available right away: Earn Marks: Poor people don't have time for investments, because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor. Okay? I need to eat today, not in September. Full scene is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hOCjX_SSXY&ab_channel=ThaiMurphys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hOCjX_SSXY&ab_channel=ThaiM...
• Tade0 6y ago
  This is such a different experience than being poor-ish in eastern Europe. I grew up in a below-average household, my SO in outright poverty. We couldn't afford shool books and clothes other than off brand stuff, her family had to buy appliances like a washing machine or refrigerator used. The five of us lived in a 45m2(500sq. ft.?) apartment, the four of them in a 25m2 one. My dad bought his car in 1992 new (back when we were better off), and accumulated less than 140k km over the 23 years he had it, both of her parents didn't have a driving license. But with all that we could rely on public healthcare, transportation and the areas we lived in were relatively safe.
• JayPeaEm 6y ago
  Grew up homel
• programmertote 6y ago
  > Note: The hostess and her husband were both doctors. They had a combined income somewhere upwards of $200,000 a year I find this a bit puzzling. If the couples are both doctors in the US, they certainly are making much more than $200K/year. The median salary of a generic doctor (internal medicine) in the US is ~$250K. I really wonder where this couple doctor is practicing at. Other than that, I agree with the whole post. I came from a lower-middle class family (my dad died when I was 12; my widowed mom worked very hard and earned as much side income as possible--I remember having to send baked goods to nearby stores for my mom before going to school at 8am--to give me and my siblings as good an education as one can reasonably get in our third world country). Even to this day, I don't own a car. I live by $600/month budget for food, entertainment and other necessities. I am always saving and investing at least 50% of my income in case I become poor again.
• fellowniusmonk 6y ago
  I started working full time right after I turned 15. My family had always flirted with extreme poverty. At one point all 6 of us lived in a tiny gulfstream on the back property of a church for 6 months. We had to carry our waste out in buckets. We got kicked out of section 8 housing by the sheriffs department. This was while living in a combination of DC, or the VA side. My mother was diagnosed with cancer (which took her life 7 years later) when we didn't have insurance and my dad stopped getting out of bed. Because of pre-existing condition laws at the time she was unable to get insurance outside of state medicare. My very religious parents best option was to divorce so my dad's income wouldn't effect her status, they declined. The summer after I turned 15 I worked my first 40 hour week (over a weekend) running networking cable and doing admin for a local medical home equipment company. I transitioned from small business network admin to SEO and "New Media" and on to become a developer. I paid for rent and food for my family, anything I didn't spend on work clothes or essentials was taken by them each month. I didn't have a car. I spent 1 semester in college and couldn't afford it, I couldn't afford not to make money and I lived in an active construction site, just a mattress on subfloor in a gutted husk. I was born with a couple heart defects that cost me thousands each year at a minimum, until ACA I could not get personal insurance and had to get company insurance. I have started companies and done well for myself but the lack of access to capital, the lack of network opportunities meant I have had to scrap far harder than people can understand. I've had to fake coming from a position of security my whole life just to have more leverage in negotiating. I've had to learn to code switch in ways people don't understand. I learned this all after my first (illegal) W2 job took maximum value from me and payed me a third of what my role, responsibility and output would have earned as an adult. People who make it don't appreciate how lucky they had to get, people that have parents that aren't a net financial burden can't understand what that weight around your neck is like, people are far luckier than they appreciate. Lack of access to capital, having to constantly bootstrap without any kind of family or other safety net, having no home to go home to is something most people don't understand.
• munificent 6y ago
  > This is because apartments at both of these levels quite accurately assume that you can’t afford a lawyer - while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth of rent as a security deposit, it’s much less normal to get it back; the apartment complex has no reason to give back thousands of dollars they can simply keep. This is a really key point and this behavior affects many many aspects of life. Money is liquid power. Power is the ability to get others to do what you want. Unfortunately, power imbalances between people form an unstable equilibrium. As soon as you have a tiny bit more power over someone, the first thing you can do is use it to force them to give you more. This is, I believe, the seed of almost all inequality in the world. One of the main accelerators of this imbalance is threat—applying power without spending it. If power worked exactly like money where to get you to do something I had to pay you, then there would be natural counter-balance towards equality. Any time someone had more power, the only useful thing they could do with it would to be spend it, which would lower their power and raise someone else's. Unfortunately, you can often get what you want without spending any power simply by making it clear to someone that you could force them if you wanted to. They will capitulate and do what you want while you don't actually have to put any real effort in and squander any power. In the example here, the apartment complex can afford a lawyer to argue about returning a security deposit and you can't. So you acquiesce to not getting your deposit back and they don't have to pay for a lawyer. They acquire a bit more power (cash) from you without having to spend anything to get it. It's a shitty part of how life works.
• jimmaswell 6y ago
  > Unless you really, really need everything in your house to clearly be part of a unified set, you are a sucker if you buy furniture new I'd generally agree but some Ikea stuff is so cheap that it's not a big deal. $10 for a nice little table is fine. They also tend to have a discount section for returns and minor defects, those can be decent deals.
• gwbas1c 6y ago
  I very rarely read long Hacker News articles to the end. This one is fascinating. A few years ago I watched a Netflix series about extreme cheapskates. (I think it was called "Extreme Cheapskates.") The thing that struck me were the older "cheapskates" who realized the kind of economics in this article. They retired young and follow many of the same habits described in this article, and are totally happy. One guy bikes everywhere and only eats weird cuts of meat and fish that no one else wants. Then he scrounges loose change in parking lots to pay for his "vacations." Another family only buys "expired but good" food and has a creative way to replace toilet paper. They got into the habit when they needed to get out of debt and just decided that they'd rather put their money elsewhere. The series made me NEVER complain about money again, even while I was unemployed during the pandemic.
• hikerclimb 6y ago
  Hopefully I become poor. I would rather be poor than rich
• dvirsky 6y ago
  Very good post, just one thing caught my eye: > it’s very small (think >900 sqft) That is an average middle class apartment for a family where I come from (Israel). Thinking about it as being small is so American :) And BTW you don't get to live in a _house_ in Israel unless you inherited it, are rich, bought it >20 ago before the real estate boom, or willing to drive a couple of hours in each direction to get to work (which is ridiculous in a tiny country with a 100% tax on gas) If you're poor you'll have to do with ~600 sqft or so for a family. And I know there are countries where even this is rather spacious.
• throwaway284239 6y ago
  Boy, does the stuff about cars hit home. When I was poor I had to drive on tires so old that the steel was exposed. The worst was when my insurance got canceled because I couldn't afford it. This led to a chain reaction of absolute dumpster-fire awfulness: - Can't afford insurance - Insurance gets canceled - This automatically triggers registration getting canceled - I can't stop going to work, and there's no public transit where I lived, so what choice do I have but to keep driving? - Highway patrol scans my plate, notices I'm not registered, pulls me over - Car gets impounded for not being insured, which is actually the more lenient punishment, because (as I learned that day) not having insurance is a criminal offense - Can't afford the ticket I got for not being registered, so my license gets suspended for non-payment So because I couldn't make an insurance payment, my registration got canceled ($), my car got impounded ($$$), and my license got suspended ($). And is any of this money going to fund public transportation? Of course not. I did eventually get my car back, got new insurance, re-registered, and reinstated my license, at great personal expense including the time it took to go to the DMV (the nearest one of which is in the next town). But it was another year before I could afford to replace my tires.
  • vmception 6y ago
    > because (as I learned that day) not having insurance is a criminal offense > Can't afford the ticket I got for not being registered so here is where you got lucky, not having prior outstanding non-payment or not having prior potentially or actual criminal offenses on your record. non-payment of the ticket would have led to harsher punishment upon your next infraction, which is much more likely to happen when your neighbors and the police are looking specifically at you all the time, which may have been your experience but just food for thought for anyone browsing this thread.
    • throwaway284239 6y ago
      I know you didn't mean it this way but I would not describe any part of this experience as "lucky." But you're right. The patrolman came right out and said that he was knocking down the no-insurance charge to an unregistered citation because I didn't have a criminal record. What he didn't know is that I do have a criminal record, just not in that state. Guess his systems don't connect to the federal ones. So yeah. "Lucky" is right. What galls me about this is that if you look at any of the individual steps in isolation, it sounds perfectly logical, or at least there's an argument to be had. And that's the level at which we argue about these things when it comes to passing laws. But when you look at the whole thing end-to-end, it is crystal-clear that there is a sum greater than its parts, and that sum functions to drive people who are in poverty even further into poverty. In this particular case there's the additional unintended consequence of prioritizing the flow of money over actual vehicle safety.
• carapace 6y ago
  Good luck can cover for bad decision making, but good decision making can't cover bad luck. You can mitigate but Murphy will have his due. - - - - > That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”. This is more-or-less by design. It's what keeps people from "going native". (Literally, at least in the USA. We wouldn't even let the natives go native! Made them put their kids in our schools, wear our clothes, style their hair our way, and speak only our language. It was pretty fucked up. The open secret is that whites who got kidnapped by Indians and lived among them for a while tended to like it.[1] As in, they refused to go back to town or the farm. I'm not trying to say that the Native lifestyles and cultures didn't have problems, I'm saying that they had fewer problems than the European newcomers. For example: no homelessness. It wasn't until after the Europeans arrived that a man or woman in North America could become destitute.) The give-away is the objection, "But who will pick up the garbage?", when one brings up the idea of a post-scarcity Utopia. If there wasn't the specter of homelessness, we couldn't get anyone to haul our trash for us. That's the unstated assumption behind that objection. It's pretty ugly: "We need a lower class that can be kept in line with the threat of homelessness, vagrancy, and prison to supply cheap labor to do the things we don't want to do ourselves." The obvious solution, don't have trash in the first place, doesn't get air time. (But think it through: there is no such thing as trash or waste in Nature. The very concept of "trash" is human mental construction. There are plastics that biodegrade... etc.) [1] "An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States", Dunbar-Ortiz https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-us/ https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/indigenous-peoples-h...
• lisper 6y ago
  There is a huge survivorship bias in people's theories of what it takes to succeed economically. Working hard improves your odds, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for success. Luck plays a huge role, starting with who your parents are. Nonetheless, the ranks of the successful are chock-full of people who worked hard and who think that they can draw a straight line between their hard work and their success, and that if they can do it, so can anyone. If you are such a person, I urge you to read this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/10/travelogue-beauty-and-desperation-in.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/10/travelogue-beauty-and-de...
• nixarian 6y ago
  One part of this article is HIGHLY inaccurate: "This isn't evil on anyone's part"
• nixarian 6y ago
  "This isn't evil on anyone's part" Highly inaccurate
• nabusman 6y ago
  I would love to understand how this is different in a metropolitan in Canada (e.g. Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal). Is it much better than it is here in the US of A or more of the same?
• 14 6y ago
  Just read this this morning before work and thought how I can relate to having to fix my own cars and now I am better off and don’t car stress any more but if forced me to learn a lot along the way. Then at work my coworker is telling me she was at the transmission shop and Toyota and car still isn’t running well. I look and knew right away she had a bad air filter. 25$ back on the road full power
• RGamma 6y ago
  Seeing this thread I understand why the "U"SA have become so fucked. Sorry to all those 90s kids who grew up in the illusion of a middle-class society. Carrot for the well-situated, stick for the rest. The truly amazing thing is how this system creates its own proponents without any diction or explicit coercion like ideologies of old. And by obfuscating its workings with complicated black boxes in the form of financial and legal entities it can stay diffuse and difficult to pinpoint. Gratz to those who made it, could have been much easier in the rest of the first world though.
• magnetowasright 6y ago
  > Take no guilt from this article - It’s informational, not a call to arms. Why isn’t it a call to arms? Why should anybody have to live like that? I’ve done it. I was busting my arse to get by. Got out basically because of luck. Nobody should live in poverty. I also find the “has your water been cut off” interesting. Due to the safety/health implications, cutting off water is illegal where I live. You can be restricted for a few specific reasons, but they can’t just turn your water off. Jesus. Absolutely atrocious that that happens to people. Australia is FAR from perfect but at least medical bills don’t bankrupt people and depriving people of utilities generally isn’t allowed. ...Why isn’t this post a call to arms, again?
• neverartful 6y ago
  I didn't grow up being poor (not rich either, solid middle class), but I did witness extreme poverty. I was a young boy when many Vietnamese refugees came to the U.S. at the end of the Vietnam War. A number of families came to my small town and some of them came to my school. These families had nothing (no food, no money, no clothes) and to make it many times worse, they couldn't speak the language and it was a foreign culture for them. The local churches helped them with housing and some basic necessities. What they did have though was strong family ties (they stuck together) and the will to survive (and later thrive). Many of them eventually established successful businesses, learned to speak English quite well, and their children were educated. I have great respect and admiration for their accomplishments in the face of such incredible adversity.
• egfx 6y ago
  I’m a bit late to the comment party and didn’t have a chance to read any but pertaining to this article. I’m sorry but I read halfway through and did a search for the word “food” simply that and didn’t find it. I can’t take this author seriously as someone who truly understands.
• j8014 6y ago
  I grew up with my sisters in poverty. I didn't eat at a restaurant until I was 14 and paid for it myself. I started baking crackers, biscuits and pancakes that my younger sisters and I would eat for dinner with government peanut butter or cheese when I was 11. Having no utilities was a regular occurrence. Christmas was socks, underwear and a winter coat. Shoes were a touchy subject and I would have to have pretty big holes before they would get replaced. School hot lunch and food drives were awkward. I decided what I wanted out of life in my mid-twenties and pursued it and now in my 40's I am doing better than I could have ever imagined. Everyone I know who was poor and wanted to better themselves was able to get out of poverty. All 4 of my sisters are middle class or better. Thats 5/5 that succeeded. All my friends across the states I had lived are homeowners and seem happy. All the people I met who bitched and didn't do anything to better themselves are still poor or dead. I didn't get lucky and neither did my sisters and friends. We each made personal decisions and planned our way out of poverty. It didn't happen over night. A lot of set backs happen and everything is hard. Transportation and unforeseen expenses are the largest hurdles and access to credit is also difficult because of the length of time it takes to repair.
• kf6nux 6y ago
  > How many times have they turned off your water? Like anything else, this isn't a perfect metric. I know folks who have kept their water on all the way to eviction for non-payment. That said, the author nails it when noting the dichotomy of "feeling broke" vs "being broke." I knew a lawyer that complained about "being broke" (feeling broke) because he "had to" sell two of his Porsches and couldn't make as many real estate investments as he would have liked to make that year.
• NotSatoshi537 6y ago
  Being poor means living with poor people that do not seem capable of understanding how harmful interruptions are to focus and concentration, thinking they are only taking one minute of your time each time they interrupt, but it is actually one minute plus 10-15 minutes to get back to where I was. Being poor means having friends and family from lower classes the never talk about credit scores, and the impact they have on job and housing searches. I didn't realize until years later that my job search out of college was probably so difficult because of my low credit score (partly due to my often being a few days late, which I didn't realize is a VERY BIG DEAL for credit scores). Being poor means living with people that always have the TV blasting near 100%, making it difficult to read or focus on anything. Not being able to afford headphones that can drown out the noise doesn't help. Being poor means living in an area with more crime, so after you save for a year to buy a decent computer, it gets stolen. So you have to go to a thrift store and get a 10-15 year old computer, which is so slow that you have to spend 80% of your time looking at spinners/hourglasses. Being poor and living in a poor neighborhood you spend more time waiting in lines. For example, it takes longer to use an ATM because there is only one outside the bank, so there is a line. In the wealthier towns 20 minutes away they have 3 or 4 ATMs all lined up in a row, so I've never seen anyone wait in line there. Being poor in a poor area means things are more expensive. For example, the car wash charges $3.00, but the wealthy town 20 minutes has a car wash that charges on $2.00; the laundromat charges more in the poor neighborhood too. In the poor area, it costs $1.00 to inflate my tire at a gas staiton, while in the rich neighborhood it's often free. In poor places, sometimes business charge 50 cents to use a restroom, and there is often no mirror, and sometimes no TP. While the wealthier town the bathrooms are often free, with a mirror and plenty of TP. And some chain stores often have bathrooms open to the public in wealthy towns, but not in poor towns. If they exist in poor towns, you usually have to ask for a key, which looks like you can get 50K kinds of bacteria just by touching. Being poor means no matter how hard you try to be a good driver, you can end up with a $500 ticket by a simple mistake, which you have to pay on-time or the penalties are aggressively insane and will bankrupt you. So you have to skip a bill and credit card payment, which further messes up your credit, making it more difficult to get a better job, housing, etc. Being poor means your neighborhood is louder. Louder cars, motorcycles, music, etc. People doing their loud stuff very early in the morning and very late at night. People revving up their extremely loud cars and motorcycles in their driveways for 10-20 minutes at a time. There are more parties that blast extremely loud music outside until 2am. When I go to wealthier areas I'm always struck at how nice and quiet they are. Being poor in California means that the yearly $250 car registration fee on my cheap car means that I'm going to have to not pay a bill or else start saving a few months ahead of time. Or worse, not pay for awhile and deal with the insane penalties, hoping the cops don't notice and pull me over. Being poor means not knowing anything about negotiation, not knowing anyone that has every negotiated for a higher salary, and not even knowing early in your career that it is a possebility. So you get stuck in a $40K job in expensive coastal California. You start off your career with your morale low and depressed, thinking you should be wealthy by now, but realizing all your blue-collar friends are making more money than you. And you can't even start paying the full monthly amount on your student loans, so you'll be in debt for awhile. Things get better after 5 years of experience, but the first few years can be tough. And being somewhat poor as a developer, where everyone seems to eat out for lunch everyday, and not being able to afford it, and thus being seen as anti-social and out of the loop. Being poor means lots of your family and friends are poor. If you live in the same area, they will need lots of free technical support with their computers and phones. You will also need to spend a lot of time helping your nephews and nieces with their school work because their poor parents cannot figure out to help them and cannot afford to hire a tutor. You will be out of energy and time that you could have used to advance your career. Your social connections tend to bring your down, putting breaks on your ambitions. You feel like your are caught in a spider web, that is dragging you back, only allowing you to move only so far. Being poor means your brother or sister is poor and the financial stresses cause a divorce, and they move back in with your parents. And you also live with your parents because you are trying to save money by commuting to college. But now you can only get 3-4 hours of sleep because there is a newborn in the equation that screams so loud that everyone is sleep-deprived. You walk around campus like a zombie, try hard to process the lecture and notes, which you have to read over and over again. Your GPA goes from 3.7 to 2.3, and you have to retake a couple classes, and you can kiss your hopes of grad-school good-bye. You often think what's the point? No matter how hard I try my redneck friends and family will always pull me down. Being poor means people see you as lazy because you grew up in a social class where you do what you're told and taking initiative is seen as bad. You are seen as taking control from others and full of yourself, so you do the minimum of what you are told. Then you get around upper middle-class people and your virtue is now a vice. People at work or college talk about what needs to be done and you are waiting for them to tell you what to do. But others are volunteering and being proactive and soon all the tasks are gone. You wonder why they left you out, thinking they don't like you or are not good enough. Several years later you realize you are supposed to volunteer without being told exactly what to do. You were seen as lazy and unhelpful, even though you were willing to work twice as hard as everyone else on a project. But no matter how much you volunteer after you learn the new rules, your reputation as lazy and not-a-team-player will never change until you change jobs.
• Jennifer9918910 6y ago
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• billyruffian 6y ago
  > Usually you can be over a month late before the water company actually goes to the trouble of sending someone out to turn off your water. What? You can be disconnected from water because you're a month late? That's barbaric, what the hell are you supposed to do in that situation?
• known 6y ago
  Higher Education is the best way to escape from Poverty; Return on Investment in Education is 8.8% https://archive.is/uaLy6 https://archive.is/uaLy6