16 ms·

Being Poor (2005)

187 points by sturza 5y ago

jbrot 5y ago
(2005)
- DiabloD3 5y ago
  Being poor didn't stop being a punishment inflicted on you by the rest of society in 2005. Sometimes an article really is timeless.
  - rzzzt 5y ago
    I think the date suffix is just an indicator for people who are wondering whether an earlier article has been updated. It can still be relevant.
  - sarlalian 5y ago
    Part of the context around that article is it was written post Katrina, in response to many people asking why the people didn't just leave. "Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave."
- dfee 5y ago
  For many, too many, (everyday).
rzzzt 5y ago
Mentioned at the end of "Poor in Tech": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tomcooks 5y ago
Fortunately soon the babyboomer dream will be over and this is what is going to be daily life for more and more people.
- riffraff 5y ago
  My mother is a baby boomer and she was poor, she lived in the country so they didn't really go hungry, but they had stuff like keeping a single smoked hering to flavor things for two weeks. The most traditional dish in my hometown is literally called "cooked water". If anything, boomers had the rise from poverty, and it's gen-x who got it good. And this is only true in western countries anyway.
  - tomcooks 5y ago
    Am I referring to your mom, baby boomers in general or the american-centric ideal that created the conditions which lead to the core of the problems illustrated in the article? Moreover if you want to generalize let me help you: the article was written in 2005, we can assume the author is from Gen X, so how come he didn't have it good?
  - lsiebert 5y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5p...
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    What is "cooked water"?
    - riffraff 5y ago
      "acquacotta". The recipe varies, but in my hometown it's basically a soup made with onions, potatoes, stale bread and raw olive oil, plus whatever was around to give it flavour (broccoli, wild water cress, dried cod, lard). It's not "bad" but you definitely can feel it being the cheapest thing that you could do to fill you up.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Fortunately?
inglor_cz 5y ago
Some of those hit uncomfortably close to home, when I was a teenager living with a single mom and no child support from my foreign father (Bulgarian justice system of the late 1980s and early 1990s could not be assed to do anything about him and even simple replies to letters from Czechoslovak courts took years to arrive). Especially the bad shoes. Oh my, the bad shoes, leaking and tearing themselves apart all the time. Walking around in portable puddles whenever it rained or the snow started melting. I hated that so much, but good shoes were too expensive.
- nomorewords 5y ago
  On a side note, being from Eastern Europe as well, I think that, at least mentally, it was different being poor here in the 80s/90s than it was in the western world. Basically you and all of your neighbors and everyone else around you would be poor (unless you were a party member). Everybody had the same starting point when democracy arrived and there was real incentive for factories to come up with a good balance between quality and cost.
  - romanovcode 5y ago
    I have the same feeling. I was poor when I was a kid because of the fall of Soviet Union. But I did not feel bad or worse then everyone else becaue 95% of people were dirt poor back then. Therefore I never got any psychological difficulties with it since I never was discriminated against. When everyone is poor you don't think about it too much. For example, pretty much everyone had the lunch tickets at school so nobody was ashamed of it at all. Also note that there was no instagram/facebook/yt so you could not even compare yourself with people you don't know as kids can do now. In a way I am greatful for my experience. Gives a lot of perspective and sympathy for people who struggle with money.
    - ido 5y ago
      It reminds me of a story my grandfather told me about his time as a refugee during WW2 (my grandparents were teenagers when the war broke & fled without their families east into the Soviet Union as the Nazis advanced): they were moved to Uzbekistan and according to him they were poor, but they had just enough to eat and everybody else around them were just as poor. He said the locals treated them well & there wasn't really a reason to feel bad about being poor, it was just the situation everyone was at and didn't even really imagine it being any different.
LeCow 5y ago
I went from extreme poverty to extreme wealth by knowing exactly how much things cost.
- fouc 5y ago
  How's that?
- princeb 5y ago
  surprise, extremely poor people know exactly how much things cost. they know their bank balances down to the cent.
skrebbel 5y ago
I consider myself extremely lucky that I grew up middle class and now earn a pretty nice buck (for European standards). However, halfway there, there was a period where my wife and me had to turn around every penny. Strict budgeting, shopping at ALDI only, no takeout, etc. "I hope the kid doesn't get a growth spurt" definitely resonates. We were nowhere near as poor as some people, and it was only for a few years, and it was self-inflicted to some extent because I was starting a startup while my wife was getting reeducated. So I don't know what it's like to be really poor. Those stories on HN from people who, 20 years past lifting themselves out of poverty, still hold on to every old sock, that's not me. But at the same time, having been somewhat poor: damn it rocks to be rich! We became rich overnight a few years ago when my wife got a job, and every time I buy a sandwich without worrying about the cost, I get excited mentally. There's always this "Omg can we afford th- oh haha we're rich! Of course we can, woohoo!" process going on in my mind and it's super awesome. I feel so decadent, so lavish! I'm buying a sandwich! To me, that's the definition of "rich". Buying a sandwich that someone else made, anytime I want. If you're rich enough to be able to buy whatever at the supermarket, or get your favorite sandwich for lunch without worrying about the cost, cherish that. I don't really believe anything from here to private jets is going to make me much happier in practice, but I never want to be below that bar again.
- dstick 5y ago
  So true! Your background mirrors mine almost to the letter. My personal bar was never having to think about any purchase below €50. Mind you, do purchases like that all day and you’ll be poor pretty quickly ;-) But just knowing that you don’t have to think about it. So freeing. Thanks for sharing!
- jwr 5y ago
  I've never been really poor, but similarly to you, there were periods in life when I at least earned some respect and appreciation for money. Going to the grocery store and buying the absolute minimum necessary, while picking the cheapest products. There were two thresholds that I remember distinctly: the first one was crossing from "poor" to "ok", when I could go shop for groceries and buy most things (though still looking at the price tags, to avoid the expensive stuff). That was a big step up from buying the bare necessities. The second threshold, "rich", was when I realized I don't have to worry about the prices in my local grocery store. I can just buy whatever I want. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't "rich" by any means, but it is enough to provide immense comfort and ease of living. I think many people who have this comfort are unable to appreciate what they have.
tomcooks 5y ago
While I understand that there are food deserts in the US, I can't understand why someone poor would feed themselves with cheap ramen, mac and cheese and fast food. Isn't buying vegetables, cheap meat cuts, flour and other basic staples much cheaper and healthier? To put things in context: I'm European and been homeless, the core of my artistic research and career is precisely about food for the homeless.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  Don't underestimate the mental overhead having to cook a meal can cost. Especially if you're already stressed out (and if you're poor you're likely stressed out) and strapped for time. Nobody is a perfectly rational economical agent, like most comments in this subthread seem to suggest. Stuff sucks, work was hard today, you're tired, and you haven't even started thinking about dinner yet. Fuck. Let's just do hamburgers today. Can't afford them but let's worry about that tomorrow.
  - tomcooks 5y ago
    It's a basic need for survival and it's beyond my comprehension how it can be considered a chore. I say this as a person that lived homeless and that comes from a line of people that had to make do with scraps. I guess it could also be cultural, who knows.
    - FeepingCreature 5y ago
      It's not cultural, people are just different. I'm not poor, which is thankful because it means I can live off food bars instead of having to prepare meals daily, which would annoy me a lot.
    - viraptor 5y ago
      Depends on a person. I don't know of a worse chore than doing shopping and I do it only once a week. Cooking every other day is meh at best too. (apart from an occasional "I want to make something really nice") Look at the old HN comments on Soylent articles with a lot of people like me. I'd be happy eating a balanced nutrients paste most days if I lived alone.
dstick 5y ago
I will never waste an opportunity to share my favorite quote from my favorite fantasy series, the Discworld: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.” This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
- blfr 5y ago
  It's not true though, not any more at least. A supermarket pair of shoes is much, much less than even resoling of quality shoes. It's definitely cheaper to just wear them for a season or two instead of buying shoes that might last you a decade or two or more but cost 8-20x more and require expensive (in terms of cheaper shoes) fixes.
  - cauliflower2718 5y ago
    Back in the day, I used to spend ~$20 for a pair of rainboots, and they would invariably leak within a year. This stopped happening when I bought ~$50-$100 rain boots, which are certainly not grocery store boots. A $50-$100 pair of rain boots isn't exactly top quality, but is still much better than a $20 pair.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
      Oh you’re talking about the level of quality leveling off at a certain point when increasing price. The quality difference between a $10 product and a $100 product of the same type is enormous. But then when you go up to $200 the quality increases much less. There is a name for this that I can’t recall right this second, the point being that there is a sweet spot price/quality wise for most things.
kh_hk 5y ago
I was thinking about the generational effects on the cases on which someone has been raised on poverty and it has been successfully overcome and the positive values and life lessons it carries over, compared to other childhood experiences that carry over negatively (abuse). My father grew up on relative poverty (post war Spain), and the value of things is something it's always present with him and how he educated me unconsciously. Fixing broken things, scavenging parts, the value of food, time and work. Seeking comfort and security, instead of luxury. Or put it differently, the luxury is having a car that works and is nice (and second hand), not a luxury car per se. Luxury is having bread every day with your food. Luxury is being able to fix your own toilet or watering your plants. I am forever grateful for these, and kind of sorry I cannot fully comprehend what and how he did it. I earn well over the average wage, and still I buy my computers second hand.
- oblio 5y ago
  It's a small cost to pay for real freedom. With this kind of mindset generally the only major expense that's a hurdle is your home. If you can somehow buy that efficiently (hard these days), you're set for a prosperous and safe life, with almost no drawbacks.
p0d 5y ago
Someone bought me a really good pair of shoes 30 years ago based on the state of my own shoes at the time. A simple act of kindness I won't forget.
filleduchaos 5y ago
Poverty is such a relative thing. There are some things on this list that, while I can understand how they are hallmarks of poverty in the US, are completely alien to what's considered to be poverty where I am from (a car? Buying cereal?) Then again maybe we are all just horrifically poor here apart from a select few. Western indices certainly seem to think so.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  It is different: But you can basically replace "car" with transportation (poor people have issues affording transportation in general: For most of the US, this means you must have a car to even go to work) and Cereal with "whatever is cheap and easy to make for breakfast, only not quite enough". In some areas, everyone is horrifically poor. In the US, however, it has been painfully obvious in every single place that I've lived that not everyone is horrifically poor and has a panic attack over half of a dollar spent on some food of better quality.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  Cars are an interesting case. If I could have lived where I lived, but without needing a car, I wouldn’t have been poor. A car isn’t a luxury in a place designed for cars, but a burden. You’re constantly told driving is a “privilege”, but you can’t go to work without it and maybe not the grocery either. You’re worried that it will break down because not only will you not get to work (and maybe get fired) and don’t know how you will repair or replace it, but because you know you can’t even pay the tow truck company to drag it off the road. Tires cost money so you drive on bald tires until you literally can’t, white-knuckling it on ice-covered roads. Gas prices swing widely so you’re always watching and planning can be tough. You have to choose between insurance you can’t really afford and breaking the law. Since you use cheap gas without additives you fail the smog test and have to take your car to a shop (which you worry may rip you off) where they will guess at the problem, but if it doesn’t work you have to repeat the process once more before, for a fee, you can be exempted. Cars were a massive source of anxiety for me when I was poor. Instead of worrying about shelter and food, I had to worry about a car, shelter, and food; and basically in that order.
- Aeolun 5y ago
pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
Hey I live next to the freeway and Im a tech millionaire...
- sangnoir 5y ago
  If you're renting, maybe consider moving or at least investigating the downsides? Especially if you have kids - there are health issues that correlate to the distance of one's dwelling place from freeway. Those fumes aren't good for you.
jp0d 5y ago
wow.. I really needed to read this. Thank you.
pvsukale3 5y ago
Growing up I always thought poor people are poor because they are lazy. But I realised later that I was soo wrong. Life is an unpredictable mess. Sometimes even when you try your hardest due to some things that are not in your hands you can end up on the other side. I want to quote Morgan Housel here "Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself"
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Most of my success is due to great circumstances, but I’m still really happy I grew up in those.
  - ahel 5y ago
    > but I'm still really happy I grew up in those. Of course you should be happy and grateful. Being born in any circustance is not something anybody can decide. It's even worse when people feel bad about having born in or having good circustamces.
- pydry 5y ago
  >Growing up I always thought poor people are poor because they are lazy. This is a message that the American media tries to get us to internalize through selective storytelling: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-true-story-behind-the-welfare-queen-stereotype https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-true-story-behind-the-...
- humanrebar 5y ago
  I'm very against judging people. That being said, we do a disservice to our youth if we overemphasize the role of luck in being in poverty or not. There are strong correlations between poverty and lifestyle choices people typically do have control over. - Starting your career before having children. In many cases, this implies finishing a certain amount of school and/or training. - Marrying a responsible person and staying married - Avoiding substance abuse - Planning your pregnancies [1] - Avoiding a criminal record [2] And then there are risk mitigation strategies to avoid catastrophe: - Establishing an emergency fund - Living within your means - Getting insurance and keeping up with payments - Avoiding high risk investments and career moves [3] I guess I feel that people who have figured out the basics are hesitant to preach what they practice. All of the above seems like a given to people who are comfortably middle class. But if you didn't have wise parents and nobody says anything out of an overemphasis on empathy, you could make any of those mistakes easily and then get treated like a fool. [1] Tragically, some people are raped and become pregnant against their will, which is why we shouldn't judge folks, but the mass majority of pregnancies do not happen for this reason. Considering the abortion rate for married women, it seems that accidental pregnancy is actually very common. [2] Again, don't judge. People are falsely convicted of crimes. People have criminal family members. People make dumb choices and learn their lessons. But being violent over beefs or going for joy rides in stolen cars is just setting yourself up to struggle financially. [3] If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
plank_time 5y ago
My family came from a war-torn country. My father grew up very poor. My mom grew up poor. Both escaped poverty by studying and getting scholarships for grad school to come to the US. I’ve never been poor, but we were lower middle class early on and middle middle class by the time I reached high school. My parents always scrimped and saved. The cars my family owned were all one step before the junkyard. I never got Christmas presents except for 3 years that I can remember. It was disappointing but not soul crushing. We never felt poor but we never ate out ever and never went on vacation ever. Getting Kentucky Fried Chicken was a luxury. When I graduated from college, I was unemployed for the first few months and needed to stay with friends. After I got my first job, I was the lowest paid person I knew. I also scrimped and saved like my parents, but I never felt poor. I would track all my spending to the penny, until I had saved enough such that I could forget about the change in my pocket. I’m now a low-single digit millionaire which isn’t that much in Silicon Valley but good enough for me. At one point a few years ago my wife and I were earning over $1M/year. My wife is now C-suite and I’m essentially retired. We have two multi-week trips a year and my kids have never sat in economy. I haven’t had to think about what the price of things were in 15 years now. I just buy whatever I want, which is frankly not much besides computer equipment for myself. Most money I spend is on the kids. I drive a 10 year old Toyota but my wife drives a Porsche. There’s the old saying that sticks with me. “My father rode a camel, I rode a Mercedes Benz, my son will ride a Lamborghini, my grandson will ride a camel.” My kids are hard workers at school and we try to keep them grounded but their privilege really shows through in ways that I never expected. They really don’t know the value of money or how much things cost. We don’t really spoil them with toys and such but if there’s something educational like a set of books or lego, I will get it for them without thinking. I need to figure out a way to get them to understand the value of money but it’s very hard. Granted they are still young but it’s an important topic that I need to know they understand because I don’t want my grandchildren to suffer because I spoiled my kids now.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  If you want them to understand the value of money really quickly, fly economy for a change :D
  - 5y ago
nathias 5y ago
The problem of being poor in a good country (having free education and healthcare) is not only in not being able to afford necessities or luxuries from time to time, but about not having a base of capital on which to build on, not being able to do your own projects while being forced to pay rent to rich people, to fund their businesses with taxes, to help their economies through inflation and being forced to participate in their projects.
lookalike74 5y ago
I love how this touches on perceptions of intelligence vs wealth. Our family was somewhat poor, with 5 kids growing up on 1 public school teacher's salary, but we all made good grades. I remember this one kid saying "I thought your parents were doctors or lawyers." And what he meant was, you have less than me and you do more with it - but you still have less than me.
- Tade0 5y ago
  It flies in the face of the idea that if you're educated and smart, you'll be well off. Looking at how the lifes of my school classmates went I believe there's a positive correlation, but its influence is minor comparing to things like career choices and having connections or not.
sethammons 5y ago
I can write a lot on this and my personal experience, but I’ll just leave this one for now. I, while living alone in a house in partial construction (missing a wall) in the Southern California mountains would get a ride from a friend or a neighbor to high school (20 minute drive into town). If I had some (about a dozen a bag, one bag a month), a single russet potato tossed in the toaster oven would be breakfast (no seasoning, grab and go). I was on free lunch at school, but I’d pocket an extra hamburger to sell at a reduced price in the lunch yard. That extra dollar would get me a can of soup that I heated on a wood burning stove for dinner. For me, having to steal food to be able to buy different food that can store better is a being poor. I’ve got a thousand other stories growing up. But now I’m on track for an early and comfortable retirement; no complaints.
thrwxx5667890 5y ago
There's also an unfortunate path, when someone grows up okay not having to worry about anything and then the family goes bankrupt (without recovery) when his life is about to start after high school. Being poor from the start sucks, but it at least teaches you things how to navigate in life with what you have.
davedx 5y ago
Something to add to this: donate to your local food bank
dirtpoorcoder 5y ago
Being poor mean that nice guy (in mid 20s/30s) who stays in same rented basement for remainder of his life. Despite his average coding skills and gracious attitude on zoom meetings, it's concluded that he was broke and dirt poor, only after news of him taking his own life, was verified by his landlord. Depression is hell of a thing, eh.
theshadowknows 5y ago
My wife and I got married at 21. We went to college. Had a small apartment. I worked overnight at a gas station and she worked at a retailer in the mall. Our rent was $500 a month USD. And we almost never had the cash when rent was due so we always had late fees. The power got cut off consistently. We couldn’t afford cell phones. Our college was paid for entirely by student loans because we couldn’t afford it otherwise. It was embarrassing. Dehumanizing in a lot of ways. We bought old books that many times didn’t even have the material we needed for our courses and our grades suffered. We both did poorly. Both our families were poor and would offer help if we asked but we rarely did since they didn’t really have much either. After we graduated we both went to grad school. It was a little bit better because we both had graduate assistant jobs. So we each had two jobs and things were a little less lean. Until the car broke down. That set us back. After grad school my wife got a job as a university instructor. I got a job working in marketing. Things were better for a little while. Until my wife got sick. Turns out she has an autoimmune disease that is rare and difficult to manage. We didn’t know that for a while. Nightly trips to the emergency room. Doctor visits. Specialists. MRIs. CAT scans. Blood tests. More specialists. Oncologists. “You might have brain cancer.” That was a decade ago. It was so hard. Every single day we were just trying to make it to the next day in one piece. We moved to a new house that didn’t smell like urine because we could afford it. Until she just couldn’t work anymore. Our rent was $700 a month. We were trying to build savings. Our $2500 a month student loans and stacks of medical bills made it hard. We ate cheap food but we ate. Our phones only got cut off sometimes. I got a job offer in Europe. We were going to take it. Until her dad got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We stayed. He died. She had a short term mental break down. The engine in our car blew up. $4000. The flooding started. We went to sleep every night hearing rats in our walls. Our dog died. Our cat died. We couldn’t do anything about it. We wanted to give up. Every second of every day was a struggle. Until I got a new job. My base salary is $165,000 usd. I get 20% performance bonuses. I have amazing health insurance for both of us. I have a vibrant and rapidly growing retirement account. We moved from the south east to the north east. My wife has good doctors now. A whole fucking medical team. She’s doing good. More good days than bad days. And the bad days aren’t as bad. And the seizures have stopped. And she doesn’t wake up screaming. We toasted fucking marshmallows on our porch last night and we go on hikes and visit antique stores and see nice things we like and sometimes we even get greedy and buy something just because we can. We’re rich now. We buy food we like. We have savings. We have investments. We bought a new car and paid it off. The old car had to be towed away when we moved and the scrap yard guy gave us $200 for it. Every single time we see a couch on the side of the road. Every single time we see a help wanted ad. And every single time we spend a dime. We both get anxious. Maybe not. Maybe next time. Maybe I need to call them. Maybe what if but what do we do if how why when we shouldn’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. And it’s not something I’d wish on anyone. And we weren’t even that poor. We never were homeless. We came close some times. Being poor is awful. And its effects last a long time event after you think you made it out. Our credit is shit. We’re fixing it but it’s a slow process. We can barely get qualified for any type of loan. Home ownership is out of the question for a few more years. And I’m glad the car is paid off. That’s one less monthly bill.
teddyh 5y ago
Whenever this topic comes up, I like to link to these excellent and eye-opening articles: • 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...
llamajams 5y ago
Eh. Poverty is a state of mind. I'm not reffering to the actual state of having no money and being stuck there. I'm reffering to the feeling of inferiority and shame people that grow up poor acquire. Often the latter does more damage than the former.
NoNameHaveI 5y ago
Growing up, Dad worked 3 jobs to pay the bills. On more than 1 occasion, I was sent to go pay a utility bill after the utility was shut off. My first experience driving was at 13 to haul our garbage up to the school dumpster on Sunday nights because we didn't pay our bill. The car was constantly breaking down. With no garage, I spent more that 1 weekend on my back in the dirt, even in January, helping Dad fix it. Vacations? Ha! Although I live modestly now, I have a decent paying job and suffer from none of those things. Car is 12 year old, mostly runs OK, and there is money reserved for emergencies like when a an oil line broke last month. All bills are paid on time, automatically, each month. I try to keep a minimum 2k reserve for emergencies. I am out of the debt spiral. Our modest condo will be paid off in 4 years. I have no great ambition to be wealthy, just secure. Lots of people I know, and people here on HN, have more to show for their lives. But I'm doing better than I did growing up, and to me, that is satisfying.

Being Poor (2005)

187 points by sturza 5y ago

jbrot 5y ago

(2005)

DiabloD3 5y ago
Being poor didn't stop being a punishment inflicted on you by the rest of society in 2005. Sometimes an article really is timeless.
- rzzzt 5y ago
  I think the date suffix is just an indicator for people who are wondering whether an earlier article has been updated. It can still be relevant.
- sarlalian 5y ago
  Part of the context around that article is it was written post Katrina, in response to many people asking why the people didn't just leave. "Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave."
dfee 5y ago
For many, too many, (everyday).

rzzzt 5y ago

Mentioned at the end of "Poor in Tech": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tomcooks 5y ago

Fortunately soon the babyboomer dream will be over and this is what is going to be daily life for more and more people.

riffraff 5y ago
My mother is a baby boomer and she was poor, she lived in the country so they didn't really go hungry, but they had stuff like keeping a single smoked hering to flavor things for two weeks. The most traditional dish in my hometown is literally called "cooked water". If anything, boomers had the rise from poverty, and it's gen-x who got it good. And this is only true in western countries anyway.
- tomcooks 5y ago
  Am I referring to your mom, baby boomers in general or the american-centric ideal that created the conditions which lead to the core of the problems illustrated in the article? Moreover if you want to generalize let me help you: the article was written in 2005, we can assume the author is from Gen X, so how come he didn't have it good?
- lsiebert 5y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5p...
- throaway46546 5y ago
  What is "cooked water"?
  - riffraff 5y ago
    "acquacotta". The recipe varies, but in my hometown it's basically a soup made with onions, potatoes, stale bread and raw olive oil, plus whatever was around to give it flavour (broccoli, wild water cress, dried cod, lard). It's not "bad" but you definitely can feel it being the cheapest thing that you could do to fill you up.
pseudalopex 5y ago
Fortunately?

inglor_cz 5y ago

Some of those hit uncomfortably close to home, when I was a teenager living with a single mom and no child support from my foreign father (Bulgarian justice system of the late 1980s and early 1990s could not be assed to do anything about him and even simple replies to letters from Czechoslovak courts took years to arrive). Especially the bad shoes. Oh my, the bad shoes, leaking and tearing themselves apart all the time. Walking around in portable puddles whenever it rained or the snow started melting. I hated that so much, but good shoes were too expensive.

nomorewords 5y ago
On a side note, being from Eastern Europe as well, I think that, at least mentally, it was different being poor here in the 80s/90s than it was in the western world. Basically you and all of your neighbors and everyone else around you would be poor (unless you were a party member). Everybody had the same starting point when democracy arrived and there was real incentive for factories to come up with a good balance between quality and cost.
- romanovcode 5y ago
  I have the same feeling. I was poor when I was a kid because of the fall of Soviet Union. But I did not feel bad or worse then everyone else becaue 95% of people were dirt poor back then. Therefore I never got any psychological difficulties with it since I never was discriminated against. When everyone is poor you don't think about it too much. For example, pretty much everyone had the lunch tickets at school so nobody was ashamed of it at all. Also note that there was no instagram/facebook/yt so you could not even compare yourself with people you don't know as kids can do now. In a way I am greatful for my experience. Gives a lot of perspective and sympathy for people who struggle with money.
  - ido 5y ago
    It reminds me of a story my grandfather told me about his time as a refugee during WW2 (my grandparents were teenagers when the war broke & fled without their families east into the Soviet Union as the Nazis advanced): they were moved to Uzbekistan and according to him they were poor, but they had just enough to eat and everybody else around them were just as poor. He said the locals treated them well & there wasn't really a reason to feel bad about being poor, it was just the situation everyone was at and didn't even really imagine it being any different.

LeCow 5y ago

I went from extreme poverty to extreme wealth by knowing exactly how much things cost.

fouc 5y ago
How's that?
princeb 5y ago
surprise, extremely poor people know exactly how much things cost. they know their bank balances down to the cent.

skrebbel 5y ago

I consider myself extremely lucky that I grew up middle class and now earn a pretty nice buck (for European standards). However, halfway there, there was a period where my wife and me had to turn around every penny. Strict budgeting, shopping at ALDI only, no takeout, etc. "I hope the kid doesn't get a growth spurt" definitely resonates. We were nowhere near as poor as some people, and it was only for a few years, and it was self-inflicted to some extent because I was starting a startup while my wife was getting reeducated. So I don't know what it's like to be really poor. Those stories on HN from people who, 20 years past lifting themselves out of poverty, still hold on to every old sock, that's not me. But at the same time, having been somewhat poor: damn it rocks to be rich! We became rich overnight a few years ago when my wife got a job, and every time I buy a sandwich without worrying about the cost, I get excited mentally. There's always this "Omg can we afford th- oh haha we're rich! Of course we can, woohoo!" process going on in my mind and it's super awesome. I feel so decadent, so lavish! I'm buying a sandwich! To me, that's the definition of "rich". Buying a sandwich that someone else made, anytime I want. If you're rich enough to be able to buy whatever at the supermarket, or get your favorite sandwich for lunch without worrying about the cost, cherish that. I don't really believe anything from here to private jets is going to make me much happier in practice, but I never want to be below that bar again.

dstick 5y ago
So true! Your background mirrors mine almost to the letter. My personal bar was never having to think about any purchase below €50. Mind you, do purchases like that all day and you’ll be poor pretty quickly ;-) But just knowing that you don’t have to think about it. So freeing. Thanks for sharing!
jwr 5y ago
I've never been really poor, but similarly to you, there were periods in life when I at least earned some respect and appreciation for money. Going to the grocery store and buying the absolute minimum necessary, while picking the cheapest products. There were two thresholds that I remember distinctly: the first one was crossing from "poor" to "ok", when I could go shop for groceries and buy most things (though still looking at the price tags, to avoid the expensive stuff). That was a big step up from buying the bare necessities. The second threshold, "rich", was when I realized I don't have to worry about the prices in my local grocery store. I can just buy whatever I want. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't "rich" by any means, but it is enough to provide immense comfort and ease of living. I think many people who have this comfort are unable to appreciate what they have.

tomcooks 5y ago

While I understand that there are food deserts in the US, I can't understand why someone poor would feed themselves with cheap ramen, mac and cheese and fast food. Isn't buying vegetables, cheap meat cuts, flour and other basic staples much cheaper and healthier? To put things in context: I'm European and been homeless, the core of my artistic research and career is precisely about food for the homeless.

skrebbel 5y ago
Don't underestimate the mental overhead having to cook a meal can cost. Especially if you're already stressed out (and if you're poor you're likely stressed out) and strapped for time. Nobody is a perfectly rational economical agent, like most comments in this subthread seem to suggest. Stuff sucks, work was hard today, you're tired, and you haven't even started thinking about dinner yet. Fuck. Let's just do hamburgers today. Can't afford them but let's worry about that tomorrow.
- tomcooks 5y ago
  It's a basic need for survival and it's beyond my comprehension how it can be considered a chore. I say this as a person that lived homeless and that comes from a line of people that had to make do with scraps. I guess it could also be cultural, who knows.
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    It's not cultural, people are just different. I'm not poor, which is thankful because it means I can live off food bars instead of having to prepare meals daily, which would annoy me a lot.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    Depends on a person. I don't know of a worse chore than doing shopping and I do it only once a week. Cooking every other day is meh at best too. (apart from an occasional "I want to make something really nice") Look at the old HN comments on Soylent articles with a lot of people like me. I'd be happy eating a balanced nutrients paste most days if I lived alone.

dstick 5y ago

I will never waste an opportunity to share my favorite quote from my favorite fantasy series, the Discworld: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.” This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

blfr 5y ago
It's not true though, not any more at least. A supermarket pair of shoes is much, much less than even resoling of quality shoes. It's definitely cheaper to just wear them for a season or two instead of buying shoes that might last you a decade or two or more but cost 8-20x more and require expensive (in terms of cheaper shoes) fixes.
- cauliflower2718 5y ago
  Back in the day, I used to spend ~$20 for a pair of rainboots, and they would invariably leak within a year. This stopped happening when I bought ~$50-$100 rain boots, which are certainly not grocery store boots. A $50-$100 pair of rain boots isn't exactly top quality, but is still much better than a $20 pair.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
    Oh you’re talking about the level of quality leveling off at a certain point when increasing price. The quality difference between a $10 product and a $100 product of the same type is enormous. But then when you go up to $200 the quality increases much less. There is a name for this that I can’t recall right this second, the point being that there is a sweet spot price/quality wise for most things.

kh_hk 5y ago

I was thinking about the generational effects on the cases on which someone has been raised on poverty and it has been successfully overcome and the positive values and life lessons it carries over, compared to other childhood experiences that carry over negatively (abuse). My father grew up on relative poverty (post war Spain), and the value of things is something it's always present with him and how he educated me unconsciously. Fixing broken things, scavenging parts, the value of food, time and work. Seeking comfort and security, instead of luxury. Or put it differently, the luxury is having a car that works and is nice (and second hand), not a luxury car per se. Luxury is having bread every day with your food. Luxury is being able to fix your own toilet or watering your plants. I am forever grateful for these, and kind of sorry I cannot fully comprehend what and how he did it. I earn well over the average wage, and still I buy my computers second hand.

oblio 5y ago
It's a small cost to pay for real freedom. With this kind of mindset generally the only major expense that's a hurdle is your home. If you can somehow buy that efficiently (hard these days), you're set for a prosperous and safe life, with almost no drawbacks.

p0d 5y ago

Someone bought me a really good pair of shoes 30 years ago based on the state of my own shoes at the time. A simple act of kindness I won't forget.

filleduchaos 5y ago

Poverty is such a relative thing. There are some things on this list that, while I can understand how they are hallmarks of poverty in the US, are completely alien to what's considered to be poverty where I am from (a car? Buying cereal?) Then again maybe we are all just horrifically poor here apart from a select few. Western indices certainly seem to think so.

Broken_Hippo 5y ago
It is different: But you can basically replace "car" with transportation (poor people have issues affording transportation in general: For most of the US, this means you must have a car to even go to work) and Cereal with "whatever is cheap and easy to make for breakfast, only not quite enough". In some areas, everyone is horrifically poor. In the US, however, it has been painfully obvious in every single place that I've lived that not everyone is horrifically poor and has a panic attack over half of a dollar spent on some food of better quality.
cgriswald 5y ago
Cars are an interesting case. If I could have lived where I lived, but without needing a car, I wouldn’t have been poor. A car isn’t a luxury in a place designed for cars, but a burden. You’re constantly told driving is a “privilege”, but you can’t go to work without it and maybe not the grocery either. You’re worried that it will break down because not only will you not get to work (and maybe get fired) and don’t know how you will repair or replace it, but because you know you can’t even pay the tow truck company to drag it off the road. Tires cost money so you drive on bald tires until you literally can’t, white-knuckling it on ice-covered roads. Gas prices swing widely so you’re always watching and planning can be tough. You have to choose between insurance you can’t really afford and breaking the law. Since you use cheap gas without additives you fail the smog test and have to take your car to a shop (which you worry may rip you off) where they will guess at the problem, but if it doesn’t work you have to repeat the process once more before, for a fee, you can be exempted. Cars were a massive source of anxiety for me when I was poor. Instead of worrying about shelter and food, I had to worry about a car, shelter, and food; and basically in that order.
Aeolun 5y ago

pkdpic_y9k 5y ago

Hey I live next to the freeway and Im a tech millionaire...

sangnoir 5y ago
If you're renting, maybe consider moving or at least investigating the downsides? Especially if you have kids - there are health issues that correlate to the distance of one's dwelling place from freeway. Those fumes aren't good for you.

jp0d 5y ago

wow.. I really needed to read this. Thank you.

pvsukale3 5y ago

Growing up I always thought poor people are poor because they are lazy. But I realised later that I was soo wrong. Life is an unpredictable mess. Sometimes even when you try your hardest due to some things that are not in your hands you can end up on the other side. I want to quote Morgan Housel here "Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself"

Aeolun 5y ago
Most of my success is due to great circumstances, but I’m still really happy I grew up in those.
- ahel 5y ago
  > but I'm still really happy I grew up in those. Of course you should be happy and grateful. Being born in any circustance is not something anybody can decide. It's even worse when people feel bad about having born in or having good circustamces.
pydry 5y ago
>Growing up I always thought poor people are poor because they are lazy. This is a message that the American media tries to get us to internalize through selective storytelling: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-true-story-behind-the-welfare-queen-stereotype https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-true-story-behind-the-...
humanrebar 5y ago
I'm very against judging people. That being said, we do a disservice to our youth if we overemphasize the role of luck in being in poverty or not. There are strong correlations between poverty and lifestyle choices people typically do have control over. - Starting your career before having children. In many cases, this implies finishing a certain amount of school and/or training. - Marrying a responsible person and staying married - Avoiding substance abuse - Planning your pregnancies [1] - Avoiding a criminal record [2] And then there are risk mitigation strategies to avoid catastrophe: - Establishing an emergency fund - Living within your means - Getting insurance and keeping up with payments - Avoiding high risk investments and career moves [3] I guess I feel that people who have figured out the basics are hesitant to preach what they practice. All of the above seems like a given to people who are comfortably middle class. But if you didn't have wise parents and nobody says anything out of an overemphasis on empathy, you could make any of those mistakes easily and then get treated like a fool. [1] Tragically, some people are raped and become pregnant against their will, which is why we shouldn't judge folks, but the mass majority of pregnancies do not happen for this reason. Considering the abortion rate for married women, it seems that accidental pregnancy is actually very common. [2] Again, don't judge. People are falsely convicted of crimes. People have criminal family members. People make dumb choices and learn their lessons. But being violent over beefs or going for joy rides in stolen cars is just setting yourself up to struggle financially. [3] If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

plank_time 5y ago

My family came from a war-torn country. My father grew up very poor. My mom grew up poor. Both escaped poverty by studying and getting scholarships for grad school to come to the US. I’ve never been poor, but we were lower middle class early on and middle middle class by the time I reached high school. My parents always scrimped and saved. The cars my family owned were all one step before the junkyard. I never got Christmas presents except for 3 years that I can remember. It was disappointing but not soul crushing. We never felt poor but we never ate out ever and never went on vacation ever. Getting Kentucky Fried Chicken was a luxury. When I graduated from college, I was unemployed for the first few months and needed to stay with friends. After I got my first job, I was the lowest paid person I knew. I also scrimped and saved like my parents, but I never felt poor. I would track all my spending to the penny, until I had saved enough such that I could forget about the change in my pocket. I’m now a low-single digit millionaire which isn’t that much in Silicon Valley but good enough for me. At one point a few years ago my wife and I were earning over $1M/year. My wife is now C-suite and I’m essentially retired. We have two multi-week trips a year and my kids have never sat in economy. I haven’t had to think about what the price of things were in 15 years now. I just buy whatever I want, which is frankly not much besides computer equipment for myself. Most money I spend is on the kids. I drive a 10 year old Toyota but my wife drives a Porsche. There’s the old saying that sticks with me. “My father rode a camel, I rode a Mercedes Benz, my son will ride a Lamborghini, my grandson will ride a camel.” My kids are hard workers at school and we try to keep them grounded but their privilege really shows through in ways that I never expected. They really don’t know the value of money or how much things cost. We don’t really spoil them with toys and such but if there’s something educational like a set of books or lego, I will get it for them without thinking. I need to figure out a way to get them to understand the value of money but it’s very hard. Granted they are still young but it’s an important topic that I need to know they understand because I don’t want my grandchildren to suffer because I spoiled my kids now.

Aeolun 5y ago
If you want them to understand the value of money really quickly, fly economy for a change :D
- 5y ago

nathias 5y ago

The problem of being poor in a good country (having free education and healthcare) is not only in not being able to afford necessities or luxuries from time to time, but about not having a base of capital on which to build on, not being able to do your own projects while being forced to pay rent to rich people, to fund their businesses with taxes, to help their economies through inflation and being forced to participate in their projects.

lookalike74 5y ago

I love how this touches on perceptions of intelligence vs wealth. Our family was somewhat poor, with 5 kids growing up on 1 public school teacher's salary, but we all made good grades. I remember this one kid saying "I thought your parents were doctors or lawyers." And what he meant was, you have less than me and you do more with it - but you still have less than me.

Tade0 5y ago
It flies in the face of the idea that if you're educated and smart, you'll be well off. Looking at how the lifes of my school classmates went I believe there's a positive correlation, but its influence is minor comparing to things like career choices and having connections or not.

sethammons 5y ago

I can write a lot on this and my personal experience, but I’ll just leave this one for now. I, while living alone in a house in partial construction (missing a wall) in the Southern California mountains would get a ride from a friend or a neighbor to high school (20 minute drive into town). If I had some (about a dozen a bag, one bag a month), a single russet potato tossed in the toaster oven would be breakfast (no seasoning, grab and go). I was on free lunch at school, but I’d pocket an extra hamburger to sell at a reduced price in the lunch yard. That extra dollar would get me a can of soup that I heated on a wood burning stove for dinner. For me, having to steal food to be able to buy different food that can store better is a being poor. I’ve got a thousand other stories growing up. But now I’m on track for an early and comfortable retirement; no complaints.

thrwxx5667890 5y ago

There's also an unfortunate path, when someone grows up okay not having to worry about anything and then the family goes bankrupt (without recovery) when his life is about to start after high school. Being poor from the start sucks, but it at least teaches you things how to navigate in life with what you have.

davedx 5y ago

Something to add to this: donate to your local food bank

dirtpoorcoder 5y ago

Being poor mean that nice guy (in mid 20s/30s) who stays in same rented basement for remainder of his life. Despite his average coding skills and gracious attitude on zoom meetings, it's concluded that he was broke and dirt poor, only after news of him taking his own life, was verified by his landlord. Depression is hell of a thing, eh.

theshadowknows 5y ago

My wife and I got married at 21. We went to college. Had a small apartment. I worked overnight at a gas station and she worked at a retailer in the mall. Our rent was $500 a month USD. And we almost never had the cash when rent was due so we always had late fees. The power got cut off consistently. We couldn’t afford cell phones. Our college was paid for entirely by student loans because we couldn’t afford it otherwise. It was embarrassing. Dehumanizing in a lot of ways. We bought old books that many times didn’t even have the material we needed for our courses and our grades suffered. We both did poorly. Both our families were poor and would offer help if we asked but we rarely did since they didn’t really have much either. After we graduated we both went to grad school. It was a little bit better because we both had graduate assistant jobs. So we each had two jobs and things were a little less lean. Until the car broke down. That set us back. After grad school my wife got a job as a university instructor. I got a job working in marketing. Things were better for a little while. Until my wife got sick. Turns out she has an autoimmune disease that is rare and difficult to manage. We didn’t know that for a while. Nightly trips to the emergency room. Doctor visits. Specialists. MRIs. CAT scans. Blood tests. More specialists. Oncologists. “You might have brain cancer.” That was a decade ago. It was so hard. Every single day we were just trying to make it to the next day in one piece. We moved to a new house that didn’t smell like urine because we could afford it. Until she just couldn’t work anymore. Our rent was $700 a month. We were trying to build savings. Our $2500 a month student loans and stacks of medical bills made it hard. We ate cheap food but we ate. Our phones only got cut off sometimes. I got a job offer in Europe. We were going to take it. Until her dad got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We stayed. He died. She had a short term mental break down. The engine in our car blew up. $4000. The flooding started. We went to sleep every night hearing rats in our walls. Our dog died. Our cat died. We couldn’t do anything about it. We wanted to give up. Every second of every day was a struggle. Until I got a new job. My base salary is $165,000 usd. I get 20% performance bonuses. I have amazing health insurance for both of us. I have a vibrant and rapidly growing retirement account. We moved from the south east to the north east. My wife has good doctors now. A whole fucking medical team. She’s doing good. More good days than bad days. And the bad days aren’t as bad. And the seizures have stopped. And she doesn’t wake up screaming. We toasted fucking marshmallows on our porch last night and we go on hikes and visit antique stores and see nice things we like and sometimes we even get greedy and buy something just because we can. We’re rich now. We buy food we like. We have savings. We have investments. We bought a new car and paid it off. The old car had to be towed away when we moved and the scrap yard guy gave us $200 for it. Every single time we see a couch on the side of the road. Every single time we see a help wanted ad. And every single time we spend a dime. We both get anxious. Maybe not. Maybe next time. Maybe I need to call them. Maybe what if but what do we do if how why when we shouldn’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. And it’s not something I’d wish on anyone. And we weren’t even that poor. We never were homeless. We came close some times. Being poor is awful. And its effects last a long time event after you think you made it out. Our credit is shit. We’re fixing it but it’s a slow process. We can barely get qualified for any type of loan. Home ownership is out of the question for a few more years. And I’m glad the car is paid off. That’s one less monthly bill.

teddyh 5y ago

Whenever this topic comes up, I like to link to these excellent and eye-opening articles: • 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...

llamajams 5y ago

Eh. Poverty is a state of mind. I'm not reffering to the actual state of having no money and being stuck there. I'm reffering to the feeling of inferiority and shame people that grow up poor acquire. Often the latter does more damage than the former.

NoNameHaveI 5y ago

Growing up, Dad worked 3 jobs to pay the bills. On more than 1 occasion, I was sent to go pay a utility bill after the utility was shut off. My first experience driving was at 13 to haul our garbage up to the school dumpster on Sunday nights because we didn't pay our bill. The car was constantly breaking down. With no garage, I spent more that 1 weekend on my back in the dirt, even in January, helping Dad fix it. Vacations? Ha! Although I live modestly now, I have a decent paying job and suffer from none of those things. Car is 12 year old, mostly runs OK, and there is money reserved for emergencies like when a an oil line broke last month. All bills are paid on time, automatically, each month. I try to keep a minimum 2k reserve for emergencies. I am out of the debt spiral. Our modest condo will be paid off in 4 years. I have no great ambition to be wealthy, just secure. Lots of people I know, and people here on HN, have more to show for their lives. But I'm doing better than I did growing up, and to me, that is satisfying.