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There are a couple things to understand about being poor. It's not about lack of money (though obviously having lots of money means you're not poor). It's abou
by bachmeier 5y ago
There are a couple things to understand about being poor.
It's not about lack of money (though obviously having lots of money means you're not poor). It's about insecurity. I grew up in farm country in the 1980s. Nobody had money, but I didn't feel poor. When I moved to other parts of the country, that's when I encountered poor people. They had to worry about crime, schools for their kids, and being homeless.
When you skip meals because you have to put two gallons of gas in the car so you can get to work the rest of the week, that's when you're poor. Or when you're under constant stress because you're worried about what's going to go wrong next, and when you spend all your time on stuff like where you'll spend your last $12 because that's all you've got. It's hard to understand what it's like to be poor because you don't even realize that's part of the deal.
The other thing is that there's a saying along the lines of getting wealthy being mostly the same for everyone, but every poor person is poor for different reasons. One example is a guy I knew in the 1990s that worked hard at a low-wage job. He got hit by a car while walking across the street. The driver got away and left him laying there. He couldn't work for months. The non-poor person's solution is to move in with their parents or to have their parents send them money. Maybe put things on the credit card. Maybe take money out of savings. He didn't have those options. How do you financially recover from something like this if once you go back to work, you're making the same low wage?
- zepto 5y ago> The other thing is that there's a saying along the lines of getting wealthy being mostly the same for everyone What does this mean?
- bachmeier 5y agoMy understanding is that it's a reference to being easy to give advice on building wealth since it's all the same story about saving and getting a return on your savings. This is in contrast to being poor, which can involve lots of things, like bad decisions, bad luck, bad birth...
- bradleyjg 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
- bachmeier 5y agoYep, I completely forgot about that. The one I cited is just a variant.
- flavius29663 5y agoGrowing up poor affects your brain for life and you will be less resilient to stress, you'll make worse financial decisions. This has been studied and it's proven. I guess it's an effect of living under constant stress, worrying about basic needs while your brain is very receptive and malleable.
- spzb 5y agoPoverty is relative but those who are not poor tend to view it as absolute. So anyone who has any apparent trappings of being well-off, such as a car, mobile phone or a big TV, obviously isn't poor and is a scammer or criminal. Never mind that, in this day and age, a car and a cellphone are pretty much essential for getting work and a TV (big, small or in between) is the cheapest form of entertainment for filling your non-work time.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoFurthermore, not every poor person was born poor. They may have earned the trappings of wealth in the before times.
- prepend 5y agoSeems like the solution to this problem is to figure out ways to have stronger networks of friends and family. It’s like trying to build a robot to love me when the simplest thing is just to form relationships. Stronger community bonds seem like the only long term solution to the problem of being taken care of when a hit and run driver knocks me out for a bit. Of course short term disability insurance is effective for this specific instance, but loving parents, sibs, kids, cousins, etc is probably more robust.