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Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt poor. It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you to

Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt poor. It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay more money for less product at the dollar store than elsewhere. Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores and go "hey, wait a minute!" If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and stressful, and you're constantly weighing spending money now versus keeping what little remains for whatever awful thing is going to leave you destitute. There's a fair amount of conflicting and complex psychology going on in that shopping decision beyond not just knowing that they should comparison shop.

jdgoesmarching 5y ago
Your first sentence sums up the majority of this site on any socioeconomic issue. At this point the term “financial literacy” is exclusively used by armchair poverty quarterbacks.
- kgwxd 5y ago
  > armchair poverty quarterbacks HA! I'm picturing the kid that owned the football and would threaten to take it home if he didn't get to be quarterback :)
- imtringued 5y ago
  I'm very bad with money. I never look at my account balance when I spend money. Heck, often months pass without me looking at my account at all. When I end up seeing the balance it is always much higher than I expected. What am I missing? Oh right, I earn more than the average person in my country and I'm so busy I don't even have time to spend the money.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Earning more money than average and spending less money than average is typically considered being “good” with money. Not the best if you are not investing it to keep up with inflation, but most people do not get past the “earning more money” requirement of being good with money.
RobertRoberts 5y ago
I have been dirt poor most of my life. And I can tell you I was careful about where I shopped. And many other poor people I knew _blew_ tons of money on McDonald's because "they couldn't afford to cook" It's not so cut and dry.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt poor. I’ve been dirt poor; I’ve never been in a situation where “dollar store as regular grocery source” made sense (though I’ve shopped in dollar stores, and occasionally when I did found deals on grocery items that were worthwhile), and I am very much aware of why that was never the case for me and why it is and was sometimes for other people. Also, not all people who shop at dollar stores are dirt poor. > It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay more money for less product at the dollar store than elsewhere. Actually, it would probably suprise some of them. Believe it or not, poorly informed poor people do exist. The idea that they don't is as misguided as the idea that all poor people are poorly informed. > Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores Not really, when reason #3 (“Lack of actual grocery stores conveniently located”) applies. Comparison shopping takes time and effort that is something of a luxury in the best of cases, but it also takes having alternatives in the first place. > If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and stressful, and you're constantly weighing spending money now versus keeping what little remains for whatever awful thing is going to leave you destitute. That's true, but it doesn't contradict anything I said. It's like you have a canned rant about poor people that you arr trotting out independent of its actual relevance to the discussion. > There's a fair amount of conflicting and complex psychology going on in that shopping decision beyond not just knowing that they should comparison shop. Which would perhaps be an insightful counterargument if I had said something even approximately like “poor people who shop at dollar stores do it because they don't realize they should comparison shop”. Of the three reasons I gave for people shopping at dollar stores, only one relates to a failure to understand the price realities, and I never suggested that one was particularly common among the poor.
wahern 5y ago
Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon, a consequence of the destruction of local retail by various chains--first chain groceries, then Wal-Mart, etc. Dollar stores have slowly filled in the gaps left by the closure of local retailers and low-end chains like A&P. At first chains drove down prices, such as precipitous price declines brought by chain groceries, and then those Wal-Mart brought to everything else. But consolidation in the chain industry, including Wal-Mart displacing lower end chains and then slowly moving up market, left gaps, especially at the very low end. Dollar stores slowly filled in those gaps, but as they did so they ceased being literal dollar stores. And like any for-profit chain, they've begun using their market dominance to increase prices. > Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores and go "hey, wait a minute!" Not really. Dollar stores have become so ubiquitous precisely because of their market dominance in areas without options--retail deserts, if you will. If you've really been dirt poor--and dirt poor outside the major cities and suburbs--you would know that driving 20-30 miles to the Wal-Mart two towns over, presuming they even have lower prices, can be cost prohibitive (especially when considering wear-and-tear and the risk of breaking down) when you're living day-to-day, even though in the long-term you end up paying more at the dollar store. Drive across the vast areas of rural and poor America and you'll see dollar stores in the most random and remotest of places; places that 10, 20, or 30 years ago had more options--you may even see their long shuttered remains somewhere nearby. This is the classic dilemma the impoverished face, and have always faced--it takes money to make (or save) money. Yes, increases in prices at dollar stores will negatively impact alot of people. But when decrying the state of the nation you have to understand why that is and what it means. For example, before someone blames inflation, maybe they should look at profit margins. AFAICT, they've rose relatively sharply since COVID-19: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/... Indeed, the "narrowing" of Dollar Tree's earnings forecast mentioned in the article, from $5.40-$5.60 to $5.48-$5.58, is maybe better described as an upward adjustment. I suspect the price increase will help margins even further.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon Kind of, but only because of the brief interregnum of the ~1970s-1990s height of suburban shopping malls. Dollar stores are a revival of the general variety discount stores — “five-and-dime” or “dime stores” — that largely either fell to suburbanization and shopping malls or morphed out of the model into mega-retailers (Walton’s Five-and-Dime, for instance, is now known as WalMart) or did the latter but still ended up doing the fomer (e..g, Kmart); the new dollar stores were rising just as many of the earlier giants of the same model were taking their last breaths in the late 1990s and 2000s; at least one of the early dollar store chains (Dollar Zone) was a rebranding of a classic general variety discount store chain that had started as a literal dime store chain (McCrory’s). The rise of dollar stores tracks pretty well with the decline of the malls that had marginalized the original variety discount stores. They weren’t so much a new phenomenon as something that went through about a generation of marginalization.
eric_cc 5y ago
> y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? Because apparently all poor people all the same in your mind.

jdgoesmarching 5y ago

Your first sentence sums up the majority of this site on any socioeconomic issue. At this point the term “financial literacy” is exclusively used by armchair poverty quarterbacks.

kgwxd 5y ago
> armchair poverty quarterbacks HA! I'm picturing the kid that owned the football and would threaten to take it home if he didn't get to be quarterback :)
imtringued 5y ago
I'm very bad with money. I never look at my account balance when I spend money. Heck, often months pass without me looking at my account at all. When I end up seeing the balance it is always much higher than I expected. What am I missing? Oh right, I earn more than the average person in my country and I'm so busy I don't even have time to spend the money.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Earning more money than average and spending less money than average is typically considered being “good” with money. Not the best if you are not investing it to keep up with inflation, but most people do not get past the “earning more money” requirement of being good with money.

RobertRoberts 5y ago

I have been dirt poor most of my life. And I can tell you I was careful about where I shopped. And many other poor people I knew _blew_ tons of money on McDonald's because "they couldn't afford to cook" It's not so cut and dry.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt poor. I’ve been dirt poor; I’ve never been in a situation where “dollar store as regular grocery source” made sense (though I’ve shopped in dollar stores, and occasionally when I did found deals on grocery items that were worthwhile), and I am very much aware of why that was never the case for me and why it is and was sometimes for other people. Also, not all people who shop at dollar stores are dirt poor. > It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay more money for less product at the dollar store than elsewhere. Actually, it would probably suprise some of them. Believe it or not, poorly informed poor people do exist. The idea that they don't is as misguided as the idea that all poor people are poorly informed. > Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores Not really, when reason #3 (“Lack of actual grocery stores conveniently located”) applies. Comparison shopping takes time and effort that is something of a luxury in the best of cases, but it also takes having alternatives in the first place. > If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and stressful, and you're constantly weighing spending money now versus keeping what little remains for whatever awful thing is going to leave you destitute. That's true, but it doesn't contradict anything I said. It's like you have a canned rant about poor people that you arr trotting out independent of its actual relevance to the discussion. > There's a fair amount of conflicting and complex psychology going on in that shopping decision beyond not just knowing that they should comparison shop. Which would perhaps be an insightful counterargument if I had said something even approximately like “poor people who shop at dollar stores do it because they don't realize they should comparison shop”. Of the three reasons I gave for people shopping at dollar stores, only one relates to a failure to understand the price realities, and I never suggested that one was particularly common among the poor.

wahern 5y ago

Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon, a consequence of the destruction of local retail by various chains--first chain groceries, then Wal-Mart, etc. Dollar stores have slowly filled in the gaps left by the closure of local retailers and low-end chains like A&P. At first chains drove down prices, such as precipitous price declines brought by chain groceries, and then those Wal-Mart brought to everything else. But consolidation in the chain industry, including Wal-Mart displacing lower end chains and then slowly moving up market, left gaps, especially at the very low end. Dollar stores slowly filled in those gaps, but as they did so they ceased being literal dollar stores. And like any for-profit chain, they've begun using their market dominance to increase prices. > Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores and go "hey, wait a minute!" Not really. Dollar stores have become so ubiquitous precisely because of their market dominance in areas without options--retail deserts, if you will. If you've really been dirt poor--and dirt poor outside the major cities and suburbs--you would know that driving 20-30 miles to the Wal-Mart two towns over, presuming they even have lower prices, can be cost prohibitive (especially when considering wear-and-tear and the risk of breaking down) when you're living day-to-day, even though in the long-term you end up paying more at the dollar store. Drive across the vast areas of rural and poor America and you'll see dollar stores in the most random and remotest of places; places that 10, 20, or 30 years ago had more options--you may even see their long shuttered remains somewhere nearby. This is the classic dilemma the impoverished face, and have always faced--it takes money to make (or save) money. Yes, increases in prices at dollar stores will negatively impact alot of people. But when decrying the state of the nation you have to understand why that is and what it means. For example, before someone blames inflation, maybe they should look at profit margins. AFAICT, they've rose relatively sharply since COVID-19: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/... Indeed, the "narrowing" of Dollar Tree's earnings forecast mentioned in the article, from $5.40-$5.60 to $5.48-$5.58, is maybe better described as an upward adjustment. I suspect the price increase will help margins even further.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon Kind of, but only because of the brief interregnum of the ~1970s-1990s height of suburban shopping malls. Dollar stores are a revival of the general variety discount stores — “five-and-dime” or “dime stores” — that largely either fell to suburbanization and shopping malls or morphed out of the model into mega-retailers (Walton’s Five-and-Dime, for instance, is now known as WalMart) or did the latter but still ended up doing the fomer (e..g, Kmart); the new dollar stores were rising just as many of the earlier giants of the same model were taking their last breaths in the late 1990s and 2000s; at least one of the early dollar store chains (Dollar Zone) was a rebranding of a classic general variety discount store chain that had started as a literal dime store chain (McCrory’s). The rise of dollar stores tracks pretty well with the decline of the malls that had marginalized the original variety discount stores. They weren’t so much a new phenomenon as something that went through about a generation of marginalization.

eric_cc 5y ago

> y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? Because apparently all poor people all the same in your mind.