5 ms·

This person apparently had a $65/mo smartphone No, they just had a $65 bill. That doesn't imply a smartphone, that could easily be racked up in minutes or tex

This person apparently had a $65/mo smartphone No, they just had a $65 bill. That doesn't imply a smartphone, that could easily be racked up in minutes or text messages. Pay-as-you-go phones are only cheap if you don't use them. But it hit me up for a $325 car payment. That doesn't imply you got a new car. That means you got a 24 month loan on a $5000 car with 20% interest. Like I said, shady as hell, but what are you gonna do. You need a car. it needed to be gone a long time ago. I think a lot of people would starve before they gave up their dog. It's a living being, it's not a netflix subscription. who doesn't have the intestinal fortitude I don't think you understand how expensive it is to be poor. It's much cheaper to be well off, because you have the option of making the right decisions, instead of being constantly put in no-win situations like these.

lotharbot 15y ago
> "I don't think you understand how expensive it is to be poor." So when Dove says "I've done it before", you're calling her a liar. Here, have a downvote. A high-interest loan on a $5000 car is not your only option; try buying a cheaper car. Spending $65 racking up minutes and text messages is not your only option; if you need to save money, hang up the phone. These are not "no-win" situations. They're just situations that are not going to go well if you make bad decisions.
- michaelchisari 15y ago
  So when Dove says "I've done it before", you're calling her a liar. I think sometimes people think they've done it before, but by their statements, make it clear that they don't have the quite the perspective they're claiming. I regularly see people conflate early life independence (college, ramen, etc) with familial or generational poverty, which are not the same thing. try buying a cheaper car. This puzzles me. $5,000 is about the cheapest you're gonna get without having trouble within the first year. But assume you go cheaper, say, $2500. You still have to finance, because you don't have that kind of pocket change. Now, the price is so low, nobody wants to give you a 2+ year loan on something that's hardly gonna make it out of the parking lot. So you get one year financing through the shady dealership themselves, again at 20% or something ridiculous. That puts you at almost $250 a month for a car that's probably pushing 30 years old, with no guarantees. Did you really just save money? Spending $65 racking up minutes and text messages is not your only option; A one hour phone interview or discussion with your kids teacher can run $20 with a Tracfone. Imagine your brother was arrested, and you couldn't figure out where he was being held. This isn't a matter of chatting with your friends. You can downvote me, I can take it, but it's amazing to me that people think that these scenarios are out of the ordinary.
  - lotharbot 15y ago
    > "people think they've done it before, but ... conflate early life independence" That's not what's going on here. We've been married almost 10 years, have a kid, and presently live below the poverty line; we've also had very close friends in extremely dire financial situations. Please stop making assumptions about our experiences. > "$5,000 is about the cheapest you're gonna get without having trouble within the first year" How much trouble is $325/month worth? If you get an $800 car from the classified ads and it works for 3 months, you're already ahead; if it works for a year and only requires $500 in work you're way ahead. If you're as poor as the above scenario presumes, you shouldn't be spending $325/month on a car. Either get one you can pay for up front (yeah, it's going to be a POS; welcome to poverty), find a way to finance a solid car from a reputable source (a brand new economy car, at a crappy rate with nothing down because you have terrible credit, will run you less than $300/month; the 3-year-old model is less), or find a way to get a ride/take the bus/ride a bike and save some money. You can push and tweak and justify all you want, trying to explain why the spending in this scenario is realistic -- but when the spending is higher than what I spent when I was poor and also higher than when I was financially very well off, I just don't buy it. It goes back to the initial point -- if you're really that poor, what are you doing spending $500/month between your car, phone, and pet? If you're really poor enough that making it through the month with enough food is a struggle, those are unacceptable expenses (which most of the truly poor people I know would have already cut.) I'm not saying it's easy to be poor. I'm just saying, it's a lot harder to be poor when you make a bunch of crappy decisions.
    - michaelchisari 15y ago
      An $800 car, with taxes, titles, fees, registration and plate transfers, will come to upwards of $1100. In which case, no, you're not ahead. That's of course, presuming you have the $1100 in the first place. Your other option, if you don't, is to finance with no money down. find a way to finance a solid car from a reputable source Didn't this whole thread start because people were flabbergasted that someone would dare finance a new vehicle while they were poor? And here you're suggesting that as a reasonable option. Point is, $325 car payment is not a crappy decision when you have no other reasonable choice. find a way to get a ride/take the bus/ride a bike You live in Aurora, Illinois. New job is in Carol Stream. 30 min drive, two and a half hour bikeride. It's January. There's no busses. I think your expectations for the options available are much more unrealistic than the simulator. A car payment, a family pet, and a cell phone are not luxuries. They are not crappy decisions. Let's take the one you seem to be the most callous about, which is having a dog. I'm assuming your not a dog person, so you don't have the same kind of attachment to a dog that others might. Food for a mid-size dog is about $40 a month. Assume the dog's already grown, you can skate by on that, assuming there's no major vet bills. Now the idea that people will hit hard times, and immediately drown their dog in a river, or bring them to the pound, is ridiculous. The site didn't make it a matter of people getting a new puppy for christmas when they already can't feed themselves, and for people to jump on the idea of having a pet that you're responsible for, and not immediately throwing them to the curb at the first sign of trouble, is unrealistic. If you're having hard times, $40 is a small price to pay for companionship and unconditional love. All told, $430 ($325+$65+$40) a month is $5,160 a year, for three things that you can make a real strong case for. I simply cannot see spending that money as some kind of frivolous luxury of the irresponsible poor. Look, we could all just live in squats, eat dumpstered food, not have cell phones, and only get clothes from a free box. Maybe then, when we run out of money, people on the internet will finally be sympathetic.
Dove 15y ago
No, they just had a $65 bill. That doesn't imply a smartphone, that could easily be racked up in minutes or text messages. Pay-as-you-go phones are only cheap if you don't use them. I suppose that's true. But I'm also speaking from practical experience. That TrakFone I mentioned is the phone I actually use as my main phone (no landline), and I pay less than $10/mo for minutes. You just have to be careful; if you need to have an hour long conversation with your mom, try Skype. I have no doubt you could contrive a situation in which someone needed to talk on the phone enough that they absolutely could not pay less than $65 for it, but I would consider such a case extraordinary. My practical experience is that phone service can be had for much less, and that such a high phone bill is indicative of unnecessary luxury. That doesn't imply you got a new car. That means you got a 24 month loan on a $5000 car with 20% interest. I think your interest numbers are way off; the car loan being in part secured by the car itself, I have never seen a loan for it at such a percentage. One can always do better at their bank. But leaving that aside, I would consider even a $5000 car an unreasonable expense in such a scenario. I again speak from personal experience here. Our first car was $1500, obtained from a relative. We paid cash, and it gave us little trouble for the several years we owned it. A poor friend bought a car from me for $300, on a gentleman's agreement to pay $50 a month. It had a number of cosmetic problems, but ran fine. My sister's first car was free, a gift from a friend. My sister's second car was $2400, and I contributed $2000 of that. My brother is a budding freelancer, and has my second (presently unused) car on long-term loan for free. I could go on. My point is that every car I have encountered in a similar financial situation has been bought for a song from a friend, financed largely by family, or borrowed. Or simply gone without -- a rather high percentage event, and hardly hell. Generally nowhere near $5,000 and certainly nowhere near a triple-digit monthly payment. I acknowledge again that you could contrive a scenario in which such a car was necessary, but I do not think this is the normal case. A large fraction of people can get by on public transportation, cycling, or walking. Of those who cannot, a large fraction can beg or borrow a junk car from a friend or relative, or pay gas in a carpool. Of those who cannot, a large fraction can buy a reliable used car with reasonable financing from the classfieds. Once you discard options you cannot afford, you'd be surprised the number of creative ways to attack a given problem. I don't pretend that reduces the remaining folks to no one, but I do assert that it is a rare situation. I very strongly disagree with presenting such a scenario as the norm, when it isn't. That really accounts for my incredulity in the game; taking on that car payment on that income is something I would consider only after I had exhausted alternatives as extreme as icebiking, moving, finding a different job, moving in with parents, and learning to repair a free non-working car. And maybe spent weeks trying to come up with any other solution, however creative. I don't think you understand how expensive it is to be poor. It's much cheaper to be well off, because you have the option of making the right decisions, instead of being constantly put in no-win situations like these. I will respectfully disagree with you. Though income does afford many efficiencies, being poor is not necessarily expensive. I have found it to require humility, elbow grease, integrity, wisdom, and self-control. I particularly disagree with your sentiment that as a poor person, you do not have the option of making right decisions. I think that's exactly backwards. As a poor person, you do not have the margin to make wrong decisions! I don't know what your experience is, but I have helped many friends in dire financial straits--as often with practical advice and physical labor as with money. I have even supported a family myself on low (or no) wages. And I used to be quite the personal finance blogosphere junkie, too, so I've heard a lot of stories. I think I have sufficient experience with poverty in the bare sense of "low income" to hold the justified opinion that, in general, it isn't permanent and isn't hopeless. No-win scenarios are a part of life, that I don't deny. And they can happen to anyone, rich or poor. And folks in trouble deserve our compassion, that I'm on board with. But I think presenting poverty, at least in the US currently, as an inescapable parade of bad options, is both disingenuous and harmful. Some small number of people may be in hopeless scenarios, but for most, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Saying there isn't only deprives them of the motivation necessary to get there.

lotharbot 15y ago

> "I don't think you understand how expensive it is to be poor." So when Dove says "I've done it before", you're calling her a liar. Here, have a downvote. A high-interest loan on a $5000 car is not your only option; try buying a cheaper car. Spending $65 racking up minutes and text messages is not your only option; if you need to save money, hang up the phone. These are not "no-win" situations. They're just situations that are not going to go well if you make bad decisions.

michaelchisari 15y ago
So when Dove says "I've done it before", you're calling her a liar. I think sometimes people think they've done it before, but by their statements, make it clear that they don't have the quite the perspective they're claiming. I regularly see people conflate early life independence (college, ramen, etc) with familial or generational poverty, which are not the same thing. try buying a cheaper car. This puzzles me. $5,000 is about the cheapest you're gonna get without having trouble within the first year. But assume you go cheaper, say, $2500. You still have to finance, because you don't have that kind of pocket change. Now, the price is so low, nobody wants to give you a 2+ year loan on something that's hardly gonna make it out of the parking lot. So you get one year financing through the shady dealership themselves, again at 20% or something ridiculous. That puts you at almost $250 a month for a car that's probably pushing 30 years old, with no guarantees. Did you really just save money? Spending $65 racking up minutes and text messages is not your only option; A one hour phone interview or discussion with your kids teacher can run $20 with a Tracfone. Imagine your brother was arrested, and you couldn't figure out where he was being held. This isn't a matter of chatting with your friends. You can downvote me, I can take it, but it's amazing to me that people think that these scenarios are out of the ordinary.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  > "people think they've done it before, but ... conflate early life independence" That's not what's going on here. We've been married almost 10 years, have a kid, and presently live below the poverty line; we've also had very close friends in extremely dire financial situations. Please stop making assumptions about our experiences. > "$5,000 is about the cheapest you're gonna get without having trouble within the first year" How much trouble is $325/month worth? If you get an $800 car from the classified ads and it works for 3 months, you're already ahead; if it works for a year and only requires $500 in work you're way ahead. If you're as poor as the above scenario presumes, you shouldn't be spending $325/month on a car. Either get one you can pay for up front (yeah, it's going to be a POS; welcome to poverty), find a way to finance a solid car from a reputable source (a brand new economy car, at a crappy rate with nothing down because you have terrible credit, will run you less than $300/month; the 3-year-old model is less), or find a way to get a ride/take the bus/ride a bike and save some money. You can push and tweak and justify all you want, trying to explain why the spending in this scenario is realistic -- but when the spending is higher than what I spent when I was poor and also higher than when I was financially very well off, I just don't buy it. It goes back to the initial point -- if you're really that poor, what are you doing spending $500/month between your car, phone, and pet? If you're really poor enough that making it through the month with enough food is a struggle, those are unacceptable expenses (which most of the truly poor people I know would have already cut.) I'm not saying it's easy to be poor. I'm just saying, it's a lot harder to be poor when you make a bunch of crappy decisions.
  - michaelchisari 15y ago
    An $800 car, with taxes, titles, fees, registration and plate transfers, will come to upwards of $1100. In which case, no, you're not ahead. That's of course, presuming you have the $1100 in the first place. Your other option, if you don't, is to finance with no money down. find a way to finance a solid car from a reputable source Didn't this whole thread start because people were flabbergasted that someone would dare finance a new vehicle while they were poor? And here you're suggesting that as a reasonable option. Point is, $325 car payment is not a crappy decision when you have no other reasonable choice. find a way to get a ride/take the bus/ride a bike You live in Aurora, Illinois. New job is in Carol Stream. 30 min drive, two and a half hour bikeride. It's January. There's no busses. I think your expectations for the options available are much more unrealistic than the simulator. A car payment, a family pet, and a cell phone are not luxuries. They are not crappy decisions. Let's take the one you seem to be the most callous about, which is having a dog. I'm assuming your not a dog person, so you don't have the same kind of attachment to a dog that others might. Food for a mid-size dog is about $40 a month. Assume the dog's already grown, you can skate by on that, assuming there's no major vet bills. Now the idea that people will hit hard times, and immediately drown their dog in a river, or bring them to the pound, is ridiculous. The site didn't make it a matter of people getting a new puppy for christmas when they already can't feed themselves, and for people to jump on the idea of having a pet that you're responsible for, and not immediately throwing them to the curb at the first sign of trouble, is unrealistic. If you're having hard times, $40 is a small price to pay for companionship and unconditional love. All told, $430 ($325+$65+$40) a month is $5,160 a year, for three things that you can make a real strong case for. I simply cannot see spending that money as some kind of frivolous luxury of the irresponsible poor. Look, we could all just live in squats, eat dumpstered food, not have cell phones, and only get clothes from a free box. Maybe then, when we run out of money, people on the internet will finally be sympathetic.

Dove 15y ago

No, they just had a $65 bill. That doesn't imply a smartphone, that could easily be racked up in minutes or text messages. Pay-as-you-go phones are only cheap if you don't use them. I suppose that's true. But I'm also speaking from practical experience. That TrakFone I mentioned is the phone I actually use as my main phone (no landline), and I pay less than $10/mo for minutes. You just have to be careful; if you need to have an hour long conversation with your mom, try Skype. I have no doubt you could contrive a situation in which someone needed to talk on the phone enough that they absolutely could not pay less than $65 for it, but I would consider such a case extraordinary. My practical experience is that phone service can be had for much less, and that such a high phone bill is indicative of unnecessary luxury. That doesn't imply you got a new car. That means you got a 24 month loan on a $5000 car with 20% interest. I think your interest numbers are way off; the car loan being in part secured by the car itself, I have never seen a loan for it at such a percentage. One can always do better at their bank. But leaving that aside, I would consider even a $5000 car an unreasonable expense in such a scenario. I again speak from personal experience here. Our first car was $1500, obtained from a relative. We paid cash, and it gave us little trouble for the several years we owned it. A poor friend bought a car from me for $300, on a gentleman's agreement to pay $50 a month. It had a number of cosmetic problems, but ran fine. My sister's first car was free, a gift from a friend. My sister's second car was $2400, and I contributed $2000 of that. My brother is a budding freelancer, and has my second (presently unused) car on long-term loan for free. I could go on. My point is that every car I have encountered in a similar financial situation has been bought for a song from a friend, financed largely by family, or borrowed. Or simply gone without -- a rather high percentage event, and hardly hell. Generally nowhere near $5,000 and certainly nowhere near a triple-digit monthly payment. I acknowledge again that you could contrive a scenario in which such a car was necessary, but I do not think this is the normal case. A large fraction of people can get by on public transportation, cycling, or walking. Of those who cannot, a large fraction can beg or borrow a junk car from a friend or relative, or pay gas in a carpool. Of those who cannot, a large fraction can buy a reliable used car with reasonable financing from the classfieds. Once you discard options you cannot afford, you'd be surprised the number of creative ways to attack a given problem. I don't pretend that reduces the remaining folks to no one, but I do assert that it is a rare situation. I very strongly disagree with presenting such a scenario as the norm, when it isn't. That really accounts for my incredulity in the game; taking on that car payment on that income is something I would consider only after I had exhausted alternatives as extreme as icebiking, moving, finding a different job, moving in with parents, and learning to repair a free non-working car. And maybe spent weeks trying to come up with any other solution, however creative. I don't think you understand how expensive it is to be poor. It's much cheaper to be well off, because you have the option of making the right decisions, instead of being constantly put in no-win situations like these. I will respectfully disagree with you. Though income does afford many efficiencies, being poor is not necessarily expensive. I have found it to require humility, elbow grease, integrity, wisdom, and self-control. I particularly disagree with your sentiment that as a poor person, you do not have the option of making right decisions. I think that's exactly backwards. As a poor person, you do not have the margin to make wrong decisions! I don't know what your experience is, but I have helped many friends in dire financial straits--as often with practical advice and physical labor as with money. I have even supported a family myself on low (or no) wages. And I used to be quite the personal finance blogosphere junkie, too, so I've heard a lot of stories. I think I have sufficient experience with poverty in the bare sense of "low income" to hold the justified opinion that, in general, it isn't permanent and isn't hopeless. No-win scenarios are a part of life, that I don't deny. And they can happen to anyone, rich or poor. And folks in trouble deserve our compassion, that I'm on board with. But I think presenting poverty, at least in the US currently, as an inescapable parade of bad options, is both disingenuous and harmful. Some small number of people may be in hopeless scenarios, but for most, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Saying there isn't only deprives them of the motivation necessary to get there.