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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 cle

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.
  - lotharbot 15y ago
    The issue is more like, the game consistently presented options on the expensive side, with no ability to make any sort of reasonable spending cuts or prioritizations. It's not the car, in isolation. It's not the dog, in isolation. It's not the phone, in isolation. It's not the $60 internet, in isolation. It's the combination -- the supposedly hella-poor person with a higher car payment than I've ever had (despite spending more to be close to work), a higher phone bill than I've ever had, a higher internet bill than I've ever had, and a pet who's costing an extra hundred bucks in rent. And the game doesn't allow the player to cut any of these things. I have no problem with a reasonable car payment. A $6000 car with a 3 year lease and a poor 10% rate is $200/month, which isn't so bad. Even a brand new $12000 economy car on a 60 month lease doesn't cost $325/month unless you jack the rate all the way up to 18%. (Note that the game said "car payment"; presumably gas and insurance are separate.) If you're in that situation and you've got a $325/month car payment, that's a prime candidate for a cut. The same is true for $65/month phone bill, $60/month internet, and $100/month pet rent. It's not that you can't have a car, pet, phone, or broadband if you're poor. It's that taken together they comprise a set of luxuries you can't really afford in that situation. Maybe you can afford one or two -- maybe the dog is really important and you can't bear to give it up, but you can find a way to get by with slower internet. These are all candidates for being cut, yet the game treats them all as stuff you're just stuck with. That's why I have a problem with this particular "simulation". I myself am borderline poor. I've got a lot of family and friends who are poor. I've helped some move back in with parents. I've some move into, out of, and between shelters and various forms of transitional housing. Some of us have had really tight budgets before and have had to make some really tough decisions. I know what it's like. And this "simulation" devotes over 40% of my monthly budget to things that I'd consider prime candidates for cutting back on, and doesn't provide the option to cut back. That's not realism. That's propaganda.

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.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  The issue is more like, the game consistently presented options on the expensive side, with no ability to make any sort of reasonable spending cuts or prioritizations. It's not the car, in isolation. It's not the dog, in isolation. It's not the phone, in isolation. It's not the $60 internet, in isolation. It's the combination -- the supposedly hella-poor person with a higher car payment than I've ever had (despite spending more to be close to work), a higher phone bill than I've ever had, a higher internet bill than I've ever had, and a pet who's costing an extra hundred bucks in rent. And the game doesn't allow the player to cut any of these things. I have no problem with a reasonable car payment. A $6000 car with a 3 year lease and a poor 10% rate is $200/month, which isn't so bad. Even a brand new $12000 economy car on a 60 month lease doesn't cost $325/month unless you jack the rate all the way up to 18%. (Note that the game said "car payment"; presumably gas and insurance are separate.) If you're in that situation and you've got a $325/month car payment, that's a prime candidate for a cut. The same is true for $65/month phone bill, $60/month internet, and $100/month pet rent. It's not that you can't have a car, pet, phone, or broadband if you're poor. It's that taken together they comprise a set of luxuries you can't really afford in that situation. Maybe you can afford one or two -- maybe the dog is really important and you can't bear to give it up, but you can find a way to get by with slower internet. These are all candidates for being cut, yet the game treats them all as stuff you're just stuck with. That's why I have a problem with this particular "simulation". I myself am borderline poor. I've got a lot of family and friends who are poor. I've helped some move back in with parents. I've some move into, out of, and between shelters and various forms of transitional housing. Some of us have had really tight budgets before and have had to make some really tough decisions. I know what it's like. And this "simulation" devotes over 40% of my monthly budget to things that I'd consider prime candidates for cutting back on, and doesn't provide the option to cut back. That's not realism. That's propaganda.