9 ms·

On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

56 points by nateb2022 4y ago

superchroma 4y ago
I strongly disagree with the premise. This isn't proper poverty, this is a borderline agrarian lifestyle utilizing various allowances as well as support structures intended for the poor. The author has a personal safety net, as well as a social one supporting them, and took advantage of lax property enforcement to build a house on state land. If you have means and options like they do, you aren't dirt poor. This isn't poverty, this is conscientious objection. Many small farmers live this way. At any point they could stop and have a normal life if they chose. That's not poverty, merely poverty tourism. As such I don't think documenting this lifestyle serves as useful as advice for other poor people. This isn't a commentary on the ethics or merits of their life either. Good for them.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Completely agree, the author is describing frugality, not the experience of being dirt poor. > Each month the very generous Swedish government gives us no less than 600 dollars in child allowance. We also have some other incomes from book sales and irregular jobs. And we do have savings, larger than we like to admit, which in good years give capital income and in less good years give a cushion to take from. All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure Author does not get it whatsoever. Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings. You have no or barely any money coming in from the government, not $600 a month just in child benefits. You don't have passive income in book sales or investments. If anything is broken, you cannot afford to fix it, including things like your utilities and appliances. You are one wrong decision from ending up homeless, which in turn is one wrong decision away from death. Subsequently, every decision you make is run through a lens of extreme anxiety. Your entire life is a fight for survival and you have no-one to turn to. That is dirt poor. "Still you'll never get it right Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the walls You can call your Dad and he'll stop it all, yeah." This author has multiple safety nets. Until they're stripped away, he has no idea what dirt poor looks like.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure Yeah, I doubt that takes into account external things like school lunches and neighbors giving things to the “poor” children. With “poor” meaning unfortunate and not poverty stricken. Every time I hear of a school closing for whatever reason they always state that the food program will remain open because truly poor people rely on it out of absolute necessity. Nobody wants their kids to go hungry and that goes double for the collective “we”. Now that I think about it my sister’s husband grew up dirt poor, and not because his grandparents(?) chose that lifestyle, and spent his entire youth working as hard as he could to not be poor. Like commuting 3 hours every day to attend a “good” university and never looking back. Dude absolutely hates poverty.
    - tehsuk 4y ago
      School lunches in Sweden are free.
      - lifeinthevoid 4y ago
        That's great to hear, I think that's extremely important. Here in Belgium, a large percentage (20-ish if I'm not mistaken) of the children lunch very poorly at school because their parents can't afford it, don't care or for some other reason. Providing kids with at least 1 healthy, nutritious meal on a week day is at least a step in the right direction and I will be happy if my tax euros would be spent on that.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings Exactly. I hate to say it, because I've often heard it coming from very financially privileged people as an accusation towards poor people, but in essence being poor is a state of mind, meaning it's not necessarily the lack of money and financial means that gets to you (even though that's not ideal, of course), it is the constant thought of not having money and financial means that eats at your soul. I know because me and my parents stumbled upon a period of quite severe lack of financial resources about 20-25 years ago, in my adolescence years, and even though I've personally and thankfully managed to get out of it (thanks to free uni education) the feeling is still there, I suspect it will always be there till the day I'll be no more. And, yes, whenever someone writes poverty tourism pieces like this one Common People is the first song I think about. Often times I come back listening to it on YT and watching the video just because.
- rolph 4y ago
  i think the "poverty" definition is suspect. i recall 20k annual being declared the poverty line, and i would be able to live way beyond my needs if i had that much revenue. unfortunately we train most kids to be dependent on government conventions, and dont provide the tools, and opportunity, to live independently of this regime. this is a dependency trap. considering your comment, i identify as tech-agrarian.
- strken 4y ago
  Yes. The piece from Resident Contrarian hit hard because it was about being trapped in poverty. Choosing to live with low consumption is laudable. I grew up in a thrifty household, though nowhere near so thrifty as the author's, and using less was much better for all of us. However, spending very little money but having a safety net and the opportunity to leave is the opposite of being trapped. It's like a controlled retreat versus a rout. When you're choosing to be poor you have time and slack to make the choice. You might choose to live in a nice but remote house in the forest, which you may actually own outright (the article has no mention of rent or mortgage), and collect wood and grow your own food. When you're forced out of your shitty apartment because you lost your job or your landlord kicked you out on some flimsy pretext, as has happened to a few of my friends, then you've got two options: either find someone to give you a bit of breathing room by loaning you money/space on the couch/etc., or get an even shittier apartment for a worse price.
  - emptystation 4y ago
    Right. I got a feeling that the OP is OK with their situation because they feel rather safe in their life conditions, there's an undertone "well if I _really really_ have to, I can take that job, or call my middle class parents, or the government will step in". None of these things are default for most poor people. When you're trapped in the cycle of poverty, you have one chance to get it "right" and you don't get a "phone a friend" option. This aspect of poverty just mangles your mental state really. Suppose, if you're lucky, you manage to live an OK, accident-free, healthy life while poor, but the anxiety about "what ifs" is going to haunt you all the way. Folks which have been poor and managed to escape it, are not driven by consumerism (not as the main driver at least), but by a sense of security.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Perhaps this article can be actually instructive for a poor person then? Say you used to be trapped in poverty, but making it a choice reduces your psychological overhead and helps long term.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  You're right about everything you said, minus the "poverty tourism", I think that's a little excessively condescending. Poverty is the wrong word for this. Someone else in this thread said it better than I can come up with: poverty is lack of options. If this lifestyle is a choice it isn't poverty. I agree with that. No matter how simple you choose to make your life, if you've got options you're doing good.
  - superchroma 4y ago
    Fair. I intended it in the most charitable way possible.
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  Perfect. That’s what I wish I could say if I wasn’t personally affected by it. Thanks.
simple-thoughts 4y ago
[flagged]
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > …and ignore their own environmental impacts (wood burning in this instance). This is what you’re going with?
- letrowekwel 4y ago
  Wood is renewable, burning it for heating houses in countryside full of forests is perfectly sustainable. Not caring about social status is only smart, as long as your choices don't hurt others. It should be up to individual to decide what makes them happy within these limits. Instead of hippies I would be worried of consumerist sheep who think buying products/services makes them happy, and who destroy the planet in the process. Amazon, shopping malls full of people spending money just for fun, those are the real evil of our world. I would much rather live in a hut without electricity than be your average city-dwelling consumerist.
  - jay_kyburz 4y ago
    The problem with wood is that if we all burnt it, there would be nowhere near enough, and our cities would be full of smoke and heavily polluted. Every household would need a lot land just to support tree regrowth. You have to be planting a lot of trees every year and letting them grow for a long time too. I don't agree with simple-thoughts on hippies, but I understand why we don't all burn wood for energy.
    - strken 4y ago
      You get 80 tons of wood from an acre of land after 20 years of growth, or 4 tons a year. A household probably uses about 2 to 4 tons a year, less if they're in a warmer climate. That's half an acre to an acre per house. There are potential problems here: water table and soil depletion, pollution in built-up areas including acid rain, overuse of wood in crowded areas destroying habitats for animals, and probably more. Nevertheless, all these problems only apply in certain circumstances, and rural use of firewood for heating is likely not as big a problem as you think it is. Obviously in the city things are different, but neither the author nor letrowekwel were talking about cities.
twelve40 4y ago
he touches on interesting points and I actually appreciate the honesty, but kind of meandering, a bit pointless, and in parts outright massively contradicts itself: > Living without spending takes some time and effort, just like a job. But at least it is a job I can perform at the time and place of my own choosing right above that he sounds like he's lamenting being stranded in his location, unable to travel, come anywhere near metro areas or travel like in his childhood. That's, like, the absolute opposite of "place of my own choosing".
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Maybe it's okay to be of multiple minds about something?
shswkna 4y ago
The author refers to others being driven by class and status. There are however also people who work because they want to contribute to society and provide purpose to others and themselves. I was instilled by my parents with a principle that I should give back more than I take from society. I am not judging the author, and I believe he and his wife love their kids, which is what matters most. But as others have pointed out, his path in life is only possible in Europe or similar societies. Most other societies are in desperate need of more “providers” and those that “pull the cart”.
- Moldoteck 4y ago
  The thing is, 'providers' are paid much less nowadays compared to the past. Like for how long should one work to afford a house? If society is making people's life worse by requiring to work more for less, why should people care to go extra?
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    I don't know, man. I guess, in the end, it's about fulfilling your purpose. For some, it is family. For others, it is to build. For yet others, it is to serve. Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help. But what's the alternative? I must fulfill to myself what I want to be. That's why everything.
    - laurencerowe 4y ago
      > Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help. So as well paid software engineers our overall tax rates as single filers in California reach about 40% at $400k but would only reach 50% at around $5M annual income. That public services are so expensive to provide in California reflects the fact that housing costs are so expensive. Housing costs are where they are because of a mix of very high average wages and the ingrained nimbyism of existing home owners sitting on multi-million dollar homes. At the end of the day median public sector workers like teachers need to earn enough to pay median housing costs. In the Bay Area we don't pay teachers anything like that. That makes me wonder whether I should move away when I have school age kids even if I am making absurd tech salaries here.
renewiltord 4y ago
It's always good to read this stuff because it helps me set a personal boundary on my spending - which has really changed from a decade ago when I spent $25k a year living in San Francisco and having a ball. Crazy that they raise 5 children on this. I doubt I could manage that!
jwr 4y ago
> We save even more on heating. For heating we use wood that we get from the surrounding forests more or less for free (just insert physical labor). Someone subsidizes your living, then, by giving you the wood. I mean I hope they are giving you the wood, because otherwise that would be theft. Where I live, most forest is national, and you can't even gather fallen branches. You can buy the wood or a permit to gather a certain amount of fallen wood.
- lpghatguy 4y ago
  There are lots of places, including many national forests, where you can cut your own firewood for free. If you live near the Flathead National Forest in Montana in the US, for example, you can cut firewood for a campsite without a permit. You can also get a free permit that allows you to cut 4 to 12 cords of wood per adult per year. I don't know anything about firewood laws in Sweden or the rest of Europe. From first glance they look quite a bit more restrictive.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Swedish allemänsratten give people quite extensive rights to exploit forests, even on private property. You are correct that cutting trees and collecting firewood are explicitly excluded from this in theory, but in practice, since the OP lives in a very rural, forested area and is presumably collecting wood from fallen trees instead of actively cutting them down, nobody will give a shit. Even if they did, it would be some kind of environmental violation, not "theft".
- paganel 4y ago
  > and you can't even gather fallen branches. And that's stupid as stupid can be, and it's not theft. Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) that used to be customary practice for hundreds of years, maybe even more, meaning people taking the falling branches for heating purposes over the winter. Of course, as modernisation set on around these parts of the continent (thanks, Brussels) then all that became highly illegal, so that highly-equipped policemen were set up to patrol the foresty areas and confiscate the equipment used for said "theft" from what are mostly very poor people, which in many cases involved them confiscating a very weak horse and a barely functioning wooden cart. But hey, modernisation! This whole subject makes me very angry because it is so reactionary, as you've got poor people supporting the brunt of the law while the wood multinationals (or whatever their PR name is) are profiting from it because they can afford to cut exponentially more wood in a "legal" manner. And yes, we do own a small piece of forest in my family (my brother does, in fact), so I should be all-in for the camp of "damn poors are stealing our branches from the forrest we own!". I am not. One of the very few positive aspects of all this is that these type of police-imposed reactionary actions coming from the very top have created a new sense of community in my brother's village. Nowadays almost the whole village is again on the lookout for patrolling police vans, as the villagers communicate with the people who are in the forest to take wood as to the policemen's whereabouts and instruct them when it's safe to pass. And then city-based laptop class people complain how come the "populists" are winning more and more votes.
gizajob 4y ago
I enjoyed the article but felt the author is over-egging his frugality past the point of actual meanness. I find that money generally arrives at the level one mentally expects it to, and while he makes a point of saying he's not consuming, he still is, albeit at a low level, by picking through everyone's scraps, which can be as time consuming as putting a bit more thought into earning more for things like buying gifts for his children better than recycled cast-offs or obliging grandparents to deal with it. It's admirable, but he's still chosen to have three children more than the two that would have been the replacement level for him and his partner, hence everyone else on the planet and in Sweden is paying for them and subsidising him and his self-centred choices, because it doesn't seem like he's going to be paying any taxes to fund his life choices, so society will be picking up the tab. I don't really disrespect him for it, because a nice simple life is great to have, but he is performing the financial and environmental calculus without really holding much of a mirror up to himself.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I was not impressed by his level of frugalness, and indeed he seems to understate the role of the community he rejects in his family's success, and likewise refuses to give back to that community meaningfully for the favor. That is the whole point of work and taxes, and I think some people fail to see the connection between work and everything that is around them. Not that I think we should all be wage slaves, but some humility when living off the work of others would seem fair.
- olau 4y ago
  Having well-functioning children is valuable to a modern society like the Swedish.
emptyfile 4y ago
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bhawks 4y ago
The author seems quite selfish and manipulative of others. He chooses to live this way because it allows him to avoid social interactions with others. Unlike true poverty he could easily utilize both his relational capital (call parents, get cash) and educational capital (had the ability to get a professional job and turned it down) these are simply not options for people who are actually poor. He clearly wants more from life, as long as someone gives it to him on his own terms. There seems to be a lot of baggage from his childhood and subtle resentment to his parents. I'm concerned for his mental health. If this is truly just his personal choice though, I really question the relationship he has with his children and his justifications for how he provides the bare minimum for them when her could certainly do more. For someone so focused on frugality and minimalism his discussion about his children was focused completely on materialism, gift giving and the fact that a little under half of his monthly income came from government programs targeted at children. I kept expecting to read something about how he connects with them in emotionally meaningful ways or helps them grow and thrive. That love and care just didn't seem there. Ultimately I worry about the kids, specifically their emotional and developmental needs. Their dad is so focused on himself and how he wants to live. That sounds like a very tough home to grow up in, even if the author was spectacularly rich.
- ano88888 4y ago
  Since I came from a very poorish developing country, i can't understand some Europians contempt for wealth. I still lived in the poor country but i am making much more money than the OP and I am proud of it. They have this attitude of 'oh, i don't care about money' prabably they think their government is gonna be always be able to support them and their economy will always be good. Things change. These people will likely regret when they put their family in a fragile position.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Or maybe, like you, they understand their own position quite well. As I wrote in the reply above, I know many now adult children of similar parents. They're doing fine. I also know some whose parents had more of an attitude like you, that this could all be gone soon and you need to resolutely pursue money and status to be safe when that happens. Usually kids of immigrants. They seem to have much more strained relationships to their parents - and not that much better outcomes on average. Where you are, maybe your advice is sound. But odds are that OP understands their own situation better than you who aren't in it; and that in Sweden you would be barking up the wrong tree, guarding against the wrong threats.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
This is an interesting article, though I sense a complex mixture of regret, rationalization, and hurt pride that makes me wonder whether the author shouldn't just have taken the software developer job in Stockholm. It doesn't read like the author was making deliberate life choices. That part of it resonates well with me since I also didn't really set a clear goal for myself and instead took one university job after another, and now I'm 51 and relatively poor, too. Contrary to the author, who seems to be yet undecided, I believe that was a mistake and I'm seeking to correct it. What I'm missing in this article and in many of the comments is the #1 reason for working: Being able to afford a decent life style. That is the main reason why most people work. They do it for money, so they don't have to worry about issues like rent & bills and can buy nice things and afford holidays. It's neither for vocation nor because it gives them status and class, they really just want the money. Being poor is bad because everything in our society revolves around money. As German musician Rio Reiser wrote: Money doesn't make you happy, it just calms your nerves.
Saigonautica 4y ago
Choosing to be poor seems logically impossible to me. During the time in my life when I was poor, it was characterized by a lack of choices more than anything else. I don't think poverty is a thing that can be chosen, because being poor is not having choices. Sure, constant low-level danger was another theme -- nearly dying from preventable diseases, parts of your home falling on you, and vehicle accidents were some things that came up. Scrounging for and repairing stuff and frugality were themes too. All of this was of no importance compared to the lack of choices, which I felt viscerally every moment of every day. (Thankfully everything is much better now!)
friend_and_foe 4y ago
I relate to this quite a lot actually. Not the taking of charity type thing, I choose a somewhat similar lifestyle but I acknowledge that it is a choice, so I don't take freebies. Particularly > I would be working 40 hours a week and would get exactly nothing out of it, financially speaking. I relate to that a lot. And all the stuff after it. I don't consider it poverty, just a simpler way of living. I cut my monthly expenses down by 80% by downsizing my life, and I actually got more space, freedom, independence, less neighbors, parking, silly rules and miscelanious bullshit. I just don't understand people that choose to live and work in cities. It always felt like spinning my wheels, and the whole "diversity of food options" struck me as a little snotty. You like diversity because it enables you to pay brown people to cook for you? I just cook for myself. Mostly when people explain to me why they choose the rat race (as I see it) it strikes me as excuses to continue because they don't know how to do anything else, or theyre hung up on status in the eyes of people who don't give a shit about them, or they have a sunk cost fallacy relationship with their student loans or something like that. I'll take a shack and a propane tank in the sticks to a nice apartment a 5 minute walk from whole foods any day. I'm lucky to have found a partner who is somewhat similar, and we intend to raise our children this way as well. Clean home, but a simple home. Clean clothes and healthy food, but simple. Life is about discovery, adventure, and creation, not consumption. I hope they're happy as adults about their childhoods, I think they will be.
- ehnto 4y ago
  > You like diversity because it enables you to pay brown people to cook for you? This comes across as a shallow understanding of food, culture and the makeup of cities. Cities are often very multi-cultural, all over the world, and not just for food. All races can enjoy that diversity and a somewhat fairer playing field (depending on exactly where you live).
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    Not to insult, but this sounds like cope and rationalization to me. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I come from a very, very diverse background and have a very diverse family, including my own personal one. There are 5 ethnicities in my immediate family. I've lived in a couple of very diverse cities most of my life. I've had all the food. It's nice, it's good. But when I hear people say they want to stay in a city due to "diversity" and usually mentioning Chinese take out and sushi, all I hear is a daft white person not realizing they're saying they like cities because the poor immigrants perform services that make their lives better.
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low_tech_love 4y ago
As a south american who lives in Sweden since a few years, this article is offensive and preposterous, exactly the kind of disconnected, absurd surreal nonsense that I have come to expect from the Swedes around me. The fact that this person honestly thinks the word "poor" applies to him is baffling. He chose to live a simple life, and even after trying very hard to screw everything up, he still can not manage to do so. Because that's how Sweden works: you can't be super rich, but you can also not be really poor. So he doesn't eat meat regularly because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. Yes, some types of meat are very expensive here, but other more common types are as cheap as Broccoli or Cheese. The true reason is the one he let slip: he doesn't know how to cook it. And more importantly: he doesn't care, because he has access to a lot of other good stuff that he can just put in a frying pan for 5 minutes and eat it (Swedes have an extremely low level of requirement for food; they will eat raw vegetables or crappy kebab-based fast food everyday if it saves them a few minutes). A really poor person does not have access to any food without busting their ass off 12 hours a day in some horrible, exploitative job that nobody else wants to do. Oh, he doesn't drive because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. He has an m-f-ing electric bike. Tell a poor person from Colombia or Venezuela that a poor person in Sweden has an electric bike. They will laugh on your face, then ask you to please take them with you to Sweden. It's preposterous. The true? They don't need a car. I have been here for 6 years, with two kids, and I only bought my first car last month. All cities have bike lanes everywhere, which are safe because the cars actually respect them, and the public transportation is amazing. How far do you think a person can go in São Paulo or Bogotá in a bike before they are run over by a car? Oh, yeah, and also because in those cities you have live 50km away from your actual office if you want to pay less than 80% of your salary in rent. This guy has the guts to say 1500 dollars a month is "ridiculously low for such a large family". I cannot keep reading. That's enough.
- bojangleslover 4y ago
  >1500 dollars a month Nearly half of which is welfare!
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Lol, take a deep breath. The article is nonsense. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they have maybe 200,000 in the bank to live off the gains. Welfare state aside, that places them far above the 99th percentile in the world. Labeling themselves as poor is an ignorant and immature bid for attention. It’s like a trust fund kid seriously talking about how they made it through their travels with “just a backpack”. It could literally be a joke. I would love to tell them to grow up. Sitting on 200,000 is rich even in Sweden. Sounds like they’re just lazy as shit.
bojangleslover 4y ago
>Each month the very generous Swedish government gives us no less than 600 dollars in child allowance. You mean taxpaying Swedish citizen?
georgeoliver 4y ago
This was more interesting and nuanced than I was expecting, but, as hinted in the title (dirt-poor _ish_) the author is not really describing poverty (experienced by billions of actual people in the world) but some other condition of stepping aside from the race of contemporary society onto a kind of cozy government supported lifestyle cushion. It's funny because this seems to be the ideal state of a lot of futurists but in reality most people seem to keep working harder for less for the benefit of a few lottery winners.
rex_gallorum2 4y ago
I found the discussion here more interesting than the article/blog post. Most of you are talking at cross purposes, and there are some major intercultural communication problems here that are masked by everyone reading/writing in English. If we were all part of a single culture and organic community, where the unwritten rules and mechanics of how things work and don't work are known to all, we could have a meaningful discussion, and perhaps debate the ethical aspects of the author's lifestyle. But we are not and do not and can not. I would argue that although the author wrote in English, what he wrote really only makes sense within a Swedish cultural context. I see comment after comment projecting foreign norms, values, and circumstances on the author without any knowledge whatsoever of how things work in Sweden. I am even seeing classic stuff right out of Geert Hofstede's six dimensional culture model such as individualism vs. collectivism. I don't expect everyone to understand this comment, but someone definitely will!
- olau 4y ago
  Another side of this is that when people are confronted with someone doing things different from what they're used to, their innate ego centrism makes them react if it is about them. It reopens the identity crisis of their teenage years. I once experienced this on the board of a kindergarten. There was a public debate about whether kindergartens should have computers or not. The kindergarten I had my kids in thought not, for good reasons. When talking to the other parents, with some those reasons clicked immediately. But many were simply not able to digest them. They were stuck thinking about their own situation as parents and the fact that their children were using tablets at home. Big parenting identity crisis, no constructive discussion possible.
gnrlst 4y ago
Judging by his comment, he has close to 600K-1M+ SEK in savings. He's anything but "dirt-poorish"
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Fascinating article and reactions to it. I think it cuts to the Core of the difference between being poor and being desperate. It also provides an Outsiders opinion on materialism and motivation as it relates to society at Large. It also scratches the surface of what it means to be a parent, and the relative value of materially providing for children versus teaching values and skills.

56 points by nateb2022 4y ago

I strongly disagree with the premise. This isn't proper poverty, this is a borderline agrarian lifestyle utilizing various allowances as well as support structures intended for the poor. The author has a personal safety net, as well as a social one supporting them, and took advantage of lax property enforcement to build a house on state land. If you have means and options like they do, you aren't dirt poor. This isn't poverty, this is conscientious objection. Many small farmers live this way. At any point they could stop and have a normal life if they chose. That's not poverty, merely poverty tourism. As such I don't think documenting this lifestyle serves as useful as advice for other poor people. This isn't a commentary on the ethics or merits of their life either. Good for them.

rcarr 4y ago
Completely agree, the author is describing frugality, not the experience of being dirt poor. > Each month the very generous Swedish government gives us no less than 600 dollars in child allowance. We also have some other incomes from book sales and irregular jobs. And we do have savings, larger than we like to admit, which in good years give capital income and in less good years give a cushion to take from. All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure Author does not get it whatsoever. Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings. You have no or barely any money coming in from the government, not $600 a month just in child benefits. You don't have passive income in book sales or investments. If anything is broken, you cannot afford to fix it, including things like your utilities and appliances. You are one wrong decision from ending up homeless, which in turn is one wrong decision away from death. Subsequently, every decision you make is run through a lens of extreme anxiety. Your entire life is a fight for survival and you have no-one to turn to. That is dirt poor. "Still you'll never get it right Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the walls You can call your Dad and he'll stop it all, yeah." This author has multiple safety nets. Until they're stripped away, he has no idea what dirt poor looks like.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure Yeah, I doubt that takes into account external things like school lunches and neighbors giving things to the “poor” children. With “poor” meaning unfortunate and not poverty stricken. Every time I hear of a school closing for whatever reason they always state that the food program will remain open because truly poor people rely on it out of absolute necessity. Nobody wants their kids to go hungry and that goes double for the collective “we”. Now that I think about it my sister’s husband grew up dirt poor, and not because his grandparents(?) chose that lifestyle, and spent his entire youth working as hard as he could to not be poor. Like commuting 3 hours every day to attend a “good” university and never looking back. Dude absolutely hates poverty.
  - tehsuk 4y ago
    School lunches in Sweden are free.
    - lifeinthevoid 4y ago
      That's great to hear, I think that's extremely important. Here in Belgium, a large percentage (20-ish if I'm not mistaken) of the children lunch very poorly at school because their parents can't afford it, don't care or for some other reason. Providing kids with at least 1 healthy, nutritious meal on a week day is at least a step in the right direction and I will be happy if my tax euros would be spent on that.
- paganel 4y ago
  > Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings Exactly. I hate to say it, because I've often heard it coming from very financially privileged people as an accusation towards poor people, but in essence being poor is a state of mind, meaning it's not necessarily the lack of money and financial means that gets to you (even though that's not ideal, of course), it is the constant thought of not having money and financial means that eats at your soul. I know because me and my parents stumbled upon a period of quite severe lack of financial resources about 20-25 years ago, in my adolescence years, and even though I've personally and thankfully managed to get out of it (thanks to free uni education) the feeling is still there, I suspect it will always be there till the day I'll be no more. And, yes, whenever someone writes poverty tourism pieces like this one Common People is the first song I think about. Often times I come back listening to it on YT and watching the video just because.
rolph 4y ago
i think the "poverty" definition is suspect. i recall 20k annual being declared the poverty line, and i would be able to live way beyond my needs if i had that much revenue. unfortunately we train most kids to be dependent on government conventions, and dont provide the tools, and opportunity, to live independently of this regime. this is a dependency trap. considering your comment, i identify as tech-agrarian.
strken 4y ago
Yes. The piece from Resident Contrarian hit hard because it was about being trapped in poverty. Choosing to live with low consumption is laudable. I grew up in a thrifty household, though nowhere near so thrifty as the author's, and using less was much better for all of us. However, spending very little money but having a safety net and the opportunity to leave is the opposite of being trapped. It's like a controlled retreat versus a rout. When you're choosing to be poor you have time and slack to make the choice. You might choose to live in a nice but remote house in the forest, which you may actually own outright (the article has no mention of rent or mortgage), and collect wood and grow your own food. When you're forced out of your shitty apartment because you lost your job or your landlord kicked you out on some flimsy pretext, as has happened to a few of my friends, then you've got two options: either find someone to give you a bit of breathing room by loaning you money/space on the couch/etc., or get an even shittier apartment for a worse price.
- emptystation 4y ago
  Right. I got a feeling that the OP is OK with their situation because they feel rather safe in their life conditions, there's an undertone "well if I _really really_ have to, I can take that job, or call my middle class parents, or the government will step in". None of these things are default for most poor people. When you're trapped in the cycle of poverty, you have one chance to get it "right" and you don't get a "phone a friend" option. This aspect of poverty just mangles your mental state really. Suppose, if you're lucky, you manage to live an OK, accident-free, healthy life while poor, but the anxiety about "what ifs" is going to haunt you all the way. Folks which have been poor and managed to escape it, are not driven by consumerism (not as the main driver at least), but by a sense of security.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Perhaps this article can be actually instructive for a poor person then? Say you used to be trapped in poverty, but making it a choice reduces your psychological overhead and helps long term.
friend_and_foe 4y ago
You're right about everything you said, minus the "poverty tourism", I think that's a little excessively condescending. Poverty is the wrong word for this. Someone else in this thread said it better than I can come up with: poverty is lack of options. If this lifestyle is a choice it isn't poverty. I agree with that. No matter how simple you choose to make your life, if you've got options you're doing good.
- superchroma 4y ago
  Fair. I intended it in the most charitable way possible.
low_tech_love 4y ago
Perfect. That’s what I wish I could say if I wasn’t personally affected by it. Thanks.

simple-thoughts 4y ago

[flagged]

UncleEntity 4y ago
> …and ignore their own environmental impacts (wood burning in this instance). This is what you’re going with?
letrowekwel 4y ago
Wood is renewable, burning it for heating houses in countryside full of forests is perfectly sustainable. Not caring about social status is only smart, as long as your choices don't hurt others. It should be up to individual to decide what makes them happy within these limits. Instead of hippies I would be worried of consumerist sheep who think buying products/services makes them happy, and who destroy the planet in the process. Amazon, shopping malls full of people spending money just for fun, those are the real evil of our world. I would much rather live in a hut without electricity than be your average city-dwelling consumerist.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  The problem with wood is that if we all burnt it, there would be nowhere near enough, and our cities would be full of smoke and heavily polluted. Every household would need a lot land just to support tree regrowth. You have to be planting a lot of trees every year and letting them grow for a long time too. I don't agree with simple-thoughts on hippies, but I understand why we don't all burn wood for energy.
  - strken 4y ago
    You get 80 tons of wood from an acre of land after 20 years of growth, or 4 tons a year. A household probably uses about 2 to 4 tons a year, less if they're in a warmer climate. That's half an acre to an acre per house. There are potential problems here: water table and soil depletion, pollution in built-up areas including acid rain, overuse of wood in crowded areas destroying habitats for animals, and probably more. Nevertheless, all these problems only apply in certain circumstances, and rural use of firewood for heating is likely not as big a problem as you think it is. Obviously in the city things are different, but neither the author nor letrowekwel were talking about cities.

twelve40 4y ago

he touches on interesting points and I actually appreciate the honesty, but kind of meandering, a bit pointless, and in parts outright massively contradicts itself: > Living without spending takes some time and effort, just like a job. But at least it is a job I can perform at the time and place of my own choosing right above that he sounds like he's lamenting being stranded in his location, unable to travel, come anywhere near metro areas or travel like in his childhood. That's, like, the absolute opposite of "place of my own choosing".

throwaway290 4y ago
Maybe it's okay to be of multiple minds about something?

shswkna 4y ago

The author refers to others being driven by class and status. There are however also people who work because they want to contribute to society and provide purpose to others and themselves. I was instilled by my parents with a principle that I should give back more than I take from society. I am not judging the author, and I believe he and his wife love their kids, which is what matters most. But as others have pointed out, his path in life is only possible in Europe or similar societies. Most other societies are in desperate need of more “providers” and those that “pull the cart”.

Moldoteck 4y ago
The thing is, 'providers' are paid much less nowadays compared to the past. Like for how long should one work to afford a house? If society is making people's life worse by requiring to work more for less, why should people care to go extra?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  I don't know, man. I guess, in the end, it's about fulfilling your purpose. For some, it is family. For others, it is to build. For yet others, it is to serve. Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help. But what's the alternative? I must fulfill to myself what I want to be. That's why everything.
  - laurencerowe 4y ago
    > Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help. So as well paid software engineers our overall tax rates as single filers in California reach about 40% at $400k but would only reach 50% at around $5M annual income. That public services are so expensive to provide in California reflects the fact that housing costs are so expensive. Housing costs are where they are because of a mix of very high average wages and the ingrained nimbyism of existing home owners sitting on multi-million dollar homes. At the end of the day median public sector workers like teachers need to earn enough to pay median housing costs. In the Bay Area we don't pay teachers anything like that. That makes me wonder whether I should move away when I have school age kids even if I am making absurd tech salaries here.

renewiltord 4y ago

It's always good to read this stuff because it helps me set a personal boundary on my spending - which has really changed from a decade ago when I spent $25k a year living in San Francisco and having a ball. Crazy that they raise 5 children on this. I doubt I could manage that!

jwr 4y ago

> We save even more on heating. For heating we use wood that we get from the surrounding forests more or less for free (just insert physical labor). Someone subsidizes your living, then, by giving you the wood. I mean I hope they are giving you the wood, because otherwise that would be theft. Where I live, most forest is national, and you can't even gather fallen branches. You can buy the wood or a permit to gather a certain amount of fallen wood.

lpghatguy 4y ago
There are lots of places, including many national forests, where you can cut your own firewood for free. If you live near the Flathead National Forest in Montana in the US, for example, you can cut firewood for a campsite without a permit. You can also get a free permit that allows you to cut 4 to 12 cords of wood per adult per year. I don't know anything about firewood laws in Sweden or the rest of Europe. From first glance they look quite a bit more restrictive.
rippercushions 4y ago
Swedish allemänsratten give people quite extensive rights to exploit forests, even on private property. You are correct that cutting trees and collecting firewood are explicitly excluded from this in theory, but in practice, since the OP lives in a very rural, forested area and is presumably collecting wood from fallen trees instead of actively cutting them down, nobody will give a shit. Even if they did, it would be some kind of environmental violation, not "theft".
paganel 4y ago
> and you can't even gather fallen branches. And that's stupid as stupid can be, and it's not theft. Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) that used to be customary practice for hundreds of years, maybe even more, meaning people taking the falling branches for heating purposes over the winter. Of course, as modernisation set on around these parts of the continent (thanks, Brussels) then all that became highly illegal, so that highly-equipped policemen were set up to patrol the foresty areas and confiscate the equipment used for said "theft" from what are mostly very poor people, which in many cases involved them confiscating a very weak horse and a barely functioning wooden cart. But hey, modernisation! This whole subject makes me very angry because it is so reactionary, as you've got poor people supporting the brunt of the law while the wood multinationals (or whatever their PR name is) are profiting from it because they can afford to cut exponentially more wood in a "legal" manner. And yes, we do own a small piece of forest in my family (my brother does, in fact), so I should be all-in for the camp of "damn poors are stealing our branches from the forrest we own!". I am not. One of the very few positive aspects of all this is that these type of police-imposed reactionary actions coming from the very top have created a new sense of community in my brother's village. Nowadays almost the whole village is again on the lookout for patrolling police vans, as the villagers communicate with the people who are in the forest to take wood as to the policemen's whereabouts and instruct them when it's safe to pass. And then city-based laptop class people complain how come the "populists" are winning more and more votes.

gizajob 4y ago

I enjoyed the article but felt the author is over-egging his frugality past the point of actual meanness. I find that money generally arrives at the level one mentally expects it to, and while he makes a point of saying he's not consuming, he still is, albeit at a low level, by picking through everyone's scraps, which can be as time consuming as putting a bit more thought into earning more for things like buying gifts for his children better than recycled cast-offs or obliging grandparents to deal with it. It's admirable, but he's still chosen to have three children more than the two that would have been the replacement level for him and his partner, hence everyone else on the planet and in Sweden is paying for them and subsidising him and his self-centred choices, because it doesn't seem like he's going to be paying any taxes to fund his life choices, so society will be picking up the tab. I don't really disrespect him for it, because a nice simple life is great to have, but he is performing the financial and environmental calculus without really holding much of a mirror up to himself.

ehnto 4y ago
I was not impressed by his level of frugalness, and indeed he seems to understate the role of the community he rejects in his family's success, and likewise refuses to give back to that community meaningfully for the favor. That is the whole point of work and taxes, and I think some people fail to see the connection between work and everything that is around them. Not that I think we should all be wage slaves, but some humility when living off the work of others would seem fair.
olau 4y ago
Having well-functioning children is valuable to a modern society like the Swedish.

emptyfile 4y ago

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bhawks 4y ago

The author seems quite selfish and manipulative of others. He chooses to live this way because it allows him to avoid social interactions with others. Unlike true poverty he could easily utilize both his relational capital (call parents, get cash) and educational capital (had the ability to get a professional job and turned it down) these are simply not options for people who are actually poor. He clearly wants more from life, as long as someone gives it to him on his own terms. There seems to be a lot of baggage from his childhood and subtle resentment to his parents. I'm concerned for his mental health. If this is truly just his personal choice though, I really question the relationship he has with his children and his justifications for how he provides the bare minimum for them when her could certainly do more. For someone so focused on frugality and minimalism his discussion about his children was focused completely on materialism, gift giving and the fact that a little under half of his monthly income came from government programs targeted at children. I kept expecting to read something about how he connects with them in emotionally meaningful ways or helps them grow and thrive. That love and care just didn't seem there. Ultimately I worry about the kids, specifically their emotional and developmental needs. Their dad is so focused on himself and how he wants to live. That sounds like a very tough home to grow up in, even if the author was spectacularly rich.

ano88888 4y ago
Since I came from a very poorish developing country, i can't understand some Europians contempt for wealth. I still lived in the poor country but i am making much more money than the OP and I am proud of it. They have this attitude of 'oh, i don't care about money' prabably they think their government is gonna be always be able to support them and their economy will always be good. Things change. These people will likely regret when they put their family in a fragile position.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Or maybe, like you, they understand their own position quite well. As I wrote in the reply above, I know many now adult children of similar parents. They're doing fine. I also know some whose parents had more of an attitude like you, that this could all be gone soon and you need to resolutely pursue money and status to be safe when that happens. Usually kids of immigrants. They seem to have much more strained relationships to their parents - and not that much better outcomes on average. Where you are, maybe your advice is sound. But odds are that OP understands their own situation better than you who aren't in it; and that in Sweden you would be barking up the wrong tree, guarding against the wrong threats.

jonathanstrange 4y ago

This is an interesting article, though I sense a complex mixture of regret, rationalization, and hurt pride that makes me wonder whether the author shouldn't just have taken the software developer job in Stockholm. It doesn't read like the author was making deliberate life choices. That part of it resonates well with me since I also didn't really set a clear goal for myself and instead took one university job after another, and now I'm 51 and relatively poor, too. Contrary to the author, who seems to be yet undecided, I believe that was a mistake and I'm seeking to correct it. What I'm missing in this article and in many of the comments is the #1 reason for working: Being able to afford a decent life style. That is the main reason why most people work. They do it for money, so they don't have to worry about issues like rent & bills and can buy nice things and afford holidays. It's neither for vocation nor because it gives them status and class, they really just want the money. Being poor is bad because everything in our society revolves around money. As German musician Rio Reiser wrote: Money doesn't make you happy, it just calms your nerves.

Saigonautica 4y ago

Choosing to be poor seems logically impossible to me. During the time in my life when I was poor, it was characterized by a lack of choices more than anything else. I don't think poverty is a thing that can be chosen, because being poor is not having choices. Sure, constant low-level danger was another theme -- nearly dying from preventable diseases, parts of your home falling on you, and vehicle accidents were some things that came up. Scrounging for and repairing stuff and frugality were themes too. All of this was of no importance compared to the lack of choices, which I felt viscerally every moment of every day. (Thankfully everything is much better now!)

friend_and_foe 4y ago

I relate to this quite a lot actually. Not the taking of charity type thing, I choose a somewhat similar lifestyle but I acknowledge that it is a choice, so I don't take freebies. Particularly > I would be working 40 hours a week and would get exactly nothing out of it, financially speaking. I relate to that a lot. And all the stuff after it. I don't consider it poverty, just a simpler way of living. I cut my monthly expenses down by 80% by downsizing my life, and I actually got more space, freedom, independence, less neighbors, parking, silly rules and miscelanious bullshit. I just don't understand people that choose to live and work in cities. It always felt like spinning my wheels, and the whole "diversity of food options" struck me as a little snotty. You like diversity because it enables you to pay brown people to cook for you? I just cook for myself. Mostly when people explain to me why they choose the rat race (as I see it) it strikes me as excuses to continue because they don't know how to do anything else, or theyre hung up on status in the eyes of people who don't give a shit about them, or they have a sunk cost fallacy relationship with their student loans or something like that. I'll take a shack and a propane tank in the sticks to a nice apartment a 5 minute walk from whole foods any day. I'm lucky to have found a partner who is somewhat similar, and we intend to raise our children this way as well. Clean home, but a simple home. Clean clothes and healthy food, but simple. Life is about discovery, adventure, and creation, not consumption. I hope they're happy as adults about their childhoods, I think they will be.

ehnto 4y ago
> You like diversity because it enables you to pay brown people to cook for you? This comes across as a shallow understanding of food, culture and the makeup of cities. Cities are often very multi-cultural, all over the world, and not just for food. All races can enjoy that diversity and a somewhat fairer playing field (depending on exactly where you live).
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  Not to insult, but this sounds like cope and rationalization to me. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I come from a very, very diverse background and have a very diverse family, including my own personal one. There are 5 ethnicities in my immediate family. I've lived in a couple of very diverse cities most of my life. I've had all the food. It's nice, it's good. But when I hear people say they want to stay in a city due to "diversity" and usually mentioning Chinese take out and sushi, all I hear is a daft white person not realizing they're saying they like cities because the poor immigrants perform services that make their lives better.

deleted 4y ago

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low_tech_love 4y ago

As a south american who lives in Sweden since a few years, this article is offensive and preposterous, exactly the kind of disconnected, absurd surreal nonsense that I have come to expect from the Swedes around me. The fact that this person honestly thinks the word "poor" applies to him is baffling. He chose to live a simple life, and even after trying very hard to screw everything up, he still can not manage to do so. Because that's how Sweden works: you can't be super rich, but you can also not be really poor. So he doesn't eat meat regularly because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. Yes, some types of meat are very expensive here, but other more common types are as cheap as Broccoli or Cheese. The true reason is the one he let slip: he doesn't know how to cook it. And more importantly: he doesn't care, because he has access to a lot of other good stuff that he can just put in a frying pan for 5 minutes and eat it (Swedes have an extremely low level of requirement for food; they will eat raw vegetables or crappy kebab-based fast food everyday if it saves them a few minutes). A really poor person does not have access to any food without busting their ass off 12 hours a day in some horrible, exploitative job that nobody else wants to do. Oh, he doesn't drive because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. He has an m-f-ing electric bike. Tell a poor person from Colombia or Venezuela that a poor person in Sweden has an electric bike. They will laugh on your face, then ask you to please take them with you to Sweden. It's preposterous. The true? They don't need a car. I have been here for 6 years, with two kids, and I only bought my first car last month. All cities have bike lanes everywhere, which are safe because the cars actually respect them, and the public transportation is amazing. How far do you think a person can go in São Paulo or Bogotá in a bike before they are run over by a car? Oh, yeah, and also because in those cities you have live 50km away from your actual office if you want to pay less than 80% of your salary in rent. This guy has the guts to say 1500 dollars a month is "ridiculously low for such a large family". I cannot keep reading. That's enough.

bojangleslover 4y ago
>1500 dollars a month Nearly half of which is welfare!
comfypotato 4y ago
Lol, take a deep breath. The article is nonsense. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they have maybe 200,000 in the bank to live off the gains. Welfare state aside, that places them far above the 99th percentile in the world. Labeling themselves as poor is an ignorant and immature bid for attention. It’s like a trust fund kid seriously talking about how they made it through their travels with “just a backpack”. It could literally be a joke. I would love to tell them to grow up. Sitting on 200,000 is rich even in Sweden. Sounds like they’re just lazy as shit.

bojangleslover 4y ago

>Each month the very generous Swedish government gives us no less than 600 dollars in child allowance. You mean taxpaying Swedish citizen?

georgeoliver 4y ago

This was more interesting and nuanced than I was expecting, but, as hinted in the title (dirt-poor _ish_) the author is not really describing poverty (experienced by billions of actual people in the world) but some other condition of stepping aside from the race of contemporary society onto a kind of cozy government supported lifestyle cushion. It's funny because this seems to be the ideal state of a lot of futurists but in reality most people seem to keep working harder for less for the benefit of a few lottery winners.

rex_gallorum2 4y ago

I found the discussion here more interesting than the article/blog post. Most of you are talking at cross purposes, and there are some major intercultural communication problems here that are masked by everyone reading/writing in English. If we were all part of a single culture and organic community, where the unwritten rules and mechanics of how things work and don't work are known to all, we could have a meaningful discussion, and perhaps debate the ethical aspects of the author's lifestyle. But we are not and do not and can not. I would argue that although the author wrote in English, what he wrote really only makes sense within a Swedish cultural context. I see comment after comment projecting foreign norms, values, and circumstances on the author without any knowledge whatsoever of how things work in Sweden. I am even seeing classic stuff right out of Geert Hofstede's six dimensional culture model such as individualism vs. collectivism. I don't expect everyone to understand this comment, but someone definitely will!

olau 4y ago
Another side of this is that when people are confronted with someone doing things different from what they're used to, their innate ego centrism makes them react if it is about them. It reopens the identity crisis of their teenage years. I once experienced this on the board of a kindergarten. There was a public debate about whether kindergartens should have computers or not. The kindergarten I had my kids in thought not, for good reasons. When talking to the other parents, with some those reasons clicked immediately. But many were simply not able to digest them. They were stuck thinking about their own situation as parents and the fact that their children were using tablets at home. Big parenting identity crisis, no constructive discussion possible.

gnrlst 4y ago

Judging by his comment, he has close to 600K-1M+ SEK in savings. He's anything but "dirt-poorish"

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Fascinating article and reactions to it. I think it cuts to the Core of the difference between being poor and being desperate. It also provides an Outsiders opinion on materialism and motivation as it relates to society at Large. It also scratches the surface of what it means to be a parent, and the relative value of materially providing for children versus teaching values and skills.