Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

> Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

> But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

> This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

If you're earning nothing and have no savings, you need crisis mode budgeting.

Think the financial equivalent of malnourishment - you don't want the regular food pyramid, you need an IV drip.

This doesn't actually change ever. The 'best course of action' changes at every level.

Poor people money advice is worthless to rich people too. Lower middle class advice on 'how to save for a home deposit' is completely useless to the wealthy.

Usain Bolt doesn't take advice from the guy running in the park either.

What a terrible way to look at it, making it seem like it’s entirely out of your control and you need outside help just to survive. There’s many examples of people who have climbed out of poverty to middle class, even upper class. I highly doubt they’d spread the advice that being poor is a hopeless disease.

Edit: Anyone want to tell my why I'm apparently so wrong?