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Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

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Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#61

Post by Gibbon1 »

bloaf wrote: post #15

The one universal piece of money advice is "Spend less than you earn, and put the difference somewhere that earns interest." Most articles, recognizing this universal truth, go on to propose ways of spending less and saving more efficiently. The author of this piece, having reduced his spending as low as reasonably possible, actually just needs advice on how to earn more.

When I was dead broke that's what I did. Reduced expenses and then focused on bringing in as much cash as I could sustain.

Towards the end of that people on 6th street stopped asking for change and instead would say things like, do you know if check day is Friday or Monday this month. That question was when I realized I needed a new jacket.

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#62

Post by village-idiot »

PeterisP wrote: post #21

This kind of has a very simple point - advice is useful iff your problem is caused by bad choices, and advising to make better choices can help. If your problem is caused by external forces that your choices can't change much, then it's better to devote all your energy to doing stuff instead of looking for advice on how to do stuff better, because there's no silver bullet, you can't do significantly better, and you d…

Also, budgeting and finding ways to save money take time, energy, and skill. The author of this article literally couldn’t afford one of the more popular budgeting apps, You Need a Budget, from the liquid cash they had on hand.

Same goes for saving money by cooking at home. It works, but it takes skill and time. If you’re working 60-80hrs a week then it’s very hard to justify that time expenditure, and triply hard to justify the up front cost of tools and ingredients. $20 for a mediocre kitchen knife is 6-10 McDonald’s meals ($1,$2,$3 menu), putting someone who is already broke deep into the red before seeing any returns.

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#63

Post by RickJWagner »

The author (Talia Jane) has some interesting tweets.

My BS-meter is showing a strong reading after seeing these:

"i’m pretty blindly aggressive against all the manifestations of capitalism so naturally my takeaway is Eliminate The Stock Market: It Is Stupid And Harmful And Archaic And, Perhaps Worst Of All, Boring."

"moisturizing in my 20s like i’m in my 40s with the (pointless) hope i won’t look like i’m in my 50s by the time i hit my 30s"

Here she's offering to help buy some guy a mattress: https://mobile.twitter.com/itsa_talia/status/107409983684723...

Here's she's gone to LA (from New York) for work:

"lemme try this in LA-speak: hey, LA buds! although i’m in town working on a tv project, i’d love to hang out tonight! let me know if you’re interested!"

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#64

Post by icedchai »

seibelj wrote: post #30
ddingus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poor people do not buy $20k Civics. For about half the nations labor force, that purchase could be half a year worth of income. Given housing and other costs, financing that purchase is difficult. What they do is get $500 to $2000 cars. And those do break down frequently. They may or may not have resources, skill and or time to repair them.

A long time ago I worked at a pizza shop as a delivery boy and cook. Multiple coworkers had luxury cars, including one Cadillac sporty sedan. They just seemed to put every possible spare dollar they had towards the most expensive car possible. Made no sense, but buying too much car is a common phenomenon in America.

Blame the banks. If it weren’t easy to get loans, people would live within their means. They wouldn’t have a choice.

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#65

Post by RickJWagner »

RickJWagner wrote: post #63

The author (Talia Jane) has some interesting tweets. My BS-meter is showing a strong reading after seeing these: "i’m pretty blindly aggressive against all the manifestations of capitalism so naturally my takeaway is Eliminate The Stock Market: It Is Stupid And Harmful And Archaic And, Perhaps Worst Of All, Boring." "moisturizing in my 20s like i’m in my 40s with the (pointless) hope i won’t look like i’m in my 50s b…

I'm disappointed someone would down-vote this. Sincerely: Why would you do such a thing?

In my thinking, this author does not seem to be living the life of a poor person trying to save.

If you downvote, please share your point of view. I'd really like to understand.

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#66

Post by RickJWagner »

rfugger wrote: post #7

The real question here is if the author went to college and got a degree, why are they working in sandwich shops? I'm not saying there's not a reasonable explanation for their situation, but any discussion of their particular problem should start there. Obviously there are people who are doing the best they can in a sandwich shop, and those people may need better support than they're getting, but I don't think that's…

The author's Twitter account shows that she flies from New York to LA for television projects.

She's not just a sandwich-shop worker, apparently.

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#67

Post by DanBC »

ddingus wrote: post #18
chrisco255 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that always holds up or is that an unreasonable extrapolation? There are plenty of high dollar products that don't last. And spending $100K on a car isn't going to give you a more affordable or longer lasting vehicle than a $20K Honda Civic. It's far more likely that you can buy a $20K Civic and it will last longer than the luxury vehicle with lower maintenance costs.

The poor people do not buy $20k Civics. For about half the nations labor force, that purchase could be half a year worth of income. Given housing and other costs, financing that purchase is difficult. What they do is get $500 to $2000 cars. And those do break down frequently. They may or may not have resources, skill and or time to repair them.

And those cheap cars are more likely to have faults that police can write tickets for, pushing those poor people into further debt, and then into the criminal justice system because US courts are just weird.

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#68

Post by zozbot123 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #65
RickJWagner wrote: post #63

The author (Talia Jane) has some interesting tweets. My BS-meter is showing a strong reading after seeing these: "i’m pretty blindly aggressive against all the manifestations of capitalism so naturally my takeaway is Eliminate The Stock Market: It Is Stupid And Harmful And Archaic And, Perhaps Worst Of All, Boring." "moisturizing in my 20s like i’m in my 40s with the (pointless) hope i won’t look like i’m in my 50s b…

I'm disappointed someone would down-vote this. Sincerely: Why would you do such a thing? In my thinking, this author does not seem to be living the life of a poor person trying to save. If you downvote, please share your point of view. I'd really like to understand.

I mean, who wouldn't have trouble saving after Eliminating the Stock Market and perhaps "all the manifestations of capitalism"? Because isn't that what capitalism is all about? Saving, and accumulating some capital, some seed corn, so that you don't have to live hand-to-mouth?

Re: Most Money Advice Is Worthless When You’re Poor

#69

Post by username90 »

I have yet to see a poor person blog written by anyone who are actually too poor to save, instead its just people who don't understand how much all the small things they buy actually adds up at the end of the month. In the end you just need a computer (20$ a month over its lifetime) with internet (10$ a month) for most non-physical needs, food is dirt cheap if you just buy the right things (2$ a day so 60$ a month is enough to live healthily) and clothes last a very long time so no need to buy new ones that often (~20$ a month), then you have 40$ a month for random things. That is 150$ a month after rent and transportation, if you got more than that and still can't save you are doing something wrong.

Personally I lived like that for many years, with 350$ rent on 1000$ income and thus saved 500$ a month, after a few years you will have saved a couple of ten thousand dollars. That was enough for me to take time off to learn programming properly without worrying about money, I am now working as a software engineer and make lots of money (not sure how people can find enough important things to spend this much on...) but I hated blogs like this even when I was poor.

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