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On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

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Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#321

Post by beaner »

syops wrote: post #214
throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

I very much enjoyed reading your post. You made a statement that, taken literally, I disagree with and wonder if you care to elaborate more on it. I made it and you can too. It seems to me that luck plays a huge role in each success story like yours. My wife had a similar trajectory and makes quite a bit of money. However, along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way. She's…

If it came down to hundreds of decisions along the way, not just one or two, that isn't luck. She's a good decision maker.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#322

Post by ed25519FUUU »

busterarm wrote: post #216
throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

Fellow former-poor here. It's the kind of thing that casts a shadow over your whole life. And in this industry, nobody is comfortable talking about it. Most of the people I work with graduated from school as guaranteed millionaires. I hear things get said by people that are so far from the orbit of my reality and I cringe. Reading the article was really eye opening for me because I hadn't thought of all of the life s…

> And in this industry, nobody is comfortable talking about it. Most of the people I work with graduated from school as guaranteed millionaires.

This is surprising to me. I’m also a former poor. A lot of people I work with in tech come from generally “normal” backgrounds. Middle to lower class (in excluding h1b and green card holders). It just turned out for them that their passion and hobby (computers) ended up being a great career.

Now things are probably different for younger generations now that the secret is out about P90 software salaries.

Good thing I got in while they were still taking nobodies.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#323

Post by chrisseaton »

offtop5 wrote: post #146

The part about cars is pretty spot on, I'm upper middle class and I've been able to save so much money by getting rid of my car. On the low end you're going to hit 300 to 500 dollars a month for the privilege of driving. The problem here is America simply isn't built for public transit. But since cars are a status symbol, people still go down to Toyota, or Honda and as long as they can make that first down payment th…

> On the low end you're going to hit 300 to 500 dollars a month for the privilege of driving.

How is maintaining a car costing you so much?

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#324

Post by [deleted] »

sql_monkey wrote: post #41
mudita wrote: post #29

I was poor for some time after deciding to quit my computer science phd for a career in art. I guess I still am compared to others, but it does not feel that way any more. When I was really poor, worrying about money and how to pay the next rent was a regular source of stress for me, which took quite a lot of emotional energy. Now I still have much lower income than people, who have regular well-paying jobs, but I do…

Thank you for sharing. Your comment highlights something important I believe when talking about poverty. One common argument against any type of government help is that poor people should just work harder and pull themselves by the bootstrap. However the situation you describe above shows the many side-effects of being poor which impede life in general: lack of proper sleep (because you live in a noisy area with no o…

[deleted]

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#325

Post by SN76477 »

throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

Thank you for your story I can relate. I grew up with out enough, and now I am terrified of spending money.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#326

Post by jinjin2 »

syops wrote: post #214
throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

I very much enjoyed reading your post. You made a statement that, taken literally, I disagree with and wonder if you care to elaborate more on it. I made it and you can too. It seems to me that luck plays a huge role in each success story like yours. My wife had a similar trajectory and makes quite a bit of money. However, along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way. She's…

> along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way.

And probably and equal amount of decisions that could have turned out better.

So rather than being the result of one or two lucky or unlucky events, the final outcome is more likely to be the average of the quality of all the decisions over time.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#327

Post by Aunche »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #99
Aunche wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value is relative to the labor pool. If you hired me to inject vaccines instead of a nurse, after some light training I might be able to stop 40 people from dying every week rather than 50. That doesn't mean I would be 80% valuable as a nurse. I'd be providing negative value because there are plenty of nurses who are also willing to do the same job. Also, if you consider class action lawsuits as overall positive valu…

By “negative value“ I mean “the world would be better off if nobody did that”, not “negative relative to the counterfactual where you didn't do it”. The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed… unless we have some variety of UBI, but regardless, that's no longer capitalism; it's an inverse job auction. > Also, if you consider class action law…

>The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed

Why not? How could an economy function if it were based on real value as opposed to relative value? Farmers and water treatment engineers would all be billionaires and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers and learning about water treatment. If you drive a truck of medical supplies, you'd make millions, but if you drive a truck of consumer goods, you'd make very little, despite doing the same work.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#328

Post by cwp »

burlesona wrote: post #167

This is a great write-up, and as someone who spent time being poor-ish, it really resonated. What I realized from my own life experience: the US sawed the bottom rungs off the ladder in the 1950s when it suburbanized. There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area, and virtually every societal problem we deal with either stems from this or is made worse by it. Then the healthc…

I noticed this after spending time in developing countries. They are set up much better for being poor. Trivial example: you can go into a pharmacy and buy two aspirin. Some people can't afford 100 at a time, and don't need that many anyway.

Or rent: you can get a place to live for only $60/month. There's no running water, but it's clean and dry and it has a lock on the door. The cheapest place you can find in the US is a lot nicer, but also much more expensive.

Buses have no route maps, no shelters and no doors. They might not come to a complete stop when they pick you up. But you can ride for 25¢.

The US has a kind of minimum standard of living, but it comes with a minimum cost of living. If you can't afford that, you end up with nothing.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#329

Post by nickelcitymario »

I completely relate to this. I was raised in a middle-class family. My parents worked their way through school. Our first homes were in social housing (or co-ops... I honestly have no idea whether they were publicly funded or not). Then a tiny apartment. Then a house in a tiny town way up north -- the only place they could both find work.

It paid off for them. They retired comfortably. But it took a lot of work to get there.

I took every advantage for granted and didn't leverage any of it. Didn't go to school, didn't develop my social network. Had kids in my early 20s. By the time I realized I was poor (and broke!), I was way over my head and working near-minimum-wage jobs. It just caught me off guard.

But once my kids showed up, I realized I needed to do better and changed things. I'm pushing 40 and have finally reached the point where I've cross the income threshold. I'm still not rich, and I've got money problems like everyone else, but I'm no longer wondering if I can pay my utilities bill. I have a mortgage, not rent. I have a reasonably decent vehicle that I can afford to take to a mechanic twice a year for basic maintenance.

And the result is that life is WAY less stressful. I rarely worry about the basic necessities anymore, and instead get to worry about the future, like whether my kids will be able to go to college. But it was a struggle and a half to get to this point. (Even buying a house was only viable because it was cheaper than renting a place big enough for my whole family. It required some financial ninjutsu to pull off.)

That small house and a Toyota Corolla? Absolutely freaking outstanding.

Now I get to complain about things like "I really don't feel like going to work today" instead of "I really don't have gas money to make it to work today".

TL;DR: I experienced both a lower and middle class childhood, then due entirely to my own life choices, experienced both of them all over again. I agree with the author. There really is a threshold, a tipping point, when it comes to income. Below that threshold, it feels like the entire economy is against you. Above that threshold, I wouldn't say the economy is working FOR me, but I at least feel like I'm a part of it.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#330

Post by II2II »

dionidium wrote: post #249
syops wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much enjoyed reading your post. You made a statement that, taken literally, I disagree with and wonder if you care to elaborate more on it. I made it and you can too. It seems to me that luck plays a huge role in each success story like yours. My wife had a similar trajectory and makes quite a bit of money. However, along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way. She's…

Of course luck plays a factor in everything everybody does. The question isn't whether luck plays a role; it's how much salience it deserves. This person made hundreds of good choices across decades to achieve the success they have, so it seems a bit perverse to focus instead on the hundreds of things outside their control.

Luck was not mentioned to diminish what the person has accomplished. It was intended to point out that their story may be difficult to replicate.
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