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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

#341

Post by newswasboring »

meepmorp wrote: post #309
newswasboring wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh in that case I understand your trauma. But you need to understand that it is trauma and not facts of life. I am, for the past few years, learning how to be happy. I realized that most of my life training has been around learning how to survive because that's how it is where I was born. And because that's all I knew, I thought that was somehow superior. Our media also tries very hard to glamorize "struggling", ther…

>Oh in that case I understand your trauma. But you need to understand that it is trauma and not facts of life. Thank god you now understand their trauma well enough to explain how they don't comprehend reality the right way.

I did not comment upon their trauma at all. Just that I think it is trauma. I have gone through my share of poverty without the first world safety nets. That is what I was talking about.

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

#342

Post by swiley »

cwp wrote: post #328
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…

This is what's ridiculous about much of the zoning and building codes here. People don't want poor people living in sub-optimal housing, so instead they force them to sleep outside or live with abusive people.

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

#343

Post by [deleted] »

Terretta wrote: post #295
sethammons wrote: post #129

> You are also more or less forced to learn to do mechanic work. You are forced to do all your own work, unless the landlord will help. I am no longer poor and broke, but I spent roughly my first three decades there. I recall a colleague saying they were redoing their walk way; it blew my mind they paid someone to do it — the concept of paying someone to do something for you is not something I experienced growing up.…

The article touches on this with “don’t by a spatula from Craigslist”. No matter your income, what you’re really doing is trading time for goods and services, the money is just a token. When “doing your own work”, be mindful of the opportunity cost of your time. What’s your rate versus the handyman’s rate? If you fix the porch, are you less able to pick up that overtime shift? This needs to be genuine trade off, not…

[deleted]

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

#344

Post by sologoub »

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…

As someone who has experienced pretty rough times (different from the OP), but doing just fine myself, of course luck has a lot to do with it, but why in the world so many people feel so compelled to belittle the accomplishment of OP climbing out and then encouraging others to at least hope for the same?

I’m pretty sure things would be very different today if I didn’t have that hope. Don’t take the hope from people even if it’s a long shot.

For all those reading this who are in a bad place financially or otherwise - YOU CAN DO IT! Do not listen to nay sayers and just do your best (or better yet, do even better - you can never really know your own limits/potential unless you try). It’s not a done deal, but is better than the alternative.

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

#345

Post by commandlinefan »

tangjurine wrote: post #228
commandlinefan wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would need to have inherited to feel financially secure It seems ridiculous to most of us, but I can see how it happens. I grew up pretty poor - my father was a police officer and my mother didn't work because she had to watch the four of us. But I graduated with a degree in CS in '95 (if you're thinking about graduating with a degree in CS, try to do it in '95 because that may be the best possible year to do…

The average software engineer makes around 100k. If you have been working for 20+ years, has it been difficult for you to save up enough money for college?

> save up enough money for college

Depends on the college. MIT says to expect to spend ~ $70K/year. $100K * 20 years = 2 million. Two kids * 4 years = $560K. That's a little over 1/4 (before taxes). So yes, it would have been difficult to save up that much money. I have enough to send them both to a public in-state school debt-free, but not an elite private school.

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

#346

Post by dakial1 »

I never was poorish, but thanks to the boyscouts (when I was young) and an NGO I helped that worked with housing in Brazilians slums, I had great in depth exposure to what a poorer life was. And the very first thing to notice is that even if those people live in very modest conditions they still managed to be happy and that is because they had no reference of what a richer life was. Usually their wealth targets were very close to what they had, they were always poor/modest so their reality was that. The greater problem is when people live the wealthier life and makes the the movement to a poorer situation, something that seems to be happening in the US (I don't live there, so I don't have first hand experience). So people who had a taste of a better, more comfortable life, are suffering because of that. That is the reason I live well under what my wealth can pay, it is still considered a mid-upper class but I'm avoiding at all costs the "quality of life trap". If were we (my family) are is comfortable, then all the extra money I get will go to savings) investments to allow us to keep this life as long as possible, not on luxury items or a bigger house/car/TV. Speaking to americans, I get that this is not a mindset that they have.

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

#347

Post by PragmaticPulp »

kungito wrote: post #333
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…

I think this issue is very important and when I think about it I cannot help but think the answer lies all the way down in the question whether we have free will. Some people say "you have to be perseverant like me and you will make it and often time we think about people who have simply cannot be perseverant enough but they are good people. Can they be better "if they wanted it more" or "if someone helped them" and…

> Are they to blame

I think we’ve become so afraid of giving the impression of victim-blaming people who are down on their luck that we’re afraid to acknowledge that people can and do work their way into better life circumstances.

Even if we think of luck as the central determinant of a person’s success in life, then we still have to acknowledge that the person’s own choices and actions will pivot their destiny around that luck. Licking in to a dream job through connections and serendipity doesn’t go very far if someone decides not to put in the effort required to succeed at the job, for example.

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

#348

Post by kingnothing »

chrisseaton wrote: post #323
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?

$100 / month on gas, $200 / month for a car payment, $100 / month for insurance. That's not even accounting for maintenance.

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

#349

Post by iamatworknow »

aembleton wrote: post #205
sethammons wrote: post #163

Queue my first truck. My uncle gave it to me. S-15. The bench seat didn’t lock, it slid forward and back when breaking or accelerating. Hard left hand turn and the keys would fly from the ignition and land on tue floorboard of the passenger seat (this did not turn off the truck). During the same hard left, some electrical thing would connect or un-short and my radio would temporarily turn on until the end of the turn…

Does the US or California not have some sort of annual check to ensure that cars on the road are roadworthy? Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test

New York requires annual car inspections that include emissions testing as well as a basic safety check (tires, brakes, head/signal/brake lights, horn, fluids, and a few other things). They "only" cost $20 but they put a color coded sticker on your windshield that is easily seen by passing cops, who will pull you over if you have the wrong color. Getting the inspection done is a bit of a pain in the ass, too, as because at least for me it would usually require taking at least an hour off of work to drive the car to a garage who could do it. And the garages seemed to often run out of inspection stickers, as they're provided by the state and only allot so many to each garage that does inspections. It was kind of a nightmare in its own way.

And if your car failed inspection, you were obligated to fix it, of course. I knew a lot of people who would postpone the inspection as long as possible and hope they didn't get pulled over. When I was pretty poor I had a car that frequently had its check engine light on (an instant fail for the inspections). It was cheaper to buy an OBD reader online that could reset the check engine light long enough to get the inspection done than it was to fix the problem.

When I moved to Georgia which only does the emissions test (and only in the Atlanta area counties), I was surprised by how quick it was. Perhaps coincidentally, I see many orders of magnitude more cars engulfed in flames on the roads in metro Atlanta than I ever did in New York.

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

#350

Post by offtop5 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #323
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?

Gas and insurance alone can easily hit 300 of you drive enough. Say you keep it at 200, 100$ a month to fix minor things isn't unreasonable. But that assumes you bought a car cash, from my experience people tend to finance cars just because they can't get three or four thousand dollars together at one time. Then you're paying $400 a month
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