On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by ThrustVectoring » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #374

I think the biggest threat to poor people, would be the ridiculous housing market. It's not just in big expensive cities, it's pretty much everywhere. Only places that are being spared, are those in destitute areas with some serious emigration problems - but those things happen for a reason (no work). In my country (Norway), the housing market has appreciated around 5.5% ANNUALLY, compared to annual wage increase of…

> Having been raised by a poor-ish single mother, I can remember that at least in the 80s/90s, there was a lot less debt around. At least here, credit cards and consumer debt wasn't being handed out like free candy, back then. You had to rely on your salary, and then either get help from family/friends, or the welfare office. My mother had too much pride for that, even though my dads side were loaded.

> These days, it seems like poor people are also getting trapped in debt. Everything is driven by debt, and every bill you fall behind on, is compounded by some fee, which is applied the second you're overdue.

This all is a side-effect of the one-two punch of aging demographics and switching from pay-as-you-go to defined-contribution retirement schemes. Every debt is someone else's asset, so if the market is demanding more assets, interest rates will fall until asset values rise, debt loads increase, and the market clears.

The situation is just cursed, IMHO. If you want to ease conditions, you have to reduce the payments various debtors and tenants make to asset-holders, which is ultimately infeasible on the grounds of impoverishing retirees and ruining pension funds. If you use government spending on this, you either raise taxes or foist off the problem to public borrowing and/or inflation. At the end of the day, the real goods and services that the working public produces but does not consume is the same size as the real goods and services that the non-working public consumes but does not produce; at best you can redistribute spending within these demographics.

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

#532

Post by throw0932439 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

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…

Just want to say I hate the "yeah but luck"/"yeah but you're still privileged because x" going on in the comments and I found your comment inspiring, in case you ever doubt it.

I'm poor, but not extreme poverty poor only because I'm "lucky" that I've had my parents be able to support me. I have several health problems which border on being disabilities (for which actually getting support would be very hard). Without my parents I'd probably be dead. My goal isn't even not being poor just self-sufficient. Of course I'm grateful for having them and how hard they've worked to get where they are now, but anyone pointing out this "luck" anytime I try to comment about my experiences pisses me off to no end. Do you think I don't ponder how much worse off I could be? Will dwelling on that even more than usual help me or anyone like me? No. It already depresses me enough as it is. What helps is hearing that other people have managed to improve their lives too (I also look at ways I could apply what they did). The worse part is when people say it in a way that dismisses all effort on my part (which is how it's usually put even if the people writing it don't realize it). As if, because statistically there are people at my level with worse/better luck that somehow should mean anything to me. I'd rather some ignorant rich person complain about being "poor" than that sort of thinking. If I had put in no effort I would probably still be stuck at home, in pain, probably suicidal.

I can't speak for people in extreme poverty, but I can't imagine "well, you got the short end of the stick" helps them in any way. I would say, yeah, you got the short end of the stick, but even more because of that, if you don't try to dig yourself out, no one is going to come do it for you. You'll fail, again and again and again probably. It's not your fault, and yeah, it's not fair. But if you give up there is not even the chance of getting out.

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

#533

Post by bobitsaboy » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #355

kingnothing wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

$1200 a year insurance? Seems a huge amount! Is this one of those things where it's for some reason more expensive for poor people?

You think $100/mo for car insurance is expensive? The average car insurance rate is apparently $133, but I personally know it's not very hard to hit more than $100 (even on an older model car) if you want more than liability.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/insurance/car-insurance-basi...

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

#534

Post by ajkjk » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #470

bsanr2 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liberal approach is to subsidize to maintain that base level, because of an awareness that the social outcomes tend to pay dividends in higher social unity, better health, etc. Some people would rather pay for private security than for policy that makes muggings less likely, I suppose.

Is this what California, San Francisco, or New York do?

Not really, yet.

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

#535

Post by Barracoon » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #497

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…

>There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area This just isn't true. The majority of the US has cheap housing. The person who wrote the article lives in Pheonix where you can get houses for 200k or under. Like this perfectly good 3 bed 2 br for 200k: https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/8520-W-Palm-Ln-85037/unit-... Housing costs are out of control in a handful of places in the…

The author of the submitted article spent multiple paragraphs describing how it is not pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty, so if you want to maybe write a long form explaining how to effectively and realistically do so for people in this situation, that’d be great.

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

#536

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

benhurmarcel wrote: post #408

technofiend wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go read The Millionaire Next Door. You'll see that there are plenty of people like yourself who remain frugal after managing to pull themselves out of poverty. I'm suggesting the book to both validate your behavior but also give you some examples so you can perhaps moderate it if you still feel that's needed. I can give a single example from my life: my uncle managed to snag a liquor distributorship after WW II. It w…

I really didn't like that book, for me it missed the point entirely. For the entire length it discusses how you accumulate more wealth by not spending it, but it never discussed why you would be accumulating all that wealth. People want to be millionaires, not to stare at 7 digits on a webpage, but for the lifestyle it affords. This book just assumes the end goal is the number on a bank account.

> People want to be millionaires, not to stare at 7 digits on a webpage, but for the lifestyle it affords

Some do. Others do not.

My boss makes ~300k a year base. He drives a ten year old Golf, carries zero debt, and plans his (very infrequent) meals out around "which restaurant is running a 'kids eat free' special today?"

His goal is to build up a sizeable savings, retire and live off interest, and provide generational wealth for each of his children.

One of his peers makes ~300k a year base and enjoys driving a Ferrari that costs more than my house. Different strokes for different folks :)

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

#537

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

bobitsaboy wrote: post #533

chrisseaton wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1200 a year insurance? Seems a huge amount! Is this one of those things where it's for some reason more expensive for poor people?

You think $100/mo for car insurance is expensive? The average car insurance rate is apparently $133, but I personally know it's not very hard to hit more than $100 (even on an older model car) if you want more than liability. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/insurance/car-insurance-basi...

> You think $100/mo for car insurance is expensive?

Definitely! Mine is $500/year for full coverage in the UK.

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

#538

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

I very rarely read long Hacker News articles to the end. This one is fascinating.

A few years ago I watched a Netflix series about extreme cheapskates. (I think it was called "Extreme Cheapskates.") The thing that struck me were the older "cheapskates" who realized the kind of economics in this article. They retired young and follow many of the same habits described in this article, and are totally happy.

One guy bikes everywhere and only eats weird cuts of meat and fish that no one else wants. Then he scrounges loose change in parking lots to pay for his "vacations." Another family only buys "expired but good" food and has a creative way to replace toilet paper. They got into the habit when they needed to get out of debt and just decided that they'd rather put their money elsewhere.

The series made me NEVER complain about money again, even while I was unemployed during the pandemic.

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

#539

Post by pmiller2 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #411

sologoub wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

If you read "you can do it" as encouragement to others in the same situation, it's a good thing. When you read it as a justification for why we shouldn't expand the social net, it's pretty terrible. No one is trying to belittle OP's accomplishments, but "I did it and you can too" sounds like a line from an anti-welfare politician so it shouldn't be surprising that many people take issue with it.

Agreed. "It can be done" would be a more appropriate phrasing, IMO. I dug myself out of worse circumstances than OP described, but it took a lot of luck, persistence, and a good amount of risk taking to get there. I guess it helped that I was at a point where I didn't have much to lose, so, risk taking seemed less risky than staying where I was.

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

#540

Post by bzbarsky » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #187

cableshaft wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the US healthcare system basically means you have to be a multimillionaire when you've retired if you want to have any semblance of a comfortable retirement, because any serious injury or health issue (which will happen at some point) will do a damn good job of sucking up most or all of that money away super fast. If you're younger at least you might get lucky with GoFundMe "insurance", but that requires your st…

I thought everybody over 65 in the US got free national healthcare?

Medicare is reasonably cheap (assuming you paid Medicare taxes for at least 7.5 years; if you did not, it's at least $471/month). To be clear, "relatively cheap" is "at least $148.50/month; more if you have more income during retirement".

But past the premiums, there are deductibles, coinsurance (e.g. for hospital stays longer than 60 days), you still have to pay for medicines (how much varies), etc. See https://www.medicare.gov/your-medicare-costs/medicare-costs-... and the links from it for details.