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

Yeah I think it's still nearly impossible if you're too disabled to work. You can't even get married without losing what meager benefits you have.

> 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?

There's more to it than just the money though, although that's certainly a big factor[0].

There's having control over your environment, being self-reliant, shaping it the way you want it shaped. I don't know about other people but that's really good for my mental health - particularly at the moment.

Other benefits:

- You don't have to go into it with a fully realised vision upfront. I can't do that for interior design - I have to iterate towards something decent.

- Inevitably along the way you encounter unanticipated problems and complexities (much like software development). If you've paid someone a shit-ton of money to sort out your house your only options are to throw more money at the problem or compromise in a way you may not like. If you're doing the work you are generally able to consider more options.

- You don't have to compromise in the way you would if you got somebody to do it for you. If I get somebody to design my bathroom for me then, because I don't and can't know the answers to all the questions up-front, at the very least I'm going to have to live with some of their answers. Those answers might start to wear on me after I've lived with the new room for a time.

- If I screw something up myself or decide I'd prefer it to be different I have zero qualms about undoing my own work, partly because I know I can redo it in the way I want, but also because there's less risk of sunk cost fallacy clouding my thinking.

- On the odd piece of work for which I will need a tradesperson they're not going to be able to take me for a ride.

Working on your own house is a real confidence building exercise that I'd recommend to anyone, and especially those who feel like they have no practical skills, for reasons that go far beyond the financial.

[0] In theory I could afford contractors; in practice I'd have to make sacrifices in other areas where I'd rather not make sacrifices to do it.

I grew up with my sisters in poverty. I didn't eat at a restaurant until I was 14 and paid for it myself. I started baking crackers, biscuits and pancakes that my younger sisters and I would eat for dinner with government peanut butter or cheese when I was 11. Having no utilities was a regular occurrence. Christmas was socks, underwear and a winter coat. Shoes were a touchy subject and I would have to have pretty big holes before they would get replaced. School hot lunch and food drives were awkward.

I decided what I wanted out of life in my mid-twenties and pursued it and now in my 40's I am doing better than I could have ever imagined. Everyone I know who was poor and wanted to better themselves was able to get out of poverty. All 4 of my sisters are middle class or better. Thats 5/5 that succeeded. All my friends across the states I had lived are homeowners and seem happy. All the people I met who bitched and didn't do anything to better themselves are still poor or dead.

I didn't get lucky and neither did my sisters and friends. We each made personal decisions and planned our way out of poverty. It didn't happen over night. A lot of set backs happen and everything is hard. Transportation and unforeseen expenses are the largest hurdles and access to credit is also difficult because of the length of time it takes to repair.

Honestly, I think the role of stuff like this is exaggerated... if you look at real examples. Base level building cost per sqm at the low end is pretty low but..

1 - IRL, especially in urban markets... rental markets tend to have a pattern where not far below median prices, quality falls off a cliff. For every dollar you save, you lose a lot: sqm, finish, location, etc. By about 0.5X median prices, there is often nothing. Conversely, in suburban & rural markets, quality per dollar tends to explode somewhere not far above median.

2 - This is usually less true for owner-occupied or other types of housing.

I think the end of tenement-type housing has as much to do with culture as it has to do with pure economics or building norms. Most of those, originally, had live in owner-operators. It was a way to make housewifing into a business. Apartments didn't really exist yet.

I get your point, but the bursars for those other colleges didn't seem to get the memo that they aren't MIT.

The thing is, MIT's tuition is fairly typical for a private university. If anything, MIT (and other elite private universities) offer better discounts than lower-ranked schools.