The cost of hand-to-mouth living
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Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#2Walmart's CEO talked about this a few years ago—how crowded their stores get around midnight on the last day of the month, because that's when people's payments clear:
about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs, and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when electronic — government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher. And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they’ve been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours — come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason.
That stuck in my mind. It's a poignant image.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/20/watching-walmart-a...
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#3My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#4I was hoping to see some data on how limited funds forced people to buy inefficiently...that is, buying cheaper quantities that are per-item more expensive than bulk buying because they can't afford the up front cost of buying bulk. My roommate will do this when buying dish soap for the household, always getting the smallest bottle than just paying for the large one at a 30% discount per ounce.
Also, some cheap items are disproportionately bad for one's health...if I were poor, it'd be hard to justify buying two apples over a Big Mac, given the calorie per dollar ratios.
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#5My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".
Obligatory Vimes quote:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#6My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".
Obligatory Vimes quote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Thos…
Similarly it's expensive to be disorganized. I have hesitated in the past to buy a quality fall/winter jacket because the risk was too high that I would lose it. I cleaned out some boxes recently and found three low-quality sets of Allen wrenches. If I had bought a nice set, I probably would just have been out more money when I lost them anyway.
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#7There really isn't much to this article. From the title, I thought it was going to discuss the problems that people face when they live paycheck-to-paycheck and/or near the poverty line, which is a story that's been told but bears repeating and further exploration.
Instead, it merely remarks that some US corporations have noticed an upward trend in the number of their customers who are a part of this very predictable cycle (pay/benefits days, usually at the end of the month), and mentions that more "middle-class" are now a part of the cycle.
However, it doesn't delve much deeper than linking it to the recession, and doesn't offer any insights into how these businesses are adapting other than vague references to "big data" (with a hat-trick of references to the term).
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#8My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".
Interestingly, that's a common Norwegian saying ("Det er dyrt a vaere fattig"). My two primary takeaways from it :
1. Don't skimp on quality when necessary.
2. Have empathy for those with less means. Getting out of the rut of low-income swpending patterns is often non-trivial.
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#9My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".
Interestingly, that's a common Norwegian saying ("Det er dyrt a vaere fattig"). My two primary takeaways from it :
1. Don't skimp on quality when necessary.
2. Have empathy for those with less means. Getting out of the rut of low-income swpending patterns is often non-trivial.
Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living
#10My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".
Obligatory Vimes quote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Thos…
That's a great quote, but this all really just boils down to short- versus long-term thinking. When you're poor, your long-term thinking goes out the window in exchange for making it to next week. Getting out of that is hard -- harder than you can imagine until you're in it -- because it's like your long-term thought center just atrophies in survival mode.