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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#581

Post by csomar »

hippo22 wrote: post #545
dwedge wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to avoid being unable to eat. As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up the paperwork. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor owed somewhere around £400…

[flagged]

1. The debtor probably need the motorbike, badly. He probably should have sold it to cover the debt but didn't think of that as an option. Not the smartest choice but again, he's there probably because of another set of similar choices.

2. The parent seems from the UK and I am not sure how things work there. But many auctions are "closed off" in shady ways. In one of the countries I (and some friends) have contemplated going, gangs with knives were putting people off. The gov. employees involved knew about it and do nothing.

> Whenever "the poor" are debated, it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves.

3. Many of the times, they are not exactly bad or lazy people but they might not have made the optimal choices. They should, probably, be penalized for it; but not by completely wrecking their life and sodomizing them for a good many years. Also back to 2, and the parent you are replying to, many times the system is designed to over-screw them in the process.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#582

Post by wiseowise »

wagwang wrote: post #133
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15

I like this guy’s backstory[0]. I grew up in Africa. The poverty I saw, as a child, was foundational in my own personal development. There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes. I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting poverty (with very limited success). They believe that poverty is probably the single biggest problem in the world, to…

My parents grew up poor in manner that is more extreme than anything OP described in the post and they always remind me that its just hard work and grit.

> they always remind me that its just hard work and grit

Copium for poors.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#583

Post by wiseowise »

popcorncowboy wrote: post #362
rustystump wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am normally a knee jerker but i grew up in a big family with very little. Between broke and poor. Almost going to food banks but not quite. This is pretty spot on to what it is like. Even broke, something as simple as a parking ticket is borderline life threatening. Id buy the McDonald’s 1$ drink with free refills and calorie load on that all day reusing the cup. He doesnt touch on the shame of it you feel esp in t…

> He doesnt touch on the shame of it you feel This is the part people who have never experienced it most overlook. The profound, lived-in shame that comes with being poor, and the damage that does over time.

Don’t forget that it will be there forever no matter how many millions you make.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#584

Post by wiseowise »

Aeolun wrote: post #577

I feel like the author tells us that being poor means worrying about problems you can’t fix all the time? Or at least, that you believe you can never fix them? If you don’t have the $300 for the own part repair on your truck, there’s no point in worrying about it. If you truck breaks it breaks, it’s never going to recover unless you think of something else. Complaining that you don’t have $300 for even the home repai…

Yeah, this right here has never been poor.

“Just don’t worry”

“Just pull yourself by your bootstraps”

“Just stop being poor”

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#585

Post by CallMeJim »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #485
CallMeJim wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would you save yearly if you didn't have a dog? A few accumulated years of those savings would let you buy a better-quality drier or washing machine - saving you from replacing them regularly, or replacing your damaged clothes. Pets are a choice that's fairly high up the Maslow hierarchy. Get rid of them, get into a better position, build up some reserves, and leave your family in a better place than you sta…

Dog food is about $30 a week.

$1,360 a year. Use it to buy higher quality goods that will save you more in the long run. Use the ongoing $1,360 a year PLUS the accumulating savings gained from the higher quality goods to repeat at higher levels.

A lot of the discourse about poverty reminds me of this:

> I do occasional work for my hospital’s Addiction Medicine service, and a lot of our conversations go the same way.

> My attending tells a patient trying to quit that she must take a certain pill that will decrease her drug cravings. He says it is mostly covered by insurance, but that there will be a copay of about one hundred dollars a week.

> The patient freaks out. “A hundred dollars a week? There’s no way I can get that much money!”

> My attending asks the patient how much she spends on heroin.

> The patient gives a number like thirty or forty dollars a day, every day.

> My attending notes that this comes out to $210 to $280 dollars a week, and suggests that she quit heroin, take the anti-addiction pill, and make a “profit” of $110.

> At this point the patient always shoots my attending an incredibly dirty look. Like he’s cheating somehow. Just because she has $210 a week to spend on heroin doesn’t mean that after getting rid of that she’d have $210 to spend on medication. Sure, these fancy doctors think they’re so smart, what with their “mathematics” and their “subtracting numbers from other numbers”, but they’re not going to fool her.

> At this point I accept this as a fact of life. Whatever my patients do to get money for drugs – and I don’t want to know – it’s not something they can do to get money to pay for medication, or rehab programs, or whatever else. I don’t even think it’s consciously about them caring less about medication than about drugs, I think that they would be literally unable to summon the motivation necessary to get that kind of cash if it were for anything less desperate than feeding an addiction.

From https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/25/apologia-pro-vita-sua/

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#586

Post by 9rx »

vkou wrote: post #389
9rx wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money, more being able to deal with it immediately.…

> I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile When you have money, you can just buy the thing you need, instead of hoarding five metric tonnes of crap that you'll never use. If you haven't used something in the past 5 years, you can almost certainly toss it.

> When you have money, you can just buy the thing you need

What I need is time. Whereas buying things is stupidly time consuming, running completely counter to what is needed.

I don't have it all. Sometimes I have no choice but to go buy parts when a breakdown occurs, but that's never a welcome experience. You're looking at a good hour or more to source even if it is available locally, and often you have to travel far and wide to find someone who has it in stock. Worse, sometimes the only stock available is on the other side of the world in who knows where, leaving you down for days while you wait for it to show up...

Once someone invents a magical teleporter that can spit out what you need in a split second on demand, then money to spend when you need it becomes more powerful than already having what you need, but we're a long way from seeing that become reality.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#587

Post by s5300 »

9rx wrote: post #283
rectang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Being poor is you already did all those things. You cancelled all your streaming services years ago. You make all your food from scratch all the time. You never go to fucking Starbucks. You fix everything yourself. You already stretch everything to the limit. That is how you have to live every day of your life, for eternity, with no relief in sight.

> You make all your food from scratch all the time. [...] You fix everything yourself. What stands out here is that if someone finds out that you can cook or fix things in my circles, they'll be knocking at your door trying to throw money at you. These are hotly desired skills. Of course, it is conceivable that if your circle is other poor people that can't offer you a good job, you'll never find those opportunities.…

[dead]

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#588

Post by s5300 »

bombcar wrote: post #424
DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people should have Amazon prime because it doubles as fast delivery, and zero other streaming services. Staying in is always going to be cheaper than going out so some entertainment at home is a good idea.

Poor people shouldn't be buying shit on Amazon, nor should they be spending money on Prime. They'd be better off with DVDs from the library. The problem is the same as with dieting; we do know what we need to do but the willpower required is quite high. And the world is engineered to make it hard, because they want to separate us from what money we do have.

[dead]

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#589

Post by duskdozer »

steveBK123 wrote: post #169
ModernMech wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is wondering why solving homelessness and poverty is so hard, this sibling reply is dead but I think people need to see that this opinion exists, and we need to contemplate the richest and most powerful people in this country share this sentiment: "we're not blind to it, half of us are sick of paying for it for multiple generations, accruing interest. we're paying for poor people from 20 years ago still. le…

I often find the loudest voices with this mentality either come from well off families, or were poor enough themselves in childhood to have benefited from the government programs they wish to destroy. The first is ignorance and the second is some sort of self hatred / shame. I rarely hear people that grew up fairly middle class and "made it" looking back at the poor as someone holding them back in this same manner.

>or were poor enough themselves in childhood to have benefited from the government programs they wish to destroy

or, are currently benefiting, but they're just getting what's owed to them, unlike all the other moochers taking handouts

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#590

Post by tjpnz »

merth wrote: post #128
J_McQuade wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the terminology of the article - which I enjoyed and recommend that you read when you get time - these friends of yours are not 'poor', they are 'broke'.

article says broke for temporary, these people poor 10-20 years. that doesnt sounds like temporary. they get government or familiy support, and rarely work short term here and there.

That still doesn't make them poor.
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