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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

#681

Post by Bukhmanizer »

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…

> Anyway, people think I'm 'privileged' now because I earn a lot of money, but they have no idea that I used to sleep on the floor and eat in soup lines.

> I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone.

These two statements are so irritatingly bland and dismissive.

> Anyway, people think I'm 'privileged' now

Yeah, so if people look at you and say "that person probably grew up in a nice home with good parents", that is a privilege. Boo-hoo, middle-class people accept you and think you belong within their social tier. The fact that you're afraid your co-workers will know that you grew up poor is proof of how much of a privilege it is.

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

#682

Post by nitrogen »

grumple wrote: post #583
nitrogen wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

someone I knew at the company Sounds fortunate. This is one aspect where I too have been "lucky" in the past, but you have to be both lucky and good.

I think the key is looking at the opportunities that you have, whatever they may be, and putting in the work to take advantage of them. I have hundreds of friends who are relatively poor and who have many opportunities they don’t take. For example, I’ve offered to give free guidance or instruction to many, but it turns out most people don’t want to take advantage of that. I told people I could hire them (into the ver…

Definitely agree that it's frustrating to offer to teach someone to code or something, and they act like "Who the F are you to think you can teach me?" or "Nah, seems boring" but then they turn around and resent you for your success.

Some of the advice I wish friends would take is this: accept help wherever you can get it, as long as it won't distort your relationship or create an untenable dependency.

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

#683

Post by overlords »

criticaljudge wrote: post #608
dv_dt wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused by this. The comment is against taking care of lazy people directly, but also hits on government spending which would be the way to make direct personal care of lazy people indirect. As to the infinite money - we have more than enough productive capacity to supply basics of life to everyone without trying to somehow further weigh if their laziness needs to be punitively motivated for basic living suppor…

I was replying to an absolute statement, "every lazy person deserves x". My point is that there are probably more aspects to consider in general. Your claims that we have "more than enough" are unproven, imo. Let's take housing. Is your claim that there is enough good housing around for everybody, or that it could be built quickly? How quickly - how many houses are needed, by your estimate? How many building workers…

Do they need to be typical houses?

About 10 million cars are produced in the USA every year. An RV/Trailer type thing is like a car - so quite easily you could imagine producing that many of these 'tiny houses' every year with car style factories.

About 600k people are homeless in the USA. That's about equal to the number of RV's produced every year.

So that solves 'physical' homelessness quite quickly if there was an effort to. (that disregards that some homeless choose to homeless out of mental illness etc)

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

#684

Post by andi999 »

newswasboring wrote: post #292
jbluepolarbear wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not so much luck, but perseverance. I have a similar poor upbringing and I have built a pretty comfortable life by never letting myself get too down and always keep working towards a better life. Being smart helps, but really the best thing that works for me is being okay with failure. When you’re poor you fail a lot, being able to take that failure and learn from it separates the successful and the unsu…

See you are disregarding all the luck a person had while being born in the right side of the world. I would say being born in the first world, even if poor, is a huge privilege which large parts of the world can't get. You win that lottery, and you already have a huge leg up. Now I don't want to convert this thread into misery olympics, all sadness is valid if felt genuinely and just because you are privilege in one…

Actually most of the third world has been progressing as well (with exceptions of course)

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

#686

Post by pokot0 »

dnautics wrote: post #404
pokot0 wrote: post #381

European pro life tip: if you make 200.000/yr don't let anyone lend you money. Buy your car cash, no cc debt. Mortgage would be the only exception. I honestly find it crazy how most american are ok with living on someone else money and pay the interests just to have a current year car...

is it crazy? If you can get terms on low enough interest rate and long enough time horizon (aka, you're rich) it's not a bad choice because you are (safely) gambling that your earnings potential will go up over time, in both real and nominal terms, letting the cost of the debt decrease over time. Moreover, the opportunity cost of that cash not being invested and used for purchases is real.

You assume people are investing that money. What I see is people having a lifestyle that is only possible with lended money. Those are expenses and not investments and put you in a position where a minor change in your expected income growth will deeply affect your lifestyle.

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

#688

Post by ip26 »

Aeolun wrote: post #367
commandlinefan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What in gods name could they be spending $70k a year on?! They hire a private teacher for every student?

I don't know MIT but my first reaction is that number probably does include room & board, which in a college town might be $20k a year.

$50k a year in tuition is still not a bargain, of course.

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

#689

Post by andi999 »

dionidium wrote: post #385
II2II wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck was not mentioned to diminish what the person has accomplished. It was intended to point out that their story may be difficult to replicate.

I think this is backwards and the opening lines of Anna Karenina get it right. It's "bad luck" that you should look out for, but every (moderate [0]) success story sounds more or less the same. (Said yet another way, success isn't the result of good luck, but it does require the avoidance of bad luck.) [0] We're talking about routine success here, not Elon Musk. We're talking about avoiding poverty, not going to Mars…

I also goes the other way. I see people making bad decisions which might lead to poverty.
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