“Money is pretty much everything you think about.”
Recently Reddit user u / 192335 asked people to share what others in general “do not understand to be poor. ”Here are some of the top-rated responses:
Note: Answers have been edited for length and / or clarity.
1.
“Being poor is exhausting. It’s exhausting, mentally and physically, and sometimes everyone needs to win. Sometimes that victory is about finding a way to afford a meal or a movie. Yes, you have. bills to pay, but everyone needs a breath of fresh air sometimes. A struggle needs a break once in a while. “
2.
“Money is pretty much everything you think about. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but not having money certainly buys constant anxiety.”
3.
“It takes two to three times longer to get anywhere on the bus than in your own car. It means leaving for work earlier and coming home later. In many places, buses do not run as often on weekends. the bus just means taking what you can carry, which means going more often, which means more time wasted waiting. “
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4.
“If you have a bank account you will probably have to pay a monthly fee because your balance is too low. If you overdraft they charge you $ 35 more even though they can see you have nothing in it.”
5.
“Fear. Fear of something unexpected you haven’t budgeted for. Fear of being knocked on the door by a debt collector. Fear of having to choose which of your children can eat more of it. once today. The fear of having to choose which days you are hungry so that your children can eat at all. “
6.
“You can have a job and still be poor. You can have a job where you earn $ 1,000 per month, but if your rent is $ 600 to $ 700 per month, you are spending over $ 100 on food (assuming you don’t have to take any medication or something similar), your bills, your auto insurance (if you have a car) and gasoline for your car, what do you do with what’s left after that? You can’t do nothing.
7.
“Everything you buy has interest because you are NOT using that money to pay off debts that you probably have. “
8.
“When we save money, something happens that forces us to use that money we had saved, which sets off a cycle that is hard to break.”
9.
“When you were a kid, boredom. All my friends had interests. BMX, hunting, ninja stuff, action figures and video games. And their parents encouraged their interests and provided funds to develop their skills. hobby / sports. I had some stuff too, but never had the kind of ongoing investment to pursue something like a hobby or an interest. Everything was second-hand, hacked, hacked, to half functional, etc. “
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ten.
“Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you automatically get social assistance. You can earn a little more than the line and still be poor. My mom only earned $ 1,000 a month, but it was still too much to get on welfare.
11.
“Being physically safe is a luxury, not a given. It can be dangerous not to be conscious for a few hours. When you are homeless and sleeping somewhere, you don’t think about tomorrow, you think, “What if I wake up and there’s a knife in my face?”
12.
“That the poor cannot take advantage of sales or wholesale purchases. They literally spend whatever they earn on basic necessities. Being poor is a vicious cycle, and it takes a lot of sacrifice to get out of it, if ever.
13.
“We can’t be trendy minimalists. We don’t let go of most of our stuff because, yes, we might need it in the future, and we’d rather not buy it again.”
14.
“90% of the time you can’t fail or make a bad / bad decision. If you do, it will take years and years to get over it.”
15.
“Having to move constantly because your job requires it or because the rent got too high. One to two years is how long I would stay in a house as a kid. I never bothered with it. friends, because I knew I wasn’t going to be around them for over a year or so. “
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16.
“I can’t just ‘quit my job’ to ‘find something better’. Interviews take time that I don’t have. I can’t just skip work to go to interviews.
17.
“Good, healthy food is expensive after the bills, and cheap food makes you feel like crap.”
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18.
And finally, “Poverty is not just bad decisions – poverty is an ENVIRONMENT. These are bad roads. It is poor city and county governance. It is a lack of generational wealth. C It’s a lack of access to a grocery store, a doctor, a bank lender, a dentist, plumbers or electricians, a lawyer, a school, a parking lot, both financially and geophysically. It’s desperation in your landscape to through forgotten and abandoned buildings that once housed businesses and families, now left to rot, while you are too much Watching others struggle while you yourself are unable to help, because you cannot not keep your head above water either. “
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