Inspired by my post in this thread, I’ve decided to start a thread for those that need assurance that there are people around here that are just as poor as they are. Everywhere in the world there are smart, hard working, honest people who live paycheck to paycheck and can’t seem to get ahead. Well, cheer up. It’s not just you!
I have basically $1.00 to my name right now. I get paid today, but that money is already spent on rent and other bills. The bright side, I have a nice tax return coming that will allow me to pay some stuff off. No big flat screen TV with this return.
Being broke has its advantages. My taxes are ridiculously easy. I did them in 20 minutes on my lunch break this week. No weird forms for capital gains or differed income or oddball deductions. Nope, just some w-2’s. Easy.
Also, it’s a good to use as an excuse when people you don’t like want to go out. “Nah, sorry guys, I’m broked,” works every time. Unless they offer to pay, which is a win-win!
Anyway, be a Charter Member! Post here if you’re broke! There are plenty of other people in the same boat as you! Remember: mo money, mo problems!
I’m not a charter member. I have no clue on how to become a charter member–does it involve more money? I think I should be a charter member based on my good looks alone. See this thread: HeyGoodLooking!
I am poor, but it’s a relative poverty. It’s more like financial insecurity and haphazard work/income. I’m in grad school to become something that makes about 2/3’s LESS than I am making now.
Perhaps I should open an “are you mentally ill when it comes to making sound financial decisions thread of my own…”
It is not what you have, but who you are that is important.
I am as far from poor as I could be. I have a beautiful house (with a chronically late mortgage payment), a beautiful wife (thank God she’s not “Late”, know what I mean?), seven amazing kids between us (4 from her, 3 from me), and everyone of them, including myself are healthy happy and wonderful.
That said, I am among the millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. If I have $1 left at the end of the month then it was a good month. However all things considered I must respectfully decline to become a Charter Member of the Hopelessly Poor at this time. I’m afraid I simply don’t qualify.
I’m poor, but not hopelessly so, just chronically. I own a small retail business. My income fluctuates according to sales each month. Sales have not been as strong as I’d anticipated in the business plan.
A year ago I got married for a second time. We’re still easing slowly into the arena of joint finances, but even though he’s not sitting on piles of money, I do feel less like I’m on the high wire without a net. In the years between the end of my first marriage (and during it, too…we divorced largely because Husband #1 was fiscally irresponsible when he did work, which wasn’t all that often) and my sweet baboo’s arrival on the scene, every month was a squeaker. There was always one more bill than I could pay. It wasn’t always the same bill, but there was always one. I’ve put the check to the electric company in the phone company envelope “accidentally” to buy some time.
When it was just me dealing with finances I was so focused on just making ends meet that I didn’t really have the energy, or the means, to worry about things like savings. Now that I’m with someone with a clue he’s starting to talk about things like mortgages and equity, and retirement accounts, and a 529 college savings account…
I live like I’m poor. My bank account gets down to under $100 each month. But that’s because I throw all of my extra money into paying off loans and credit cards. I am more than able to pay off every bill every month. I could very well have a lot of extra cash if I ignored my credit cards or paid the minimum.
I have a set of financial goals I am trying to reach. All of those goals preclude me from having anything “extra” right now - I eat cheap, all of my furniture is second hand (mostly free), I haven’t bought new clothes in 2 years, I rarely go out, etc etc.
So I don’t know what that means. I tell people all the time that I “can’t afford” things - but that’s because I do not want to spend more credit. It’s not because I don’t make a decent wage or because I am tapped out. I guess if I say I owe more than I have then I am definitely poor. But I do not feel poor - just cheap. Or even better, just getting by right now until I make the jump over the red line into the black.
I don’t feel hopelessly poor, but that’s because I’ve adjusted my expectations. There’s enough to pay the bills and eat, but unless I work more hours (I’m semi-retired), I won’t be able to do some things I’ve wanted to do, like travel, remodel the kitchen, and get my quilt tops professionally finished.
So I’ve decided to try and take a few day trips every summer, keep the kitchen spotlessly clean, and do the quilt tops myself.
But if something goes wrong with the car or the house or one of the pets, I’ll be joining the club.
We also live paycheck to paycheck, but we don’t like to use the word poor, we prefer to use the word broke. Yeah, it’s just a word, I know, but to us, poor connotates more hopelessness. Broke is (or should be, anyway) a more temporary situation.
Plus, as others have stated, while our monetary situation could use a boost, we have an overabundance of love, health and happiness surrounding us with family and friends, so things really aren’t so dire in the big picture.
But we have been broke going on a couple years now so I’m hoping the temporary part of it kicks in soon!!
I try to remain positive about things and enjoy working on ways to penny pinch. I never thought I would be spending so much time in thrift stores and off-brand grocery stores, etc, but it is fun finding a great bargain on something we really need.
This is more or less the idea of my feelings. I don’t make enough money to allow for savings of any kind. I need every dime I get from each paycheck. Unexpected expenses, like my traffic tickets I mentioned in a my GQ thread, are almost impossible to save for. My current job pays half of what my old one did. It’s hard to find good paying jobs in my area. Either you are working for peanuts (like me) or living off a trust fund (like the company’s owners’ kids). There’s not a lot of middle ground. It blows.
I’ll jump in. In fact I am fighting off panic right now because two weeks ago I was fired. My last paycheck was yesterday. I am now unemployed, and uninsured, and scared to death. I could certainly be in a worse position because I rent from my dad, and he is waiving this month’s rent. I have been on several interviews and have two more scheduled, and I could potentially easily make $10K a year more than I was making at my last job (which I hated, btw). But right now I am using my credit card far more than I am comfortable doing.
Due to a recent change in finances, I have gone from broke to desperately poor. I may be looking at homelessness or having to move into a group home.
I am trying to get on eBay to make some cash. I have plenty of collectible toys to sell. I am trying to get my clowning business off the ground. I am having many anxiety attacks.
I’m on a VA disability pension. I’m not broke - I have enough to pay bills, and eat comfortably. Even some for new clothes and the like. But, there’s always that little more that would be nice to have.
I’m a student. I was near broke at the beginning of the year, since then I’ve paid the insurance and rego on my car, plus paid for a service to keep the poor thing going. I just sold all of last year’s textbooks at half price to new first-years in order to buy this year’s textbooks, even though they would have been useful to keep. And I still need several texts which I can’t afford. Practically all my money each week goes to my rent and I’m already working every non-school hour that I can without causing myself to fail. I’m about to get an electricity bill and a water bill which I have no idea how I’d going to pay.
Got a letter the other day to inform me that my rent will be going up shortly. And I think I need to take my cat to the vet, though again I’ve no idea how I’m going to pay for that.
Sigh. Yesterday I had an apple, two pieces of bread and half a tin of soup. I’m saving the other half for tonight.
And I just received a $150 speeding fine. I am so stupid. Coz’ I just had to be going those 7 ks faster than the limit, didn’t I? Oh well, that’ll be a hard feat of stupidity to replicate since I’m not going to be able to afford any petrol for a good while.
It is good to know I’m not alone in the boat of poverty. In about six weeks, it will be my birthday - with any luck all my relatives will send me money instead of gifts which I may have to sell and then feel bad about.
I’ve been in a constant state of freak-out about my finances for about six months.
I’m still adjusting to the fact that my federal retirement pension is nowhere near my former salary. I went on a bit of a buying binge after I sold my house in Chicago and moved to NC, but lately I’ve been reminding myself that I need to watch the spending more carefully. I’m currently renting, but I’ve started looking at houses around here and trying to decide how much of the money I’ve got left from the house sale I can afford to use as a down payment to reduce the amount I’ll be financing, in order to have lower mortgage payments than my current rent.
Of course, there’s always the chance that the Powerball ticket I bought earlier today will be a winner.
I’m a student. I’m not poor, per se, and my parents are paying most of my tuition. Broke, yes, but that’s mostly I was really sick earlier this semester and missed many hours of work, plus I just made a $250 payment for something. I’ve got about $100 to play with right now.
But. I’ve made the ridiculously, abhorrently idiotic decision to go to a very, very expensive college. So when I graduate next year, I’ll have the following to my name: A useless degree that I greatly enjoyed the process of earning, and a net worth of -$65,000, give or take a few thousand. I’m pretty sure that over 60k and no great job prospects qualifies as hopelessly poor.
I’ve always been the girl who saves more when she earns more…and that sounds good but it isn’t. IOW, if I have a couple grand in savings and my bills are paid, I’m a bit stingy and cheap…
But if I have $40 bucks to my name? Total?
Sounds like a bar tab! There’s no difference in my head between $40 bucks and nothing. So why not assume I have nothing?
If this sounds odd…I’ve always had jobs wherein I work for tips, and sometimes I’m in the money and sometimes I’m not. When I make fat cash I try to save it (doesn’t work as well as it should) and when I don’t make fat cash I’m late on my bills and eat macaroni.
At the moment I’m hoping that my next two shifts–tonight and tomorrow–are lucrative enough so that I have a bit of spending cash after the rent and my phone bill. I kinda doubt it though. Looks like a macaroni kinda week.
Am I poor? Hmmm. I drive a Neon, but it’s a late-model Neon dammit. I have a nice apartment (rent shared with my SO) and a cable modem and a cell phone. I would say that I make it work, but do I have “fun money?” Hair money, clothes money, bar tab money? Not in awhile. Not foreseeing it any time soon either.
But honestly, if I feel like I’m “hopelessly poor” because I don’t have “fun money” then I guess I don’t qualify. I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself.
I’ll jump into membership. I SHOULD be doing ok. However, due to a past marriage, bankruptcy, and CC cards, I am always in the red.
I’m slowly doing better and trying to get a jump on the credit cards. I don’t use them, just paying off old debt. Jerky companies have some ridiculous interest rates and a couple refuse to lower them.
I was born into a family that was hopelessly poor, I’m often chronically broke and worrying about the likelihood that I will possibly remain hopelessly poor for the rest of my life is one of my main pastimes. I’m in college and between spending the first two years only taking classes that I could afford to pay for, and then accumulating several scholarships, I’ve been able to keep the amount of student loans low (comparatively speaking, I guess). I just finished paying off my car in January, so I have a little extra money right now that’s not going out immediately for bills, but I’m trying to save that. I’ll more than likely end up paying in on my income taxes this year (since I am technically self-employed) and I’m planning a move which I’d like to have a little financial cushion for. There’s no way that I could afford to move if my brother wasn’t gracious enough to be offering me the use of his couch until I find a job and save up enough for the deposit on an apartment. My car, although paid for, is a complete piece of crap and liable to die any day now. I’m just hoping that it’ll keep running until the end of the semester. I graduate in May with a degree that probably won’t do me much good in today’s job market (English and Women’s Studies, what the hell was I thinking?). If I don’t get accepted into any of the grad schools I applied to I’m going to start working on my Peace Corp application and hope for the best.
I keep telling myself it’ll be okay. I’m not homeless and living out of a car or eating out of food pantries like I did all through childhood. Even if I never manage to pull ahead, I’ve always worked hard enough that I manage to stay afloat somehow. If I could just stop worrying about it all I don’t think I would even mind so much.
Can I join? At three years out of college, I’ve had a string of temp jobs and two that didn’t work out, leaving me more in debt than ever. During my last job, I was earning a ridiculous amount of money, more than I ever did before, and I accidentally “set myself up” to be dependent upon the income- I got a pricier apartment, tried to pay down all my credit cards instead of saving, etc. When that job ended unexpectedly, I got unemployment- and that’s the only thing I’m living on, now, save the fact that monthly rent equals more than the whole month of unemployment together.
I’m planning on breaking the lease next month (which means losing, forever, the $3000+ security deposit I was counting on getting back) and moving back in with my parents for a while. But until then? I’m dependent upon my SO. He buys me food every day and even bought me my yeast infection medicine today (aghh). I’m very depressed about everything. I’d almost rather be on the street than allow anyone else to support me.
