I sometimes wonder if I’m too comforatble…my basic wants are taken care of, and I can afford most of the necessities of life. What leads me to ask this question: many great men appear to have LIKED “living on the edge”. Take the great architect, Frank Llloyd Wright-he was COSNTANTLY in debt. In fact, he related (in his autobiography -“TESTAMENT”)that once he collected a large commisiion, and paid off all of his creditors. What did he do? He (Wright) went out and bought:
-a new grand piano, and-several new suits
-toys for his children
When asked why he plunged into debt again, he told his friends that he “needed to stay sharp-having debts made him work harder and appreciate life’s challenges more”!
Do any of you feel this way? Should I shedmy comfortable/boring lifestyle and plunge into debt?
Why would you want to go into debt? I have less than $10K in debt, and could pay it off if necessary but since it’s interest free I’ll hang onto my cash for now. The thought of being too deep in debt scares me and I guess that’s from childhood experience. The only debts that I couldn’t cash out are my auto loan and my mortgage.
I have never been really poor or homeless, but there were some years when I was a kid that we were on the verge and believe me those years weren’t any fun. My parents were in debt, not because it was keeping them “sharp”, but because it was keeping a roof (however humble) over our heads and a jalopy out in the driveway. My dad, an electrical mechanic layed-off from a large aerospace company, worked nights as a janitor in a grocery store and sold Fuller Brush products during the day. My mother worked at a rose nursery for minimum wage. When my dad went back to work and things got better, they paid off all of the creditors and didn’t go into debt for anything other than a new car. The only debts they had were a mortgage and an auto loan. They saved and paid cash for anything else they wanted.
Yes.
On a totally unrelated note, I could really use a plasmascreen TV for christmas. 
Was it Gertrude Stein who said, “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, and rich is better”?
Only rich people sit around and wonder about stupid stuff like this.
There is NOTHING fun about being poor and/or in debt. Are you outta your MIND?
What can possibly be “passionate” about having a stack of bills every month and not enough money to pay them, despite your best efforts?
I’d better stop before this becomes a pit …
I haven’t been rich, but I’ve been everywhere from poor to comfortably affluent. Having struggled financially unquestionably makes my present affluence sweeter. But I’m not going back by choice, noway nohow. Gertrude Stein was right.
I recently had a similar conversation with a female friend. She had just read O Henry’s The gift of the Magi. She felt that the sacrifices that the two made for each other was terribly romantic. I asked her if my gift to her was less of a show of affection because I can afford the money I spent. She felt that in some intangible way, it was.
No. Being broke is depressing, and I, personally, can’t write or compose when I’m depressed.
Not being able to pay the bills causes me more anxiety than the average person, since I have GAD, and the anxiety often trips over into panic and/or paranoia.
When I have enough money to take care of not only the basics, but to also afford a few creature comforts, then I can relax, and that disposes me to creating. Just last weekend, CuriousCanuck was up to do some marathon work with me on our musical. If I had been broke, there wouldn’t have been enough coffee or cigarettes to sustain us both. 
Well, when I was about-to-be-evicted no-phone-almost-no-power poor, it made me learn to appreciate everything much more. Like having food.
Or after I got out of poverty:
Not having to worry about when I’d eat next.
Finally buying my first new pair of pants in a year.
Going out for a meal.
Paying bills on time.
Snack foods.
Going out to see a movie.
Vacations.
So, for me, AFTER I stopped being poor, life became sweeter. A lot of things other people take for granted make me feel really good. Like not oweing the electric folks $300, or paying rent on time.
Would I be poor again?
Damn, I hope not.
If by passionate, you mean bitter, angry, envious, and depressed…then yes.
I think having had the experience of being poor or hungry in the past does make a person appreciate the good times more, of course.
I have to go with the majority here. I’ve been broke and hungry before and the only redeeming thing about it was when the situation improved. I hated it. Not having enough money to make ends meet, not having enough energy, being constantly stressed…it was awful. I’d equate it to having a broken leg or a bad case of the flu that lasted several months.
Charles Bukowski has a great quote in Factotum (I think) about that. I’m at work, so I can’t quote it directly, but he basically says that he spent a while eating nothing but one candy bar a day, and wrote nothing but crap. He goes on to talk about how a writer needs a good steak dinner (and because it’s Bukowski, probably some hookers and scotch) to really create something meaningful.
[hijack]I’m probably the last person on earth to realize this, but amazon.com now lets you read the first few pages of most books online. How cool is that? Here’s Factotum.
[/hijack]
I agree with the majority here, that being in debt is not a nice thing. But on the flip side, being in debt/want does give you a fire in your belly to succeed, makes you more focussed to succeed at any costs.
There’s a poverty of threads over in IMHO. I think I’ll donate this one.
Being poor totally sucks, but it’s good to be poor at some point in your life. It helps you appreciate things you might otherwise take for granted. Example: One time I ate nothing but rice with various condiments for three horrible weeks. When I finally had some money for groceries again, a BLT tasted like filet mignon. (Yes, I still like rice.)
Being stony broke also can instill frugality: Now that I make a decent living, I still hardly ever buy things for myself (though I sometimes go overboard on gifts for others), and as a result I’m this close to being totally out of debt. Probably next month I’ll have everything paid off.
It can also work the opposite way, of course: we’ve all heard stories of people who win the lottery and go from the trailer park to the mansion, then end up blowing the money and ending up broke again. Either way, the crunch times can reveal character in ways that simply never have to come up when you live on Easy Street.
But on the flip side, being in debt/want does give you a fire in your belly to succeed, makes you more focussed to succeed at any costs.
Not always.
I think there is only a drive to succeed if you KNOW that you can get out of debt if you work hard.
Sometimes people get so far gone in debt that there is no chance they will EVER get out, barring finding a job that pays several times their present salary. At that point, people just lay down and give up.
I think that if you want to experience poverty and see how it makes you feel, the answer is not to go out and rack up credit card bills. Poor people can’t do that.
Instead, why don’t you simply move to a cheap apartment, and direct deposit a significant amount of your paycheck into a savings account (or, if you want to be serious about this, to charity)? You don’t have to be so poor that you’re starving or can’t afford to have electricity, but just make yourself live simply and see how you like it.
My guess is you won’t. It’s easy to romanticize poverty, but once you get used to the convenience and opportunities that money gives you, it’s hard to go without again. What would you do differently if you lived in a smaller place and didn’t have cable? Write a novel? Invent a better-smelling laundry detergent? Or just sit around and wish you had a bigger place and cable?
I think that if you want to experience poverty and see how it makes you feel, the answer is not to go out and rack up credit card bills. Poor people can’t do that.
Say what?
Poor people do it all the time!!! Lots of them LIVE on credit cards because their income isn’t enough to provide the basics! Charge one up to the limit, get another one. It’s cake.
It is EASY to get a credit card with no income whatsoever. My mother gets about 2 offers a week in the mail for a Visa and she is unemployed. I’m a broke full time college student and I could have a credit card tomorrow if I wanted one.
And ditto to whoever said that being poor does make you appreciate the good things once you get them. Someday I’ll be able to build a brand new house, and there will never be another homeowner more thankful than I am to have central heat and air 
Being poor does give you some passion. Yesterday I spent the evening in a park on a swing, thinking about life and coming up with all sorts of artistic thoughts. I realized it’s something great to not have a big backyard, but to realize that the whole world is your big backyard. It’s a little great to be unemployed and free to spend my day walking around feeling the air. It’s motivating to have so much nothing to do that I spend all my spare time writing and talking with good friends because thats the only stuff that doesn’t cost money. Growing up poor, especially, has given me a resourcefulness and appreciation of the smallest beautiful things in life that is hard to get any other way.
Take clothes, for example. It’s one thing to go to Macy’s and buy a nice looking outfit off the rack. It’s another thing to go to a thrift store, find some cool disparate pieces, do some quick work with needle and thread (and maybe the bedazzler) and come up with something amazing. I grew up doing the later. Thats what I had to do and it became an art of it’s own.
Or food. Yesterday I bought a cremepuff. It only cost a dollar, but it was a dollar I didn’t really have. And I walked halfway across town to get it. And it was the most wonderful thing ever. You just kind get that kind of experience driving to the esperesso store and getting something to go along with your four dollar soy latte. Being poor inspires you to seek out the choicest morsels, to suck everything for what it is worth.
Finally, structurally poor is artistically exciting because it forces you to work in strange jobs, often many of them. It makes you live in loud, exciting neighborhoods and walk long distance and take bus rides with odd people. Your going to come up with more life experiences than if you drive back and forth from the suburbs to your office job for fifty years.
I hope one day I’m not so poor. The downside to poverty comes in when you can’t afford things like toothpaste. I’m hopeing I can convince my mom to buy me some deoderant for Christmas, because I don’t have the five bucks to spare and I really need it. But I’m glad for the lessons I’ve learned from all this and I hope I can maintain the values that poverty has taught me.
Poverty can be romanticized, but it is never romantic. The only poor people I’ve ever known who find any charm in it have rich parents they can fall back on.
I have been poor, and more than anything it was about being tired all the time. I worked at the grocery store from 3am to noon six days a week. I had an infant at home and went to school during the day. I blessedly remember very little of being poor because I was too sleep deprived to accomplish anything of note other than creep towards my degree.
I lived in rural New Hampshire and unlike so many there who are stuck in dead end jobs I had no problem moving. I knew that I couldn’t live like that forever. Trust me poverty has nothing to recommend it.