My spouse and I regularly sit down and go over the budget, and we do ask each other “do you really need this? Can we cut this?” Having another person spot-check you helps keep you from bleeding to death from small cuts. It’s another way to keep track, the two of us going over our finances with a fine-tooth comb.
Things have loosened up sufficiently that we each have an “allowance” each week that we can spend without having to account for it - maybe buying lunch instead of yet another sandwich from home, or a book to read, or something of the sort. Interesting, though - about half the time it goes unspent for either of us, resulting in a small stash. So once in awhile I can take him out to a movie with my saved up “allowance”, or he takes me out to dinner with his. The goody is the reward for self-discipline.
A lot of it is just being mindful of when you spend money. Too many people buy the morning Starbuck’s automatically, without thinking. If they actually started to think about it they might decided they’d rather have the money/lose the calories and if they made it a special occasion instead of a daily thing they’d appreciate it more.
How does a prohibition against stove or oven use get issued and enforced? Is it just sis being a little over protective and saying hey don’t use this any more or else I won’t bring food over, old-fashioned property law (e.g. the stove in the home doesn’t belong to him and he can be charged with unauthorized use of property), or is there some type of legal structure in place to issue an order of no stove use under penalty of catapult? Btw, how can I get a prohibition order made against my brother from making those awful pot roasts again?
Also rather than not having that fear, there are people who have never lived without that fear. How many times have I encouraged someone to just pay the damn bill off and scrunt (an English term) for the month. It’s only when you’ve done this you realise how that debt was weighing over you. Many people have never lived without owing this and that here and there.
My dog food costs around $US18 per month but since the dogs double as a security service / peace of mind providers they are a huge saving.
IDK how you could totally enforce something like this, but his doctors told him not to use either, because it’s not safe for him to do so. It goes without saying that he isn’t allowed to drive either.
I understand what you’re saying, and good for you for helping, but the guy paying for a motel each night isn’t making bad choices, he’s making the ONLY choice (well actually I’d probably try to be full-on homeless and try to save my money instead of flushing 98% of my income on a motel each night, but I haven’t been in the situation so who knows). Anyone in that situation is utterly screwed and IMO was not a good example of poor people “poor choices”, of which I’ve personally made many (if I could travel back in time to 19/20 and life coach myself I’d probably be making 10-15k more per year conservatively right now, but what are you gonna do… no one ever taught me so much as how to pay a bill or plan out my paychecks ahead of time so I knew what bills to pay when.)
By far, the best book I’ve read about the poor was American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. Apparently, I am not alone in my admiration for this book, as is expressed in this review.
It has been almost a decade since I read it, so all of the details are not fresh in my mind, but at the time it really struck me and so many things suddenly made sense. There were a number of points in the Cracked article which reminded me of the book.
One person upstream in this thread pointed out how when one person they knew was trying to get out of poverty, then a bunch of others would show up to borrow money and such. Another post talked about people moving somewhere without cash, with the expectation of finding help. DeParle makes the point in his book that the three sisters did something similar. There was a constant juggling of money, of needing more and not having enough so they would have to get it from where they could.
It does seem that the OP simply wants to dump on poor people who are buying the wrong things. Fair enough. There are plenty of them and you will find not a few people responsible for their own misery. Are some people stupid? Yes, certainly. But be honest enough to not be asking for an explanation that you have no interest in hearing. Or open a Pit tread.
As a society of fellow humans, though, not taking the time to study and understand the decision making process shared by many of the poor seems shortsighted to me. Do I have all the answers? Of course not, but I believe that it is possible to gain a better understanding of identifying points which sometimes can be addressed.
Like most other issues in life, when you start to actually study something, it’s not a simple black and white issue (no pun intended, although race can be one factor in poverty).
The problem for many appears to be far more complex than simply “poor people spend X amount of money too much a month on non-essentials and if they could only see this, they would no longer be poor.” Again, there are people who make really stupid decisions and this would be the best advice for them, but this is not the case for the entire socio-economic class.
Nor is it a matter of all of them being forced by circumstances to remain poor in spite of everything they do. There is a middle ground somewhere.
The fact is that a family needs $X to survive. Fair or unfair that is how life is. There are some people that make $X and they spend all of their money on survival but there are other people (the people I brought up in the OP) that make more yet because or choices to spend money on non-necessities, they have less than $X and complain they are broke. They tend to play the victim card and want pity but when an opportunity come up to apply for a better job that they have a chance of getting, they find an excuse to not apply or they find ways to spend money they have on movies or an expensive new car but not on gas the last three days of the month to get to work. The first group are poor because they don’t have the chance to not be poor. The second group are poor because they choose to be.
And there is that scolding tone again, which is seen over and over, as if those of us who are speaking in less than contemptuous terms of the poor somehow don’t know that there are people who make shitty decisions. We know that.
To sum things up from my perspective:
A lot of those people making bad decisions were never taught how to make good ones nor do they have the knowledge base to make good ones.
Not all poor people fall into this category, and those making wise decisions for their situations are more common than most people know or want to believe.
And yes, there are people who know better but make bad decisions. However, saying they “choose” to remain poor implies a more conscious decision than I think actually takes place in their head. I’ve never met anyone who woke up one morning and said “Hey, that poverty thing sounds great! I’m going to be poor!”
Those behaviors are hardly exclusive to the poor- they happen at all socioeconomic levels. The problem is, poor people don’t have that financial buffer of larger incomes that causes most middle class people who behave like that to only suffer the consequences later in life when it comes time to retire and they have no retirement savings, or inadequate retirement savings. The problem is that with the poor, a bad decision about how to spend $25 dollars is a critical one that may have longer reaching effects, while with a middle class person, it takes quite a few to really be an issue. That’s why so many people in this thread are harping on the decision making and future planning- those are literally the ONLY way people are going to get out of poverty. No external force is going to do it- it has to be an internal motivation and behavior change, and it takes more sacrifice than a lot of people are willing to do
I also think the only reason people aren’t more pissed off about insolvent elderly people is a lack of connecting the dots over time- they see kindly old grandparent types who are broke and having to work, and don’t connect behavior in their 30s and 40s with their current unfortunate state. After all, they cost at least as much as the poor, and probably more in the long haul.
And there is that scolding tone again, which is seen over and over, as if those of us who are speaking in less than contemptuous terms of the poor somehow don’t know that there are people who make shitty decisions. We know that.
To sum things up from my perspective:
A lot of those people making bad decisions were never taught how to make good ones nor do they have the knowledge base to make good ones.
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There is a complex psychology at work that goes beyond similistic “poor people are poor because they made bad decisions”. Poor people seem to develop a learned helplessness where even if you showed them how to make good decisions, or even made them for them, they often resist them.
From literature I’ve read by people like Malcolm Gladwell and from my own annecdotal observations, kids who grow up affluent develop a sense of entitlement and learn to assert themselves. In extreme negative cases, this can result in being spoiled, but in smaller doses, these kids learn that they can achieve goals and push back when they feel they are being treated unfairly.
Kids who grow up poor often don’t learn this. They learn to do what they are told and to never make waves, otherwise their boss might fire them. Sometimes this leads to resentment and anger, causing them to rebel by turning to drugs, alchohol, crime and other self-destructuve behavior.
In other words, poor people learn growing up that they have little control over their lives and thus make no effort to change it while rich people learn they can achieve their goals with hard work.
So, yes. It’s more than just “poor people make bad decisions”. They are often unaware of the options or even that there is a decision to be made.
Very true, although I’m not sure it’s about affluence, more about parenting and self-worth. The company I work for employs casual workers, they are paid pretty much ad hoc. One girl (actually a friend of mine, I got her the job, so I laughed when she came in for her check - she hadn’t even thought of asking me for it) calls the boss and says ‘I’m coming tomorrow for my check’ - he writes the check. Almost all the rest call me and say ‘When are the checks going to be ready?’ All I can say is, ‘He hasn’t given me any checks yet, I’ll put a note on the bosses desk, but if you call him directly, maybe you’d get a better response.’
It occurs to me that that system of family members always expecting that they can get help from each other and in turn that they must always help out when asked must be a major disincentive to making the kind of delayed gratification decisions some of us are asking the poor to make.
It’s not that Poor Person Joe can’t see that if he [scrimped and saved by not buying/spending that would bring pleasure right now] that he’d end up with [big amount of money] that would allow him to invest in [something costly that saves money in the long run.] It’s that he knows it doesn’t work that way for him.
That extra hundred bucks he laid his hands on? He can buy a nice shirt, take a girl to a movie and get the extra big tub of popcorn, have a nice night hanging out in the bar, buy a new game, whatever. A whole slew of things that he’d enjoy doing/having, and he’ll have at least the memory of having that fun – plus maybe that shirt or game will still be around – afterwards.
If he virtuously tucks the money into the bank, maybe to save up for a better car, he knows that soon Aunt Mary is going to need money for her rent or she and her three kids will be homeless, and is he really going to be stern enough to say, “Can’t help you” when he actually has money squirreled away?
Telling someone that the way to go is to delay gratification only works if they will actually get that bigger payoff later on for their sacrifices.
His choice is spend it on fun stuff now OR give it to someone else later.
I think this is very true. One thing that I had to learn, and that took me a lot time to pick up, was how to act as if I feel like I belong in places of success- top schools, interviews for good jobs, happy hours with notable people, etc. And it’s more than just projecting confidence. It’s about learning how to ask for what you want in these settings. I realized that the people around me never even questioned that path- the just glided along it as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and they had never even considered that they might not succeed. I had to do a pretty big mental shift to take on the same attitude. For example, one thing I did in grad school was go to every occasion I could find that called for me to wear a suit, just so I could feel as comfortable and natural as possible in one.
When I went to undergrad, I vastly undershot the level of school I could have attended. I attended a solid, but not at all prestigious, state university. Looking back, I absolutely could have attended a school with some name power. This is a pretty common situation for high-achieving low-income students, and is strongly associated with higher drop out rates. Low income students are more likely to stay in school and achieve in school when they go to the most competitive school they can get in to.
I didn’t make that mistake applying for grad schools, but it was a huge mental hurdle to get over the idea that yes, I did have some business applying to top-tier schools.
People, even dumb people, like to believe they are rational human beings who make good decisions. It is a natural reflex to defend one’s actions and be resistant to change.
And also, if you have an inferiority complex–which I’m thinking a lot of poor people probably suffer from, to varying degrees–it is especially difficulty to admit you are doing the “wrong” thing. You already feel like it’s climbing Mt. Everest to do all the things you manage to do–keep the kids fed, show up to work on time, keep the house from burning down, etc. And then, here comes some Well-Intentioned Busy Body dropping in to criticize and judge…as if your accomplishments mean nothing. Being able to accept criticism requires a good deal of self-esteem.
If a rich person, a person who has never had to walk in my shoes or live my life, were to give me a bunch of unsolicited advice about how I could improve my situation, I know I would be defensive and resistant.
Everyone, except for the actually crazy, are indeed rational human being who make what seems like the best decision based on the information available at the time. This doesn’t necessarily translate into good decisions, but nobody just throws darts to decide their lives.
> Low income students are more likely to stay in school and achieve in school
> when they go to the most competitive school they can get in to.
An article from Slate magazine about that very subject:
I have an essay I wrote shortly after that appeared that I submitted to Slate about why it’s even more difficult than that article indicates for very smart kids from low-income families to apply to, to get admitted to, and to make it through a top college. (I didn’t even get an acknowledgement from Slate, let alone get it published.) I can send it to anyone who wants to read it.
I suspect that the degree and nature of family help is going to have different results depending on what the family wants and asks for help with. Take, for instance, a well-off family that cuts the kids out at 18, vs one that helps them get an education. I had a sibling stay with me rent-free for a 9-month job search. I was closer to the prospective work, and it worked out splendidly. Maybe the difference is in helping family members get a leg up vs constantly yanking them out of disaster.
Looking to family is a great insurance policy, and so a great adaptation to being poor. However, it can also have the effect of preventing someone from being not-poor.
Being not-poor requires the ability to accumulate reserves. If you have a large and needy extended family, there is simply no way to accumulate such reserves, because there is always going to be someone who immediately needs money to face a legitimate crisis.
Their immediate needs are always going to outweigh your rather vague ‘need money for a reserve, to invest in various ways to escape poverty’. So doing your duty by your extended family can keep you poor (but keeps building a social network or reciprocal obligations that makes that poverty survivable).
This is why decisions that make perfect sense as adaptations to being poor, can in fact have the undesired effect of keeping you poor.
And if the boss tells them to hit the road if they don’t like it, or just tells them to hit the road for being a PITA, it’s not that big a deal. They have the safety net of savings, or other connections to find a job, or family who can and will help them out. That job isn’t the only thing between them and having the lights/heat/water turned off, or being homeless, or not being able to eat. They can take risks like pushing back that the poor can’t take, because the stakes aren’t nearly so high for them.
That’s why I was the designated pusher-back at my last job. I was the only one who could survive a span between jobs without huge financial repercussions. Everyone else was usually too scared to speak up and say “No, that’s unreasonable/unethical/illegal.” They felt like they had no viable options except to keep their heads down, their eyes front, and eat whatever helping of shit the boss served up.
they are a huge saving.