Don’t bother, y’all. Just don’t.
You’re right, but fundamentally, blaming the “food desert” for that is putting the cart before the horse. If what you say is true, the “food desert” is a symptom of something else, not a cause of anything.
I’d agree, but put it slightly differently: the well-off are much less vulnerable to sudden economic disasters or one-time bad decisions, but they are just as vulnerable to long-term bad planning.
No matter how much one earns, running a negative balance sheet is going to ruin you. It may be that a well off person can, as you say, “get away with it” for a long time - because they have access to better credit, and maybe assets against which to borrow; that just means that they can get deeper into debt.
What differs is that the reasons for being financially imprudent tend to be less understandable or condonable, the better off you are. If you are well off, you are that much more likely to be able to meet basic needs and even real emergencies without debt.
I am well off myself and so are many I know. Some of them, as I’ve remarked elsewhere, live paycheque to paycheque even though by any rational estimate they are well off - because they spend everything as fast as it comes in. They live with the same precariousness as if they were poor, even though they are not, because for whatever reason they simply never learned the necessity of growing and maintaining a surplus and living below their means. That comes from putting different values on stuff - these folks value having the symbols of success - like the nice house full of expensive furnishings and electronic toys, and two leased luxury cars - over financial security. On an upper middle class income, in an expensive city like mine, one can have either the one or the other but generally not both unless you are truly wealthy, and many people choose the former.
The price is that everything is leased and mortgaged and line-of-credited, and large percentages of each paycheque go towards financing payments - and god help them if interest rates go up.
As Fox News so helpfully pointed out, 99% of poor households have access to a fridge, and 98% have a stove and oven.
In terms of tools and knowledge, this is exactly the type of personal investment that a poor person should be making. You can’t buy shares of Berkshire Hathaway, but you can save up to get pots and pans, and put time into learning skills that will pay dividends down the line.
First, what does access to a fridge mean? If it’s in their own apartment, they can use it easily, if it’s some communal fridge for several families, then it would be difficult to store your fresh fruits and vegetables there. Second, I didn’t realize 98% of Americans have a stove and oven; I looked for statistics, but could only find statistics about microwave ovens.
And it’s true, people should save up to get pots and pans and learn to cook, but I don’t blame them for not doing it. Other posters have said why it’s hard for poor people to save. I would think most money saved would go to urgent expenses, like transportation or health care costs. And it can be hard to learn to cook well even when you have time and resources. I’ve known many middle-class people who have made resolutions to cook at home more often, and given up after awhile because it was a pain. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of working class do the same, or see how much trouble it will be and just don’t start in the first place.
[QUOTE=Broomstick]
Actually, for a lot of people not being among the top 10% (or 1%) DOES make you a loser.
[/quote]
Yeah well you try living in New York City on hundreds of thousands a year.
This is sort of the point. A person with tight finances has so much to gain from incremental reductions in day to day spending. For a person who is raiding the couch for enough money to pay a bill at the end of the month, cutting out $10 a week in food cost is a big deal.
Middle class people have enough money to trade money for convenience. For the poor, making that tradeoff makes them even more poor.
I don’t know, maybe I’m an anomaly.
Like most north American families, mine NEVER discussed money. From the way they behaved, we were not well off.
However, I guess I should have clued in when my dad’s all but antique car died 6 months after he bought it, and my step-mother made him buy a Jaguar. Mind you, they drove that until it fell apart and the underside rust made it uncertifiable, 15 years later. (The odometer rolled over and I my dad asked “Is that 200,000 or 300,000?” and he replied “I don’t remember”.) My dad was such a cheapskate my step-mother would tease him about grabbing his suitcases and rushing into the hotel so he would not have to tip a bellboy. My step-mother, on the hother hand, was not going to spend her trust-fund income on the children of her husband’s ex and wasn’t going to allow him to spend too much either.
I earned every cent I had myself, caddying and delivering newspapers. I earned my college tuition myself - and residence, working 32 hours a week while going to college.
So maybe my experience is the opposite of the poverty mentality - I thought I was poor while I stuffed my money into the bank and was terrified about ending up in debt. There was college to pay for, and then I planned to return to college to finish my degree, then when that was done - OK, I bought a house for cheap, but I don’t want any more debt yet…
So I would buy the cheapest of everything. When I did finally buy a car, it was the cheapest new Honda Civic you could get - not even a radio. Don’t buy $60 dress shirts or pants when the same can be had at Sears (later, at Walmart) for under $30. When I needed furniture the first time, it was a sofa and chair at a garage sale for $20.
One of my friends gave me some good advice later. “First class only costs about 50% more”. (Obviously not thinking of airline travel). You can get really nice stuff for usually about 50% more than basic. Don’t go hog wild, but the nice stuff usually looks and feels better than the el cheapo crap - in the long run, a better deal. “If you want it, are going to make good use of it, and enjoy it, and can afford it - it’s money well spent.”
My current philosophy is that there’s a nice balance between saving it all, and dying in grubby clothes with a massive bank balance, and being perpetually broke barely making payments. I’ve known so many people who make a decent income, but they have to have that new snowmobile or fishing boat every few years, new truck every 3 years, and never seem to get ahead. I still ry to avoid taking n new debt.
I remember talking to a hiring officer for a heavy industry about the people wandering into town with absolutely nothing, and going from the hiring office to the welfare office to get an advance while they wait for a job and the first paycheque - becase they have absolutely nothing and a family to feed.
I said I couldn’t live like that, not knowing where the next meal comes from. His reply - these people are exactly the opposite, they have been in this position over and over, and… someone provides. Someone always comes through. The welfare department of local government finds them housing, gives them food vouchers, even rounds up furniture; or else the local churches pitch in.
the school I attended had a quite a few Chinese students who studied like hell and worked at the same time and achieved the best marks in the school. I attributed this to growing up in Hong Kong before they came over - live in a third world country and you see the difference between poverty and money, between working hard and working smart (preferrably both!).
Here in North America, the poor get the same whether they try or not. As the story above about the air conditioner shows, it can be hard just to try to change your life. The cynic in me sometimes thinks the welfare system does not WANT you to escape since their cushy civil service jobs depend on the poor being there is sufficient volume; plus there is an power trip for some in telling you what to do.
Five per cent of what? The amount of the advance, or 5%. Five per cent sounds about right as a fee for just cashing a check. An actual advance is likely going to involve some ridiculously high interest rate.
Oh you’d be surprised. There are companies that specialize in “emerging credit” customers, and offer cards with things like $99 annual fees, monthly maintenance fees, 30+ APRs, and more. I worked for a normal megabank and I once had a client call in desperate to make a payment over the phone because she forgot to mail it in & it was due tomorrow. Then she got upset when I couldn’t take a money order over the phone. :smack: She didn’t “use banks”, but somehow managed to have a higher credit score & credit line than me.
I can only speak to California and Washington states, but it’s actually illegal to rent apartments that don’t have a working stove and a refrigerator in them. Each unit must have their own private refrigerator and stove. (And if it breaks, the landlord must either fix it within 24 hours or provide alternative accommodations).
You’d only have a shared appliance in something not classified as an apartment or home - dorms, boarding houses, and hotels for example. Or if you have multiple families sharing a single house or apartment.
Not necessarily. Saving $10 a week gets you $520 extra dollar a year. What are you going to get for that? Half a college credit? A used car that takes you ten years to save for?
Is it actually worth grinding it out day after day, yet after year, living down the bare bone for an amount that is actually unlikely to make a noticeable difference and certainly not going to make a permanent change? Isn’t it a better investment to do something that will make your life a little better everyday- and maybe free up sometime to help the kids with their homework or look for a better job? Isn’t making life better what its all about in the end?
The well off can do the “You can save for a down payment by cutting the morning latte” thing because they have a 4.00 morning latte to cut. Cutting out the .50 coffee isn’t going to have the same effect.
The issue isn’t totally what you would go out and buy for your $500, it is also how unsafe you are lacking even $500 as a reserve in the bank.
Well… the OP asked for the thinking that makes people poor, and you’ve certainly nailed it. This kind of thinking is exactly why they stay poor.
If you got off work at six and put the kid to bed by eight, would you spend that two hours:
A: Shopping for, prepping, cooking, and cleaning up after a meal using inexpensive whole food ingredients, while kiddo watches TV
B: Open up a can of peas and throw in some fishsticks, and spend the rest of the time helping kiddo with her homework?
Would $42 extra dollars a month make you change your mind? Yes, the poor can’t afford to trade time for money. But everything takes longer when you are poor (seriously, everything. How much of your life have you spent at laundromats?) and it’s not like the poor get a few extra hours in their day. Something has to give.
My mom worked in exactly that role when I was a kid: Her title was Public Assistance Specialist at the Florida Department of Children and Families. I think describing the job as “cushy” is being generous at best, outrageously wrong at worst. If you simply don’t care about people I suppose it’s a white collar job with okay pay and good benefits. But Mom was a lifelong liberal, and that job was stressful as hell on her. She hated seeing legitimately needy people getting insufficient assistance from the government (but was, obviously, unable to do anything about it), and she hated having to deal with the inevitable assholes gaming the system instead of actually trying to be productive members of society. Add to that a raft of bureaucracy and it’s not a pleasant experience. But it was pretty clear that nothing would make her happier than getting people the hell out of that system, either because it would mean one fewer needy family, or one fewer lazy asshole she had to deal with.
So, suffice it to say that, at least at the low levels, I would strongly disagree with an assessment that the welfare system is there solely as the means to some privileged existence for the people who work there. For some? Sure, there are assholes everywhere. But assholes are generally an unusually visible minority no matter where you look.
But then you have to clean up the dishes and wash the pan…:smack:
C: Put a roast/chicken and some vegetables in the crockpot* before I leave for work. Don’t let kiddo watch TV until you and they have worked together to set the table, wash the dishes, take out the trash and finish the homework.
But I guess my parents just didn’t love me. 
- Or you can do even better: On Sunday, pre-cook several meals that can be frozen or refrigerated and re-heated with minimal effort. Bonus points if you cook a large chunk of meat and incorporate it (and the drippings) into multiple meals Example: a turkey is sliced meat one night, drippings for soup base the next night, chunks of meat in a pot pie the third night. More bonus points if you buy several turkeys at Thanksgiving at $0.25/lb and freeze them for use throughout the year. Example 2: crock-pot a whole pork shoulder ($1/lb if you watch the sales, $2 if you don’t) and do BBQ sandwiches one night, pulled pork tacos the next (ingredients: pork, cabbage, hot sauce, tortillas) and pork with gravy the next. Example 3: crock-pot a bunch of pinto beans (or other bean of your choice). Do beans and cornbread one night, bean burritos the next and pasta e fagioli the third.
I’m tempted to go off on a tangent about how I hate, hate, hate Rachel Ray in this context, but we may already be on a tangent as it is. Let’s just say that I can do in half the effort and half the cost meals that are twice as good.
You cannot relate to the poor but I bet you can relate to yourself. Think about something you’ve wanted in your life; maybe you wanted to play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, maybe you want to be a billionaire playboy that builds a superhero suit to fight crime. All the wishing in the world won’t make it true if you simply do not have the ability/resources to make it happen. The Poor are just like you! They don’t have the resources or skills necessary to thrive at a middle class level; you don’t have the ability to get yourself to the billionaire level. Do you think of yourself as a failure, as a drag on society, as scum?
The poor also do something wealthier individuals do, namely try and “take advantage” of the system as best as they can. You might deride them for this even as you take the mortgage interest deduction or accept a subsidized college education. There is the notion that the poor are poor ‘cuz they just don’t want to work or make continually poor choices. Maybe that is so. Maybe they have fallen into a trap and don’t know how to get out of it. If we could place one of you comfortable people in that spot you probably believe you would climb right out. However, other people have made a better life for themselves than you can ever dream of. Why aren’t you doing as well as them? You should just try harder, you should not spend on those little things that make life nicer, you should work 100 hours a week to try and grow your billion dollar dream. Maybe you’ll succeed. Or could it be that you don’t have the talent to be Bill Gates/Lebron James?
Is this true? Is this a fairly new law? When I was apartment-hunting in San Fernando Valley (part of Los Angeles) in 2004, I sure saw a lot of apartments without refrigerators. And these were real apartments in apartment buildings, not just backyard guest houses and converted garages and storage sheds. (Well, there were those too.)
Can you cite me a law I can pull in case I ever have to deal with that kind of shite again?
Maybe not in a moral or philosophical sense: I agree that we shouldn’t encourage the mindset that lack of top-ranking financial success makes you worthless or despicable.
But come on. In a very real and practical sense, capitalist competition means that lots of people are losing all the time. Hopefully their losses will mostly be short-term and they’ll have some kind of safety net to cushion the fall, but they are losing.
They’re losing a job, or they’re losing their business, or they’re losing important clients, or they’re losing their savings, or they’re losing money on their investment, or they’re losing their house, etc. The constant “creative destruction” of capitalism means that the rules are always being rewritten in some form or other, and on every change somebody loses out in some way.
Now of course the idea is that in the long run, this constant adaptation makes markets more efficient and frees up room in the economy for new successful ventures. But in the long run, we’re all dead. In the short run, somebody is always walking away from the latest mutation more financially insecure than they used to be.
njtt is quite right that this is a fundamental part of how the system operates. Capitalism is not just a happy bunny garden where we all continually maximize our achievement but some admirable people are able to maximize theirs further than the rest of us. It’s a state of perpetual instability in which every shift means that somebody somewhere is taking a real hit in the prosperity.