@Helena330 - In a matter of no time I found these. They have many citations at the end as well. If you want to do your own peer reviewed study on this stuff, knock yourself out. I lived it.
https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/213spears.pdf
https://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Papers/BernheimRayYeltekin2.pdf
Most of it tastes like shit if you eat it cold, and either needs cooking facilities or is even less healthy than pizza.
I’ve had periods when I was alternating eating:
noodles with a dash of tomato sauce,
noodles with half a chopped-up slice of ham,
noodles with noodles.
For dinner and lunch, and breakfast would be long-life fruit (apples, bananas, oranges, pears).
But I didn’t have to drag the food around (which would be hell on delicate fruits such as bananas or pears) and I had the means to cook it. And a bed to sleep in. And a toilet, with a shower. Compared with this woman, I was like Paris Hilton compared with me now.
Or to put it another way, “shelf stable” is not always ideal when one doesn’t have a shelf.
Wasn’t really a claim, it was a question. It was only due to your rather questionable editing that changes the meaning of what I said that kinda makes it look like it was. There were two distinct statements that you put together in a way that changes their meaning.
Really? What makes you “hazard a guess” about this? It’s not called the murder capital of the world because they keep crows there.
You mean, given your unsupported assumption that flies in the face of facts?
I think that your attempt to give nefarious motive to my posts is extremely inaccurate.
And what would $50 do to avoid such a fate? She has no ability to use it for that purpose. It will either be the US accepts her asylum status, and she can begin a new life here, or they don’t, and they send her back. Her fate is out of her hands. It is actually more in your hands than in her own.
Your general observations, while not specific to this case, are in a thread that is specific to the case, and you are responding and making points specific to her case.
But, at least you admit that you don’t know enough about her back story to come to a convulsions. Of course, you certainly seem to have enough knowledge to pass judgement upon her actions.
It’s common, that you look at someone else’s misfortune, and you blame them for the choices that they made that got them there, and when you look at your own misfortune, you blame others for putting you into that position.
Right, in your opinion, you would have done what with the money?
Ah, for the “war tax”. Sure, I am certain that if she held onto that $50, and managed to not have it taken from her by ICE agents, or by other detainees, or by others on her transport back to honduras, that that $50 would have gotten the gangs to leave her alone forever.
Who has made such a claim? It may very well be their last chance to eat american food in an american restaurant, but no one has claimed that this is the last chance they ever get to eat. Once they are admitted, they will probably be provided with some sort of food substances while they are detained.
Yes, there is quite a bit of contempt and even bordering on hatred for her. When people act like that, like bullies upon the defenseless, it is a natural reaction for some people to defend those being attacked.
Seems you do.
[quote]
I just think it probably wasn’t the best idea and others seem to practically deify this person like they’re about to be martyred. If they are, then live it up!
['/quote]
Who are these “others”? Please cite the posts that are deifying this person.
When you are in a situation where any money that you have is taken away from you, then yes, you do learn to spend it when you have it. Maybe if she is admitted to the US as an asylum seeker, she and her children can learn fiscal responsibility. If she is sent back, then they likely won’t get the chance.
I think the reason why people are called to defend this woman is that she’s already proven her dedication to her children. She* walked across two countries* to keep them safe. Whether or not you agree with our current immigration policy, whether or not you think she should be deported, it seems indisputable that this is a woman willing to hurt and suffer and sacrifice for her kids. So to imply she’s a shit mother because she feeds them pizza, or that she’s irresponsible because she didn’t save the money, seems obscene. I can think of no greater willingness to assume responsibility for your children than to do what she’s already done. People second-guessing this one moment–and equating it to a merely poor family blowing a weekly paycheck too fast, or spending a tax return on a TV–seem to have no empathy, no understanding about how this situation is not the same as whatever they witnessed in their own lives.
ETA: I guess what I am saying is that considering what she’s done and what she’s been through, it seems incredibly presumptuous for someone on the outside to pass judgment, to feel confident that she made a poor decision and that that poor decision came out of some sort of character flaw.
I eat stuff out of the can all the time. It’s already cooked and it tastes the same. It doesn’t grown vitamins when you cook it so I don’t see how it gets healthier.
Look k9bfriender, I’m not going to go round and round with you. HurricaneDitka already did a good job. You’re going to pick and pick while whining about others pointing out one thing that in our opinion wasn’t a prudent choice, this part of the forum is about opinions, and you seem to think that yours is right and you can somehow win an argument here. I have no such interests. It’s clear that you aren’t going to change my opinion, nor I yours, so we’ll have to agree to disagree. I have other things to do in life. It was semi-interesting because the subject of someone without money blowing through it quickly is something I have experience with. Maybe you do too, maybe you don’t, maybe you feel it’s relevant, maybe you don’t, but I’m not as interested in trying to change your opinion as you seem to be mine.
I would say exactly the opposite - a homeless refugee has an even greater need to save than someone who is only poor.
Everything in her future is uncertain, that is entirely true. Therefore having $20 in your pocket is at least a tiny bit better than having nothing in your pocket for the future.
Even inadequate preparation is better than no preparation.
Regards,
Shodan
My post has an OR you seem to have mistaken for an AND.
While I would not try to insult and diminish you as a poster by mischaracterizing your opinion as “whining” or insinuating that your motive is to win an argument or change an opinion as you have done here, I wasn’t really looking to go round and round either.
I was simply expressing my opinion, as it pertains to my experiences, as well as defending a person that people seem to enjoy attacking because she has no way of defending herself. You are absolutely free to think whatever you like about someone of whom you have the extreme fortune to never have had to walk in their shoes.
But yeah, if people are going to up and attack someone for making the best choice she could see in circumstances not of her own making, then I am going to “pick” at those bullying statements and challenge the derisive contempt that people have for those less fortunate than themselves. You are of course, welcome to your own opinion, you are very set in it, and I have no interest in changing it, on that we certainly can agree. However, that does not mean that I will not challenge your opinion when you publically express it.
I don’t think that’s true. As long as she has money in her pocket, people will expect her to pay to feed her kids. As soon as the money is gone, others will pay to feed her kids.
So if she “saves” the money, it’s gone a few days anyway, and her kids are exactly where they would have been if she’d never had the $50 in the first place.
If she takes them out for a treat, then for the first time in however long–maybe ever–she sees her kids satisfied and happy–and then she’s right back where she was.
The only real problem with that would be the idea that it’s shameful to take charity, so she should stretch out the intervals between taking charity as long as possible. But I can’t agree that taking a little more charity than maybe you strictly had to is really a more unethical choice than denying your kids the chance for a really amazing event after they’ve lost so much–and may lose so much more.
We disagree. It *is *shameful to take charity. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but it is nonetheless.
It is even more shameful to waste the charity you receive as quickly as possible on things you don’t really need so as to qualify for more charity.
There is a difference, in my view between “I spent what you gave me as carefully as I could, but it only lasted a few days. Can I have more? I will try to spend that with equal care” and “I got rid of what you gave me on stuff I didn’t really need, and it didn’t last me an hour. Can I have more? I will try to spend that with equal care”. IYSWIM.
Regards,
Shodan
I do, and in a lot of situations I’d agree with you, but she’s been through hell, and she likely has hell ahead of her. Her opportunities to really see her kids happy are so few and far between that I can’t bring myself to judge her for choosing to indulge them on one of the very, very few chances she’s ever had–and may ever have–to do so. This is not the same as kids who live in first-world poverty. These kids have suffered. These kids have walked across two countries. And she made them do that because, apparently, it seemed like the best odds to keep them safe. If after all that, she’s willing to sacrifice her pride to indulge them a little, who are we to judge? Do you see what I mean?
How far did you lug those cans while pregnant, carrying a toddler, and leading a six-year-old by the hand?
…while physically exhausted, emotionally traumatized and living in an environment where there was a high probability of desperate people attempting to steal any possessions of worth you had including food?
Yes, I see what you mean. I think it is an understandable mistake, but it’s still a mistake.
In a way, it’s like people who win large windfalls in the lottery, and then end up bankrupt in a few years. They have no experience in handling money, and “easy come easy go” is not the path into the middle class, or to stay in the upper. “He who is faithful over little is faithful over much”, and vice versa.
Maybe I am coming across as looking down my nose at her because she doesn’t scrimp and scrape and save every penny. Maybe I am looking down my nose. But if she wants to make it in the USA, she has a much better chance if she acts like the ant and not the grasshopper.
My father taught me how to budget when I was a wee Shodan. First rule is, 10% to the church, 10% to savings, and live on the rest. He did it when he was poor, and when he was rich. I did it when I was poor, and I do it now when I am no longer poor. Budgeting is not a guarantee of reaching the middle class, of course, and nobody can be sure if this woman could have treated her kids on $40 instead of $50 and ended up with $5 in her pocket she would succeed in the US. But it is IMO a better frame of mind.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.
Regards,
Shodan
For all we know, she does have $10 in her pocket. It wasn’t clear that she spent every last dime.
I feel like you are changing your position. First you said she should have saved as much as possible and made it last as long as she could because the future was unpredictable. Then you said she shouldn’t have spent it on anything non-luxurious because that’s inappropriate when you are living on charity. Now you say that $40 on indulgences was fine and appropriate, but she better have $10 to show for it.
I’d buy it as needed so I didn’t have to carry it around.
So, you would pay more for cab fair to drive you to and from the store when you needed to resupply the cans that you can carry with you. That’s prudent.
so now she took a cab through 2 countries?