How do people end up so poor?

Great Debates
181

We went from bringing in close to $50k to living on $13k per annum (plus $270 per month in food stamps) for the last four years.

Our saving grace is that I had paid off our property with a small inheritance a few years before I was laid off. If I hadn’t done that, I have no idea how we would live on this income.

I had savings that has long since been spent on things that either make us a little money and/or save us money (i.e. used snow plow, wood stove) or on unexpected repairs (well pump and pressure tank), etc.

We also have another huge advantage over most poor in that we have 20 acres, a large garden and heat with wood that we cut ourselves. We have a few chickens and we just started raising a couple of pigs for meat this year (the first one is in the freezer).

However, those advantages are coupled with the fact that the nearest full grocery is 42 miles away and we have to pay for gas and equipment (1964 massey ferguson tractor) maintenance to plow/maintain our land and 3 mile driveway. Plus we still have normal utility bills, property taxes and auto/homeowner’s insurance to pay. $1100 goes fast around here, there is nothing left to “save”.

I drive a 16 year old car with 248,000 miles on it that get 30mpg. SO drives a 1978 ford truck. I got lucky and worked for the Census last year and put new tires on both vehicles and did other needed home/car equipment maintenance with the rest of that “windfall”.

Yes, I have satellite TV (and an old CRT TV) and internet (a must have for the part-time job that brings in $700 per month). I have furniture (that is desperately in need of recovering), a microwave, upright freezer and other niceties the “poor” aren’t supposed to have.

I have no children. I don’t play the lottery. I have a beer maybe twice a month in the summer and I quit smoking two years ago.

We have eaten out once in four years, when the SO was given a gift certificate to the only “restaurant” in town for helping a friend of a friend split firewood.

I don’t buy steak or lobster with food stamps, I buy chicken and ground beef on sale.

The only new clothing I have purchased in four years are underwear and socks. Otherwise, all clothing comes from thrift stores.

I graduated from high school and college, I come from an upper middle class family and I am not stupid, I am just broke.

emacknight seems to think that:

  1. If I just tried harder or worked smarter, this wouldn’t be the case.
  2. As I am poor, I shouldn’t have a freezer (runs up that electric bill dontcha know), a microwave or particularly satellite television.
  3. I should turn off AC that I don’t have or the electric heat that I haven’t used in three years to save money.
  4. The only reason I, or anyone, is poor is through bad choices or outright stupidity.

Bullshit.

I am poor, I do all I can to maximize the money coming in and reduce what goes out. I don’t have savings because there is NOTHING LEFT TO SAVE.

My bills are paid, I have groceries in the house and 1/2 tank of gas in my car. I also have $8.57 in the bank and a handful of pennies and nickels in my purse that have to last until the 5th of October.

I guess I should put that in savings? :rolleyes:

182

Again you dodge the question I posed back in post 125.

I’m not asking you to sell someone they shouldn’t have kids, I’m asking you if you personally think having another is a wise financial decision?

I’m also curious to know if you think smoking is a wise financial decision, but I’d settle for one question answered at this point.

183

You forgot the “live on rice and beans and nothing else” bit, loshan

(Having a garden really helps out a lot! I’m trying to acquire a freezer, as I currently have more vegetables than room, but at least I can trade vegees for favors)

184

Smoking isn’t good for your HEALTH, much less your bank account. Do you think of everything in terms of money and nothing else?

185

Hey, I’ve heard from prominent politicians that it can cost $200,000 per year just to feed your family. No wonder people can’t save any money.

186

Really?

I think you pretty solidly proved my point. You grow vegetables and make use of the land you have available to you in incredibly intelligent ways. How hard/expensive is it to grow some tomatoes? Yet lots of people living at or near poverty choose not to, and instead feel the food bank should provide it to them. I’ve started community gardens in neighbourhoods covered with wasted yard space, sadly most residents didn’t give a shit, and they usually get trashed.

You don’t have AC, and you don’t have electric heat, and you use wood on your lot to heat your house. Is it safe to guess that you take active measures not to waste fuel? I was criticized because I had the audacity to suggest putting plastic on windows, and to turn off lights not being used. It seems you agree that utility bills can be lowered.

A deep freeze is actually an extremely good idea because they’re can be less wasteful than a normal refrigerator, and prevents food spoilage. I personally disagree with buying meat using food stamps, mostly because the meat you’re buying is of such low quality it’s more likely to make you sick. It’s that reason I invested in a meat grinder.

You admit you quit smoking, and don’t drink a lot of alcohol, obviously because of the cost.

You’re doing more with $13k a year than a lot of people with $20k+

187

So you agree that smoking is a bad decision, and probably something a person living in poverty should not do?

“Almost 29 percent of adults with incomes of less than $15,000 are smokers.”

Perhaps you feel they’re entitled to the enjoyment smoking brings? As long as the bills are paid of course.

Poor financial management isn’t just limited to people living in poverty. Lots of high income earners are maxed out and living pay cheque to pay cheque.

188

It has nothing to do with money - smoking is BAD FOR YOU and it’s a poor decision regardless of income. I think it’s a stupid idea no matter how much money you have (or don’t).

189

Nothing else? Can you point to where I said that or are you deliberately misrepresenting what I said? You have it in quotes as if I said it.

If you look at where I mentioned rice and beans, it was in response to a woman eating ramen noodles–deep fried stryofoam devoid of nutrition. Remember what you said about how it’s pointless to buy boots that don’t keep your feet dry? Apply that logic to ramen noodles.

BTW did you look up the vitamin C content of beans yet? How about the vitamin C content of ramen noodles?

190

I must say, I am shocked and appalled that **gonzomax ** would misrepresent what someone wrote. You must have done something wrong.

191

Again, this statement is wrong, perfection is demanded of us all. As in the parking ticket example, failure to read the sign was a simple mistake, but I was punished for not being perfect.

Should I be punished if I can’t/don’t/won’t pay a bill on time? It’s wrong to expect me to be perfect, yet they charge me a late fee.

Imperfection is a luxury, and a very costly one at that.

[QUOTE=Broomstick]
Proportionally, $50 is a much higher percentage of my income than your income. $50 for someone making $100,000 a year is like $500 to me. 6,000 years ago the Code of Hammurabi prescribed fines on a sliding scale based on net worth because folks could figure that out millennia ago.
[/quote]

Are you suggesting that poor people shouldn’t have to pay parking tickets? Keep in mind though, that your net worth may actually be higher than mine, where net worth is in no way the way as annual income.

192

I don’t know where you live, emacknight, but around here people in public housing are not allowed to garden on the property.

This is leaving aside the disabled who can’t manage a garden, and people in high rises who have no access to the space to garden.

I’d happily be an advocate of hydroponic gardening for the poor. I’ve even developed a low-power system that, in collaboration with the other person in my building, lets us have fresh chard, spinach, radishes, and lettuce all winter. Yes, we have to run the grow-lights 14 hours a day, but the nutrient pumps only consume power for 15 minutes 5 times a day (yay, timers!) and also takes advantage of natural light as well, so we don’t need as many grow-lights as we would otherwise. By our calculations the system paid for itself in 4 months. I have an even lower power version that, while not suited to someone who is gone most of the day, would work for someone home pretty much all the time, utilizing muscle power to move the growth solution (my dad came up with that one when I was a kid. Guess who got to supply the motive power :slight_smile: ) Unfortunately, hydroponics has gotten such a bad reputation due to marijuana growing that most of my poor friends won’t go near it, fearing suspicion and harassment. Not entirely unfounded. We’ve been reported twice by neighbors for “suspicious activities, possibly marijuana growing”. Well, my partner in this is buddies with the local sheriff deputy and gave him a tour of the set up before we got everything going, so the local cops know what we’re doing and that we’re legal hobbiests. Damn shame, because hydroponics isn’t that hard, isn’t that expensive, and can make significant improvements in nutrition. And because it’s indoors I lose a lot less to local wildlife and the neighbors (yes, people do sometimes steal out of my garden. Usually the lettuce).

The cost of running the lights 14 hours a day (they’re also on a timer) is less per month than buying a couple pounds of equivalent vegetables per month, particularly in winter when things are out of season, so we come out ahead as far as I can see.

Or do they not give a shit because the gardens get trashed and they get nothing for their efforts?

Me and a couple other people tried to get a community garden started in a nearby city and the city demanded a insurance policy in case someone got hurt - no one had the money for the yearly premium, so no garden. Seriously, the premium was in the four digits. Hey, we’re poor! We ain’t got the money for that!

I am working with some people I know at a local trailer park to plan some vegetables for next year, but their space is extremely limited and far from ideal. The management won’t let vegetables be planted along any road, or at the front of the trailers, so they only have small spaces at the back to use. I think we can sneak some “Bright Lights” chard along the front of the trailers and pass them off as ornamentals (which you can just happen to eat) but most things, nope, no vegetables recognizable as vegetables allowed.

You can buy any quality meat with foodstamps - personally, I buy higher quality and only eat meat 2-3 times a week rather than buying garbage, but hey, whatever. If I didn’t use my foodstamps for meat, though, we’d eat no meat at all. I’m not allowed to hunt in my area - I can get a permit to carry a concealed gun, oddly enough, but I"m not allowed to hunt. :rolleyes: Whatever.

What gave you the idea that on foodstamps you can only buy meat of such low quality it makes you sick? The food police aren’t looking over your shoulder when you make your selection.

Of course, if you try to buy LOTS of really expensive stuff your foodstamps won’t last until the end of the month. Most people figure it out pretty quickly. Generally, it only take running out once to do it, hunger being a harsh teacher.

My garden allows me to get my vegetables for “free” which allows me to use my foodstamps to either purchase extra canned goods (that became quite important during last year’s blizzard when we couldn’t get out of the driveway for a week) or buy higher quality food or both. Because I usually don’t use all of them in a month I can also do things to make my life easier once in awhile, like few days two years ago when my spouse was in the hospital, I was working, and being able to afford some frozen dinners I could just pop in the microwave sure made it easier to get everything done AND have time for adequate rest. Or when I worked on a job site that had no power and no water I could purchase items that didn’t require heating, cooling, or preparation that weren’t just junk food.

Really, just about anyone can do that sort of trade-off budgeting. Foodstamps dictate very little about what you can or can’t buy - it has to be food, that’s about it. You get X dollars a month. How you spend them is up to you. If you budget properly you can eat cheap (but healthy) most of the week with enough for a “special” meal once a week or so, something a little more expensive, or a little more fruit, or a convenience meal, or a cake for a special occasion. You can’t do that every day, but you sure can do it once in awhile. If you think about it, that’s the “reward” for learning to manage a food budget. Every so often you get something a little better than average. Having a garden means I get to do it a little more often still.

(By the way - you can purchase vegetable seeds with your foodstamps, which is great because in the spring I can drop $10 or $15 on seeds in the spring and grow enough vegetables to last me nearly all year with that. I haven’t had to buy greens for, oh, 4 years now. And I give lots of them away.)

My only real concern is that I’m not quite sure the allotments are really adequate for active teenagers. I know teenagers - particularly boys - who could eat through my allotment twice as fast as I do. And I’m not talking about fat kids, I’m talking about slender but very active teens.

193

No, I’m saying a sliding scale based on income might be more appropriate. Say… .001% of your annual income per offense. That would be $50 for someone making $50,000 a year. $15 for someone making $15,000. $5,000 for someone making $5 million a year. It’s the same percentage of income for everyone, and arguably equally painful for people of differing incomes.

But hey, if you want to base such a system on net worth, OK, it’s worth thinking about it.

And no, I very much doubt I have greater net worth - when you apply for public benefits you have to have less than $2,500 in assets (actually, the precise number varies with location and program, but it’s a good rule of thumb). If I had, say, a private yacht I’d probably have to sell it before qualifying for benefits. If someone qualifies for aid in the US they probably have very few assets and little net worth. I lived off savings and odd jobs for two years after my layoff before I was poor enough to qualify for foodstamps.

194

What’s wrong with you? Do you really have that hard a time with reading comprehension? I notice you haven’t found where I said, “live on rice and beans and nothing else.” Yet I don’t see an apology.

My point is that SNAP doesn’t provide enough money (that I’m sure you agree with), which means the only *affordable *meat is shit (those little tubes of ground “meat” for a dollar).

Since quality beef starts at $5/lb I don’t see it as good idea in financial or health terms (remember what you said about smoking?) to waste money on shit meat.

Just think how many packets of ramen noodles you could buy with $5!! You could be full all the time, completely malnourished, while at the same time overweight.

195

Actually, you are far from the first to make similar assertions. Some prior threads on the topic.

But hey, if you want to take ownership of the concept, go right ahead.

I never eat ramen by itself. I always combine a package of ramen noodles with a cup of vegetables (usually from the garden out back), sometimes two, egg-drop or leftover protein from a prior meal, and use my own broth instead of the crap in the little foil pack. Granted, the noodle part of the meal is mostly calories, but when I’m working as a manual laborer I need the calories. And I don’t eat it every day.

Ramen is not some evil anti-nutrient. It’s not a complete diet, either. You need to combine it with something else, and definitely eat it in moderation. Of course, you shouldn’t eat anything as a constant thing, you need a varied diet for best health. Some people should stay away from it entirely - my spouse, for example, it really spikes his blood sugar. So I eat it when he’s eating his red beans and rice, which I can’t eat, or when I’m just doing lunch for myself if I’m not eating a plain baked potato or something.

Vitamin C is destroyed by cooking. Quite a few beans are toxic raw. Cooking them sufficiently pretty much destroys all the vitamin C.

Now, green/yellow/wax/other pole beans can be cooked a sufficiently short time as to retain vitamin C, but they don’t keep as well as, say, kidney or great northern beans or lentils - all of which MUST be cooked to be utilized by the body. Lima beans are another exception to the “cook a long time” rule for legumes. That’s about it. Even so, neither the pole beans nor lima beans are particular rich in vitamin C, and again the amount is very dependent on how and how long you cook them. Peas probably also retain usable amount of vitamin C as long as you don’t overcook them.

However, the cans of beans of other sorts we have - frijoles, chickpeas, kidney beans, red beans, etc. - all list ZERO vitamin C on their labels. Clearly, not all beans are equal in this regard. Certainly even when they have vitamin C it’s easily destroyed by over cooking.

Fruits and vegetables are the reliable sources of vitamin C.

Ramen the way I cook it probably has some vitamin C - but that’s because of the vegetables I add, not the noodles which, as we all know, have none.

Alternatively - it might be nice if foodstamps covered the purchase of a multivitamin to make up for any deficiencies in the poor person’s diet. But they don’t.

196

And I very pointedly said I have a huge advantage because I have land. Being poor in a rural area is easier in some respects, harder in others. These things are a hell of a lot harder to do for those in a city or anyone with a physical disability. Raising your own meat, gardening/preserving, and cutting your own firewood are near impossibilities for those people.

I am not poor because I want or chose to be.
I am not lesser than you because I have no savings.
And I certainly don’t need your approval of my methods for managing my poverty. Yeah, I get food stamps and try to spend them wisely. But really, if want to buy nothing but ramen, Twinkies and Mountain Dew with those food stamps, it is frankly none of your business.

And BTW your own cites say that 71% of those people earning less than $15,000 DON’T smoke or play the lottery.

One last note. I don’t have children by choice. But, I can’t be on birth control and I will worry every damn day until I am SURE menopause is done that something snuck by the condom. In the event that happened (knock on wood) I guess that would make me stupid/irresponsible for actually being human and enjoying a sexual relationship with my partner?
Broomstick - I got my freezer (almost brand new) off craigslist for $75…scoooore! :smiley:
Of course, for emack’s gratification, I will say I had to sell a 1/2 cord of my hard won split firewood to pay for it since I only had $5 to my name when I found it.

197

Where the hell are you shopping? I can get decent quality ground beef for $1.99/lb on sale every couple months.

198

I wouldn’t buy a “tube of ground beef” for a dollar, either.

Last time I was at my local butcher beef started at $2.49 a pound. Sometimes they have specials even lower. Granted, round steak isn’t sirloin, but it’s a step up from a “tube of meat”. Their stew beef and roasts are both under $3.00 a pound. Of course, I don’t doubt your reports - I’m sure prices vary in different areas. Chicken is more expensive than beef around here, go figger. So is fish. For some reason beef is the cheap meat around here.

Oh - and we don’t eat an entire steak for dinner. 1 pound of round steak stretches to four servings, or two meals for two people. It goes even further in stew or soup.

Mostly, I look for specials and meat on sale. Around St. Patrick’s Day I can usually get several pounds of corned beef brisket for ridiculously low prices and I freeze what we can’t immediately eat.

And yes, sometimes I can get hot dogs or various types of sausage for stupidly low prices - nothing wrong with hot dogs once in awhile. Just don’t eat them every day.

  1. Trust me, all the poor folks know exactly how much ramen costs!

We get $347 a month in foodstamps at my household. We can afford more than just rice and beans. Or just ramen. Especially with the garden.

199

A few choice words of wisdom from Broomstick:

Seems like you advocate budgeting and responsible money management.

Oddly enough, I tried to say the same thing but was called a condescending jerk. Imagine having the audacity to suggest someone garden, I mean, that’s worse than having to put plastic on windows! Do you really think poor people should have to toil in the dirt like some 18th century peasant?

You know what, misrepresenting people is fun, now I see why you guys do it so much.

200

Nevermind.