I am definitely not a redneck, but I thought of Jeff Foxworthy and his “you know you’re a…” construction, but filled in “kind of low income person” instead when my fridge went kaput on me and I knew I didn’t have the money to get it fixed, but could at least for now use that unheated living room to move my food to. (In the winter, we keep our electric bill paid on time by heating only the kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms.). It’s 39 degrees in there: perfect. (We also have a chest freezer that is still operational.)
I don’t normally think of us as poor, because we do pay all our bills on time, have enough to eat, and so on. But it does illustrate that razor thin margin a lot of us Americans live on, when something big like this happens. I think I saw a statistic that something like 50% of American households cannot come up with the funds for a $500 unexpected expense? There ya go, case in point.