Everything, really. Furniture, purses and bags, clothes, knives, shoes… Heck, I wear socks that come with a lifetime guarantee. $30 a pair. I’ve worn them for years and they are like new.
There is a point of diminishing returns. I doubt there is much difference in longevity between $30 socks and $500 socks.
But because I can, I try to stick to the “buy it once” rule of thumb.
There’s a subreddit devoted to this called But It For Life that recommends great products that aren’t insanely expensive.
That’s how I found my blender (the answer is always Vitamix.)
And “grok” is from a book called Stranger in a Strange Land, which you may have heard of.
I have heard of it. I’m not sure if I will give Heinlein another shot. I tried Friday, that was a nope, and don’t think I made it past the first chapter of Starship Troopers. Something about it just does not appeal.
The only quibble I have about the theory is that I think it’s less about why rich people stay rich, and more about why poor people stay poor.
Related to the theory, if not exactly the same, is that eating healthy is expensive, expensive in monetary terms (the ingredients for healthy meals) but also in time terms (it requires time to turn those ingredients into food) and in energy terms, it takes energy to actually get to the kitchen and prepare the meal.
All things (money, time, energy) that are in short supply if you are poor.
But then all that non-healthy eating you couldn’t avoid result in ill health, which is extremely expensive even if you have universal healthcare (in terms again of time, lost opportunities, energy) but even worse if you don’t or if your universal health-care is severely underfunded.
Do they also have somewhere the Boots Index for, e.g., boots/clothes, automobiles, appliances, and other sectos?
Anecodal, but some years back, I spent several years living right on the edge, financially. Barely scraping the money together for rent and essential bills. I was going round all the shops when they discounted food for the day, wore all my clothes completely out, scraped through til payday on fumes. Every time I had a tiny bit scrimped and saved up, a disaster appeared to claim it.
I kept a car running on luck and money from birthday presents- I didn’t get it serviced, just hoped nothing broke because anything more expensive than a new tyre would have meant no car hence no job.
Then my grandmother (who I didn’t know) died and I got left a couple of thousand pounds (UK). Suddenly life got way easier. I could afford proper food shopping! Could replace my clothes! Do minor car repairs before I broke down! I even splashed out and went to a few events!
… and after a year, with no other change in income, I still had all the money I’d inherited.
The fact that the money was available meant I could actually plan ahead and not just react to disasters as they happened, it meant I could get the option that wasn’t the cheapest right this second if it wasn’t the best deal. Being able to plan was so much cheaper, that I could noticeably improve my lifestyle without it actually costing a penny more overall.
If you’ve never lived like that it’s really easy to a) underestimate how much of a difference having that flexibility makes and b) blame the poor suckers stuck in the cycle for not making better choices.
I would imagine that you having lived a little better off before that set of skint years also helped greatly.
You knew how to manage your affairs more efficiently even if you couldn’t actually do it right then for lack of funds. So once you had the funds again, you could switch back into efficient mode.
Someone who’s been serious poor their whole life, and their parents before them, has no idea how to live any other way. Them receiving the same windfall amount you did would probably be handled very differently.
Our dear @Broomstick is seemingly in semi-similar shape. Long time middle class, now forced by Fate to operate pretty close to the bone, but with the middle class knowledge to (mostly) do it the high efficiency way. Helps that’s she’s also damned smart.
Oh sure, and if you’re living in a family that’s been poor for generations, you often have the extra costs of helping everyone else out that helped you out when you had an especially bad patch. But when you have no money it doesn’t matter how good you are at budgeting, there’s no good choices.
Another thing that does not help is that it’s often easier to get money if you have none. Who is someone more likely to help out when they need $200 to get a car fixed- the guy who has $0 savings, or the guy who sensibly keeps $200 in an emergency fund? There’s no reward for even trying to sensibly budget if your income is low enough.
So, we all agree the problem exists.
How can it be fixed?
I’m partial to an universal basic income, if you have income security you can avoid these pitfalls.
Problem: what to do with those who, for whatever reason, do not?
I would say let them, but it would surely be used by those against the UBI to argue against it.
I heard this somewhere on these boards. There’s an incentive to rent a TV rather than try to save up and buy one, because if you save up, you’re going to be asked to help someone out. You can’t say “I don’t have any money.” then turn around and buy a $1,000 TV, but you can say “I don’t have any money” and then pay your $40 weekly TV “rent to own” fee.
Yeah! That Vimes guy is really miscast in my view.
I’ve been in similar straits…Another enabler for that little bit of money cushion is the ability to immediately or in advance pay off bills, payments, loans, etc. instead of paying on the due date or late. Having the empowerment to control your budget float and make expense choices when you aren’t treading the line of late fees or utility shutoffs is huge. This means that the surprise car repair or fixit bill can usually be absorbed rather than driving you into debt or late payments for necessities.
Cf. the Tom Stoppard play where the main character calls a friend for a loan because he can’t pay his cab fare:
I’ll need driving directions to your place - I’m in a cab…No, that’s WHY I’m broke…
If you’re going to try one, go right to the best, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”
Stranger would be an odd place to start and Friday probably was also.
Starship Troopers is pretty dated and was more rah rah then most of his works. Maybe I should have said RAH RAH, his initials.
Thanks for the flattery (it might get you somewhere) but it’s not just the smarts - my income is now back in the (lower) middle class. Which helps.
But three years of serious medical issues have eaten into my emergency account so I’m having to be pretty cautious right now. I’m hoping things don’t go sideways (again) in this crazy world.
On the other hand, when I was a kid, my family was very poor… but due in part to generational experience, my mom was really good at being poor. And because she was so very frugal, our lifestyle was very close to middle-class, unless you looked very closely.
Yep, there was a whole set of traditional life skills that included various forms of mending and repairing, knowing how to prepare and store cheap types of food, palliation and treatment of minor illnesses and injuries, practical networking and bartering for services in an extended family or community, etc., that have now essentially vanished in large parts of US society (and elsewhere).
Poor people nowadays have to spend so much time working at, and commuting to, low-paying jobs that don’t use or develop any of those traditional skills, and they get so much cultural/commercial pressure to outsource their needs to the market instead of taking care of them at home. But all the market solutions to their problems are more expensive. Rock and a hard place.