Why Poor People Stay Poor

[Displaced Bama Fan]

For the most part, yes. At the same time, situations arise, many involving catastrophic events, medical situations, family members, etc., that make us have to make decision contrary to our better judgement. Those can have detrimental effects that remain for many years, or possibly for the rest of our lives.
In many such situations, we have no choice. We do what is best for ourselves and/or our family members.
Essentially though, Life happens. There's not a single one among us that knows what's going to happen to us or those we know and love today, tomorrow, next week or years down the road. We take life as it comes and we do with it the best we can, regardless of whether we think it's in the best interest of our own financial future.

Well said. I've shared with several that I work a second job umpiring baseball. I started this a few years ago just to help with those unexpected costs. Like this week. $1,000 deductible for the girl who rear ended me in her 2001 Pontiac POS on I-10 two Fridays ago because she didn't have insurance or a drivers license, just a state ID so I had to file on my insurance. Another, $800 for my dog to have his undescended pre-cancerous testicle removed as well as the other one lopped off. In addition, two root canals tomorrow afternoon that I'm sure I'll drop around $1,500. Those are the unexpected expenses that many encounter but can't afford. Fortunately, I do have double coverage on my dental insurance between my wife and myself but, I'm still going to have to pay 50% for the root canals and crowns.

Trust me, I get it. I'm not going to trash the poor in any way shape or form other than control the number of mouths you have to feed until you can feed them. If you spit out 9 kids, my sympathy level for you goes down. I feel sorry for the kids being raised in abject poverty, but I don't feel sorry for the parent(s) who make those dumb decisions.

 

[crimsonaudio]

There's a fairly large no-man's-land in terms of household income where assistance stops but you've still got a ways to go before you can really provide for the household.

So true, this hit us hard as we tried to climb out.

 

[4Q Basket Case]

I think we've reached a consensus...

You can get poor for any number of reasons. Some of which might be in your control, and others out of your control.

But you stay poor by repeating bad decisions.

uafan4life, however, makes an excellent point around the safety net actually having the unintended consequence of incenting the very behavior it is designed to prevent.

 

[Bodhisattva]

A lot of people make the mistake - no just the poor - of having their expenditures rise to meet their income. I see this all the time. Someone gets a rise or gets some overtime .... few set that extra money aside to cover the surprise expenses that shouldn't be unexpected. That bigger screen tv is more important. People tend to go out of their way to live on the razor's edge financially.

 

[uafan4life]

A lot of people make the mistake - no just the poor - of having their expenditures rise to meet their income. I see this all the time. Someone gets a rise or gets some overtime .... few set that extra money aside to cover the surprise expenses that shouldn't be unexpected. That bigger screen tv is more important. People tend to go out of their way to live on the razor's edge financially.

Saving is solid, money is fluid, and spending is a gas - it tends to expand to fill the income container.

 

[4Q Basket Case]

A lot of people make the mistake - no just the poor - of having their expenditures rise to meet their income. I see this all the time. Someone gets a rise or gets some overtime .... few set that extra money aside to cover the surprise expenses that shouldn't be unexpected. That bigger screen tv is more important. People tend to go out of their way to live on the razor's edge financially.

Amen, brother.

In such cases, it doesn't take much to put you back poor again.

Also, in those cases, I'd say that the proximal cause -- loss of a job, accident that prevents work, etc. -- isn't the real reason you're poor again.

The real reason is that you didn't save anything while you were making good money -- one of those bad financial decisions.

So it was actually more in the control of the person who reverts to poverty than he/she generally wants to admit.

 

[92tide]

so i guess we are now back to the point where staying poor is the fault of the poor.

i guess it is good that they are deemed blessed.

 

[AUDub]

It was a good post. The margins are still razor thin for the poor, as parents with means can and often do bail their kids out of bad decisions.

To expand on this, Titan at AUFamily had a great response to the "don't screw up in your youth" point:

I did all of these things. I'm in good shape. I have a lot of friends who failed on a couple of them. Being mostly in a middle to upper-middle class upbringing, the ones who messed around and had kids out of wedlock or abused drugs or alcohol in HS or college had families with means who could help them. The pregnancy wasn't the end of the world, though it delayed their progress a few years. They eventually wised up on the partying, either growing out of it naturally or having families with the means to provide intervention.

In other words, kids who are born into good families that screw up royally have margin for error. They can recover from stupid choices. Hell, they can even prolong the amount of time spent making stupid choices because they are shielded from the most devastating, permanently life-altering consequences many times. Kids unlucky enough to be born poor get no such slack. They don't get the shielding and the opportunity to learn before their life is veering off course. Getting out of the ruts that poor decisions make for people is a Herculean effort by comparison.

 

[Displaced Bama Fan]

so i guess we are now back to the point where staying poor is the fault of the poor.

i guess it is good that they are deemed blessed.

I don't think anyone said that. I think in some cases it is based on poor decisions and in other cases it's just bad luck, i.e. car breaking down, appliances going out, loss of job, etc.

Circumstances differ, but one thing is almost certain, poverty is seemingly cyclical and hard to break out of.

 

[AUDub]

I first read that in HS as part of Skeleton Crew, fantastic collection, but that story is one of the few that truly haunt me.

"It's eternity in there"

Chilling

 

[crimsonaudio]

I think we've reached a consensus...

You can get poor for any number of reasons. Some of which might be in your control, and others out of your control.

But you stay poor by repeating bad decisions.

I don't completely agree - not everyone has the opportunities we were afforded to move up the ladder. Could be various reasons - lack of education, lack of intelligence, lack of decent parenting. There are some really intelligent poor people who don't make poor decisions that cause them to remain poor - they do so simply because life has hit them in ways that even we would struggle to absorb, and they're trying to get by without the cushion that even a little extra money affords.

 

[Displaced Bama Fan]

so i guess we are now back to the point where staying poor is the fault of the poor.

i guess it is good that they are deemed blessed.

A buddy of mine who umpires with me lost his job nearly year ago. He's been umpiring and living off savings and credit cards to make ends meet. Fortunately, he starts a new job today, but now he has the arduous task of building up his depleted savings and paying off his credit cards. Not everyone has the luxury to build up a savings, even a small one. Again some of it is due to choices we make like buying a new car v. a used one or the big screen tv that we can't afford and don't need...or even the IPhone for our kids because, hell, every other kid has one, right? There's always going to be some of the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality even though secretly the Joneses are in debt to their eyeballs.

 

[crimsonaudio]

I don't think anyone said that. I think in some cases it is based on poor decisions and in other cases it's just bad luck, i.e. car breaking down, appliances going out, loss of job, etc.

Circumstances differ, but one thing is almost certain, poverty is seemingly cyclical and hard to break out of.

Mainly because we all make poor decisions now as than, but as AUDub posted just above, those of us with solid familial backgrounds, especially those of us from middle-class (or higher)backgrounds, have a lot greater margin of error.

 

[92tide]

I don't think anyone said that. I think in some cases it is based on poor decisions and in other cases it's just bad luck, i.e. car breaking down, appliances going out, loss of job, etc.

Circumstances differ, but one thing is almost certain, poverty is seemingly cyclical and hard to break out of.

from the previous page

I think we've reached a consensus...

You can get poor for any number of reasons. Some of which might be in your control, and others out of your control.

But you stay poor by repeating bad decisions.

 

[Jessica4Bama]

I've been very blessed since I was a kid to not have to worry about where our next meal was coming from or if we would be able to have enough clothes, etc. I remember being in 4th or 5th grade and hearing the rumor that we were selling drugs as to why we had what we had. I laugh about it now, but what they didn't know is that my dad worked two jobs. One at Delphi and one running the trailer business. He would get home at midnight or so and get up at 7 to start all over again. He did this for 25 plus years I believe. People don't realize how much my dad missed out on when we were growing up to give us a good life.

I have always been good at saving money. I remember saving my tooth fairy money as a kid. A fear of mine is when I go back to school, I'll have to quit my job, which means I could be 2-3 years without a good paying job. Thankfully, I have enough in savings to cover those years without a job, but I'm still scared about that.

I have family members on the other hand, who couldn't save a dime to save their life. I have a cousin who has a $45,000 vehicle she has no business having and planning $10,000 Disney World trips, and they can't get a house because her credit is shot (part of which is her mother's fault; it's a long story). I just shake my head at her, but she wasn't taught any different.

 

[92tide]

Mainly because we all make poor decisions now as than, but as AUDub posted just above, those of us with solid familial backgrounds, especially those of us from middle-class (or higher)backgrounds, have a lot greater margin of error.

it seems like i have tested that margin (both self imposed and otherwise) quite a bit over the years.

 

[AUDub]

it seems like i have tested that margin (both self imposed and otherwise) quite a bit over the years.

In many ways, I'm simply glad I made it to a nice stable adulthood. Somebody in my family had to. :-(

 

[Bodhisattva]

so i guess we are now back to the point where staying poor is the fault of the poor.

Most of the time, yes. Show me someone who is poor and most of the time I'll show you a catalogue of bad choices that person has made.

To repeat an earlier post:

Just so I won't be accused of hating on the poor in the abstract, let me make this personal:

My brother who is a year-and-a-half younger than me never obtained a trade or college degree. In spite of my parents paying for years worth of college, my brother mostly dropped his classes and kept the refund. He spent his twenties, thirties, and early forties doing little more that having out-of-wedlock children. His youngest daughter is two. His ability to pay child support has been hit-and-miss and will be for at least the next 16 years. He has massive debt and a credit rating through the floor. He spends his disposable income, when he has it, on tattoos. He's a personal trainer who doesn't have enough clients to allow him to have an apartment. He hasn't had a legitimate place of residence in at least a decade; he sleeps on the floor at a gym. He insists on living at one of the more expensive cities in country. I've offered several times to set him up with a money-making business. He only wants me to loan him money that he'll never pay back.

You get the picture. In my opinion, my brother is solely responsible for his situation. I don't believe he is entitled to anyone else's money. How much of your money do you think my brother deserves?

My brother's situation is not unique. Millions of people live like him. Let me know if you don't blame him for his situation, and I'll let you know where to send a check.

Another example ...... I interact with the poor regularly. One of the apartment complexes I own has largely poor tenants. The units are nice, but the complex is older and doesn't have the amenities newer places have. (We used to have a swimming pool, but the ghetto dwellers next door kept invading the pool and trashing the place. Eventually, we decided to get rid of the headache (and potential liability), so the pool was filled in. Democrats are why we can't have nice things.) It is a routine to have tenants stop paying rent and wait for the eviction process so they can get a few months of free accommodations. These people have the latest iPhone, nice cars, big screen televisions, etc., but they can't/won't pay their rent. I regularly have to fly back for trial. A couple of weeks ago was a two-fer.

One tenant skipped about of one of the furnished apartments ..... and took the furniture with her. Winning the case is easy; collecting on these deadbeats is hard. I'll get my $8000 (rent, damages, furniture) back in pennies every two weeks when I have her paycheck garnished.

The second case is a pending criminal trial. A denizen of the neighboring ghetto apartment complex was caught dumping trash on our property. When confronted my Mom was attacked and hospitalized. I have so much sympathy for scum who contribute nothing to society and go out of their way to destroy what others have built.

 

[92tide]

I've been very blessed since I was a kid to not have to worry about where our next meal was coming from or if we would be able to have enough clothes, etc. I remember being in 4th or 5th grade and hearing the rumor that we were selling drugs as to why we had what we had. I laugh about it now, but what they didn't know is that my dad worked two jobs. One at Delphi and one running the trailer business. He would get home at midnight or so and get up at 7 to start all over again. He did this for 25 plus years I believe. People don't realize how much my dad missed out on when we were growing up to give us a good life.

I have always been good at saving money. I remember saving my tooth fairy money as a kid. A fear of mine is when I go back to school, I'll have to quit my job, which means I could be 2-3 years without a good paying job. Thankfully, I have enough in savings to cover those years without a job, but I'm still scared about that.

I have family members on the other hand, who couldn't save a dime to save their life. I have a cousin who has a $45,000 vehicle she has no business having and planning $10,000 Disney World trips, and they can't get a house because her credit is shot (part of which is her mother's fault; it's a long story). I just shake my head at her, but she wasn't taught any different.

i wouldn't let the going back to school fear get to you too much. there is a lot of upside for continuing education even if the time in school is tough.

i went back to get a grad degree (left a nice stable job with a good company) in my early-mid 30s. i had enough money saved to cover tuition, etc costs for the two year program. at the end of the first semester, my first wife left and proceeded to take most of the money we had saved for that, left me with a massively underwater mortgage, two years of car payments, a dog and two cats (with associated vet bills) and 1.5 years of school loans. i thought about ditching school and leaving town (could have gotten a solid job on the west coast with my previous employer) but stuck it out and it worked out very well despite the financial setback.

 

[92tide]

Most of the time, yes. Show me someone who is poor and most of the time I'll show you a catalogue of bad choices that person has made.

To repeat an earlier post:



My brother's situation is not unique. Millions of people live like him. Let me know if you don't blame him for his situation, and I'll let you know where to send a check.

Another example ...... I interact with the poor regularly. One of the apartment complexes I own has largely poor tenants. The units are nice, but the complex is older and doesn't have the amenities newer places have. (We used to have a swimming pool, but the ghetto dwellers next door kept invading the pool and trashing the place. Eventually, we decided to get rid of the headache (and potential liability), so the pool was filled in. Democrats are why we can't have nice things.) It is a routine to have tenants stop paying rent and wait for the eviction process so they can get a few months of free accommodations. These people have the latest iPhone, nice cars, big screen televisions, etc., but they can't/won't pay their rent. I regularly have to fly back for trial. A couple of weeks ago was a two-fer.

One tenant skipped about of one of the furnished apartments ..... and took the furniture with her. Winning the case is easy; collecting on these deadbeats is hard. I'll get my $8000 (rent, damages, furniture) back in pennies every two weeks when I have her paycheck garnished.

The second case is a pending criminal trial. A denizen of the neighboring ghetto apartment complex was caught dumping trash on our property. When confronted my Mom was attacked and hospitalized. I have so much sympathy for scum who contribute nothing to society and go out of their way to destroy what others have built.

i have known some poor people who are morons too.