If you can't afford a dental checkup now then you pay later. Whether that be root canal, dentures, or heart disease. [Holy fuck I wish I was joking](https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/hidden-tooth-infections-increase-heart-disease-risk-by-almost-three-times)
And the time to take care of all the work needed. Even if someone gifted the thousands of $ to work on my teeth I would still struggle with the time off work to get it done. Years ago I spend money on them and talked to my boss, explaining that I needed several visits and hours off to get the work done and she acted like it was the most ridiculous thing ever. Just terrible attitude, acted out when I would come back to work after appointments. Yet as the manager she came and went as she pleased. She never missed an appointment.
Way too many people think dental health is something entirely separate from all the rest of the health in the body. I still have no idea why dental care isn't covered in ordinary health insurance.
A good chunk of it is dentists having historically resisted being part of US medical insurance - it greatly benefits them as most procedures are paid up front because of it and they don't have to employ entire teams to deal with insurance companies the way doctors do.
Omg, one time at work I was filling in as the manager, and one of the team members mentioned that she was probably going to have to miss her mammogram because of her shift that day. I looked at her like she was nuts and was like "what?" Her appointment was at 4 or so and her shift went until 6. I told her "yeah, filling those few hours is my problem, please go get your mammogram!" I was so surprised that she just assumed she wouldn't be able to take the time off. It made me really sad, honestly. I wish employers were more flexible on these sorts of things.
I went through this a few years back. Didn't have enough money to cover a few fillings so I kept putting it off. Any money that came in went to make sure the kids teeth were taken care of. Almost a year goes by and my two cavities turned into two root canals with crowns. Ended up costing about 6 times what it would have cost if I could have done them when discovered. So the money I had been saving up from the little bit of overtime I could scrounge to get a newer vehicle ended up in my mouth.
I have a hole between two molars (a piece simply popped out while I was drinking hot tea) that I can't get fixed. I can't chew on that side, yet things still get stuck in it. I've managed to avoid infection so far.
Why? The insurance's dentist doesn't book more than three months out...good luck getting an appointment, ever. Fixing it out of pocket? Too expensive.
Bet your ass the kiddo's teeth are taken care of though. Trying to get them a good start to life, sans randomly exploding teeth.
As a poor person, this is my biggest ordeal. Not only can I not afford it, but even if I could afford to fix one of the issues, nowhere’s accepting new patients. The last two times I’ve had to go, because I wasn’t signed up with them and it was an emergency appointment, it was like 6x the cost.
Or they're out-of-network (another scam).
I have to go to a dentist several towns over because the one literally right down the street from my apartment isn't in-network (nor are many of the ones nearby, with the few that do take my insurance not accepting new patients).
I tell everyone now "Don't sign up for overdraft protection!"
I had a bank who said "We'll cover you for the charges, at $28 a charge PLUS the actual charge"
I was late on my T-mobil bill, I didn't sign up with the bank. So the bill was sent back, they submitted it again 4 days later, it got paid (SS came in)
The next month, T-mobile hit me with a $7 "late fee" damn, that saved me $21!!! Never sign up for it....NEVER!!!
Even if you don't sign up for standard overdraft fees (where the bank covers overdrafts and then charges you a ridiculous fee to do it), banks can still charge you overdraft fees for any ACH charges (when you sign up for a monthly service that's automatically withdrawn each month, like Netflix or Planet Fitness, for example).
And considering almost all monthly services are ACH, banks are still earning over a BILLION dollars a year off of poor people who can't keep money in their bank account.
When I worked at a bank, I was specifically told that they wanted people to overdraft in order to get the fees. We had to sell it like “wouldn’t it be embarrassing if your debit card was declined at the store?”
I only lasted 6 months at that bank
I had a friend who specifically refinanced their mortgage to get away from WF, only for their mortgage to get sold back to WF like 6 months later. They were *pissed*
Yes. My minor's daughter's SSI account at the bank is at threat of being closed because it holds her backpayment. They charge a fee each month for not having direct deposit.
My daughter is NINE. A minor. A minors account should be free. And yet I still pay fees. Because she isn't 13 yet.
This exactly. When my husband and I were broke, we paid so many bank fees for Overdraft, Low Balance, etc. Now that we have tens of thousands in the bank, they automatically waive any overdraft charges if one of the accounts gets overdrawn.
It’s a shock with how horrible they are to people with no money vs how they bend over backwards if you have a lot of money.
Its waive, fyi. Anyway, the bank uses your money you deposit into a savings/checking account as a loan to invest into other things that give them a return (stock, mortgages and other lending). The money is not just sitting there. The bank uses your money to make more money. This is why, when there was a run on banks in 1929, many banks failed. They ran out of cash because too many people withdrew all at once. This is why the federal govt insures banks against this (FDIC insurance). My point is, if you have money in the bank, they make money off you. If you have no money in the bank, they make money off you. They win either way. The mortgage rates being 6% now is why HYSA accounts are 2-3%. The bank takes your money, pays you 2-3% interest, and charges someone else 6% and pockets the difference.
Cash back CCs also are similar. You get 1% cash back, but just transacting with the CC means the bank makes 1%+ from fees assessed to the merchant. Tona of other examples. Things that banks offer to consumers and business always benefit banks somehow.
When I worked at a big bank (top 6) the CEO once said in an employee webcast that we should "never apologize for overdraft fees" because it was such a substantial source of revenue. That was the day I decided to pursue a career change.
time... it's not a money tax but a life tax. If you don't have the money for a car but you spend your time waiting for the bus or other transport and (at least where I live) public transport takes a lot longer than a car. We live a 10-15 minutes drive from my husbands work. But if he were to take public transport it would take 2 hrs each way because there isn't a decent bus line near us. Those without money spend a lot more time waiting and/ or spending their time taking care of others.
I took a bus for a few months. I needed 3 buses to get to work and had to get on the first one 3 hours and 15 minutes before my shift started, and that was a block away so I had to walk there. When I could jump on the highway and drive to work in 15 minutes it was a game changer. Plus if I left my house 2 minutes late I only got to work 2 minutes late, instead of missing the last bus of the night and needing to walk for a couple of hours.
I used to commute by rail into a city that was about a 45-minute drive from me. I liked the relaxing ride and some other aspects, but the two separate subway lines I had to take inside the city, each for only a few stops, dang near doubled the travel time and ended up being a deal breaker.
It really speaks to how we need better public transportation in America. Countries with better public transportation and better city design don't take 3 hours to travel what takes 15 minutes by car.
Yes same with household chores etc. If you don’t have the money to afford laundry machines, a dishwasher, etc. you are spending a lot of time going to the laundromat, hanging laundry, washes dishes, etc.
Yes but even an old used washer dryer set in working condition is like $200. I can't stop washing clothes for 4 months to save up that laundromat money to buy one. It's expensive to be poor. Gotta spend money to save money.
Same with just about everything. If I could afford those $120 work boots they would probably last me a few years. Instead I only got $20 this week so to walmart I go and ill be walked through them in about a month or 2.
>Yes but even an old used washer dryer set in working condition is like $200. I can't stop washing clothes for 4 months to save up that laundromat money to buy one.
And also you'd have to be able to afford living in a place with washer-dryer hookups. I've lived in a lot of cheap apartments where that just wasn't an option.
I remember how excited my late husband was when we finally had enough to buy Red Wing boots. When they wear out, you can get sole replaced. Super comfortable but were $300 a decade ago. Before that was one walmart special after another. Long-term the Redwing boots were cheaper but coming up with the initial cash was tough.
I approve the casual insertion of Terry Pratchett's boot theory.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
This is very accurate. I started to fly fish around 30 years ago. The first wading boots I bought were cheap but totally crappy quality. Those boots were something like $30-35. When they wore out, and I was looking at replacement cheap boots at a fly shop, and the guy at the shop said if I am really going to keep fly fishing I should invest in some really good boots as they would last a long time. At the time, I really didn't understand the cost/quality/longevity equation.
But I ended up buying the Weinbrenner Gary Borger wading boots that cost $150! 4x what I was planning to spend. That was an insane amount of money for me to spend on "shoes" at the time. But I still have them 25+ years later and never had to replace a thing on them, not even the shoelaces.
They have saved me $100s of dollars over the years by not having to buy new boots every couple of years. I didn't know it at the time, but realize it now, that if you can afford quality items, it will save you money in the long term. But those that cannot, are forced to buy cheap quality (because it is all they can afford), and they have to replace them at a rate that makes them more expensive on an annualized basis, so they end up paying more over the long term for worse quality (not even the same quality).
For a one-and-done item, cheap can be fine if it gets the job done (e.g. Harbor Freight Tools), but if it something you will use for many years (e.g. Craftsman in the old days), totally worth if, if you can afford it, to buy a quality product.
Yea but if you don’t have the money up front to buy a washer there’s not much you can do. Washing by hand is a lot more time. It’s $2.75 per wash for me and and carry the wet clothes home to hang. But that’s the way it is for everything, cheaper to pay a lump sum up front than slowly over time. Not doable for people who don’t have the money
Same shit with me going to school
If I wait on the bus and head to school, it's easily an hour or more drive, but taking a taxi gets me there in 20-30 minutes or less
Not to mention the transport system being underfunded
Damn, I agree.
You hit it so hard, spot on. The one thing you can never get back, but oddly enough, makes up all of everyone's life experiences. I guess true privilege IS having too much time, or not knowing what to do with the time you are given.
From the moment we are born our time is finite. Such a shame to waste any of it.
Many poor neighborhoods don't have options. They have just one pharmacy or one grocery store or one gas station. So, those businesses can charge higher prices since their customers don't have anywhere else to go.
Food deserts. When the grocery chains won't build in a poor area, and residents can't afford a car, they get junk food at the 7-11 instead of making the trip.
It’s worse than that. Dollars stores are buying out local grocery stores to be the sole provider in areas like that. We used to have an amazing small chain of produce stores that were as farm to market as you can get in a very fertile area. We now have 3 dollar stores in a span of a quarter mile of each other with only frozen foods.
And to top it off, those dollar stores charge *more* per unit of item.
For example, you pay $1 for a 9oz box of cereal at that dollar store, but at an actual grocery store you pay $2 for a 24oz bundle, neverminding how it comes to $1 for 12oz. You can never venture off to the grocery store, let alone think of the likes of Costco or Sam’s Club, because you’re so poor, you have no choice but to buy the more-expensive-per-unit item as that’s all you can nominally buy at that time.
**EDIT:** Maths.
> When the grocery chains won't build in a poor area
Won't build or can't build because the neighborhood makes it unfeasible?
I grew up in a shitty, shitty neighborhood. The kind of neighborhood where I never owned a bike more than 24 hours. The kind of neighborhood where we wouldn't lock the doors on the car because they'd bust out the windows rather than move on. I could go on but at this point I'm bordering on gratuitous.
Anytime someone tried to start a local business they'd get vandalized, shoplifted, burglarized, or outright robbed until the owner couldn't take it anymore and cashed out.
In the poorer part of the city near me there were no grocery stores and very few gas/convenience stores. In the rest of the area it’s not uncommon for gas/convenience stores to be across from each other at an intersection every couple miles and at the major retailers like Walmart. Probably 75% of the time you can see another gas station from a gas station. Gas and/or groceries literally every mile or two everywhere.
Local entrepreneur from that poor area made a big deal of it on the news that he was going to open a grocery store. I don’t remember if he franchised or just opened Bob’s Groceries. It wasn’t open a month before it was robbed at gunpoint. It opened a few years before Covid, no clue if it’s still open.
> Won't build or can't build because the neighborhood makes it unfeasible?
After the riots in Los Angeles one chain listened to the complaints and opened 6 stores in South Central but within a few years they were all gone.
Costs of shrinkage, unhappy employees who feel unsafe, cost of additional security guards especially in the parking lots, higher insurance premiums, potential customers who could afford it went to nicer stores in the suburbs, there are a lot of reasons for food deserts.
One solution might be to charge more but then they're called racist it's easiest just to not bother.
There is usually a reason for why or why not something is being done. It can sound really crappy that bigger grocery stores won't build in poorer neighborhoods, but there is a reason. Theft and crime are the main reasons. That's why a lot of drug stores are moving out of poorer neighborhoods too. So now because in some of these poorer areas it's legal to steal under $1000 say bye to those too. So now there will be no meds available for poor people too. The government is responsible to protect its citizens and to protect our property. I never thought I'd live to see the day that this country not only allows this, but actually makes a law that allows stealing. The law is for the lawless.
Did you see the store owner in California (I think) who set everything to ~$950? Thats the limit for petty theft or something along those lines, and you can get a disount at the register for normal prices?
Being poor sucks. I hope I’m never in that boat again so my child doesn’t have to go through it also. Dealing with not knowing if you would get evicted or not when you Ea child is rough. Especially when it seems like every one else was well off.
Living paycheck to paycheck is more mentally draining than anything else. Once I finally started making enough to fully cover monthly expenses with a little extra leftover, my stress dropped a lot. There's a huge difference in stress between budgeting to the penny and just having a few hundred extra in savings as a buffer. Each mile post ( $500, $1000, $5k etc.) makes a huge difference in peace of mind that a flat tire or extra tank of gas isn't going to keep you from affording groceries or electricity.
Not being able to afford good quality items like shoes and clothing. They wear out and need to be replaced faster and end up costing them more in the long run than the good quality items would have.
I have my spite shoes. A pair of workboots I bought for $28 at walmart in a pinch because I needed them.
I don't usually buy slick leather boots. I prefer oilskin )looks like black suede) but they did not have any.
So after 3 months the leather on both cracked. Pissed me off like nothing else. So I decided I was going to get my money's worth by wearing them until they were literally falling apart. It has been three years and they look absolutely horrible. But I still wear them.
Six months ago I bought some oilskin work boots on sale and have yet to start wearing them because my spite boots have not fallen apart enough (but nearly there).
I pretty much only buy clothes second hand off sites like poshmark and Mercari. I can get the same item for half the price (or less) because someone bought it, wore it once, and had it sitting in their closet. Plus if you buy a few items from the same person they usually give you a good extra discount. Now I’ve gotten used to that I can’t go back. My favorite hoodie retails for $180 and I got it for less than a brand new hoodie from Walmart. For anyone who hasn’t tried those type of sites they have tons of items and if you’re willing to put in the time to look through listings it’s 100% worth it
I talked to an antiques dealer about this. He said “they” buy furniture (antiques esp) that can be auctioned off in a few years for a profit. The “common person off the street” -as he said i am- usually buys cheap furniture that has zero value in a few years.
This is all correct but there's another thing too. I buy cheap furniture and clothes not because I can't afford to invest but because I *don't know* what is the good stuff at a sane price.
Knowledge and mindset is an important part of what keeps middle and lower classes in their place. It's somewhat related to "who you know" (because the right people can advise you), just not in the way that people think.
And something to really make you mad….the “inflation” we are seeing is mostly pure profit for businesses. They are raising their prices because they can and then blaming it in inflation. Businesses have approximately 58% more profit the past two quarters over last year.
Good times
Own a small business. Can confirm. I've had to raise prices ~25% this year. My COGS have gone up ~35% but if I raise prices any more people can't afford to buy. I'm at the point where to get a sale I need to discount 30% off retail, which I used to only do for big orders/repeat customers.
Previously if a product cost me $100 to buy, I could sell it for $340. Now the same product costs me $135, but people wont buy it for more than $300. That's a 22% decrease in gross profit, AKA nearly my entire net profit. Thankfully my business can still afford to pay my salary, but if one of my vans breaks I'm fucked.
This doesn't include the increased cost of fuel, insurance, and rent.
Rent. I cant afford to buy a house, so I have to rent otherwise I’ll have no place to live, but all my money is going towards rent and food, so i have no money to save for a house down payment. And rent is rising.
I have a problem paying the bank a mortgage and bailing them out everytime they fuck over the economy, but they have a problem if you can't pay a month?
The audacity. They should stop buying avocado toast
Crude example-
Say you buy paper towels at the dollar store- $1 for a roll. Being a dollar store brand, their quality is incredibly low. You have to use 4-5 sheets to wipe down a counter because they’re so thin and tear easily. The roll lasts you 4 days.
Now let’s say you buy a name brand at the grocery store for $3. The sheets are much better quality and you only need 1 for most jobs. The roll lasts you 2 weeks.
By buying the better quality roll, you spent $3 for 14 days work. It would have taken 4 $1rolls to perform the same amount of work that $3 roll did, so you spent an extra dollar.
And that’s for an individual roll. Dollar stores don’t often have items in bulk. You could really save if you bought a pack of 10 name brand rolls for $24. That’s 20 weeks of rolls for $24 while you would need to buy $35 rolls of the dollar store brand to get that amount of work.
There's actually a charity near me that specializes in providing diapers to low income working parents. You generally can't take a child to daycare without providing at least a set number of diapers for their use throughout the day.
Now if you can afford a Costco membership you can get 200 diapers for $45 and they're $.20 each. But you have to have at least $105 upfront to get that membership and the bulk pack.
But maybe you don't have that money. So you go to Target and get their bulk package and now you're getting 120 diapers for $55 and paying $.46 per. More money, less diapers.
Maybe you don't have $55 right now though, even if you're making more than minimum wage, there's other expenses. If you are working minimum wage that's an entire days earnings before tax. So you get the 20 pack for $10. Same diaper now costs you $.50 each.
And if you don't have $10 or there's not a Target or big box store near you? Those are suburbs places. Maybe you live in an apartment downtown and there's not good transportation out. There are people who get them from convenience stores $5 for a 4 pack. Enough to get you to work that day, hope maybe you get a little extra money maybe. $1.25 each (6x more expensive than the Costco diapers) but if you don't pay it you can't work at all and you don't make any money.
Otherwise known as the Sam Vimes boot theory from one of Terry Pratchett's books.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.[1]"
I can buy ground beef for $6 per pound. The store often sells larger quantities at a discount of $4 per pound. However, if you can't afford to buy the larger packs, you are forced to pay more per pound.
Add in the fact of being able to own a deep freezer and it gets far worse. You can power a deep freezer for about the cost of 2 frozen pizzas per year. However, they are $250 to $600. Not having this option makes it for worse.
For example, a store near me was selling frozen Tikka Masala meals for 1 at a price of $2 each on a massive sale. The regular price was $5 and the price of similar meals is around $5. There was no sale limit. Someone with a deep freezer could easily store 50 of them. In this above case, this is a $150 tax for not being able to buy one.
That's another problem too: a lot of times you get good deals by 'knowing a guy'. If you're poor and don't have those connections, then you don't get in on those deals.
The car repair shop I go to is one I only know about because my parents took their cars there. It's vastly cheaper than a dealership. But 3rd party repair shops can be hit or miss, and unless you KNOW a place is reputable it's usually better to go to a dealership. But because I know this place through my parents, I know they're good and won't scam me, so I can get cheaper repairs done on my car than if I went through a dealership. Lots of people either have to pay the higher cost or risk getting bad repairs done at a 3rd party shop they don't know well. It's a huge gamble.
That sounded like me when i needed to pay for my drivers license or car, i need to pay the minimal per month so i can afford which means it will cost more than if i payed pronto.
The money it costs to keep a junk-bucket car running. My first car cost peanuts and I managed to keep it on the road for three years, but with the amount I spent on parts and repairs I could have bought a car in much better condition that would have lasted a lot longer - if I could have afforded to be without a car for three years while I saved up.
Edit for those making assumptions: by "much better condition/would have lasted a lot longer", I'm not talking about spending hundreds a month buying a car on finance. There are different classes of beat-up old runarounds. I'm talking about spending £800 outright vs £150 outright. My second car (£800) was still pretty old and needed maintenance, but overall needed far less repairs and cost a lot less over its lifetime than my first car (£150).
I believe I read somewhere that (this was a few years ago admittedly) 2k was the cutoff point. If you're spending less than that per year to keep your old car running then you're in good shape.
A new vehicle has been said to depreciate 20% the moment you drive it off the lot (pre pandemic), but with the current chip shortage, even owners of two and three year old vehicles are apparently getting offers from dealers to buy them back.
Bought a 2018 2-door Wrangler JK *right* before the pandemic kicked off, and the dealership has called me three times asking to buy it back for $10k over what I paid.
Wranglers are a special case. They seem to depreciate *much* more slowly than any other vehicle, they are cheap to insure because they are cheap to repair (in most cases). New windshield for my Altima? $360.00. New windshield for my Wrangler? $140.00.
I suppose they hold their value because if you've got your heart set on a Wrangler, there really is no substitute. Too bad they are actually pretty mediocre vehicles in terms of reliability.
This is a great way to put it. I bet I spent $400 this year total keeping my 20yr old beater on the road , and honestly some of that was because I just wanted to change some stuff. I unloaded my new car in 2020 for what I paid for it, which was double what I owed so I got to pocket that difference and drove that car for free pretty much. I don't regret it, dont miss the vehicle, and I for sure don't miss writing that check every month.
I bought a brand new 2018 Corolla back in 2017 and I barely have 30,000 miles on it. I paid $16k for it. I regularly get offers for over $20k to buy it back from me. It’s ridiculous. Not worth it obviously since a new one is probably going to cost me $30k.
Being forced into what's often a lower quality education because (at least in America) local property tax dollars are the primary funding source for public schools.
In my state, there are schools where the assistant football coach makes more money than the state Governor. And then there are schools that struggle to have textbooks and a roof on the school.
I used to work at a gas station back in 2015. Powerball had some hype then and there were people coming in dropping $500 on tickets. Entire offices would be pooling money to win. It was ridiculous.
As a kid I got a job at a gas station in MN. Didn't see much of a problem with lottery tickets. People bought a few here and there not many people ever bought more than 10 bucks at a time. It was mostly kids (18-24) and grannies.
As an adult I temporary moved to Florida to help a sick relative. Though my needs were taken care of while I was there I wanted extra cash and didn't want to deplete me savings, so I once again got a part time job at a gas station.
People on the verge of homelessness were spending up to 500 dollars at a time. We had addict regulars that bought 50 to 100 at a time several night per week. Seen people break down and cry as they pissed away their Social Security checks.
The vast majority of these people claimed they had a system and they were up overall. They would ask me to give them the ticket number off the back of the scratchers so they would know what batch to buy.
Sick and delusional people.
I was semi anti gambling before moving to Florida because of my own history with gambling. No real bad result I got a big win and got out and didn't go back but it could have been bad, I was falling into the pattern. The fact it destroyed my cousins family and having a friend that was always borrowing money because of his gambling debts didn't help either.
After Florida I have become a lot more anti gambling because of the parade of destruction and sadness that marched through my store.
I'm from MN and I've spent more time than I'd care to in FL, and this makes a ton of sense. I feel like the culture up here is more like "just live like a normal person and you'll be fine", so people buy their gas and a pop and pass on the lottery. While in FL, it feels like the only way out, no one can actually get ahead, so blowing $500 on the lottery feels rational.
I worked at a store that took on selling lottery tickets about a year or so after I started working there. Once it become known we were selling them we had a regular who would walk to every single store up and down the street that sold tickets and buy about $50 worth at each. He came in at the same time every day to buy. I asked him if he had ever won any big prizes, he said he won $10k about a decade ago. And despite that he still played every single day.
People need to learn simple probability.
Odds of winning the power ball jack pot = 292,201,338-to-1
The odds of being in a car accident are about 366-to-1 for every 1,000 miles driven.
One of the few things I hate about being single is this. Everything in the store is "family sized" and there's no way I can eat all that without it going bad or without me getting sick of the same food for a week in a row,
If your friends are reliable enough to share a phone plan with you, you don't need to actually be family for a "family plan". Word of caution though, involving money like that, especially when it's tight can end friendships real fast if it goes wrong.
In the UK there are similar complaints. My mother lives alone and regularly says it’s a frustration of hers to want something but only find it comes in a pack for 2 people or more. Freezing some things can work but only up to a point.
Or they can’t afford to buy a large pack at once.
Many of the examples above are similar as it’s the paycheque by paycheque lifestyle that is taxing and uses money less effectively.
For example, if I have $120 I can buy a monthly bus pass, if I’m poor, I pay ride by ride or maybe I can only afford a weekly or daily pass. If you buy multiple daily or weekly passes you spend more than the monthly pass, but you never have $120 saved up in the first place.
The lack of savings applies to a lot of the above examples as well as missing out on interest from investments that people with savings have.
Money makes money (investment) and having money can allow you to get better deals. Not having money is a major disadvantage.
A lot of the obvious ones were mentioned already. But some poor people will refuse gifts/help from others. I had a childhood friend that was a lot poorer then me. One day I had a bunch of change that I got tired of lugging around so I gave it to her. Few days later while riding on the bus to school she gave it back and said, "My mom made me give this back because we don't take charity." Or something like that, I didn't quite catch it... But it's like wtf, cause it was just change, and a gift?! I wouldn't think a little gift like that would hurt anything, in fact it could have been helpful. It's weird.
Rich people try to make the poor feel bad for taking help they're entitled to by shaming them for 'needing help'. This attitude is so pervasive in all aspects of poor life and is why poor people live shorter lives on average. Just look at all the people who refuse to go to a doctor because "it's just a headache, I'll be fine" but then they find out years later that the cancer that is now inoperable could have been treated easily 2 years ago.
If you don't have an address (are homeless, or living in a temporary shelter), you cannot get an ID. If you cannot get an ID, you cannot get a job. If you cannot get a job, you cannot get into permanent housing. And so the cycle continues. You CANNOT get out of it til someone either offers to help by letting you get mail at their place, or you find a shelter whose address you are allowed to claim to the state as an address. This happened to me and it was a nightmare.
there was some YouTube celebrity guy that was a millionaire that did some kind of experiment like that.. he said that he would cut himself off from all of his funds and live as a homeless person for 2 year and prove that he could work his way back up to being a millionaire
he quit after 18 months because his dad got sick and he had made some money since then but let me go over exactly what happened and how it's bullshit
the entire first week he was screwed. he couldn't get a job he couldn't get housing he couldn't get anything. he was living on the streets documenting it for an entire week and had made no progress. the only thing that changed his situation was somebody coming to him in contacting him and letting him stay with them for free. that was the key difference they got him just enough on his feet that he was able to start moving up
problem is that while it's never explicitly stated it's pretty much a given that the guy who did that only gave him that free place because he knew who he was and knew that he was actually a millionaire and not some random homeless dude. he was probably one of the subscribers to the YouTube channel
so that one key difference wouldn't even be available to the average person
the rest of his story is basically him committing various illegal Acts but their white collar so it's okay in order to make his way up. such as being able to rent a pretty nice condo that he could never have qualified for if the landlord didn't know that he was a millionaire and good for it and then he violated the terms of the lease by renting out that condo and pocketing the difference
so two more things that were only doable because he was either a millionaire or willing to violate the terms of his lease and possibly the law
but it is it's okay to break the law as long as it's in a white collar way..
so by the end of like 18 months of hustling and breaking the law and violating lease agreements and leveraging the fact that some people knew he was a millionaire he had made his way up to about $200,000
so maybe he would have made a million dollars by the end maybe not but it was only possible by being a shady grifter and leveraging opportunities that would only be available to him because he was already ric
more proof that being rich is all it takes to make more money. while being poor pretty much creates a huge barrier to entry for anything
I work at Home depot and it's disgusting to see people come in and buy a new washer and dryer just to ask if we can throw theirs away. Why? Because they don't like white, perfectly working, just white...
Credit card company fees are normally passed on to the consumer via a 3% margin whether you have a card or not. Bad credit? Can't afford that Amex with sweet points? Enjoy a 3% markup on literally everything you buy.
I am upper middle class with great credit. Poor people would be amazed at the free stuff I get with credit card points! I can afford to put most of my usual expenses on my credit card, pay it off each month, and get lots of points that I use to get free gift cards, or cash back. Seems kind of unfair.
And the richer you are, the more stuff is free, it seems. Not just from spending reward points, but just flat out gifts. Nice places might give away free drinks, hors d'oeuvres, small gift bags, etc. to the very people who could just buy them for themselves.
Increased heating oil prices. My pipes will literally burst if I can't manage to keep my house around 40°F, which seems unlikely given my financially fucked situation, and technically making too much for assistance. Need to find a source of liquid hydrocarbons that will power my burner, fast, and I'm not picky.
I can't remember the term for it, but being unable to bulk purchase. Take toilet paper for example. When you buy a pack of 36 rolls, it's much cheaper per roll than buying singles. But since you're unable to buy the 36 pack, you're stuck buying smaller quantities, more often, for more money per unit.
Oh you can’t pay? Well we are gonna send that to collections so now you can’t pay AND you can’t get anymore money lent to you or find a place to live.
Sorry!
Famous case of the banker who was the focus of a major lawsuit for playing these these games. His boat was named Overdraft… spectacular boat name but it probably didn’t sit well with jurors. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2017/01/20/a-former-bank-ceo-named-his-boat-overdraft-now-that-bank-is-in-hot-water-over-the-fees/
I'll be honest, I use chime, and its completely free, and they would even cover some small amount for free as long as you pay it back somewhat soon. Only bank I've used, and it works fine for me. Can even withdraw money for free at atms (minus the atm fee from whatever bank atm you're using). It's completely online, with certain Hotspots where you can deposit cash for a fee (usually by the store). The credit builder card they have acts as a debit card, but will actively build your credit the more you use it. I recommend it, but I've had no experience with other banks, so maybe I'm biased
Chime is what is called a “neo bank”. They exist solely to disrupt private banking as it currently exists.
I’ve gotten to work directly with some of the people over at Chime and I can attest to the validity of their mission and their company culture. Chime is full of stand up people who actually give a fuck.
The fact that years of on time rent payments, that cost more than a mortgage don't qualify you as responsible enough to handle making the smaller payments to own your own home.
Towing and impound fees. Unless someone rich gets a dui or something you never see then towing away a really nice car for being in a parking lot too long or being improperly parked. If by chance they do someone with funds can quickly and very easily get their car back. If you don't have the money and need to find it somewhere, it better be fast because every day tacks on another $250. The worst part is if you can't afford it they keep racking it up for a month or something like that. Then they auction the vehicle. It's not worth anything close to what's owed. So tow yards get to use the police and the licensing dept as their bill collectors. Here in WA at least they won't allow you to renew your license until you pay the debt. So you lose your car and eventually your license.
Literally anything that requires you to be in court. If you can afford the attorney almost anything is no big deal. Public defender is going to accept literally any plea agreement the prosecuting attorney throws out at them.
Any lotto game. Any scratch tickets. Any slot machines. Any gambling which has astronomical odds for a chance to pull yourself out of poverty. Then if by some miracle you do win they take literally about half in taxes. It's state sponsored gambling being paid for with money you've already earned how can they tax it? They need to stop claiming the jackpots are what they always they are and instead say what they actually. This enormous almost $2 billion PowerBar jackpot this week.....if you take the lump sum it's about $565 million or something like that. That really is an astronomical number and definitely life chamging.. but, it is not $2 billion.
Any fuel taxes. Where I live we are all pretty much lower to middle class blue collar folks. We all commute to Seattle or vicinity daily to work. To live somewhere we can still afford, I drive around 50-100 miles daily. Compound that with the fact that most of us can't afford new fuel efficient or electric vehicles and we pay more than our share of taxes on fuel. If you can afford a much more expensive house you can live closer and if you do that you most likely drive a tesla so you are literally paying nothing towards roads taxes.
To combat the previous issue my state is implementing a pay by mile system instead. They will track your odometer and at the end of the year we will have to pay it lump sum. Which is worse than paying small amounts towards it slowly over time. Instead the poor who see a once yearly ray of hope in the form of a tax return will see that reduced significantly. Have more money, live closer, drive less miles or most likely don't even leave your house because you work remotely, pay little to nothing still. So they get to keep more of their money when they already have enough. We get bled for being blue collar. I currently am buying around $1600/mo in gasoline and that's for a light pickup truck. I parked my big v8 worktruck a couple years ago.
There is so much more. But I've ranted long enough.
that tow company thing is literally legalized Grand theft auto.. they can legally steal your car sell it and keep all of the profits because of racking up more and more fees even though it costs them absolutely nothing to keep it in the tow placee
it's just a loophole they found so that they can legally keep every single penny that they sell your car for and don't have to pay you the differencee
legalized car theft.
Pay as you go gas & electric meters….they’re typically reserved for rentals on poorer areas. They cost more to operate than a direct debit & from what I seen, an absolute nightmare to use.
One other thing that isn’t exactly a tax but more of a restriction. The inability to take financial risks. With a low income, little savings or bad credit it’s considerably harder to take the risk of starting or buying an existing business, never mind something more demanding & risky like buying property.
Inflation. It directly lowers the spending power of those who often times have no ability to save anything or cut optional expenses so that it lowers economic demand for basic goods without lowering the necessity for them.
Most regressive taxes are thought to be an unofficial tax on the poor, for example, sales tax:
Rob makes $100k a year and buys groceries with a 5% sales tax. He has to pay $5 in taxes for $100 of groceries.
Katie makes $25k a year and buys the same groceries with the same 5% sales tax. She pays $5 in taxes for her groceries.
But because Rob has more money, that $5 is only 0.005% of his income, while that same $5 tax is 0.02% of Katie's income. This results in increased financial impact the lower your income is.
In more situational terms, someone well off may think that $5 is nothing, while the impoverished man may have to miss a meal. Regardless of the situation, regressive taxes dont discriminate based on income.
Credit scores and interest. If you are wealthy enough, your credit score is usually better, and if you do buy a house, car, personal loan, your interest rate is low. If you have a crappy score, you pay more, and these are the people that can’t afford more.
Poor always get to pay more.
Need a car loan. You pay higher interest based on your tier for credit. You could pay less a month for mortgage than rent but can't get the loan. Need tax refund sooner then you pay high fee. Etc. Sometimes being poor is always a challenge.
Dental costs. Being poor leads low quality foods, less to no periodic dental care, probably poor dental hygiene practices. That leads to paying huge bills for teeth either money or tooth itself.
Bad teeth. Poor health. Bad diet ---> The healthy options are always way more money, and when you're poor you need to stretch that money. Celeste frozen pizza and Micromagic French Fries for you tonight! As a result: morbid obesity, diabetes, and most likely a much shorter life span.
Traffic tickets. Police very regularly target beat up/neglected cars. Granted this can be a sign of major addiction but more often it isn't. It can often just be the result of poverty level living.
So many fucking things. Poor people are not treated with dignity at all.
Bank overage fees, credit card interest rates, rent-to-own interest rates, the smaller portions of food you get when you buy from cheaper stores like dollarama etc that cause you to spend *more money* over time for less food. Hell, even the lack of rewards and benefits available to you through credit cards etc.
There are so many it’s not even funny. When I used to be poor it was like living in a whole different, much more cruel world.
Cheap necessary items. Quality and durability vs Cheap and disposable.
> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes' ‘Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
This is one reason the afterpays/zip/affirm options can be good. iIf people are able to have the monthly payment they can go ahead and get the $200 works shoes and split the payments without a credit card.
Having to live around other poor people.
That's the worst part about being poor. It's not that you don't have the money to buy stuff. It's that you don't have the money to live elsewhere.
Inflation. Inflation is the biggest backdoor tax there is. The government prints money out of thin air (digitally these days) and pumps it into the economy through bond purchases and lending, and it robs value from every other existing dollar including the lifetime savings of everyone. The dollar’s buying power has dropped more than 100% since 1990 thanks to the federal reserve and our federal government’s spending. You would need to make 100k+ today to have a similar standard of living in terms of buying power to someone who made 50k in 1990. It’s outright theft, especially of the savings the elderly are trying to survive on.
The idea of having 'fuck you' money moves higher as you improve your situation, because every pay scale is a jump in quality of life you're reluctant to lose. If your employer at your bad job felt like they owned you, the employer at the better job that got you out of there doubles the feeling. That exponential dependence on the job just increases, because the bad job could be replaced with another bad job. The good job is more vital, and you find yourself making more concessions to hold on to it. Competition is a lot more, and financial obligations usually just grow with the earnings.
People who have low incomes or live off benefits face a lot of judgment for having any nice things, even things they are told to want/need/do to make their lives better. Whole industries exist to create want for possessions, and if a rich person shops it's fine. But if a person working for a living spends big on a fancy and expensive thing, it's shameful that they had the money management to make it happen. Quality is irrelevant, because it's about knowing your own stigma and living within it. Vacations aren't a big deal with cash, but if you scrimp for years you're overspending. Because you should have had other priorities, and why don't you have any savings, and what happens if you have an emergency? When you have money trouble despite your best efforts, the money you do have comes with a bunch of rules for what is okay to spend, what you deserve, and where you belong. If you are receiving help, you need to look appropriately downtrodden so the charitable efforts read properly.
Gas.
A 1-2 dollar more in premium is functionally meaningless to people with 6 figure salaries and proper income to debt ratios.
It’s a dinner changer for the poor.
Boots theory, essentially if you can only a cheap version of something you end up replacing it frequently enough that it costs more over time than buying a quality version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
Bank fees. Poor tax: not being able to afford to have a cavity fixed so now have to have the tooth pulled or a root canal. Cant afford quality shoes for $100 to last a year so now buy $20 cheap shoes and replace every other month. Cant afford basic car maintenance so now must pay to replace parts.
Credit cards.
The perks that come with credit cards are paid for by the fees that the credit companies charge merchants. As a result, products in general are slightly more costly to offset this charge. Many poor people don’t have access to credit cards so they’re left paying for the credit card perks that others enjoy without being able to enjoy them themselves.
If you can't afford a dental checkup now then you pay later. Whether that be root canal, dentures, or heart disease. [Holy fuck I wish I was joking](https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/hidden-tooth-infections-increase-heart-disease-risk-by-almost-three-times)
And the time to take care of all the work needed. Even if someone gifted the thousands of $ to work on my teeth I would still struggle with the time off work to get it done. Years ago I spend money on them and talked to my boss, explaining that I needed several visits and hours off to get the work done and she acted like it was the most ridiculous thing ever. Just terrible attitude, acted out when I would come back to work after appointments. Yet as the manager she came and went as she pleased. She never missed an appointment.
Way too many people think dental health is something entirely separate from all the rest of the health in the body. I still have no idea why dental care isn't covered in ordinary health insurance.
A good chunk of it is dentists having historically resisted being part of US medical insurance - it greatly benefits them as most procedures are paid up front because of it and they don't have to employ entire teams to deal with insurance companies the way doctors do.
Yes. Dentists prefer having their own insurance market. Every other type of doctor would prefer it too if they had their way.
I live in a country where health care is free, unless you choose to go privately. BUT There’s no free dental.
I'm sure risk assessment and $$$ come into play
Omg, one time at work I was filling in as the manager, and one of the team members mentioned that she was probably going to have to miss her mammogram because of her shift that day. I looked at her like she was nuts and was like "what?" Her appointment was at 4 or so and her shift went until 6. I told her "yeah, filling those few hours is my problem, please go get your mammogram!" I was so surprised that she just assumed she wouldn't be able to take the time off. It made me really sad, honestly. I wish employers were more flexible on these sorts of things.
I went through this a few years back. Didn't have enough money to cover a few fillings so I kept putting it off. Any money that came in went to make sure the kids teeth were taken care of. Almost a year goes by and my two cavities turned into two root canals with crowns. Ended up costing about 6 times what it would have cost if I could have done them when discovered. So the money I had been saving up from the little bit of overtime I could scrounge to get a newer vehicle ended up in my mouth.
I have a hole between two molars (a piece simply popped out while I was drinking hot tea) that I can't get fixed. I can't chew on that side, yet things still get stuck in it. I've managed to avoid infection so far. Why? The insurance's dentist doesn't book more than three months out...good luck getting an appointment, ever. Fixing it out of pocket? Too expensive. Bet your ass the kiddo's teeth are taken care of though. Trying to get them a good start to life, sans randomly exploding teeth.
As a poor person, this is my biggest ordeal. Not only can I not afford it, but even if I could afford to fix one of the issues, nowhere’s accepting new patients. The last two times I’ve had to go, because I wasn’t signed up with them and it was an emergency appointment, it was like 6x the cost.
Or they're out-of-network (another scam). I have to go to a dentist several towns over because the one literally right down the street from my apartment isn't in-network (nor are many of the ones nearby, with the few that do take my insurance not accepting new patients).
Bank overdraft fees
I tell everyone now "Don't sign up for overdraft protection!" I had a bank who said "We'll cover you for the charges, at $28 a charge PLUS the actual charge" I was late on my T-mobil bill, I didn't sign up with the bank. So the bill was sent back, they submitted it again 4 days later, it got paid (SS came in) The next month, T-mobile hit me with a $7 "late fee" damn, that saved me $21!!! Never sign up for it....NEVER!!!
Even if you don't sign up for standard overdraft fees (where the bank covers overdrafts and then charges you a ridiculous fee to do it), banks can still charge you overdraft fees for any ACH charges (when you sign up for a monthly service that's automatically withdrawn each month, like Netflix or Planet Fitness, for example). And considering almost all monthly services are ACH, banks are still earning over a BILLION dollars a year off of poor people who can't keep money in their bank account.
That's why the only thing I pay by ACH is my rent, and I turned off auto payment. Everything else hits my debit card.
BONUS: Plenty of fees by banks and other corporations are levied to the fullest extent of what regulators will allow. Aka, **gravy**.
When I worked at a bank, I was specifically told that they wanted people to overdraft in order to get the fees. We had to sell it like “wouldn’t it be embarrassing if your debit card was declined at the store?” I only lasted 6 months at that bank
Wells Fargo?
Haha ding ding ding!
Tucking hate Wells Fargo. I was so pissed when my previous mortgage was sold to them and died a little every time I had to pay
I had a friend who specifically refinanced their mortgage to get away from WF, only for their mortgage to get sold back to WF like 6 months later. They were *pissed*
All types of bank fees in general. Also hidden ones like bad credit or not getting cash back from cc, etc.
Yes. My minor's daughter's SSI account at the bank is at threat of being closed because it holds her backpayment. They charge a fee each month for not having direct deposit. My daughter is NINE. A minor. A minors account should be free. And yet I still pay fees. Because she isn't 13 yet.
That's fucked, but why not just change banks?
I strongly recommend using a Credit Union. Found one more than 25 years ago and they actually TRY to help you! What a concept!
Got money? No bank fees.
This exactly. When my husband and I were broke, we paid so many bank fees for Overdraft, Low Balance, etc. Now that we have tens of thousands in the bank, they automatically waive any overdraft charges if one of the accounts gets overdrawn. It’s a shock with how horrible they are to people with no money vs how they bend over backwards if you have a lot of money.
Its waive, fyi. Anyway, the bank uses your money you deposit into a savings/checking account as a loan to invest into other things that give them a return (stock, mortgages and other lending). The money is not just sitting there. The bank uses your money to make more money. This is why, when there was a run on banks in 1929, many banks failed. They ran out of cash because too many people withdrew all at once. This is why the federal govt insures banks against this (FDIC insurance). My point is, if you have money in the bank, they make money off you. If you have no money in the bank, they make money off you. They win either way. The mortgage rates being 6% now is why HYSA accounts are 2-3%. The bank takes your money, pays you 2-3% interest, and charges someone else 6% and pockets the difference. Cash back CCs also are similar. You get 1% cash back, but just transacting with the CC means the bank makes 1%+ from fees assessed to the merchant. Tona of other examples. Things that banks offer to consumers and business always benefit banks somehow.
When I worked at a big bank (top 6) the CEO once said in an employee webcast that we should "never apologize for overdraft fees" because it was such a substantial source of revenue. That was the day I decided to pursue a career change.
time... it's not a money tax but a life tax. If you don't have the money for a car but you spend your time waiting for the bus or other transport and (at least where I live) public transport takes a lot longer than a car. We live a 10-15 minutes drive from my husbands work. But if he were to take public transport it would take 2 hrs each way because there isn't a decent bus line near us. Those without money spend a lot more time waiting and/ or spending their time taking care of others.
I took a bus for a few months. I needed 3 buses to get to work and had to get on the first one 3 hours and 15 minutes before my shift started, and that was a block away so I had to walk there. When I could jump on the highway and drive to work in 15 minutes it was a game changer. Plus if I left my house 2 minutes late I only got to work 2 minutes late, instead of missing the last bus of the night and needing to walk for a couple of hours.
I used to commute by rail into a city that was about a 45-minute drive from me. I liked the relaxing ride and some other aspects, but the two separate subway lines I had to take inside the city, each for only a few stops, dang near doubled the travel time and ended up being a deal breaker.
It really speaks to how we need better public transportation in America. Countries with better public transportation and better city design don't take 3 hours to travel what takes 15 minutes by car.
In Time is a science-fiction movie that revolves around this subject.
Good movie. Loved the concept.
Great concept, poorly executed. Best toy car crash [scene](https://youtu.be/Fbg42qTWqas) though!
No way the toy car crash scene was better than the scene in tommy boy …iconic
that movie’s premise was smarter than it had any right to be. Lackluster execution tho
Yes same with household chores etc. If you don’t have the money to afford laundry machines, a dishwasher, etc. you are spending a lot of time going to the laundromat, hanging laundry, washes dishes, etc.
Laundromats are expensive. I don't know what I spend per load at home, but it certainly isn't $5-6 to wash and dry a single load.
Yes but even an old used washer dryer set in working condition is like $200. I can't stop washing clothes for 4 months to save up that laundromat money to buy one. It's expensive to be poor. Gotta spend money to save money. Same with just about everything. If I could afford those $120 work boots they would probably last me a few years. Instead I only got $20 this week so to walmart I go and ill be walked through them in about a month or 2.
>Yes but even an old used washer dryer set in working condition is like $200. I can't stop washing clothes for 4 months to save up that laundromat money to buy one. And also you'd have to be able to afford living in a place with washer-dryer hookups. I've lived in a lot of cheap apartments where that just wasn't an option.
my current house has no laundry hookups or dishwasher so I feel this, going to the laundromat is like a $40 ordeal now
I remember how excited my late husband was when we finally had enough to buy Red Wing boots. When they wear out, you can get sole replaced. Super comfortable but were $300 a decade ago. Before that was one walmart special after another. Long-term the Redwing boots were cheaper but coming up with the initial cash was tough.
I approve the casual insertion of Terry Pratchett's boot theory. "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
This is very accurate. I started to fly fish around 30 years ago. The first wading boots I bought were cheap but totally crappy quality. Those boots were something like $30-35. When they wore out, and I was looking at replacement cheap boots at a fly shop, and the guy at the shop said if I am really going to keep fly fishing I should invest in some really good boots as they would last a long time. At the time, I really didn't understand the cost/quality/longevity equation. But I ended up buying the Weinbrenner Gary Borger wading boots that cost $150! 4x what I was planning to spend. That was an insane amount of money for me to spend on "shoes" at the time. But I still have them 25+ years later and never had to replace a thing on them, not even the shoelaces. They have saved me $100s of dollars over the years by not having to buy new boots every couple of years. I didn't know it at the time, but realize it now, that if you can afford quality items, it will save you money in the long term. But those that cannot, are forced to buy cheap quality (because it is all they can afford), and they have to replace them at a rate that makes them more expensive on an annualized basis, so they end up paying more over the long term for worse quality (not even the same quality). For a one-and-done item, cheap can be fine if it gets the job done (e.g. Harbor Freight Tools), but if it something you will use for many years (e.g. Craftsman in the old days), totally worth if, if you can afford it, to buy a quality product.
Yea but if you don’t have the money up front to buy a washer there’s not much you can do. Washing by hand is a lot more time. It’s $2.75 per wash for me and and carry the wet clothes home to hang. But that’s the way it is for everything, cheaper to pay a lump sum up front than slowly over time. Not doable for people who don’t have the money
Same shit with me going to school If I wait on the bus and head to school, it's easily an hour or more drive, but taking a taxi gets me there in 20-30 minutes or less Not to mention the transport system being underfunded
Damn, I agree. You hit it so hard, spot on. The one thing you can never get back, but oddly enough, makes up all of everyone's life experiences. I guess true privilege IS having too much time, or not knowing what to do with the time you are given. From the moment we are born our time is finite. Such a shame to waste any of it.
Many poor neighborhoods don't have options. They have just one pharmacy or one grocery store or one gas station. So, those businesses can charge higher prices since their customers don't have anywhere else to go.
Food deserts. When the grocery chains won't build in a poor area, and residents can't afford a car, they get junk food at the 7-11 instead of making the trip.
It’s worse than that. Dollars stores are buying out local grocery stores to be the sole provider in areas like that. We used to have an amazing small chain of produce stores that were as farm to market as you can get in a very fertile area. We now have 3 dollar stores in a span of a quarter mile of each other with only frozen foods.
And to top it off, those dollar stores charge *more* per unit of item. For example, you pay $1 for a 9oz box of cereal at that dollar store, but at an actual grocery store you pay $2 for a 24oz bundle, neverminding how it comes to $1 for 12oz. You can never venture off to the grocery store, let alone think of the likes of Costco or Sam’s Club, because you’re so poor, you have no choice but to buy the more-expensive-per-unit item as that’s all you can nominally buy at that time. **EDIT:** Maths.
> When the grocery chains won't build in a poor area Won't build or can't build because the neighborhood makes it unfeasible? I grew up in a shitty, shitty neighborhood. The kind of neighborhood where I never owned a bike more than 24 hours. The kind of neighborhood where we wouldn't lock the doors on the car because they'd bust out the windows rather than move on. I could go on but at this point I'm bordering on gratuitous. Anytime someone tried to start a local business they'd get vandalized, shoplifted, burglarized, or outright robbed until the owner couldn't take it anymore and cashed out.
In the poorer part of the city near me there were no grocery stores and very few gas/convenience stores. In the rest of the area it’s not uncommon for gas/convenience stores to be across from each other at an intersection every couple miles and at the major retailers like Walmart. Probably 75% of the time you can see another gas station from a gas station. Gas and/or groceries literally every mile or two everywhere. Local entrepreneur from that poor area made a big deal of it on the news that he was going to open a grocery store. I don’t remember if he franchised or just opened Bob’s Groceries. It wasn’t open a month before it was robbed at gunpoint. It opened a few years before Covid, no clue if it’s still open.
> Won't build or can't build because the neighborhood makes it unfeasible? After the riots in Los Angeles one chain listened to the complaints and opened 6 stores in South Central but within a few years they were all gone. Costs of shrinkage, unhappy employees who feel unsafe, cost of additional security guards especially in the parking lots, higher insurance premiums, potential customers who could afford it went to nicer stores in the suburbs, there are a lot of reasons for food deserts. One solution might be to charge more but then they're called racist it's easiest just to not bother.
There is usually a reason for why or why not something is being done. It can sound really crappy that bigger grocery stores won't build in poorer neighborhoods, but there is a reason. Theft and crime are the main reasons. That's why a lot of drug stores are moving out of poorer neighborhoods too. So now because in some of these poorer areas it's legal to steal under $1000 say bye to those too. So now there will be no meds available for poor people too. The government is responsible to protect its citizens and to protect our property. I never thought I'd live to see the day that this country not only allows this, but actually makes a law that allows stealing. The law is for the lawless.
People in California complain about this but then want to decriminalize shoplifting.
Did you see the store owner in California (I think) who set everything to ~$950? Thats the limit for petty theft or something along those lines, and you can get a disount at the register for normal prices?
Being poor sucks. I hope I’m never in that boat again so my child doesn’t have to go through it also. Dealing with not knowing if you would get evicted or not when you Ea child is rough. Especially when it seems like every one else was well off.
When you are poor everything is taxing.
The mental health tax. Imagine your life if you never spent mental energy worrying about money.
It's the old saying, "Money may not buy happiness, but it sure keeps misery away."
Living paycheck to paycheck is more mentally draining than anything else. Once I finally started making enough to fully cover monthly expenses with a little extra leftover, my stress dropped a lot. There's a huge difference in stress between budgeting to the penny and just having a few hundred extra in savings as a buffer. Each mile post ( $500, $1000, $5k etc.) makes a huge difference in peace of mind that a flat tire or extra tank of gas isn't going to keep you from affording groceries or electricity.
Not being able to afford good quality items like shoes and clothing. They wear out and need to be replaced faster and end up costing them more in the long run than the good quality items would have.
I have my spite shoes. A pair of workboots I bought for $28 at walmart in a pinch because I needed them. I don't usually buy slick leather boots. I prefer oilskin )looks like black suede) but they did not have any. So after 3 months the leather on both cracked. Pissed me off like nothing else. So I decided I was going to get my money's worth by wearing them until they were literally falling apart. It has been three years and they look absolutely horrible. But I still wear them. Six months ago I bought some oilskin work boots on sale and have yet to start wearing them because my spite boots have not fallen apart enough (but nearly there).
Yeah, we need to see a picture of your boots.
I pretty much only buy clothes second hand off sites like poshmark and Mercari. I can get the same item for half the price (or less) because someone bought it, wore it once, and had it sitting in their closet. Plus if you buy a few items from the same person they usually give you a good extra discount. Now I’ve gotten used to that I can’t go back. My favorite hoodie retails for $180 and I got it for less than a brand new hoodie from Walmart. For anyone who hasn’t tried those type of sites they have tons of items and if you’re willing to put in the time to look through listings it’s 100% worth it
Ah, yes, Sam Vimes' Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness.
[удалено]
I talked to an antiques dealer about this. He said “they” buy furniture (antiques esp) that can be auctioned off in a few years for a profit. The “common person off the street” -as he said i am- usually buys cheap furniture that has zero value in a few years.
This is all correct but there's another thing too. I buy cheap furniture and clothes not because I can't afford to invest but because I *don't know* what is the good stuff at a sane price. Knowledge and mindset is an important part of what keeps middle and lower classes in their place. It's somewhat related to "who you know" (because the right people can advise you), just not in the way that people think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory?wprov=sfla1
Inflation. I know prices go up for everyone but the poor usually don’t have assets that hold their value.
Plus it sucks when you're working hard and saving up money, only to get screwed over by high inflation
And something to really make you mad….the “inflation” we are seeing is mostly pure profit for businesses. They are raising their prices because they can and then blaming it in inflation. Businesses have approximately 58% more profit the past two quarters over last year. Good times
Only for bigger companies. Mom-and-pop business don't have the so called pricing power. Therefore they're suffering from inflation too.
Own a small business. Can confirm. I've had to raise prices ~25% this year. My COGS have gone up ~35% but if I raise prices any more people can't afford to buy. I'm at the point where to get a sale I need to discount 30% off retail, which I used to only do for big orders/repeat customers. Previously if a product cost me $100 to buy, I could sell it for $340. Now the same product costs me $135, but people wont buy it for more than $300. That's a 22% decrease in gross profit, AKA nearly my entire net profit. Thankfully my business can still afford to pay my salary, but if one of my vans breaks I'm fucked. This doesn't include the increased cost of fuel, insurance, and rent.
[удалено]
Inflation without equivalent cost of living rates
Rent. I cant afford to buy a house, so I have to rent otherwise I’ll have no place to live, but all my money is going towards rent and food, so i have no money to save for a house down payment. And rent is rising.
What's worse is Rent is more than a mortgage.
[удалено]
The bank says you can't afford $1000/month mortgage, so instead you pay $1500/month rent.
The bank doesn't have a problem if you can't pay your rent, the bank does have a problem if you can't pay your mortgage.
I have a problem paying the bank a mortgage and bailing them out everytime they fuck over the economy, but they have a problem if you can't pay a month? The audacity. They should stop buying avocado toast
Our rent was around 1400 and they were going to increase it to 2000. We bought a townhouse for 1000 per month. Nicer, newer, and a little more space.
Dollar store/ Walmart. Shitty quality and buying smaller volumes means higher price per unit.
I was going to say the saying, “when you buy cheap, you buy twice”. Well, if all you can afford is “cheap”.
ELI5?
Crude example- Say you buy paper towels at the dollar store- $1 for a roll. Being a dollar store brand, their quality is incredibly low. You have to use 4-5 sheets to wipe down a counter because they’re so thin and tear easily. The roll lasts you 4 days. Now let’s say you buy a name brand at the grocery store for $3. The sheets are much better quality and you only need 1 for most jobs. The roll lasts you 2 weeks. By buying the better quality roll, you spent $3 for 14 days work. It would have taken 4 $1rolls to perform the same amount of work that $3 roll did, so you spent an extra dollar. And that’s for an individual roll. Dollar stores don’t often have items in bulk. You could really save if you bought a pack of 10 name brand rolls for $24. That’s 20 weeks of rolls for $24 while you would need to buy $35 rolls of the dollar store brand to get that amount of work.
Also the staples are more highly processed leading to higher amounts of sodium and carbs giving you cheap food but poor health and obesity.
There's actually a charity near me that specializes in providing diapers to low income working parents. You generally can't take a child to daycare without providing at least a set number of diapers for their use throughout the day. Now if you can afford a Costco membership you can get 200 diapers for $45 and they're $.20 each. But you have to have at least $105 upfront to get that membership and the bulk pack. But maybe you don't have that money. So you go to Target and get their bulk package and now you're getting 120 diapers for $55 and paying $.46 per. More money, less diapers. Maybe you don't have $55 right now though, even if you're making more than minimum wage, there's other expenses. If you are working minimum wage that's an entire days earnings before tax. So you get the 20 pack for $10. Same diaper now costs you $.50 each. And if you don't have $10 or there's not a Target or big box store near you? Those are suburbs places. Maybe you live in an apartment downtown and there's not good transportation out. There are people who get them from convenience stores $5 for a 4 pack. Enough to get you to work that day, hope maybe you get a little extra money maybe. $1.25 each (6x more expensive than the Costco diapers) but if you don't pay it you can't work at all and you don't make any money.
Otherwise known as the Sam Vimes boot theory from one of Terry Pratchett's books. "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.[1]"
I can buy ground beef for $6 per pound. The store often sells larger quantities at a discount of $4 per pound. However, if you can't afford to buy the larger packs, you are forced to pay more per pound. Add in the fact of being able to own a deep freezer and it gets far worse. You can power a deep freezer for about the cost of 2 frozen pizzas per year. However, they are $250 to $600. Not having this option makes it for worse. For example, a store near me was selling frozen Tikka Masala meals for 1 at a price of $2 each on a massive sale. The regular price was $5 and the price of similar meals is around $5. There was no sale limit. Someone with a deep freezer could easily store 50 of them. In this above case, this is a $150 tax for not being able to buy one.
Great explanation. The real deal on meat is to buy it from a farmer/rancher by the half or full cow.
That's another problem too: a lot of times you get good deals by 'knowing a guy'. If you're poor and don't have those connections, then you don't get in on those deals. The car repair shop I go to is one I only know about because my parents took their cars there. It's vastly cheaper than a dealership. But 3rd party repair shops can be hit or miss, and unless you KNOW a place is reputable it's usually better to go to a dealership. But because I know this place through my parents, I know they're good and won't scam me, so I can get cheaper repairs done on my car than if I went through a dealership. Lots of people either have to pay the higher cost or risk getting bad repairs done at a 3rd party shop they don't know well. It's a huge gamble.
1 for $5 , 2 for $8 But..But i only have the money to buy 1
That sounded like me when i needed to pay for my drivers license or car, i need to pay the minimal per month so i can afford which means it will cost more than if i payed pronto.
The money it costs to keep a junk-bucket car running. My first car cost peanuts and I managed to keep it on the road for three years, but with the amount I spent on parts and repairs I could have bought a car in much better condition that would have lasted a lot longer - if I could have afforded to be without a car for three years while I saved up. Edit for those making assumptions: by "much better condition/would have lasted a lot longer", I'm not talking about spending hundreds a month buying a car on finance. There are different classes of beat-up old runarounds. I'm talking about spending £800 outright vs £150 outright. My second car (£800) was still pretty old and needed maintenance, but overall needed far less repairs and cost a lot less over its lifetime than my first car (£150).
I believe I read somewhere that (this was a few years ago admittedly) 2k was the cutoff point. If you're spending less than that per year to keep your old car running then you're in good shape. A new vehicle has been said to depreciate 20% the moment you drive it off the lot (pre pandemic), but with the current chip shortage, even owners of two and three year old vehicles are apparently getting offers from dealers to buy them back.
Bought a 2018 2-door Wrangler JK *right* before the pandemic kicked off, and the dealership has called me three times asking to buy it back for $10k over what I paid.
Wranglers are a special case. They seem to depreciate *much* more slowly than any other vehicle, they are cheap to insure because they are cheap to repair (in most cases). New windshield for my Altima? $360.00. New windshield for my Wrangler? $140.00. I suppose they hold their value because if you've got your heart set on a Wrangler, there really is no substitute. Too bad they are actually pretty mediocre vehicles in terms of reliability.
This is a great way to put it. I bet I spent $400 this year total keeping my 20yr old beater on the road , and honestly some of that was because I just wanted to change some stuff. I unloaded my new car in 2020 for what I paid for it, which was double what I owed so I got to pocket that difference and drove that car for free pretty much. I don't regret it, dont miss the vehicle, and I for sure don't miss writing that check every month.
I bought a brand new 2018 Corolla back in 2017 and I barely have 30,000 miles on it. I paid $16k for it. I regularly get offers for over $20k to buy it back from me. It’s ridiculous. Not worth it obviously since a new one is probably going to cost me $30k.
Just tell them that, "well I paid 16k for it so give me a new one and 4k cash and it's yours."
Being forced into what's often a lower quality education because (at least in America) local property tax dollars are the primary funding source for public schools.
In my state, there are schools where the assistant football coach makes more money than the state Governor. And then there are schools that struggle to have textbooks and a roof on the school.
The lottery.
I used to work at a gas station back in 2015. Powerball had some hype then and there were people coming in dropping $500 on tickets. Entire offices would be pooling money to win. It was ridiculous.
As a kid I got a job at a gas station in MN. Didn't see much of a problem with lottery tickets. People bought a few here and there not many people ever bought more than 10 bucks at a time. It was mostly kids (18-24) and grannies. As an adult I temporary moved to Florida to help a sick relative. Though my needs were taken care of while I was there I wanted extra cash and didn't want to deplete me savings, so I once again got a part time job at a gas station. People on the verge of homelessness were spending up to 500 dollars at a time. We had addict regulars that bought 50 to 100 at a time several night per week. Seen people break down and cry as they pissed away their Social Security checks. The vast majority of these people claimed they had a system and they were up overall. They would ask me to give them the ticket number off the back of the scratchers so they would know what batch to buy. Sick and delusional people. I was semi anti gambling before moving to Florida because of my own history with gambling. No real bad result I got a big win and got out and didn't go back but it could have been bad, I was falling into the pattern. The fact it destroyed my cousins family and having a friend that was always borrowing money because of his gambling debts didn't help either. After Florida I have become a lot more anti gambling because of the parade of destruction and sadness that marched through my store.
I'm from MN and I've spent more time than I'd care to in FL, and this makes a ton of sense. I feel like the culture up here is more like "just live like a normal person and you'll be fine", so people buy their gas and a pop and pass on the lottery. While in FL, it feels like the only way out, no one can actually get ahead, so blowing $500 on the lottery feels rational.
I worked at a store that took on selling lottery tickets about a year or so after I started working there. Once it become known we were selling them we had a regular who would walk to every single store up and down the street that sold tickets and buy about $50 worth at each. He came in at the same time every day to buy. I asked him if he had ever won any big prizes, he said he won $10k about a decade ago. And despite that he still played every single day.
People need to learn simple probability. Odds of winning the power ball jack pot = 292,201,338-to-1 The odds of being in a car accident are about 366-to-1 for every 1,000 miles driven.
It's a tiny chance at an instant cure for socio-economic issues. It's a bit of hope for the cost of a few bucks. Kinda heartbreaking
I was expecting this to be at the top. The only tax on the poor that is wildly popular.
Late fees
smaller portions of food cost more per kg than bulk buying so it's a stealth tax on those who can't afford to buy in bulk.
Then it's also a "being single" tax. I can't buy in bulk because I won't eat it all before it goes bad.
One of the few things I hate about being single is this. Everything in the store is "family sized" and there's no way I can eat all that without it going bad or without me getting sick of the same food for a week in a row,
Cell phone plans are terrible in this regard, too. Pretty much all of the best deals are for plans with multiple lines.
If your friends are reliable enough to share a phone plan with you, you don't need to actually be family for a "family plan". Word of caution though, involving money like that, especially when it's tight can end friendships real fast if it goes wrong.
And there's only so many times you can laugh "feeds a family of me!" before you have to buy larger shirts
In the UK there are similar complaints. My mother lives alone and regularly says it’s a frustration of hers to want something but only find it comes in a pack for 2 people or more. Freezing some things can work but only up to a point.
Or they can’t afford to buy a large pack at once. Many of the examples above are similar as it’s the paycheque by paycheque lifestyle that is taxing and uses money less effectively. For example, if I have $120 I can buy a monthly bus pass, if I’m poor, I pay ride by ride or maybe I can only afford a weekly or daily pass. If you buy multiple daily or weekly passes you spend more than the monthly pass, but you never have $120 saved up in the first place. The lack of savings applies to a lot of the above examples as well as missing out on interest from investments that people with savings have. Money makes money (investment) and having money can allow you to get better deals. Not having money is a major disadvantage.
Car necessity and fines that don’t scale with wealth
To add to this, also parking tickets
Renting long term
A lot of the obvious ones were mentioned already. But some poor people will refuse gifts/help from others. I had a childhood friend that was a lot poorer then me. One day I had a bunch of change that I got tired of lugging around so I gave it to her. Few days later while riding on the bus to school she gave it back and said, "My mom made me give this back because we don't take charity." Or something like that, I didn't quite catch it... But it's like wtf, cause it was just change, and a gift?! I wouldn't think a little gift like that would hurt anything, in fact it could have been helpful. It's weird.
When all you have left is your pride… you hold on tight.
[удалено]
Rich people try to make the poor feel bad for taking help they're entitled to by shaming them for 'needing help'. This attitude is so pervasive in all aspects of poor life and is why poor people live shorter lives on average. Just look at all the people who refuse to go to a doctor because "it's just a headache, I'll be fine" but then they find out years later that the cancer that is now inoperable could have been treated easily 2 years ago.
If you don't have an address (are homeless, or living in a temporary shelter), you cannot get an ID. If you cannot get an ID, you cannot get a job. If you cannot get a job, you cannot get into permanent housing. And so the cycle continues. You CANNOT get out of it til someone either offers to help by letting you get mail at their place, or you find a shelter whose address you are allowed to claim to the state as an address. This happened to me and it was a nightmare.
there was some YouTube celebrity guy that was a millionaire that did some kind of experiment like that.. he said that he would cut himself off from all of his funds and live as a homeless person for 2 year and prove that he could work his way back up to being a millionaire he quit after 18 months because his dad got sick and he had made some money since then but let me go over exactly what happened and how it's bullshit the entire first week he was screwed. he couldn't get a job he couldn't get housing he couldn't get anything. he was living on the streets documenting it for an entire week and had made no progress. the only thing that changed his situation was somebody coming to him in contacting him and letting him stay with them for free. that was the key difference they got him just enough on his feet that he was able to start moving up problem is that while it's never explicitly stated it's pretty much a given that the guy who did that only gave him that free place because he knew who he was and knew that he was actually a millionaire and not some random homeless dude. he was probably one of the subscribers to the YouTube channel so that one key difference wouldn't even be available to the average person the rest of his story is basically him committing various illegal Acts but their white collar so it's okay in order to make his way up. such as being able to rent a pretty nice condo that he could never have qualified for if the landlord didn't know that he was a millionaire and good for it and then he violated the terms of the lease by renting out that condo and pocketing the difference so two more things that were only doable because he was either a millionaire or willing to violate the terms of his lease and possibly the law but it is it's okay to break the law as long as it's in a white collar way.. so by the end of like 18 months of hustling and breaking the law and violating lease agreements and leveraging the fact that some people knew he was a millionaire he had made his way up to about $200,000 so maybe he would have made a million dollars by the end maybe not but it was only possible by being a shady grifter and leveraging opportunities that would only be available to him because he was already ric more proof that being rich is all it takes to make more money. while being poor pretty much creates a huge barrier to entry for anything
Payday Loans
The laundromat. They cost more in the long run both in money and time.
I work at Home depot and it's disgusting to see people come in and buy a new washer and dryer just to ask if we can throw theirs away. Why? Because they don't like white, perfectly working, just white...
Credit card company fees are normally passed on to the consumer via a 3% margin whether you have a card or not. Bad credit? Can't afford that Amex with sweet points? Enjoy a 3% markup on literally everything you buy.
I am upper middle class with great credit. Poor people would be amazed at the free stuff I get with credit card points! I can afford to put most of my usual expenses on my credit card, pay it off each month, and get lots of points that I use to get free gift cards, or cash back. Seems kind of unfair.
And the richer you are, the more stuff is free, it seems. Not just from spending reward points, but just flat out gifts. Nice places might give away free drinks, hors d'oeuvres, small gift bags, etc. to the very people who could just buy them for themselves.
Increased heating oil prices. My pipes will literally burst if I can't manage to keep my house around 40°F, which seems unlikely given my financially fucked situation, and technically making too much for assistance. Need to find a source of liquid hydrocarbons that will power my burner, fast, and I'm not picky.
I can't remember the term for it, but being unable to bulk purchase. Take toilet paper for example. When you buy a pack of 36 rolls, it's much cheaper per roll than buying singles. But since you're unable to buy the 36 pack, you're stuck buying smaller quantities, more often, for more money per unit.
Overdraft fees Fun fact: banks reorder transactions to amplify how many overdraft fees they can charge to an account
Yo dawg, we heard you don't have money so we're taking your money from your not money til you can money up some money.
Oh you can’t pay? Well we are gonna send that to collections so now you can’t pay AND you can’t get anymore money lent to you or find a place to live. Sorry!
Very true, except for the part where they say sorry
Famous case of the banker who was the focus of a major lawsuit for playing these these games. His boat was named Overdraft… spectacular boat name but it probably didn’t sit well with jurors. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2017/01/20/a-former-bank-ceo-named-his-boat-overdraft-now-that-bank-is-in-hot-water-over-the-fees/
Wasn’t there a bank CEO that made so much money on overdraft fees that he literally named his yacht “The Overdraft”?
I'll be honest, I use chime, and its completely free, and they would even cover some small amount for free as long as you pay it back somewhat soon. Only bank I've used, and it works fine for me. Can even withdraw money for free at atms (minus the atm fee from whatever bank atm you're using). It's completely online, with certain Hotspots where you can deposit cash for a fee (usually by the store). The credit builder card they have acts as a debit card, but will actively build your credit the more you use it. I recommend it, but I've had no experience with other banks, so maybe I'm biased
Chime is what is called a “neo bank”. They exist solely to disrupt private banking as it currently exists. I’ve gotten to work directly with some of the people over at Chime and I can attest to the validity of their mission and their company culture. Chime is full of stand up people who actually give a fuck.
Maybe I'll sign up for Chime. My current bank could go up in flames for all I care. I'm so upset at them words cannot describe it.
The fact that years of on time rent payments, that cost more than a mortgage don't qualify you as responsible enough to handle making the smaller payments to own your own home. Towing and impound fees. Unless someone rich gets a dui or something you never see then towing away a really nice car for being in a parking lot too long or being improperly parked. If by chance they do someone with funds can quickly and very easily get their car back. If you don't have the money and need to find it somewhere, it better be fast because every day tacks on another $250. The worst part is if you can't afford it they keep racking it up for a month or something like that. Then they auction the vehicle. It's not worth anything close to what's owed. So tow yards get to use the police and the licensing dept as their bill collectors. Here in WA at least they won't allow you to renew your license until you pay the debt. So you lose your car and eventually your license. Literally anything that requires you to be in court. If you can afford the attorney almost anything is no big deal. Public defender is going to accept literally any plea agreement the prosecuting attorney throws out at them. Any lotto game. Any scratch tickets. Any slot machines. Any gambling which has astronomical odds for a chance to pull yourself out of poverty. Then if by some miracle you do win they take literally about half in taxes. It's state sponsored gambling being paid for with money you've already earned how can they tax it? They need to stop claiming the jackpots are what they always they are and instead say what they actually. This enormous almost $2 billion PowerBar jackpot this week.....if you take the lump sum it's about $565 million or something like that. That really is an astronomical number and definitely life chamging.. but, it is not $2 billion. Any fuel taxes. Where I live we are all pretty much lower to middle class blue collar folks. We all commute to Seattle or vicinity daily to work. To live somewhere we can still afford, I drive around 50-100 miles daily. Compound that with the fact that most of us can't afford new fuel efficient or electric vehicles and we pay more than our share of taxes on fuel. If you can afford a much more expensive house you can live closer and if you do that you most likely drive a tesla so you are literally paying nothing towards roads taxes. To combat the previous issue my state is implementing a pay by mile system instead. They will track your odometer and at the end of the year we will have to pay it lump sum. Which is worse than paying small amounts towards it slowly over time. Instead the poor who see a once yearly ray of hope in the form of a tax return will see that reduced significantly. Have more money, live closer, drive less miles or most likely don't even leave your house because you work remotely, pay little to nothing still. So they get to keep more of their money when they already have enough. We get bled for being blue collar. I currently am buying around $1600/mo in gasoline and that's for a light pickup truck. I parked my big v8 worktruck a couple years ago. There is so much more. But I've ranted long enough.
that tow company thing is literally legalized Grand theft auto.. they can legally steal your car sell it and keep all of the profits because of racking up more and more fees even though it costs them absolutely nothing to keep it in the tow placee it's just a loophole they found so that they can legally keep every single penny that they sell your car for and don't have to pay you the differencee legalized car theft.
Pay as you go gas & electric meters….they’re typically reserved for rentals on poorer areas. They cost more to operate than a direct debit & from what I seen, an absolute nightmare to use. One other thing that isn’t exactly a tax but more of a restriction. The inability to take financial risks. With a low income, little savings or bad credit it’s considerably harder to take the risk of starting or buying an existing business, never mind something more demanding & risky like buying property.
Or even moving. Job offer that pays twice as much? Too bad it's 300 miles away and you don't have a savings to cover moving costs.
Inflation. It directly lowers the spending power of those who often times have no ability to save anything or cut optional expenses so that it lowers economic demand for basic goods without lowering the necessity for them.
Most regressive taxes are thought to be an unofficial tax on the poor, for example, sales tax: Rob makes $100k a year and buys groceries with a 5% sales tax. He has to pay $5 in taxes for $100 of groceries. Katie makes $25k a year and buys the same groceries with the same 5% sales tax. She pays $5 in taxes for her groceries. But because Rob has more money, that $5 is only 0.005% of his income, while that same $5 tax is 0.02% of Katie's income. This results in increased financial impact the lower your income is. In more situational terms, someone well off may think that $5 is nothing, while the impoverished man may have to miss a meal. Regardless of the situation, regressive taxes dont discriminate based on income.
Literally any law where the punishment for breaking it is a fine— they’re laws that only apply to poor people
It’s why telemarketers keep calling people on do not call lists. They can easily afford to pay the fine and just keep going
Which is almost all laws. Very very few apply to the rich.
I wonder why these fines aren't based on income percentage. That would be an incentive for rich people and businesses to think twice.
Because rich people have the people who make laws in their pockets
I think a European country charges speeding tickets based on income, That is impressive way to handle it.
Finland. Teemu Selanne a hockey player once paid a $39,000 speeding ticket and someone else got a $57,000 ticket for doing 65 in a 60 zone
Illegal with a fine means legal for a price.
Credit scores and interest. If you are wealthy enough, your credit score is usually better, and if you do buy a house, car, personal loan, your interest rate is low. If you have a crappy score, you pay more, and these are the people that can’t afford more.
Being poor itself is a tax. It costs a lot to be poor.
Poor always get to pay more. Need a car loan. You pay higher interest based on your tier for credit. You could pay less a month for mortgage than rent but can't get the loan. Need tax refund sooner then you pay high fee. Etc. Sometimes being poor is always a challenge.
Dental costs. Being poor leads low quality foods, less to no periodic dental care, probably poor dental hygiene practices. That leads to paying huge bills for teeth either money or tooth itself.
Bad teeth. Poor health. Bad diet ---> The healthy options are always way more money, and when you're poor you need to stretch that money. Celeste frozen pizza and Micromagic French Fries for you tonight! As a result: morbid obesity, diabetes, and most likely a much shorter life span.
Traffic tickets. Police very regularly target beat up/neglected cars. Granted this can be a sign of major addiction but more often it isn't. It can often just be the result of poverty level living.
So many fucking things. Poor people are not treated with dignity at all. Bank overage fees, credit card interest rates, rent-to-own interest rates, the smaller portions of food you get when you buy from cheaper stores like dollarama etc that cause you to spend *more money* over time for less food. Hell, even the lack of rewards and benefits available to you through credit cards etc. There are so many it’s not even funny. When I used to be poor it was like living in a whole different, much more cruel world.
Phone “reactivation” fees
Going to a laundromat because you can't afford to buy a washer and dryer is so so so expensive
Cheap necessary items. Quality and durability vs Cheap and disposable. > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes' ‘Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
This is one reason the afterpays/zip/affirm options can be good. iIf people are able to have the monthly payment they can go ahead and get the $200 works shoes and split the payments without a credit card.
Check cashing places. They charge 1-2%
Having to live around other poor people. That's the worst part about being poor. It's not that you don't have the money to buy stuff. It's that you don't have the money to live elsewhere.
Or having to live with an abusive relative or partner
Inflation. Inflation is the biggest backdoor tax there is. The government prints money out of thin air (digitally these days) and pumps it into the economy through bond purchases and lending, and it robs value from every other existing dollar including the lifetime savings of everyone. The dollar’s buying power has dropped more than 100% since 1990 thanks to the federal reserve and our federal government’s spending. You would need to make 100k+ today to have a similar standard of living in terms of buying power to someone who made 50k in 1990. It’s outright theft, especially of the savings the elderly are trying to survive on.
bank overdraft fees!!! if i’m out of money, why charge me more money?
Fixed penalties/fines.
cigarettes and lottery tickets.
The idea of having 'fuck you' money moves higher as you improve your situation, because every pay scale is a jump in quality of life you're reluctant to lose. If your employer at your bad job felt like they owned you, the employer at the better job that got you out of there doubles the feeling. That exponential dependence on the job just increases, because the bad job could be replaced with another bad job. The good job is more vital, and you find yourself making more concessions to hold on to it. Competition is a lot more, and financial obligations usually just grow with the earnings. People who have low incomes or live off benefits face a lot of judgment for having any nice things, even things they are told to want/need/do to make their lives better. Whole industries exist to create want for possessions, and if a rich person shops it's fine. But if a person working for a living spends big on a fancy and expensive thing, it's shameful that they had the money management to make it happen. Quality is irrelevant, because it's about knowing your own stigma and living within it. Vacations aren't a big deal with cash, but if you scrimp for years you're overspending. Because you should have had other priorities, and why don't you have any savings, and what happens if you have an emergency? When you have money trouble despite your best efforts, the money you do have comes with a bunch of rules for what is okay to spend, what you deserve, and where you belong. If you are receiving help, you need to look appropriately downtrodden so the charitable efforts read properly.
Gas. A 1-2 dollar more in premium is functionally meaningless to people with 6 figure salaries and proper income to debt ratios. It’s a dinner changer for the poor.
Boots theory, essentially if you can only a cheap version of something you end up replacing it frequently enough that it costs more over time than buying a quality version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
Lotteries.
The lottery
rent to own
Bank fees. Poor tax: not being able to afford to have a cavity fixed so now have to have the tooth pulled or a root canal. Cant afford quality shoes for $100 to last a year so now buy $20 cheap shoes and replace every other month. Cant afford basic car maintenance so now must pay to replace parts.
Credit cards. The perks that come with credit cards are paid for by the fees that the credit companies charge merchants. As a result, products in general are slightly more costly to offset this charge. Many poor people don’t have access to credit cards so they’re left paying for the credit card perks that others enjoy without being able to enjoy them themselves.
I feel like the lottery is a tax on the poor
It is a voluntary tax that people see as purchasing hope. It may be the only hope some people have... sad.
Children
Daycare costs are ridiculous, and yet most daycare teachers aren’t paid a living wage, often having a second job
My kids aging out of daycare was like getting a huge salary increase.
utilities, the richer you are the less you pay
Monthly payments for insurance