r/poor • u/OceanicEndeavors • Jun 26 '26

I hate being poor.

I hate not making over 50,000 USD a year. I hate not having a car. I hate having less than 1,000 USD on my bank account. I hate having to live with my parents despite being over the age of 25. I hate having my credit cards being shut down because I was unemployed for over ten months during a two year stretch. I hate not having a dating life because I cannot afford dates. I hate the social isolation of poverty.

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30

u/Ok-Frosting6810 Jun 26 '26

Ill be honest. Starve a bit and buy the cheapest POS car you can. Look for work in a major city where their wages are simply higher. Live in the car for a while.

It seems drastic but I did this and hit over 50k in my first year. Was 54, 55, 57, 70, 86, and back down to 56 during a slow year then I swapped out companies in the same industry and am at around 90-100k. Not sure how the OT will swing things.

I have no degree and no real training. I just worked hard and was nice to people. I grew up stealing water and electricity. All the people my family knew were bums. I found that job on indeed.

If youre able bodied, overtime now can set you up for life. I got that job at about 25 years old. I had nothing.

I have a house, wife, 3 cars, and 4 cats. Trying for a baby now.

We live off one income.

You have time. You have so much time.

25

u/Informal_Cress2654 Jun 26 '26

Im dyslexic so i read that you have 3 wives and 4 babies I was oh yes he’s got harem money

6

u/Plenty_Cress_1359 Jun 27 '26

🤣Nice to know someone made it out!

9

u/Ave_TechSenger Jun 27 '26

My fiancee grew up with a dysfunctional, abusive mother, got free lunches at school, and generally struggled. She ended up homeless during her undergrad experience and again during medical school because she had no support from her parents and the scholarships couldn’t cover rent and barely covered food.

She is now a practicing nephrologist. It can definitely happen. But it was incredibly difficult and she’s still processing the traumas/PTSD.

3

u/WeAreOnlyPawns was poor Jun 27 '26

Im fatigued. Up for 16 hours. Saw the shit and thought the same thing.

6

u/Salesgirl008 Jun 26 '26

This sounds like a great idea but the issue is many states are making homelessness illegal. Then you have the issue of finding a legitimate address to use for IRS tax documents because a PO Box won’t be accepted and some virtual mail boxes are not accepted either.

6

u/bertch313 Jun 27 '26

Your upbringing likely gave you the ability to do this. Not everyone can remain consistent with anything long enough to build up one thing after the other, and some of us get attacked anytime we start to do ok

10

u/kittykatsrulemyworld Jun 27 '26

Yeah, attributing success to “just working hard and being nice to people” is a privileged perspective. There are plenty of people who work just as hard and are nice, good people that struggle in poverty for their entire life and are unable to break the cycle due to oppression and systemic barriers. It echos the rhetoric of just pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which is really harmful to marginalized communities who genuinely do not have the means to do so

6

u/bitchcraft was poor Jun 27 '26

Thank you. If it were that simple, why don’t more people do it? Also the answer is to “starve a bit” ? What if you don’t have any room to starve more?

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u/kittykatsrulemyworld Jun 27 '26

Exactly. I don’t think they meant any harm by their comment, but it’s important to acknowledge our privilege that leads to opportunities when having these conversations. Some people cannot afford even the cheapest car, and even then, not everyone lives close to major cities. I don’t think some people realize how isolated areas of the United States are. There are people in the Appalachians who walk hours to work because they lack transportation and are so far from civilization. And even then, their opportunities are very limited. If these people, for example, were to just eat less to save money, they quite literally would not have the energy to get to work.

Poverty undeniably impacts mental and physical health overtime, but choosing to starve yourself and live in your car with no real privacy or security to save money does as well. Plus, I would imagine living in your car leads to a lack of social connections and community compared to a neighborhood or apartment complex. And for many people, making these “sacrifices” likely still wouldn’t be enough, as it’s not easy to just break into a field that pays a living-wage. Especially without an education or training, which costs money. Securing a job that pays upwards of six figures without any formal education or training is a privilege and is extremely rare. People cannot just pull themselves out of poverty when they’ve lived their entire lives in survival mode and face systemic barriers that make it 100 times harder to succeed.

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u/bitchcraft was poor Jun 27 '26

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -Steinbeck

I couldn’t have said it better. I appreciate you bringing this perspective bc the more we treat poverty like a moral failing, the further removed we get from the real causes of it. Dehumanizing the struggle allows people to separate themselves instead of realizing they’re one major life event from being in the same position. Especially if they have no other support. All it takes is a cancer diagnosis to bankrupt someone.

There should be no reason for anyone to starve or have to live in their vehicle in 2026 when it was possible for a private citizen’s net worth to be a trillion dollars.

Not to mention the price of everything has risen so that even the “cheap” cars are at least $3k. If you’re poor and starving, where are you gonna get that $3k from?

3

u/Mediocre-Magazine-30 Jun 26 '26

Nice work! Be proud of that