Being Poor

I've seen several people link to this post, but I had to as well. It's really moving -- not only the post itself but the comments.

As a summary, the post is about what it means to be poor. The ones that stand out to me are the ones impacting children. A few of them are:

• Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won't hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier.
• Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.
• Being poor is your kids getting excited on Dumpster-hunt day, because that's the only time they get to eat "real food" like cookies, fresh fruit and desserts.
• Being poor is staying with a man who beats your kids because you can't afford to keep them out of foster care without his salary.
• Being poor is scrambling under the car seats to make up enough change to get two happy meals to split between a family of 4 - and everyone is ecstatic when you do so.
• Being poor is finally realizing that when your Mom says you can be anything you want, she doesn't really believe it, but feels she has to keep saying it anyway to keep the whole family from falling into despair-based lifestyles.
• Being poor is discovering that that letter from Duke University, naming you as one of three advanced students in your class invited to test out of HS early into their scholarship program, is just so much firestarter because the $300 it costs to take the test may as well be $3 million.
• Despair is finally realizing, at nearly 36 and with a barely-afforded AA in English from a community college, just where you could have been by now had you had $300, and what that missed opportunity has truly cost you.

I'm pretty much a "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of guy, but this post even got to me.

I can remember living alone with my mom and her working at a minimum wage just to keep us going. We lived in unsafe places, got free lunches at school with a "special" card, made a $0.19 packet of Kool-Aid last two days, and put gas in our car in increments of $1 or $2 at a time (this is when $2 actually bought more than 2/3 of a gallon). But I never really felt poor. We had each other and as long as we were together, things were fine. Plus, I just knew that this was only temporary for us. That we were both destined to be in a better spot financially. Several decades and lots of hard work later, we are in better places financially.

Can all poor people aspire to this or were we just "lucky"? After reading this post, I'm not sure.

Comments

[joe]

It really sucks being poor. Me and my family have been struggling forever it seems. No matter how hard we try, or what we do to get ahead, there is always something to knock us back down even further. Everyday is a struggle just to get by. Each year also continues to get worse and more expensive to live. Why does life have to be so difficult for poor people. We just keep praying and never give up.

[Fading Away]

If you look up being poor in the dictionary... that is me. A young single mother who also looks for change in my car and couch so i can put gas in my car. I do not have a phone. A lot of the time i do not have electricity. I have no 'luxury' in life. I have a car that seems to only start when it wants to. My daughter hears me cry and cry every night because we are so poor and cannot make ends meet. I do not have friends because who wants to go to their 'friends house' and sit in the dark and do nothing... I work 2 jobs and go to school full time. I have not a penny to my name EVER because i work to pay for child care. We do not have the option of EVER having fast food or going out to eat because all our change goes towards gas. My daughter gives me all her money she gets from her birthday or Christmas to help us live... she is now 8 years old and i owe her about $200. She does not get gifts, she does not get new clothes, nor do I... My child is also on the free lunch program... We cannot afford toilet paper so we take it from gas station and other public bathrooms... We both had two terrible accidents over the past 2 years and i now owe the hospitals tens of thousands of dollars...

My dream is to own a house
My dream is to have a car that runs
My dream is to some day be happy
My dream is that my daughter makes a better life for herself than i...

I know i will never own a house or a new car and i probably will never be happy, BUT I DO KNOW my daughter will have a better life when she's an adult because there is nothing worse than this.
I pray and nothing happens. I will pray again tonight and hope tomorrow is the day all are hopes come true...

[anna]

Think good thoughts, you are clearly doing what you can to survive. I myself grew up on park benches and battered womens shleters, the commute to my school was two hours on the public bus both ways. I didnt have it easy my mom was and is addicted to drugs this was hard for me to be around as a child and teen, but I knew better and found the strenght and will power to change my life. This was not easy but now I am very successful and happy with my life, all it take is determination and the belief that you have control of your life and its course. I know that your daughter will suceed if you let her.

[dantown]

Dear Fading Away,
Please contact a hospital administrator immediately.I know your post is 18 months old.I have heard you can negotiate your bill if you simply ASK for help.There are programs for "medically indigent"(poor) patients.I don't guarantee anything.Please contact Jewish Family Services,Lutheran Social Services, and Catholic Family Services,etc.Look in the phone book/online for social services.There may be money out there for you.Please try to join a church or synagogue of some kind.Tell the religious leader your situation. I lived off of free lunches at school.Summer meant eating potato chips and those large bottles of Pepsi.And stealing pears off the wild pear trees near the playground.If the yellowjackets didn't get them first.Honeysuckle was a nice treat at times.Also,wild grapes were very fun.Kids are resilient as long as they have a source of fuel called"love".If you portray to your kids that your situation is perhaps "bad",but not hopeless,and enlist them in the "adventure" of survival,they will see it as a way to help you and love you.You have to enlist your kids in "Mom's army".General Chuck Yeager shot squirrels[to eat] before school to help his parents survive,eighty years ago in dirt-poor West Virginia.Gen.Yeager,shall we say,did alright.

[samanthawesley]

my dream is to have a car that runs for me and my daugther

[Jose D Rivera]

How can I get free money or money I could pay back at a later time cause I`m having dificulties finding a job at the moment..Need to pay for living expenses for my child and the goverment doesn`t want to help, I don`t want to break the law by ilegally getting money...

[diana]

Being poor is just a state of mind, if you think you're poor you will be poor. I know you think that I am one of those person's that's see's life through rose colored glasses but I am not. I just know when I dwell on being poor I seem to get more poor. But when I start to think big, big things happen. Think of having money and you will. Believe you have money and money will come.

[Melissa]

I am a 26 year old mother of 7 young children.I say the only reason people are poor is greed.We are not poor and I have no colledge.If you do not live beyond your means or spend your whole life paying back student loans for a job that most likely at least statistically will not last.Just get a regular job and use 1/2 your months income on bills and use the rest for fun.Life is to short not to enjoy it.At least this works for me and I have 7 children as I said before as well as an okay vehicle.It runs has heat and ac.So were good.This might not work for us all but with this many children and a $500 pymt on a mobile home + all my other bills are about 900 total which leaves me about $400 thats $100/week to blow on nothing it does'nt sound like much but were all together and happy find happiness in listening to the radio.Playing outside,My kids like to dig and ride bikes.

[hope]

I am a single mom of 4 behind on my rent and bills Well my car I'm using it till it gives out cause it has a oil leak that I don't have money to fix My dog got bitten and we almost lost him because I could'nt pay to get him stitched up I have no medical insurance and might have diabetes cause of the stress But Im happy because at least I have 4 beautiful children to love and love me back A stupid dog who even though he got beat up cuz he thinks he's a pitbull makes us laugh with his ways. A car that is a beat up old convertable but I enjoy it when I manually pull the top down and it makes me feel like Im driving a audi or something Where I live I made my own little garden to keep me and the kids busy a 3 dollar pool so they can play and pass the time I consider myself very rich, maybe not with money but with the inventiveness and imagination to survive and enjoy the life I was given! I always tell myself I could be worse but Im blessed I know What I have many people wish they could have even those who are financially better off. I have been using my extra time since I find it hard to get a job I make things to sell to get gas or get some money for whatever. I offer rides to nieghbors or friends in exchange for gas to save on what I spend I know alot of people are having it hard right now but we all have to help one another when we can and all become inventors and figure out ways to make money. The caveman lived on alot less !!!

[Cheryl]

I do not enjoy being poor. I work so hard to take care of my three children and just when I take a step forward I seem to slide back three steps. At the end of May my sons and I will be living out of the car but atleast the weather is better and we can set a tent up somewhere. I pray everyday for bigger and better things. But I pray the most that my children will be able to live a better life. I am grateful that I do have money for food. I cannot afford shelter as rent keeps going up and up but summer is here and we all be ok for now. Good bless us all...

[Jef]

Okay, I would say I am at about the middle of the spectrum for wealth, or at least my family is. I am poor. I go to college, and as I work my way through, I say to myself I dont want to do this for the rest of my life. HOW CAN I MAKE MONEY??? We need to work together-and by communicating this, we can help ourselves build income. Think of LEGAL things. History has shown that making money is based on how you can make someones life easier. ex. the invention of the car (makes traveling easier)/as simple as the pillow (makes sleeping more comfortable). How can a poor person do just this? how can one with little make a lot? what are ideas that with the support of others can change others AND ourselves?

[Victoria]

I am a single mother of 2.We have a roof over our head and pray to god every night we keep it.I worked 3 jobs and paid off my motgage after high school and because that I lost my first son-Jordan he died on christmas 98.I worked to hard but, have 2 healthy children now even though we can't afford a vehicle that runs right,heat for the winter or even food to eat we get by the best we can.Even if I don't eat for weeks,they do.We don't have water like most or electric,nor t.v or phone.But,we have one another and the good lord.They can take everything but, not our home.We'll always have each other if welfare don't destroy us.

[Ben]

There will be poor people all around us for as long as this life continues, partly because of all the injustice. I believe one reason for there being so many poor people in America is because the in-crowd gets all the good paying jobs and all the top-paying positions. And once the in-crowd secures themselves the top-paying jobs, they then get to keep those jobs and top-paying positions for as long as they want. I see this trend all the time. I believe if we would stop allowing certain people to hold the top-paying positions by rotating them out every year and putting in new people, then more people would have an opportunity to have a piece of the American pie. The problem with everything now is, the fat cats get all the American pie, while the rest of us poor folks have to struggle just to a crumb.

[Exit Poverty]

Being poor is being powerless

[Aleria]

You're lucky that you got Kool-Aid!

We were dirt poor, my mother worked 3 jobs (one while we were in school, one she would take us with her and one every other weekend when my father had us)and we shopped exclusively at Good Will.

Kool-Aid was something we got in our stockings because sugar was so sacred and used very sparingly. My mother struggled to get milk once a month on most occassions.

But we were happy, poor, but happy. My childhood was very wonderful even though we didn't have much money to do anything.

[Derek Dicks]

I pay my rent and my bills with a social assistance cheque. Then there is nothing left. No food, no drinks, no tolitries, no clothes, nothing. I have been like this for about 5 or 6 years and I'm stuck. I have a criminal record and have been unemployed since. Being in this situation for years made me turn to crime as my only source of income. No one hires an ex-con when there is twenty other people in line for the same job without a record. I hate my life, which i don't even have one, I'm single as no girl wants to go even ten feet near a broke man. I don't have kids at least. But my empty stomach is hard enough to deal with. People say, "what bums, how can they just keep living on welfare like that?" The answer is we don't. Not one part of this exsistence is living. To me living is enjoying yourself, being happy, eating healthy food, having social drinks with friends. My exsistence consists of sitting at home by myself and rotting away. So hopeless, now so helpless. And so very very alone.