Article- Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense

[Deleted]

There is a lot of this that I find very honest and thought-provoking.  There are some things I disagree with but those are more omissions rather than actual content and have to do with my own experiences of growing up poor which were, obviously, not her experiences.
Any thoughts?

www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233.html?ir=Parents

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.

Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full course load, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12:30AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I'm in bed by 3. This isn't every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork. Those nights I'm in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won't be able to stay up the other nights because I'll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can't afford to be sleepy. I never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn't leave you much room to think about what you are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn't in the mix.

When I got pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst knocked up.

I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.

The closest Planned Parenthood to me is three hours. That's a lot of money in gas. Lots of women can't afford that, and even if you live near one you probably don't want to be seen coming in and out in a lot of areas. We're aware that we are not "having kids," we're "breeding." We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion even harder.

Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a check and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered around SF for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cell phone to the desk to hold as surety.

Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary, but I've been turned down more than once because I "don't fit the image of the firm," which is a nice way of saying "gtfo, pov." I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won't make me a server because I don't "fit the corporate image." I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on B12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that's how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn't much point trying.

Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realizes that. I've spent a lot of hours impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn't work, but is amusing.

"Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there. There's a clinic? Great! There's still a copay. We're not going. Besides, all they'll tell you at the clinic is that you need to see a specialist, which seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. "Low-cost" and "sliding scale" sounds like "money you have to spend" to me, and they can't actually help you anyway.

I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.

I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.

Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.

I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it helps make sense of it.

[steph96]

Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick.

What? Cooking broccoli incorrectly can make you sick?

Cooking food attracts roaches? I cook all the time and have never seen a roach in my home.

[Deleted]

Nov 23, 2013 17:04:41 GMT -5 steph96 said:

Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick.

What? Cooking broccoli incorrectly can make you sick?

Cooking food attracts roaches? I cook all the time and have never seen a roach in my home.

Do you live in a dive motel?

[orangeblossom]

Nov 23, 2013 17:04:41 GMT -5 steph96 said:

Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick.

What? Cooking broccoli incorrectly can make you sick?

Cooking food attracts roaches? I cook all the time and have never seen a roach in my home.

Yes, in certain places cooking can attract roaches. If there is a roach infestation, which there frequently is in low income housing you have to be very vigilant about keeping the roaches at bay.

There is no "I'll wash these dishes in the morning" left you want to wake up to roaches everywhere.

Count yourself lucky if you've never had to live in such circumstances.

I don't agree with everything that she says here, but yes cooking and worrying about roaches, mice and other vermin is unfortunately, something people have to worry about.

[azurely]

Interesting perspective. I enjoyed the article.

Did you see that she set up a GoFundMe and has raised $45k? That will surely change her life.

[statlerwaldorf]

Nov 23, 2013 17:04:41 GMT -5 steph96 said:

Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick.

What? Cooking broccoli incorrectly can make you sick?

Cooking food attracts roaches? I cook all the time and have never seen a roach in my home.

The roach thing is true depending on where you live.  If you live in a motel or apartment where the entire building is infected, there isn't much you can do to keep them out unless the entire building is treated.  Even when we had a SFH in an inner city neighborhood, the houses were so close together that the roaches would keep coming back.  It's not as simple as buying a can of Raid or those traps to get rid of them when you have a bad infestation.  We hired an exterminator that would come out every few months and it wasn't cheap.

[Deleted]

Nov 23, 2013 17:19:17 GMT -5 azurely said:

Interesting perspective. I enjoyed the article.

Did you see that she set up a GoFundMe and has raised $45k? That will surely change her life.

Wowzers! I hadn't investigated the gofundme account she mentions.  That should definitely afford her a break from the second job. 

[mcsangel2]

She actually updated in her gofundme page, that she has quit (or is about to?) her second job. She has a legit agent that wants her to prepare a presentation for a book to publishers.

I have started reading her blog now. This is kind of amazing.

[steppenwolf]

Interesting article. In the same vein is this piece from New Yorker about why poor people often choose to use check-cashing services and payday loans instead of bank accounts. the www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/10/the-high-cost-for-the-poor-of-using-a-bank.html

[wise_rita]

Why is she bothering to go to school if she's resigned to the fact she'll always be poor?

Save your time, sister, since you're so certain your future will bring nothing but poverty and misery, regardless of what you do.

[wise_rita]

Why is she bothering to go to school if she's resigned to the fact she'll always be poor?

Save your time, sister, since you're so certain your future will bring nothing but poverty and misery, regardless of what you do.

[craftyesq]

Unfortunately, planning for the distant future and optimism is a luxury that not many very low income individuals can afford. Add to that a few generations with very low incomes and you do get a very different world view.

[ESF]

This article was amazing. I also recommend reading her blog here ---


killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decisions-or-poverty-thoughts-1450123558

she is engaging with the commenters. Her response to a commenter named opalcat (right now, its the top right comment) is as good as the article itself.

[Deleted]

Nov 23, 2013 18:14:56 GMT -5 statlerwaldorf said:

Nov 23, 2013 17:04:41 GMT -5 steph96 said:

What? Cooking broccoli incorrectly can make you sick?

Cooking food attracts roaches? I cook all the time and have never seen a roach in my home.

The roach thing is true depending on where you live.  If you live in a motel or apartment where the entire building is infected, there isn't much you can do to keep them out unless the entire building is treated.  Even when we had a SFH in an inner city neighborhood, the houses were so close together that the roaches would keep coming back.  It's not as simple as buying a can of Raid or those traps to get rid of them when you have a bad infestation.  We hired an exterminator that would come out every few months and it wasn't cheap.

I have had roaches crawl out of my patient's bags (sometimes several), have seen them crawling on baby strollers...infestations are horrible. And yes, of course food attracts them.

[5thofjuly]

Nov 23, 2013 17:04:41 GMT -5 steph96 said:

Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick.

What? Cooking broccoli incorrectly can make you sick?

Cooking food attracts roaches? I cook all the time and have never seen a roach in my home.

The broccoli is intimidating. I believe the illness sentence is referencing things like chicken. And, she doesn't say that cooking attracts roaches, but rather not doing dishes right away. I can leave mine in the sink when I'm tired and do them in the morning. In certain places, you cannot.

[Deleted]

Nov 24, 2013 12:21:36 GMT -5 tillie said:

Well, my sympathy was gone when she said she got pregnant while living in a motel, and also smokes. The money wasted on cigarettes alone could by significant food.

Point............................................you.

[scout8]

Nov 24, 2013 12:21:36 GMT -5 tillie said:

Well, my sympathy was gone when she said she got pregnant while living in a motel, and also smokes. The money wasted on cigarettes alone could by significant food.

No kids for poor people!

By the way, she specifically says that she isn't asking for sympathy.

[winnied]

I didn't care for the article but I suppose it's good to have it to share experience beyond, "I was poor, now I'm not. Yay me!"

I know she didn't say her experience was the same for everyone, but as someone whose family was poor not such a long time ago, I roll my eyes a bit. Poverty is hard. Not everyone can get out. At some point, though, you have to look at your choices, recognize that some of them are poor, and actually try to do something about them.

[Deleted]

Nov 24, 2013 13:22:14 GMT -5 scout8 said:

Nov 24, 2013 12:21:36 GMT -5 tillie said:

Well, my sympathy was gone when she said she got pregnant while living in a motel, and also smokes. The money wasted on cigarettes alone could by significant food.

No kids for poor people!

By the way, she specifically says that she isn't asking for sympathy.

No ciggies or skittles either!

It was a very interesting piece.

[flatlan]

Thanks for sharing. Many moons ago, DH lived in a low income apartment that was infested with roaches. He said that he would wash the dishes, make his food, wash the dishes again. He was a very clean and tidy person but the infestation in the entire building couldn't be dealt with on an individual basis.

[statlerwaldorf]

Nov 23, 2013 22:18:15 GMT -5 wise_rita said:

Why is she bothering to go to school if she's resigned to the fact she'll always be poor?

Maybe it's to take out student loans and use some of that money toward her living expenses.

[Deleted]

She wrote a follow up post clarifying her personal experience (vs. generalities of poverty, which is really more what her first post is about).

www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/meet-the-woman-who-accide_b_4334428.html?ir=Parents

[msmerymac]

Nov 25, 2013 22:35:05 GMT -5 sunny said:

I have lots of childhood memories of roaches. you turn the kitchen lights on and those baby roaches go running.
fleas too.

Yes, the studio apartment I once had (for 6 months) in an urban area had german roaches like that. I'd come home and turn on the lights, and one would be chilling on the wall. Or three would scurry across the kitchen floor. I couldn't leave out cat food and I always had to do my dishes. My apartment management company's solution was to send a guy up with a spray bottle of insecticide.  ^o) No, it was to the point where the whole building had to be tented, because they were coming from SOMEWHERE.