Being Poor Is Expensive
How It Costs More To Be Poor
When you are living pay check to pay check, it gets expensive. Being poor is expensive. “Huh? How so?” you might ask. You’d be surprised by the little things that add up to big things when you are already hurting for money.
Transportation
If you’re poor, and are lucky enough to even have a car, it’s probably a used one. It’s a clunker that is always breaking down, causing you to pay for repairs that are sometimes more than the value of the car.
Not being able to properly maintain a car is costly. Say you need new tires. That’s a lot of money to drop at once so you put it off as long as possible. But having bald tires causes other damage to your car that can end up costing money to replace. So now you need new tires AND new breaks. Excellent.
Banks Can Screw You Over
You checked your bank account yesterday. You know you have $50 in there and you haven’t spent any money. You need groceries so you go spend the $50 to get you and your family through until next pay day.
But, uh oh! You forgot you set up an automatic payment with your doctor’s office for your last medical exam. That’s $75 that came out today, when you didn’t check your account.
And since you just bought $50 worth of groceries, you’re way in the hole now. Only $75? Try again. Because they will ding you an over draft fee of $35 for the bill and the groceries, adding on $70 in over draft fees onto the $-75 already there. So now you’re really in the hole.
Yes banks, go ahead and take money from people who already don’t have money. That’s helpful.
Groceries Costs More
It’s cheaper to buy in bulk but when you’re poor, you don’t have the funds to spend $20 on a big pack of toilet paper. So you go with the $2 pack that only comes with 4 rolls in it and isn’t very good quality.
If you can’t afford a car, grocery shopping can get really tricky. You can only buy what you can carry and often you have to shop at more expensive stores because they are within walking distance from home.
Some people can only do “grocery shopping” at gas stations because there are no grocery stores within walking distance. If you’ve ever had to buy something from a gas station, you know they hike up the prices there.
Health
This is a big one. If you can’t afford to take care of yourself as a preventative measure, your health problems are going to get worse and will end up costing more in the long run, the sicker you get.
Say you find a strange looking mole on your arm but you can’t afford to go to the doctor to get it checked out. Instead you just let it go as long as you can until it starts looking worse and worse. Well now your skin cancer treatment is going to end up costing you more than that doctor visit was going to! What can you do though? If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money.
Or say you need insulin for your diabetes. You can only afford so much each month so you ration it as best as you can. This can end up doing major damage to your body, if it doesn’t kill you. All of that damage will have you ending up in the hospital, once again, costing you more money.
Because you don’t have enough to pay a doctor, you don’t have enough to prevent yourself from getting sick. It is an endless cycle that won’t end well.
They say money can’t buy happiness. I beg to differ. Money give you peace of mind. If you haven’t been poor, you don’t get to say “money can’t buy happiness.” It might not make you happy but it sure as hell makes life a lot easier.
