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Why It's Expensive To Be Poor (Patreon)

Published:
2022-11-15 19:42:06
Edited:
2022-11-15 19:55:44
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hello Patrons! You know that thing where it's very expensive to be poor?

We're interested in hearing about your experiences with that phenomenon. Had to buy the cheap boots that wear out in three months instead of the expensive boots that last five years? Unfair overdraft fees? Had no control over your retail work schedule and thus had to spend more money on child care?

If you're comfortable sharing, please detail (in under 75 words please!) your experience in the comments on this post. Or, if you prefer, you can email submissions@somemorenews.com with the Subject Line "Why It's Expensive To Be Poor." A small number of these submissions may be featured in an upcoming episode of Some More News. Thanks!

Comments

Jon Gellott

I think about what's paid in time.  When I got married, young and catholic like the conservative parents wanted, my wife was in school.  I worked 4 jobs, and none provided healthcare.  That many hours to make ends meet damaged relationships and made career planning difficult. Got an interview at a job fair because it was on my day off, and when hired traded $15,000 in income for health benefits with an entry level phone job (hawt).

bramcrackers writes

There are a lot of unfair things about being poor (I have a lot of overdraft fees in collections and they ain't gonna see a dime), but the hardest is related to health. I have had depression since I was 20 and I've always only been able to afford psychiatrists in training or social workers (who can't administer drugs). My depression is treatment resistant, so it wasn't until I finally found a job with decent insurance and income (a few years ago, at age 31) that I was able to do a treatment that worked (ECT). If I had just been able to see a real psych in my early twenties, if I'd had enough money then, I may've been able to treat my depression faster. It feels like I wasted an entire decade in time and money, seeing what are essentially medical amateurs who couldn't deal with my difficult case of this illness. Over ten years of feeling like life wasn't worth living is just...gone. Because I couldn't afford the right doctor or the right treatment. It's infuriating.

AlaskanWeeb

One of the things that people overlook is the time cost of some things. When I didn’t have a garage, I had to wake up earlier every day in winter to scrape my car windows of frost. Sometimes my battery would die if I forgot to plug the care in when it got cold at night. I didn’t realize how useful having a garage was until I didn’t have one in college and when I was renting.

Anna Benkoski

i don’t receive health insurance through my job. i broke a tooth in 2011 when my state’s medicaid program did not include dental (they do now.). I went to a dentist and almost died when they quoted me the out-of-pocket cost. Being vain, i signed away the cost on Care Credit, only to realize the interest was almost 25%.

Alex Verhaeghe

Health costs for not having a primary care physician. Everything ends up as an urgent care or emergency room visit.

Orion Ussner Kidder

We had a tiny, shitty freezer, the kind that turns into a block of frost over time, which meant we couldn’t buy in bulk and save money. I used to stare longingly at deep freezers in my rich friends’ houses.

Andrea Obaez

It's not just expensive to be poor. It's expensive, period, and it seems like cost of living is purposely left out of the equation. It's not included in salary designation handbooks, where they go by title and the, "market rate," to decide how much you should make. I've seen people insist that we need to keep a certain percentage of unemployment to keep inflation down, except, any wage earner is bound to spend that money to stay afloat. And during all the hubub about, "No one wants to work!" I took a look at the data- that did not include any identifying details about those surveyed- and found that the wages had remained, but the quality of the labor they wanted was higher. So, again, everything has gone up except for our ability to pay for it.

Dany Schwarz

I'm from a very poor area in the rural south and from an 80s teen pregnancy single mom, so we never had enough money. The lights were constantly getting turned off so then you have to pay a reconnection fee, we went without food or school supplies, but one of my most visceral poor people problem memories was of our constant car trouble. In rural areas, you don't have any other choice but to drive yourself long distances. My mom didn't always have the money for regular maintenance, or new tires, or batteries, and the cost of repairs were a huge burden on us and there was no way we were going to afford a new car. I ended up having to get a hardship license and start working at 14 because we were so poor, and I would regularly fall asleep in class and had no time to do regular teen things. Once, when my paycheck was late, we ended up not being able to afford new tires, and I had a blowout and totaled our only car. Car repairs in general cost so much that it inspired me, as a teen girl in the rural south, to take two years of auto tech because of all the bills I'd seen from car repairs and it made me understand that if we'd had the money for a newer car and regular maintenance it wouldn't have been so expensive. My entire life has been damaged by how poor my upbringing was and how I had to care for my siblings almost my entire life because my mom couldn't afford child care. It left me with a stunted adulthood where I was trying to make up for the time I'd lost as a child and then trying to fix my mental health and all the mistakes that come from that kind of adulthood. Growing up poor cost me so much figuratively and literally.

Estance DH

It's hard not to feel like a cow being milked when I've given 85 000€ to my landlord over the past 11 years & the other human in his 40 units also have to pay rent, when the mice live here for free (eating our food, crawling into MY BED while I sleep) ! See, the mice go into my bed because my bed in on the ground, because I live under the rafters, I can touch the roof sitting in my bed). Of course there is no thermic isolation & the landlord won't fix the skylight which doesn't close all the way, so it gets COLD. I used to only use the shitty expensive convection heater when the weather got under 15°C (60°F), so I was sick all the time. Now I use the heater so it doens't get under 18,5°C (65°F), that can get 1/5 of my income in the winter months, of course my rent is over 3/5 of my income, but that's just full time minimum wage pay in France, a country that raises the minimum wage regularly to "keep up with inflation".

Estance DH

You can last 6 months with a 10€ pair of shoes, until it just has no sole any more. The cost is not the shoes, it's how sick you get because your feet catch cold. The cost of poverty is not just money, it's your life expectancy.

James Faucher

Working as a low-totem salary person, you have to use your own time outside the normal 40 hour, to do required job training. Furniture also. Our cheap crap falls apart quickly and is unsellable in the secondary market, while rich people I'm sure have a greater return on those purchases.

kitt m

This is a long time ago and in the UK, but my mum was too poor to qualify to pay for gas & electric by direct debit. We had to buy it like £10 at a time from the local corner shop. Trouble is, a £10 top up card gives you way less electricity than £10 by direct debit. Even today, topping up rather than DD can cost hundreds of £ more overall – and obviously, we didn't have that extra money, so we just went without. Cut to child me, living in a first world country, in the 21st century, without reliable access to electricity.

The Wyverns

We have been forced to rent apartments my entire life. Rental apartments are meant to be temporary and don't have storage, so we can't store equipment or spare materials. This means we can't fix and re-use a lot of things and have to keep buying new stuff when they break. It also means we have to pay for professionals to do any house-work because we have no tool storage. Also: loan interest :-(

Julie Scott

When I was pregnant with my son, I was a temp, and I wasn't able to get insurance because my pregnancy was a "pre-existing condition" for private insurance so I had to pay cash for all my medical needs and borrow $1500 from my parents to pay for the delivery. When I finally gave birth I quit my temp job so we (my husband and I) could qualify for insurance with the California state program and food stamps because I could not afford the child care costs to keep working. The first month on the state insurance, we found out we had to pay 50% of our income in medical bills before the insurance would cover anything because he "made too much money" at his barely above minimum wage temp job. Our rent was 50% of his take home so we ended up on payment plans for medical bills and ignoring any medical needs that weren't for my son. Eventually we gave in and accept my husband's parents offer to move in with them despite knowledge thier history of abuse and general unpleasantness. Luckily we were able to save up enough to get back out of there after a few years, and my son was kept pretty sheltered from thier BS, but it was a really difficult era of our lives.

Mulloy

I was kicked out of my house when I was 17 for extremely dumb reasons (I've been a coder since the 80s but my parents are the bad luddites not the cool kind). I worked a series of shitty fast food jobs and bought the cheapest boots footlocker had available from 15-19. At 20, my mom bought me a pair of redwings in 2001. I still wear them today, compared to buying new shitty foot locker boots every 4 months.

Urnow

I had no dental insurance following the 2008 crash, just after entering college. I went for a checkup paid for out of pocket and was told my wisdom teeth were completely sideways and would need surgery to remove, but as I had no coverage, could not get it done. I instead lived with the pain of impacted wisdom teeth until one broke the molar in front of it, causing an emergency surgery they could not turn me down for. This medical debt hung over me in collection for almost a decade.

Bel

I could only ever afford one tire at a time if something happened to one, so for years I lost a tire once a year. Stopped happening after I replaced all four at once with a stimulus check. Also I couldn't afford work shoes years ago so I sustained injuries in my back and knees in food service. Spent more money on takeout because it hurt too much to stand and cook until someone at church bought me better shoes. Pain keeps coming back though. I tried to go to PT in 2018 when I moved from restaurants to social work, but I couldn't afford it and quit early. Now I'm in PT again for the same problem, but worse! 🙃

HiSodiumContent

"Unfair overdraft fees?" I banked with Washington Mutual (WaMu) when I first started working. Things were okay for the first month, then I started getting hit with overdrafts every week, regardless of when I made my deposits. Eventually, they slammed my account into $400+ negative by delaying a week's worth of transactions and then batch processing them BEFORE processing any deposits. Turned like 50$ of purchases into 600$ in overdraft. The bank itself folded like 2-3 months after I had closed my account.

Pat

Siting in the freezing cold trying to get my car moving again. By the time I was done I couldn’t move my fingers. Later that year the engine threw a rod, because I couldn’t afford basic maintenance. I was working and going to school both full time (using the GI Bill to supplement my income), getting 2-3 hours of sleep most nights. I ended up falling asleep behind the wheel and hitting a guardrail.

Andrew Carkner

Having to cut back on food was expensive. It was harder to concentrate on work, and I was sick more often

Jax Uzpen

I went without bipolar medication for 2 years because after I aged off my parents' insurance, I couldn't afford the copay, coinsurance, deductible after the premiums taken out of my paycheck. Which, obvs, did not make it easy to hold down a job and therefore the scant insurance I had.

Robert Launder

Old cars! Before I had a decent car, the few I had would break down and cost me around $200-600 to fix every few months. I absolutely paid more than they were worth just in upkeep.

Ashley Bonkajo

Having a job that does not pay enough to be able to afford rent means living in my car. There is no way to store food that is not in a package. Buying things in single servings is far more expensive than buying a larger amount, and being able to store the remainder in the refrigerator. No oven/stove means buying prepared meals which are more expensive, more salt, sugar, and a larger portion than I would normally eat. I cannot let food sit in my car for long. buying bottled water instead of tap water. Having fairly regular bouts of food poisoning due to trying to keep food until the next morning. Not being able to maintain my car properly, and only fixing the catastrophic failures which cuts into everything else including food. My car is filled with clothing, bedding, and all other signs of homelessness which makes me a target of robbery, and violence. After all, who am I going to call; the police? My very existence is a crime. I have been robbed 7 times this year. I have been attacked twice this year, and had broken ribs by being struck with a bat. I was glad that I did not have any serious injuries as that would have needed a hospital run. Even with Obama Care there are costs that I could not cover. I try to present as masculine to prevent some crime, but there is only so far that will cary. Lack of proper sanitation is a big issue. I have to buy something in order to be a 'customer' allowing me to use a bathroom. In order to remain clean and presentable, I have to have a gym membership. At a bit over two dollars a day for a shower is better than other options, but it is a cost. There is also the fear, and depression. I am sure all the stress is not doing my health any good. Sleeping in two to three hour intervals because "what the hell was that noise", and is it safe to try to get a bit more sleep? Poverty kills us in tiny increments every day. This is a very disorganized rant, and I apologize for that. TLDR: poverty is extremely expensive in more ways than money. Health, and sanity are also depleted.

Timothy Hayes

Before the ACA even though I worked as an editor, I was freelance, which meant no health insurance. Being a Type 1 Diabetic, that meant my insulin came out of pocket. The option was to pay hundreds a month for insurance that didn't cover pre-existing conditions or pay hundreds a month for generic insulins and supplies which didn't keep me that healthy. Saving on health insurance meant thousands of dollars in hospitalizations that happened once or twice a year.

JessicaM

Dealt with tooth pain until it was unbearable then had to go to an emergency dentist. Paid 500 to get root canals for the now infected tooth. Couldn’t afford the crown so eventually the temp crown broke off, taking the rest of the tooth with it. Still missing that tooth.

Tami Wolff

I'm an only parent. I made too much to receive a subsidy for my son to go to preschool, but not enough to actually afford to send him. He was in daycare up to Kindergarten where he began a year or more academically behind his peers. In 7th grade now he still feels the repercussions.

Maebeee

I have to have a car to get to work but I can only afford to buy cheap cars. They of course keep breaking down and I have to pay $500 here or $2000 there just to get to work. I often end up missing work when my car breaks down as well, which has cost me career opportunities. I’ve spent tens of thousands on repairs but could never buy a reliable car.

richard mediate

Being physically disabled on disability and a single parent of a child on the spectrum I can tell you that without consignment events, I wouldn't be able to clothe my son. He does have a Warmbo shirt but that's because he loves that puppet. Not enough is spoken about adults on disability or how we are supposed to survive in America...I couldn't get the covid money for him because I don't file taxes as disability doesn't count as income. Either way we love you very much and you need more Warmbo according to my son

Jacqueline Gross

15 years ago, just before a paycheck cleared, I was charged three overdraft fees back to back because a bank moved my purchases around from the order they were made to the order of the most expensive purchases. Had they left the purchases in the order they were made I would have overdrafted once by about between 50 ¢ to $2.50 (long time ago can’t remember exactly), but because they went by order of most expensive I overdrafted by $120 something. The way this worked was the largest purchase put me over the limit by a few cents and then I was hit with a overdraft fee of $40, then the next purchase immediately put me over by a few more cents and I was hit with another $40, etc. When I called the bank the customer service representative accused me of playing games with my account because I made purchases when my account was so low. In the end as a ‘courtesy’ they reversed one of the overdrafts but left me with the other two. Again had they not played games with my account I would have only had one overdraft fee

Stephanie Kay

Earlier this year my bank quietly instituted a minimum account balance requirement, then withdrew a $50 fine for being too low (again with no notice) which overdrew my account, and then of course charged an overdraft fee. Also, back when the ACA was first implemented I was making ~13k a year, which was too much to qualify for Medicaid, but somehow too little to qualify for an ACA subsidy. Gorgeous design.

Rory Coble

Piggy backing on Stephanie I found out you could not pay the individual mandate fee on your taxes by ‘lying’ about having insurance. So you know being able to afford living by committing a ‘crime’.

Kevin Hengehold

Teeth! It's my girlfriend's story, but not being able to afford regular cleanings for years results in some expensive &painful ass work to be done in the present. (As an aside - in addition to being the things you use to eat, tooth & mouth health affects heart health in a significant way. So fuck everyone who had a hand in the decision that dentistry isn't "healthcare" and needs its own separate system).

Duck

Got a full-time job as a (student) molecular biologist (35k/year). Health insurance was ~20% of my paycheck, high-deductible, and did not cover the disabilities I had. My entire paycheck went towards my medical bills. The work was way more physically taxing than you'd imagine and it exasperated my conditions. HR would not accommodate and the elevator was constantly under repair. I had to walk up three flights of stairs to get from my reagents to my lab multiple times a day. Losing my job to disability actually saved me, since I got covered by Medicaid because it actually covers my medical costs. Medicaid for all and grad students please unionize!

vargonaut

Bank fees and shit. Now I'm paying the bank and vendor $ b/c I miscalculated and came up short. Even $50 buffer would have saved me so much $.

Benjamin Eagan

I have a car for work, and I cannot afford one outright so I have a car loan and they hold my title. I just moved so I need to register my car in the new state, but I cannot do that without the title. I have requested that the lender mail the title to the DMV and while waiting I have been fined over $800 between different tickets for failure to register.

OhhCrapGuy

In order to buy a house, you have to have a mortgage. In order to qualify, you have to have "good" credit. To get "good" credit, you have to have loans and credit cards, which means paying interest. You have to pay the banking industry for them to consider letting you own a home. If you don't have the money to spare to pay interest, you have to rent for the rest of your life, even though it's more expensive.

Douglas Baker

After being victim of a break-in theft, I financed some very necessary computer equipment with zero percent interest if paid off in a year. That was the plan. Just found out I didn't quite make it in time when I received notice that a $700 pure interest charge was added to the total I owe! Yay!

Mich Blackie

Woo boy… 4 weeks ago I was crying in my car because I didn’t know if I had enough fuel to get home. Out of desperation, I check my bank for the hundredth time to see if I had more that $0.80. I did, I had $65,000. An inheritance from my grandmother had come in. Suddenly, there interest coming in to my account. I got $120 for NOTHING. Just coz the money was in my account? And since I wiped my debts, I’m being inundated with offers for loans with low repayments, or credit cards with low interest. Since I can shop when I want to, I’ve saved so much money buying in bulk, or buying something that I don’t need yet (deodorant, detergent etc) while it’s on sale instead of waiting until I NEED it and having to pay full price. I got my car serviced. The mechanic caught an issue that would have cost me thousands to fix if it had of full given out on me. Routine service $250. Pay in time discounts on bills, my mental health is better, my physical health is better since I’m so much less stressed, I haven’t had any dishonour fees… It’s a million tiny little things. It’s truely bizarre… and more that a little infuriating.

Tashlin Familiy

Shitty apartments have shitty appliances. When things were rougher for us, we lost SO many groceries, esp fresh vegetables, because a refrigerator either got too warm and everything molded, or got too cold and froze everything. I can also remember a dryer that sometimes just did high heat regardless of setting, and in the process destroyed a bunch of work clothes.

Colleen French

As a disabled person, it is interesting to see how much poverty is just the requiring of absurd amounts of proof, either through time, effort or both to beg for safety nets the state should already be providing. As an SSDI recipent who got in before the 2015 crackdown I did everything 'right', yet every year I have to fill out an 18 page financial accounting in order to get access to medicaid, which I need for in home care, lest I be sent to nursing home.

Jason Luckey

When I was in college, I was working three jobs and going to class. I still didn’t have enough money to pay all my bills (living off campus, paying rent, car payment, utilities, car insurance, etc) and I accumulated a lot of credit card debt. Because my paychecks were low and my bills all seemed to hit at the same time, I started accumulating overdraft fees. Thirty five bucks per check. The bank was taking fees out because I couldn’t pay the fees they were taking out. Phone got cut off, couldn’t afford books. Luckily, my girlfriend had a friend that worked at the bank and wiped out enough fees where I could pay some bills. Never got out from under until I was well past college and deep in the “office job workforce.” Overdraft fees man. They can kill a body.

Setzer Studio Arts

Dentistry. If I had dental and health insurance when I was a kid, I wouldn't have to pay thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to have an oral surgeon extract my wisdom teeth because I would have had regular dental care and insurance would have covered it when I was a teenager.

Miss Jess

Oh wow, where to start. Let's go with banks: overdraft fees, fees for not having a certain amount put into your account via direct deposit monthly, monthly charges for maintaining your account, fees for not having a certain amount of money in the account (yes, they take money out for you not having enough money in there to begin with, it makes no sense).

Rob Heller

$300 a month for seizure medicine because you haven't hit your $5,000 deductible. I love paying for things that I was born with and have no control over... monthly.

April Hughes

Teeth. I went without any sort of medical/dental insurance for 15 years. When a tooth would 'blow up'. I'd have it pulled. I didn't have the $2-3K the dentist wanted to save the tooth. What teeth I have left are in bad shape. You kinda need your teeth to eat. Yet they're not considered a medical necessity in this country.

Isaac Comer-Wyrd

A microwave only lasting a year for the dumbest reason: "budget" model at Wal-Mart has "feature" where plastic rollers under glass turntable rub off all the paint of interior floor so badly a rust ring forms. Eventually spin so bumpy turntable constantly derails. Two times with the same model. Not gonna risk it a third.

Isaac Comer-Wyrd

I'm a salaried perm work from home (b-c COVID happened) employee. Yet I can't risk getting sick b-c my insurance has >$2500 "deductible". My son's on Medicaid b-c classic autism and deaf and blind. Yet I have to pay $590/mth to keep it active b-c I make too much money. ???

Warmbry

Check cashing places? I live in Harlem, and the ONLY people using them to cash checks (as opposed to the other services they provide) are the poor, who are unbanked, and so have to pay money to access their money. Also, maybe this is just a New York thing, but the supermarkets in poor areas actually charge more than the ones in wealthier neighborhoods (even more than WholeFoods) because they know they'll have more customers using WIC/EBT to pay for their food.

Dajama

The sometimes crippling feelings of anxiety arising from checking the bank account everyday to make sure the bills will clear and the feelings of panic and shame that show up when they won’t. Having to tell the kids no all the time. People thinking that being poor must mean that you don’t/didn’t have a strong work ethic (It doesn’t) or aspirations (which are just painful when it’s clear you won’t achieve them)

Emily Perkins

One time I had to provide proof of income to refinance my car loan and my credit union told me I didn’t make enough money to qualify for refinancing…how does that make sense?