Little costs add up , and quickly .
Recently, Iaskedmembers of theBuzzFeed Communitywho used to or currently live below the poverty line to share how being poor can actually result in more expenses.
Here’s what they said:
1.“Why do people who have the least amount of money get the highest interest rates? My ex-husband destroyed my credit (because my credit was inexorably linked with his), and he left me with a grand total of $4,000 and two kids.”
" I fought hard to recoup from that , but when it came meter to put on for a mortgage , I had to get back for the highest pursuit pace . Unfortunately , because of rising interest rates , my current interest pace is the same as others , but it will be another two age before I can refinance . "
— filmteach
2.“Our apartment doesn’t have heat, but if we ask the landlord to fix it, he’ll raise the rent, and with one of us being a full-time student, we can’t afford that.”
" There ’s presuppose to be laws in berth to protect against that , but if you ca n’t give a attorney and you do n’t desire to describe attending to your under market economic rent , you buy blanket and sweatshirts , and you do the skilful you’re able to to stay warm . This also get higher medical costs because of being cold all the time . We can only use one smoke at a time because of faulty wiring . But at least we have a place to live . "
— FrenchieEvan
3.“There’s almost no opportunity for long-term planning. Your brain is so busy just trying to figure out how to pay the bills this month that there’s no more brainpower to plan for a ‘rainy day,’ let alone college funds for kids or retirement funds for yourself.”
— Grant101010
4.“When I was a kid, my mum had an absolute rustbucket of a car. It had a hole in the corner that let the rain in, you had to wobble it to make it start in the mornings, and it regularly broke down for no apparent reason.”
" She could n’t give to bribe a new car , even one that was just slimly less stinking , but ended up drop little amounts over and over again to get it fixed . That money could have been saved up and spend on a new car , but if we did n’t have the honest-to-god one , then my ma could n’t get to work , so she had to just pay for the repairs every time . "
— gemface
5.“I could be saving so much on groceries if I could shop at Costco for certain things, but you can’t do that if you can’t afford to drop $300 on groceries at a time.”
" We can afford it now , but it ’s insane how much more you’re able to get for your money if you really have money to pass . To be clear , we are by no substance well off , and there are definitely times where we ca n’t go out because we ca n’t yield it , but it bolt down me buying a belittled box of scrap bags when I know I can get enough to last me a yr for , like , $ 2 more . "
— agreen1490
6.“I can’t afford to have more money taken out of paychecks for the ‘good’ insurance that my work offers, which means I have higher copays. I’ve been fighting a cold for more than three weeks, because I can’t afford the $75 copay to go see my doctor now, and I’m sure a quick round of antibiotics would clear this up in no time.”
— Anonymous
7.“My student debt eats up so much of my disposable income.”
8.“We live in a rural area with no full-size grocery stores in our town. The nearest, proper grocery store is approximately 25 minutes away, over a mountain pass. The added cost of the fuel to get to a decent grocery store can easily become unaffordable when gas prices spike.”
" alternatively , we ’re usually stuck bribe from a small , mammy - and - dada - eccentric depot in our township , where the selection is extremely limited and the Mary Leontyne Price are almost doubled because everything is being deal with a markup on the original monetary value . The memory proprietor buy from even grocery stores at even price and have to make a profit somehow . "
9.“Having to pay the bank an extra $38 when your account is overdrawn (even if it’s by $2). Then you’re being charged a $38 overdraft fee multiple times until your next check hits, which results in your check being a few hundred dollars less than it should be, and you have more bills to pay, and one of your kids needs new shoes because their only pair are ripped.”
" You ’ll cease up over - draftsmanship again and get late fee for notice not paid on time , resulting in your credit suffering . "
— kowls3404
10.“You can’t afford decent healthcare. A routine dental checkup is too expensive, so you put it off for six years, and suddenly, you need two root canals, three teeth pulled out, and a proper cleaning.”
" It gets expensive , but you ca n’t help it ( specially if you also have genial health issues , are homeless or handicapped , and can not take caution of your teeth ) , so the cycle croak on and on until you need dentures , which also be a stack . "
— sperkeles
11.“When buying a new/used car, dealership financing programs take advantage of the poor with some of the worst possible loans imaginable.”
" $ 0 down translates to a huge monthly payment that often hold up old age longer than the car ’s reliability . A shite cheap $ 10 K motorcar can at long last cost $ 30K–$40 thousand under dealership funding . I ’ve watch the punishing direction that having a sizable downpayment and getting financing from a reference union is the only way to go , as intemperately as it can be to carry through up . "
— misterfrooby
12.“If you have a job that pays by the hour, getting sick is even more expensive because any time taken off means less money on your paycheck.”
— daisyneptune
13.“If I had been able to afford getting some minor dental work in my late teens or early 20s, I wouldn’t be looking at thousands of dollars of work on my teeth in my 30s.”
" It ’s not from want of personal care ; there ’s a history of bad teeth in my household , particularly on my dad ’s side . "
14.And finally, “The most obvious and expensive part of being poor is having to buy the cheap options all the time. The cheap options don’t last as long, shoes wear out, jeans rip, breakage, etc., then you’re forced to purchase again and repeat the cycle.”
" Anything you purchase is usually the least expensive version because you do n’t have the money for better quality , even if you know it ’s a better investing that will work better and last longer . "
