[merth]

I have poor friends, they spend more on Netflix, Gym, Starbucks, IPhones, steam games etc then me, and they are poor for atleast last 10-20 years. I almost never have any of these and I have given them that classic suggestions like the cancelling the gym membership that he/she rarely or never uses, and it doesnt work, they keep spending money on garbage with money they don't have.

[J_McQuade]

In the terminology of the article - which I enjoyed and recommend that you read when you get time - these friends of yours are not 'poor', they are 'broke'.

[merth]

article says broke for temporary, these people poor 10-20 years. that doesnt sounds like temporary. they get government or familiy support, and rarely work short term here and there.

[SilverElfin]

I see this all the time in developed countries. The “poor” in a place like America are different from the poor elsewhere. Often times, the poor in America are just people making bad decisions, living beyond their means. You see it in the places they choose to live in, the cars they own, the number of children they have, etc.

[jamiek88]

Ah all you had to do was mention avocados and we had boomer bingo.

[moralestapia]

This argument is baseless.

All those things add up to a couple hundred a month, let's be extreme and say it's $1,000 USD/month. That amount will never move you up in the socioeconomic ladder. You're two-three orders of magnitude away(!).

"But it adds up" could argue the midwit, "why don't you just get a job that pays you more", "just invest", "why didn't you buy bitcoin in 2010", "why don't you just buy the winning lottery ticket". I wrote all those in order of increasing stupidity. Not aimed at you @merth, it's just stuff that I've actually heard.

Nobody who is wealthy these days got there by skipping Starbucks and instead throwing that dollar in a jar. Nobody.

You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely difficult these days because the denominator there is almost zero.

As TFA states, people who have not experienced poverty have ZERO idea of what it is like.

[abbablack]

Your argument holds even less ground. Yeah let's not save ~$12,000 a year since it'll never help. Instead say woe and stay in the same bucket and beg for handouts since there's no 12k in safeguards. If you're living from paycheck to paycheck due to your own spending habits it's a personal issue as well. As someone previously commented, it's about reducing expenses while making money. It isn't going to immediately lift you out. But it will eventually.

[IncreasePosts]

Being able to save money for an emergency fund is the first step towards financial and life stability if you're poor. So, yes, cutting out extraneous expenditures does add up, even if it doesn't directly make you move up the socioeconomic ladder.

Saving that $1000 or even $100/month means you might be able to get your car fixed when you need it, which might be the difference between keeping your job and getting fired/forced to quit. It can mean eating dinner every night, giving you better mental clarity and better sleep quality which can improve every part of your next day.

I think, "poor" is bigger than what the author wrote(ie that poor people have already cut out every extraneous expenditure). For every class, there are people with good financial hygiene and people with poor financial hygiene.

[merth]

> You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely difficult these days because the denominator there is almost zero.

I agree, but you should do both I think, increase your income and decrease your expenses.