Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

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It was a long, slow recovery, and I lost a lot of weight in the process.

I am poor and have lived poor most my life given how my parent's managed their money, its tough but that's the only way I know how to live. Worrying about money is oppressive, its a sickness that really sucks the joy out of life but from this anxiety I've developed pretty strong budgeting skills and am pretty good eating at least food I make for the most part. When I go to the store I have a pretty good idea what I am going to buy and how much I can spend so I have enough until the end of the month, it's not terribly hard and I make real effort to sniff out sales and load up.

I don't drive but my parents most my childhood would be buying those cheap used cars, they'd buy them and drive them until they couldn't anymore but if you can buy a car for <$1500 and get it to run for a few years then it's a pretty good buy. My dad has found some pretty nice cars despite buying used ones so cheap from individuals, sure beats a car payment.

I don't have cable or a smartphone, that's a real luxury. Internet is something worth investing money in, you can get most of your needs served out of it.

I keep things in perspective, where I live there are many homeless people and just folks that are a lot more messed up and less fortunate than me, I know I can survive to certain degree. I can't even imagine what life if is like in these poverty stricken third world countries, so while there is much wrong in our country and the world today we are still fortunate to be here in this and place.

The point isn't to poke holes in your premise it's to explain that it might not actually be a solution for some poor people. If you don't have tap water, a stove, counter space, a roof over your head, a refrigerator, any utensils or plates, any pots pans or bowls, you're probably not going to be making your own food. It's most likely cheapest to pay people to make it for you if you have to make a $30 dollar investment in an outdoor camping cooker or even $3 dollars for a lighter and $5 for a plate in order to make it yourself.

When Fnord says you don't understand poverty that's what he's talking about. You're method is a great solution for a certain type of poverty but it doesn't help when you're flat-out broke and homeless.

That's the whole point of dumpster diving.

Alisoncc was only 1 year old when WWII ended, so I doubt that he has any real memory of that time. Most people have no memories at all from before they were 3 years old.

I have real memories of living hand-to-mouth, on my own, and without the help of others. I also have real memories of being in real combat in a real combat zone.

I am a veteran of both poverty and the military. Maybe someday I'll finish this autobiography ...

It wasn't until I was ten years old that all post-WWII food rationing ended in the UK. And SHE has distinct memories of it. Although I was theoretically a HE back then.

As for serving in the military, I did eight years as a regular in the Royal Air Force, much of it on a nuclear armed bomber squadron at the height of the Cold War. I do have the dubious honour of having sat on the top of an armed nuclear bomb on dispersal. This was followed by fifteen months down the Gulf, before the Americans turned it into a media circus. Back then we could shoot people and no one gave a damm.

Try reading previous postings. There was no tap water, stove, counter space, refrigerator, utensils or plates where I once ate this bread on an Arab Dhow. And most of them are missing in the Sahara as well.

But I'm pretty certain that millionaire you know doesn't have to do all those things. Not so for poor people.

But there was a dhow. It was very resourceful to use the dhow's engine as a stove. There still had to be a dhow and gasoline to fuel it. When you have nothing the cheapest thing is a meal for $1.67. Investing in a dhow's engine to cook food on would actually be more expensive than investing in a stove.

If the raw ingredients cost 0.12 I would like to see you come up with cooking appliances that cost lest than $1.55. Can you really get a stove or an engine for $1.55?

Picky, picky picky. The flat bread I quoted is most probably the staple food for billions of people around the globe, and I mean billions. The fact that I now make it in a first world kitchen doesn't detract in anyway from the purpose of the posting. I have seen it cooked on a flat stone that had had a small fire lit on top. When the stone was hot enough turn it over so as not to get ash in the bread, a splash of oil of some variety, even camel fat, and place the raw dough on top. Wasn't rolled out as I do, but fingered out.

I mix this dough, enough for the day, everyday first thing in the morning. Doing so enables me to "contain" my budget. My daily version is made with Spelt and Rye wholemeals - It's tasty, nutritious and very cheap.

How many here complaining of poverty would even have a clue how to survive in the third world where poverty is far more real.

Alison

Doesn't have to, but he sees most spending as wasteful.

I have it on good authority that most people who accrue great wealth during their lifetime invariably spend their older years trying desperately to hang on to it. They rarely get to enjoy it, but their children or heirs do.

Alison

Anyone who has wealth only to hoard it for the sake of frugality might as well live in self-imposed poverty.

Ok but try stating a fire to cook on in a first world city. ill accept that u can do it with no utensils and everything everyone else is saying. but when if ur homeless and you started a fire somewhere you would have be arested. when i was homeless i didnt have a car to leave the city. i didnt have the money to get trnasport out of it. and im motor impaired so walking out into the country wasnt much of an option.

sure if i had been arested then i would have had a place to sleep and been fed. but try getting a job once youve got an arson charge. a lot of my mums friends were homeless when i was growing up and a whole load of them went to prison on arson charges for setting fires to try and cook in the manner u mentioned. the fact is in first world countries there are systems in place to stop people from doing what you describe. benches designed so u cant sleep on them, etc. etc. poverty is different in different places because access to resoucrses is different. i dont doubt that people manage with much less than things we have in first world countries but also consider the things in place to stop us from managing with much less.

plus also people in these places have been taughjt to live in this way. if youve never been taught how to catch a fish or a rabbit or such itll be hard to learn how while slowly starving and then potentially be arested trying to cook it. itd probably be more straightforward and life saving to just buy mcdonalds and hopefully not have your time being homeless ruin your chances of ever being not homeless again.

So, you're one of those types who believe that poverty isn't real unless it occurs in the Third World, eh? No wonder so many people in the First World starve to death; it's because people like you don't believe that they are really poor!

There's a big distinction between living below the poverty line and being homeless, and those terms mean different things depending where you are on the planet. From my observations of many people living below the US poverty line in my rural neighborhood are either fat, chain-smoking cigarettes, able to afford raising two or three kids AND buying tons of beer on a Friday night. That kind of poverty is not the real poverty in my opinion.