Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

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Exact opposite here. People dozing off whilst driving is a significant problem given the distances we need to travel, so all of our intercity roads have areas set aside for sleeping in your car. These areas are typically well back from the road, have public conveniences and washing facilities to freshen up, and even occasionally electric BBQ's for cooking. There are regular road signs suggesting that drivers should take a break and have a snooze. Back in October, drove over 3000km in the space of a week to visit my daughter and return. It's far to easy to just keep pushing on without taking a break.

The experts say you need to save several million dollars for retirement if you don't want to work and want to have the same living standard. Now many people have to work until they die.

Where I work, the pension annuity is ~60k USD/year for the rest of my life when I retire, as early as age 57. That is like having 1 to 2 million in the bank to draw down on. This is akin to the above mentioned frugal millionaire.

Maybe I'm thinking of "Cromwell".

I just tell my son no or say "maybe for Christmas." If he wants that toy real bad, he will still be talking about it but the rest he forgets about and he wants everything on TV so I just say no.



I am lucky my parents got me a good car and even though it needs a lot of work, it's still running and I need to take it to the shop again and we have public transportation and I can use my parents cars.



I hope I never get one.



Why?



I didn't grow up poor so I can't relate but I am sure my husband can, he grew up poor. My son isn't in school full day yet.



Nothing to do with income, I have seen nice homes next to a freeway.



Good thing I am not this poor.



Luckily I don't need to ask for help. I assume this means financially.



I am frugal.



Yep I lived this way until we moved into a house.



Never had this happen and I don't have friends anyway. Besides if you have people stealing from you, why do you have these "friends"?



I understand.



I also understand and I have read sad stories about moms stealing groceries to feed their kids and when you have kids and get caught doing it, you don't get jail, instead the cop will buy some of your groceries and tell you places to go to for free food



Frugal



Yes, been there.



What?



I didn't use AC in my apartment unless there was a heatwave and what does the school having old textbooks have to do with someone's income?



Yeah but still not enough to make a living.



I don;t have anyone but my parents and they give a damn and my inlaws are poor.



I work under fluorescent lights anyway but I work evenings.



We actually kept getting something from human services and I think it was about child support but we never opened it since it was never addressed to us. I think someone used our address to avoid it and then we had a cop in our yard and my husband talked to him.



That tells me I am not that poor.



I am not this poor either and I just assume it's busted or why would they throw it away, it would be in the donation bin.



Sad.



How would they know you're poor? This is a stereotype that poor people all dress in rags and are all dirty.



I don't see how I would survive as a single parent without help. I can see myself not working if I were on my own.



Huh?



I hate wasting food.



Anyone can be poor.



Duh. I never understood the logic about why anyone would want to be poor. I never ever thought being poor was a choice because if it was so easy to not be poor, people would have gotten out of that situation a long time ago if they didn't like living that way.



This can be anyone because accidents happen. I have once had to wait 4 hours when my son was three days old because we thought he had jaundice and thought he peed blood.



What?



This sucks. I once got a 0 dollar paycheck because my old work charged me for health insurance and they took all the money out and I only worked like two days a month when everything was slow. What is the point in working if you get nothing to take home?



We have a bed that is busted but we don't have the money to replace the mattress.




Ignorance, naivety.



I know this.



Yep.



What?



Leave what? An abusive marriage? This happens to anyone, class has nothing to do with it.

I used to think I was poor until I read an article about the poor paying more than the rich. My husband used to tell me "You don't even know what poor is" and he would tell me I live like I am poor and act like we are. He also would call me cheap. Then I read that article and realized I wasn't poor. Yeah we may have lived in an apartment and can't afford to travel or pay for expensive things but those are all luxuries and so is living in a house and having a yard. We could afford to eat and didn't have to worry about not having food, we could pay all our utilities without having anything shut off and we could pay for our phones, we had internet and cable, we could afford to get our car fixed.

I also watched that Extreme Cheapskates show and I realized how cheap I am not because those people were living like they were poor when they were not. Dumpster diving, washing clothes in the shower, peeing in a bottle, getting water from the creek, driving a truck that only goes 15 mils per hour because the transmission was out, and oh boy don't get me started on the gifts they would buy their partners or feeding their guests food they got from the dumpster. Also some had lack of furniture in their home. The difference is none of these people were poor and they could afford the luxury life like laundry and buying food and flushing the toilet, using their own water, how normal people live but they were choosing to not do it while poor people who are that poor don't have a choice. It would still be wrong for a poor person to dumpster dive for food and feed it to their guests.

Reading about being poor really makes me appreciate my life more and not complain about my income and how "poor" I am or "broke."

Talk about a first-world problem.

I have not eggsperienced poverty in my life, I only know a little about poverty from my parents telling me their eggsperiences when young, as children/teenagers. They had homes, but little food to eat for years. During one period, my father's hair turned partially white from malnutrition, but it grew back black after the worst times were over. It would be much much much worse if they had no homes either. Saying that perhaps someone deserves to die if they can't find somewhere to prepare a simple meal is one of the most nasty things I have read. I have rarely read anything meaner and nastier than this.