[tomrod]

Snark aside, disposable income is possible. Maybe it comes by picking up a side gig, maybe it comes by choosing to avoid drinking/smoking/junk food, maybe it comes by replacing shorter trips (<10 mi) with bike rides. There are dozens to hundreds of margins where individuals can be super-savers. Use a bucket of water and fingers + soap or newspaper instead of toilet paper, use baking soda instead of toothpaste, eat dandelion leaves instead of buying kale, etc.

I lived two years among the poorest of the poor in the Philippines, who live on less then $2/day, and I've seen super saving as a necessity for survival. In the US we have wonderful things like food stamps, guaranteed healthcare at ERs, utilities help if you're poor, etc. that take so much of the risk out of life. If you're living on rice + salt + parasite-laden water, cooking your food in a stolen pot by burning coconut shells from your manual labor during the day as a copras harvester (and getting your protein from unripe jackfruit, salted minnows, purloined coconut, and the wild bird that falls into your traps), living in a house that has a thatched roof and split bamboo walls and floors, and you still send your kids to school and pay the $100/year in tuition to get them there, then seeing how to save literally any disposable income makes a whole lot of sense. We're so wealthy in the US that we have little idea what it means to be truly poor.

[darpa_escapee]

It is disingenuous to compare the conditions of poverty in one place and time to another as if poverty is measured absolutely.

Adam Smith, coined the father of economics, had this to say about this sentiment in The Wealth of Nations:

> By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries, without meaning by this appellation to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life, and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.

[nostrademons]

Is it actually disingenuous?

When I graduated college, I had a decent job in financial software, but figured I would measure my standard of living against my peers who were unemployed or going to grad school and just bank the rest of my salary. That gave me the freedom to take advantage of many opportunities that would've been closed off to me had I measured my standard of living against what other people in my workplace expected.

Similarly, when looking at my life as a whole, I compare it to my dad (who grew up in WW2 Philippines and had his house bombed) and think I'm doing great.

Sure, I understand that it's natural to compare yourself against your immediate surroundings rather than arbitrary points in time and space. But if a mental model comparing yourself against another reference point will make you happier and give you the wherewithal to actually improve your standard of living, why not adopt it?

[tomrod]

Aye, and he wrote before the great stabilization of the Western hemisphere by the Monroe doctrine, and before the American and Canadian Manifest Destiny fervor, before the Irish potato famine, etc. Adventurous times when people of indigent circumstances went somewhere else or faced dire potential outcomes. Smith's argument supports my point that there are margins in all kinds of directions one may potentially save on, in noting that one can forego wine and beer without reproach. The people I lived among also had norms considered reproachful to cross, yet necessity occasionally required.

Sometimes you bite the bullet for awhile, as an investment for the future. You do what it takes.