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by jeffe
1834 days ago
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Do you know down to the penny, how much credit you have remaining on your credit cards? Have you ever lived in a state of fear, wondering which thing you've been putting off – the toothache, the weird noises coming from your car, the surprise bill, will bring you over the brink into homelessness? Do you think anyone in this position can simply get out by choice? How many people do you think live in conditions like this? |
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Assumptions are funny things. It might surprise you, but I actually HAVE been in more or less this situation. For me, it was in the years of the Great Recession. I graduated in 2010 and nobody would hire me, not even for service jobs like Starbucks/Walmart/etc. My parents had no ability to help me, and moving back in with them in the podunk town where I grew up would've been an economic dead end. At my lowest all I had was a $300 netbook computer to my name with maxed credit cards and an empty bank account; net worth -$60k due to student loans and credit card debt I acquired trying to make ends meet during my extended unemployment.
During this period I would've been on the streets except I was able to rotate among friends who generously let me sleep on the sofa for free. I stole about 80% of my food from a nearby university by pretending to be a student on the dining plan and spent my days applying for jobs from the library while starting to learn how to code Python. What little income I had during this period came from ghost-writing papers for rich college kids--$10 per page!--and one-off tutoring gigs I arranged through Craigslist. I tried making logos for people on 99designs using a pirated version of Adobe Illustrator but never won any design contests and gave up after a couple weeks of trying to focus on the writing and coding which seemed more promising.
When I managed to get my first paid tech job in 2014, I spent my first $20k on dental work I'd deferred to the point I needed a bunch of root canals and crowns. Only after my teeth were fixed did I understand how much of my mental bandwidth had been occupied by thinking: How are my teeth feeling today?
It was difficult being poor and I considered killing myself at times because I felt like such a failure. But I'm glad I saw these as problems for myself to solve because if I was waiting for a government program or social revolution to make things fair, I'd still be waiting. Or homeless. Or dead.
> Do you think anyone in this position can simply get out by choice? How many people do you think live in conditions like this?
No, I don't think ANYONE can. And I don't think it's simple. But I think many people can. I wouldn't advise waiting on somebody else to fix your problems if you're able to attempt self-rescue. I'm tired of people who have never been poor infantilizing those who are by pretending they have no agency in life.