"Being Poor Is Expensive" And People Confirm It With Some Concrete Examples From Their Daily Lives

"I need some examples of "Being poor is expensive," for my rich friends. Please share. That stuff is eye-opening."

Ayoub

• Published in Interesting
• June 13, 2022

You might be familiar with the saying "being poor is expensive", at first glance it doesn't make a lot of sense, but once you actually understand what it actually means, things become much clearer. Money makes more money, and that's a fact, and not having enough money makes everything more expensive because you can't afford cheaper alternatives that require conditions you can't meet.

If you already have money, all aspects of your life will come with things that you mostly take for granted, but for people who aren't as privileged as you, those things come at an extra cost, and these seemingly small fees pile up and can get really expensive. Understanding this concept is certainly not easy, but concrete examples of why "being poor is expensive" can make the idea a little bit clearer in your head.

Society punishes individuals who don't have a lot of money. All the extra costs that you have to pay pretty much punish you for not having enough money, it's a tax for the poor.

A Redditor who goes by the username u/Paratrooperkid made a post on the r/antiwork subReddit with the title "Need help driving the point home. Please share. The post included a picture that reads "I need some examples of "Being poor is expensive," for my rich friends. Please share. That stuff is eye-opening."

1. "Many banks charge a monthly fee to have an account with a balance under a certain level, like $1,500. It's literally a poverty fee."

2. "If you can't afford your own laundry machine or an apartment that comes with one, it costs like $10 in quarters to do laundry. EVERY TIME."

—u/falanian

"Also add to that altering your schedule around laundromat hours and time to commute, and all the time you waste waiting around for it to be done because you can’t get other stuff done like you would if you had laundry appliances at home."

—u/SmashinCetacean

"We moved into a house that didn't have a washer and dryer. Went to the laundry mat and somehow spent $45 to do six loads."

—u/OGSchmaxwell

3. "Cars. Maintaining an unreliable junk heap is very expensive and a sinkhole. If you can't afford a reliable vehicle, your financial progress is going to be a lot slower. Missed shifts, unexpected expenses — it sucks."

—u/apathetic_take

"Or you can't afford a car at all and walk or take the bus for so many years (and can't afford good shoes) that it damages your feet, causing chronic pain, so you have to spend $500 on orthotics that are somehow deemed medically unnecessary."

—u/skidwitch

4. "Poor people can’t pay for childcare. The wealthy rely on underpaying people to take care of their kids."

—u/Parking_Relative_228

5. "Having to buy cheap shit that breaks fast because you can't afford good-quality stuff (clothes, shoes, electronics)."

—u/Duochan_Maxwell

"Especially shoes. You need good shoes to work in, but you can't afford good shoes, so you buy OK shoes that break after three months. After four pairs of OK shoes in a year, you've spent more than if you'd bought one pair of good shoes."

—u/TheVantal

6. "Not being able to save by buying in bulk. Even though it costs less per unit, the TOTAL is higher."

—u/Duochan_Maxwell

8. "Uber driver here. I live in a major city with shit public transportation. I can’t even tell you how many rides I give weekly where the Uber ride one way costs more than the passenger's hourly wage. I drive tons of people working part-time shifts that pay $12 an hour when the ride just to work costs $20. I feel very bad for them. It’s not like I am making the big bucks driving Uber, but paying $40 to get to and from work when you only make a few hundred a week doesn’t make any sense to me, but this is the reality for many."

—u/ChickenFrancese

9. "I’ve never had the money to spend on dental work, so now I’m spending thousands more to fix everything that was neglected."

10. "Chase has a $35 overdraft fee."

—u/justsomeguyfromny

"Before online banking was a thing, I was in college full time, working three part-time jobs, about 30 hours a week. I’d be so burnt out from my schedule I’d forget how low my checking account would get sometimes, and one time I overdraft and got charged $40. Here’s the thing: They would send you a notice via mail, which took three to five days. In those three to five days, you’d get more daily overdraft fees. By the time I got the letter for the first $40, I had accrued $240 in overdraft fees."

—u/Bain_PD

11. "Rent versus mortgage. The bank says you're too poor for an $800 mortgage payment, so you have to pay $1,500 on rent instead."

12. "The monetary burden of poor people is staggering, but the stress is just as bad — if not worse. Owing money that you don't have is incredibly stressful, as is struggling to perform a shitty job just to barely scrape by. The mental burden of being poor also requires money to cope with and, since professional help is expensive, it often ends up being dealt with in an unhealthy way..."

"Things like drugs can cause additional health issues, as well as potentially risking fines or jail/prison, so it's a slippery slope."

—u/ThrobbingSerpent

13. "If you have a low credit score, you have to pay a $300+ deposit in order to get the power turned on at your place."

"This is true in Las Vegas, and there's only one power company — NV Energy."

–u/cella80

14. "How about the fact that homelessness is illegal..."

—u/texas-hippie

"I got fined $200 for being asleep in a car park the other week. How can it be illegal for a human to be asleep?"

—u/taddo97

15. "Not being able to afford preventive medical care leads to huge medical bills later. I’ve seen it numerous times where people put off routine exams/procedures, and then come through the ER and end up with an amputation — or even death — because the illness had progressed so far before they sought treatment."

—u/Stoic-Nurse

16. "Higher interest rates anytime you borrow and lack of assets to borrow money against. You can't get ahead."

—u/JoeMayoParty

17. "The hardest part of being poor — for me — was the 'cost' of time. My weekly grocery trip took almost four hours. Time spent looking over fliers and making a list of what I could afford, walking to the closest bus stop, transferring to another bus, an hour of shopping and tallying up my total to make sure I was within budget, waiting up to 20 minutes for a bus home (including another bus transfer), and then walking home with all my groceries from the bus stop."

"I would often go without groceries because I didn’t have time to get to the store and was stuck making macaroni 'n' cheese without butter or milk because that is what was in the pantry."

—u/TwoBlueToes

18. "There are no grocery stores in your neighborhood and you don't have a car. The Bodega you can walk to is under stocked and extremely expensive. These are your groceries."

There is no bank near you and they close at 4 or 5. So you can't take a bus to the bank. So you have to use check cashing services that take a percent.

You have a mild toothache you can't afford to fix. So I becomes an outrageous expense when it turns into an abscess.

19. "Getting to and from work. Since you're poor, you cannot afford to live close to work and thus have a longer commute."

But you also cannot afford to own and run a reliable car, so you have a beater that breaks all the time and gets poor mileage.

When it breaks, you can't get paid because you aren't at work so you have a new bill PLUS halted income.

To compensate, you take out high interest loans to repair the car. But it breaks again later so you're always in debt for high interest loans on top of the car costs.

I see this a lot in the northeast.

20. "You meticulously maintain a high mileage used car that is totaled in a car accident that is not your fault. Insurance company will only pay you $1,000 for your car."

21. "Only being able to afford the small jar of mayo (or whatever), even though the larger jar is a better deal."

Overdraft fees that charge you money for having no money.

Late fees for not being able to afford your bills.

Having to go to the closest grocery store, even though it may not be the cheapest, because it's on the bus route or within walking distance.

Payday loans

Rent to own stores where you have to pay a ton of money for a couch, but pay weekly

Having money will make you more money and not having enough of it will cost you even more money. It's a messed-up system that we have to live with and try to make the best out of. The alternatives are either worse or non-existent so most people don't really have a choice.

Ayoub