raingiant:

equagga:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

Being poor is just a series of emergencies.

Emergencies really do crop up more often for poor people. Necessities, like vacuum cleaners or phones or bedding or shoes, need replacement or repair more often when you only buy the cheapest possible option.

Poor people’s health tends to be compromised by cheap, unhealthy food; stress; being around lots of similarly-poor contagious sick people who can’t afford to stay home or get treatment; inadequate healthcare; and often, hazardous and/or demanding work conditions.

So we get sick more. On top of that, many people are poor specifically because of disability. All of that is expensive – even if you just allow your health to deteriorate, eventually you can’t work, which is – say it with me – expensive.

When you’re poor, even the cheapest (most temporary) solution for an emergency often breaks the bank. Unexpected expenses can be devastating. People who aren’t poor don’t realize that an urgent expense of thirty dollars can mean not eating for a week. Poor people who try to save find our savings slipping away as emergency after emergency happens.

I don’t think people who’ve never been poor realise what it’s like. It’s not that we’re terrible at budgeting, it’s that even the most perfect budget breaks under the weight of the basic maths: we do not have enough resources.

Cos we’re fucking poor.

People who aren’t poor also have different ideas of what an emergency constitutes. The AC breaking in the middle of summer isn’t an emergency when it’s in the budget to just go buy a new one the same afternoon without worrying about how it’ll affect your grocery money; having to take two days off from work because you’re running a bad fever isn’t an emergency when you have paid sick leave.

So it’s no wonder the well off people of the world don’t get it when a low income person is stressed over something breaking or a minor illness. I know people for whom a crashed car – as long as no one was hurt – would just be ‘damn it I liked that car and now I gotta borrow my wife’s’ and I know people for whom it would be ‘I can’t afford to have this fixed but I can’t get to work if I don’t get it fixed and I can’t get it fixed if I don’t go to work hahhaha time to indebt myself to family members who I desperately wish I didn’t even have to interact with because they’re the only ones who can give me rides or loan me money.’

Two very different worlds.

This makes abusive situations infinitely more difficult too.

Being poor is isolating as all shit, and you have very little power to choose who you do and don’t interact with. Quite often, in the midst of all these emergencies, the only people who’ll offer a hand up are abusers or toxic friends, and their help will carry invisible conditions, or be contingent on you never speaking up or “acting out” against mistreatment. And where are there any other options, what can you afford to do about it?

Sometimes even good friendships can turn sour and toxic if there’s a major difference in wealth between two or more people. As the poorer friend needs help more and more often and options shrink under the expense of being poor, it becomes scarier and scarier to speak up on the occasions when your better-off friend who helps you out inevitably fucks up and hurts you, like friends do.

It’s a power imbalance that will almost inevitably be abused. Poverty can actively breed toxic situations between friends and partners.