to think that some people just don't get poverty?

[Ohsoworried]

I've seen a few posts recently where people earning a fair bit of money (think around 100k a year) are complaining that they're struggling with money, don't have enough etc. I DO understand that it is all relative but equally, for people like me on a low low wage, in insecure housing, wondering how I'm going to pay rent, having to stop paying in to my pension for the extra £30 a month etc it does make me cringe a little. Things are a little better for me at the moment but it has been hard and my secondment is up soon so back down to low pay. When I left my abusive ex I was living in poverty. And when I mean poverty I mean in a refuge, no job because I had to relocate, no money for a deposit to rent etc. It's the choice between being able to downsize your house, not go on holiday for a couple of years, make sacrifices but still live comfortably etc, compared with not knowing if you'll be able to afford your bills. Of course I'm generalising and I'm sure there are people out there who are genuinely on high wages but have high mortgage payments etc who are struggling. I do sympathise. But I don't always think this is the case...

Finish high school.
Get a full-time job once you finish school.
Get married before you have children.

AKA

Be clever enough and have a stable enough upbringing to be able to finish high school
Be lucky enough to be born into a part of the country where there are jobs or clever enough to have family who can support you to move to an area where there are jobs
Be lucky enough to meet a person who wants to marry you (emotional stability from stable upbringing will help) and if not accept that your punishment is to not be able to have kids.

You're confusing cause and effect and not recognising privilege. This is not a formula for success, this is correlative.

Yeah you’re not though. You’re just quoting one survey you’ve seized upon as it supports your world view. As pp said, it’s correlation not causation that the (still pretty young) kids in your study who finished school and got married prior to having kids are less likely to be in poverty than the control group.

This is all dreadfully sad. However, it does not sound like you’ve read the OP

Yep. Lots of people proving they don’t get it.
At all.

Did all this and I've still ended up poor AND marginalised. I also grew up in a MC family. There really isn't any secret formula for women to avoid becoming poor and a product of the patriarchy, other than making a conscious choice to remain single, unmarried/not having DC and staying independent of a man.

The success sequence:

Finish high school.
Get a full-time job once you finish school.
Get married before you have children.

I totally get this. I came to London in my 20s to study & i was so skint for a good few years. Relying on store cards & dodgy credit cards. Was almost homeless at one point. Took me yrs to get back on my feet. Im now lucky enough now to be comfortable, but i remember that dread & sinking feeling. Still now, i have a worry in the back of my mind that its all going to be taken away again!

I agree. I think it's very difficult to understand poverty if you haven't experienced it first hand. A lot of the lack of understanding is surrounded by clichés - things like "having a positive attitude" and "money can't buy happiness". Then there's the idea that if you work hard enough you can achieve anything. I haven't experienced it first hand but in my job I've seen it. I think the other week there was a woman wondering how she was going to.afford electricity bill - it turned out she had like 3 TVs in her house. It just made me think she was ridiculous.

Those things like "positive attitude" and working hard are obviously true but there are caveats. Social mobility isn't great in the UK but it is possible.

Having a positive attitude and working hard is key, but only if you're fortunate enough to find a career that will enable you to climb the social ladder. Sadly the top 5% is based on a limited number of jobs that pay well enough to facilitate mobility.

And money definitely doesn't buy happiness. You need to be happy in the first place and it is actually possible to be happy and poor, which is rare but we were. However, money relieves a huge burden of stress that comes with being poor.

I think what we've established is that there are two types of people with no money:
a) People who had no money in the first place
b) People who have no money because they've spent it all

We all know the ones who bleat about being 'poor' but can afford 2 or 3 holidays a year, to eat out regularly, to get the house improvements and save money. What they have is freedom to make choices which for someone on the lower socio-economic scale is all but denied. It is hard to dream of a better life when every waking moment is spent worrying about where the next meal for the kids is coming from. This is why successive governments pulling up the ladder after them for affordable post-16 education is so wrong. It was the route out of poverty for so many. I disagree with the politics of the Victorian workhouse where the poor are demonised for not working harder or deserve their misfortunes. Many are not given the hand up that is so desperately needed and much of the poverty in this country is systemic and engrained. What many people forget is that the majority are only 1 or 2 pay cheques away from homelessness. It is an appalling state of affairs in this day and age in the country with the 5th or 6th largest economy globally!

You see, I read tbe OP and think that until she’s seen (or been in) the camps for ‘displaced persons’ from Syria and Yemen, she has no idea what poverty’s like

when you look at somewhere like Switzerland, where poverty is almost inexistent, it really brings it home how awful this country is for inequality. I watched the video below a few days ago and was gobsmacked by how a woman working part time in a minimum wage job and supporting two kids, living in a lovely flat, considered herself to be poor because she couldn't go on holiday abroad and had to 'settle' for the holiday in Switzerland she was gifted by the government. A lot of people working full-time in the UK would consider themselves fortunate to have her lifestyle. oh I think you’ve just caught the holiday part and left out the other things she said, she makes around £2300 net a month, yet she can’t afford meals out for special occasions nor holidays, she needs to downgrade to a less spacious apartment, and that’s not in big cities like Geneva , Zurich , Bern. It’s more the less expensive cantons.

£2300 net a month can offer a relatively comfy lifestyle for a family of three in U.K.,

£2,300 a month?? My husband and I are on less than that with 3 children to support. Some people really don't know the meaning of poverty.

My personal experience is a lot of poverty is all rooted back to childcare.

A full time nursery place is average £1500 a month in SE London. How is that affordable if you are a single parent or on lower incomes?

Instead (women) are forced into lower paid part time work to try and reduce the cost of childcare.

That’s very sad and unfortunate for you but she’s talking about poverty specifically, not “whose misfortune is worst.”

Well I have three horses and they cost nowhere near my mortgage payment.

You don’t need to be rich to have a horse. I’ve always had horses even since before I was a teenager. My mother was a single parent on income support at the time.

That said, having horses is probably the reason I am NOT rich.

Something I find really frustrating is people who say things like ‘I’ve worked hard to get where I am’ as if their achievements
are all down to them and their terribly hard graft, without having the humility to acknowledge that their fortune and family circumstances played a part too.

I earn a decent wage and yes, I’ve worked hard to get where I am. But I wouldn’t even have got the chance to work hard to get to where I am if it weren’t for my parents’ financial help and investment in my future. If I’d been born into poverty I am as certain as I can be that I wouldn’t be where I am now. I’m not cleverer or more hardworking than someone who was born in poverty.

There are of course people who are born into poverty and who work their way up to become huge successes, and I have nothing but admiration for those people. But the majority of successful people don’t start out from poverty. It’s a hell of a lot easier if you start from higher up the ladder.

I'm just in the process of digging myself out of it.

I have two DC. Without doubt the single most influential thing that has helped me is having a stable home and income, even if it has been through benefits. It meant I could focus on studying and parenting whilst my kids were pre school age. I've just had a job offer on the back of my degree where I start on 24k. I haven't had financial or practical help from family, but I have been fortunate to not have any benefit hitches and fortunate enough to have a HA home. I couldn't have done it whilst struggling to keep a roof on our heads or to feed us. It's a vicious cycle and it is pure luck.

Everything @MissChandlerBong80 says is true. All these well off, 'I'm Alright Jack types' are no more worthy or hard working than someone born at a disadvantage - whether that be through poverty, being part of a marginalised group, via the patriarchal system, parental abandonment, or your own parents misfortune during your childhood (eg. ill health).

This government know very well they could at least try to ease the cost of living crisis by raising social welfare benefits for the most vulnerable of our society, but they choose to sweep 'the problem' aside. Fuck them.

Exactly @Basketet . I think the ‘I’m alright Jack’ types do it because it’s much easier to believe that they have some kind of inherent merit over and above other people than to acknowledge the truth, which is that luck has played a enormous part in their outcomes. Because it’s unsettling to acknowledge that if the cards had fallen differently, that could be us relying on the food bank, isn’t it? It’s much more comforting to think ‘that person must have been lazy. That could never have happened to me because I’m so smart and hardworking’.

I look back at my life and I can think of so many ways, big and small, starting in primary school, in which the luck of being born into a reasonably comfortable MC family has enabled me to achieve things I don’t think I would otherwise have achieved.

Sorry I am choking laughing at people trying to claim they are poor while they have a horse/horses 'because its cheaper than the mortgage.'

Yeah, thats not poverty. Not even close.

I know, right?! So out of touch!
I am fortunate enough to not be in poverty but I couldn’t afford a horse upkeep.

I didnt mention YOUR mortgage, I said "more than my mortgage payments...". And three horses DO cost more to keep than MY mortgage per month. Being able to keep three horses and still pay your much higher mortgage, bills etc makes you rich in the eyes of a hell of a lot of people in the UK right now, so thank you for proving my point.

As my grandmother said "There are none so blind as those who will not see".

The government doesn't get it.