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This would be a lot better if it were more realistic, it banks on you not being able to make smart decisions to ram the various factoids down your throat. It would be a much better experience if the basics were spread out over multiple months with the occasional clustering of events.

This 'perfect storm' of trouble is just setting you up for failure, the deck is stacked against you much further than it is in real life. You are also not given the full picture up front, nor are you given the option on which services you subscribe to.

Also, if you can't afford a mobile phone you probably shouldn't have one, and if your landlord does something illegal an alternative option is to tell him to go f*ck off rather than to pay or move out. Good luck evicting me if I'm up to date on payments and the contract stipulates terms that I've lived up to.

That said, it's probably a useful tool to get people to put themselves in the shoes of someone that has it worse than they themselves do.

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Games are always rigged. Usually in favor of the player, this one is against. I think it supposed to illustrate this one month when problems cluster.

I know a poor person who has 3 kids and car that falls apart. Some of the decisions she makes are strange. This game allowed me to take a peek at crazy world she's living.

If you had the education and forthought to read and comprehend a legal contract, you probably wouldn't be a low income worker. Don't look down on those who have difficulty in life, it's a roll of the dice with a little skill sprinkled on. I'd argue success is more due to your upbringing and factors outside your control than we give credit for.

> you probably wouldn't be a low income worker.

I was one of those once, and I remember the time very well.

The bigger problem underlying all this is that people are lured in to making very bad choices the downsides of which only become apparent once they're hooked.

People that I employed were unable to do basic bookkeeping, balance their checkbooks, work out how much their various loans (for stuff they didn't strictly speaking need) were costing them etc.

This is first and foremost an education problem, low wage people are created, they are not born that way.

If you fail to educate a large portion of your populace to the point where they can do any of the above in their sleep then you will end up with people that are structurally in trouble in a country where wealth is potentially abundant.

If you outsource all your labor to even lower wage countries then you end up creating an even larger problem for those lower on the totem pole and you make the rich much richer still.

Problems like these don't just fall out of the sky, they systemic and single individuals have limited ability to influence the total picture, but they typically have a lot more control over their own life than they usually want to admit.

I know some people that are currently downright poor, they both smoke like chimneys, and have health issues to boot because of that, which further cuts in to their ability to spend their money where it should be going.

Beats me.

Interesting. Some friends and I were talking about this the other night. I have a few friends who actually "made it" but still haven't learned those essential skills. I wonder what may happen if one day they happen to face tight budget. They probably wouldn't last long.

Some background: My mom made about $8000 a year, and my three siblings and I we were lucky to have temporarily free housing from a richer sibling. So, with food stamps, welfare, my absent dad's union health insurance we got by.

Eventually, I found my way into a gifted program at a small, urban city school. That, at least, put me on an academic track. My class size was about 400, and the gifted group was about 15. By the end of the 12th year, I would guess that, of my gifted class, probably 40% had dropped out. The class merged with the honors students in 11th grade because of attrition. However, I made friends with some honors students who were of working class and poor backgrounds.

Again, by sheer luck, I happened to get accepted at a state college. After meandering around for a couple of years, I happened to made the right decision by banking on computer science, even though I had never used a computer until I was 15 and didn't own one until my junior year of college. Those years of constantly fighting with the student aid program were some of the most stressful years of my life. Now, I make over 100K as a high-end developer. I have done well for myself.

However, most of the other gifted and honors students haven't fared so well. I do have a few friends that have also done well using Computer Science as a gateway out of poverty. However, those friends sadly still haven't figured out how to do basic bookkeeping or balance their checkbooks. But, in all honesty, I did not figure that out until I was 28 or so.

Anyway, without savings, with poor life skills, and a lot of debt, even those smart kids are probably likely at risk. If ever the software development market turns down, if they're out of a job for an extended period of time, I wonder what will happen to them, as well.

I never understood the American English term "balancing the checkbook." Is that simply keeping track of how much you're earning and spending and making sure the former is higher, or is there more to this skill?

edit: thanks all!

That's basically it.

There is/was a small ledger in the front of most American checkbooks where you (ideally) log the deposits into your checking account and the checks that you wrote and calculate the balance after each transaction. Some people integrated their budget explicitly, logging 'transactions' to represent future/monthly obligations, savings targets and the like, but that wasn't at all common IME.

Practically speaking, this was a more necessary skill back in the days before direct deposit and debit cards. When a check might 'float', having been written but not cashed, for days or weeks until the recipient cashed it and the bank that accepted the check worked out the transaction with your own bank.

Nowadays what people mean by the term is simply the discipline and wherewithal to understand how much money you have in your account, what your obligations are and what you can safely spend.

The term comes from a paper process. Traditionally, balancing the checkbook was the act of reconciling your personal record of the checks you wrote (your "check register") against the statement the bank gave you at the end of the month, giving you a chance to correct errors on either side.

It is used in a more general context to mean keeping a budget, as someone who would check the bank's work and make sure their own accounting matched to the penny presumably is doing so to ensure he is living within his means.

It's that plus comparing what you wrote down to the bank statement at the end of the month to make sure that you didn't make any mistakes (and make sure the bank didn't either.)

> Again, by sheer luck, I happened to get accepted at a state college.

Sheer luck? You were a hardworking person in a gifted and talented program in high-school. Luck had nothing to do with your college acceptance.

Certainly, I would love to take responsibility. But, generally, the data shows otherwise. Of my 10-20 closest friends, many of whom I consider smarter than myself, many are still in working class poverty, working as bartenders and laborers. In fact, only about 25% of adults in the US attain college degrees. Most of those degrees are attained by people already in the middle class. Furthermore, many are in uneconomical specialties like Literature.

At some level, I suppose I was a better decision maker, but overwhelmingly I happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Some 'luck' factors:

- At 17, I became friends, by accident, with a boy in another area whose dad was the VP of an engineering company. His dad saw my interest in science and encouraged me to go to college.

- At 18, while working as a temp, I happened to make friends with a retired engineer who encouraged me to college.

- I went to college in the 90s, at a time when Computer Science was a much more achievable major. Now, it is much more competitive.

- In the 90s, Computer Science had much less inspiring occupational outlook. I believe chemical engineering was all the rage then.

- I stumbled into Computer Science by accident. I happened to be a Physics major who had a sad, late night addiction to MUDs. And, I decided to start my own MUD and code it myself.

Well these people encouraged you to go to college, but their encouragement didn't add to the likelihood you'd be accepted.

You worked hard and were in a good program--that was the decider.

May I ask.... did your 10-20 closests friends apply to a state school and get rejected despite having grades better than you (its not enough that they're smarter than you, their grades have to show it)?

I may be speaking out of turn though... I'm from Virginia, and here state schools are practically guaranteed acceptance. If you can't make it to the university level initially, you can always make it into a community college and after 2 years of passing grades the state university is required to accept your transfer.

No. You were a clever guy who fell on hard times. That's quite different from someone who is destined to be a low income worker for life due to early events they can never recover from, whether their own fault or not. That foundational education you received stays, whether good or bad.

Having said that, yes it is an educational problem, but it's also the randomness of life events. Families breakdown without notice and without a childs control, lives end, jobs are lost, shit happens just like good things happen too. Some people get a string of bad events, others a string of good events.

Don't look down on their lack of skills, you had the ability to comprehend them, they didn't, maybe you had access to facilities and the time to learn, maybe they didn't.

In the end, who knows what the true reasons are, just do what you can to help a fellow out and enjoy your good fortune if that's how things turned out, but try not to judge and over simplify an exceedingly complex problem with one step solutions (although I agree, good education works).

You seem to be saying that people are simply a product of their (random) environment. I think that too is oversimplifying the problem. How can we tell the "clever guys on hard times" from those destined to wallow at the bottom? Just saying that the everyone that doesn't succeed in life was "destined to be a low income worker" reeks of confirmation bias.

> just do what you can to help a fellow out

Don't worry, I do my bit.

if your landlord does something illegal an alternative option is to tell him to go fck off rather than to pay or move out. Good luck evicting me if I'm up to date on payments and the contract stipulates terms that I've lived up to.*

I have never ever experienced a landlord trying to raise my rent mere days after I moved in, like they seem to do in this game.

It's not uncommon if it's cheap housing that's only semi-legit to begin with. When I lived in Santa Cruz, I heard all sorts of this kind of shady behavior going on with sublets, which due to housing shortage was the only thing you could really get for <$1000.

But what are they gonna do? They can't legally evict you under those circumstances, so just keep paying the originally-agreed rent.

You might be able to prevail, yeah, but many people are a bit scared of finding themselves on the street, unable to find another apartment, so aren't willing to play hardball. With an unofficial sublet (no signed lease, etc.), landlords don't necessarily resort to proper court-supervised eviction proceedings; "eviction" can take the form of "change the locks and dump your stuff on the curb, and deny that you ever lived there", which probably rarely happens but seems to be a common worry of people renting irregularly with no paperwork.

Then you'd have to find somewhere to live, and undertake the time/expense of suing. The best protection is probably a bit of a mutually assured destruction angle if the landlord is breaking the law through the irregular rental in the first place (in Santa Cruz many of the rentals are off the books because they aren't even legal rental units--DIY converted garages and attics and such).

Not sure how big that "informal rental" section of the economy is, though, so maybe this isn't a common situation. I'd guess it's highest in NYC.

The usual money-grabbing scheme I've seen is to require some excessive security deposit, and then contrive ridiculous reasons for keeping large chunks of it.

One flat I shared the rental agency tried to withhold £150 for the changing of 1 (entirely ordinary) lightbulb, and cleaning a single drawer of a chest of drawers (a tiny amount of dirt under the drawer lining paper, and not apparent).

It's such a persistent theme that I tend to write off the deposit as part of the costs of moving, and consider it a good deal if I see 50% of it again.

This is true. Here, the deposit is usually a months rent. I lived in a house for a while and when we moved out the landlord didn't want to return the deposit (about €1200 I think it was) even though there was no real reason for it. There is some kind of government run agency here to deal with disputes with landlords and they got the deposit back for us, but it took a long time. In the end the landlord had a choice of going to court or paying up and he paid up.

When you are living on the edge, the perfect storm can come around far quicker and more often than you'd imagine.

- study loan: don't get one in a field where job prospects are bad, better to go do work instead

- cell phone: don't get one if you can't afford it (ditto for a regular phone)

- kids: if you can't afford them, use a condom (yes, that's harsh, but that is something that really beats my understanding, people already living on the edge that decide to have one, two or even more children)

- in general: if you can't afford something, don't buy it.

Your prior decisions will determine to a large extent whether or not you can survive on a very basic salary when hard(er) times hit. Getting a room-mate and sharing the cost of things that you are unable to afford by yourself are good tricks to get around some of the more practical limitations that a low wage job gives you.

I used my low wage job (mailroom boy) to expand my knowledge about computers which eventually landed me a higher wage job. My typical meal back then consisted of plain macaroni with ketchup, because the rent took away 5/7ths of my income, and the electricity bill another 1/7th. That left me with a grand total of 100 'credits' to feed myself for a month. Not a whole lot. I made pretty sure that there were no kids, phone bills or debts to go with that, and I did whatever was within my means to cut short that phase of my life.

> - kids: if you can't afford them, use a condom (yes, that's harsh, but that is something that really beats my understanding, people already living on the edge that decide to have one, two or even more children)

I totally agree. If you only make $9/hr, maybe you shouldn't have kids. If we ever get around to controlling reproduction in the US, income level seems like a great place to start to me. (The game also tried to make me feel like a bad parent because I 'let' my kid get teased for eating free lunch and 'risk my child going hungry'. Where's the "Eat your damn food and mock people who have to pay if they try to mock you" option? Also I didn't pay $15 for a field trip which forced them to stay at the school that day when I know kids at my elementary got their field trip fees waived.)

"kids: if you can't afford them, use a condom"

It is totally possible to predict when you'll become poor and therefore decide not to have kids. It beats me why do people ever get poor when life is just a sequence of such obvious decisions.

I'm talking about those situations where you are already poor and decide to have kids anyway.

I personally know a number of people who are on social welfare and planning having a second or even third child. I find this is extremely irresponsible. They can barely afford the children they already have and want to get the state to pay for more? I'd much rather my taxes went to schools and hospitals and better public transport than for paying for these peoples stupid decisions. What kind of life will that child have?

If you cannot afford it, do not have children. I can totally understand if you had the children before you, eg, lost your job or whatever. Things happen, situations change. The problem is the people who don't already have children. Also, if you cannot afford it, you need to be extra careful not to have an "accidental" pregnancy.

If people on welfare stopped at 2 or 3 kids we and they wouldn't have any financial problems with it.

This generation's moonshot public works project should be a low cost reversible renewable year-long sterilization technology.

Also, harsh as seems, it would help if newborns on welfare were taken to orphanages and treated well there instead of generating funds for their genetic ancestors.

> This generation's moonshot public works project should be a low cost reversible renewable year-long sterilization technology.

At least for women, that already exists (IUD, implanon). The problem is, for any medical technology there's side effects, and people still need to consent to it.

Having children makes people happy. As in deep, deep happy. It's really not as mysterious as some make it out to be.

This is generally not true: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/06/28/having-kids.... Although it does seem to be true that most people think having kids will make them much happier.

Seems to counter itself with a statement like: "Parents still report feeling a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives than those who've never had kids."

Obviously if one equates happiness to lower amounts of worries and responsibilities than sure.. But that seems kind of.... superficial?

Note: I am not in anyway saying that those who choose to not have kids are superficial, it is their choice -- just as it was mine to have a kid.

Sometimes birth control fails! Like it did with me and my girlfriend a few months ago. My poor ass is now job hunting!

Many ancient religious proscriptions have their basis in correlations to healthy living. There really are reasons to consider abstaining from pork and sex before marriage.

Anyway, everyone's life is half chance. Make the best of it and enjoy the ride.

Time to grow up!

Congratulations are in order anyway, so here are mine, and I really hope that you get that job. My children were all planned and even if I did fall on hard times (twice) in the intermediate the fact that we cut down to the bone as soon as trouble hit helped us survive. Things that don't kill you will make you stronger.

If you can't take that risk: Abstinence (or just different sex practices), abortion, adoption or tough if out.

My capitalist instincts would suggest another option: sell the child to a wealthy couple who can't bear their own.

You can try that, but the market for that is probably very strange. For example, I can imagine that demand goes up with price, because no one wants a cheap child. And for some combinations of properties of the child you'll probably have to charge less than nothing (i.e. pay the adopters).

Of course, someone who really believes in the market would harvest the child for organs. (Sarcasm implied.)

Quite true. My daughter is the failure case for condoms combined with birth control and a wife who was told "you can't have babies." I'm just glad it happened two months after we got married instead of for the 3 years we shacked up previously.

Good luck, boss!

Sage advice, and yes it IS possible to follow (and I know it is too late for you now but here it is anyway): 1. Do not have sex if you do not want a baby. 2. Do not get married unless you can support a baby.

Life finds a way!

Make a solid investment in her, and she'll pay you back with interest.

Still: congratulations! Babies are great.

kids: if you can't afford them, use a condom

Agreed.

The game background implies the player had a good job, could afford kids, but fell on hard times after cranking out some pups.

The player was pretty dumb not to have more than a thousand dollars in savings at the start of the month, then.

The player had been unemployed for a while, benefits ran out, savings depleted.

Where the player went wrong was letting things get so desperate that choices were limited.

So the game screws you over before you begin. It's like a car racing simulator where you start out three feet from a wall, travelling at 120mph. And every time you crash, the game tells you that this just goes to prove that driving is dangerous.

Or like playing QWOP and concluding that running is hard.

"cell phone: don't get one if you can't afford it (ditto for a regular phone)"

This is kind of a tricky thing, right? Phone access is still essential for job hunting, and payphones aren't terribly common anymore either. Borrowing a friend's phone is sometimes possible, but for getting a callback? Not so much.

Same thing goes for internet access (which, of the two, I think would probably be a better investment once a job is secured). Even so, low-wage jobs are often very dependent on scheduling and thus require a phone to get updated about shift changes.

(note also that yes, you can get net access from unsecured wireless networks [increasingly shunned due to piracy and access concerns] and public libraries [which may not be convenient to get to])

Simply not getting a phone (generalize to point of contact if desired) is not really a good option.

You can get a prepaid phone. Without a monthly contract a phone really only costs as much as you use it.

If you're only using your phone for job calls, this should be fairly cheap.

The per-minute rates are generally high (on the order of $0.30/min) and the prepaid time generally expires (in 10-30 days for low-dollar loadings). If you are actively searching for work, you need to have enough time loaded to handle a telephone interview and to be put on hold from time to time. Once that's covered, you need to top up the time at regular intervals in order to avoid losing what you've already paid for -- and that leads to a non-refundable "savings account" with your provider. Prepaid is not significantly cheaper than a low-end contract, and can be more expensive.

Your job choices here were waiter, warehouse worker, and office temp.

Who gets a telephone interview for any of those things?

At least I know that no warehouse job I ever worked required a telephone interview.

Based on the ignorance of your statements, I would have to guess that you're either of an upper middle class background with very little exposure to poverty or that you have an overt political agenda.

I'm really trying to see the intellectual validity of your statements. I'm really trying to understand if you truly believe what you're saying. Would you actually make those same decisions?

Sorry, this isn't against you. I just see these type of comments often, and they only seem to make sense to me, in some abstract 'know-it-all' 'hindsight 20-20' sort of way, as if all of these life decisions are black and white and obvious.

You're very funny, and you have no clue what you're talking about.

I would suggest that, perhaps, he has much more of a clue than you'd like to admit. Maybe not about you specifically, but I too have noticed that, in the general case, those who lecture the truly poor have never been truly poor, or in many cases even mostly poor, at all. Full disclosure: I was once one of those assholes.

I, personally, have never been in a state of poverty. I've been very lucky. I was lucky to be born male and white in a country (and a state within it) where there were opportunities available to me. I was lucky to be born to parents who were reasonably educated but had enough discipline to take care of a kid (my father did, anyway). And I was lucky that a number of my own decisions, foolish in retrospect but in all seriousness a good idea at the time, did not come back to bite me in the ass.

I would suggest that, when talking about how people should not make those decisions, perhaps you could entertain the idea that they see no alternative. I've certainly been guilty of this before, both politically when in a certain libertarian phase (I got better) and in my professional life, when I drove myself to frustration wondering why person X did this thing that I instantly realized was stupid. Perhaps no alternative is within their view. (Even if you've been there, surely there's the possibility that you have certain advantages, in being able to see "the big picture", that others lack?)

Sure, there's no doubt some of the lazy "welfare queens" that the American right likes to demonize; I'm sure some exist. But I have come to something of an understanding in my own life that those in poverty are much more likely to encounter Morton's forks than others, and I find it more difficult than I did during that libertarian phase to self-righteously castigate such folks for making bad decisions when they have few, if any, good choices to make.

From your other posts, it seems like you're not one of the people who's born on third base and thinks they hit a triple, but a lot of folks who write as you do are indeed those people--and the simple fact that you're able to do what you do, to have ended up in a position where you can perform the mental gymnastics necessary to be a (I assume, good) programmer, that maybe, despite whatever else, you weren't exactly birthed in the batter's box.

Just something to think about.

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