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Comment by fantasyfacts | Hacker News Reader

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> Whatever is left over after expenses is fun to be had as soon as possible.

When income is 80% of the minimal bills, which dollars are the fun ones?

> But anyone who has actually dealt with poor people who live paycheck to paycheck knows they are not good at budgeting and planning.

You may not know that assertion is uneducated nonsense. The nonsensical part is the inference that better budgeting is all that stands between 80% of minimal bills and 105%.

Past that, an extended time in hunger-level poverty tends to lead to some hyper-focused money management. As in being intimately aware of each penny that hopefully will add up to this weeks bag of white rice.

Some of the "better at planning" poor people have built up crude math to make it all makes sense, but seems overly complicated for someone like me. The one I noticed: "oh, I got $85 for selling that pot I made, I'll use that for the fridge repair." - Which is totally different to "oh I got $85, I'll just put it in the pool of my bank balance because I already budgeted for that fridge repair which costs $60". I tried asking this person, but you also needed an extra $10 for that McDonald's lunch you wanted to buy but they insisted "nope, that's my fridge-repair money, can't spend that"

Not sure I'm explaining that properly, but it was the sort of math I encountered dealing with such individuals.

One I've encountered is putting any surplus money into tattoos because they can't be stolen, repossessed or otherwise lost, thus making them a savvy place to put money.

I believe whoever told you that may have been joking[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

They were completely earnest. The joke followed that they can't take money with them when they die, but they can take tattoos. Pharaohs still have their tattoos, they point out.

There is also a general pattern of spending "extra" money on things like parties, experiences, consumables, etc. Better to spend the money on a pizza party and gocart trip for their kids than to stash it away in a savings account. Better to spend the money on beer for a party than even to hide it under their mattress.

you made an account just to talk shit about the poor?

As far as I can be bothered to care, schemes involving having other people store your money such as tax withholdings and insurance policies exist primarily to save people from themselves and their lack of budgeting capabilities.

Most people can't budget, poor people especially so (it's among the biggest and most likely reasons why they are poor). They see money, they spend it all immediately. Saving? Investing? "roflmao" or "I can't.", they will say. The only way to address this so certain, specific, important payments are made absolutely is to literally take and keep the money out of the person's hands until the payment is made.

It isn't "talking shit", what he's saying is broadly true and you're not doing poor people any favors by pretending otherwise.

Picked an appropriate username tho

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