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Comment by goalonetwo | Hacker News Reader

My 2 cents from an immigrant:

Most people that claim they cannot pay the bills make more than enough to pay the bills and save but get stuck into a loop of overspending and buying things without thinking. This seems to be a very specific American issue.

I grew up in a country where the average monthly income is half of here in the US even though groceries and rent is probably about the same. What you see is people go out of their way to buy cheap groceries, and think hard before buying stuff they don't need. What I see here in the US is that even the poorest people seem to be on a spending spree, or have a hard time to lower their standards to something sustainable. There seems to be a bigger shame in the US to try to be frugal and not spend a lot of money. We need to teach people how to live with 3000$ per month, that is still a lot of money.

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It’s hard to generalize. Americans from different parts of the country have different relationships with frugality and entitlement.

Lower income people in high COL places like NY typically know how to survive through frugality. They’re more like the rest of the world.

Lower income people in less competitive places tend to find it harder and expectations and the level of hustle are different.

For instance, I was a former international student and used to live in a 400 sq ft apartment. This to me was a ton of space, an amazing upgrade from the 100 sq ft room that I used to rent. To most (non-New Yorker) Americans, this makes them feel claustrophobic. They need more space. And a house with a yard. I’m in my 40s and currently live in a 600 sq ft apartment and it’s more than enough space.

As a former international student, schools would often publish guidelines on living expenses — food, rent, entertainment. It was always surprising to me how much they think a student needed to budget for entertainment. But it was based off the average American budget for entertainment. Most poor international students could live off much less — I almost never ate out, never went to the movies. Instead I borrowed books and DVDs from the library. There are free things to do in every city. And shopping at ethnic groceries and cooking cuts your food bill by up to 30%.

Yea, the strength and excess of the US consumer is both blessing and curse.

It to a certain extent increases our standard of living and makes stimulus really move through the economy, unlike a lot of more frugal countries / cultures that just save it all, but of course it makes us more precarious.

However, it's also a systemic regulatory issue where companies are able to essentially scam customers, offer deals that are too good to be true, etc. which further extracts money from our working class.

There's an unhappy medium between European-style consumer protections and many countries where the lack of regulation makes everyone very savvy to how everyone from big companies to street merchants are likely trying to scam them.

Where exactly do you "see" this? Do you know a lot of poor people and their spending habits?

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