Poor people should properly budget and cook at home to avoid staying poor
If you can afford to eat McDonald's nobody cares (well it's not healthy either but that's a different matter that doesn't really have to do with being poor or not)
If you can afford to eat McDonald's nobody cares (well it's not healthy either but that's a different matter that doesn't really have to do with being poor or not)
You can't budget your way out of being poor. Most actually poor people (as opposed to people who have a substance abuse problem) I know have a very good grasp of their budget as they are constantly shifting money around figuring out which bills they have to pay and which bills they can put off.
You get out of being poor by getting more money. Period. Nothing else works.
Yes, more money doesn't guarantee you get out of being poor, and we all know people who got a windfall and then were worse off than before.
However, insufficient money absolutely does guarantee that you will be poor indefinitely.
While you can't budget your way out of being poor if you have a very low income you absolutely can keep yourself poor by not budgeting no matter how much you make
I don't know why you seem to take offense with a simple suggestion that will help reduce how much you spend
There are people who make six figures who are in debt because they overspend and food is often one of the biggest factors in that
Those people aren't "poor". They aren't worried about eating or staying warm.
"Poor" is when you are deciding between fixing the car you need for work and whether or not you will have electricity the last 4 days of the month. You don't fix that with "clever budgeting".
But yes obviously there are levels to it however regardless if you are buying overpriced fast food when you could be cooking at home for much cheaper that's not good for anybody especially if you don't make a lot of money... So what's your point other than trying to argue over the definition of poor?
If you don't have an emergency fund and your car breaks down and then you have to get into debt to fix it and then you have to spend more paying interest on that debt and you get stuck in a cycle... Compare that to reducing your expenses by not buying fast food and building up an emergency fund and not getting stuck in that situation to begin with
Because people make political decisions about programs that support the "poor" and the definition matters.
In particular, if a program supports the "poor" and winds up handing money to someone who is making $100K, there are a lot of people who will scream about that and attempt to cut off all support for all poor people.
This was the whole the point behind the racist "welfare queens" dog whistles, for example.
You can absolutely reconsolidate and budget your way out of debt, though. Or budget your way to having a savings account when you're earning the median income.
For family? Not really
I know multiple folks who did this. Poor people aren’t mentally deficient. (Often they’re sturdier than those of us who grew up comfortably enough.)
> unexpected expenses and cost of living increases destroy your budget a lot more than McDonald’s
This is correct. But it’s true for most Americans when we consider medical debt.
Budgeting and analyzing spending and risk is still sensible.
Oh no please broaden your mindset. This is not a healthy way to look at wealth inequality in 2025. Being poor can happen for arbitrary reasons, and the impact can vary greatly across countries and continents. E.g if you get and recover from cancer in Europe you will be OK financially, while being ruined in America.
This is an extreme example, but the point is not to weigh individual examples but rather to recognize that you as an individual don't understand the circumstances that create or alleviate poverty, because entire government branches are dedicated to doing this and haven't figured it out.
Bottom line poverty is bad news for everyone, there's money to be made solving poverty. It's not a trivial problem to solve.