edit I think I came on a bit strong here, sorry about that, but it really was a tough time...I think my real point is that we were making it work, we had optimized enough that we could
just get by every month, but it only took one thing to throw that all out of whack and we needed help
end editI agree completely that the medical system is broken. I was expecting a $2k bill for the level of treatment I had that night, not $10k.
However, there's an understanding of being poor that can never be explained to somebody who never has been poor. There's a quality of the thing that can never really be conveyed (all personal true stories): The near monthly 3am panic attack that wakes you up even though you're 20 hours behind on sleep for the week, deciding that "no, the $1.50 menu items are too expensive", buying food by weight/cost with considerations made for non-perishability, wearing the last pair of pants you have left and hoping they last for 3 more months because you passed out from exhaustion and tore your other pair beyond repair on the way down. It means never taking a sick day, because the $40 you'd lose that day would mean you couldn't pay rent -- even though your cough clearly lets you know it's pneumonia. It means that you save every piece of plastic container you can get your hands on because you can't afford dishes, or dashing out of a fast food restaurant with handfuls of plasticware so you can stop eating your oatmeal with your hands. It means using the remains of your second to last pair of pants as reusable napkins over your dinner of canned corn (discontinued 20 for a $1!) and half of the ten pack of Ramen you scored at the dollar store that you're trying to stretch with more water. It means seriously considering stealing enough ketchup packages on your way out with the plasticware that you might be able to get a tomato soup broth going. Being poor is not having a TV and digging through your apartment complex's trash to find furniture you can patch up. It means that for the first year of your marriage you have a mattress, and no other furniture, you spend your nights sitting on the floor trying to keep your 7 year old discount computer alive with spare parts and literal duct tape or you'll fail school. It means not buying any textbooks and then scouring campus for lost smartcards so you can copy the relevant readings out of somebody else's book...it means not having a cell phone or a landline phone, it means paying an extra $100 a month in rent so you have a place to live because your credit score is abysmal and the property manager thought you looked honest and he'd make an exception this time, it's trying to find a way to score a bottle of free modafinil from a friend with sleep apnea so you can take a night shift at the local grocery loading dock twice a a week...it's having a guy almost murdered in the apartment below you buy a homeless man he invited in to drink and do drugs in exchange for sex, and thrice weekly police showing up at your building, it's hearing shots fired on the other side of the firewall in the building next to yours, it's picking through slices of cheese or fruit to cut out the moldy bits so you can still eat it, it's getting a $.50 an hour raise an thinking immediately about how you might be able to buy a new pair of pants a month earlier, and calculating how many hours you have to work to make up for what each and every meal costs.
That was my life for about two years and most of it stayed true for another four after that.
In my area a $900/mo apartment was the cheapest possible option short of renting a room out of somebody's home (which ran around $500-700, but afforded no quiet place to study, no private restroom and were all an additional 10-20 miles from school and work. Crunching the numbers and the additional fuel cost, plus the driving time (which simply didn't exist) would have almost equalled out. My other choice was homeless shelter, but it cost $20/night or $600 a month and there was no place I could store my books or computer.
One thing I hear a lot of is that poor people should go to school or improve themselves so that they don't stay poor. It took round the clock discipline, 7 days a week, for 6 years to make that happen in our case. I doubt that most people could do that on such a sustained basis.
I know that I couldn't have done it on my own. There were many dozens of times that I almost threw in the towel, and my wife almost did the same -- but we picked each other up when we needed it and made it happen.
In the end I only did it because I was tired of growing up poor and living poor, and getting shitty jobs and..just...being poor and watching others get opportunities I would never see just because I was born into the wrong family...indignant rage carried me through.
I have permanent scars from those days. My lungs are permanently scarred from a case of pneumonia I carried around with me while working for six weeks before my wife finally forced me to go see a family doctor (who gave me free antibiotics and an almost free visit out of the kindness of his heart) -- I pretty much can't do cardio exercises. The stress was so bad that it weakened my immune system, and gave me some mild nerve damage in my face and problems with my pancreas I'll carry for life. I have night sweats most nights, and recurring nightmares of suddenly going bankrupt and being poor again. I had two mild untreated breaks in my hands that didn't heal quite correctly, leading to permanent pain and reduced mobility. I have ulcers making coffee and other acidic drinks painful to drink. I had an untreated stye in my left eye that left my eyelid permanently thin, meaning when I close my eyes, I can still see light in that eye.
Nothing I've ever experienced since can hold a candle to the stress of that time, not being in warzones, not having friends die, not even living the life of a startup.