Living “poor” and loving it.

 

Happy Throwback Thursday! This is the original version of my second article for MSN Money. Given the popularity of the reboot of my first-ever MSN piece the one about surviving and thriving on $12,000 a year – I’ve decided to post its successor.

Some of its sentiments about the Us-vs.-Them mentality are still relevant. (Unfortunately.)

Incidentally: I didn’t write the headlines; they were thrust upon me. My own suggestion was “How to be poor,” but the editor liked his version better. I’m leaving in the original because I’m masochistic like that.

 

I don’t consider myself deprived, although I can see why some people might think so. I don’t own a laptop computer, television, DVD player, stereo, iPod, video-game system or  many of the other things marketed as necessities.

But I have food, shelter, family, friends, a radio, a bus pass, a library card and the chance to attend a respected university. How could I consider myself “poor” when so many people have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep and no chance to improve their situations?

Yet there is another reason I hesitate to call myself poor: the cultural baggage associated with the word. Poor people are lazy, stupid, immoral, shameless and incapable of making smart decisions. Poor people are losers; our country loves winners. We want poor people to trade their rags for riches. We want them to embody the American dream.

 

Most of all, we want to believe that poor people are shiftless and depraved and always to blame for their poverty. Otherwise, we’d have to face the possibility that someday we, too, could wind up on the business end of the bread line.

 

 

Blaming the victims?

 

I’m not naive enough to think that some people don’t make bad choices. But I’m not mean-spirited enough to believe that poor people are poor only because they’re pathologically incapable of wealth. Lots of them are where they are because of sickness, unemployment, a lack of education, a dearth of opportunities. More than a few of my relatives are among them.

I joked to a cousin that our family has been practicing “how to be poor”  all our lives. She agreed. “Poor just is,”  she said, “and you don’t question, ‘How?’ You just do it.”

I grew up fairly broke and stayed that way until my early 20s. Marriage and a career kept me comfortably middle-class for more than two decades. Now I’m a divorced student and broke again.

Scratch that. I’m not broke. I’m poor. I’m redefining the word so that it will lose its power to harm. Being poor is what my dad would call a “useful life skill.”  (He used this phrase when he wanted us to carry cinder blocks or weed the tomato patch.)

And I happen to believe it’s a life skill that plenty of Americans could use, saddled as they are with credit card debt, college loan debt and mortgage debt. Being “poor” for a while – that is, making a conscious choice to manage money differently – would be good for them.

Here, then, are the rules for How to Be Poor:

 

Rule 1: Have very little money.

 Rule 2: Live on it.

 Rule 3: Rule 2 will change your life, if you let it.

 

Being poor means taking a hard look at your needs and getting ruthless about separating them from the wants. (I need food. I want steak.)

It means not behaving as though you still have money because you don’t have money — you have credit cards. Using them to live beyond your means is financial suicide.

Whether you’re in debt because of bad luck or bad choices doesn’t matter. What matters is taking charge of your situation. As the old saying goes, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. In other words, stop spending. Dinners out, vacations, electronic toys, shopping trips, cable TV, tickets to sporting events – you simply can’t have these things right now.

But here’s the good part: Once you can afford them again, you may not care whether you get them. That’s where Rule 3 comes in.

 

 

An attitude of gratitude

 

My most important money-management tool hasn’t been figuring out how to get more but rather discovering how little I really need and how much I already have.

Sure, I look for practical ways to save. The local electric company has a reduced rate for lower-income users. I cook simple meals that cost practically nothing. I shop for loss leaders and use coupons and rebates. Yard sales, thrift shops and dollar stores supply most other requirements.

How I save money isn’t the point. What’s important is knowing that I have everything I need and some of what I want. Although I have never been more broke, more tired or more uncertain about the future, I’ve also never been happier.

I’m no Zen master, but I can say that having less makes you that much more grateful for what’s in front of you. I’ve also learned that paring down possessions means a lot more room in your life as well as in your house.

I might not have selected this scenario for my life. But now that I have it, I’m going to see what I can learn from it. My hope is that it will make me wiser about what I eventually seek.

Here’s what I’ve already learned: Being poor doesn’t mean not wanting things. It means wanting the right things for the right reasons. When these clothes wear out, I’ll get new ones. In time, I’ll want a new computer for my freelance writing work. Several family members are struggling financially, so I’d like to help them.

Certainly, I’d love to travel. Someday I’ll treat myself one of those small-but-mighty bookshelf sound systems so that music will fill my apartment with momentous impact. And I want to donate to a couple of education foundations so that others can have the same opportunities I’m getting.

Those are all nice goals, but I can still be happy if I don’t get all (or any) of them. Should I earn a good salary one day, I’ll decide which are most important and make them happen. But it won’t matter if I don’t get a high-paying job because I know how to be poor: You live as well as you can on what you earn and look for ways to improve your life.

True prosperity is more than just a healthy bottom line. Being rich wouldn’t necessarily make me happy or generous. Those two states of mind have nothing to do with your bank balance. There’s a world of difference between poverty and poverty of spirit.

Not that being poor makes me noble. It doesn’t. It just makes me careful. And grateful.

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22 thoughts on “Living “poor” and loving it.”

  1. I like your blog so much. You are such a true and down to earth person. Your advice are so practical it always cheers me up. Thank you so much Donna.

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  2. I read this article when it first came out. In particular, the phrase “I have everything I need and some of what I want” really stuck with me. It’s what I tell myself when I am feeling sorry for myself.

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  3. I don’t comment very often but I read it the first time it came out and continued reading. Found your blog and kept on going. You helped save my life, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that. This brings back memories of hard times. But I am in a very different fabulous place now.Thank you. Just in case you sometimes wonder if all this writing, which I know you would do anyway, makes a difference. It does.
    Also, I love your kind philosophy, being poor isn’t always about bad choices, sometimes it is bad fortune, circumstances over which we have no control. We would all do well to remember that. I certainly should. Well done Donna, then and now.

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    • Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m glad your life is so much better. And now that you’ve de-lurked, keep commenting! I want this site to be a conversation, not a monologue.

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  4. I remember reading that when you wrote it long ago and it also brought me back to remember how your writing in those MSN posts showed your incredible strength and that financial difficulty is a significant challenge but it is possible to stay afloat (along with offering a boatload of tips to do it). Your writing was a true blessing in the scary uncertain depths of the recession. Things don’t always end up as bad as you think they might and there was a rainbow at the end of the storm but I will always appreciate you for the support your writing was during a very difficult time.

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  5. Donna,Donna…How i admire you, your strength, your voice, i have listened over many years now and used so much you have shared to my benefit. Tears came this morning as i reread the original post…so much happened personally that there would be days i had to remind myself of i did indeed have “everything needed” THANKS!!

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  6. I needed to (re-)read that post. I particularly love the part about ‘you live as well as you can on what you learn and look for ways to improve your life.’ Right now, I’m doing just that. I recently lost a teaching job — a total surprise, for I was putting in countless hours on my own, and buying things with my own cash, to make my classroom a learning haven. It wasn’t good enough, apparently, for the eggheads in administration. Two days later, I was called by another employer. I start that (non-education) job tomorrow. It will pay far less, but I’m going to ramp up my frugal skills and make it work. I’m excited because a regular job, unlike a teaching job, gives me all my hours off to pursue whatever interests me. And the old VHS/DVD player built in to an oldstyle TV was something I’d bought at the Salv. Army store, so it is mine. It came out of the classroom and is in my den and I’m looking forward to viewing all kinds of movies. I never had cable and seldom go to movies so all these old flicks are brand new to me. And the tapes are 50 cents at the thrift store. DVDs are free from the library. I’m tearing up my school t-shirts for cleaning rags so I don’t have to buy so many paper towels. I hope I can carpool when I meet my new coworkers. Life is good. Your blogs are terrific! I’ve also been a fan since I read “Surviving and Thriving” on MSN during the recession.

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