"The Nearest Grocery Store Is 25 Miles Away": 14 People Who Grew Up Poor Are Sharing How Life Was More Expensive
Recently, I asked members of the BuzzFeed Community who used to or currently live below the poverty line to share how being poor can actually result in more expenses.
Here's what they said:
1."Why do people who have the least amount of money get the highest interest rates? My ex-husband destroyed my credit (because my credit was inexorably linked with his), and he left me with a grand total of $4,000 and two kids."
"I fought hard to recover from that, but when it came time to apply for a mortgage, I had to settle for the highest interest rate. Unfortunately, because of rising interest rates, my current interest rate is the same as others, but it will be another two years before I can refinance."
2."Our apartment doesn’t have heat, but if we ask the landlord to fix it, he’ll raise the rent, and with one of us being a full-time student, we can’t afford that."
"There’s supposed to be laws in place to protect against that, but if you can’t afford a lawyer and you don’t want to draw attention to your under market rent, you buy blankets and sweatshirts, and you do the best you can to stay warm. This also causes higher medical costs because of being cold all the time. We can only use one heater at a time because of faulty wiring. But at least we have a place to live."
3."There’s almost no opportunity for long-term planning. Your brain is so busy just trying to figure out how to pay the bills this month that there’s no more brainpower to plan for a ‘rainy day,’ let alone college funds for kids or retirement funds for yourself."
4."When I was a kid, my mum had an absolute rustbucket of a car. It had a hole in the corner that let the rain in, you had to wobble it to make it start in the mornings, and it regularly broke down for no apparent reason."
"She couldn't afford to buy a new car, even one that was just slightly less shitty, but ended up spending smaller amounts over and over again to get it fixed. That money could have been saved up and spent on a new car, but if we didn't have the old one, then my mum couldn't get to work, so she had to just pay for the repairs every time."
5."I could be saving so much on groceries if I could shop at Costco for certain things, but you can’t do that if you can’t afford to drop $300 on groceries at a time."
"We can afford it now, but it’s insane how much more you can get for your money if you actually have money to spend. To be clear, we are by no means well off, and there are definitely times where we can’t go out because we can’t afford it, but it kills me buying a small box of trash bags when I know I can get enough to last me a year for, like, $2 more."
6."I can't afford to have more money taken out of paychecks for the 'good' insurance that my work offers, which means I have higher copays. I've been fighting a cold for more than three weeks, because I can't afford the $75 copay to go see my doctor now, and I'm sure a quick round of antibiotics would clear this up in no time."
—Anonymous
7."My student debt eats up so much of my disposable income."
—Anonymous
8."We live in a rural area with no full-size grocery stores in our town. The nearest, proper grocery store is approximately 25 minutes away, over a mountain pass. The added cost of the fuel to get to a decent grocery store can easily become unaffordable when gas prices spike."
"Instead, we're usually stuck buying from a small, mom-and-pop-type store in our town, where the selection is extremely limited and the prices are almost doubled because everything is being sold with a markup on the original price. The store owners buy from regular grocery stores at regular price and have to make a profit somehow."
—Anonymous
9."Having to pay the bank an extra $38 when your account is overdrawn (even if it’s by $2). Then you’re being charged a $38 overdraft fee multiple times until your next check hits, which results in your check being a few hundred dollars less than it should be, and you have more bills to pay, and one of your kids needs new shoes because their only pair are ripped."
"You’ll end up over-drafting again and get late fees for bills not paid on time, resulting in your credit suffering."
10."You can't afford decent healthcare. A routine dental checkup is too expensive, so you put it off for six years, and suddenly, you need two root canals, three teeth pulled out, and a proper cleaning."
"It gets expensive, but you can't help it (especially if you also have mental health issues, are homeless or disabled, and cannot take care of your teeth), so the cycle goes on and on until you need dentures, which also cost a lot."
11."When buying a new/used car, dealership financing programs take advantage of the poor with some of the worst possible loans imaginable."
"$0 down translates to a huge monthly payment that often lasts years longer than the car's reliability. A dirt cheap $10K car can ultimately cost $30K–$40K under dealership financing. I've learned the hard way that having a sizable downpayment and getting financing from a credit union is the only way to go, as hard as it can be to save up."
12."If you have a job that pays by the hour, getting sick is even *more* expensive because any time taken off means less money on your paycheck."
13."If I had been able to afford getting some minor dental work in my late teens or early 20s, I wouldn't be looking at thousands of dollars of work on my teeth in my 30s."
"It's not from lack of personal care; there's a history of bad teeth in my family, particularly on my dad's side."
—Anonymous
14.And finally, "The most obvious and expensive part of being poor is having to buy the cheap options all the time. The cheap options don’t last as long, shoes wear out, jeans rip, breakage, etc., then you’re forced to purchase again and repeat the cycle."
—Anonymous
"Anything you buy is usually the least expensive version because you don't have the money for better quality, even if you know it's a better investment that will work better and last longer."
—Anonymous
