#8: Nobody really likes you when you’re poor, especially the government. They blame you for your financial situation as if you were able to control the zip code where you were schooled, or call you lazy despite the fact you may work several shitty part-time jobs or long hours at one shitty low-paying job just to be poor. And isn’t ironic that
#7: You pay more for everything. You’ll pay the highest interest rates for loans. You cannot afford to buy things in bulk because you spend at least half your pay in rent, provided you have a place to rent, which leads to…
#6: You’re always at risk of being priced out of your run-down apartment or being harassed for parking somewhere to sleep in your car, or sleeping in some public place because
#5: It’s illegal to be poor. Even when it’s not. There’s not supposed to be a debtor’s jail here in Texas, but still some poor people find themselves in jail for unpaid parking tickets or unofficially serving time because they cannot post bail or making some other shortcut in life because they’ve fallen between society’s cracks, so
#4: You must constantly come up with survival strategies, not merely life hacks to exist. Everything takes more time and energy to achieve without the lubricant of money or credit to grease the gears of the great production machine of life, which instead grind you up with the speed of crushing obstacles along your path. At least middle-class people can hide their lack of money in socially acceptable credit card debit, but not you since
#3: You lose your agency when you’re poor. You either have to convince many people who are in the same condition to speak out or wait until someone rich or otherwise privileged speaks out about conditions you’ve been raising the alarm about for much longer than you thought you should have to. You live with constant stress that you cannot put your finger on the exact thing since it’s all the things until the proverbial last straw boils over and a mental/physical sickness manifests, but
#2: You can’t afford to be sick, not physically and most definitely not mentally. You can get some remedy for physical illness, but you’re totally screwed if you have some on-going mental illness. It’s easier for you to access a gun than adequate mental health treatment. Unless you’re so poor you qualify for Medicaid, but as soon as you make a mere dollar over the limit because you’re more productive with reasonable health services, you’re immediately cut off. Too bad your ailments don’t know that. You may lose pay or even your job if you take time off due to illness; so you drag your ass to work. You trudge along in life not quite well, but certainly in no fucking mood to hear someone repeat that saccharine sweet phrase about how money can’t buy happiness, which you know is bullshit because
#1: Poverty sucks.