Poverty - How to Get Poor & Stay Poor (2nd of 3)

How to Get Poor and Stay Poor

Not everyone who is poor got there the easy way by virtue of his or her birth. Some people had to work at it. There are proven pathways to becoming poor if you are not born that way.

The first is to let your worst personal characteristics take over your behavior when you are young. Let your frustration stop you from sticking to your tasks, especially school work. Let your laziness steer you into trivial pursuits and idleness. Let your need for gratification have you focus only on what is happening now so you are unprepared for later. Youth is a great time to waste your talents and prepare for poverty. Simply by slipping through the educational system with minimal effort (the system will help you do this), you can enter adulthood with neither the skills nor the personal character required to earn a decent living. If your parents don’t value education, it makes this much easier because they will not pressure you to perform academically. The sad truth is that you may wise up to your errors only to find yourself with kids, car and house payments, and a full-time job that leaves you no time to get the education you should have gained in your youth. "Too soon old, too late wise" is the saying that applies.

You can also achieve poverty quickly by having one or more children. Do this as early as possible - preferably while you are still in high school. If you are a girl, this is especially effective because you will be raising the baby. If you drop out of school to do that, you get a boost on the path to poverty. If you are a boy, don’t expect you can walk away from your obligations. States have become very tough on enforcing child support orders. The money you thought you had for a car payment will now be paying for diapers and formula. If you can have a child in high school, belong to a minority group, and live in an impoverished neighborhood, you have the trifecta combination for a life of poverty.

If you are getting by and not yet in poverty, you can use a common route to poverty that many people have discovered. Get divorced. Once you divide into two households instead of one, you have practically doubled your housing payment and your utility bills and some of your insurance costs (if you have any). While the government may supply extra help to the party raising the kids, don’t worry, it won’t be as much as the additional expenses you will incur. If living together is hard emotionally, living apart is hard financially unless you are well off to start with.

It is tough, if not impossible, to save when you are in or near poverty. Getting by week-to-week takes everything you have. Truly, it does. Because of that, you will never have any retirement savings. However, if you are fortunate enough to have the ability to save for retirement, it does not mean you must do so. Spend the money instead. You may be dead next year. Why worry about something that far away? After all, there is Social Security to take care of you. True, but try living on just Social Security. If your wages are modest, you Social Security assistance will be even less modest. If you aren’t poor while you are working, by not saving you can become poor in your old age.

Another great way to diminish your chances for the good life is to be convicted of a crime. Felonies are better than misdemeanors because they stand out on your record. Many employers do criminal background checks where they find out about felonies. Who wants a felon on the payroll when a law-abiding applicant is standing in line for the same job? Maybe you get lucky and catch a break with a sympathetic employer, but those are long odds. Because crime doesn’t pay, you won’t get a high-paying job. You pay for your crime twice.

Let’s assume you are smart enough to stay out of trouble with the law and disciplined enough not to create kids before you get married (or at least reach 21). What other good opportunities are there for reaching poverty? One of the best is to pile up debt. Fortunately, our society offers many ways for you to do this. Start with credit cards. Get as many as you can. Max each one out. Because you have spent money you don’t have, and you won’t have any extra coming in to catch up for the overspending, you will end up either being enslaved by your minimum monthly payments or filing for bankruptcy (and that is a whole other story).

Clever enough to manage you money and your credit? Don’t worry, there are other options for poverty. Student loans are useful to tie you down, but you only get those for advanced education and you may in fact earn enough to pay them off. Unless, of course, you spend $50,000 for a degree no employer is interested in. And, by the way, bankruptcy won’t rid you of these loans - while your education lasts forever, so does your student loan obligation.

Credit card debt, student loans, car payments, leases, and mortgage payments are all debts you can see coming so you can avoid or manage them. Medical bills on the other hand arrive out of the blue. The best way to be impoverished by medical expenses is to not have health insurance. You will be amazed at how expensive even the tiniest procedure is, and hospital stays - well, they are off the charts. With only a few uninsured days in the hospital, you can kiss a year’s worth of pay good-bye. Oops, you need that paycheck for rent and groceries and gas? Indeed you do, so you can plan on paying off the docs for a long, long time. Did I mention bill collectors if you don’t? Such lovely people. You’ll get to know them well. They know more poor people than anyone else.

If a little self-indulgence is a good thing, what’s wrong with a lot of it? If you see something you want, buy it (and please use a credit card). Live for today and you can ease your way into poverty. A simple way to do this is to live on the cash you have in your pocket now. If you get paid and you have a lot, you are rich. Indulge yourself. Don’t worry about the bills coming due at the end of the month, or end of the year, that’s too far out to concern you. Besides, saving is such a pain. It’s better to buy on credit and get it now than save and get it later.

Low on cash? Visit your friendly cash advance location and get that extra $300 to last you til payday. Their interest rate is only about 200% a year. Not bad for them when you compare it to what you would earn by saving the money in a bank or CD. You’ll like the friendliness of these folks so much you’ll be back again and again. All the while, the fees they collect from you could be buying bread and milk for the week.

Everyone likes Disneyland, but it is expensive. You can do just as well by living in La-La Land for free. Just ignore things that might trouble you financially. Worried about whether you can afford the car payment for that new car? Nah, don’t worry. Wondering how you will pay the car insurance bill? Oh, fiddle - there’ll be money from some place when the time comes. Be like the animals in the Lion King and just hum a little "Hakuna Matata" - no worries my friend, that’s what La-La Land is for. Ignorance is bliss, if only for a while until poverty takes over.

It helps others to know that you are among the poor by dressing the part. In short, you need the right "costume." You can not only be poor financially, you can use poor taste in your appearance to emphasize the point. While fashion changes with the times, generally speaking you can look the part of a lower class poor person by getting tattoos and body piercings - the more there are and the more visible, the better. Find an alternative hair style to go with it (too much or too little works as do wild colors).  Pump up the makeup.  Use motorcycle gang members and streetwalkers as your models. Once people see you looking this way, you can be sure you won’t get job offers for those good paying jobs that all the straight looking people have. Your chances of staying poor are now enhanced.

Finally, to enhance your poverty possibilities, take risks. Find a dangerous hobby. Drive recklessly. Ignore speed limits. Pick a fight in a bar. Sleep with strangers. Sign contracts without understanding them. Do drugs - they have the wonderful benefits of not only taking all your money, but getting you in trouble with the law and piling up medical bills. Of course, with enough drugs, you can forget your troubles.

If you live on the fringes of poverty, all you need is one small disaster to put you completely over the edge. A good injury, a sizeable traffic fine, an HIV infection, take your pick. Each is a great way to tumble head-over-heels into poverty. Taking risks will get you there.