In the last year or two I’ve learned a lot about the challenges of the working poor. I thought that when we were students, that we were poor. While our income well below the ‘poverty line’ we never felt poor. We shopped for clothes and furniture at thrift stores and garage sales. We filled our grocery cart with products in vibrant yellow boxes, and we certainly weren’t out buying extras, but we didn’t feel poor. We never had bill collectors call us, or had utilities cut off because we were behind in our payments. We never asked our parents for help to cover our day to day expenses, although being parents, they would often send us home with generous care packages when we went to visit.
Our children arrived while we were juggling university and jobs. The magazine the hospital gave me said that it cost $3500 to get everything a new baby needs. Through thrift stores and sewing myself, our expenditure for clothes, bedding and furniture was $143. My husband worked full time, I did full time child-care, and we both studied part time. When I was ready to start teacher training and working full time hours, he was able to work nights, so we never had to worry about child care help.
By the time we hit 30 we both had respectable, well paying jobs, had purchased and sold 2 houses building up to a beautiful acreage dream home. Our hard work had paid off. There were no vacations in exotic places. There were no fancy extras, but there was never any lack either.
We might have thought that our deligence and perseverence was bound to ensure we achieved all our dreams within the specified time lines we’d determined. We followed the rules and probably thought we deserved our success.
Fact is, we were lucky.
If any of the family had had a serious illness, job loss, or other catastrophe, we would have lost our perfect little life in an instant. We lived in a fragile soap bubble, and I had no idea just how fragile it was, or just how blessed we were.
Over the last few years I’ve met people who are just as talented, academically trained, or career focused as we were. Yet these brilliant people, through no fault of their own, are stuck in drastic financial straits. I’m not talking about addicted homeless people here. I am talking about decent, hardworking individuals who are not extravagent or wasteful. People who struggle desperately to make it month by month because of health issues and circumstances beyond their control.
Consider this: if you are too ill to work, how do you pay the bills if you don’t have sick benefits at your job? What if you contract cancer? or a severe mental illness? suffer a chronic health condition? or someone else in your household does? What happens if the government does not acknowledge your condition?
Here’s another situation: What happens if you miss a monthly payment with ICBC? Well, you must not only pay the missed payment plus a penalty, but you lose the opportunity to pay on monthly installments. How do you afford to pay a year’s insurance up front when you can’t manage a month’s payment? You don’t. You lose your ability to drive. Your vehicle becomes lawn ornament. If you don’t live in a city, how do you get around without a car? You cycle, walk or take transit and have to walk to the nearest stop. What if you’re too ill to walk or cycle, because you have cancer? or an injury? What if you need to cart water bottles?
What happens when you’re working full time, but you can’t manage your rent and utilities, even when they’re in the cheapest possible accommodations?
I hear the problems. I listen to the frustration. I sense the hopelessness. I wonder. Why does this happen? What social safety net has a gigantic hole in it, that this can happen? It is easy to see how families are torn apart by poverty. They can’t afford the services that are supposed to help them. Why are we failing our poor? What should be happening so there is not this desperation? What choices can we make in a democratic society to ensure that everyone can eat, have shelter, and can get to their jobs? We offer micro-credit to people in third world countries, is there anything like that here?
I don’t have a solution, but I want one.
Any ideas?
Shawn L. Bird 
Reblogged this on Shawn L. Bird and commented:
Still have no solutions. How about you?
No solution here, but we can help those we have the ability to help. My son and I used to have long talks about these big issues. He was great at conjuring unique solutions.
Thoughtful post, thank you.
Patti
You know, I helped a couple like this by driving out of my way to hire her services. (She was a certified beautician). Her skills weren’t strong, she took forever, but I figured I was helping her. I always bought a few extra products she’d made as well, whether I needed them or not. She couldn’t drive, so I took her into town if I was coming through her area, even if I had my own schedule. I thought I was being a very good friend.
Then one day she wondered why she wasn’t building clients and asked whether I had any suggestions. I very courteously suggested making the entry to her house look more professional (their porch was a junk yard) would probably help. She went ballistic and didn’t want my business any longer. This extremely dramatic response to a reasonable suggestion, voiced very gently by a friend, suggested some sort of mental instability. So I no longer support her, and she lost a considerable income and a supportive friend. I learned that some people can not be helped. It made me very sad, but it was an education.
honestly speaking, i never make good choices, whether in friends or whatever … i always fail.
Oh dear! Perhaps you should speak to a professional about that?
I have come full circle beginning life’s journey in Poverty, I grew up in Ontario housing, we ate meat once, maybe a week because that is what my mother could afford for four kids back then. I left school at fifteen and began working, by sixteen I was completely independent. by 18 I was making a comfortable living by working two jobs one as an assistant manager in a fast food restaurant the other as a forklift operator for the now defunct Simpsons and on the side I was also learning the drywall trade which I went into for a few years a little later. In my late 20’s early 30 I made more than the university graduates I knew. Then at 40 my health took it all away. I am considered physically disabled, and have been advised medically not to work anymore, not even in a sit down job. After my last job fired me for having a heart attack and emergency stent surgery (for which there is very little recourse in Canada) and both unemployment and social assistance rejected my claims I have been forced to do odd jobs, physical jobs that are under the table to support myself…my primary focus is feeding and housing myself and I cannot afford my medications. So here I am through no fault of my own right where I began.
I have many ideas for solving poverty. One is to DEMAND our politicians do something about it as it effects ten percent of our population.
Get rid of Job Placement Agencies, out law them and have the government become the only agency. Job Placement Agencies do nothing but exploit the poor by literally taking a large portion of pay that could go to the worker and not someone that wants to get rich on their backs. Also make it illegal to use temporary workers for a period of longer that five months with seven months before using them again. There is a big trend to use Temporary workers in place of Full Time workers. Canadian Tire’s distribution center for example has a full time force of less than ten percent and less than 50 percent of employees in those facilities on the Canadian Tire Payroll…they use temporary workers for years before hiring them and when they do they hire them part time and not full time to get out of paying them benefits, after several years as part time you may get lucky and be hired full time…I am not centering out Canadian Tire because what they are doing has become industry standard.
The government should hire the remaining unemployed to do road work, clean our hospitals become health care aids, etc… all things our society desperately needs.
The government should not be allowed to refuse anyone applying for social assistance if they have no other income.
I have estimated the cost of solving poverty in Canada at approximately 350 billion dollars a year of which the government would receive approximately half of that back through various taxes, income, sales etc..
I have more ideas, but I think I said enough other than to say we are a rich Country with many resources and the ten percent of our population that lives in poverty is a sad reflection upon us as a society and as individuals for allowing it to persist…
10 in desperate straits perhaps, but I suspect it’s much higher than that in poverty, and growing higher all the time.
You are very right Shawn and there are people teetering on the brink as we speak. We have already surpassed the conditions that led to the French Revolution in terms of over extended credit and rise in food prices. In ten years the price of a loaf of bread went up 1/3 in price current day North America has seen a doubling of food prices across the board including grains and starches potatoes for example are up almost 400% all it will take is a draught, crop failures or another global financial crisis (which is inevitable when the pull the stimulus band aid off) and we will witness something far worse than the great depression of the dirty thirties and I hope and pray this never happens…there are too many suffering already
Arg. So depressing. Look at Greece, though.
To keep myself positively motivated through the obstacles in life I always tell myself that there are people in worse circumstances in life. That’s what keeps me going. The only thing is I am the type of person whom wishes to help everyone. There are way too many things going on in society that need to be addressed and acted upon not just “all talk”. If society does not wake up then the future generations will suffer. Do we want that? NO. So if we would like the system to do better and if we would like this world to be a better place we must not just say words we must do something towards change one day at a time. We can with sheer determination in standing our ground. I wish I had answers for solutions as well but it starts from within each individual and of course it would help if there were less “greedy” people taking over corporations. Maybe then this country would not be in the debt it is in. It’s all about the money when it should not be. When will people wake up and realize that happiness comes from love/compassion and no material thing can give you true happiness? Thank you for viewing my thoughts. I have so much more to say to this but then I would be writing a book. LOL. 🙂
Perhaps it’s a book that needs to be written?
I’m flattered. I shall see……currently still a work in progress is a children’s book I have been working on for quite a few years now. On hold. Hope to get back to it soon and finish one day. 🙂
Honestly, financial management is not part of the education process for the working poor. I know because I was the working poor. Lights cut off, struggling for groceries and rent, the whole ugly package. At least, it was not part of my education process.(In the US ,during my generation, I mean.) There is no easy answer but I do not think it incumbent on those who live successfully to care for those who are struggling. I do, however, believe that some solid education in money management would be key to changing things. There is no ‘one big thing’ sort of answer to this problem, obviously. As a species, we’ve struggled with this for eons.
I know it’s all part of our curriculum here, because I taught across the hall from the Planning 10 class this year! Budgets, facts about debt, insurance, savings, etc. were all covered. It’s a mandatory class, too. However, the kids generally think it’s stupid and don’t work very hard at it. Of course. What can you do?
exactly. The ‘horse to water’ can be applied. They have to want it first, and then realize they are capable (which is a much harder thing to grasp). I learned because I wanted to. I did the hard work of fixing it because I wanted to. Poverty will always be with us, I fear.
But sometimes, they truly aren’t capable due to illness, injury, intellect, etc and then there has to be some sort of safety net! Especially as there seem to be more and more of these people.
In those cases I agree. I could on and on for days about the elderly and our war veterans. Yes ma’am, on that we do agree. I believe the safety nets are stretched too thin under people capable of caring for themselves, which prevents the net from holding up those who truly need it.
I think I could come up with hundreds of solutions, but no cure. I believe this to be a numbers game. For instance, our safety net has moved away from those who need it, to being a piggy bank for the military. The only real social security is a military career these days. The numbers are staggering where spending is concerned.
The next excuse our governing body uses is the “Socialist” word. Even though our system has been written as a brother to that philosophy, the people have been inoculated against the word. Now, when a few people talk about social programs, all the leaders have to do is throw that word out there to start a frenzy about democracy as if it is the opposite. It has become a code word for “I’m not giving my money away to some lazy person”. The cure is a massive shift away from our self-serving attitude that a human’s worth is connected to the change in their pocket. I’m not going to write a blog here, but I study this stuff for a living. Huge topic. Good questions. 🙂
I’m presuming you’re American, since military spending is certainly not even a vague issue for us here in Canada. We have a more open minded attitude to taxing and ‘socialist issues’ here (Medicare, etc) but we have government that is ‘pro-business, support the millionaires over the common people’ and I do not understand why people vote for governments that are not for them! It’s like a slave voting to keep slavery! Manipulating the populace is a fascinating skill. Sheep do what they’re told. Bahhh.
“Sheeple” We have a saying: “Delete the elite”. Canada is run by the same people I’m afraid. My advice to people is to turn off the television and read books. Hope it helps someone. I am a US person btw.
This is why I teach Orwell’s 1984.
You are a good citizen ma’am.
Universal pharmacare is one step in the right direction. In ontario we don’t have it, apparently bc and Quebec have the best systems in Canada, but still far from perfect. http://healthcoalition.ca/ @healthcoalition
If someone has a severe chronic illness that they don’t support though, what then? Funding every illness is a huge issue as well. People don’t want to be taxed to death, but they want the services. Such a challenge!
I see this all the time, because I work for a financial consulting firm that specializes in bankruptcy. One of the first steps is properly educating people on what it means to take on debt and how to manage it, as well as simple things like making a budget. If kids learned these skills early on and were aware that, like you said, it’s not only people who made “poor choices”/are addicts, etc. who get to be in terrible financial situations, it could prevent people from making a bad situation worse.
In the main case I was thinking about here, there isn’t any consumer debt at all. There’s just the working poor, not being being frivolous, not over extending, but simply not able to make ends meet. It’s terribly sad.
Wow, it appears you know my life as it stands currently. I have Lupus, Firbromyalgia, and have a joint disorder which is inherited. This said, I am now reduced to sitting on my arse, waiting for a Social Security Disability decision. I am in the appeals stage, and my attorney gives me much hope (of course he does!). I was the person who was working in a career I loved (paralegal), but at the end of the month, $1,600 didn’t go very far when the rent my stupid ex-husband and apartment complex (long story) set me up with was $1,200. Four hundred dollars for everything else is just crazy. At least at this point I didn’t have a car payment, as my truck was paid off, old but paid off. I thought I was in dire straits then, now I am living with Mom (ugh!), in the one room of her two bedroom apartment in a seniors complex. The stories are great at times, other times it is just nasty to watch all the pain people have to inflict on each other in just this small community. I often think there is no hope for mankind if just the few residents here cannot love, or at least like, each other. So, now my total income for the month is…wait for it…$200 in food stamps. I have no cash and no health insurance or coverage of any type. I have been told since I am waiting for Disability I cannot access County or State healthcare clinics, cannot receive any funds to help me live (like to buy non-grocery items such as toliet paper, cat litter, etc.), and I am basically screwed if something should happen to my Mom. I didn’t do anything wrong, didn’t build up enormous purchases on credit cards, or buy expensive cars, or even a friggin’ house. But, in this country, I am no qualified for so much because I am a white, single, woman, with no kids. Puts me out of the loop of a lot of programs. I have a Master’s degree, and was working on a Doctorate until the education funds were cut as of 2012. So, now I sit here, read free books on my kindle, and am limited to sitting on my bed most of the day due to my illnessess. What sucks, is I had no fun getting here, didn’t cause any of the problems I have, and now I am a hair’s breath away from homelessness. I so get this post.
Oh honey! That is what I’m talking about! This should NOT happen in North America! Send me your email (use my About Page). I can send you a book or two.
I appologize for not getting back to you sooner. I appreciate the offer of the books. I guess I should make it clear, despite what I have written and what I am going through, I am not depressed. Frustrated and sometimes really mad, but not depressed. I guess if I became homeless, yeah, then it would be depression I would seriously be facing. Thanks.
I’m glad that you have a positive outlook. I hope the political changes help you!