From free.vice.com: Why most money advice is worthless when you’re poor. Trying to align with the standard expectation of how to interact with your money when you’re low income," says Linda Tirado, who wrote Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, "is useless: you are adapting to your circumstances, thinking in the short term. It would be maladaptive for a low-wage worker to set even middle-class financial goals. It doesn’t make sense to maintain a savings account if you can’t pay your rent. If you’re working low wages, the whole concept of saving and investing goes away because you don’t have the luxury of that long term; it’s hypothetical." You ask yourself: how come I’m working all the time, my body is breaking down, I’ve cut and tightened every way I can think of, and I still can’t manage to make rent? It’s at this point that poor-person brain says: if I’m still going to struggle whether or not I buy a bag of chips, I might as well buy the chips. Buy the chips As Tirado puts...
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