Everyone has experienced being broke. Being broke sucks. You are watching every dollar spent, finding ways to trim or make things stretch until the next payday. The difference is when you are broke you have some money. You can afford to put gas in your car, but not enough to do that repair. Money is tight, but you can get the basics at the grocery store. You can’t afford to go to the movies, but will stay home and watch what’s new on Netflix.

When you are poor that next payday brings no relief. It is like an endless runner game. No matter how fast you run or how high you jump you can never see the finish line. No matter how tired you are the ground keeps moving. There is no room for errors as the punishment for mistakes is astronomical. When you hit an obstacle you don’t restart from the last checkpoint, you go back to the beginning.

I have a van that is falling apart. It needs a lot of work that we cannot afford to do. In the mindset that poor people are unskilled, it appears that I should watch some YouTube videos, get the parts, and do it myself. The misunderstanding is that being poor means you have tons and tons of skills. You have to fix everything yourself. There is never, I mean never, a time you can pay someone to fix it for you.

In this example folks think, “If the repair at the shop costs $1,000, but the parts cost $300, you can save a lot of money doing it yourself.” You are absolutely correct. Yet, I still need to be able to afford the $300 in parts.