Transcription
People love to tell me that I am lazy, irresponsible, or uneducated just because I don't make a lot of money. My channel is kind of centered around frugality, living on a low income, thinking outside the box, but still being able to do the things that you want with your life, even if you don't have a lot of money. So, I want to kind of dispel a lot of myths that are centered around poor people because poor people get a lot of hate. And it's not just me. I know that a lot of people are getting these same comments. And that's where my frustration comes from. It's just the comments that I hear directed towards me can reflect off of me and those thoughts and just misconceptions are going towards so many other people that are in a similar situation that I am and they are grossly unwarranted.
Living without a lot of money actually takes a lot of strength and resilience and intelligence to be able to do it and to still be able to survive and function in our world even without that money. Poverty is not what you think it is and most people are way closer to poverty than they would like to admit. The economy is getting uh less stable and more and more people are feeling the stress, the financial stress that is going on in the world. The prices are rising just for your most basic needs, housing, food, transportation are rising much faster than our wages are. And so a larger group of people are feeling poor or feeling like they live in poverty. And more people are, even if those numbers statistically are not keeping up the poverty level numbers, there are way more people that are actually living in poverty, which to me means that they are struggling to meet their most basic needs. Like, forget the extras. I'm just talking about like basic stuff. More and more people are feeling that stress. And there is nothing wrong with you if you feel like you're not making enough money. If you're struggling, it's it's not you. It's the system. The system is broken. And we have got to come together to fix it and stop looking down on other people for not having a lot of money. Money is not everything. It's just a small small part of life. And our values in our society are focused on how productive someone is, how much money they make. But that's not everyone's values. That's not what is most important to a lot of people. Everyone needs to meet their most basic needs. And those most basic needs are getting harder and harder to meet financially. So more people are struggling. And it's not a money issue. It's it's a society issue. It's it's the system.
So, let's go ahead and dispel the first myth that people who are poor are lazy. Being poor is far from being lazy. Most low-income Americans are working multiple jobs. They're working making less money per hour than a wealthy person. If somebody is wealthy and they have a lot of money, they are actually they don't even have to work anymore. They're putting their money in an investment and that investment is growing and they don't even have to think about it. It's solely passive income. The wealthiest people in the world do not have to work. They are not needing to work hard. It is not necessary anymore once you have a certain amount of money sitting in your bank account just earning interest. And actually inflation is benefiting wealthy people. They like inflation because it is making their money grow faster. While for lower income people, people who don't have a lot of money invested and aren't able to build wealth passively, they're having to work a salary job or a wage job and their money is not going as far because of inflation. They're having to spend more money to meet their most basic needs or even beyond. And so they are working harder. They're getting less out of it. But the wealthy people are benefiting from this system. So poor people work really hard. They do. It is a falsity that people who are poor are lazy. They have to put more effort into every hour of their day. Not only are they working harder at their job, but after that 40, 50, 60 plus hours of working every week, they're having to come home and figure out how to pay their bills, how to find food, how to, you know, like the budgeting takes time. Wealthy people don't have to budget that much. It's not really that big of a deal. They are spending more time, you know, like if you're having a hard time putting food on the table, you are meal planning, you're cutting coupons, you're searching flyers in for like the cheapest option at each store, maybe you're driving around to multiple stores to gather your supplies, you know, like you're spending a lot more time just to make food for your family than somebody who doesn't have to think about that. So, while you're already stretched in working just to make money, you're also working harder to meet your most basic needs. And that is where a lot of people get trapped in this rat race is they don't have the time to figure out a way to get out to ever get ahead. And it is hard. It is possible. Um, but it it is hard.
You know, people have a hard time also seeing beyond that 9 to 5 work is like the only type of work that someone can do. We chose to quit our 9 to 5 job and work doing our own thing. So, we were renovating houses and working our own business and homeschooling kids and taking care of our family and living off-grid, growing our own food, building things. And while doing all of this stuff, people were still calling us lazy because we didn't make a lot of money. But like we were far from lazy. It's almost laughable. And you know, I realize that people's opinions are just based on their like very narrow perspective of what like work is. But we were working hard, you know, and so like how do you convince someone that you're working? You don't. You just have to let it slide off and not take those people's opinions personally because you know you're working hard. And there is nothing wrong with resting. Everybody needs to rest. You know, if you're working hard six days a week, you are allowed to have the seventh day to just rest. Like everybody deserves some time off for themselves to relax. Everyone needs that.
Myth number two is that poor people are uneducated. First of all, let's just talk about the different types of intelligence. You know, having a job and working like in a career is only, you know, going to school, getting a degree, having a career. That is like one form of intelligence that is measured by school. But there are so many different types of being intelligent. Like having a garden and growing your own food and understanding our natural world is a form of being intelligent. It is not easy to grow a garden. It is not easy to grow your own food into the soil and be able to make herbal remedies at home. Baking bread like all of these things is also a type of intelligence that not everybody has and that you need to, you know, educate yourself on. And those are valuable skills, very valuable skills because those are meeting your basic needs, right? Building stuff is a skill that not everyone has. That is a form of intelligence. That's math. And you know, like all the stuff comes from doing stuff yourself. You know, we grew up in Appalachia and the people of Appalachia work hard, but a lot of people still look down on them because they are a poor community as far as monetary value goes. They do not make a lot of money and they do suffer from lack of money. But they are not unintelligent. They are so smart and they know how to make things work. They know how to survive. They know skills that most people don't have. And really, if you think about it, like these are if if push comes to shove, these are like really important survival skills that would be really beneficial in a situation where, you know, our economy collapses or things aren't going so well. You're going to rely on your neighbors who know how to how to do stuff.
And as far as education, let's just talk about our education system right now. In the US, uh like 60 to 75% of high school seniors are graduating without being proficient in reading and math. Our education system is failing kids. And if you want to talk about college, the average college degree is costing between $120 and $250,000 to get a college degree. So like, is it smart to go to college? Like every single person is going to have to start asking that question because right now about 50% of people who have college degrees who went and spent the time and the money to get those degrees are undermployed. They are not using that degree for their job. And people are going to sit here and they're going to say that well that's because you know they got the wrong degree. But if you look even at the STEM field, which is science, technology, engineering, and math, even in that field, those computer science degrees, engineering degrees, it's still a 30% undermployment rate. So like going to college and getting a higher education right now is not even if you take cost away is not really as valuable as it once was. So being educated is very subjective, you know. And then again, like my personal situation, I actually have two college degrees. I went to school, I went to school on scholarships, so fortunately, I didn't have to pay out a bunch of money. Um, but I have degrees and yeah, I could use them to have a career, but I realized that one, I'm autistic and it's really hard for me to work just in a personal situation. But also, I wanted to be home with my kids. I value my family and raising my kids more than any career that I could have had. That doesn't mean I um like am don't want to work and just stay home with the kids. Although that is a very like if if somebody wants to do that, that is a job in and of itself. But like I came home and I figured out a way to make an income because at the time that I made that decision, I was a single parent and I had two kids and so I figured out a way to come home and make an income from home. Was it a lot? No. But it was enough to take care of my family and meet all of our needs and do all the things that I wanted to do and value. I mean, of course, would I like more money? Yeah, life is a lot less stressful when you have more than enough money, right? Even with all of that, like I am not uneducated. I'm not lazy, but I still never have made a lot of money. And that's okay with me. Sometimes the hardest working people and the most intelligent people are actually the people who aren't playing the system and doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. Takes creativity to think outside the box and do something different. Especially when people are telling you that you're doing the wrong thing and you're failing and you're lazy and you are stupid and you're making bad choices. Like there are so many people in this world that have, you know, single moms who have left abusive relationships and are doing the hard thing, raising their kids on their own and and taking care of that situation.
The next myth being that having kids when you are poor is irresponsible. Having kids is not only something that wealthy people should do. I mean that's called eugenics, right? Only a certain class of people are allowed to have children. Only only special people can have children. Kids are not a luxury item. And many low-income parents are raising resilient, compassionate kids who have a deep understanding of the world around them. And you can be low income and you can be poor and you can still provide a great life for your family. You do not need to make a lot of money. Kids do not have to be expensive. You don't have to give your kid everything that they want. You don't have to sign them up for every extracurricular activity that comes their way. Like in fact, you know, that's a way to spoil kids and to give kids too much. Kids need to learn a balance and, you know, teaching them hard work and uh understanding other people and having empathy towards other people no matter what their situation is is really valuable for kids to have. Like teaching them how to cook, how to do how to fix things, how to grow food, and just just having a better understanding of their world requires no money. And in fact, having that money there as a crutch for people and giving your kids everything that they want and signing them up for everything, doing all those things that you have access to when you have a lot of money is not really what kids need and is actually can be detrimental. In most situations.
The next myth is that poor people are bad with money when in fact you don't have a lot of money. You are very aware of your money, about where it's going, what you're spending it on. Uh, I have learned so much from being frugal and understanding like budgeting and buying the cheapest item and shopping around and not taking for granted the things that I do have. I am very good with money because I've never had a lot of it. I've had to be really efficient with the money that I do have. It is true that being poor is more expensive than being wealthy. It costs more money when you have to get a loan for something. You're paying interest while the wealthy person is making money off of that interest that you've borrowed from them. It's more expensive to not be able to buy items in bulk. It is more expensive to um if you're late on a payment, you have late fees, you know, like all of these things. It's more expensive. That's not a failure of not having a lot of money. It's just the system that we live in. It is not fair to um have to pay extra money just because you're poor. Like that is the opposite of what a ethical society does to its people. Not having a lot of money makes makes you super resourceful. That is one thing that growing up in Appalachia has taught us is resourcefulness. You know how to stretch a dollar. You know how to make, you know, your clothes last longer by mending them. And you know how to fix a car when your car breaks because you don't have the money to go get it fixed.
If you are poor or having a hard time, you know, just paying your bills and keeping up with just the economy and everything, it's just really important for you to understand that you are resilient, creative, you're not lazy, you're hardworking, you're intelligent. Like all of these things that it takes to be poor is something that you should be proud of. And for those people who look down on us, just know that most Americans are way closer to to joining us than they would like to admit. The average household in the US is $100,000 in debt. That is not wealthy. That is right on the brink of just total collapse. Most Americans don't have enough money in savings to cover a $500 emergency. So, if your car breaks down, what are you going to do? What are you going to do if you have a health emergency and you have to go to the emergency room and you get a very large hospital bill and you also cannot work because of your injury that you received or whatever happened to you healthwise. People spend so much time judging homeless people and assume that why they get there is through bad choices, but a lot of the time it's not. And they weren't always homeless. They never thought that they would be homeless, but they are. When people say that poor people should just work harder or make better choices, they don't realize how fragile their own stability is. Poverty isn't a character flaw. It is a reality that most Americans are just a few paychecks away from. Being low income does not mean that you're less than. It means that you have developed important skills in resilience, creativity, and adaptability. Personally, I have learned how to do more with less, how to be happy and content without a lot of money, and how to raise kids that see the world a little differently.