Comment by pflenker

One of the things that suck most about being poor is that you need to have money in order to save money. You need to have enough money to buy a certain level of quality, and if you don't have it, you're forced to buy cheap stuff that breaks more easily (thus spending more money in total). I found this aspect hard to understand for others, the attitude often seems to be: "you don't have to be poor, you simply need to invest wisely!" This is true if you are free to choose to buy a new shirt now or save a bit and buy it later. But if you are running out of shirts now, you don't have that choice.