While we worry about who's to blame for the poverty trap, our pensioners and working poor are choosing between milk and medicine. Photo / Getty Images
While we worry about who's to blame for the poverty trap, our pensioners and working poor are choosing between milk and medicine. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION
Have you ever had to drastically reduce your spending? I'm sure you have.
Your partner has lost their job, there's a baby on the way, the car broke down, you've started a business, you're hoping to buy a home, or maybe you're retiring.
There are times in all ourlives (silver spoons excepted) when we need to tighten our belts.
I scoured some internet discussion boards for some general advice to help people cut down on their household spending, and picked 10 of the most popular suggestions:
Hunt for cheaper alternatives and sacrifice a bit of convenience, leisure or pleasure to save some money.
A reduction in your standard of living is only to be expected when your income is truncated and it's likely to be a temporary measure until you can get back on your feet.
When there's an end in sight, knuckling down is worth it.
But imagine that you, like some of our seniors, are a pensioner with no way of increasing your income.
Your finances are set in stone, while the cost of living steadily rises.
Frank Russell, 76, lives week to week on the superannuation with no cash left over. Photo / Cira Olivier
Maybe you too will have to choose between paying for milk or medicine, like 76-year-old Frank Russell.
Maybe you'll have to rely on kind neighbours to cook your meals. Or you'll live the rest of your days as a near hermit, not being able to afford a car or money for outings to meet with loved ones.
It's a scary thought, and the reality for some right here in God's Own. It's not just our seniors either - some employed people, the "working poor", are also faced with similar choices.
What a grim existence. Seniors at least have one perk that poor workers don't and that's (limited) free public transport. It's not much, but it's something.
When you're already bare-bones, this list of ways to save money is – at best – patronising. Barely any of it is useful, practical or able to be implemented.
If you're at the point of needing to choose between milk or medicine, you've already trimmed the fat. Takeaways? Ha! Buy in bulk? With what money?
Ever heard the saying "it's expensive to be poor"? Notable publications such as The Economist, the New York Times and The Atlantic have all talked about it in recent years – the fact that being poor makes life more expensive than for the middle-income and rich earners.
In the US in particular, writers for these publications address the fact that fines, overdraft fees and late payment penalties are only punishments for the poor.
Low-income people are the ones most likely to rack up these costs – and the ones who struggle to pay them back.
Plus, the more money you have spare, the more you can make it work for you to reduce your outgoings.
For example, a new electric car is cheaper to run than a 1996 Toyota Sprinter, one of the cheapest cars currently for sale on Driven, and will very likely have far less ongoing maintenance.
A modern house built to current standards is going to be warmer and easier to heat than a 40-year-old brick unit.
Old appliances generally use more power than newer ones.
Cheaper alternatives often take a lot more time as well. Public transport, for example. If you start work at 9am, you may need to catch the bus at 8am to get to the city by your start time, and something similar again in the evening.
That's another two hours added on to your day.
If you're using public transport, that also hampers how much food you can buy from the supermarket and carry home.
Or you can pay extra to have your groceries delivered. But if you don't have freezer space, that's also going to limit how much food you can store at home.
It's hard to make use of those three-loaves-for-$8 deals when you can't fit three loaves in your freezer!
It's an exhausting existence and one that is hard to pull yourself out of.
It's easy to blame poor people for being poor, saying they should have made better decisions, got better jobs, spent wiser.
But there's a reason poverty is often described as a trap – as the saying goes, it takes money to make money.
And while we worry about who's to blame, our pensioners and working poor are choosing between milk and medicine.
