Poor versus Broke
January 17th, 2008 by Ana
Poor and broke are two words a lot of people tend to use interchangably. They sound like they mean the same thing…but they don’t. I’ve been both poor as well as broke - often at the same time - and have discovered there is a huge difference!
Now, Dictionary.com doesn’t show the difference between broke and poor. That puzzled me, until I realized it is more a matter of connotation as opposed to denotation. The definition of “broke” I agree with: having no money. Yup, I been there…often think I am still there compared to others even though I know I shouldn’t be worrying about anyone else’s income or standard of living.
Poor is more slippery…defined as a state of poverty, lacking in money and resources (paraphrase). It’s a little more than just that: it’s a state of mind as well. Poor people tend to stay poor, have poor money handling skills, and have paltry to no savings. Yeah I have been there also…the first fifteen years of my adult life!
So, what brought this up? Other than yesterday’s introspective post? I was just at the grocery store, and walked down the cereal aisle! In that aisle are two cereals I ate as a kid when we were on WIC: Kaboom and King Vitamin. I hate them both. I have to keep my eyes straight forward and not look at them, or I start feeling poor again. It’s a gut-level, visceral reaction that I just am never comfortable with. Usually, I send my son down the cereal aisle and skip walking down it, but today I was out grocery shopping solo…so I had to go down the aisle to pick up son’s cereal.
Dave Ramsey said on his radio show last week that he can’t eat tuna fish, or even smell it, without feeling poor. Well I am cool with tuna fish, even the cheap cans of it (a favorite frugal meal of mine is macaroni and cheese with tuna fish and some vegetables like peas or corn thrown in).
I just can’t abide by that cheap nasty-tasting WIC cereal. Forget eating it or smelling it…just the sight of it brings back those feelings of financial insecurity…and the first thing I did when I got home was check my bank account balances to reassure myself. I guess the truth of the matter is I am afraid of becoming poor again. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away…especially since Dave Ramsey went broke over 20 years ago and still feels the same thing.
Posted in random stuff |
January 17th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I don’t think you get over it completely, ever. I think anyone who grew up under financial hardship (and felt it) has some kind of trigger.
For me it isn’t food. I ate endless amounts of tuna fish and mac and cheese and I still eat them just fine. Even sticky nasty overcooked oatmeal… yeah, boring but I could care less now.
I hate K-Mart. I hate it. K-Mart stands for in my head all the clothes I wore for years even when I’d outgrown them and they had holes in them you could see my underwear through, the coats that got handed down from my younger (but bigger) brother to me that never fit right, and all the ways kids at school made fun of me for not fitting in. It represents the apartment in the WRONG part of town (like, the drug-filled scary part) I grew up in, and everything that went along with that.
Honestly, only in the past two years have I been able to make myself go in a K-Mart since I reached adult age.
And yes I shop at thrift stores for my kids, goodwill, they wear hand me downs, etc. But I’m super picky about it, and they’ll never if I can help it, feel like I can’t provide for their basic needs.
You know, until I read this post, I never realized exactly why I hate K-Mart. lol
January 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
PaidTwice: I would have loved to have Kmart clothes during the truly lean years! Mom did our school clothes shopping at garage sales…and just about everything was at least five years out of style. The only things we got that weren’t hand-me-downs were socks, underwear, and shoes, unless mom got some fabric on sale and made us clothes.
The ultimate irony is if I could find the old-style government cheese we used to get for free I would snap it up in a heartbeat. It was actually quite good LOL Tuna and mac n cheese I eat at least once a week
although overcooked oatmeal would suck. It does remind me of another WIC cereal: Malt-O-Meal (farina). Bleh!
January 17th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I’m a fiend for that WIC imitation Cinnamon Toast Crunch. In college I would gorge myself on it, still would if they sold it at aldi or bloom
January 17th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Micah has a few triggers as well. One is just a fear of money in general because he saw his parents being so afraid of it. And phone calls because of collections agencies.
His brother still has a horror of powdered milk, but Micah got over that, fortunately for him.
There’s some food that still scares him.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I love garage sales (and honestly, 90% of my kids clothes come from them) but where I grew up there were not really a lot of garage sales. I guess it wasn’t really a big thing there. Which I guess is good because now I love garage sales instead of hate them…. lol.
I think that my K-Mart experiences colored me for all K-Marts unfairly. In the town I grew up in, K-Mart was in the ghetto and only “poor” people shopped there. I learned as an adult that isn’t true of all K-Marts lol. My brain just equates K-Mart with being poor. Heh.
And, the clothes were always ugly. lol
January 18th, 2008 at 9:41 am
When I was growing up, there were garage sales: it was a way for people to clean out their closets and make about $20 off of it! So you can imagine what the clothes looked like. Worse yet, we were subjected to what my mom thought was “cute” so I had that retro look decades before it was cool.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I completely agree with you about the difference between poor and broke. I am broke right now but I realize that there is an end to that as long as I keep working and saving and paying off the debt.
I love canned tuna and it is a regular part of my diet since I don’t eat red meat and other seafood is so expensive.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am
[…] **DebtFREE Revolution - Poor versus Broke […]
January 19th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I too have been poor and broke. I do not think I have any “triggers” though. Mostly, when I think of those days of being poor it doesn’t make me shudder as much as want to roar like a lion. It reminds me how far I have come. And fills me with a determination to never ever be there again. Broke I do not mind because I look around my life with such gratitude for my education, my career, my children, my Mr. Wonderful and the safety and security of my home.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Poor means having no hope. However, if you have half a brain and some drive, you know you can improve your lot, and you go after it. If you have that, you’re not poor. Never give up and reconcile yourself to a life given over to the government caseworkers.
I’ve been broke but I’ve never been poor.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
[…] presents Poor versus Broke posted at […]
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:54 am
[…] the fear of being poor again […]
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
For me, it is (or was) Ramen noodles. I ate them so many nights for so many years while trying to get out of debt, I couldn’t stand even the smell anymore. It’s been 6 years of being debt free and only a few months ago did I try Ramen again. I might eat it a couple times a month now, but I don’t hate it like I used to.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:18 am
I still wear Kmart clothes, but not because they are cheap, but because I actually like them. Especially the Wrangler Jeans and Timbercreek pants. I like the fact that the Timbercreek pants actually have a little bit of elastic in the waistband so if my weight goes up, they don’t feel so tight and if I lose weight, they aren’t so loose.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:51 am
For me, it the the cup o noodles. I cannot stand them. But for some crazy reason, I find comfort in eating spam.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Asithi: cup o’ noodles I can eat. Spam and Treet “meat” I will not EVER eat again. I had totally forgotten about that one! If I can’t afford real ham (no longer a problem) then I will go without.
Ryan: I get my Wranglers (although I prefer Lee brand for comfortable fit) at the Goodwill for about $3.50 a pair LOL Sometimes they still have the tags on them.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
[…] post Financial Strategies for Infants and Young Children mopped up the floor with my post Poor vs Broke. Now it’s round two, and Lynnae from Being Frugal.net has already put the call out for her […]
August 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Growing up broke represents to me the living in a house where you would never have other kids come over to visit or stay over because its beyond run down. Washing what few clothes you have by hand and hangi ng them up to dry knowing the only pair of jeans you own are wet so you stay around the house wearing only a pair of underpants. Sitting in the back of the classroom because you dont want the other kids to laugh at the fact your wearing jeans that you’ve outgrown and are half way up to your knees. Wearing old canvas converse shoes all winter with holes in them. Wearing a handed down jean jacket from my cousins that was too big and was not ment for winter weather. The constant reminder that when someone stopped over though the only clothes sometimes I had to wear was a pair of underpants may have been the worst. Not to mention never a curtain over a window and plaster falling down all over the floors because the roof leaked so bad the upstairs bedrooms had no electric because it wasnt safe.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I’m chronically broke, doesn’t that make me poor?
Income: $1004
Rent: $650 (room in a house with nine people)
Medical exp: $110
Student loan garnishment: $136
I just LOVE tuna…looked forward to it as a kid and I still love it. But mac-and-cheese is cheaper. (Observation: Walmart’s Great Value store brand at 42 cents is cheesier and tastier than other store brand generics (35-50 cents) I’ve tried.)