Have You Had Experience Being Working Poor?

[Aristus]

4. Sort of.

I worked for a couple of years in a minimum wage, dead-end job when I was in my twenties. I had constant fears that I wasn't going to be able to pay my share of the rent (and sharing a place with a succession of unpleasant roommates was its own special kind of Hell...), and shopping even for necessities was always a matter of parsing scarce dollars.

OTOH, I was single, no children, I could walk to work (thereby avoiding the expense of a car) and had no major responsibilities besides keeping myself housed and fed. So I can't imagine the fears one has to live with if one has a family to support, or large bills to pay.

While I look back at that time through rose-colored glasses as a period without the obligations that go with a demanding career, a marriage, and a family, I don't really miss it.

I'm comfortably middle-class now, with a thriving, rewarding career. But I will advocate for the working poor until my dying breath.