Economic inequality isn’t just about having less money — it’s about living in a completely different system where everything costs more, takes longer, and compounds into cycles that are nearly impossible to break. What looks like poor financial decisions from the outside often reveals itself as the only available options when you’re operating without cushions, credit, or the luxury of strategic timing. When u/Live_Bird704 asked about the hidden “costs of poverty” that average people never consider, the responses illuminated a parallel economy where being poor is, paradoxically, expensive. Here are 25 of them below:
1.“Time. It takes so much more time to be poor. I grew up poor and am now not, and the amount of time money can save you — I don’t have to sit and call several companies to negotiate partial payments of bills, and I don’t need to visit multiple shops to get discounts or shop on Christmas Eve because I have to wait for a Christmas bonus to buy gifts. It’s not even time in the sense of outsourcing services — that’s obvious. You have to dedicate time to being poor.”
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2.“I’m a homeowner who moved into an apartment for a renovation, and this was one of the wildest things for me: We (my wife and I) prefilled a $200 laundry card, thinking this would surely last us the six months our house is under construction. It lasted six weeks. (It’s something like $15 for a large load for bedsheets, $5 for a small load for clothes, $10 for a medium load for towels, and $1 for every 20 minutes for a medium-sized dryer load.) The laundromat is awesome and has a lot of machines, so we can get it all done in a couple of hours. But I’m also like, ‘What if I only did laundry every six weeks and just got an Airbnb with a washer and dryer for that price?'”
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3.“How long it takes to get somewhere on the bus vs. driving.”
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“To quote the mayor of Bogota, ‘A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.'”
“Man, during the ’08 crash, I lost my job and couldn’t afford to insure my car. So I garaged it and finally found a place to work. It was about eight miles by bus. Took me two hours to get to work, and coming home, the last stop was three miles away from my place. The first trip back, the bus driver nonchalantly said, ‘Everybody off!’ I was the only one, and let out a, ‘But I’m not home yet?’ And he chuckled at me. That was a shitty year.”
4.“Constantly having to replace cheap things that break instead of affording quality once is a hidden cost most people overlook.”
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“It never hurts to repeat the theory: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example… A really good pair of leather boots costs fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars… But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years.
A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.”
5.“Living in old apartments with poor insulation that make it more expensive to heat.”
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6.“In general, if you can’t pay for something outright, it costs you more over time. Can’t pay for a car repair? You use your credit card and pay it off, plus interest over time.”
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7.“Not being able to buy things strategically for cheaper prices. For example, Christmas stuff and winter coats are way cheaper in the summer. But if you desperately need some shorts or sunscreen, you’ll end up buying those even though they’re at their most expensive, because you need them now. You can’t afford to buy stuff that you won’t need for six months, even though it’d be financially better. There are lots of ways poor people pay more than richer people would never consider.”
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8.“You get a small injury to something like your knee. You can’t afford the time off to let it heal, so it just keeps getting worse until it needs to be replaced — but you can’t afford to get it fixed, and so on.”
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9.“If you don’t have a car, buying groceries at local neighborhood corner stores is often more expensive than going to a big-box supermarket (and has a worse selection of things like fruits and vegetables).”
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10.“Teeth.”
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11.“Discounts. If you don’t have a buffer in your checking account, autopay is terrifying. No autopay discounts for the phone bill, internet, etc. That’s effectively a tax for not having money.”
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12.“Buying in bulk/on sale. I have a chest freezer and buy a couple of extra packages of ground beef and other expensive frozen or freezeable items when they go on sale. Can’t do that if you don’t have the extra freezer space, can’t afford the extra electricity, or don’t have the cash to buy extra groceries.”
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13.“Car/home/renter’s insurance. If the only ZIP code you can afford to buy or rent in carries a higher premium, you’re penalized for being poor.”
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14.“Home maintenance/upgrades. When you’re barely scraping by, you can’t afford to make improvements or changes that will bring down your energy bills (or even just make your house more comfortable). Weatherization and efficient appliances pay for themselves over time, but if you can’t afford the upfront cost, you’re stuck paying more.”
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15.“Building community ties. When I was poor, I had to move all the time. Apartments would get more expensive, and roommate situations would change. I ended up moving at the end of every yearlong lease for the better part of a decade. There’s no chance to build new friendships in your area when you do that.”
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16.“Credit cards have been mentioned. What I have long found ironic is all the credit card benefits I receive. I get cash back and airline miles, which I love, but don’t really need. Meanwhile, people who could really use these benefits have no access to them.”
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17.“The cost of banking for poor people is obscene.”
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“Must have X in the account or be charged a monthly fee of $35.”
18.“And just the lack of availability of banks in poor neighborhoods. It’s why check-cashing businesses are a thing.”
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19.“The exhaustion of stress and constant worry. And the toll that takes on your body, mind, and relationships.”
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20.“The fear. It stays with you forever, even long after it is no longer a concern. It reminds you it could be.”
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21.“Worse environmental exposures are concentrated in poorer communities (Google ‘environmental justice’). This is found within the home (e.g., older and more toxic building materials, outdated gas stoves that emit excessive benzene) and outside the home (e.g., more air pollution, lack of green spaces or trees). These are especially impactful on children. Also related: Flint, Michigan has a wild poverty rate; Cancer Alley in Louisiana.”
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22.“In the broadest sense: interest rates. The poorer you are, the higher interest you pay on basically everything. It’s like a punitive tax for not having enough money.”
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23.“Eating healthy. You’ve got this much money to last a couple of weeks. You can buy a few healthy things that will rot or go bad in a few days, or a bunch of highly processed junk that will last a month.”
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24.“Getting ticketed. Got a traffic ticket and had to pay a $250 fine on top of having to pay for a driver’s class. It was something I could afford and didn’t affect me much. But for someone living in poverty, not paying that ticket could have serious consequences. You could do community service, but if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, that’s time not working.”
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“For those wondering, I got tickets for not slowing down enough when there was a police car on the median with its lights on, on the freeway. I couldn’t get over — too many cars to my right. The cop clocked me going 46, when I should have slowed down to 40. The speed limit on the freeway was 70.”
25.And finally, “Intelligence… I don’t mean that in a ‘poor people are dumb’ way. I mean that in a ‘people constantly under stress are tired’ way. Stress and anxiety rob people of problem-solving skills, emotional availability, planning time, mental fortitude, and patience.”
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Altogether, these stories reveal a structural design that makes escaping poverty exponentially harder — every ‘choice’ carries compounding costs that those with financial stability never have to consider. Have you experienced any of these hidden costs yourself? What other “poverty taxes” do you think go unnoticed? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
