Have you ever watched Caleb Hammer's "Financial Audit?"
People in dire financial situations very often have a history of making bad decisions with money.
Personally I do not struggle with money/budgeting but the only time I will ever use something like InstaCart is if I am sick and can't leave the house.
You are privileged enough to be ABLE to make good decisions. Some people are victims of the boots theory of economics and better choices aren't actually an option.
Lifting yourself by your bootstraps only works if you can afford boots in the first place.
Pratchet said:
"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 cost 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." [0]
You make dangerous assumptions about me in order to justify your preexisting view of poverty and socioeconomic mobility.
My background is very poor. Food stamps, raised by single mom, whole nine yards. For most of my 20s I existed in the very same cycle of bad financial decisions that many other poor people engage in.
My situation had approximately a 0% chance of changing until the behavior changed. That doesn't mean behavioral changes are always enough, but they are the absolute bare minimum and an excellent starting point.
People I still know in bad situations refuse to acknowledge this and refuse to critically examine their decisions. They do nothing but avoid, avoid, avoid and hope for a miraculous windfall.
You arent wrong that some people just stink at finance. Thats not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about those who WOULD make better decisions if they were able. What is sometimes referred to as "the poverty trap."
> You make dangerous assumptions about me in order to justify your preexisting view of poverty and socioeconomic mobility
You said that you don't struggle making good financial decisions. I am claiming that you were lucky to be in a situation that allows you to make good decisions.
I believe that to be accurate, regardless of your history.
You must remember that the legitimately poor often do not have many choices to make at all. Poverty can constrain choice to the point of irrelevance. EG - Somone with a thousand dollars has more options than someone with a hundred dollars.
In your case it seems that you (now at least) have enough to be able to make choices. If you only had $50 to your name you would have far fewer options to choose from and most of those options would be bad.
Imagine a single mother working for minimum wage with a flat tire she cant afford to fix, and needing groceries. Instacart might make her problem worse, but surviving is all she can hope for sometimes.
Similary imagine an elderly widow on fixed income who is injured. Or a 17 year old who had to flee an abusive home situation, and is lucky to make rent on a weekly rental room.
For any of them it is easy to imagine they might have enough money to eat, but not enough to buy a car or even a bicycle. They will starve long before the situation improves enough to make that happen, regardless of their choices. So they make ends meet and they survive.
Its not Instacarts fault, any more than it is Dollar Generals, but it is also true that the service often worsens their long-term well-being.
People in dire financial situations very often have a history of making bad decisions with money.
Personally I do not struggle with money/budgeting but the only time I will ever use something like InstaCart is if I am sick and can't leave the house.