Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Great line of the day

A reader at Carolyn Hax provides one of the best summaries I have ever read about the vulnerability of poverty:
On feeling like the bad-luck fairy has moved in with you and is sleeping on your sofa:
People with plenty of money have crummy luck all the time, too, but it’s just an inconvenience for them. My parents are millionaires. Last week their heater, car, and garage door broke. So what?
If they were poorer, each problem would’ve caused two more problems. People living on the edge are vulnerable to every mishap in a way that is catastrophic. It’s very hard to break the cycle. You need a string of good luck that lasts for years.
By the way, I’ve always tried to live within my means and got hit with the housing crisis in a perfect storm that reduced me to zero. So I’m not saying here that poorer people are doing something wrong; it’s just about having more than enough money to be able to recover.
Emphasis mine.

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