Hello, everybody. This is Lois Lane, Miami, the equalizer on the Purple Kool-Aid podcast. I strive to help people understand how others think and why they think what they think. Today, I want to talk to you about the poverty mindset disconnect. Middle-class people, and I’m not even sure if the rich do it as much as the middle class or those nearly poor, formulate perceptions about poor people. These perceptions can ultimately land them in the same situations as those they judge or aspire to surpass.

Now, I just want to say this: I am a firm believer that most people can do better. In fact, I believe the majority of people can improve their circumstances if they try. However, there is a significant disconnect between what people think is possible for those in poverty versus what is actually achievable. Growing up in an African-American neighborhood, I was much closer to that side of my family. Those were my relationships, and that’s what I know most about. Therefore, I don’t try to talk about things I haven’t experienced or been around.

Let’s get back to the topic: the poverty mindset disconnect. I have noticed, having fluctuated between poverty and doing pretty well, that I’ve never been rich or really owned anything great. But I’ve had a little bit of money in my pocket, been able to afford some things, go some places, and have a lot of fun. There were a lot of decisions I made that could have been better, and perhaps I’d be set up pretty well right now, but that’s just me.

From experience, I can tell you about my aunt who always told me, “save money, save money, save money.” She advised me during times when I was struggling or seeking help and was really in a bad state. I’ve noticed this theme among people who have no idea what it’s like to be in a really bad position or have never been in one themselves.

First of all, I’m thinking, if you’re listening and think you’ve been in a bad situation, remember that such situations are subjective. It depends on what you’ve been through. For example, ‘really bad’ for me included times during my childhood when my mother, a single parent, struggled but still kept us afloat. She never received any financial help from family, though she worked hard. There were times when we needed charity for basic necessities like winter coats.

We lived in homes with no furniture, where the gas or electricity was cut off during winter, leaving us with no heat. We lived in areas considered the ‘hood’ or ‘ghetto,’ yet we never lived in the projects because my mother was doing just well enough to keep us out, although she probably would have wanted Section 8 or something similar if she were eligible. Despite this, she had a bachelor’s degree in psychology, was very smart, and always worked.

However, we were still struggling. We didn’t always have a car, rarely had a washer or dryer, and there were years when we moved multiple times because we couldn’t afford the rent or the places we lived weren’t well-maintained. The total number of schools I went to is hard to remember unless I sit down and write it down. There were also some good times, which you can read about in my book, if I ever finish it—Maloney sandwiches, right?

Now, I’ve looked up and read a lot about people living in poverty. In fact, every day as I drive to work, on my way to drop my dog off at doggy daycare, I see a lot of homeless people lying in the streets with no food, no proper clothing, or they have old clothes and nowhere to go. I’ve known people who have been homeless, including a relative. It bothers me when I hear people say they were homeless because they chose not to talk to some family member. Many are homeless because they have no family at all to call, even if they wanted to reconcile.

The disconnect has to do with people believing, or somewhat wanting to believe, that everyone who is homeless is on drugs. Many of us are just a couple of bad situations or a few paychecks away from being homeless or not knowing where our next meal will come from. People don’t like to talk about this, but it can happen to anyone, especially if you don’t have a strong support system or a lot of family or friends to rely on.

When I moved back to Ohio for a few years and sold insurance, I ran into a lot of black people who were doing pretty well for themselves. Many had college degrees or businesses. I’ve met a lot of these people throughout my life, but I met many more when I moved back to Ohio, a place where people often brag about being in fraternities and sororities and being on their job for 40 or 50 years. There’s a big focus on education and which school you went to. I’ve met a lot of people who want to teach or feel like they can sit down with someone who is in extreme poverty, or even average poverty, and teach them about financial literacy, thinking it will solve their problems. They somehow assume that people who are homeless or caught up in the system just don’t know how to navigate it.

A lot of these well-intentioned people come from two-family households; yes, they may have lived in the hood, but they were that neighbor across the street from me who had well-manicured lawns, even though they were not rich and not even middle-class. They had hard-working parents who were there to encourage them, and they had the opportunity to go to college and make better lives for themselves.

Now I congratulate and am grateful for those people, but what they don’t realize is that not everyone has the same set of opportunities. The mother who was on drugs or the mother who had six children and the brothers and sisters were babysitting each other did not have the same opportunities, even if they sat next to each other in the same classroom.

These well-intentioned people do not realize, like when my aunt kept telling me to save money, that there was absolutely no money to save. People give you advice as if you can’t add or subtract. Now, I’m very good at adding and subtracting, so I knew that the money coming in was less than the money going out for the bare necessities every month. There simply wasn’t enough money to get by, and this is a very hard thing to try to teach people. I don’t know if they don’t want to learn it, or they just simply cannot comprehend it with all their degrees and all their experience in life.

And I know some people are more observant than others, but I see a trend in people not wanting to see what’s really going on when what’s really going on is something that doesn’t align with them. So yeah, I ran into a lot of people in Ohio that wanted to hold classes and teach poor people financial literacy.

And just today, I had a friend of mine, a very nice guy and an amazing father, who I went to the same school with. He grew up in a two-family home and is doing very well with his wife and his children. Their children are doing very well, but he sent me a video on what black people should do, which is supposed to help them get out of poverty. The man in the video said that everyone should take financial literacy classes.

I had to laugh, and I said to myself, you know what, thank you. I said to myself and I said to him, thank you for sending me that video because you gave me an idea for a podcast. I wrote down in my notepad on my iPhone, podcast ideas: the poverty mindset disconnect.

Because I’m engaged in conversations and arguments with people who went to HBCU and who grew up in family homes where they had a fair amount or a great amount of stability. They talk about and go back and forth with me about how they want to teach people in the hood and in the ghetto who are on public assistance about financial literacy.

I always have to laugh, but I mean well. They want to help their people, and they think because they grew up in the same hood with these people who had no stability and who were getting their stuff from Goodwill or charity newsies, or who had their electricity cut off while it was running, they think that telling people how to spend their money, which they don’t have, is going to help them.

They have no idea what it’s like not to have money to save or to do something else with. Now don’t get me wrong, some people are extremely savvy, but actually, they’re not doing that, so they take their money and they go on vacation, right?

And a lot of immigrants have come from very, very, very bad situations. So when they come over here, they are able to do without some things that we consider necessities, and they will move together and live a lot of people in a home, and they have things differently, so it is possible in that way.

But people, especially I’ve noticed people who have college degrees, and especially people who went to HBCU, and no, I’m not trying to pick on you, but I have noticed that nine times out of 10, when someone is giving this advice, that’s their background. They’re trying to tell people who don’t know how they’re going to put food on their table every day how they should buy a home, how they should invest in stocks, should save money, and how they should not buy designer belts and designer clothes and nice cars.

Which brings me to another poverty mindset disconnect: not everyone who is in poverty is buying designer clothes and 1000 inch TVs for their living room while their children starve. And not everyone who is in poverty on public assistance is not trying to work.

And people, I hear this a lot out of especially white people. White people somehow think that they’re carrying the burden of the nation on their shoulders, so their taxes and believing that black mothers having children are their cause for their taxes being high. They use the scapegoat they can find, doing research and blaming it on black mothers, so they believe we’re having a bunch of children, but I’m not going to get too much into that.

So now, back to the financial literacy teachers. They want to teach people who have 10 times more money going out than they have coming in how to save money, invest in stocks, and buy homes. Am I saying that this stuff is impossible? No, I am not. Am I saying that it is difficult? Yes, I am. Am I saying that you have no idea what it’s like to be in this situation? Absolutely.

So if you have not had, if you didn’t grow up with rats and roaches in your home, if you didn’t move three times a month, if you never met your father, never met your mother, if you didn’t have your gas cut off in the middle of winter, if you weren’t able, your parents weren’t able to buy your school supplies at all whatsoever, then you don’t know what it’s like to be poor.

Am I saying that you should not teach people financial literacy? No, I’m not saying that you should not, but I believe that you need to do a lot more research. You need to talk to people who are actually poor and find out what they’re dealing with. You need to think of more creative ways for them to become more financially literate.

But I think the most important thing that they’re going to need is more money. So maybe instead of trying to teach people that have no money how to save money, maybe you should teach them how to get more money and improve their situations. Maybe you should invest in free daycare. Maybe you should invest in teaching them about birth control.

Because I also noticed that a lot of people want to encourage other people to have as many children as they can possibly have, or they don’t want them to have access to birth control, but they also want the same people to save money. And taking care of children and raising them and putting them in ideal situations costs a whole lot of money.

So my advice to you is to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. Do your research. Talk to people who are actually poor, not who seem a little bit poor. And also, I want you to understand something.

When I was growing up, every once in a while, we would have a little bit of money, like on Easter, and our mother would take us out, and she would give me a beautiful Easter dress. Those are some of my fondest memories, is when my mother took that extra money and she bought me that pretty dress and new shoes for Easter Sunday.

And I remember my sister that same. I also remember the one time, or maybe it was twice, when I was really young, maybe about—I wasn’t even, I was about six when my mother got a new car, and then the other time my mother got a new car, it was a cheap car, a cheap Chevette, when I was about 12 years old.

How proud I was and how good it made me feel, even though I was going through all kinds of hell and shit in between that, being embarrassed that I had no furniture in my living room for my friends to sit on when they came over because all of them had furniture in their living room.

So when a person who is very poor goes out and spends money on something expensive that they cannot afford, they’re doing that for a temporary moment of escapism. It’s the same reason why you go on vacation to get away from your job, the same reason why you go buy something expensive, or the same reason why you, well, when you’re able to pay for your child’s college, how great it makes you feel.

See, when people have nothing, sometimes those little things that they can’t afford are the only moments of joy and escapism from the issues that they have to deal with every day. It offers them a right to upgrade their appearance, give them a little bit of a sprinkle of joy or happiness or a moment of pride and hope.

Being able to buy that new television, so maybe their kids can forget about whatever other bullshit they’re going through, that is what they’re doing. No, I’m not saying this to say that this is something that people should continuously do, and that this is a smart move, and that people don’t do stupid things that hurt them or that make their situations worse. They definitely do.

But I just think that there is a poverty mindset disconnect with people who are not in poverty and what they think about the mindset of people who are in poverty. And that may be the people who have the ability to provide people in poverty with solutions should dig deeper and find better ways than thinking that people are just stupid or that they just don’t want to help themselves.

Do more, and I think I said this already, just do more homework. Find out what it’s like. Talk to people. Ask them what they’re going through. There’s so much information out there today, people. I know you can do better.

Yeah, if you’re going to teach financial literacy, you should probably teach that. I don’t know, it’s kind of like preaching to the choir. People need some finances in order for them to be lit about it, and teaching financial literacy to people who have absolutely not enough money coming in for necessities, it’s not going to work that way.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but you’re going to need to do some other stuff first. Right. I hope that this helps someone understand someone else. This was Lois Lane, Miami, the equalizer on the Purple Kool-Aid Podcast. Until next time, bye.

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