The Dangling Carrot

                                         

pov·er·ty

/ˈpɒvərti/ Show Spelled [pov-er-tee] Show IPA

noun

1.

the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor. Synonyms: privation, neediness, destitution, indigence, pauperism, penury. Antonyms: riches, wealth, plenty.

2.

deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc.: poverty of the soil. Synonyms: thinness, poorness, insufficiency.

3.

scantiness; insufficiency: Their efforts to stamp out disease were hampered by a poverty of medical supplies. Synonyms: meagerness, inadequacy, sparseness, shortage, paucity, dearth. Antonyms: abundance, surfeit, sufficiency, bounty, glut.

                            -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Fifty million Single Americans age fifty or older in live in Poverty. I am one of theses fifty million Americans.

I did not ask to end up in this state nor did I intend to be here at age fifty writing a blog about being in poverty. Like all Americans and humans the world over, we begin dreaming our dreams when we are children and some of us achieve them or other dreams that became our new reality along the way.

I was born into a poor family. My parents were never in a place where they could send my two sisters or me to college and my Mom ( Rest In Peace) passed on to us only what she knew by what she had been taught and that was that little girls grow up to be lovely ladies, find a husband and live happily ever after.

I learned to manage a checkbook from my High School Home Economics teacher and I learned to save what few pennies I could squander in a silly program called; 'Tuck a Buck a Day Away' that was offered through a local bank for children to have savings accounts and learn at early ages the value of a dollar, I know it's value, but that doesn't help when there are no dollars to value! I know how to live within my 'means' and how to pay my bills and basically be fiscally responsible, but one circumstance after another have taken away my chances at recovering from blow after blow to my finances, my personal growth and ability to plan for a retirement future.

I go to lectures and groups to learn how become an amazing person in my fifties and beyond. I listen to person after person give advice and tell stories of how they turned their lives around and became independently wealthy! Oh let's not forget that through completely rethinking how you think and changing your mind set and ridding yourself of your negative thoughts will magically turn your life around! I am quite certain they are right and that I could turn my life around, but this sage wisdom comes from people who had spouses to support them in all manners while they were jogging down their road to success or they had savings or retirement or some other financial means to hold them over until their first million poured in. These are people who have never gone a day without eating because they had to decide between paying the rent or buying groceries.

Now, I know they all mean well and I have had my share of profound generosity, but by the time the generosity came I was so far in debt and unemployed that I had nothing left to squirrel away or invest and now I am no longer unemployed but I am living paycheck to paycheck and the job is only a temporary so I am still treading water not floating dreamily on soft waves. 

I want those who think they have all the answers to answer this question; What is your definition of poverty? 

I listen to the so called experts tooting their horns saying things like, " I was so broke I had to live off of my ten of thousands of dollars of retirement funds...that is until they started their own business because they had money to do so. Then there are the ones who talk about how they understand poverty and they have "Been there too' that they saw is first hand while traveling the world and talking to people in poverty...does anyone realize how much it costs to travel the world? Don't sit in front of me wearing an outfit that cost more my monthly utilities and tell me you know poverty, you have been there etc... 

I have been there, I have been homeless, I have been weeks without adequate food, I'm in my third year without medical care for my disease because I cannot afford insurance, I have lived in run down tenements, I have lived with no way  to fix my car if it broke down and  I have lived in fear of not knowing how I am to get by the next day, and I have been cheated and lied to out of my chance at a future by friends and spouse who I trusted and who should have been there but took what they could and left me hanging in the wind.

Now lots of folks have said that I should go back to school! If I go back to school then in a few years I will be finished with school and burdened with ten of thousands of dollars in school loans that I would never live long enough to pay off and I don't think there are a lot HR personnel jumping at the chance to hire a fifty + year old woman who just finished school? 

Am I angry, yes a little, am I frustrated, yes a lot, but not because of my circumstances as you may be thinking, I am angry and frustrated at the people's rhetoric about how greener the grass is over on their side and yet none of them can relate to or speak to the reality of the plight of people my age and above, none of them can speak to 'Me'.

I worry everyday about my future and I don't pity myself, I do however get tired of hearing people try to sell me their snake oil solutions when they don't even know what the real problem is.

If you want my attention, if you want me to respect what you are saying and buy what you are selling than come down here to my economic neck of the woods and if you can stand it for a little while without running screaming to your new car then we will have a lot to talk about, I'll even put on a pot of coffee and offer you some cheep cookies.