Too poor - Andreea Vîlcu

I invite you to do a short exercise together. I will read a few statements, and if you have experienced one of these situations, subtract one point. If you haven't, add 1.

I had my gas or electricity cut off for non-payment - 1

I had a gas cylinder in my apartment so we could use the stove and heat water. -1

I was expelled from university for non-payment of fees. -1

I grew up with parents who worked abroad. +1

I pawned my laptop or other belongings for daily expenses, bills, debts. -1

What was your score? I got minus 3.

Apart from my parents working abroad, I checked all the other boxes.

I grew up in Brăila, with debts listed in my notebook, without camps or vacations. When I was 11, we had to sell the apartment we lived in because of utility bills. Not to mention having our gas and electricity cut off. I went to college on my family's dime, and in my last year, I was expelled for not paying my tuition. I pawned my laptop at a local pawn shop for almost a year to cover my daily expenses until I lost it for good.

I got used to never having enough, without knowing what effect this would have on my development. This precariousness meant a lot of shame and anger. But also a kind of sentence, at the time, that I would never leave that small town, where everyone gets by as best they can. But I was lucky.

In 2022, I published an essay about how I had lived my whole life with this burden. Since then, more than ever, I have been haunted by the subject of poverty and precariousness. So, this year, I used what I learned in journalism to understand how it affects us and shape our beliefs and behaviors.

A month ago, my colleagues and I launched the Too Poor podcast. An audio series that explores both the anger and shame that many of us grew up with and how these shortcomings transform you in adulthood.

I have read over 500 personal stories these past few months, collected in a form where I asked people to share their experiences with money. Stories about fear, humiliation, poverty, and helplessness.

• My biggest expense right now is my mortgage payment. I'm afraid of ending up homeless or having to move back in with my parents, where I was physically and psychologically abused as a child.

• "Even the idea of somehow getting by decently scares me, as if I wouldn't be comfortable that way, and it's a little strange. I've been poor most of the time, or at least worried about tomorrow, for more than a third of my life."

• And now, to top it all off, this budget deficit seems to be hitting me again. And I have no choice but to take it personally. I really fought and worked all these years, and it seems like that vacation, the first one I would really take, and which would be called a vacation, will never come. Thinking about buying my own place is a distant dream, but I feel much worse if I give up. My dreams give me hope."

Then I talked to people who are one emergency away from bankruptcy. A family with an OK income, where, after the father lost his job, there followed almost two years of loans from non-bank financial institutions, refinancing, and holes caused by gambling People for whom poverty and the feeling of being "too poor" comes from income instability, from the feeling that you are living from month to month, that you are always on the edge. This feeling also haunts people who grew up in poverty and who, once they reach adulthood, fear that they could lose everything from one day to the next. All these fears have been massively accelerated in recent years by record inflation and austerity measures.

And we have learned a lot:             

Vladimir (from episode 2)

However you look at it, it is clear that after 35 years of free market, capitalism, and democracy, almost half of the population lives in precarious conditions. That is, they have no security for tomorrow or next month in terms of covering their current expenses, maintenance, rent, or mortgage payments.

[15:24] Because this economic growth has been uneven, profoundly uneven. Not everyone is better off than they were 35 years ago. Not everyone is better off.

Raluca (from episode 1)

[1:35:16] But when we talk about money, we're not talking about mathematics. We only talk about mathematics when we calculate it. Otherwise, money comes with an emotional charge, money comes with emotions attached to it, some positive, some less positive. The vast majority of people have painful emotions attached to money.

Dani 2 (from episode 2)

[12:56] If someone like Albert Einstein were born tomorrow in Ferentari, he would most likely not finish high school or would have great difficulties. If he were born into a family with drug problems, if he were born into a family with many, many other accumulated problems. And that means that, as a society, we are missing out on some of our potential to develop, to have extremely capable people available in the labor market because they never get to express themselves and reach their true potential.

I learned at home, at school, and at work that poverty is shameful. And it's a personal failure, we're told. A consequence of not working hard enough. I swallowed whole the lie that if I stick with school and work hard, I'll have a well-paid job, then a house, a family, a car, and I'll be happy. Except that this whole meritocratic system has gotten a bit warped along the way. Not for any other reason, but because even with all my years of work, I still don't earn enough to save, let alone indulge.

Being "too poor" doesn't just mean being part of the working class, it's also a feeling that many of us live with, and which we try to overcome every day. Working on this series, I'm learning that the solution actually lies in solidarity, from family and friends to public policies that bring more justice to as many people as possible.

I would like us to take a moment to think about how we got here - historically, socially, emotionally. Let's think about what we can do differently, both for ourselves and for others. I recently heard an example from a group of friends about how they made a support plan in case one of them ever found themselves in trouble.

In order to write a new story about our relationship with precariousness, we must first eliminate the shame of talking about it. So help me.

I invite you to leave a message right now with the score from the beginning and write me one thing that makes you feel too poor these days. And after the show, listen to Too Poor and send me an audio message about your experiences. It's a good start to a dialogue about how we live and what it really means to have enough.