{"id":485,"date":"2022-06-13T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/the-paradox-of-riches-being-poor-is-expensive\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:26:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:26:45","slug":"the-paradox-of-riches-being-poor-is-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/the-paradox-of-riches-being-poor-is-expensive\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradox of Riches: Being Poor is Expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of the saddest ironies of personal finance and wealth-building is that being poor is a very expensive state of affairs<\/em>, while being wealthy tends to open doors to more wealth and more savings.<\/p>\n

It turns out that inertia<\/strong> isn\u2019t just something that applied in the 12th grade physics tests I struggled through\u2014it\u2019s observably applicable with money, too. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. A person with money tends to stay that way. A person without it? You guessed it. Momentum matters.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t mean \u201cpoor\u201d in the colloquial, \u201cI have $12 in my checking account because I\u2019m 24 and went to too many bars this weekend\u201d poor; I mean the \u201c37 million Americans\u201411% of the population\u2014living in poverty as of 2025\u201d poor. <\/p>\n

The threshold for poverty was defined in the Census Bureau data in 2019 as one person earning less than $13,171 per year, on average, or a household of two people earning less than $16,733, on average.<\/p>\n

Exploring the data surrounding poverty<\/h2>\n

The reasons for entering poverty vary: Job loss, addiction, a series of unfortunate events, mental illness, divorce, an unexpected child\u2026the list is long and not exhaustive, I\u2019m sure. For many already living close to the edge (read: paycheck-to-paycheck) they\u2019re just one or two emergencies away from finding themselves without shelter. <\/p>\n

But regardless of those reasons, once you\u2019re in<\/em> poverty, it\u2019s difficult to escape the cycle.<\/p>\n

When you consider that nearly half the jobs in the United States <\/em>pay less than $30,000<\/span><\/a> per year pre-tax, it\u2019s easy to see how close to the edge some people really are. On $30,000 or less, your margin of error is relatively small.<\/p>\n

A few examples of why it costs so much to be poor<\/h2>\n