The poor get the picture. The bombs never hit you. When you're down so low." - Read About it, Midnight oil.

In my first post for this blog i stated that I would like to get my weekly spending down to the same as some one that was unemployed and on a government allowance.

Well, I would like to say that i am pretty damn close to that. weekend splashing on the step kids for lunch is the regular expenditure that would take me over this limit.

Why would I want to lower my expense to the 'dole' amount.

- To help funnel my money to pay off my debits. Fuck banks, I aint going to give them a cent more than i have to. Once all my credit cards and loans are paid off, I will try as much as possible to wash my hands of them.

- To see what it would be like to live at such a point.

- But the major reason is this. I would like to have a life style with as little stress as possible, I have a mother, I dont need any more stress than that. By lowering by expenditure to that level I could take the fear of losing my job away. Not saying that I would like to be unemployed, I just dont want to have to worry about car repayments ect.

The interesting thin that i am becoming more aware of is that it cost money to be poor, especially if you have dependents.

A friend was the first to alert me to this. I was visiting him while he was living in London. The first time I visited him he was living in a nice group house in Wimbledon. It was a nice place but quite a trip to soho were he worked. Close to a year after he moved to London he had some very good luck, his father was posted to london and got a nice government funded house in Kensington. Now what does this have to do with my argument? My mate had to live in Wimbledon due to his income. Wimbledon was Zone 3 on the tube payment system and when he moved this went down to zone 1. That is a half decent saving right there. Because he was able to live in a richer part of town he was able to save more money.

Now there were other benefits as well. The amount of services closer to him had increased substantially. Big chain supermarkets with there lower prices, health services ect, He didn't need his car any more, another huge saving.

This link is to a article from the Washington Post. Obversely the US has a larger population than here in Aus so there problems for the poor is a lot worse. But it is same the world over, it cost money to be poor