How many people on a single $1200 check and unemployment will go out and buy a car, a house, a washing machine or visit a Disney park?
Has anyone on here ever actually been poor before? Genuinely curious.
Being self-employed, my dad's income was irregular and often came in $5000 chunks. You might call that a windfall, but my parents were disciplined enough with their money that it automatically went into a savings account for the next mortgage payments, or to pay off credit card debt[1]. We weren't suddenly going out to eat when a cheque came in (in fact, when I was 10 or so, I remember helping my mom enter receipts into her big accounting book, and the total restaurant expenses for the entire year was something like $30).
I don't think we were ever officially under the poverty line, but with a family of 11 in a high cost of living area, the money had to go a lot farther than normal.
[1]: Unfortunately, they weren't disciplined enough to build up and maintain an emergency fund to carry them through rough times, so they relied on a low-interest credit card for essentials way too often.
If you are paid weekly, the amount of cash you have in your pocket might only be $50, and then only on a Friday night, so $1200 looks like an extraordinary windfall.
I used to do taxes for extremely poor (<$10K yearly income) people in Michigan as a volunteer thing. For most of them, I could get the ~$3.5-5K earned income tax credit. A huge windfall? No, these people need that money for basic expenses like feeding their kids.
I can guarantee you these same folks—and the millions that suddenly lost their jobs—are not looking at a $1200 check and thinking, “sweet, 6 months of weed money!”.
But yeah, I’m “thinking about it wrong”.