I don't know why I was thinking about this, but it's pretty damn expensive to be poor.
Back when I was a young man I was very poor and felt the impact of all these scenarios.
1. If you're really poor you can only afford to buy a small amount of groceries. Whereas if you have a little more cash you can go to places like Costco and buy in bulk which saves you money on the long run.
2. If you're really poor, chances are you're sometimes late with payments, which means you can't get good interest rates. People with higher income tend to only miss payments if they forget, not because they didn't have the money. So they can set up auto pay and things like that that help keep their credit score high so they can get lower interest rates.
3. Moving is expensive and many times poor people can't afford to do it. So they get stuck trying to survive in expensive areas. Where the middle class can leave an area when it becomes too expensive to live there.
4. Middle class people can do all kinds of things to their homes to save money, like adding solar panels, replacing single pane windows with double pane, replacing appliances with more energy efficient ones...
5. Middle class people can get the best vehicle for their needs. For instance, if they commute they can get something very fuel-efficient. Where a poor person's grandfather left them a Chevy pickup when he died, and that's your vehicle. You keep it alive forever and live with whatever gas mileage it gets. No matter how far your job is.
