I am poor, and so what?

I have been poor for months my friends are giving me the cold shoulder: I don't go out with them anymore.

It costs too much...

I have been watching my expenses. What do I do wrong?

I have been lending 10k$ without interests for 9 months (to my boss) without the payments of interests, and I had to take credits.

I am stressed, my consumption of psychotropics (tobacco, alcohol,...) have been rocketing. It seems that addiction are pretty environmental.

And where I am taxes on tobacco & alcohol are 100% in VAT.

If you earn 67k$ / year and single it is no big deal. But I am married, and (lucky me) my wife is both gorgeous and (that's the problem) young.

The curse of the first job. We are basically living on one wage with high tax rates because I am both "rich" and don't know how to fill my tax forms to optimize.

In fact being (not too) poor is fun.

I have been bankrupted once in my native place that is a place of crony capitalism. I was born rich, but my parents' ethic was to make me endure life without neither a penny nor help.

It was indeed a good idea: I had fun because I am bored all the time.

My parents are millionaire (only one million of asset because of the house), I am poor like shit and I don't even resent them. I know nothing, because I am who I am: clueless.

I have been whining for money to my parents, and no poor people could have hoped for as much as my parents did help me. It is true I still resent them for not helping me when it was important (as a young adult). But I am 42 and not sleeping under the bridges.

Not that I hate the hobos. Every time I see one of them, I see a potential me. So, I have sympathy.

I made my wedding on a 400$ budget ... thanks to the help of a lot of people.

And -believe me or not- it was the best wedding I experienced. Some friends resent me for not going to their weddings. I don't have the money to go to their fancy places nor pay for their entertainment, and they think it is because I hate them since they helped me.

Well, I don't have both time and money.

How do I spend my money? On food and psychotropics.

For food I cannot do nothing.

For psychotropics, I discovered science I was taught as a 16yo kid worked. I do my own alcohol.

It is illegal, I know. But, what is an alcohol budget for rich people compared to a poor person?

Vices in puritan countries (like here) is 100%.

You could remove the environmental cause of dependency (see rat park on google), but it would cost too much.

So as a poor, I have to live with my 1500% increase in probability rate of being addicted.

I think I am pretty smart, I self taught myself R language in 6 hours because I was bored, my boss tried to put me coding in a new MVV whatever the fuck framework that is dead since 3 years and I can do it. I already know 14 languages like C#, perl, python, C, C++, 68000 assembly ....

I even created my language in 16 hours.

Why did I fail? 

Doxein vs Praxein. Knowing how to do it vs knowing how to make it know.

I also made a master in management, so I know the "language of my enemies".

In fact they are not my enemies. I have been bankrupted as my own boss. Not for not delivering what was asked, just because I was being billed 4 x other my shoulder and someone in the middle decided to not honor his words of paying me and because of the corrupted system in my country I was helpless.

Yes it sux to be a "not cresus boss" in France.

I failed. 15% of my contracts. I succeed 55% of my contracts. I was not sure for the remaining. But if paid as promised my job was sustainable.

I don't say I was the best in the world, I say I was an epsilon better than average, and that I was crushed way more than average rich kids who failed 10 times epsilon more than me.

Rich get richer, poor get poorer is like a dice game where some have dices with only 1 on the 6 faces, and other only 6 on every faces of the dices.

Sometimes poor wins, but most of the times riches are winning

Why I am not failing?

I fucking don't care anymore.

I don't care about you, or about me. I fight. Why? Because, well, it is in my nature. I am always pissed (and I am just going irreversibly poor, I am not poor yet). And I don't know why, I hate injustice especially when it applies to me.

I used to buy cheap bikes.

I bought an expensive cheap (800$) bike from a famous US company for having something reliable that costed me 500$ in fixing. And they said: your bike is not expensive so suck my dick.

I am pissed.

I used to buy amazing wines for 5$ now I have to spend 40$.

I am pissed.

Hum. I WAS pissed.

The reason of my "poverty" is the reason of my new found wealth.

As a coder I am paid 36$ an hour for 37.5 hours per week. My wife is stranger in a stranger land (fuck I hate Heinlein, but I love iron maiden) but she gave me a way out (she is paid 10$/hours for at most 20 hours/weeks does she REALLY worth ~8 times less than me? I don't think so).

I live in a place where people venerate my "country of origin" for my alcohol... The country of wine... as they said.

I translated Xenophon. I know alcoholic fermentation was brought to Europa with Alexander the great campaign thus I should credit India for the discovery of "pourriture noble" (aka cheese, wine & beer).

My wife is polish (and I don't care where she is coming from, she chose me, I chose her) and she gave me a recipe for homemade alcohol.

I am not poor anymore: knowledge rox.

Well, as a 16 yo kid my country made me studied fermentations.

We even had to make alcohol at home.

If you are wealthy 250$ x 2  of your income in psychotrops is not a problem. When you are poor, and more likely to consume then it is.

So I learnt to make alcohol.

Right now I am drinking a glass of our own strawberry wine.

My costs for C2H5OH have been diminished by 2.

I may be able to save money in the next months. I will be able to exit the poverty trap.

I can make stuff that are amazing in python, in R, in C(#|++|), matlab, asyst, VHDL....

But I don't know why (I am telling lies) , I am failing the "success" line.

I discovered that being smart for programming helps me a lot improving our process for making our own booze.

I don't known anything but I will survive.

At first I may have been afraid, even petrified.


I kown this world is unfair to poor people.
I know where I stand.

But I will survive.

I will survive.

Just to be a pain in the ass to the kids who thinks that being born lucky is a virtue.

And even if I die, my wine will be best than theirs just to prove that being born in the right family is not a virtue.


And trust me my wine is so good I have no points to make.

...

I still have to make understand my bike dealer that a poor broken asthmatic smoking coder is not likely to break a bike that cost 1000$ (tax included this time) for 500$ worth of fixing (taxes included) in 10 months without any serious "design flaw".

Well... It has became my life.

Being poor is kind of fun.

But not every day, not in every circumstances.

Sometimes to be honest, it is not.