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13 tweets,
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How expensive it is. You can't buy groceries in bulk & often have to buy from corner shops with big markups. You probably have to use local cash machines that charge for withdrawals. The lurch in your gut whenever you do use cash machines never goes away.
You can't afford quality items that will last you years (clothes, furniture, etc.) so you're constantly buying cheap crap that will need replacing within months. Even though you do buy cheap, there's the constant fear something vital (like shoes) will need replacing.
(There's no cure for growing up poor, incidentally. Even if you manage to achieve escape velocity later in life, your formative years when your brain was soft and your personality was coalescing will have poverty running through it like lettering through seaside rock)
Anyway, I digress...
Some stuff can't be bought in one go (a sofa, a fridge) and nobody is going to give you o% credit so you have to use loan shark outfits like Brighthouse. So a £300 fridge freezer ends up costing you £600.
It can rob you of your ability to enjoy non-essential purchases. Anything that isn't keeping your house warm, the rent paid, stomachs full or bodies clothed feels like an irresponsible frippery so you can't even enjoy that ice cream as you're eating it.
Or you go the other way, you're incapable of forward planning. You can't budget months ahead because you're one dead cooker away from plans going out the window so what's the point? Evidence shows it permanently alters your brain chemistry & impulse control.
It's exhausting. It banjaxes your fight-or-flight mechanism because you're on 24-hour alert for a forgotten debt, an unforseen mishap or a misfortune outside of your control. It's a full-time job robbing Peter to pay Paul that leaves little room for living rather than existing.
It's demeaning & tiring & I definitely would wish a year of it on my worst enemy. Because they view being poor as a moral failing, a lack of effort or an inconvenience they'd easily overcome. There's no nobility in being poor, nor in propping up the system that keeps people poor.
If you were born middle class, raised middle class and generally socialised with fellow middle class people, you'll have no more idea what I'm talking about than I know what it's like to be an antelope by watching an Attenborough documentary. It's not your fault, of course. But.
If this is you, when somebody tells you what it's like to be poor, listen to them. Believe them. Don't patronise them. And when you're asked to help drag people out of poverty by voting a different way or paying a bit more tax, remember what you're saving them from. It's this.
Addendum: If you don't already, please follow @KillerMartinis & @BootstrapCook who are far better chroniclers of poverty and its causes than I could ever hope to be.
I’m genuinely grateful for these tweets, as they perfectly illustrate my point. 
