I seriously believe that the worst part about being poor it that it rips away the mental dedication required to break out of the poverty well. Being able to support yourself and your family is the key to self respect. Take away the job and very few of us will keep the self respect - and the dedication to improve your situation erodes very quickly.


Have I been there, done that? Only partial, I have just scratched a tiny speckle of the surface of these effects. I moved to a different part of the country on a whim, thinking I was cool enough to whip up a cool job within a few months. I had to cave in and find that job in another town after about 9 months. I will never forget how degrading and mentally challenging it was to motivate myself to keep looking, making phone calls and all the other stuff required to find the job you want.


Mind you, we had zero financial troubles living on my wife's income during that period. We have a very supportive and resourceful family and friends. I had no trouble what so ever finding and doing alternative jobs (manual factory work, part-time teacher and such). It was just that my cool university-degree work that would be my path to self realization never seemed to materialize in the town I very much wanted to live in. After 9 months I finally came to my senses and found the job I wanted elsewhere... I will never forget how I felt at the last part of that time period.


I can't really imagine what it is like to being trapped in poverty, except that it must be A LOT tougher mentally than my little misadventure.


If you manage the mental bit you can manage anything. Lots of suggestion above - keep the mental part and you will find a way. It is all about accepting your situation, realizing you can't have a high material standard of living right now and being creative of exploiting the options available to you. There's always something. Something's better than nothing. Exploit that and you're a bit better off tomorrow than yesterday.

Here's a book about how you could deal with it. It is all about improving self esteem and life situation with very small incremental steps at a time.
Change your life in 7 steps


EDIT: About people in poverty always finding money for fancy phones and bling for their car... I think that is their little escape from reality, having a bit of fun in an otherwise harsh world. Probably not the wisest choice of investment, but who am I to blame them?