Define Poverty

Define poverty and you'll find it depends on your situation in life. If you live in a mobile home while your colleagues live in nice homes in the suburbs, you may be considered poor. Or maybe you don't have enough money saved up yet for a down payment on land and that used double-wide. Others or even you may think of poverty as not having your own home. You and they couldn't be more wrong.

So How Do You Define Poverty?

Whether you consider yourself poor truly depends on your perspective. Poverty is relative.  If you live in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau would consider you living in poverty if you are part of a family of four and bring in $25,211 or less per year.

But what if you owned your land outright? What if you built your own home and had no debt? And what if you raised your vegetables, kept chickens and kept bees for your honey. Then that certainly wouldn't mean that you're poor, even if your annual income was less than $25,000 per year.

But what if you don't own your own land yet? What if you're living in an apartment, and your income isn't so great? Would you still consider yourself to be poor?

Poverty and Perspective

Do you realize that if you have money in the bank, you are better off than most people in the world? For example, almost one third of the population in Brazil lives on less than $1 a day. Not being able to live in the type of house you want does not mean you are poor. If you have running water, indoor plumbing and food on the table every day, you are truly living in wealth.

Learning Simplicity

And while you may not consider yourself to be rich, even if you do have indoor plumbing, it does make you think about what your "basic needs" really are. Do you really need to have meat for dinner every day? What if you learned to cook beans and had those a couple of times a week? In light of how the rest of the world lives, would you still define being poor as living without meat a few days a week?

And what if you cut out that fast food burger and brought a simple sandwich to lunch every day? It's time to learn to define poverty as true hunger rather than living without luxuries.

Learn More About Frugal Living

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