The Urban Ministries of Durham has a game they'd like you to play. Spent Make it through a month with a shit job while enduring a near-perfect storm of unlucky events. One Fark user gives us a hint on how to win: "I was able to end the month with $1210 by being a complete prick. Hear that poor people? Be a complete prick." Focus: Play the game and discuss your outcomes. Alt. Focus: Have you ever had a really shitty month? Did it seem like the Fates had aligned against you? Cat died, grandpa died, car died, penis died, all within 30 days? Tales of Great and Hilarious Misfortune, HOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I ran out of money on day 29. It's interesting just how much that mirrors real life for so many. The pet one was the hardest and one that put me in the red. If you have a pet, you're their human it's your responsibility to care for them the best you can. I spent $400+ and went broke in a game. In real life when my Doberman was sick and they couldn't tell me why I spent ten times that, which I'd do all over again if it meant helping the pet. In the end it was in vain because I had to put her down anyway and they never could tell, even after running numerous tests on her tissues and such after she was gone, what it was that took her. That's by far the worst part. Do right by your pets, they deserve it. Anyway, sorry rambling, that "game" is really quite realistic.
If only. If poverty was really like this we could cure it with a 20 minute lecture entitled "Don't be a fucking moron." Bullet points would include: -Don't play the lottery. I don't care if it "seems" like an investment, what it really is is an invitation to play the social darwinism game and lose on your first turn. -$100 Nikes for a growing child? Most rich parents I know would tell their kid to shut the fuck up with that shit. -Instead of deciding between a $6 salad and a death trap hamburger, consider the following options: ---Don't forget your lunch, moron. ---Suck it up and eat when you get home ---Walk to the grocery store where instead of a quarter pound of Beef/Sawdust you can get literally pounds of produce to snack on for the same price. -Don't smoke cigarettes, what are you, 12 and hate your parents? -Don't buy a pet when you're struggling to feed your kid. Especially don't buy a pet in violation of the lease. -Don't have a $75/mo cell phone plan and stop texting your BFF Jill all day. -Don't ever rack up credit card debt, it's another version of social darwinism bingo. -Stop driving like an asshole and hitting parked cars and getting caught speeding. No wonder your car insurance premiums are so high. -Your neighbor offers you a free coat and there's even a decision on whether to accept? Suck up your pride you arrogant jackass. -Wait you have a college degree? What the fuck were you studying? For the same price as your four year minimum wage training course you could have gotten an education. -Your kid needs help in math, help your kid in math. If you can't assist in grade school level math, it may go a long with toward explaining why you think gambling and smoking are good habits to pick up during a tough time. I made it through the month with $500 to spare, and the only decision I really regret was telling my mom to shove it and by her own meds. I had health insurance and got a root canal (never gamble with your health), and although I did drive off after smashing someone's bumper, I justified that on the grounds that I wouldn't drive into a parked car in the first place, so it was a bullshit scenario.
I played this game and then realized that the link above takes you to a savegame that's already been largely played through. What you do is click on that link, and at the end where it says: ...?sessionid=01f24d45&turn=0 or whatever, change it to: ...?sessionid=01f24d45&turn=-100 Now you start from an earlier point in the game, in about your junior year of high school. I didn't play through all the scenarios, but here's what I've figured out so far: When your friend Stanley asks if you want to come over and smoke a bowl, say "no." When it asks how you want to spend your time after school, pick studying and the part-time office job. Don't pick "Skateboarding," "Getting High," or "Playing Call of Duty." When it lets you pick your senior year classes, pick "AP Bio," "AP Calculus" and "Business Law." If you rolled a character that doesn't have a high academic inclination, pick one of the shop classes instead, so you can become a tradesman later. Don't pick ceramics, drama, or Japanese. Whenever Stanley shows up again asking you to get high with him, say "no." When you're offered a promotion at your part time job, you can take it, but be careful if you're taking too many AP classes since your happiness quotient will suffer a little (though your fulfillment level will go up, as will your money). When it asks what you want to do on the weekend, pick "study, but go out with friends every once in a while as long as you're caught up." When you graduate, pick the state school that's offering you the best scholarship. Continue working over the summer, but quit before you go off to school so you can find a part-time on-campus job in one of the labs there. When it comes time to pick your major, pick "Engineering," "Law," "Medicine," or if you eventually want to get into i-banking, double up Econ & Poli Sci. Do not pick Sociology, English Lit, Ethnomusicography, Gender Studies, or Japanese. When it asks you to set the ratio of how often you want to stay in and study vs. go out to the bars with your friends, set the ratio at about 4:1. At that ratio, don't join the frat when offered unless you want to do the i-banking track. At that ratio it's less likely, but a sorostitute may come up to you at the bar and agree to fuck you. You can fuck her, but 1) use a condom and 2) give her a fake phone number when she asks. Don't call her. Apparently what happened in the original savegame is that the player knocked up the sorostitute and then had a kid to take care of...what a drag. If Stanley calls you and needs $500 to bail him out of jail, I'd say no. You can bail him out, but he goes to the sticks and knocks up a sorostitute; you're never seeing that $500 again. When you graduate, if you picked Law or Medicine, just go to Law School or Med School right away. Since you studied as much as you did, you should be able to get into a top 10-15 school in either one. If you picked Engineering, take the entry-level engineering job and then let them pay you to get a Masters while you work. If you picked i-banking, go to b-school with your friend Graham Wellington and have his dad get you a job at his hedge fund when you finish. While you're in grad school, keep the ratio of studying to going out about the same. When you graduate, take the one-bedroom apartment and the slightly-used Corolla. Do not choose the BMW, the Audi, or the 60" flat screen TV. By now your loneliness level is probably climbing, so put an ad on DateMatch.com when it offers you the chance. Since you are successful and more-or-less debt free, you should start getting messages from women almost right away. Here, it doesn't matter if you pick the Lawyer, the Veterinarian, the Doctor, the Teacher, or the Librarian. If you pick one of the first three, your combined income will be higher, but she won't be able to come with you on the free conference trips to Hawaii, Africa, and Tahiti as often. If you want to have kids at this point you can, but your happiness quotient will go down and you'll have to pay extra to bring them with you to Hawaii, Africa, and Tahiti. You will also have to fly Business Class instead of First. OK, now the final boss battle happens: Stanley calls you up and tells you a sob story. He has lost his job, and he can't find a new one. He racked up a lot of debt as an ethnomusicography major that he can't pay off. He knocked up a sorostitute that left him with a kid. He has to move into a smaller apartment and he needs someplace to store his stuff. He's temping for $9 an hour but not doing very well at that. His landlord is an asshole and his Mom needs expensive pills. For each of the above statements, say "I'm sorry to hear that." Just keep saying that. When he gets to the end and is pleading for your help, select "C) Give him the number of the Urban Ministries of Durham, hang up, and block his number." After that, just watch the end credits - you win! (Yes, I know I'm an asshole. Yes, I have already read Barbara Ehrenreich's book and Joe Bageant's book and yadda yadda. Buy an umbrella before it rains next time.)
Yeah, I'm with that. "You can see why x number of people do really really stupid thing y when they don't have a lot of money." Clearly, smoking, owning a pet, driving like an idiot, having an expensive cellphone bill, and buying shitty food all the time are things far out of people's control. I hope being poor is as easy as clicking through things.
I had health insurance too but it claimed I didnt have dental insurance and charged me a fuck load bankrupting me the first time through. The second time I helped my kid in math and started working out, everything else I said fuck it, let the dog suffer. I wound up with 236 bucks left over from waitering. I cant seem to pass the fucking typing test for the temp job. Anyone else get that? Alt focus: Spoilered for length. Spoiler I had a particularly bad week one year during the week of July 4th. It started on Sunday when I had a 10am-8pm shift, I decided to stay on and let someone else go home so I closed at midnight. My coworkers and I decided to go to the Casino in Rising Sun Indiana. I lost fifty bucks and watched my friend play black jack until 8am. On our way home my friends Ford Explorer CAUGHT FIRE. We pulled onto an off ramp and watched the front end burn to a crisp. We all got rides home and I needed to be at class by 11 am. I made it too the class to and received my mid term grades back, which he had taken the week before, and I had failed miserably. Doing the usual slacker math I realized I wasnt going to be able to get a C or above if I would have been able to ace the rest of the tests and final (something I needed in this math class to get into business college). So I had to drop the class, which I did afterwards. After my other classes I only had a short nap and had to be at work at six or seven. It was the only sleep I had had in the past day and a half. After work I came home and crashed until the next morning. Sometime in the morning my dog had gotten out and was missing when I woke up. Either I had gotten up let her out and forgot to let her back in (unlikely as I always stood by the door to call her back in) or my roommate had left the door open when letting his dog out and she snuck out while he went about his business. So I spent the rest of the day skipping classes to canvas some very shitty neighborhoods for my dog. I went into work to find someone to cover my shift that night (now Tuesday the 3rd of July) and pick up some lost dog posters my mom had made. After posting them up I went back to my house where friends were gathering for a party. We had planned a party and were going to a Reds game the next day. A girl from work wanted to come so I invited her as I had a thing for her and she was hot. After partying for a few hours we did end up hooking up a bit. She left a little while later. I don't know if it was the nonchalant attitude I had, but she was afraid that Id tell everyone though I assured her otherwise. Bright and early the next day I get a call from my manager and I had to come in and have a talk about it. She had went to the owner, a dude in his mid 30s who had a huge thing for the girl*, and claimed I took advantage of her. Basically just unprovable claims but instead of her looking like a slut I looked like Big Ben. The owner gave me the option to quit or stay on and have her "get the law involved." Seeing it as a lose lose situation and being fried from the prior three days I said fuck it and quit. I went home and had to explain that I wasnt going to the game because of what just happened and had too search for my dog. Shit was fucking taxing. A few days later a neighbor down the street had found my dog and seen the posters. I went to pick her up and she was romping and playing with the woman's Doberman having the time of her life. My roommate also hooked me up with my first barbacking job by the next Monday in a new bar downtown next to his work. * I heard she had the dude wrapped around her finger and strung him along for a while, he let her tool around town in his 85k BMW 7 series. A friend of mine that worked there also heard from her friends that it wasn't the first time she had made claims about dudes like that.
Ironically, the only time I was able to smoke the temp test was while super baked. All of my education classes keep trying to convince me that poor people are poor because society fucks them in the ass. This shit is really starting to hurt my brain.
I've never read Rich Dad Poor Dad, and Ive heard the financial advice is bogus, but the concept that growing up around people that know how to handle money and those that don't seems like a pretty fucking big factor. I have a friend who started working for a local outreach program after college. She deals with a lot of poor people, drug addicts, etc. With the minorities she worked with she started noticing the patterns of how they handled money, mostly that they tend to rely on family hand outs/loans when they are in a pinch, thus they always seemed to be in a cycle of owing money or loaning money they didnt have. She started telling them basic money saving ideas and told them to save for themselves before they thought about giving their money away. It didn't take long before her manager hauled her into her office and told her to stop. The reason being that they didn't want to interfere with these minority's culture of relying on family for help, they didnt want to be perceived as trying to change their culture. So I guess society is sort of holding them down?
Nope, I assumed (before Politik posted) that it failed you automatically to make you feel rejected like one of the poor people suffering from the 'oppression' of a society that doesn't want to give free hand outs. I'll have to try this on my work computer Monday so I can try the typing test on a desktop, my boss is going to fucking love this game. I was barely able to get through on my first try despite being a dick (read: responsible) in almost every situation, I think my major downfall was purchasing the health insurance but when I went to the doctor for chest pain it said I didn't have any. When it came to the paying for a math tutor vs letting your kid fail part I kept screaming at the screen "motherfucker I have a degree in math, I'll just fucking tutor the little shit myself!" Also, when it comes to working out vs. facebooking a friend for personal trainer, why isn't one of the options "I already do manual labor, I'll just walk around the building during lunch to round out my day and still be in better shape than most desk jockeys that go to the gym every week"? Pro tip: you can buy nothing from the grocery store and it won't affect your outcome in anyway. Edit: Also, why does choosing the server job round out to $8/ hour? Don't servers average way more than that? People coming from waiting backgrounds at my last job use to bitch about making more in restaurants (starting at my old job was around $17/hour). Are they just going off of what waiters and waitresses report on taxes? Then they call us oblivious. Edit 2: Holy shit, just noticed the income options on the lower left, I'm going with payday loan, no way anything can go wrong with that! Edit 3: I love how they make it seem like it's a big deal that you need to haul your ass to the library to get free internet, when the hell did home internet access become a right?
Focus: I ended up with $984 at the end of the month. It shouldnt be called Spent, it should be called Fucked. So it already assumes that you dont have a job and you have a kid? It takes a out a lot of the choices you would have in a lot of the situations so it fits the agenda, but it was interesting anyway. AntiFocus: Last November I blew out a tire and destroyed a rim on the Mass Pike during a snow storm, that ended up costing $900. Rent was due 2 days later ($600) as well as my college loan bill 3 days later ($450). I had also just spent $300 bucks the night before in Boston. At the time I wasnt making much so it was a very very frugal remainder of that month.
Yeah it assumes you have already made large decisions that usually cost a lot. They seem to dump them on you too, ow and now your college loan is due and the kid you had needs a tutor. They also only give you three Who Wants to Be a Millionaire style life lines, pay full price, facebook a friend, or act like nothing happened. Not that there aren't tons of charitable organizations that cater to low income people in most of the problems that come up.
My favorite was saying that my kid needed a tutor or they'll fail, then two days later it said my kid had been identified as gifted and I needed to pony up some cash for them to take advantage, life is hard. Protip 2- all you have to do is click on the facebook phone a friend option to use it, you don't actually have to post anything or message anyone and you can use that option every time with no penalty. Protip 3- if you want the temp typing job, but don't have the skills you can copy and paste into the dialog box. I just did a bare bones run (don't by any insurance, ignore all problems, be a dick, have a roommate etc...) and finished with $1,522, top that.
$127, no job (fired for hiding broken merchandise), and not enough to pay the next month's rent. Makes me wish i had added that beer to my shopping cart.
Many people have played the game, but how many have actually to the Urban Ministry or whatever it's called? Yeah, me neither. Maybe they should have all the poor people play that game and teach them not to make stupid choices. I'd support that.
Ok, I spend my whole day on a computer and I keep failing this stupid typing test. I'm pretty sure they fail you no matter what just so you have to type their mission statement over and over again.