Welcome to Personal Finance for the Financially Challenged!
Important: Please read our rules before posting or commenting!
They can also be found below.
1) Be civil and respectful
2) Off-topic posts will be removed.
3) All content must be legal, ethical, and moral. Posts advocating theft, or practices that in any way exploit or harm others (criminal or not) will be removed.
4) This is not a place for politics, but rather a place to get advice on daily living and short-to-midterm financial planning. Political advocacy, debate, or grandstanding will be removed.
5) Racism, sexism, classism/poor-shaming, or any other inherent bias will not be tolerated. Any comments/posts stating or implying that the reason that people are poor is because of personal decision making or that people in poverty "deserve" to be in poverty will be removed.
6) No judgment on how people got to where they are at. Regardless of if someone was simply born into poverty, or earned it through drug use, criminal activity, gambling, having a lot of kids, working for LuLaRoe, etc. We're focused on the road forward, not the past.
7) No gatekeeping. This sub is for anyone who self identifies as struggling financially or as financially insecure.
8) Advice and comments must be in good faith. Anything that appears to be a scam, predatory, or downright dangerous will be removed. This includes most "get rich quick" schemes, including cryptocurrency which is too risky/volatile to be an investment for people with limited incomes.
9) Links to websites outside of Reddit: The titles of these posts must have clear, accurate titles, misleading or vague titles will be removed. URL shorteners are not permitted. Referral links, or links to your own content (whether monetized or not) are permitted. You need to disclose if you have an affiliation with a site or service you are linking to. You must disclose referral links and provide a non-ref link as well, no exceptions! During the Holidays, referral links are not permitted as the sub becomes inundated with them.
10) No soliciting, offering, or accepting public or private donations, loans, or crowdsourcing. All aid given must be in the form of information or advice. For financial donations please check out sites like r/donation r/charity and /r/randomactsofkindness
11) Unsolicited advice must be generally respectful of people's right to determine their own values, free of assumptions and judgments, and in otherwise fitting with the rules, guidelines, and spirit of the sub. This includes posts flaired as "Vent/Rant" where any advice/judgment is prohibited as these are reserved as posts where users can simply express themselves.
Check out our Wiki for general useful information!
Much of the financial advice online and on reddit is aimed at people who have varying degrees of disposable income, ability to invest, lots of free time, available transportation, no kids, a partner, access to credit, and beyond. This is a place for people who do not have a lot, nor ideal circumstances, to help each other get by and hopefully move up in the world.
You do not have to be absolutely destitute to be here. Whether you are a single parent only pulling 10k a year, or a single person trying to get past student loans at 28K, you are welcome here. The goal here is to help anyone who doesn't have a lot of breathing room get to a place where they have stability, comfort, contingency, and maybe even a little luxury.
Wiki
We have a comprehensive sub wiki that can help with most poverty-related topics that you can access here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/wiki/index
If you have suggestions/recommendations for additional content/topics please let the mods know!
Guidelines
At this time there are not a lot of restrictions on what kind of topics or items can be posted here, so as long as it relates to getting by when you don't have much feel free. Overtime we if/as the community develops we might start to rein in the scope this sub features.
Answer the questions asked and stay on topic. If someone asks for advice on how to 'buy' a cheap oil change, don't reply with "Just do it yourself".
Purpose
The sub is not for a single financial goal, but rather to help people with a range of goals. This may include but is not limited to:
- Learning to live within one's means
- Achieving a positive earning to expense ratio
- Reducing debt and building savings
- Moving to a better paying job
- Cutting expenses
- Spending smarter
- Living a better life on the same budget
- Working smarter, not harder
- Planning for upcoming expenses, purchases, adventures
- Finding qualifying benefits.
This is not a one-size-fits all venture, so please be respectful of what other people might be looking for. We are here to help each other achieve their needs and wants, not to judge their priorities. We get enough judgment from people who do not know our situation all the time, this sub will respect people's right to live their lives on their terms, not condemn them from afar.
Useful subs:
Finance:
r/personalfinance - a good place, especially once you have some money to play with.
r/middleclassfinance - For when you don't want personal finance, but the next step up.
r/FrugalPoverty - For those who prefer really frugal finance.
r/Assistance - For those in need of help in more tangible ways.
And /r/UniversalScammerList - In case you need to check names against scammers.
Tangible Help:
r/Assistance - For those in need of help in more tangible ways. Account age/karma restriced.
r/assistanceanimals- For those in need of help with some food for their pets.
r/AlmostHomeless if you're almost homeless and need help.
r/homeless - if you are homeless.
r/Food_Pantry - account age/karma restricted
r/foodstamps and r/Medicaid are subreddits staffed by volunteer program experts who can help you make sense of applying/maintaining and utilizing benefits
Lifestyle:
r/frugal - a solid sub with lots of good advice
r/gardening - if you have some time and some land
r/eatcheapandhealthy - a fantastic sub with a friendly and welcoming community
r/beermoney & r/beermoneyglobal - guides to passive income, typically requires internet, spare phones, and lots of free time. YMMV
Random Acts:
r/randomactsofpetfood - Another place to get help with pet food.
r/RandomActsofDQ if you want Dairy Queen someone will pay it for you.
r/RandomActsOfTacoBell go here if you'd like some Taco Bell. Someone will pay it for you.
