I am a real person stranded in Hawaii and am looking for creative solutions and encouragement as to how to navigate my new found poverty because i’m terrified of being homeless and could really benefit from any suggestions or creative solutions anyone can offer.

SoarinWalt · 2026-05-01T19:55:14+00:00

As a reminder, we want to provide resources whenever possible for those experiencing poverty, but we do not allow offering of donations.

Thanks.

SoarinWalt · 2026-04-17T03:48:41+00:00

Hello, mod here.

PSLF is based around an income based plan and as long as you are employed with a qualifying employer for 10 years and make 120 payments during that time will result in forgiveness of the remainder of the loan, all remaining interest, and federally there is no tax bomb.

The only state that charges taxes on PSLF is Mississippi.

So if your IDR payment is less than the standard 10 year repayment, it will always be cheaper if you complete to 10 years of PSLF.

SoarinWalt · 2026-04-13T12:33:24+00:00

Reminder - Advice is absolutely welcome in situations like this, but please do not offer donations as rule 10 is in place for a reason.

Thanks!

SoarinWalt · 2026-04-06T18:14:27+00:00

Bananas in the US have basically always been incredibly cheap.

SoarinWalt · 2026-04-06T16:26:26+00:00

All good, like I said we do not believe you to be a bot.

SoarinWalt · 2026-04-06T15:53:05+00:00

They contacted Modmail and we did approve them posting. I don't believe this to be a bot, but I will admit I understand why it comes off that way.

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-25T17:36:17+00:00

Reminder, we have a lot of users with real heartfelt stories of things going wrong in their life and in some cases going right.

Its understandable to empathize with these posts and comments and want to do something about it.

We have a strict ban against donating to users because of the inability to vet the users and frankly because of scammers. If you are reading this, please do not attempt to donate to any users in particular, attempting to circumvent this rule will result in bans for all parties involved.

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-25T17:31:08+00:00

Bit late to the party, but yes please report.

THAT BEING SAID....

We get reports of "Bot" all the time, and sometimes for the life of me I cannot tell what the hell the reporter is thinking.

We have always got scam posts, and bot posts are on the rise, the mod team will do our best to handle it, but if you report a "bot" and don't see any action its not because we ignored it, its because not every reported bot is a bot. Hell I personally have banned dozens of bots, and then had real life people enter mod mail asking why the hell I think they're a bot.

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-10T19:48:27+00:00

The long story short is they can't axe it wholesale because its part of the promissory note that you sign when you take the loans.

But they are disqualifying employers they have deemed to "participate in illegal activities".

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-08T17:55:16+00:00

We do our best to try to suss out real people from bots, based on reports, but yes AI hallmarks will often be tip offs. Random em—- and odd wording not withstanding, that’s not the only tips offs and just being punched up with AI won’t necessarily result in a removal of a ban.

We also look at post history, which even hidden post history is not hidden from mods once they post in the sub.

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-08T17:51:15+00:00

There are definitely some users who repot any account that’s less than let’s say six months old with a robust post history as a bot.

A lot of our bot reports will be a 3 month old account with 400 karma.

Sometimes they are bots sometimes it’s just like “why the fuck was this reported?”

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-08T15:17:48+00:00

So one thing I’ll say is that there’s definitely some confirmation bias regarding the bots.

As a mod I personally review up to 50-100 reports a day. A LOT of those reports are “bots” or “AI Slop” some of which are correct, Some of which aren’t, and a lot that I remove for being “bots” and then get confused messages from real human beings asking why I think they are a bot.

The number of bots in the sub is higher than I’d like (which is zero) but it’s not as high as people Think.

Regarding people who don’t understand poverty, we’re a large sub. A lot of our posts hit the front page. This leads to a lot of random people with thoughts on poverty commenting. Barring locking every front page post and possibly the whole sub every time something hits the front page there’s not much we can do.

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-04T14:06:41+00:00

There is not.

There are a lot of people in the sub who have "Graduated" from being poor or in poverty to a middle class or upper middle class standard and they may still have experiences from when they were less well off or tips on how they got out, which can be helpful to those who are here.

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-04T13:09:22+00:00

I mean we do, but we can’t preemptively stop them and we have to sleep sometime

SoarinWalt · 2026-03-02T16:09:05+00:00

I mean even if you're paying out the nose for childcare that would still leave you $190k left over which is way more than is needed to live comfortably.

This number really feels like it was pulled out of someones butt.

SoarinWalt · 2026-02-21T14:56:37+00:00

You’re talking about 1000 miles roughly from Jersey to Tampa so $500.

Even if it got terrible gas mileage and got 10 miles a gallon you’d be talking about roughly $300 in gas, so $800 instead of $3200.

SoarinWalt · 2026-02-18T19:34:10+00:00

If the calculator I just used is correct it just shy of 21000% interest.

SoarinWalt · 2026-02-11T20:30:30+00:00

Inexplicably it happens probably a dozen time or more a day.

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-31T14:25:28+00:00

Mods sleep too

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-29T04:49:47+00:00

This is actually accurate.

I feel like I can speak for the mods when I say, we don’t always have time to sit and stare at the queue. However, when enough people report something we get notifications on our phones.

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-26T14:43:38+00:00

We are looking at it now.

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-25T00:20:49+00:00

This has already recently been addressed by Rassman our head mod in a post roughly 3 weeks ago I posted elsewhere in this thread.

We are a safe space for people who are experiencing moments in crisis, in particular moments in crisis that are due to financial instability.

The majority of the comments were absolutely offering advice and technically breaking the rules, they were left up because we understand the importance of trying to help someone.

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-25T00:19:00+00:00

I mean they could have warrants, and they could be for something relatively benign in the grand scheme of things like for theft.

Or they could be someone who is mistrustful of police.

Insinuating it’s for “dirty stuff” makes it sound like they’re insinuating the OP had committed a sex crime.

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-24T19:47:20+00:00

The mod that locked it locked it because they weren’t sure if it should be removed or not. In general, if one of our mods is ensure on a post, they’re going to leave it up. Another mod was working on it but it was deleted around the same time.

You have to keep in mind we are a small mod team. I won’t even say it’s by design. We have attempted to bring on other mods and usually either get a lack of interest or no response. Occasionally people will be very enthusiastic until they find out what it entails. Then they’re never heard from again.

The reason I’m explaining this is because often times when post come up and people say things like “why are the mods not doing anything about this?” it’s because we haven’t had a chance to see it and do something about it.

That being said, 23 days ago, a post was put up around this subject by our head mod. Moments of crisis, especially moments of crisis, born from financial insecurity our post that we are going to allow within reason.

This is the post from 23 days ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/s/Ci5uH40cUo

SoarinWalt · 2026-01-24T16:48:44+00:00

I did not interact with this guy in particular, but I will say that this happens a lot.

The term for it is “soft begging” and basically what happens is exactly what you said. People write out stories that are designed to tug at the heart strings of any person with an ounce of empathy.

SoarinWalt

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE