Under earning can be defined very simply: not having enough to meet your expenses, over and over again. Under earners may go for years without paying taxes, learning how to fly under the radar. They have a true poverty consciousness, often feeling they aren’t worth much pay and taking temporary, poorly paid jobs, or what I call “throw away jobs.”
Under earners often get into debt, not so much because of spending too much, but because they use credit to bail them out on the necessities of life like rent, food, utilities, etc. Eventually, if not sooner, they’ll be unable to pay off their loans and the situation simply gets worse.
Some of the finest help for the under earner is through Debtors Anonymous. Although the name sounds like they only deal in debt, under earning is actually part of their approach as well. DA is a 12 Step Program and as such, uses a spiritual approach. But it’s wonderful to discover you’re not alone in the crazy way you handle money, and the spiritual program works, even if you don’t actually believe in God as such. And, of course, DA is free, supported by passing the hat.
It certainly can’t hurt go give it a try, and it often helps.
It sounds as if you are awfully close to blaming the victim for under-earning. Debtors Anonymous tries to duplicate Alcoholics Anonymous or Gambler’s Anonymous, which aim to help people who cannot stop drinking or gambling. The cure for debtors is not a self-help group, but a shift in thinking regarding jobs. What is needed is a liveable wage mandate, which requires companies (no, not the two-person mom-and-pop) to pay employees enough to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomach. What is needed is health care reform, allowing people to go to a private doctor, rather than an emergency room. What is needed is the rebuilding of the social welfare safety net that has so assiduously been dismantled over the past few decades.
Ed, I’d go for both a living wage mandate and a single-payer health insurance program.
In fact if it were up to me I’d roll back the whole Ronald Reagan mythos - he did too raise taxes! He was anti-working people and if government scared him it was because he had some notion of how he was misusing it.
That said, self-worth issues also can play into underearning… a 12 Step approach can work… and btw, there is now a 12 step group called, you guessed it, http://underearnersanonymous.org/
(I’m an inveterate 12 stepper and even I want to sometimes develop a 12 step program for those of us who may be addicted to 12 step programs.)