When I was a teen, my older brother told me how he got trapped in a cycle of buying candles for light when his electricity was shut off. He thought, "I could pay this damn power bill if I didn't have to buy so many candles!"
I got trapped in a similar poverty cycle years ago. I couldn't replace broken dish-ware because I kept having to buy disposable plates for my meals. My mother bought me some cheap plates for xmas that year to break the cycle.
It's the fallacy of the cheap boots. A rich person can buy nice boots that last ten years. A poor person has to buy cheap boots that need to be replaced every few years. In the end, the poor person spends more on boots with less to show for it.
