Who hasn’t fantasized about what you would have experienced or bought if you won the entire first prize pot in the lottery, or at least got a nice salary increase? I have neither won the lottery nor received a wage garnishment. Nevertheless, I have almost tripled my income in a few years. It happened when, after twenty years on various benefits from NAV, I finally got a fixed and stable income. I have lived below the poverty line. Now I’m over. In addition, I have a husband to share the expenses with. As long as I stay married, I’m fine with it. Altogether, the family of four still has well below the one and a half million that Finance Minister Slagsvold Vedum in May 2022 thought was a normal annual income with two adults in the family. However, we are not poor anymore. The difference between never having enough money, and actually having it, is huge. With enough money, I sleep better. I no longer worry sleeplessly about bills I know are coming. Even though the electricity is hogwash right now, I know that we manage to pay both for electricity consumption and municipal taxes. It means I can sit back on the sofa and relax completely with the content from one of the streaming services we now subscribe to. It wasn’t like this before. It is true that the bills were always paid on time, but not without us having to cut corners on things that some consider to be a matter of course. Such as Netflix, a subscription to a regional newspaper or a bus pass. Not to mention food. I probably eat dinner on the days when someone in the house is cooking dinner. And we can make both good and nutritious food every single day. I can also eat what I want, and do not have to choose what costs the least at any given time. It’s getting to be a long time since we adults last ate the cheapest kneipp bread and pretended we had forgotten to make enough dinner for ourselves. I no longer get a lump in my stomach from the children growing. I know that we can buy the clothes they need, whether it’s winter shoes, a new jacket or trousers. And I know we always have enough in the account to replace holey gloves or forgotten hats. I myself have finally been able to buy shoes that don’t hurt my feet. It pays not to be chronically broke. When we both got a higher income, we replaced the old petrol car with a newer electric car. We now pay 60 percent less every time we drive through a barrier. In addition, we spend much less money on electricity for the new car than we spent on petrol for the old one. It is perceived as reasonably paradoxical that we can now, with better advice than we have ever had, drive more cheaply than we could before. We can also prioritize insuring the car well, so that it does not mean financial collapse if I should be unfortunate enough to dent my own or someone else’s car. Our children get to choose their leisure activities themselves. Previously, it was just to forget. They had to choose the one with the lowest quota. Sometimes they also had to drop the whole thing. Now that both have activities in the municipal cultural school, the parental payment is over twenty thousand a year. Admittedly, there are two places for each of the children, because they want to develop their interest and do what they like best a little more often. This is money we can fortunately afford to spend, without having to cut corners on either food or clothes for us adults. We participate as a matter of course at all closings and demonstrations. I no longer have to ask my mother for financial assistance. We pay the hundreds of pounds it costs to see the performances our children have with the cultural school out of our own pockets, and without it coming at the expense of a decent everyday life. When friends ask me out on a coffee trip, I usually say yes. There I buy both a roll and a coffee without worry, because I know I can afford it. I have enough money to be social in “most people’s” arena. Admittedly, I can’t go on a girl’s trip to London or pre-Christmas shopping in Budapest. I can rarely prioritize eating a three-course meal at a restaurant, nor can I afford to go to a music festival. But excesses such as a visit to a café and a visit to the cinema with my children are perfectly fine for me to indulge in. The food queues in our country are getting longer and longer, and the rhetoric about the poor is sharpening. Do they have sufficient morals to actually stand up, like that apart from the days they stand in the food queue and thus display their misery for all who want to see? And do they really need to stand there to receive alms at all, or do they accept free food so they can spend money on other things? The questions are not mine, but prominent politicians’ and public opinion’s. I will not attempt any explanation or propose a political solution. But as a former poor person in the welfare state of Norway, I know what it means for the many thousands who are affected to be lifted a couple of notches financially. Actually having enough money to live what many consider to be a completely normal life has given me a completely different joy in life. I can always accept invitations, and the economy does not stand in the way of my desire and need to meet other people. It’s nice not to have to explain that I really don’t have a single ear to devote to anything. It’s getting to be a long time since I last told a white lie about acute venereal disease, because I couldn’t bear the pity the poor economy brought. Not everyone understood that it was real either. I have met several people who sincerely believe that being poor in Norway is about bad choices and plain morals. Of course it can do that. But it could just as easily be bad luck. That life just turned out like that. I have been on both sides of the poverty line. I know, to quote Liv Signe Navarsete, what I’m talking about. My life is much better over.
ttn-69
Finally above the poverty line – Statement
