Relative Poverty: A Personal Record

Hello everyone, the Zürich bell’s are announcing Sunday morning yet again and I am sitting once again in front of an empty page, thinking about my life. Over the years this habit has evolved into one of the most wonderful moments of the week (that is given that I do not have too much other stress), I get to reflect and I get to write.

One of the nice moments of this week was when I was sharing that I am trying to write this blog with a friend. He also likes writing, but our approaches differ, so we were comparing. He likes to educate himself how to write well. I am trying to push my thoughts out of my head and onto the paper, I like to share. He pointed out to me that the most valuable thing about that is that I can look back and understand what I was thinking. Interestingly, looking at the old posts, I do not remember much about what I have written, and I am always quite surprised by my opinions. This week I want to take a snapshot of a really personal topic.

Poverty

You might be thinking, what? Michal has completely lost his mind. He is living in Switzerland, what are you even talking about. But that is exactly what I want to talk about. I moved out of Czechia almost 5 years ago to study at a university in the Netherlands. I remember that my summer savings were quite small, but my parents were happy to help me out, which I am eternally grateful for. I never struggled to buy food, clothes or health products that I needed, so in that sense I never experienced true poverty. But coming from Czechia, which is economically way less powerful than Netherlands, my savings were just worth so much less. I would say I come from a family that is quite well-off, both parents having stable jobs and good health, and neither has bad spending habits. However, I moving into a richer country and the “higher society” of international students has been quite a jump. International student might look poor on the first glance, but most people that can afford to study abroad are backed by parents that are well-off (unless being extremely cracked and on scholarships, but even those usually are not doing bad).

Either way, I do not think it is too difficult to understand that it might be difficult to get around as a student in an richer country than where you come from. To articulate this better, let’s look at the poverty lines for the different countries.

Numbers

I came to Netherlands in 2021. The poverty line for a single person in 2019 there was 1,090 EUR, whereas Czechia reported 12 818 Kč (=474 EUR). That is almost a double! So what barely gets you over the edge in the Netherlands amounts to a good lifestyle in Czechia. I kept meticulous track of my spendings back then, and I can tell you I have been below the poverty line in Netherlands for the whole time of my studies, except for months when I was paying moving in and out and paying deposits, or occasional travel tickets. In 2024, I moved to Switzerland, which at that time reported a poverty line of 2388 CHF (= 2593 EUR). That is ridiculous. That is a lot more than median netto salary in Czechia (in 2024). Once again, my spendings during my first year of studies have been steadily below this. Details I keep for myself, but I think we can conclude I just spent 4 years living under the line of poverty.

Eventually, I started earning some money, and it made me realize all of this. Especially with aging population in Western civilizations, this is not an average experience one has. I can certainly blame myself for not being resourceful enough, there are people who found themselves better jobs or ways of gaining income. The numbers are clear, but to tell the whole story I wanted to write to discuss how poverty influences day-to-day experience.

What does it feel like?

What helped me to get the narrative in my mind straight was this podcast. It talks about a woman who has gone from a leadership position into unemployment, and being able to barely afford to provide for her children. Most importantly, she talks about her feelings. How bad it feels that she cannot pay an activity that all classmates of her children are doing. For me I realized this when I was in Zurich, where suddenly anything but student event started feeling extremely unaccessible. I saw this campaign of Caritas on a tram just like here at the image below.

It says: “Armut ist… wenn das Leben an dir vorbei fährt.” (literally “Poverty is when life is driving past you.” meaning that life is passing by on you, and you cannot take fully part in it.) At that time, I did not have a public tram subscription and I felt the pain of spending whenever I had to buy a ticket. I lived close to uni, so I was just walking every day. My first salary in Switzerland, I have spent most of it on the yearly public transport ticket, and I finally felt like I could take part in all the life that was happening in Zürich, commute to see my friends and do sport activities.

To be fair big part of it was my fear of spending too much. Coming from a not extremely afluent background, spending has not been associated with nice emotions for me. This has been amplified by the extra costs that I had to make.

Why?

So why? Why did I do it? When it is so bad? I do not think I care about my own comfort sufficiently, and I think I was okay throughout. And I would totally do this again. I think pain gives life meaning, in this podcast they talk about how being parent is stressful, but super rewarding, and I would think of my life in the same way. It has not been the most comfortable way that I have chosen to go about my life, but it has been extremely meaningful and rewarding: I literally got to live out my dream. But still, want to keep this note for myself. For future Michal, so that he knows that it was not easy.