house poor
1
7.6
- adjective
:
pobre de casa
- Living in a desirable neighborhood has made them house poor, unable to afford vacations or savings.
Examples
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Put simply, being house poor means your entire net worth (savings) and the vast majority of your cash flow are tied up in your house, rendering you illiquid and unable to respond to adverse life scenarios.
Blog text (29) -
Here we discuss a potential pitfall of home ownership: being house poor.
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We're what you call house poor.
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Let's take a harder look at why so many people end up house poor, and what it really means.
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All I want is to not be house-poor anymore, and feel like I can take time to enjoy some of my success.
Blog text (8) -
We would need to make major sacrifices and basically be house poor, but that was fine with me if it meant I could still work and stay home with my child.
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There is no shame in shortening that list and being somewhat practical so that you don't end up being house poor.
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There's a fine line here between shopping at Goodwill for vintage digs and shopping at Goodwill because you are completely house poor.
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Look Jimbo, I'm house-poor.
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Many young families become house poor after buying their first home because they stretch their budget too thin.
How Burdened
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase uses fully known constituents—'house' and 'poor'—and does signal financial hardship related to housing, so there is a clear lexical link. However, the specific causal sense ('poor because so much income is spent on housing' rather than 'a poor house' or low-quality housing) is not fully predictable for a B1 learner without exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The adjective house poor likely comes from the simple picture of a house that uses up so much money the owner is left poor. So, it now means 'having most of your money tied up in your home and little left for other things'.