Some of the issues discussed in Nickel and Dimed are poverty and how low wage workers can manage to live a normal lifestyle despite the little incentive that they are given to do so, as represented through their minimal pay. Personally, Ehrenreich knows all too well about the issue of poverty, which is why she hesitated to participate in this experiment because she’s “With those issues in mind, “had enough unchosen encounters with poverty in my lifetime to know it's not a place you would want to visit for touristic purposes….” (11) Poverty has afflicted Ehrenreich so deeply that she almost appears traumatized to return to her past and have those unpleasant memories nostalgically return to her. Furthermore, society is greatly affected by the
