A huge part of living poor is buying and selling items when you no longer need them. This applies to a lot of things but I have the most experience with cars. For the love of God, research exactly what you’re trying to sell. Learn everything about it, it’s features, age, learn how to fairly and objectively grade its condition, and learn what the actual value of it is (not just what you want to get). If you don’t know exactly what you’re selling, there are so many people put there who will try to get one on you by lying about it. The other day, I had someone tell me that my car wasn’t worth as much as I had it listed for “because it wasn’t one of the manual ones” for a model that was only released in automatic.
get so depressed you get into calisthenics then you can do full body workouts with minimal equipment alone in your room and get shredded for super cheap. given u diet but healthy foods can be cheap in bulk/cans
Stop buying stuff. My wife grew up poor, probably poorer than I did, and she still buys tons of junk. If fucking Amazon is showing up to your house on a weekly basis, STOP, you are buying shit you don’t need.
Don’t buy something because it is on sale. If you don’t want it bad enough to buy it at full price, then you don’t need it. This does not mean ignore sales/discounts, but don’t let fear of missing a sale or discount force you to buy something.
Kohl’s is a fucking scam, stay the fuck away from them. All their shit is price jacked 60-80% so they can advertise 40% off, give you “Kohl’s Cash” and still make a profit. The number of times my partner has told me we have to shop for clothes because our $40 dollars of Kohls cash is expiring, and we walk out with $200 dollars of clothes and another 40 in Kohls Cash is way too damn fucking many times.
Apple is expensive junk. Avoid if you can. Fuck it, Windows/Microsoft is expensive junk too. I’m paying 150 a year for office, and I hardly use it. My partner “needs it” because they can’t write a document or use a spreadsheet in Google’s free office suite. The Surface is fucking terrible.
Just stop buying stuff. Try it for a week, don’t buy anything except groceries, and maybe gas if you drive. You’ll survive.
Black beans and Tapatio will keep you full and is pretty tasty for less than a dollar a meal. Also you can eat it out of the can. That how I lived when I was homeless.
Nope, as per my username I live in a place where infrastructure was developed before the car.
Update: you don’t need to purchase groceries daily. That would be more expensive, you put the money aside for later. The trick is that you don’t spend money that should cover expenses next week, that way you can more closely monitor your spending.
I didn’t mean it as a critique of what you were saying, and certainly not as an insult to you, but rather as a disappointed critique of American city layouts.
I once met some hippie-like people who fed themselves exclusively by dumpster diving. Not sure where they got their stuff, but they had a lot of high-end foods (cheese wheels, expensive meats, not-so-fresh produce, etc). They lived in busses, vans, RVs and stuff like that. They didn’t have jobs; not sure how they got money for things like clothes; odd-jobs I guess.
Less extreme “hacks”: Goodwill, or Ross/Marshalls if you’re feeling fancy. Ebay/Craigslist/Offer-up (need to be careful about getting ripped-off, and Ebay isn’t as cheap as it used to be). Buy, cook, and eat mostly cheap staples (rice, beans, pasta, etc). If eating meat, you can use it sparingly by cooking recipes that comprise mostly of cheap staples. Budget Bytes has decent recipes. Unfortunately, most people’s biggest expense is housing, and there aren’t many “hacks” for that. Maybe, get a work-from-home job and move to Wyoming or something
If you do have debts - try to consolidate them wherever possible. Don’t have more than one credit card adjacent means of payment (store credit cards or similar).
If you find yourself with extra money, try to pay off debts first, or at least make extra payments. Reducing debt repayments over the forward term can have a huge effect.
I like the smell of the softener. Tbh I never even considered that fabric softener… Softened fabric… In my head fabric softener = good smelly conditioner.
One day my SO and I were bickering and I was asked what is the point of fabric softener. I said for it to smell good. And they said it was to soften the fabric. Oops.
Way healthier and cheaper to make your own roast beef. The recipe is simple as it gets.
Leave meat out until 60 degrees to the core. Rub with light virgin olive oil, then heavy on the salt and pepper until it’s coated with it. Bake uncovered 375°F, 20 minutes a pound.
Cover for 20 minutes when you first pull it out so all the juices settle in. Aluminum foil and a bath towel works well for this.
Cool off to room temperature before putting in the fridge.
You will have the best RB for sandwiches you ever had.
Only buy roasts when they are on sale.
I just bought a 10 pound roast for $3.99 pound, saving me $14 a pound over deli roast beef that has added water and nitrates.
I froze half of it already sliced in vacuum sealed bags so I have some when Roast Beef is not on sale.
I save a ton with my garden and chickens. If you got just a little land. I live in a small town but in the middle of it, but I got my yard used to its maximum potential. You would be surprised what you can fit if you do it right. You can go vertical if you need too. Where you save a so much money isn’t that “oh well, now I don’t have to buy a squash! I saved 3 dollars “ but if you let it dictate your meals it’s what you eat and then you spend 0 dollars on supper. I ate a lot of squash and bok Choy and rice and home baked bread this late summer and it was great every meal. Probably saved nearly $20,000 on groceries those two months. Give or take. (Don’t try squash if you don’t have the room. They are delicious but will straight up take over a given area with huge beautiful leaves and huge wonderful yellow flowers all summer)
It’s strange because it… isn’t really a joke, just wrong information? It’s not a high enough value to be obvious hyperbole (“I saved like a million on groceries”), so it looks like a typo that you didn’t realize you made and are now aggressively defending like you meant it as a joke. Not saying that’s the case, but that’s sure what it looks like.
Could you estimate how much it actually might have saved you? I think that’d be very good for the discussion.
Farmer’s markets are very expensive in my area. Like, almost double the price of my local grocery stores. I sometimes wonder if people just buy their goods from the grocery store and sell them at the market.
How much time do you spend looking after your garden? In my area, I would need to water the garden occasionally (if there is not much rain), figure out a pest mitigation solution (I don’t want to eat squashes half eaten by rodents, weed the plant bed, etc.
I know all this because my father took up gardening as a retirement hobby and quit after a few years because he did not want another full time job.
Better yet, get a credit card that earns rewards and treat it like a bill that must be paid each month. I have a Citi double cash card that’s 2% rewards for all purchases that I use to pay for almost everything. I also have a citi custom cash card that we use for food exclusively, which is like 5% rewards for the most spent category. I keep upping the limit of both at every opportunity to try and keep spending below 10% monthly. Combined they generate at least 2k a year and I have a near 800 credit score and it’s no different than using cash if you are responsible. Free money.
Buy expensive shoes. Well, let me rephrase that. Buy GOOD shoes. A good pair of QUALITY shoes will save you money in the long term as they will last a lot longer than buying many pairs of cheap shoes.
I would also argue that many pairs of shoes can also have the same effect. If you can rotate shoes, you’re not wearing out any one pair excessively. I have shoes that are in still good condition but are a discontinued Adidas line that’s not available anymore. Although I do have shoes I still haven’t worn so there’s definitely a point of having too many pairs lol
Realized the 80 dollar slip resistant work shoes I got at Shoe Carnival were like 20 bucks at target. Same shoes, just didn’t have a football player’s name on the tag.
Put em side by side they look identical and I wear them interchangably not even noticing a difference
A boomer I know once bragged about using fabric softeners a second time because they still had some use after the first. I’ve never even considering using the stuff.
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