Back in West Texas, I used to sell my plasma. Unlike donating blood, you can give plasma twice a week. I did it for beer money but stopped once I realized I was starting to look like a junkie.
Then in Albuquerque I sold my sperm to a sperm bank. Eight deposits were a requirement, IIRC. So there could be some little Siam Sams running around the mountains now. (I guess they’re not so little now though.)
Also in Albuquerque, I signed up for clinical experiments that paid the volunteers. Nothing weird though. I think I got an MRI out of it.
Depends on the source of water, while out sailing we used to jump into various areas of Lake Ontario and the Thousand Island region with a bar of ivory soap [hey, it floats =)] and clean up. We regularly did the same in Silver Lake [Perry New York] and various state and federal parks around the country while on vacation.
Hm, I regularly guinea pig myself to Yale-New Haven Hospital, a research company in Rhodes Island and my favorite was the sound lab the US Navy has at Sub Base New London [I spent a summer getting paid to listen to sounds embedded in pink and white noise while sitting in air conditioned comfort in a tiny closet lined with foam - at close to $20/hour. I have exceptionally good high and low extreme hearing for a non-dog.] Never sold blood or body components though I am registered as a bone marrow donor and have donated my AB negative blood numerous times.
I did once fish for protein and spare money - for $1 for a package of chicken backs, $3 for 24 hours of access to the Lynnhaven fishing pier in Virginia Beach, a very large cooler, a fishing pole and tackle and 3 tidewater traps, a kitchen timer and my bamboo sunning mat once a week I would get off work [nights as a security guard] and spend the day snoozing and fishing off the pier. I would take the first load of fish and crab home and stash it in my fridge, and everything else I caught that day would get hauled over to a local fish market where I would variously trade for shrimp or other fish [like salmon or monkfish] or outright sell. I could get stuff like herbs and seasonings, lemons, limes, breading, hush puppy cornmeal, milk, cream, celery, carrots and onions. [they frequently supplied fish/seafood cooking ingredients to people in boats.] I bought beans of various types [lentils, northern beans, kidney beans and lima beans] barley, rice and flour more or less in bulk as it was cheap, fruits and veggies from the crunch and dent area, and canned goods from the crunch and dent area. I precooked the seafood and froze it and added it to stuff for meals over the rest of the week and kept my sourdough culture alive and baked my own bread. If you have access to a kitchen, stocking up on basic seasonings and cooking ingredients you can actually eat well and cheaply. I think I ended up spending an average of $5 a week on food with a bulk buy of $20 a month for basics for about 10 months. Then I hooked up with a guy in the Navy who was willing to shack up for half the rent and utilities and pay me to cook real food for him so my food budget improved drastically.
After I had graduated from college but was still living in the college town, I used to cruise by the dorm cafeteria and eat breakfast. I had eaten there throughout my senior year, so the workers recognized me and never asked for a pass. I would grab 3-4 of those little individual boxes of cereal and stick them in a backpack I carried to ‘fit in’ and that would be dinner.
That first year was tough. I couldn’t find a roommate and between car maintenance and my apartment, that pretty much sucked up all the income from my first job.
I lived on peanut butter sandwiches for a month. Store brand peanut butter and bread. I don’t even like peanut better that much, and I don’t think I’ve had a peanut butter sandwich ever since.
I never remembered this but my mom told us a sad story about when we were dirt poor when I was very young. I must have been around 2 or 3 and my brother was 1 or so. The only food in the house was some potatoes so she boiled them for dinner. For whatever reason she got distracted, the water boiled completely out of the pot and the potatoes burned. She said that while we ate the burned potatoes she went into the bedroom and cried.
I lived several months on canned Spaghetti O’s and the leftovers from a weekly barbecue hosted by a place I worked at. All the while I was bicycling around 25 miles or more per day just communing between jobs since I couldn’t afford a bus pass.
Pretty pedestrian compared to some of the stuff on here, but during grad school I did most of my laundry by hand in the shower because the laundromat in walking distance was exorbitantly expensive and I didn’t have a car.
I was 17 years old and living on my own but with my boyfriend. We were very poor. One day I was home alone and decided to make some lunch. There was an opened jar of spagetti sauce in the fridge and nothing else. So I boiled some noodles and went to pour the sauce on them when I noticed that the sauce had circles of blue mold on it. Well shit. I was freakin’ hungry and broke. So I carefully scooped off the mold and poured the sauce on the pasta. I lifted the fork to my mouth to take the first bite when the phone rang. Set the fork down and answered the phone - it was my godfather, he was in town right now and would I like him to take me out for lunch? I looked at my mold-infused pasta, turned a few shades of white, and gladly accepted his offer.
This is nothing compared to what you guys did, but one summer work was going really bad (I own my own company) and I wasn’t getting paid regularly. So I took 2 weeks off (meaning I took the days off and took care of business stuff at night) and went to work construction on a new building at my old childhood church. They had all the granola bars, water and Gatorade I could eat for breakfast and snacks, and the church provided lunch. I would stop at McDonald’s for a $1 burger on the way home. I was so tired I just came home and went to bed without being hungry. It also gave me the opportunity to not have to use electricity, water or A/C during the day at home - unlike when I am here working all day - so it was almost like I didn’t exist and didn’t cost myself any money for 2 weeks. It was nice. And I got to help my old church, and learn how to drywall.
I got a job working at a bookstore that had an attached café. I was a very broke college student. When sandwiches and muffins in the café would go past their expiration date, the café manager would put them in a Ziploc bag and drop them in the open window of my car on her way to the dumpster with the rest of the trash.
My brother and sister grew up during the depression, from the mid 1930s onward. My brother remembers eating rutabega soup on many occasions, and meat was a rarity. He said that on one occasion, when our father came home from working at some remote job, she had managed to get hold of a can of Spam, which she studded with cloves and roasted in the oven. He came in the door, took one look at it, and left again.
While a university student, I ate beef liver. Liver and onions, fried in bacon grease. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. For weeks on end. Liver was very cheap. I survived.
In the final term of the final year of my degree in Cardiff, money was running very low for most of us. For some because there wasn’t enough to begin with, and for others financial mismanagement. I went to the bank to ask for an overdraft and the manager laughed in my face, then showed me my bank statement and asked why I’d spent money on an Indian meal when I was broke. I told him it was because I’d fallen in love, but he wasn’t having any of it. I always made my rent, but had nothing to spend afterwards.
However it was a spectacular summer, and despite the lack of cash we wanted to enjoy it. I, and eight or nine friends, decided to go to the beach for the weekend. We hitchhiked down the Welsh coast to the Gower Peninsula (which is a stunning place of cliffs and world-rated surf beaches if you’re ever in the neighbourhood). We arrived in dribs and drabs over the course of a few hours. We had with us a couple of guitars, some water bottles, and a small two-person tent.
It was a beautiful warm day, and as dinner approached we pooled our cash to buy some food from the village shop a couple of miles away.
Between eight of us we had less than £3.
We were able to buy two heads of cauliflower and two cans of tomatoes. Beachcombing, we found an old rusty saucepan and a burned spoon which had been used for cooking heroin. We washed it all in the sea, built a fire, and boiled the cauliflower in seawater. Then we poured the water out and tipped in the cans of tomatoes, then the lot of us sat around the fire, passing the saucepan around and eating it with the heroin spoon. It was delicious. Then we fell asleep under the stars around the fire, with a lucky four or five people crammed into the tent.
Epilogue: in the weeks that followed, I actually started to show symptoms of starvation. I went into a bakery at one point and saw a cream bun that I liked the look of but couldn’t afford, and it caused such a gastric event that I doubled over in pain.
During that rough period between college graduation and finding a reasonably paid job, I made acquaintances with the local Freegan (scavenger) community.
The provided me with abundant wilted vegetables and stale bread. Often they had inside sources at the stores, so it wasn’t as risky as you may think. Sometimes they would raid the garbage bins of the fancy French bakery and we would feast on pies and croissants.
They taught me about a bread factory in Berkeley where you could find dozens and dozens of loafs of unsold bread- enough to feed you for days. I stopped by one day on my way home from work, but the usually open gate was locked. As I sat there pondering the problem, a homeless guy popped out of the dumpster and threw me a few loaves over the fence.
Spent some very broke time in Chicago back in the 80’s, working three part time jobs but it still wasn’t enough to have both a place to live and food. So mostly I went without, and when there was enough leftover I’d buy the cheapest bread in the store and the out of date peanut butter and have that. The little bar on my block did a Tuesday night dinner where you could get a nickle hot dog and a ten cent beer, if I’d managed to either find money (there’s a lot on the ground if you look and aren’t too proud to pick up pennies) or still have a few cents, I’d go in for dinner and a drink.
I’ve sold plasma, but never thought of it as desperation. The place was near a large college campus and most of the clients were university students. In those days they paid $10, but if you gave plasma twice a week, they paid you an extra $10 for a total value of $30 a week. That was a big help to the finances.
I’ve also been down to my last dollar a day before payday and had to feed my dog and myself. I bought a $0.75 can of dog food for the dog and a $0.25 box of mac and cheese for myself.