Ecuador, 1980’s
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I was there from 1992-94 as a Mormon missionary. All up and down the coast around Guayaquil, and inland. We usually got along great with the local Peace Corps folks. We’d wave in the street, they’d hook us up with the occasional service project to help us get our service hours, we’d play basketball on the missionaries’ day off (Monday). Privately, we thought of them as a bunch of licentious hippie college students, and they probably thought of us as boring nineteen-year olds with sticks up our collective asses*, but we were friendly.
Our monthly stipend being evidently slightly higher than theirs (I believe it was about $125/month not counting rent when I got there), I remember standing the nicer ones a meal or two, in the way of “hey guys, we just got two roasted chickens, come hang out!”
- in hindsight, I think I would rather be down there as a Peace Corps volunteer if I had it over again…
You were the inspiration for The Village People? 
When I first moved to the Boston area I was not quite that broke but I wasn’t that far from it. I got a job through a temp agency that same day but it was in the financial district, I had to wear a suit and it only paid $8 an hour (in 1997). I didn’t have any suits so I had to spend all my money at thrift stores piecing something together with the few dollars I had left. It was actually a very nice job clearing stock trades in a prestigious trust management law firm but I could not let them know how broke I really was. Every single dollar counted.
I had to commute an hour by commuter rail but that cost me my first hour’s pay if I did it the right way. Most people on the train had monthly passes and you only had to pay once on board if the conductor asked for it while you were already in route so I quickly learned to pretend to sleep when they came around to check passes and collect money. They just skipped over me about 75% of the time so that trip was free. The final mile to work would have been by subway but that cost another 80 cents that I could use for something else so I just walked it even in the rain. Lunch was prohibitively expensive except for one crappy Chinese place that sold a big container of fried rice with an appetizer like a spare rib plopped on top for $2. I got that every day for a few months and split it for both lunch and dinner.
I did that for 6 months until I got my first real job. Even though it didn’t pay a ton for the hours and demands, it seemed like all the money in the world at the time. I have made it a top life priority to never be anywhere close to that broke again and my financial habits and attitudes reflect it.
Don’t want to hijack the thread, but I spent most of my time in the El Triunfo, 26, Guayaquil area. I’m sure you remember the nicknames the locals had for the Mormons…
Remember the sign some folks would put up on the exterior of their homes ?
“Aqui somos Catolicos y no …”
Never really interacted with the Mormons, except from the occasional chance encounter at the mercado. I think us Peace Corps types were a little too rowdy and integrated in the local culture for the average staid Mormon. But I could be wrong.
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Are you sure? Consider they make thousands on the plasma you donate.
I sold plasma for a summer when I was in grad school. It wasn’t a bad gig, really.
I participated in an alcohol study once. I threw up, so they sent me home. iPhone that I had been drunk before in my life, and it turns out I hadn’t. Two stadium cups of vodka and diet Sprite will do the trick, though. I still got my $50.
And in one of the weirder things I’ve done, I sold a chunk of skin for research. They took a piece a little larger than a pencil eraser from my arm; I took their $100.
Ate nothing but white rice for an entire week. Yuck.
I stole required textbooks from the college bookstore. Over the years since, our contributions to the same college have made up for their losses a thousand times over.
When I had a young family and money was very tight, if I was sent on a business trip, being allowed $25 per day for food, no receipts required, I would eat at McDonalds or BK to clear $15 a day. When I first started, the mileage allowance for using you personal car was 2 cents per mile! To save money, the college students upstairs (3 of them plus two of us) would make two 25 cent boxes of Jeno’s pizza (crust and sauce ingredients, some dry cheese to sprinkle on, too) and split the resulting 12 inchers 5 ways, washing down with a couple of cokes also split 5 ways.
When money for toiletries was really tight, I took 7-11 sugar packets to use as a face scrub. They work well.
From about age 11 to 16 I became proficient at shoplifting with my mother. We stole food and clothing. I started working at 16 and am grateful I have been able to support myself since then.
Shewww, I was thinking of where you could have gone with that. 
I was thinking NEW! sure fired Shark Tank idea myself
I sold my plasma for a couple years for $30 a week. It didn’t feel desperate; it felt like easy money. Sit there and study for a half hour and get paid for it.
I saved the plastic bags that bread came in to use instead of buying plastic sandwich bags. Actually, I still save them, but I use them as poop bags when walking the dog.
I was a cheapskate when I was poor; I am a cheapskate now that I am rich. Didn’t bother me then, doesn’t bother me now.
Regards,
Shodan
I wouldn’t call myself rich even now, but I still have some carryover habits from my broke days. For one, even now, 75% of my work shirts come from thrift stores. Men’s dress shirts don’t exactly get beat up, so it isn’t obvious, especially once the shirt on question is pressed. (I don’t even try to get dress pants from thrift stores; men don’t get rid of pants until there’s some kind of catastrophic failure.)
It pains me greatly to buy a new shirt off the rack, even on sale. Buying a shirt from Kohl’s for $22, when I can find a formerly $90 Nordstrom shirt at Savers for $8, is endlessly galling.
Craziest thing I did for money was go to college.
I lived with a mate who was a cop for a couple of years (he later was best man at my wedding). In Australia, cops get half-price McDonalds (or even bigger discounts). My mate was not averse to flashing his badge and getting unofficial gratuities, and he did it to the max. I had a very short haircut, and would just follow him in anywhere, and most people would think I was a cop too (yes, the badge worked when you were off duty, and in street clothes).
At least twice (maybe more), when I had very little money, I may have gone on my own to one or two of those places that offered cops a discount, knew me and my mate, and passed the same discount on to me, under the assumption I was a cop.
What word were you planning to use other than “iPhone”?
I thought, I said, I claimed, I stated…etc. Any one will do.
Heh, that reminds me of what we used to do. A friend had a band. His contract for gigs included free drinks for the band and the sound guy. I was the sound guy. We did this weekly for a few years.
He did a very cool private party at a home in Pittsburgh’s Mt Washington/West End one Fourth of July. I had plenty to eat and drink and had the best possible view of the fireworks. It was an awesome party. As things were winding down, the home owner approached me and pointed out that being a sound guy was very easy work (I did nothing).
I felt bad, explained, and apologized. I got out my wallet and offered money toward what I’d consumed. He laughed and told me he would have invited me if only we’d known each other.
They were good times.
I hear ya. It’s been over 15 years since I was “poor” and to this day I forget to drink a glass of milk at home. Milk was expensive and I used to ration it for cereal and tea. I keep forgetting that if I drink up the milk I can buy more.
One time when I was 18 or 19 years old and living with my then-boyfriend I couldn’t afford the hydro bill. (I say “I” because I was the only one working, he preferred to sit around and smoke dope with his friends all day. Life lesson learned.) Anyway, I remembered that once when I was younger my mom’s church gave her money when she was broke. So I walked over to the church and asked to “talk to someone.” I broke down in tears in the person’s office and explained how hard I worked and still couldn’t pay the bills. She listened and prayed for me, and a few days later someone came to my door with a cheque for $50 which I used to pay the hydro. I always felt terrible about that, like I had scammed that church, because I didn’t belong to it, I had only attended a few times with my mom when I was younger. Years later after I had all my shit together I went back to that church and dropped of $50 with a note explaining how they helped me before and I felt I should pay them back.