Lately, I have been looking back on times when I was very poor. I’ve come a long way, but I try not to forget about my hard times in the past.
I was so poor that…
-I drank Scope to get drunk. That’s what you call the real peppermint schnapps.
-I used a gym as an apartment, sort of. I hung around all day watching TV, sitting on stationary bikes. Slept on a yoga mat in the pilates studio at night. Showered in the morning in the locker room.
-I took a double dose of Adderall to kill my appetite so I wouldn’t eat as much. Great way to save food and money.
-I would go around any device that took change to find dropped coins.
-Walked around banks hopefully to catch money flying in the wind. On occasion, people would lose grip counting money while exiting the bank, on windy days.
-I would go to bible studies, even though I wasn’t religious any more. Snacks were usually served. On lucky days, they ordered pizza or Chinese.
-I would make rounds at grocery stores eating samples of food.
-Hung around high limit areas at casinos. Sometimes generous people would win a lot of money and give away a couple of dollars to anyone near by.
-I would use the Amtrak train as a hotel. I took the earliest train slept on the way to my destination. Showered at a public pool or used a guest pass at community centers, once I got in town. And, on the way home I again would take the earliest train and sleep on the way home.
-I couldn’t afford to buy weapons to defend myself. So, I created homemade weapons. I made a shank. I tied a ice pick to a broken piece of a broomstick handle.
Were you really poor? Are you currently really poor? Share your stories and tips.
See, this is why you’re poor. Crappy economic sense. Scope, at 15% alcohol, costs $3.49 for 16.9 ounces, or $1.40 per ounce of pure ethanol. If you can buy a 750 ml bottle of 80 proof vodka for less than $13.77 you’ll get much more ethanol for the money. I hope this helps.
I used to get paid $125 (take home) every two weeks. My rent at the time was $120 a month. So one paycheck went for that and I had the other paycheck to cover all my other expenses; mainly food, gas, car payments, and car insurance.
The USA really is a third world country, just one with a LOT of wealthy and rich people in it. None of this would happen in the Netherlands. A friend of mine was homeless for a year before she worked up the courage to ask social services for help. In that year, she lived with her kids with her mom in a one bedroom appartment. She had food, stuff, kids had school, she just slept on a matress on the ground.
After she went to social services, they got her a small three bedroom house and enough money to live on, and in return she had to get a three day a week volunteer job during school hours.
Generic boxed macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles. I fed myself on about 30 cents a day.
I remember standing outside a Hardee’s that was advertising 49 cent hamburgers and thinking how much I wished I had 49 cents.
When I met the people who would become my mother and father in law, I was wearing Converse Chuck Taylors with holes worn through the soles, thankfully they saw past my appearance!
Apples to oranges, but it seems your answer is that you don’t have a time when you were really poor, but you had a friend that slept on mattress in a one bedroom apartment, when she was really poor, because in the Netherlands, that is as poor as it gets, whereas in the highly comparable United States, you can actually need to sleep on a train.
Or something like that.
In my poorest state, I ate 500 calories a day, usually tuna out of a can, and was more concerned about asking anyone for help than anything else. Being poor was a social condition in which I withdrew from just about everyone, because people suck when it comes time to do anything other than say, “Oh, it’ll be alright. Everything happens for a reason.”
Also, having no friends and no social life was very cost efficient.
Back in the day I sold my blood and serum. I used a fake name/ID at one location so that I could sell more often than they allowed. After finishing, I’d chat up the staff so that I could drink more juice and eat a few more pastries.
A crack in the pavement? We dreamed of having a crack in the pavement! My family shared space with two other families on the leeward side of a porta-potty and considered ourselves lucky to have it!
As a rich man threads like these remind me of how awesome I am for letting the poor live in my toilets. I love helping people. I make sure to eat lots of corn and peanuts so they can eat healthy.
And they don’t send an employee to sweep up after closing.