Today I'm sharing some of the good shit I learned about how to live in poverty growing up. Which I did. I was the kid in school from that povertous family who qualified for free/reduced lunch but were a little too proud to use it if it wasn't absolutely necessary. My mother came from money (quite a bit of it) and grew up a favored member of society in small town deep South, but married into my dad's true blue collar family and his unambitious career and has been somewhat heartbroken about our poverty ever since. Her family didn't approve of her po' boy choice, and with a combination of other factors, left us no money. So growing up we were poor. And my mother and father did an amazing job of making household things last, getting good quality at better prices, and teaching the payoffs of frugality and fiscal responsibility. Today's gems include:
- Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. I can't tell you how many times I came to my mom as a kid with a lotion bottle saying it was empty, and she did some magic* and tada, I had 7 or 8 applications more. *Practical tips: cutting the top off lotion bottles (or in half) and scooping out all the juice until it's squeaky clean; or always taking complimentary travel size products from hotels, and then actually using them at home until they're entirely gone (see first tip above to maximize lotion usage); or saving ALL leftover foods, no matter what portion size, and eating them. All. (before they went bad, most of the time).
- Second-hand everything you can (not mattresses or car seats). Garage sales, resale shops, craigslist, whatever. Retail prices suck balls. Furniture and clothes last mostly forever and are pumped into the market at a deluging rate. Plus, then when you buy those awesome designer jeans for $35 you're not obligated to feel guilty about your direct purchase contributing to the shitty labor conditions in Bangladesh where people are literally dying, sandblasting your pair of jeans . You're capitalizing on someone else's contribution. Which I think is just good sense. Or, for even better sense, buy a non-designer pair of jeans for $10 and take the other $25 and invest in something worthwhile. Like dinner with your kid. Or planting a tree. Or world peace.
- Make the library your best friend: Libraries nowadays have books, TV shows and movies on blue-rays, DVDs, Educational materials, stuffed animals and story-times and reading nooks for kids, & internet access ALL for free as well as cheap printing rates. The cool libraries, like the one in Salt Lake City, have cafes, comic book shops, and writing centers that help with resumes and shit. The only thing that's missing is a bar. Although, as I type this, it maybe seems the cool libraries aren't as helpful for your budget if you're tempted to impulse buy at cafes and bars.Whatever. Maybe you can panhandle outside for a cup of coffee. Stuart recommends it.
- Compromise on your morals around responsible consumerism wherever you can live with it. Ok, I kid. Mostly. But seriously, when you're poor, you buy shit from WalMart, even when you know they're evil and killing the planet.* *No vouches for the reliability of information in this link. I didn't even read it. I simply thought, "Sure, Wikipedia probably has decently accurate crap on this subject." Mostly because I had friends who admitted that they read Wikipedia rather than text books and successfully graduated from medical school.
Thanks for the lifetime of advice on how to be kind to my pocketbook, mom & dad. It's gotten me this far in life.
Next time: Haggling. It's still a real thing.
All photos are linked to their originating web publication.
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