Pretty much every item of clothing I own is from the thrift store or has been second handed in some way. I love being able to find clothes that are more my style without the $70+ price tags and I’m able to maintain a business casual wardrobe required for my office.
Furniture that isn’t beds are all second hand as well, I just steam clean everything upholstered. Buying brand new is a money making sham that only fills our landfills unnecessarily.
Also, learning how to cook has saved us a lot of money of takeout and prepackaged meals. There are so many ways to learn now too.
We also no longer own a vehicle, we walk, bike, or transit everywhere. I do maintain a license so I can rent a car when necessary though. Vehicles nickle and dime you to death when you own the outright or cost a years wages or so to buy, plus gas and insurance prices are insane. It costs me $500 a year to ride the bus.
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.
It requires a bit of financial discipline, but having a credit card that you religiously pay off in full every month can be a really powerful budgeting tool when money is tight. It lets you combine paychecks or borrow from a future week’s budget so you can take advantage of bulk prices or a really good sale price to stock up on things you use a lot of. And once you get stocked up on all your staple items, the money you would have spent on those things gets freed up for other things for weeks, or maybe even months at a time.
Speaking of stocking up on bulk items, my Costco membership has saved me a ton of money since I’ve had it. It might not make the best budgetary sense for everyone, but my membership fee more than pays for itself just with what I save on gasoline. Even when they don’t have the best price on something, often the quality you get for the price still makes a lot of their stuff worth it for me. But even if I don’t find a deal on something it’s always nice to be able to grab a huge rotisserie chicken that I can make meals out of for most of a week for $4.99.
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