Holy crap pets. Both of my dogs passed, but it was about $1,000/yr each for normal stuff, when you add it all up. Food, vet, boarding, toys, beds, etc. you aren’t kidding.
I also know that people will skip better food and the vet, meaning they end up with unhealthy pets too.
All of the foods suck, just use your dog as a food disposal for healthy stuff that is starting to get sketchy. There stomach can handle it, and honestly my dog will pull it out of the trash or compost bin completely wrotten and eat it anyway.
Also don’t buy a dog if you live in an apartment, or don’t have land and refuse to walk, it’s just mean. They are meant to expend a crazy amount of energy, and the blame only falls at your own shoes when they inevitably destroy your apartment or have health issues.
Our PT system (Melbourne Australia) is privately owned and costs $5 each way. Consider not paying and paying a fine if caught - it often works out cheaper. Fines are $200, and I’ve only had my ticket checked maybe 4 times in 6 years. Odds are good!
Learn to cook. Learn how to use fresh and pantry ingredients.
I can easily get by on $75 a week at a bougie produce market in the city (pasture eggs, free range chicken, etc). Or, I could get food delivery twice and spend more than that.
You can fill an entire wardrobe with kmart clothes for $100, it’s cheaper and more practical than even op shops most of the time. Maybe just don’t buy your shoes from there.
Bottle sauces and seasonings can last a long time, and can dramatically improve the diversity and quality of your home cooking. Basic chicken, rice, and greens can be turned into a dozen different dishes depending upon the sauces.
Avoid subscription services like the plague.
There’s always a few exceptions, but name brands are rarely worth it.
I wouldn’t be the best person to guide someone through it, unfortunately. But you can find a list of add-ons here, and there are almost certainly some quality guides by smarter folks than I to get you started.
Just in case you were being serious about the legality concern though, this may not be something you want to do.
Honestly I have stuff from clearance racks at Gap that have lasted 15 years and cost $3 -$5. Thrift stores have gotten expensive here but the mall clearance rack can still sometimes be a great deal. I didn’t buy clothes this year at all, don’t usually since I have enough to rotate. But when I do eventually, I look for something I can like for a long time.
Also smartwool socks, I thought I was throwing away money because they were so expensive, I got them for running because they are so good and help avoid blisters. I had to replace them last year, looked in my Amazon history and saw they were 11 years old! So I saved money really. Socks that lasted over ten years!
Of course these are all middle-income tricks. When I was very poor - you can live in your car but can’t drive your house, keep the car if you have to choose. Ask for help from people you know - you would help them, right? Roommates, so many roommates. Splitting rent 8 ways makes it affordable.
If you have secure housing but not much else - our neighbor used to bring us fruit & veg he dumpster dived because he knew we were struggling. Look for free healthy food like that to supplement what you buy - some community gardens you can harvest from, that’s how ours works, it’s not a grow your own space, everyone grows for everyone. Some farm coops you can trade time & labor for food. We couldn’t get food stamps because Florida but if you are willing to jump through the hoops that can really help get you through too.
Thrift stores out of season. Look for your winter jacket in June, you’ll get the nicer brands, and most thrift stores will do some kind of rotating discount on certain colored tags. Most ‘dry clean only’ items can indeed be machine washed on gentle.
Preserved and frozen meats and fish can be made into fantastic recipes. We do salsa chicken straight from frozen in the instant pot, and I make a killer pasta with tinned sardines and breadcrumbs. The benefit of these is that you can buy them on sale and don’t have to worry about cooking them quickly to avoid spoiling.
Drugstore makeup can be just as good as expensive stuff. Aldi moisturizers are incredible and $4 a pot. I splash out on super expensive shampoo and conditioner, so I don’t have reccs there, but my husband swears by Aldi’s black and white bottle stuff.
And this tip is a little wild, but learning to forage can be immense. There is so much free edible food around you, from flowers and leaves that make delicious tea (passiflora flowers), weeds that can substitute salad greens (lambs quarters, kudzu, and wood sorrel), to absolutely delicious fruit that you couldn’t even buy if you wanted to (pawpaws!). Use the golden rules of having three different ways to identify it (three sources, don’t just use photo ID apps, learn the description, not just the visuals) and also know the sickly lookalikes, and never forage for carrots or parsley.
You can straight up live off oyster mushrooms for like 2-3 months in a cold season. And the mighty little “potato bean” Apios americana, grows in almost every slightly moist disturbed area and is much more nutritious than potatoes. (Louisiana)
Not a hack necessarily, but worth repeating; if you can’t afford to pay it off right away, don’t put purchases on your credit card. Don’t make the same mistakes I have in the past.
That said, if you can afford to pay it off, credit is probably a better choice than debit for most purchases. Build up your credit score and earn those reward points.
A boomer I know once bragged about using fabric softeners a second time because they still had some use after the first. I’ve never even considering using the stuff.
Buy expensive shoes. Well, let me rephrase that. Buy GOOD shoes. A good pair of QUALITY shoes will save you money in the long term as they will last a lot longer than buying many pairs of cheap shoes.
I would also argue that many pairs of shoes can also have the same effect. If you can rotate shoes, you’re not wearing out any one pair excessively. I have shoes that are in still good condition but are a discontinued Adidas line that’s not available anymore. Although I do have shoes I still haven’t worn so there’s definitely a point of having too many pairs lol
Realized the 80 dollar slip resistant work shoes I got at Shoe Carnival were like 20 bucks at target. Same shoes, just didn’t have a football player’s name on the tag.
Put em side by side they look identical and I wear them interchangably not even noticing a difference
Decide on a monthly, weekly, or daily dudget and use cash only.
So back in the day, I had a 10$ daily budget. So every month I would withdrawal 310$, and take 10 every morning. All plastic cards stay at home. If I wanted to buy something for more than 10$, I would have to save up.
This way there are no surprises.
Also, it led me to DIY most of the non tech things in my life.
Better yet, get a credit card that earns rewards and treat it like a bill that must be paid each month. I have a Citi double cash card that’s 2% rewards for all purchases that I use to pay for almost everything. I also have a citi custom cash card that we use for food exclusively, which is like 5% rewards for the most spent category. I keep upping the limit of both at every opportunity to try and keep spending below 10% monthly. Combined they generate at least 2k a year and I have a near 800 credit score and it’s no different than using cash if you are responsible. Free money.
I save a ton with my garden and chickens. If you got just a little land. I live in a small town but in the middle of it, but I got my yard used to its maximum potential. You would be surprised what you can fit if you do it right. You can go vertical if you need too. Where you save a so much money isn’t that “oh well, now I don’t have to buy a squash! I saved 3 dollars “ but if you let it dictate your meals it’s what you eat and then you spend 0 dollars on supper. I ate a lot of squash and bok Choy and rice and home baked bread this late summer and it was great every meal. Probably saved nearly $20,000 on groceries those two months. Give or take. (Don’t try squash if you don’t have the room. They are delicious but will straight up take over a given area with huge beautiful leaves and huge wonderful yellow flowers all summer)
How much time do you spend looking after your garden? In my area, I would need to water the garden occasionally (if there is not much rain), figure out a pest mitigation solution (I don’t want to eat squashes half eaten by rodents, weed the plant bed, etc.
I know all this because my father took up gardening as a retirement hobby and quit after a few years because he did not want another full time job.
It’s strange because it… isn’t really a joke, just wrong information? It’s not a high enough value to be obvious hyperbole (“I saved like a million on groceries”), so it looks like a typo that you didn’t realize you made and are now aggressively defending like you meant it as a joke. Not saying that’s the case, but that’s sure what it looks like.
Could you estimate how much it actually might have saved you? I think that’d be very good for the discussion.
Farmer’s markets are very expensive in my area. Like, almost double the price of my local grocery stores. I sometimes wonder if people just buy their goods from the grocery store and sell them at the market.
Way healthier and cheaper to make your own roast beef. The recipe is simple as it gets.
Leave meat out until 60 degrees to the core. Rub with light virgin olive oil, then heavy on the salt and pepper until it’s coated with it. Bake uncovered 375°F, 20 minutes a pound.
Cover for 20 minutes when you first pull it out so all the juices settle in. Aluminum foil and a bath towel works well for this.
Cool off to room temperature before putting in the fridge.
You will have the best RB for sandwiches you ever had.
Only buy roasts when they are on sale.
I just bought a 10 pound roast for $3.99 pound, saving me $14 a pound over deli roast beef that has added water and nitrates.
I froze half of it already sliced in vacuum sealed bags so I have some when Roast Beef is not on sale.
I like the smell of the softener. Tbh I never even considered that fabric softener… Softened fabric… In my head fabric softener = good smelly conditioner.
One day my SO and I were bickering and I was asked what is the point of fabric softener. I said for it to smell good. And they said it was to soften the fabric. Oops.
I once met some hippie-like people who fed themselves exclusively by dumpster diving. Not sure where they got their stuff, but they had a lot of high-end foods (cheese wheels, expensive meats, not-so-fresh produce, etc). They lived in busses, vans, RVs and stuff like that. They didn’t have jobs; not sure how they got money for things like clothes; odd-jobs I guess.
Less extreme “hacks”: Goodwill, or Ross/Marshalls if you’re feeling fancy. Ebay/Craigslist/Offer-up (need to be careful about getting ripped-off, and Ebay isn’t as cheap as it used to be). Buy, cook, and eat mostly cheap staples (rice, beans, pasta, etc). If eating meat, you can use it sparingly by cooking recipes that comprise mostly of cheap staples. Budget Bytes has decent recipes. Unfortunately, most people’s biggest expense is housing, and there aren’t many “hacks” for that. Maybe, get a work-from-home job and move to Wyoming or something
Nope, as per my username I live in a place where infrastructure was developed before the car.
Update: you don’t need to purchase groceries daily. That would be more expensive, you put the money aside for later. The trick is that you don’t spend money that should cover expenses next week, that way you can more closely monitor your spending.
I didn’t mean it as a critique of what you were saying, and certainly not as an insult to you, but rather as a disappointed critique of American city layouts.
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