Aww thanks Beautiful!! That's totally the purpose of it and I'm glad you can see that! I get worried when people think making money like we do is their god given RIGHT---nah we just got lucky.
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Aww thanks Beautiful!! That's totally the purpose of it and I'm glad you can see that! I get worried when people think making money like we do is their god given RIGHT---nah we just got lucky.
Thank you for that post, beautiful.
There's no need to thank me, but I appreciate it. I really did mean every word of it and for those of you who I may have offended by the other thread, I wasn't trying to because my heart really does go out to people who aren't as fortunate. But before this gets all derailed I'll be quiet.. I will however continue to read and learn from it.
I didn't mention this before, but in light of another thread that I brought it up in...
The worst thing I did because I was broke was continue to live with a family member who had sexually assulted me in the past. I had nowhere else to go, and didn't want to be homeless. Unfortunatly, when that living arrangment came to an end, I discovered homelessness anyway. I should have just went that route to begin with, rather than subject myself to a year of hell with those living conditions.
-I lived on bread for weeks on end because i worked at a bakery (I have a wheat intolerance). My 3 housemates and 3 'hangers on' who never left also lived on bread. I would bring it home in big garbage sacks. I would catch the 4am train to the other side of town to get to said job and then back again to get to midday classes carrying my sack of bread (I was still at high school). When we ran out of bread I would get more bread from the big garbage bin that was delivered to my school every thursday for the 'disadvantaged kids'. When the gut pains from bread got too much I would spend any food money i had on purchasing ritalin from an ADD kid at school so I wasn't hungry anymore.
-Managed to drink copious amounts of beer each evening by inviting people over, we had a rotating roster of those who were most generous.
-I used to go out at night and uproot flowers from other peoples gardens and put them in my backyard to cheer myself up.
-Had no toilet seat for ages because it seemed like an uneccessary expense.
-Friends at school used to bring me some spare meat from their meals the night before to feed my cat, she actually ate pretty well, roast chicken and steak every day.
-Would take my own teabags to cafe's and order hot water.
-Slept with a guy so I had a bed for the evening cos I couldn't afford to get home.
-There was an exchange student staying at my mum's house who had someone come through the window and steal some of her stuff while we were in the lounge when i was visiting. I took advantage of the situation and stole a few hundred dollars from her. Felt incredible guilty but she was fully insured so she got it back. Was scary when the cops came to investigate the original theft though.
-My friend and I would flirt with the bartender of our local pub so we'd get free drinks and a free lift home, we did this at least two nights a week, we were 17.
-Lived in 2 houses where I had to put a lock on the door because I was so afraid of being raped or beaten up by my landlord or housemate. Moved out of one of these houses in the record time of half an hour while the landlord was at the shops. All my furniture, everything.
-Would catch the first train home in the morning from the SC. Soooo dangerous.
-Slept in the foyer of a police station in Cardiff. The cops were really nice and apologised for not having a spare cell because it was more comfortable than the foyer.
-Lived for 12 days on rice and chilli sauce I bought from the 99pence store.
-Had an argument with a big issue seller about who was worse off.
-My friends had me on couch rotation.
-Had to ask my ex-husband if I could sleep on (our) couch in (our) house cos my boyfriend kicked me out again.
Man, I have so many more, it's all kinda funny when I look back at it. It's all life experience. I do tend to get myself in these situations. For a non-confrontational, unassuming, intelligent and friendly person I sure am a fucking drama magnet!
-- Lived off of a mango and some cashews everyday for a couple of months. That sucked.
-- agreed to an OTC to pay for an abortion*. I was flat broke at the time, sleeping on someone's couch and the club was DEAD.
* REQUIRED the abortion because it would've forever linked me to the blackmailing motherfucker (mentioned in the other thread).
In case anyone was curious (and for all those holy number crunchers out there), my situation stemmed from said crazy mother forcing me out of the house at 17. Thankfully I was so obssessed with working that I had 2 g's saved.
I'm from NJ.
I had no car when I moved out, but had one before that required $3-500 a month in repairs until the tranny gave out. That's why my savings were 2 g's and not 5.
I moved in my aunt. Got the Plymouth. Staples, where I was previously FT, only hired me on PT saying they'd give me FT hours. Before I knew it, I was at 16 hours a week.
During that time, she went on a binge and one day I came home to find all my clothes on the lawn and her ranting and raving. I lived in my car for 2 weeks.
Then I came back. She was forced into rehab 2 days later, and I was given a 2 week deadline to find a place to go. I lived those 2 weeks w/o electricity.
Stroke of luck, I was rented to by an xtremely nice portugese family who had turned down 12 previous applications. Continued to work FT and more. Then I moved in with someone I didn't love because the rent was cut into a third.
Then by random chance, I started talking with my bf's ex-aim buddy, on aim. From ABQ. He was a trust fund kid but a bipolar freak with tattoos on his head who had bizzare notions of saving the world and everything else.
19 at this point. He came to NJ, I slept with him, then he begged me to come to Albuquerque. I told him no way in hell could I afford that. He said he would help me out.
I packed everything in the 1991 Toyota Camry and headed out west, where he gave me $1500 in cash inside of the Peace and Justice Center in March 2004.
Jobs were harder to come by here than I expected, being from NJ. I worked 14 hours a day at a restaurant and would make $80.
I sold my car for rent money. Public transport here is minimal.
I rented an apt, that I moved out after 8 months bc I couldn't afford it anymore.
After I got my security deposit back from the landlord, he started flirting with me.....I let him take me out to dinner and had sex with him but that was all I wanted.
After he persisted for 2 months, I became his girlfriend.
He helped me out immensely, I drove his spare car till I got one of my own. I had discounted rent. I had a good hotel job.
Then I became a stripper.
I worked at a grocery store for 7.15 per hour, as a demonstrator, and my manager and I'd "hide" portions of the ingredients I used, or open brand new containers, because whatever wasn't used at the end of the day, I could take home, and she knew I was flat broke.
A half bag of pasta here, a container of egg salad there... a thing of almond butter there....
She also snuck me samples of the natural living section, including glucosamine tablets for my painful bad hands.
I once slept with a coworker who was interested in a one night stand, simply because he was going to drive me home, and otherwise I'd have to walk for an hour in sleeting rain to make it.
Every time a family member gave me the token holiday gift(5$-20$) I'd thank them, talk gaily about something(new dress, shoes, etc.) and then put it towards my rent money.
I went so long without buying new clothes, that all of the mall s tores knew me for my window shopping habits. Go in, pick out items, tally out sales discounts, mentally find the EXACT total, wander around, put all of the items back, and leave because even on clearance I couldn't justify spending hte money.
Two months in a row, I barely made rent, due to my unemployability. I don't own a car, and I started making mental plans over where would be the safest places to sleep and how I would charge my cell phone(which my mom pays for) if I were homeless. My ex boyfriend told me how he maintained a lifetime gym membership so that if he DID end up homeless, he could at least use the showers there, and look clean, and be better able to get a job. I couldn't set money aside for the membership.
Twice, my ex boyfriend had to talk me down from suicidal lows, because of the harassment from my student loan companies.
And yes, I too have ridden the bus on used transfers saved from seats and floors of the stop. Developed a whole BS bag of transfers, sothat if they called me on it, I "couldn't find the right one" in my transfer bag, and all but once, they let me ride anyways because I LOOKED trustworthy, and they could see that surely i MUST have it amid my "daily bus ride" pile....
--Lived in Grand Central Station.
--Learned to make my own tampons.
--Ate 2 - 3 times a week.
--Appreciated bread sammiches.
--Slept with a guy I didn't really like to have a roof over my head and food in my stomach.
--Had to walk 30 minutes to get to a bus, to take 3 buses total to get to work (lost my car due to debt).
Lol that's what I imagine! Talk about vagina dingleberries.:-X
Watched my Dad dole out our meager dinners to my brother and I, then claim he had eaten at work. I knew he was lying. He got pretty gaunt during that time. Hearing his stomach growl made me cry.
Adding my spare change to the jar my Dad kept, which he would role when it got to be enough. He never noticed. It alleviated my guilt.
I stopped eating so much because eating = less money.
Contemplated jumping in front of my school bus, but didn't because I remembered funerals were expensive.
Wore my grandmother's castoff clothes, which I quickly outgrew, but still wore.
Had broken glasses for two years because we could not afford to replace them.
Was thrilled to pieces to get a plastic pocahontas necklace for Christmas. We also got a table-top air hockey. He saved all year for it. It cost him $80 at a second hand store.
Jesus this made me tear up.
Mine are mild in comparison to many things on here, but:
-I've hitchhiked home when I couldn't afford to take a bus or taxi (stupid and dangerous.)
-Lived on ramen noodles, mac and cheese, cheap cereal, and spaghetti
-Gave plasma-I thought I would hate it and would only do it for a short time to get some needed money, but I ended up not minding it and I still do it to this day. It's an easy $55 a week for 2 hours of just sitting there (1 hour each time.)
-Had my electricity shut off because I didn't pay the bill for almost a year (couldn't afford it)
-Have had my phone cut off
-When I was 17, I would steal from the store I worked at at the time because I couldn't afford to buy the items I needed or wanted. Not all the time, but little items here and there, like deodorant, makeup, etc. I would feel so guilty about it after the fact, but I kept on doing it every now and then. :-[
-Paid for items using change
-When in the mall or in stores, would walk around looking at the ground hoping to find money that people may have dropped. Never had luck though.
-Would go into grocery stores and read entire magazines when I couldn't afford to buy them
I also want to give many of you props-you're all so brave. It takes a very strong person to go through some of the stuff that you did. This thread is making me feel very grateful for the things that I have. I may not be well off, but I've always had a roof over my head and enough food (even though it may not have been the best quality food), so I'm thankful for that.
* I will spare the worst details, because I do not want to embarrass myself on this board. My past poverty isn't exactly something that I am proud of, especially since I felt powerless since it was due to factors beyond my control(bad job market, my inability to get hired despite trying real hard, people cheating me, etc).
* Any job paying over $8/hr seemed like "upper class" to me...I'd never been paid more than $8/hr at any legit job in my LIFE by this point...and that's considering that I was a college GRADUATE at this point(age 22).
* Even though I'd completed the necessary credits and was essentially a college "graduate," my college refused to give me my diploma because I owed them backtuition. How pathetic it is that I couldn't afford tuition, despite my $15,000/yr academic scholarship and good grades. Well, it's kinda hard to pay for ANYTHING when nobody supports you and you only make a "grand total" of $5,000/yr GROSS(before taxes) working your butt off at your min wage jobs.
* I went without health insurance for almost 2 yrs. During this time, I got very sick and couldn't see the doctor due to lack of money and not wanting to rack up a huge medical collections debt. (I'd learned my lesson from 2 prior ER visits, which racked up $5500 for a mere black eye and $3500 for a miscarriage that had already happened with no health complications weeks before I actually went to the ER about it).
* I first got kicked out when I was in college(over the summer), so I had to live out of a 2seater car for almost a month until I was able to move into an apartment. I was stuck moving in with a total loser guy who was possessive, controlling, abusive, and a pathological liar to boot...hey, it was that or be homeless. He ended up stealing money from me and leaving me even more financially devastated than I was before, when I was stuck sleeping in my car. He almost ruined my credit too. At the time, I was too penniless to even get up the money for the court filing fees necessary to press charges and sue him. But there's a happy ending though...3 yrs later when I was more financially stable, I successfully sued him in court for the stolen monies.
* While living with said loser, I lived off eggs and the occasional Taco Bell chalupa(back when they were less than $1 and some of the cheapest foods around that contained more than 1 food group)...later that semester, I fell violently ill and it took me a few YEARS to get my immune system back up to speed.
* Admittedly there were times I would search ashtrays for half-smoked cigarettes, and I'd smoke these because I couldn't afford my own.
* I was stranded in the middle of nowhere(I lived in a rural area) and had to drive to the bank to cash my birthday present check, but my car was very close to "empty." I had to dig around for literally PENNIES on the floor of my car until I had about $1-2 collected in pennies. This gave me just enough gas money to last me from the gas station(fortunately only a few miles down the road from me) to the bank, until I could cash the check and use this "birthday present" money to get more gas in my car. The whole time I drove from my place to the gas station and from the gas station to the bank and the next gas station, I was praying to God that I wouldn't run out of gas!
* I couldn't afford the $90/mo bare-minimum coverage car insurance on my 73 Beetle and was essentially left car-less in the middle of a snowy, record-cold winter.
* I had to put my rent on CREDIT CARD for 4 months in a row, with no idea when I'd be able to pay it off.
* I had literally no money to my name, so I couldn't buy myself shampoo when it ran out. For days(weeks) on end, I had to wash my hair with the only tiny piece of soap I could find.
* I had no money and no food left except for a bag of dry egg noodles...no sauce, no cheese, no toppings. Nothing but egg noodles and a cooking pot.
* I couldn't afford the $122/mo payment for my federal student loans. My loans were close to being reported to the credit bureaus as "delinquent," but luckily, I started stripping a mere week before they would have been reported...stripping ended up being my "miracle cure" for my poverty...so I was able to pay the loans up to current by the skin of my teeth at the last possible minute...and avoid having my credit shot to shit even more than it already was.
* My cell phone service got suspended due to nonpayment, so I would have to walk 4 miles uphill to town just to use the payphone. (I lived in a rural middle-of-nowhere town and like I said before, was car-less)
* In said record-cold winter, I would walk literally 4 MILES UPHILL in the snowing blustery cold just to get to "town," so that I could use the payphone, buy food, and feebly try to apply for jobs.
* After I was kicked out and forced to relocate residences, it was still record-cold winter...and I would take 3 busses to my part-time, $5.15/hr lil' hostessing job. I wanted more hours but they refused, because they didn't have the hours to give(probably since the idiots overhired/overstaffed). Did I mention that this was the ONLY job that hired me after I spent hours and days and weeks jobsearching to every single place around? It took me almost THREE HOURS ONE WAY to get there. On nights that I was scheduled to work until after 6:30pm, I had no way home because the only bus that ran up to that little suburb town would stop running after 6:30. So my only way home would be to walk across the shopping plaza to the grocery store that my friend M--k worked at, loiter around there for 5hrs until he got off from work, and guilt trip him into letting me ride with him. Sometimes I even succombed to fake suicide threats to convince him to drop me off on his way home so that I wouldn't be stranded out in the cold all night at that 1-horse town.
* I couldn't afford the $2 bus fare, so I would search the ground of the bus terminal f0r aband0ned bus transfers. I w0uld use these discarded, 0utdated transfers and h0pe that the bus driver didn't n0tice that they weren't valid. I did this by crumpling them up and h0pping 0n a very busy bus, where the bus driver w0uld simply c0llect the paper bus transfers with0ut even l00king at them. (technically that's a "fel0ny" acc0rding t0 Septa, and it even states this 0n the backs 0f transfers and train tickets).
* I was so poor, that people discriminated and falsely judged me because of it. Nobody believed me when I tried to say that I'd been to college, much less had a high SAT score or entered college as a sophomore or had been a math major. They saw me as working a min wage hostess job and based on that, couldn't see me being capable of anything better in life.
This one asshole at a bar falsely accused me of stealing his money after he left his wallet on the bar for most of the night...his logic for accusing me was simply that I was "poor and well-needed the money," even though I had never stolen ANYTHING before in my life. He turned the entire bar, including the bartender, against me. The whole bar nearly fought and brawled the one friend of mine that actually tried to stand up for me. Turns out that the REAL cause of his "lost money," was that he had spent the money himself and was too drunk to remember doing this until later!
Another time, some jerk friends of this one guy I was talking to started accusing me of being a "coke head," simply because I was sniffling my nose and because they knew(from their friend who I'd been talking to) that I was penniless. (Oh yeah, because every poor person is a drug addict deadbeat!) The REAL reason I was rubbing my nose, was because I was car-less and had been walking through the cold January snowstorm all day and all month. Is it really that unreasonable for ANYONE to be sniffling in the cold winter months???
* When I was stranded 0ut in the c0ld and had n0 way t0 get h0me, I pretended t0 be pregnant s0 that s0me guys would help me and give me a ride. In reality my REAL scenario was even WORSE than if I'd only been pregnant, but I didn't want to embarrass myself by telling them what was really up(see what I wrote right above this for more info). Also, I'd been pregnant months earlier and I never once used my pregnancy as an excuse or a way to seek help, and nobody gave me any support or guidance during that time in my life, and I'd seen much better-off girls feign pregnancy before so they could get things from people, so I didn't feel too bad playing the "fake pregnancy" card.
* I learned the "fine art of lying" during my poverty days. I learned the hard way that if I was honest about my situation, people would tend to misjudge me based on my plight, or they would falsely accuse me(as I've already explained). When I went to my college library(by this time, I was an alumni/graduate) to apply for jobs on the Internet, an ex-friend of mine approached me and he said in a condescending voice, "Awww, are you doing okay? Last I saw you, you were worried about all your debt. Are you still struggling with debt?" In reality, my debt/money problems were WORSE THAN EVER. But to save face, I lied to him and pretended that I was better off than I actually was.
* Apparently I looked so unhealthy, fatigued, and impoverished that when I was waiting a long time for my bus at the bus station one cold morning, a good Samaritan guy that was giving food and coffee to the homeless bums approached me and asked me if I would like some. It was bad enough that I was poor and couldn't afford a warm ride, so I felt slighted that he'd mistakened me for a homeless person. So to save face, I told him no thanks and that I was in the middle of balancing my checkbook. Checkbook implies that I have money(I didn't have money, but he didn't need to know this), so he apologized, explained that he thought I was "some other girl" he'd seen wandering around, and left me alone.
* "Moving up in life" meant finally being able to move into a $110/week ghetto one-room apartment in THE poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhood in Philadelphia. The cabinets were flimsy and crooked at best. It came with a bed(since I didn't have my own, that was a blessing), but it felt like sleeping on cardboard. The building was so ghetto, that the door handles didn't work and I actually got trapped inside my own apartment building until I called for the landlord! And would you believe the shocked, severely worried looks on peoples' faces when such a skinny innocent-looking little girl like myself nonchalantly told them that I lived in that part of North Philly...
* Another time that I was stranded with no way home, I lied and told some guys that I was a stripper. In reality, I was some humble min wage hostess at the time. (I wanted to be a stripper, but I had too much stage fright to actually pursue it) I told these guys this because I knew that young guys thought strippers were "hot" and confident and sexy. I told them that I was auditioning at a club down the road and asked them if they would want to escort me home afterwards. My lie worked like a charm! :) ...and a few weeks later, I finally got up the courage to go ahead and actually try stripping. Thank God I did(even though I didn't like it 100%), because it allowed me to finally make a decent wage so that I could financially stabilize myself and move up in life.
Just curious...do anyone listen to the punk band Blood for Blood? Most(if not all) of their songs are about how poor they were, how discriminated they were for being poor, and how better-off people can't relate to them. I find myself relating to a lot of the things in their songs.
This thread got me thinking back as I cleaned my house. One winter my shoes had so many holes in them they weren't really good for anything, and it rained all the time. It was COLD and wet and there were puddles everywhere. I couldn't afford new shoes but my feet were always wet and cold, so I used to steal those plastic bags the newspaper comes in (I would put the paper on the porch under the awning and keep the bag) and wear them over my socks. That helped a lot.
I also got to thinking about all the things I stole over the years... food, sodas, a blanket, tons of toilet paper. I remember I felt really wealthy when I bought my own toilet paper.
Ate dog food, too. It tastes like Dinty Moore beef stew.
I'm glad those years are over and I pray they never come back, but they were good for me.
Oh yeah I forgot...when I first started stripping, I was so dirt-poor and I owed money to almost EVERYONE(credit card companies, my mechanic--yet my car STILL broke down, friends, etc), that I worked 14 hrs/day, 7 days/week. I would work from 12 noon until 2am, take 3-4 late night busses home to my friend's house that I was crashing at, sleep for 3hrs, then get up and take the busses back to work. I did this for the first few months. I had "no life," barely any sleep, malnutrition, and it led to a burn-out and a drastic disdain for my hole-in-the-wall club. Due to my overworking, I became quickly known as the "crazy girl" who works all sorts of crazy hours. But I had too much pride to explain to them the horrible reasons why I had to work so much.
One last thing...and this is God-awful embarrassing but definitely not THE most embarrassing part...I had WARRANTS FOR MY ARREST because I couldn't afford to pay the parking tickets I'd received. Wow if I want to get arrested, it better be for a crime that I had fun committing...not for lacking money to pay a usurious ticket.
I'm not ashamed to say I've done some of those things
This thread reminds me of this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Just to add some lightheartedness :)
^^^ :laughing: Yup!
Was broke? I still am unfortunately. When I was living in IL, with my mom and her husband, he decided to throw all my things on the front lawn and kick me out one day because I could not afford to pay rent at my own house at 18.. so my then b/f let me come live with him and his whole family..I was really lucky for that though because they were sooo nice to me. I lived with them for about 2 years..I feel like I still owe them something. :-\
I couldn't afford rent in chicago so I thought Vegas would be cheaper and I've been struggling ever since. If I had good enough credit I'd just say fuck it and get student loans so I could get a degree and a job that pays decent, can't even do that. Still trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.
Yep :-)
Despite not having much, dealing with a mental illness, drug addiction, health issues blah blah blah, I think I had more of a carefree nature, like 'it can't get much worse so I may as well just have fun'. We used to make up ridiculous plans to raise money, lots of busking.
I went on a camping holiday once and we stayed in the bush because it was cheaper than going home. We lasted ages on mee goreng, fresh blackberries and washing in the stream.
There were some really hard times bouncing about on a cocktail of medications with fuck all else but I always had friends and family about and I'm so glad I didn't succumb to the temptation of the razor because these experiences have helped me be the person I am today and I wouldn't want it any other way.
I was so broke I decided to take my clothes off for a dollar from drunk annoying strange men.
Oh well, it worked out. ;)
For a while I lived in this sh*hole house about 40 other people because the place was dirt cheap. It was crawling with cockroaches but I was going to school and they let me keep my dog there.
I've eaten dumpster food, although I was never the person that had to climb in to get it.
Me and pup were homeless for a while too so we lived in an unfinished basement that belonged to a hooker I hardly knew.
When I moved into a place with my own bedroom I didn't have furniture so I found a mattress on the street and dragged it home. It was too cold to sleep on the floor.
When I was living at the "crackhouse" I had a boyfriend that let me and my dog stay at his house all the time. Eventually I just moved in with him. He never charged me rent and took care of the dog when I was at work and school. I felt really guilty because I didn't love him but I am grateful to this day.
Those years would have been a lot easier if I only only had to take care of myself but it was worth it to keep my dog. I took her because her original owners left her locked up 24/7 in a wire cage. >:( They wouldn't let her be out in the house because she was a puppy and she chewed, and they would only let her go outside for 2 or 3 minutes at a time because then she would dig holes in the backyard. Sorry, but that's what puppies do when they don't have an outlet for their energy!!!
I never could have done it if I didn't dance. The one thing that hurts me is my folks are wealthy enough they easily could have helped me out but wouldn't. My father wanted to help but my mother wouldn't let him because she never liked me, even since I was a baby. I had colic and I cried a lot.
Now I overcompensate by living in an awesome house with a garage, my own washer and dryer, lots of space, a swimming pool, etc. It might not seem that big of a deal to anyone else but it makes me really happy.