In 2021, the U.S. poverty rate was 12.8%, but it varied significantly among age groups. For example, among children (people under the age of 18) it was 16.9%, while for those ages 65 and over it stood at 10.3%.
Interested in how these folks get by, Reddit user ReindeerBest8970 made a post on the platform, asking everyone who grew up poor to share what was their go-to money-saving "hack." And their call was answered. As of now, the Redditor's question has received over 900 replies, many of which paint a vivid picture of frugal living.
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The public library is my best poor person hack. It’s cool in the summer, warm in the winter, quiet, there’s fun stuff for the kids to do, clean restrooms and water fountains. When my kids were little we kept a steady supply of arts & crafts, books, and dvds from our local library and it was a god send.
Yes... and that more or less sums up what "socialist Europe" looks like
You can use vinegar, baking soda or dish soap to clean almost everything. You don’t need to spend money on a bunch of specialty cleaning products. Also, don’t throw away torn/stained clothing or towels. These are your new cleaning rags. Now you don’t need paper towels.
Find the nearest food bank and get yourself some food. There's no shame in that. In my experience they never gave you any expired/government type food it was all good quality stuff. I remember I got a whole chicken once. It fed me in my roommate for about a week the rest of the food lasted through the month.
It’s not exactly from “growing up” but when I was going to my community college i knew a guy that just kept taking one class a semester for a renewed student ID so he had access to the gym and common areas and library to keep occupied and sane while trying to sort out the rest of what was going on. The gym helped him stay healthy enough and get his daily shower and the school library kept him mentally occupied.
I used to be homeless. I had a job but couldn’t afford a roof over my head. I used to pay $10 a month for a gym pass just so I could shower before work.
Before you pay to have something repaired, watch YouTube and see if you can fix it yourself. Try to borrow the tools to do the job. Clean the tools before returning them in a timely manner, and it’s more likely they’ll lend them to you again.
Learning how to make food from scratch has saved me so much money. Also budgeting my life away; along with having a detailed list of bills owed. It’s important to know what money is going in and out at all times.
I also think it’s important to treat yourself to something, maybe even once a month, to something you want. Even if you’re drowning. I got so caught up in prioritizing bills and debts for a couple of years that I barely even looked at myself, now I try to treat myself to something every paycheck after my bills are payed.
I always bought the special offer 50c fruit and veg in Aldi. A lot of them freeze well so I'd chop them and freeze them. Fruit went into smoothies or on breakfast cereal, and veg went into soup or other dinners.
If you can't brush your teeth, eat an apple instead to clean your gums and freshen your breath, or use baking soda on a damp rag to gently scrub your gums and teeth.
Remember, just using a toothbrush is about 80% as effective as using toothpaste. Even if you can't afford toothpaste, brush any way.
This is important. Tooth decay can lead to all kinds of other health problems. And avoid unhealthy processed foods.
Sleeping can help you in forgetting that you’re starving.
Potatoes are the cheapest and most underrated food you can buy and do different recipes with. Dinner was basically $0.15 each.
The least expensive filler foods, like pasta, potatoes and rice are horrible for diabetics as these carbs spike blood glucose levels. So you have to learn how to make these foods work on your budget AND your dietary restrictions. I can no longer fill up on these cheap eats because it might make me very sick.
Still poor here. One of my hacks involves groceries. I only have one reusable bag for shopping, not a super big one either. If all the groceries I buy can't fit in this bag, I start putting things back. Usually, the contents of the bag work out to be $50 - $60CDN. It's a nice way of not going to overboard when getting groceries, and this keeps me within my budget.
I get a voucher for 50€ a week for me and my teen to buy groceries. I walk around the store with a list of necessity foods and my cell phone calculator to make sure I don't go over the 50€. I can only use this voucher at one of 2 stores in my area, and one is far more expensive than the other, but the other often doesn't have the correct pricing on the shelves, so sometimes at checkout, I have to remove items from my cart because I can't pay the overage. This is frustrating and embarrassing.
1. Thrift basically everything. You can find really cheap clothes, furniture, kitchenware, and more in good condition for pennies on the dollar. Especially true if you go to a thrift in a a nicer part of town.
Not really hacks, but just what I did. I read somewhere that sweet potatoes were very nutritious. So I would walk to the store and buy a sweet potato every day, then go home and bake it in the oven and eat it, plain. Also also ate tons of rice and fried plantains. Plantains were cheap at local restaurants at the time, like a dollar for a big paper carryout box.
I worked at a place where coworkers would sometimes order food (not me because I was broke). I always offered to clean up and would snag their uneaten food for myself. I even went through the trash to pick out good stuff if they ate while I wasn't around. I know this sounds disgusting but I was so broke and hungry I was wasting away. My pay barely paid my rent so I had nothing left for food. This got me by for a quite a while. This was in New York in the early 90s and there was a recession going on.
Use every gym's free trial.
If you pay for water at home, save yourself a few cents and shower at the gym.
When I was poor and young, I would go to art openings for the snacks and free wine.
Quit wasting $ on restaurant food, buy store brand groceries and learn to cook. Don't buy bottled water, reuse a jug and fill with tap water (might depend where you live).
Buy generic brands! It's the same s**t under a different label.
Not really, though. Generic brand food is made by company specializing in "white label" products, which often also work for the brand names, that is true. But, the quality of the ingredients, the recipes and the process is always specific for the client. Basically, only the machinery and expertise of the operators is shared. For non-food items, be aware that the quality requirements are also very different: for electronics, generic brand manufacturers (the ones you find on Amazon under different names for the same stuff) often use components that may not have passed all the quality checks for non-critical performances, and are sold as "second rate" items for very cheap.
Buy a pair of redwing boots yes, that particular boot company is a bit on the expensive side but you buy one pair. You have boots for a lifetime because if they break and you have the receipt, the redwing boot company repair or replaced them for 100% free or a discounted price as well a little bit of me and coil, and an old T-shirt can go along way to keep in your boots in good condition.
Never skip the discounted meat section of the grocery store, if it looks good & expires tomorrow or the next day you can have a good protein for half the shelf price.
You can add small amounts of higher quality food to make a struggle meal much better for cheap. Like adding a boiled egg, green onion, maybe some pickled veg, and a few tablespoons of cut up leftover meat to a packet of instant noodles. Makes it much more filling for about a buck. The internet is full of struggle meal hacks that make cheap ingredients much better.
Sometimes drinking a lot of water can help with hunger.
Partially true, can take away the hunger pains of an empty stomach but only a short term solution obviously.
For years I rode a bike everywhere. It is cheap and much faster than the bus unless you have to go a long distance. That was before they had bike racks on the buses.
Watch your parents and learn that the only way to thrive is not to have kids or get married and at the same time stop the generational trauma that's been inflicted upon your forefathers all the way down to you.
Eh, getting married is the single most important thing that has contributed to our financial stability. Two incomes beats one.
Be clean. Taking good care of hygiene, hair cuts, teeth.
Wear clean clothes, press your shirts, dress well. Yes your shirt and pants may be second hand, doesn't mean they have to be unkempt. Clean your shoes or boots, wear a belt to make sure pants fit well as possible.
Being clean and dressed will make you have a better self image, and that will project to others opinion of you.
Ramen noodles!
33 cents a pop and they’ll fill you up for 4 hours.
I’m no longer poor, but just enjoyed a helping of them a few minutes ago!
Doing cardio at public parks, trails, outside areas is free. It’s good for your health, your appearance, to kill spare time, to fight against free time, to fight against depression, to at least give the chance to meet new people, to help you fall asleep at a good time at night, and so many smaller things. It was one of the single best habits I was forced to form as a child, teenager, and young 20s. Nothing is worse when you are poor, than feeling trapped inside a tiny, dirty, gross air’ed house and room.
Now a days, I find that I prefer to stay inside my house, my yard. Oh I still go outside and to public places, but I notice I only stay for 1 or 2 hours before I feel the desire to return home. It used to be, I would stay for 4 hours and have no desire to return home (although I would always need to for food and hygiene). Sometimes I would stay entire weekends without coming home, showering and eating at friends houses. Strange how dramatic my life has changed. Even eating out, I feel like I can cook better meals (at least a lot of the time) than restaurants, and absolutely eat in better conditions.
Foil over your windows if you don’t have air conditioning to keep the heat out.
Keep an eye on sales/coupons. A lot of food stuff goes on sale right before expiration which is great for your wallet if you are ok with freezing meats and veg.
When soap runs out, fill the bottle up with water a little bit.
The "working" part of soap are the anionic surfactants. Those are compounds made up of two parts: one that binds with water, the other that repels water and binds with oily stuff. The water-loving part is slightly charged negatively, and it gets activated by the slight positive charge of the oxygen atom in H2O. If you water it down, the surfactants will bind with water and separate, becoming largely ineffective, except if used immediately after.
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