The monkey made me do it

How To Be Poor

This is the sad thing. I finally have a full-time job and am able to support myself well for the first time since 2002 (when I quit my other lucrative seasonal art job in a rush of design inspiration and "I can do it!" naivete), and every month something seems to come up that steals away all the excess cash. And some of the non-excess cash. Let's just say that I know EXACTLY how far my account can be in the negative before my debit card starts bouncing like a 2 year old about to get his ice cream.

For March, a couple of evil burglars decided that they wanted to get my crappy 6-year-old single CD playing stereo, and to do it they broke a window (did I mention "evil"? My car is almost laughingly easy to pop open with nothing more than a stick and a sneeze) and used a crowbar to open up most of my dashboard and steal the faceplate off the stereo. Just the faceplate. Evil bastards. I was left with the black boxed remnants of my stereo and a backseat full of glass shards, and they took the added initiative to open my glove box and spread the paperwork all over the car and did something to the door so that it now doesn't open from the inside. They didn't take the title or any of the important stuff, and left me my empty checkbook (it was previously empty, I'm not sure exacty why it was even in my car). So, to sum up, we ended up with:

Me: Broken window, useless stereo, big mess, broken door
Them: Stereo faceplate

EVIL. They didn't even steal well! Though to give them credit, some of the crowbar work was around the steering wheel so they may have been trying to steal the entire car. That would have rocked.

Anyways, since thinking about it all still makes me seethe, I will instead share with the e-world my Incredibly Useful Hints About Living Life As A Poor Person (but not poor enough to qualify for any sort of handouts, damnit).

1. To save gas, coast whenever possible. If there is the slightest decline in the road, shift into Neutral and yell "whee!" at all the other drivers who are staring at you because you're going approximately 5 mph (and slowing) on the highway.

2. To save groceries, buy whatever you can find that will keep well and is on sale. Don't think about meals or what foods you normally eat, since that stuff is never in the cheap seat. Buy the fettucini and spaghetti-o's and nectarines and try not to think about the fact that you'll have to combine them for dinner next week. If you have a little extra, buy Powerbars or Cliff Bars and save them for the leanest times. They make an excellent supplement to the saltine crackers and the conglomerate of healthy things will hold you over for days (as long as you don't mind the taste, which resembles road tar and granola)

3. Forget about buying vitamin supplements or other-than-basic toiletries. PLEASE buy soap, but keep in mind that liquid soap covers all your needs, and looks enough like shampoo to help you keep that "hey, I'm not THAT poor!" happy mindset. Toothpaste is also not optional, unless you hate humanity. Vitamins are for wusses, as long as you keep up the powerbars and don't let yourself get scurvy or anemia from too many cracker-meals.

4. Convince your friends that movies are boring. This isn't as hard as you think, given that many movies legitimately aren't worth the money. If they insist on movies, bring out the DVD collection you scraped together back when you had funds, and make them watch "Caddyshack" for the 12th time. When they finally call uncle, make them go out to a park somewhere and skip stones until the sun sets and their hands cramp and they decide that you're strange and leave. Friends are expensive, it's for the best.

5. Learn to love cooking! Even though your only ingredients are an indescribable mix of boxed goods, pasta, dried fruit, canned peas, and that bag of brown sugar that you're pretty sure has hung around for the last two moves (a.k.a. five years), culinary joy is at hand. If you can't stir-fry it, boil it. If boiling just angers the beast, throw it in a pan and bake it. If baking creates a monster the consistancy of porridge and you're pretty sure you started out with fettucine and nectarine chunks, just sprinkle some brown sugar on top and dig in.

6. These things are now optional: Health insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, car insurance, cell phones with anything but a pay-per-minute plan, new clothes from locations other than Goodwill, dessert, and a social life.

7. These things are never optional: Rent (in Seattle, this is particularly painful), taxes. Sorry. But considering your income, you'll probably be getting taxes back! Unless of course you worked as a contractor for a friend over last summer and didn't take any taxes out of your wages, which means that you'll be paying a hefty chunk of change.

Hello, April. Hello, spaghetti-o's.

posted by LadyJay @ 3:25 PM