drained pasta inside a ^cheesegrater.

Sadly, it had less to do with me being broke than with me being too lazy to buy a colander.

I have a pair of pants whose integrated belt was broken and a regular belt wouldn’t stay on them so I stuck a giant shoelace to them that I’d use as a belt. That was definitely poor.

I’ve done so many other poor things, can’t think of them all. I once needed to tie my hair and had no rubber band on me and I found one on the sidewalk and thought oh what the hell.

I ate cereal for dinner. Also taken toilet rolls from university. I still do the latter, the school fees here are bloody expensive/unreasonable. :)

Oh i also shower at uni at times. Unlimited hot water for the win. Im sure im not the only broke student who has figured that out.

I’ve taken shredded office paper from the recycling depot to use as cat litter. Works just fine, but it’s messy, they drag it all over the house. I probably saved $20 a month doing that (three cats, takes about two regular bags of cat litter/month).

I’ve often eaten cereal or toast for supper. Lots of eggs, they’re cheap. I used to eat ramen for a lot of my suppers, with a bit of veggies or an egg in them.

not me, but she told me about a period of time where she didn’t pay the electricity, but her apartment building still had radiators for heat, so she cooked soup and hot chocolate by sitting it on the radiator.

You can cook an egg in a coffee pot apparently, in case you want to broaden your cooking horizons ;)

Poorest thing I have ever done: _{bought black & gold (generic, home brand) pads. They didn’t even come in individual wrapping, you just pulled them out of the main bag, pretty much ready to go. Never ever again.}

I’ve also dragged a used TV cabinet from the side of the road which we use to stack our plates and glasses. Waited til sunset though, ha.

We were both laid off from our jobs at the same time. For 3 week we lived on ground venison. The only groceries I bought were milk, coffee, dry beans, pasta, potatoes, sugar and flour and maybe a few canned vegetables. Our neighbors gave us a 5 gallon can of lard and a huge jar of jalepenos. I learned to make homemade refried beans and homemade tortillas. I also remember we siphoned gas from one of my dad’s tractors into our car just so my husband could drive to his union hall and go to work.

for money to live on…i had a budget of $3 a day for food…i did eat from trash cans a few times…wasnt as bad as it sounds…i survived…its what humans do

I didn’t have enough money to buy shoes for a while when the ones I owned had big holes in their soles. For a few weeks I walked around with an extra pair of socks in case it started to rain….

by this one since it happened within the decade. I reroofed the house. Instead of renting a dumpster I piled all the old shingles in the back of my garage. Each week I took out trash I added a few shovelfuls of shingles. It took about a year before my garage was empty. It was a lot of work to save $200, but money was short back then with diapers and other baby expenses.

...but when I lived on my own as a grad student, I didn’t have a TV or a stereo (kids, a stereo is for listening to music…and this is before computers—yes, I’m old). I listened to the radio for my news and my entertainment. And I walked to my classes. The campus was four miles away, so it took me an hour each way. I used the time to think.

When I got my first job 600 miles away from my family, I took only a few pieces of furniture (like a small dresser, a desk). I didn’t know a soul, so I didn’t have someone to give me their second-hand stuff. I didn’t have a bed. I slept on the floor for a year. I did get an air mattress, but this is before Aerobed. The mattress was more like an inflatable floating raft for the swimming pool.

I found things next to the dumpster of the apartment building that no one wanted, like an ottoman and then a wooden sewing machine cabinet that I could use as a sideboard.

I ate lots of cereal. Good thing I had a really fast metabolism then.

I drove my car for months and months with the bumper held on by duct tape. Classy, really :)

...I’ve had to give plasma for money just to be able to get by.

But in the past a person that I went to college with was using dollar store superglue to fix $2 knock off Keds style sneakers from Walmart when they were starting to fall apart.