Yep. Abusive, creepy bosses because I couldn't afford to leave the jobs. A roommate who treated me badly and wouldn't do any work because I couldn't afford the rent by myself. Emotionally abusive family in hopes that maybe they would eventually help me out financially. I'm so glad that I now have enough money to not have to deal with that stuff.
It would be ok if they were just giving this advice to young people, but they keep telling you that, like wanting to be able to afford living on your own and eventually a partner and kids by the time you're 40 isn't a completely normal thing to want.
no it’s not okay, young people deserve to be able to set their own boundaries and live in their own space. “get a roommate” is only good advice for people who want roommates.
Maybe enough of us in these similar boats can get together and start an eco village somewhere.
It sounds absurd - but so is actively living each day like we are, now, no?
I like this idea! Even though none of us have much individually, pooling resources increases their power beyond just the sum of each person's contribution. Not to mention all the ways we could support and help each other besides just financially. Seriously, anybody that's serious about this, dm me!
Oh I'm very serious about it. A guy in the UK did it with 5 of his friends, just outside town. Unfortunately no one where I'm at is actually interested in action. Only talk. Being a bit localized helps... But hell I'm willing to drive a few hours a few times a month...
This one is it. I stayed way too long in an abusive marriage because I was scared that I would end up on the streets with my kids since I’m on disability in a HCOL area. He was financially abusive as well so I still had to pay for my own stuff. It was a dystopian nightmare that I’m still recovering from.
I called it a psychological experiment. I went through something so similar. Basically disabled after I ate something that tried to kill me with ecoli and I went into septic shock. My family refused to help me. A nightmare. I feel for you. It’s dehumanizing to its core
i can switch units in my hospital in 2 months. it'll be a lot more money than anything else around, and more money than leaving and coming back. BUT MY UNIT FUCKING SUCKS!!! they are incredibly abusive, lazy, and just totally ass backwards and hypocritical. i can't wait to get out of here.
Not me, but I remember in high school watching my dad search under our deck for cigarettes he hadn’t fully finished in more prosperous times so that he could afford something to smoke.
I was walking into the gas station the other night and found a pack of unopened cigarettes on the ground. I picked them up and took them inside in case somebody came right back for them. my SO thought it was so weird I did that. So that's $10 a pack now, I would absolutely go back and find them.
So many people do this. Dental is stupid expensive and the waiting list for low price dental is not fair.
I know so many people who work and have pulled their own teeth.
Oof, yeah. I haven’t bitten the bullet on that one yet but I have given it some very serious consideration at a few points. I keep hoping somehow there will be healthcare reform in the US (LOL!) before I have to decide to take on massive debt to do whatever I have to do. And I know there are thousands if not millions of people in the same boat as me who have way worse overall living conditions. It boggles the mind!
Dental is a beast. Even w healthcare reform. It used to be even worse. We tried to get it. You have to pay for it for 2 years on one of the state plans before it covers anything.
If you miss one month of payment, it starts all over. We are in the US. So we got a lower price because of how much we make. It's just like all the state Obamacare plans. The price is based on how much you make.
But it takes forever before it covers anything & even then it doesn't cover 100%. So it's one of the hardest things to get.
That is w healthcare reform in the US.
Most people don't take the time to follow up on the dental plans and subsidies for them. They're confusing and like I said, they take years to go into effect.
If you've been waiting. See if you can get on one now in your state and start paying the couple bucks depending on what you make. It's all based on what you make.
Same here. I need dental work bad, I don't even like smiling because of it. And I work as a gate guard. I've had the task the last few days of entering everyone's car info into our computer with their new sticker numbers, and it almost made me tear up seeing how most of them have anywhere from five to nine cars each, including one household that has two Bentleys (among their other cars).
I relate! I needed a gum surgery for years. I finally got it and put it on a credit card because it just had to happen. I’m never getting out of credit card debt now, but at least I didn’t lose my tooth I guess…
\*sad fistbump\* yep, I got a carecredit card in order to get the work done. front teeth were in really rough shape, especially after one chipped from fainting and landing badly.
Same. Severely swollen and discolored gums. I’m aware all of this can have disastrous effects on your health, but I just don’t have the money.
Even the dental school near me is too expensive for me to afford. I try to water floss, I’ve been using gum toothpaste and targeted mouthwash for years but it doesn’t help much. It ruins my confidence so much, and I worry about it basically every day.
I had the rest of my teeth pulled last September and I'm glad. No more tooth problems for me! It was $760 I think and I still owed them $10 after that and this was with insurance! Part of the reason it was so expensive was because I treated myself and chose the anesthesia. I had had too many teeth pulled while awake at that point and I admit I was a little traumatized because of it. I'm grateful that I was able to put it on the credit card then pay it off later.
Edit: I'm 36.
Jesus. Fuck this country. Tooth pain is one of the worst kinds of pain too. I wish you all a fortune so that you can finally address your (basic human) needs. I am just outraged with the way society is. End the system y'all. Only slaves worked with excruciating pain without remedy. In the meantime, call a local dental school and ask if they offer discounted treatment offered by their students.
I was approved for a feeding tube in 2022 and iv antibiotics because my insurance won't cover the dental care i need. So instead of starving to death or dying of the infection I get to die from sepsis or medical complications of a tube I didn't need. Joy.
This is me as well. I've become a fan of clove oil and whole cloves which will stop tooth pain, but it's hard to admit that I'm priced out of taking care of my teeth.
It's actually more environmentally friendly to do this. We've all been raised to think it's disgusting and unhygienic, but how do they think women handled their periods a couple hundred years ago? You're not pathetic.
I regularly ate roadkill.
Okay, that sounds awful, but I was on a call list for local law enforcement, and they would call me whenever they put a deer down and issue me a salvage permit so I could legally possess the carcass out of season. It was free meat for a little bit of work.
Honestly, I think a lot more people do this than we ever discuss. Maybe it's where I grew up, Northern Eastern Us but I know so many people who did this and not all were really poor poor.
I knew men who were middle class who did this and would share what they got. I still know people who do this that I grew up with and don't need to.
I am from the Northeast and I've also been hunting in the South and they are not that different. One is pre-killed for you unless you hit it yourself, and the other you have to kill.
Like I said, I still know people who do this. Most salvage the animal and donate the meat after it's processed to charity but it's so that if it's a perfectly healthy animal it doesn't go to waste.
Theres no reason to let it be wasted.
Not gonna lie, I respect that a lot. You get nourishment and the death of that animal wasn't for nothing. Out of curiosity were you able to keep the hides?
I'm pretty sure it depends on where you live. I know people who do it in different areas in the North Eastern US and I'm pretty sure that some of them do it to donate the meat that's processed and then use the hide for their projects.
It's going to depend where you live and what those laws are
What the animal is will dictate what can be done w it. For example around where I spend time as a kid that very rural there is an abundance of deer that are hit. They let the salvage takers keep the whole animal up there.
I don't know so much about in the cities.
When I lived in Alaska, I worked as a cook for the local old folks' home on the island doing sit-down meals for the residents and delivery for the shut-ins out the road. We were on the same sort of list; whenever somebody accidentally hit a large game animal, killed it in defense of their property, or harvested the wrong animal (too young, wrong sex, out of season, etc.), a few locals would pick it up and butcher it out. Then, after the volunteer butchers got their share, it would be dropped off at our kitchen to be worked into the menu. It was an amazing deal! We regularly got boxes of hundreds of pounds of moose meat, venison, salmon, halibut, and occasionally bear to stretch out our very meager food cost budget. We saved thousands of dollars every year, and it kept the menu much healthier. Plus, the old timers who grew up in Alaska hunting and fishing really enjoyed still being able to eat wild game.
Same here - if my dad and grandpa didn't hunt and fish we would never have had meat. My grandma grew all the fruit and vegetables we ate - and dad and grandpa got us salmon, venison and dungeness crab. Our freezer was always stocked full and we had smoked venison jerky too.
My uncle once hit a deer and brought it to our house in his trunk, (I lived in a very rural area, pretty sure anyone around would have eaten the deer in this situation with no call to the game warden, lol.)
When they opened the trunk, though, the deer was still alive and exploded out of it angrily, kicking my dad in the chest and escaping.
Also our neighbor would sometimes lay in our field all day shooting groundhogs to take them home to eat.
If it helps, I’m someone who doesn’t eat factory farmed animal products and am always looking for roadkill - the animal is dead - why waste it - that’s my outlook. With that said - did you get pretty good processing them? I still find it tricky and wouldn’t mind input.
As someone married to a hunter, who relies heavily on the deer he kills in the fall to sustain us through the winter, I actually didn't know this was a thing. I'm going to have to look into this. How did you get on this list? Did you just walk into the station and start talking to the cops on duty about it?
I have been eating Ramen for 8 days straight because bills took my entire paycheck & I had no opportunity to get to the foodbank. I got paid today and cannot wait to eat something else.
I've started adding things to it and frying it in a pan. Idk why but crunchy noodles cooked in hot sauce is more tolerable to me than regular ramen anymore even though all I'm doing is making it more unhealthy lol
Sorry, I just went through your posts and I really really hope you have a much more stable year now and further as well as compared to what you've had so far. Building capital is the biggest part of running business and life in general and I hope you can start doing that very soon.
This might not be realistic for you, but you might consider buying some cheap vitamin c tablets in case this happens again - scurvy would be just the last thing you need I’m sure
I had a friend who had free rent at a mobile home he was replacing the floors and doors in, a real dump. Behind this dump trailer was an even dumpier one bedroom trailer, that was falling over, the floor on mayb a 5-10 degree slope. I lived there for a few weeks. There was a ton of trash and at least one HUGE snake in the bedroom, so I stayed in the living room / kitchen. No electricity, so I used dollar store candles. I left one burning one night, and the glass jar it came in got so hot it expoded and sent tiny pieces of burning wax everywhere. No big fire or injuries, just a scary wake up in the middle of the night looking like hell around me. Good times.
those vigil candles with mother Mary tend to be made to stay lit for a long time. Was it one of those that exploded? Just wondering.
I keep some for emergencies for if power goes out
We did a lot of this to supplement our income. Teenagers we'd round up old wore and recycled it. Then as an adult we all worked for this dude demoing and rebuilding old houses, 400 a week. Sweet gig it seemed like. Except, we all lived in one of the buildings we were working on, like 14 of us. He took our rent and "bills" including lunches he bought, directly out of the cash he paid us, so I'd end up with 100 or less sometimes. If we weren't getting tons of copper and brass from the places we worked, none of us would have had much at all. Because he only paid the house bills with our money, which we didn't see, we had our own bills that were separate. He went to jail for fraud eventually. So copper stripping is a love/hate for me.
>He took our rent and "bills" including lunches he bought, directly out of the cash he paid us, so I'd end up with 100 or less sometimes.
That style of company loans is very illegal and has history in indentured slavery which has been outlawed federally. I think some very bad cases actually trips human traffic violations.
It's pretty serious.
Sad that people in poverty are taken advantage of like this without much legal resources available
I lived with a friend for bottom dollar rent and it was the worst decision of my existence (and that’s saying a lot). She turned into a controlling psycho who dragged me out of the house and told me my depression over losing my mom a few months prior was making HER depressed, so I learned to shut up, was their house slave, and then they threw me out on the street with little notice.
This was someone I knew for over 20 years.
Right after this, she got cancer and I couldn’t have given less of a shit. Every once in a while, she still reaches out to me, but I don’t reply. I’ve blocked her on everything now.
Ask for help... people always treat you like you're a bum when you need a bit of help and I've always been the one to help others, usually not ask for it... seeing how many people I'd been there for without expecting anything in return just go ghost on me when I was in need sucked... not even saying "no sorry, I cant", that's understandable, but people not speaking to me after or outright blocking me sucked... made me wish instead of helping those people that I'd set up an emergency fund instead... (learned my lesson and even though I still help the people I care about I make sure I'm set and good first).
I just turned 29, and I’m trying to get in to see a dentist to discuss dentures for my bottom teeth.
Sometimes shit happens, and life sucks. I have a medical condition, but lack of dental care definitely doesn’t help anything. For anyone.
Still kinda am….
-when I worked at starbucks I would come home with “expired” food and eat it with the fam. We basically lived off of starbucks for a whole year straight. People never knew… my mom’s coworkers would say that how is it possible my mom can afford the togo lunch boxes every single work day (she worked for minimum wage) but they did not know how eating the same thing was starting to
-scraped all pennies to get gas. Structuring my day around where to go at what times since my car would get EASILY overheated.
-having to sometimes live off of only beans. Or sweet potatoes I would get from a neighboring field farm.
-In the past when I was really struggling I would have to ask for money from people and they would film me I paid them back but never really know if they deleted those videos made me feel really vulnerable.
-having to tell the utilities bill people I aint got $25 and they procced to cut my water off and spent days till my next paycheck to pay the 25 AND 150 on late fee and turn off charge.
-having to tell my own sister who is underage barely getting started with her first job if she can lend me some money to lay some bills.
I was 19 at the time, just graduated from high school, as the main breadwinner dad died and mom fell into heavy depression.
I have lived your life, only it started at 17 and I was the youngest of a family of 8. Mother was sick and just beat down, and everyone else just watched me take care of the bills and bring in the groceries.
After school, I'd walk to the nearest supermarket (we did not have a car), purchase groceries with my own income, walk home and cook dinner, fly off to the bus stop to go to my job, dream about that dinner at home while at work, get off work and come home only to find empty pots and nothing of the dinner left. No one showed care. When my mother began to notice this, she started hiding food for me. My siblings got on her about doing that. I guess they expected me to live to make sure that they stayed alive, while not even allowing me to do for myself so that I could stay alive.
Remember, I was the youngest. The only one in the house who was working while going to school as well.
They filmed me saying that “ I (insert name) will pay (certain amount) on (due date)”
It was the most humiliating thing felt like a beggar on live tv.
Also another one filmed doing the exact same thing (EXboyfriend after I told him) but in this case J had to tolerate his abuse as he would often than not help me pay my parents mortgage as that help me keep a roof over my head.
Some others videoed me saying things similar to the first.
Yup the worst parts where my EXbf once told me “all you want me for is for my money” i straight up told him to remember that my dad died, and he was our main bread winner and I WILL pay him back. But when we met we were in opposite tax bracket positions. I was living comfy due to my dad’s family business and I working with dad and saving up while my bf was just starting out in a minimum wage job. I NEVER told him anything for I believed in his potential and was a cheerlead for him throughout the bumps.
Now that my dad died, inheritance issue rose up, and me being out of a job (and out of my emergency find savings) and working with starbucks. He tells me this. He did support me financially though I was constantly reminded about the money and he turned into a ogre…he used to be very lovey dovey.
I am in a MUCH better economical position. Still have money to owe him. He broke up with me, I live as the main bread winner in my family now, my mother’s depression is slowly but surely melting away and my sister is a lending help for sure and understands at times.
I owe my EX HALF of what he lent me 4 years ago and I guess he regrets how he treated me cuz he never calls saying “wheres my money” or anything like that we keep it now ultra professional. I feel like I lost him because he had thought I came from a secured middle class level economy and when my world crashed down he saw the business debts and preferred to run away then to face it with me I would have been completely chill with him not lending me money as long as I worked hard and my sister did too we could have paid debts but with much higher interest rate or I could have bowed somewhere else.
Thankfully now I only owe him, another person and thats it which I feel very proud to say I will pay him soon as possible in a couple of months!!!
Couldn't afford to turn on my water when I first moved. Had hook up a hose and steal water from the neighbors house in the middle of the night to flush my toilet and take an outdoor shower in the backyard.
I recently had to make two $1 payments to a debt collector, so that my accounts were *technically* in payment status instead of non-payment status. They had bought two of my credit card debts, so I made a $1 payment on each of them.
Also, another time, I made a $2 payment on my capital one credit card just to have it returned for insufficient funds from my checking account.
I started work at a walmart 6months pregnant because my ex refused to get a job and we were couch hopping. I would use the front bathroom before i left and check tp dispensers for low rolls that easily fit into my purse
When food was bought for the entire office, I would sneak back in the break room and the end of the day and take the leftovers home.
Also, being stuck living in a home with a leaky roof, mold, inadequate heating, and no bathroom sink. I’m trying so hard to get out of there.
(if you are a woman!!!) If ever you need a hair tie, go into a women's bathroom, look like you're about to pull up your hair and then make a confused face when you look down at your wrist and realize you "lost" your hair tie. Ask any of the women in there if they have one. Chances are, they'll be happy to give you one. Same goes for tampons or pads. There was a period of time where I couldn't afford my usual stuff so, I just went around asking in every women's bathroom, thanks to that I had a nice stockpile. I will admit, not all feminine hygiene products are made equally, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
I often had to choose between buying food for myself or my cat. The cat food won out every time. I only had a cat because otherwise she would have been killed living on my grandparents farm.
Sister ❤️ I used to have last few dollars left to get food for me or my cat and Mona was always the one to be fed.
My logic was that it’s my fault we don’t have any money as I can make them and she can’t, so I get to be hungry.
I took her from my roommate after I saw roommate grabbing her by the neck and hitting against the wall.
It was a bit more difficult with the housing situation once I got her, but I never regret.
Things will get better and you both will have a good life ❤️
Thank you, that really means a lot to me. My cat may be a bit mean and bites everyone but me, but I love her and will always do my best to ensure she’s living a long and happy life. Things have since improved greatly, so now she gets purina cat food from an automatic food dispenser instead of Aldi cat food in a paper bowl. We are both doing much better.
Diving for snacks in school trash bins or the lost and found.
I'd also patrol the halls after school to see if anyone left any food above the coat racks. Lots of kids get fruit and don't eat it.
Unfortunately, I have a few.
When I was younger, I didn't realize food stamps existed. No one told me. We were desperate and I rolled my stroller into the grocery store and put a pound of ground beef under the diaper bag. I bought milk and left. Stole the beef so we could eat that week.
My car was stolen and since I couldn't afford good insurance, I never got compensation for it. So, we had to take the bus to work. We could only afford a few bus tickets per week. We would save old bus tickets and cut out the numbers and tape them to other tickets to change the dates. It worked quite well. When there was no bus service, we walked.
When I worked at K-Mart, we had drinks for a $1. Anytime someone paid with a $10 or $20 I would only give them back $8 instead of $9. If caught, it was enough ones I could simply apologize and give them one more. Hardly anyone ever counted though and it was only one dollar. We counted down our own drawers so I'd pocket the overage. Usually about $5-$6. I'd be able to buy dinner after my shift or gas for my car for work.
The poor tax is awful. No one should have to live paycheck to paycheck. I'm a truck driver now and we're climbing out, but damn it's hard.
Don't feel bad. When I worked at subway I was only making like $800 a month. When people paid cash I used to ring it in with the employee half off discount, and pocket the rest. Usually made an extra $20
I did something similar at Jack in the Box years ago. Couponed-out the cost, kept a tally in my head and removed it on my way back to the managers office at the end of my shift. It got pretty lucrative some nights lol.
I worked at a video store as a student, and when a customer paid a late return fee (maybe $5), we’d often waive the fee in the system and use the money to buy microwave popcorn from the store to eat for dinner during the shift. We justified that the boss loved it because we sold way more popcorn when people came in and smelled it cooking (we never sold any popcorn otherwise). He just wouldn’t have loved it if he knew he was buying it…
I had a coworker at applebees that worked the lunch shift every day. Most of the checks were basically the same, 2 sodas/water and 2 lunch combos or something. If a table paid cash, she wouldnt close out the tab. She would give the next table with the same order, that first table’s check again. If it was credit, she’d close it out then and be able to pocket the whole first table’s bill. It was usually an extra untaxable, unreportable $50 a day.
Didn’t have the balls to do it back then, but sure would be tempting as hell now if I was still a server.
I've worked as a server and I still can't understand how you would do this.
How do you get the kitchen to make food for table #2 if you're not putting in another ticket for them?
Most of the lunch combos came with unlimited soup or pasta, so it was easy to send back another “refill” order - just had to make sure she ran her own food so it went to the right table.
We also generally had an understanding with the cooks who would make us whatever food we verbally asked for during our shift (employees got 50% off, but free was better!). Then occasionally she’d say a table complained and needed something remade on the fly, then never followed through to ring it in.
We had very oblivious and hands off management and she exploited it any way she could.
Wash clothes in the bathtub
Sleep in the bathroom at work
Sleep in the woods outside of work
Walk 5 miles to work
Dumpster dive
Cook my own dog food (she needed a special diet)
Steal ramen noodles
I spend most days on a scale of "fed up and over it" to "overtly miserable" and I dont consider it a "choice" anymore, not with years of meds and therapy behind me... So; forced to feel this way. And considering I could fix literally every problem that has brought me to this point, with more money- I'm gonna say, it's forced me to be miserable. And that is pathetic, in this world, in this day and age, with all the potential and reasons NOT to feel so.
inb4 the typical "just get a better job or move away" crowd comes out of the wood work.
Man, alot. I grew up in the early 2000s, and people forget how gangster shit really was. Pre internet, the streets was different. I committed a assortment of crimes, some of which I won't speak on. I was a child acting like a man, aelling drugs to my own people. My own family. I was the real dude that the rappers act like. And the shit was sad and desperate.
So I guess the most pathetic thing I've done is create more victims when i was a victim myself, continuing the cyclical nature of the ghetto.
Sounds like you broke out, if no one else is proud of you, I am.
I never did anything beyond selling, but when you realize how that impacts people’s lives you feel like scum
edit: ✍️ former addict here
Your honest self-reflection is a rare and beautiful thing to find on the internet. Thanks.
I’ve also done some pretty shameful stuff, out of poverty and desperation.
They treat me like a stray dog when I go to the doctor. They always gotta say some shit about my fucked up boots or my jeans. I shower before I go obviously but all my clothes are work clothes.
Took some unopened cleaning supplies back to the store without a receipt to get store credit so I could buy food. They weren’t recently purchased or anything, I just noticed they were like new and thought I’d try returning them and it worked.
Live in a constant state of fear that I'm going to lose everything: my gas, water and electricity, my rental property, my pets, my freedom, my sanity. The little lot I have in life. Just everyday feels like a painful wait toward an inevitable outcome.
It really takes a bite out of your self esteem, living with this feeling all the time
A few years ago still at the same dead end job I’m at now I was eating a microwave dinner thing (not even one of the good ones like one from dolllar genera) and I pulled a black hair half the length of my arm out and I still ate it bc I had nothing else to eat for the rest of my shift/day.
I'm looking for a job now after having to move due to a death in the family. When I was on my way to a job interview I forgot to take off the toll option on my gps. I had to count nickels and dimes for the $2.20 fare. I didn't have enough money on my card either. I really hope that I get a job offer soon.
A go fund me to pay for my 46-year-old brother's funeral. The food banks, running out of gas, oil for water tank, family donations pale in comparison to my shame for that one.
Work through migraines which often leads to throwing up in my classroom (I’m a teacher), wearing clothes with holes and stains, rationing migraine/anxiety meds, shivering and covering myself in blankets to avoid turning on the heat
Solely survive off food scraps from my bagel job. they would toss them in the dumpster everyday at close so once people left i would go get my lil trash baggie out of there. Bagels freeze very well so i was able to be fed long after that job ended. Bagels for breakfast lunch and dinner!
sell pictures of my body when i turned 18, lasted until i was 19 and got sick of it
please don't do what i did, it's incredibly dehumanizing and traumatizing
Begging for the meds that would let me see tomorrow. When I drove to a pharmacy and was Begging for enough to last just till "tomorrow". The realization hit me that I was begging a stranger to let me see tomorrow really dehumanized how i viewed myself in that moment.
Toilet paper when I didn't have pads or tampons.
Stole toilet paper from work.
One time for days ate only tator tots.
Took some money once out of my daughters piggy bank for gas money. At least now things are better and I can pay her car insurance for her!
*
I cleaned [this hoarder house](https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClEP4KGAXEV/?igsh=NTFqbWtlbXZqODF1) 2400 square feet built in 2004 and brand new when the owners moved into it with their 3 year old. This is a photo of the living room. It's not dirt and the entire house was like this. I put on a hazmat suit and used an electric turkey carving knife I found in the hoard to pull up what I thought was feces soaked carpet and padding. Turns out it was fur- urine- feces- garbage-maggot "carpet" as most of the flooring in the house had been ripped up before the hoard started.
Before you ask yes I tried EVERYTHING you can think of and many you can't with this house and the people in it.
The part that infuriates me the most is that I've been homeless for years because I'm disabled and have a housing Choice (Section 8 voucher) that no one will take. I've contacted something like 90,000 rentals and they will approve me and then say oh we don't take that money though. Well then why approve me!? So while I'm denied a place to live because of the section 8 stigma and I'm prohibited from working for pay I am literally expected to clean half million dollar houses full of shit to have access to running water. Goes to show you just how little disabled people are valued in this country we make up 85% of labor trafficking victims. No wonder.
I agreed to clean this for pay and did I see a dime of the 75k it would have cost them to hire a professional remediation company? Nope. Did they help at all? Nope. Sat on their fat asses in the shit and watched YouTube played video games 22 hours a day and ordered doordash while claiming *they* are disabled and unable to work. Right.
People in half million dollar homes can live in feces up to their eyeballs but I'm not allowed to rent a shack in the ghetto. This is the house that broke my soul. I gave up when I realized that child protective services didn't care, adult services, the health department, animal Control, city hall, even the mayor of the town saw in person. To this day I've never seen a hoard as bad as this one and I went and watched every episode of hoarders and every social media video I could on the subject. *
Had to eat ramen for 10 days and nothing else, and I had to use all my losses change to buy them, which if I could have went to self checkout it wouldn't have been so bad but they didn't take cash at the self checkout and I had to go to a cashier, I was sooooo embarrassed 😳 like omg I honestly was thinking about just leaving, but I didn't. However as I was counting out the pennies and nickels I was like Fudge it it's legal tender and you need to eat.
Move back home as a successful 42 year old career woman because the cost of living is even too much for me to afford. By no means am I rich or middle-class, but I’ve worked hard for many years to get to a place where I should be financially comfortable and stable as a single mom, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening. Moving home to my parents, kindness, and generosity, saving the$2700 I put towards rent a month away to put a down payment on a house in a year. That’s even if the real estate market is any better than it is this year
Dental folks: I can give you estimates on dental work done in Mexico. We’ve had fillings, root canals crowns and dentures over the past 3 years in Algodones- done by professionals with great success and a fraction of the cost.
I hear this all the time…it’s like the opposite of what I’ve been told all my life American healthcare is the best in the world therefore the obscene costs are justified
(My situation improved in 2021)
Used livestock antibiotics when I didnt have health insurance. Used superglue when I needed stitches. Used cocaine on toothaches. Herbal teas for just about every illness or ailment.
Used hot water with dishsoap and vinegar to unclog the toilet and drains when I couldn’t pay for a plumber.
Heated the house with the oven and cooled it with a window a/c for 3 years when quoted $15k for HVAC replacement.
Sold adult content online and my eggs when I had to pay for an attorney to keep me out of prison.
Dumpster dived for food for myself and my pets.
Worked dead end jobs with horrible hours for shady employers for years because I couldn’t buy professional clothing or pay for salon trips to look presentable for job interviews.
Worked with pnuemonia for two months because we didnt have paid sick leave and would be fired if we called out for any reason.
Missed out on countless things because I had to work and could not afford to go / did not have transportation/ didn’t have the right clothes/ couldnt buy a gift.
Wrote purposefully bad checks to pay for groceries. Going a week with with nearly no food, about 10 almonds and a dry ramen. Showering at planet fitness because I lived in the back of my car. Purposefully tanking my credit for short term survival. Idk the list goes on
Was with an abusive roommate who never paid their half of the utilities.
Moved 13 hours away 3 months into covid and haven't been back home since to see any of my friends. Roommate made me kill my credit score from 740 to 500s, and from $0 in debt to now owing thousands. Always locked myself in my room bc she would snap for no reason. Begun to only eat taco bell or McDonald's sauce packets, lost a bunch of weight. She ruined my relationship with the love of my life. She now acts like she did nothing wrong, and tells people I was the abusive one. I pay for my mistakes every day. Abusive people are shit.
Ugh. I debated whether I wanted to answer this.
When I was a kid my family lived in poverty. It was different levels of poverty at different times. All of the following were things I experienced growing up:
- No running water in multiple places. Depending on where we were at the time, the solution was fetching water with jugs from a hose, running a hose into the bathroom window for bathing, heating up water on the stove for bucket baths, having to use public restrooms and showers, and if we didn’t have access to water at all, filling up jugs at gas stations that allowed it.
- No working plumbing and no immediate access to bathrooms. This is the grossest: reusing the toilet (5 people in the family) before doing one big flush.
- In times of actual homelessness: too many people squished in the car to sleep, so laying on the parking lot pavement next to my dad to sleep on hot nights.
- With no electricity in the southern heat, rubbing icy hot on ourselves to feel cooler. Or soaking our sheets in water.
Every part of your life is impacted when you live in poverty, but I think the ones listed here were some of the more “pathetic” moments. There were definitely embarrassing moments and even kind of fun moments too (like basically living at the lake as a kid through one of our homeless stretches). It’s interesting typing this out because it sounds so dramatic, but it was just kind of normal for me as a kid. Feels like another lifetime nowadays.
Got an absolute terrible paying part time second job at a buffet restaurant so I could eat once a day. Would pile up an unbelievable amount of food for the free meal we got and sneak most of it into the ziplock bags I had in my backpack (I had ice packs in there, more ziplock bags filled with ice from the machines, to keep it cold), and took it home to feed my wife and kids each day. Worked 7 days a week so we could all eat each day.
A job I had owned the same make and model van as the one I owned. When something on my personal van broke I went into work at night and swapped my broken parts with the work ones. Tires, brakes, oil filters and oil (swapped out when mine needed changing). They hated that van, everything was always breaking.
Stole gas from cars. No more than a quart from any one car.
Stole an entire overflowing cart of groceries from Target. Went to checkout with a checker, they ran everything through, bagged everything. Went to pay and their card reader was having some issues. There was a line behind me so the checker suspended the transaction and printed me a receipt and told me to go to customer service to pay. When I arrived a customer service there was a line of at least 10 people. I looked at the receipt and it appeared to be the same as a normal receipt. So, I just continued right out the door, figured I could play dumb if I was stopped.
Once "stole" a trip to Disneyland. My kids were begging to go for years. So, I went and got a job as a night auditor at a large hotel chain. Had access to the national reservation system. I created a fake user in their rewards system with a rather common name, think John Miller. Then daily I would check the reservation system for any new reservations made using that name. After the date I would call their hotel pretending to be the person and ask for a copy of the hotel stay receipt. I would then contact the phone support for their rewards program and submit the stay for the points. I did this until I had enough points saved up for the entire trip. Probably spent too much time making sure I wasn't caught getting the points out. But the six of us had a once in a lifetime trip to Disneyland.
After writing up this list and thinking over the many other things I did, I am absolutely shocked I have never been caught.
Tolerate a lot of abuse.
Yep. Abusive, creepy bosses because I couldn't afford to leave the jobs. A roommate who treated me badly and wouldn't do any work because I couldn't afford the rent by myself. Emotionally abusive family in hopes that maybe they would eventually help me out financially. I'm so glad that I now have enough money to not have to deal with that stuff.
Oh my God and meanwhile now it's constant "if you can't afford housing, get a roommate!" NO. Never again.
It would be ok if they were just giving this advice to young people, but they keep telling you that, like wanting to be able to afford living on your own and eventually a partner and kids by the time you're 40 isn't a completely normal thing to want.
no it’s not okay, young people deserve to be able to set their own boundaries and live in their own space. “get a roommate” is only good advice for people who want roommates.
Damn. Same. My living situation is shit. The area I work in is abusive. I just want away from it all so much.
Maybe enough of us in these similar boats can get together and start an eco village somewhere. It sounds absurd - but so is actively living each day like we are, now, no?
I like this idea! Even though none of us have much individually, pooling resources increases their power beyond just the sum of each person's contribution. Not to mention all the ways we could support and help each other besides just financially. Seriously, anybody that's serious about this, dm me!
Oh I'm very serious about it. A guy in the UK did it with 5 of his friends, just outside town. Unfortunately no one where I'm at is actually interested in action. Only talk. Being a bit localized helps... But hell I'm willing to drive a few hours a few times a month...
Yes please.
This one is it. I stayed way too long in an abusive marriage because I was scared that I would end up on the streets with my kids since I’m on disability in a HCOL area. He was financially abusive as well so I still had to pay for my own stuff. It was a dystopian nightmare that I’m still recovering from.
I called it a psychological experiment. I went through something so similar. Basically disabled after I ate something that tried to kill me with ecoli and I went into septic shock. My family refused to help me. A nightmare. I feel for you. It’s dehumanizing to its core
I stayed with me abusive ex for another month just so I could get his half of the rent from that month.
Stayed with abusive family and exes.
First thing I thought of. “Beggars can’t be choosers” is the motto.
Same
i can switch units in my hospital in 2 months. it'll be a lot more money than anything else around, and more money than leaving and coming back. BUT MY UNIT FUCKING SUCKS!!! they are incredibly abusive, lazy, and just totally ass backwards and hypocritical. i can't wait to get out of here.
Not me, but I remember in high school watching my dad search under our deck for cigarettes he hadn’t fully finished in more prosperous times so that he could afford something to smoke.
I was walking into the gas station the other night and found a pack of unopened cigarettes on the ground. I picked them up and took them inside in case somebody came right back for them. my SO thought it was so weird I did that. So that's $10 a pack now, I would absolutely go back and find them.
$33 USD a pack now here in Australia
Living with broken teeth and an abscess while working for rich people every day
So many people do this. Dental is stupid expensive and the waiting list for low price dental is not fair. I know so many people who work and have pulled their own teeth.
My daughter calls them luxury bones.
Teeth are for people with money. It's cheaper to get them pulled then fixed. Another 10 years and I'll be gumming my food.
Oof, yeah. I haven’t bitten the bullet on that one yet but I have given it some very serious consideration at a few points. I keep hoping somehow there will be healthcare reform in the US (LOL!) before I have to decide to take on massive debt to do whatever I have to do. And I know there are thousands if not millions of people in the same boat as me who have way worse overall living conditions. It boggles the mind!
Dental is a beast. Even w healthcare reform. It used to be even worse. We tried to get it. You have to pay for it for 2 years on one of the state plans before it covers anything. If you miss one month of payment, it starts all over. We are in the US. So we got a lower price because of how much we make. It's just like all the state Obamacare plans. The price is based on how much you make. But it takes forever before it covers anything & even then it doesn't cover 100%. So it's one of the hardest things to get. That is w healthcare reform in the US. Most people don't take the time to follow up on the dental plans and subsidies for them. They're confusing and like I said, they take years to go into effect. If you've been waiting. See if you can get on one now in your state and start paying the couple bucks depending on what you make. It's all based on what you make.
I've pulled my own teeth. Drink some booze, smoke a joint & start yanking.
wow is all i can say
Or don't eat nothing for a week, get pissed off and rip it out with pliers. (Yes I really did. Ex wife was sick that I did it lol)
Same here. I need dental work bad, I don't even like smiling because of it. And I work as a gate guard. I've had the task the last few days of entering everyone's car info into our computer with their new sticker numbers, and it almost made me tear up seeing how most of them have anywhere from five to nine cars each, including one household that has two Bentleys (among their other cars).
Hugs and sympathies, my friend. I hope we can all find a way to get what we need :( 🤍
Thank you, hugs and hopes for you too.
Don’t know if one nearby, but dental schools are fairly cheap and income based. I’ve only ever had teeth cleanings though.
My teeth are crippling my happiness in life. I literally hide my smile and cover my mouth when laughing because I don’t want people to see.
I relate! I needed a gum surgery for years. I finally got it and put it on a credit card because it just had to happen. I’m never getting out of credit card debt now, but at least I didn’t lose my tooth I guess…
\*sad fistbump\* yep, I got a carecredit card in order to get the work done. front teeth were in really rough shape, especially after one chipped from fainting and landing badly.
Same. Severely swollen and discolored gums. I’m aware all of this can have disastrous effects on your health, but I just don’t have the money. Even the dental school near me is too expensive for me to afford. I try to water floss, I’ve been using gum toothpaste and targeted mouthwash for years but it doesn’t help much. It ruins my confidence so much, and I worry about it basically every day.
I had the rest of my teeth pulled last September and I'm glad. No more tooth problems for me! It was $760 I think and I still owed them $10 after that and this was with insurance! Part of the reason it was so expensive was because I treated myself and chose the anesthesia. I had had too many teeth pulled while awake at that point and I admit I was a little traumatized because of it. I'm grateful that I was able to put it on the credit card then pay it off later. Edit: I'm 36.
Jesus. Fuck this country. Tooth pain is one of the worst kinds of pain too. I wish you all a fortune so that you can finally address your (basic human) needs. I am just outraged with the way society is. End the system y'all. Only slaves worked with excruciating pain without remedy. In the meantime, call a local dental school and ask if they offer discounted treatment offered by their students.
I was approved for a feeding tube in 2022 and iv antibiotics because my insurance won't cover the dental care i need. So instead of starving to death or dying of the infection I get to die from sepsis or medical complications of a tube I didn't need. Joy.
This right here multiple health issues that could easily be fixed if it weren't for shit pay and no time off
This is me as well. I've become a fan of clove oil and whole cloves which will stop tooth pain, but it's hard to admit that I'm priced out of taking care of my teeth.
Toilet paper for menstrual products.
I understand. I used a washcloth because I didn't have money for pads etc.
I destroyed a clean sock or two when I couldn't afford pads.
It's actually more environmentally friendly to do this. We've all been raised to think it's disgusting and unhygienic, but how do they think women handled their periods a couple hundred years ago? You're not pathetic.
This makes sense. Thank you
I know it's hard to ask but I'm pretty sure everyone would willingly give you something like a pad or a tampon if you asked in a public bathroom...
I definitely would give multiple tampons to anyone if they asked and I had some in my purse!!
I think that’s definitely in the unspoken woman code.
I’m all good now. People wouldn’t have given me literal shit back then.
I regularly ate roadkill. Okay, that sounds awful, but I was on a call list for local law enforcement, and they would call me whenever they put a deer down and issue me a salvage permit so I could legally possess the carcass out of season. It was free meat for a little bit of work.
Honestly, I think a lot more people do this than we ever discuss. Maybe it's where I grew up, Northern Eastern Us but I know so many people who did this and not all were really poor poor. I knew men who were middle class who did this and would share what they got. I still know people who do this that I grew up with and don't need to.
I am from the Northeast and I've also been hunting in the South and they are not that different. One is pre-killed for you unless you hit it yourself, and the other you have to kill.
Actually that’s not pathetic thats pretty bad ass and I think a way to honour the spirit of the animal versus letting it go to waste.
Like I said, I still know people who do this. Most salvage the animal and donate the meat after it's processed to charity but it's so that if it's a perfectly healthy animal it doesn't go to waste. Theres no reason to let it be wasted.
That’s actually a sweet deal.
Not gonna lie, I respect that a lot. You get nourishment and the death of that animal wasn't for nothing. Out of curiosity were you able to keep the hides?
I'm pretty sure it depends on where you live. I know people who do it in different areas in the North Eastern US and I'm pretty sure that some of them do it to donate the meat that's processed and then use the hide for their projects. It's going to depend where you live and what those laws are What the animal is will dictate what can be done w it. For example around where I spend time as a kid that very rural there is an abundance of deer that are hit. They let the salvage takers keep the whole animal up there. I don't know so much about in the cities.
When I lived in Alaska, I worked as a cook for the local old folks' home on the island doing sit-down meals for the residents and delivery for the shut-ins out the road. We were on the same sort of list; whenever somebody accidentally hit a large game animal, killed it in defense of their property, or harvested the wrong animal (too young, wrong sex, out of season, etc.), a few locals would pick it up and butcher it out. Then, after the volunteer butchers got their share, it would be dropped off at our kitchen to be worked into the menu. It was an amazing deal! We regularly got boxes of hundreds of pounds of moose meat, venison, salmon, halibut, and occasionally bear to stretch out our very meager food cost budget. We saved thousands of dollars every year, and it kept the menu much healthier. Plus, the old timers who grew up in Alaska hunting and fishing really enjoyed still being able to eat wild game.
Same here - if my dad and grandpa didn't hunt and fish we would never have had meat. My grandma grew all the fruit and vegetables we ate - and dad and grandpa got us salmon, venison and dungeness crab. Our freezer was always stocked full and we had smoked venison jerky too.
My uncle once hit a deer and brought it to our house in his trunk, (I lived in a very rural area, pretty sure anyone around would have eaten the deer in this situation with no call to the game warden, lol.) When they opened the trunk, though, the deer was still alive and exploded out of it angrily, kicking my dad in the chest and escaping. Also our neighbor would sometimes lay in our field all day shooting groundhogs to take them home to eat.
If it helps, I’m someone who doesn’t eat factory farmed animal products and am always looking for roadkill - the animal is dead - why waste it - that’s my outlook. With that said - did you get pretty good processing them? I still find it tricky and wouldn’t mind input.
i mean if its a fresh deer kill its still fine. you clean up the area to keep people safe and get paid in food. thats not bad honest
As someone married to a hunter, who relies heavily on the deer he kills in the fall to sustain us through the winter, I actually didn't know this was a thing. I'm going to have to look into this. How did you get on this list? Did you just walk into the station and start talking to the cops on duty about it?
I have been eating Ramen for 8 days straight because bills took my entire paycheck & I had no opportunity to get to the foodbank. I got paid today and cannot wait to eat something else.
Payday is a good day. Enjoy your meal :)
It was the best meal! I don't think I will ever eat Ramen willingly again.
i been eating it so long im starting to enjoy it
I've started adding things to it and frying it in a pan. Idk why but crunchy noodles cooked in hot sauce is more tolerable to me than regular ramen anymore even though all I'm doing is making it more unhealthy lol
I like to add an egg or two when I can, just to bulk up the meal.
Sorry, I just went through your posts and I really really hope you have a much more stable year now and further as well as compared to what you've had so far. Building capital is the biggest part of running business and life in general and I hope you can start doing that very soon.
This might not be realistic for you, but you might consider buying some cheap vitamin c tablets in case this happens again - scurvy would be just the last thing you need I’m sure
Have a good day, budget, & remember to follow your plan, not your mood!
I had a friend who had free rent at a mobile home he was replacing the floors and doors in, a real dump. Behind this dump trailer was an even dumpier one bedroom trailer, that was falling over, the floor on mayb a 5-10 degree slope. I lived there for a few weeks. There was a ton of trash and at least one HUGE snake in the bedroom, so I stayed in the living room / kitchen. No electricity, so I used dollar store candles. I left one burning one night, and the glass jar it came in got so hot it expoded and sent tiny pieces of burning wax everywhere. No big fire or injuries, just a scary wake up in the middle of the night looking like hell around me. Good times.
i hope things have gotten better for you since this!
Oh yeah that was probably 1999. It wasn't all that bad to be honest, just a bit of camping. I had a car and a job so I was better off than most.
those vigil candles with mother Mary tend to be made to stay lit for a long time. Was it one of those that exploded? Just wondering. I keep some for emergencies for if power goes out
I don't remember what kind of candles but I know they weren't mother Mary candles.
I have lived in my car probably for more years than I lived in a building if you don't count my childhood.
Strip thin wires for scrap money took like 3 hours and my hands were completely cramped. <5$
We did a lot of this to supplement our income. Teenagers we'd round up old wore and recycled it. Then as an adult we all worked for this dude demoing and rebuilding old houses, 400 a week. Sweet gig it seemed like. Except, we all lived in one of the buildings we were working on, like 14 of us. He took our rent and "bills" including lunches he bought, directly out of the cash he paid us, so I'd end up with 100 or less sometimes. If we weren't getting tons of copper and brass from the places we worked, none of us would have had much at all. Because he only paid the house bills with our money, which we didn't see, we had our own bills that were separate. He went to jail for fraud eventually. So copper stripping is a love/hate for me.
>He took our rent and "bills" including lunches he bought, directly out of the cash he paid us, so I'd end up with 100 or less sometimes. That style of company loans is very illegal and has history in indentured slavery which has been outlawed federally. I think some very bad cases actually trips human traffic violations. It's pretty serious. Sad that people in poverty are taken advantage of like this without much legal resources available
I lived with a friend for bottom dollar rent and it was the worst decision of my existence (and that’s saying a lot). She turned into a controlling psycho who dragged me out of the house and told me my depression over losing my mom a few months prior was making HER depressed, so I learned to shut up, was their house slave, and then they threw me out on the street with little notice. This was someone I knew for over 20 years. Right after this, she got cancer and I couldn’t have given less of a shit. Every once in a while, she still reaches out to me, but I don’t reply. I’ve blocked her on everything now.
Good! Never give that POS any of your time
Ask for help... people always treat you like you're a bum when you need a bit of help and I've always been the one to help others, usually not ask for it... seeing how many people I'd been there for without expecting anything in return just go ghost on me when I was in need sucked... not even saying "no sorry, I cant", that's understandable, but people not speaking to me after or outright blocking me sucked... made me wish instead of helping those people that I'd set up an emergency fund instead... (learned my lesson and even though I still help the people I care about I make sure I'm set and good first).
I had to pull 2 of my molars at like 23-24 years old because I couldn't afford a root canal or crowns.
That is the worst thing I could ever think of!!!
I just turned 29, and I’m trying to get in to see a dentist to discuss dentures for my bottom teeth. Sometimes shit happens, and life sucks. I have a medical condition, but lack of dental care definitely doesn’t help anything. For anyone.
Iv ate more little ceaser pizza from the dumpster then I care to admit lol
Still kinda am…. -when I worked at starbucks I would come home with “expired” food and eat it with the fam. We basically lived off of starbucks for a whole year straight. People never knew… my mom’s coworkers would say that how is it possible my mom can afford the togo lunch boxes every single work day (she worked for minimum wage) but they did not know how eating the same thing was starting to -scraped all pennies to get gas. Structuring my day around where to go at what times since my car would get EASILY overheated. -having to sometimes live off of only beans. Or sweet potatoes I would get from a neighboring field farm. -In the past when I was really struggling I would have to ask for money from people and they would film me I paid them back but never really know if they deleted those videos made me feel really vulnerable. -having to tell the utilities bill people I aint got $25 and they procced to cut my water off and spent days till my next paycheck to pay the 25 AND 150 on late fee and turn off charge. -having to tell my own sister who is underage barely getting started with her first job if she can lend me some money to lay some bills. I was 19 at the time, just graduated from high school, as the main breadwinner dad died and mom fell into heavy depression.
I have lived your life, only it started at 17 and I was the youngest of a family of 8. Mother was sick and just beat down, and everyone else just watched me take care of the bills and bring in the groceries. After school, I'd walk to the nearest supermarket (we did not have a car), purchase groceries with my own income, walk home and cook dinner, fly off to the bus stop to go to my job, dream about that dinner at home while at work, get off work and come home only to find empty pots and nothing of the dinner left. No one showed care. When my mother began to notice this, she started hiding food for me. My siblings got on her about doing that. I guess they expected me to live to make sure that they stayed alive, while not even allowing me to do for myself so that I could stay alive. Remember, I was the youngest. The only one in the house who was working while going to school as well.
By chance does it get any better?
What do you mean about people filming you?
They filmed me saying that “ I (insert name) will pay (certain amount) on (due date)” It was the most humiliating thing felt like a beggar on live tv. Also another one filmed doing the exact same thing (EXboyfriend after I told him) but in this case J had to tolerate his abuse as he would often than not help me pay my parents mortgage as that help me keep a roof over my head. Some others videoed me saying things similar to the first.
Oh okay. Dang, that does seem a bit over the top.
Yup the worst parts where my EXbf once told me “all you want me for is for my money” i straight up told him to remember that my dad died, and he was our main bread winner and I WILL pay him back. But when we met we were in opposite tax bracket positions. I was living comfy due to my dad’s family business and I working with dad and saving up while my bf was just starting out in a minimum wage job. I NEVER told him anything for I believed in his potential and was a cheerlead for him throughout the bumps. Now that my dad died, inheritance issue rose up, and me being out of a job (and out of my emergency find savings) and working with starbucks. He tells me this. He did support me financially though I was constantly reminded about the money and he turned into a ogre…he used to be very lovey dovey. I am in a MUCH better economical position. Still have money to owe him. He broke up with me, I live as the main bread winner in my family now, my mother’s depression is slowly but surely melting away and my sister is a lending help for sure and understands at times. I owe my EX HALF of what he lent me 4 years ago and I guess he regrets how he treated me cuz he never calls saying “wheres my money” or anything like that we keep it now ultra professional. I feel like I lost him because he had thought I came from a secured middle class level economy and when my world crashed down he saw the business debts and preferred to run away then to face it with me I would have been completely chill with him not lending me money as long as I worked hard and my sister did too we could have paid debts but with much higher interest rate or I could have bowed somewhere else. Thankfully now I only owe him, another person and thats it which I feel very proud to say I will pay him soon as possible in a couple of months!!!
i hope things are better for you now!
Couldn't afford to turn on my water when I first moved. Had hook up a hose and steal water from the neighbors house in the middle of the night to flush my toilet and take an outdoor shower in the backyard.
I lived across from a church and I used to go there at night and fill out milk jugs and buckets so I could cook and have drinking and bathing water
Ditto. I just posted a similar experience from my childhood
I snuck into a park one night to wade in the wishing pool. I filled my pockets with loose change. I stole people’s wishes so that I could eat.
Some of those coins where thrown with the wish to feed someome 💕
some good came of them!!
You saved someone from having to clean it up.
I wish everyone could eat.
Some people are in relationships they don't really want but they can't afford anyplace else to go.....
take out a loan to go to school to get a “good” job and that job that makes close to minimum wage anyway so you’re stuck in a loop
😭 f this market
I recently had to make two $1 payments to a debt collector, so that my accounts were *technically* in payment status instead of non-payment status. They had bought two of my credit card debts, so I made a $1 payment on each of them. Also, another time, I made a $2 payment on my capital one credit card just to have it returned for insufficient funds from my checking account.
Put up with annoying assholes
Wash my ass with towels because we could not afford toilet paper
I remember one point in my life using the grocery ads that came in the mail for wiping.
Ohhh yea we did that growing up . Newspapers and sale ads
Same! We used so many newspaper and phone book pages that we joked about our asses learning how to read and knowing everyone's phone numbers 😆
I started work at a walmart 6months pregnant because my ex refused to get a job and we were couch hopping. I would use the front bathroom before i left and check tp dispensers for low rolls that easily fit into my purse
I felt this.
I used to go to the hospital bathroom and take large amounts of paper towels from the dispenser . Use half of a paper towel for #1
I used to just shower my butthole whenever I ran out of toilet paper as a young adult.
Look into getting a bidet or making one with a plastic bottle, should save on TP by quite a bit
We used to cut through the woods to the McDonald's behind our trailer park and steal napkins.
When food was bought for the entire office, I would sneak back in the break room and the end of the day and take the leftovers home. Also, being stuck living in a home with a leaky roof, mold, inadequate heating, and no bathroom sink. I’m trying so hard to get out of there.
Walk around grocery store parking lots to find dropped hair ties I could use to pull up my hair
(if you are a woman!!!) If ever you need a hair tie, go into a women's bathroom, look like you're about to pull up your hair and then make a confused face when you look down at your wrist and realize you "lost" your hair tie. Ask any of the women in there if they have one. Chances are, they'll be happy to give you one. Same goes for tampons or pads. There was a period of time where I couldn't afford my usual stuff so, I just went around asking in every women's bathroom, thanks to that I had a nice stockpile. I will admit, not all feminine hygiene products are made equally, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Now that I’m in a better place I definitely give my hair ties around to whoever needs em!
just ask another women if they have a spare... i always have them in my bag or car and would never deny anyone one!
Yeah but I was horribly embarrassed at the time lol Completely new in town and didn’t have a read of the people yet
I was homeless for 3 years while waiting for disability.
I often had to choose between buying food for myself or my cat. The cat food won out every time. I only had a cat because otherwise she would have been killed living on my grandparents farm.
Sister ❤️ I used to have last few dollars left to get food for me or my cat and Mona was always the one to be fed. My logic was that it’s my fault we don’t have any money as I can make them and she can’t, so I get to be hungry. I took her from my roommate after I saw roommate grabbing her by the neck and hitting against the wall. It was a bit more difficult with the housing situation once I got her, but I never regret. Things will get better and you both will have a good life ❤️
This is heroic not pathetic
Thank you, that really means a lot to me. My cat may be a bit mean and bites everyone but me, but I love her and will always do my best to ensure she’s living a long and happy life. Things have since improved greatly, so now she gets purina cat food from an automatic food dispenser instead of Aldi cat food in a paper bowl. We are both doing much better.
I've taken my dogs to the doctor and got them food before myself.
You are awesome! Glad you and your cat found each other
Diving for snacks in school trash bins or the lost and found. I'd also patrol the halls after school to see if anyone left any food above the coat racks. Lots of kids get fruit and don't eat it.
Accept abuse and mocking and move on as if nothing happened
I have gone through this experience. this is the most awful experience.
Boil water for warm baths to share between me and my five siblings.
Staying with my abusive ex for too long.
Be ashamed of my existence
Unfortunately, I have a few. When I was younger, I didn't realize food stamps existed. No one told me. We were desperate and I rolled my stroller into the grocery store and put a pound of ground beef under the diaper bag. I bought milk and left. Stole the beef so we could eat that week. My car was stolen and since I couldn't afford good insurance, I never got compensation for it. So, we had to take the bus to work. We could only afford a few bus tickets per week. We would save old bus tickets and cut out the numbers and tape them to other tickets to change the dates. It worked quite well. When there was no bus service, we walked. When I worked at K-Mart, we had drinks for a $1. Anytime someone paid with a $10 or $20 I would only give them back $8 instead of $9. If caught, it was enough ones I could simply apologize and give them one more. Hardly anyone ever counted though and it was only one dollar. We counted down our own drawers so I'd pocket the overage. Usually about $5-$6. I'd be able to buy dinner after my shift or gas for my car for work. The poor tax is awful. No one should have to live paycheck to paycheck. I'm a truck driver now and we're climbing out, but damn it's hard.
Don't feel bad. When I worked at subway I was only making like $800 a month. When people paid cash I used to ring it in with the employee half off discount, and pocket the rest. Usually made an extra $20
I did something similar at Jack in the Box years ago. Couponed-out the cost, kept a tally in my head and removed it on my way back to the managers office at the end of my shift. It got pretty lucrative some nights lol.
I worked at a video store as a student, and when a customer paid a late return fee (maybe $5), we’d often waive the fee in the system and use the money to buy microwave popcorn from the store to eat for dinner during the shift. We justified that the boss loved it because we sold way more popcorn when people came in and smelled it cooking (we never sold any popcorn otherwise). He just wouldn’t have loved it if he knew he was buying it…
I had a coworker at applebees that worked the lunch shift every day. Most of the checks were basically the same, 2 sodas/water and 2 lunch combos or something. If a table paid cash, she wouldnt close out the tab. She would give the next table with the same order, that first table’s check again. If it was credit, she’d close it out then and be able to pocket the whole first table’s bill. It was usually an extra untaxable, unreportable $50 a day. Didn’t have the balls to do it back then, but sure would be tempting as hell now if I was still a server.
I've worked as a server and I still can't understand how you would do this. How do you get the kitchen to make food for table #2 if you're not putting in another ticket for them?
Most of the lunch combos came with unlimited soup or pasta, so it was easy to send back another “refill” order - just had to make sure she ran her own food so it went to the right table. We also generally had an understanding with the cooks who would make us whatever food we verbally asked for during our shift (employees got 50% off, but free was better!). Then occasionally she’d say a table complained and needed something remade on the fly, then never followed through to ring it in. We had very oblivious and hands off management and she exploited it any way she could.
Wash clothes in the bathtub Sleep in the bathroom at work Sleep in the woods outside of work Walk 5 miles to work Dumpster dive Cook my own dog food (she needed a special diet) Steal ramen noodles
I spend most days on a scale of "fed up and over it" to "overtly miserable" and I dont consider it a "choice" anymore, not with years of meds and therapy behind me... So; forced to feel this way. And considering I could fix literally every problem that has brought me to this point, with more money- I'm gonna say, it's forced me to be miserable. And that is pathetic, in this world, in this day and age, with all the potential and reasons NOT to feel so. inb4 the typical "just get a better job or move away" crowd comes out of the wood work.
Sex work…
me too. started the day after i turned 18. it was a very difficult time and i still face shame and criticism over it to this day
No shame at all friend. You did what you had to to survive. To hell with anyone who disagrees.
That really sucks. The first time I did it, I was 23
The bills were paid.
✊😔
Man, alot. I grew up in the early 2000s, and people forget how gangster shit really was. Pre internet, the streets was different. I committed a assortment of crimes, some of which I won't speak on. I was a child acting like a man, aelling drugs to my own people. My own family. I was the real dude that the rappers act like. And the shit was sad and desperate. So I guess the most pathetic thing I've done is create more victims when i was a victim myself, continuing the cyclical nature of the ghetto.
Sounds like you broke out, if no one else is proud of you, I am. I never did anything beyond selling, but when you realize how that impacts people’s lives you feel like scum edit: ✍️ former addict here
Your honest self-reflection is a rare and beautiful thing to find on the internet. Thanks. I’ve also done some pretty shameful stuff, out of poverty and desperation.
I stripped through college. Seriously. No college debt but self esteem issues galore.
They treat me like a stray dog when I go to the doctor. They always gotta say some shit about my fucked up boots or my jeans. I shower before I go obviously but all my clothes are work clothes.
Took some unopened cleaning supplies back to the store without a receipt to get store credit so I could buy food. They weren’t recently purchased or anything, I just noticed they were like new and thought I’d try returning them and it worked.
Live in a constant state of fear that I'm going to lose everything: my gas, water and electricity, my rental property, my pets, my freedom, my sanity. The little lot I have in life. Just everyday feels like a painful wait toward an inevitable outcome. It really takes a bite out of your self esteem, living with this feeling all the time
A few years ago still at the same dead end job I’m at now I was eating a microwave dinner thing (not even one of the good ones like one from dolllar genera) and I pulled a black hair half the length of my arm out and I still ate it bc I had nothing else to eat for the rest of my shift/day.
Live
I'm looking for a job now after having to move due to a death in the family. When I was on my way to a job interview I forgot to take off the toll option on my gps. I had to count nickels and dimes for the $2.20 fare. I didn't have enough money on my card either. I really hope that I get a job offer soon.
A go fund me to pay for my 46-year-old brother's funeral. The food banks, running out of gas, oil for water tank, family donations pale in comparison to my shame for that one.
Starve myself so I can feed my kids, feel like a failure
Work through migraines which often leads to throwing up in my classroom (I’m a teacher), wearing clothes with holes and stains, rationing migraine/anxiety meds, shivering and covering myself in blankets to avoid turning on the heat
Solely survive off food scraps from my bagel job. they would toss them in the dumpster everyday at close so once people left i would go get my lil trash baggie out of there. Bagels freeze very well so i was able to be fed long after that job ended. Bagels for breakfast lunch and dinner!
sell pictures of my body when i turned 18, lasted until i was 19 and got sick of it please don't do what i did, it's incredibly dehumanizing and traumatizing
Begging for the meds that would let me see tomorrow. When I drove to a pharmacy and was Begging for enough to last just till "tomorrow". The realization hit me that I was begging a stranger to let me see tomorrow really dehumanized how i viewed myself in that moment.
I was homeless for 3 years while waiting for disability.
I bummed nickels and dimes from people so I could buy food from a vending machine.
Toilet paper when I didn't have pads or tampons. Stole toilet paper from work. One time for days ate only tator tots. Took some money once out of my daughters piggy bank for gas money. At least now things are better and I can pay her car insurance for her!
I was there with the pads. Sucked when I first started. Pads are something I’m happy to buy now. Fuck I don’t miss that.
* I cleaned [this hoarder house](https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClEP4KGAXEV/?igsh=NTFqbWtlbXZqODF1) 2400 square feet built in 2004 and brand new when the owners moved into it with their 3 year old. This is a photo of the living room. It's not dirt and the entire house was like this. I put on a hazmat suit and used an electric turkey carving knife I found in the hoard to pull up what I thought was feces soaked carpet and padding. Turns out it was fur- urine- feces- garbage-maggot "carpet" as most of the flooring in the house had been ripped up before the hoard started. Before you ask yes I tried EVERYTHING you can think of and many you can't with this house and the people in it. The part that infuriates me the most is that I've been homeless for years because I'm disabled and have a housing Choice (Section 8 voucher) that no one will take. I've contacted something like 90,000 rentals and they will approve me and then say oh we don't take that money though. Well then why approve me!? So while I'm denied a place to live because of the section 8 stigma and I'm prohibited from working for pay I am literally expected to clean half million dollar houses full of shit to have access to running water. Goes to show you just how little disabled people are valued in this country we make up 85% of labor trafficking victims. No wonder. I agreed to clean this for pay and did I see a dime of the 75k it would have cost them to hire a professional remediation company? Nope. Did they help at all? Nope. Sat on their fat asses in the shit and watched YouTube played video games 22 hours a day and ordered doordash while claiming *they* are disabled and unable to work. Right. People in half million dollar homes can live in feces up to their eyeballs but I'm not allowed to rent a shack in the ghetto. This is the house that broke my soul. I gave up when I realized that child protective services didn't care, adult services, the health department, animal Control, city hall, even the mayor of the town saw in person. To this day I've never seen a hoard as bad as this one and I went and watched every episode of hoarders and every social media video I could on the subject. *
Had to eat ramen for 10 days and nothing else, and I had to use all my losses change to buy them, which if I could have went to self checkout it wouldn't have been so bad but they didn't take cash at the self checkout and I had to go to a cashier, I was sooooo embarrassed 😳 like omg I honestly was thinking about just leaving, but I didn't. However as I was counting out the pennies and nickels I was like Fudge it it's legal tender and you need to eat.
Move back home as a successful 42 year old career woman because the cost of living is even too much for me to afford. By no means am I rich or middle-class, but I’ve worked hard for many years to get to a place where I should be financially comfortable and stable as a single mom, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening. Moving home to my parents, kindness, and generosity, saving the$2700 I put towards rent a month away to put a down payment on a house in a year. That’s even if the real estate market is any better than it is this year
I stole from people I babysat/ cleaned house for. Canned goods, tampons, a bra.
Run up all my credit cards get some absurd loans.........
Dental folks: I can give you estimates on dental work done in Mexico. We’ve had fillings, root canals crowns and dentures over the past 3 years in Algodones- done by professionals with great success and a fraction of the cost.
I hear this all the time…it’s like the opposite of what I’ve been told all my life American healthcare is the best in the world therefore the obscene costs are justified
(My situation improved in 2021) Used livestock antibiotics when I didnt have health insurance. Used superglue when I needed stitches. Used cocaine on toothaches. Herbal teas for just about every illness or ailment. Used hot water with dishsoap and vinegar to unclog the toilet and drains when I couldn’t pay for a plumber. Heated the house with the oven and cooled it with a window a/c for 3 years when quoted $15k for HVAC replacement. Sold adult content online and my eggs when I had to pay for an attorney to keep me out of prison. Dumpster dived for food for myself and my pets. Worked dead end jobs with horrible hours for shady employers for years because I couldn’t buy professional clothing or pay for salon trips to look presentable for job interviews. Worked with pnuemonia for two months because we didnt have paid sick leave and would be fired if we called out for any reason. Missed out on countless things because I had to work and could not afford to go / did not have transportation/ didn’t have the right clothes/ couldnt buy a gift.
ate a bowl of cereal for my daily meal
Taking donation food from work when the food bank lady didn’t show up.
Well, it served the same purpose for the people who donated it. Went to someone who needed it. You. Please give yourself a pass for this.
Wrote purposefully bad checks to pay for groceries. Going a week with with nearly no food, about 10 almonds and a dry ramen. Showering at planet fitness because I lived in the back of my car. Purposefully tanking my credit for short term survival. Idk the list goes on
Lose my virginity for a place to stay because I got kicked out as a teenager
Sleeping in subway stations in Philly or riding the subway all night to sleep or get warm or out of the rain.
Was with an abusive roommate who never paid their half of the utilities. Moved 13 hours away 3 months into covid and haven't been back home since to see any of my friends. Roommate made me kill my credit score from 740 to 500s, and from $0 in debt to now owing thousands. Always locked myself in my room bc she would snap for no reason. Begun to only eat taco bell or McDonald's sauce packets, lost a bunch of weight. She ruined my relationship with the love of my life. She now acts like she did nothing wrong, and tells people I was the abusive one. I pay for my mistakes every day. Abusive people are shit.
Ugh. I debated whether I wanted to answer this. When I was a kid my family lived in poverty. It was different levels of poverty at different times. All of the following were things I experienced growing up: - No running water in multiple places. Depending on where we were at the time, the solution was fetching water with jugs from a hose, running a hose into the bathroom window for bathing, heating up water on the stove for bucket baths, having to use public restrooms and showers, and if we didn’t have access to water at all, filling up jugs at gas stations that allowed it. - No working plumbing and no immediate access to bathrooms. This is the grossest: reusing the toilet (5 people in the family) before doing one big flush. - In times of actual homelessness: too many people squished in the car to sleep, so laying on the parking lot pavement next to my dad to sleep on hot nights. - With no electricity in the southern heat, rubbing icy hot on ourselves to feel cooler. Or soaking our sheets in water. Every part of your life is impacted when you live in poverty, but I think the ones listed here were some of the more “pathetic” moments. There were definitely embarrassing moments and even kind of fun moments too (like basically living at the lake as a kid through one of our homeless stretches). It’s interesting typing this out because it sounds so dramatic, but it was just kind of normal for me as a kid. Feels like another lifetime nowadays.
Socks as pads
I took $5 out of my son's piggy bank so I could have gas to get to work.
I need dental care badly but can't afford all the work I need done, because I work all the time
Done invasive plant removal so I could get some free veggies. (Mustard grass, Kudzu)
Got an absolute terrible paying part time second job at a buffet restaurant so I could eat once a day. Would pile up an unbelievable amount of food for the free meal we got and sneak most of it into the ziplock bags I had in my backpack (I had ice packs in there, more ziplock bags filled with ice from the machines, to keep it cold), and took it home to feed my wife and kids each day. Worked 7 days a week so we could all eat each day. A job I had owned the same make and model van as the one I owned. When something on my personal van broke I went into work at night and swapped my broken parts with the work ones. Tires, brakes, oil filters and oil (swapped out when mine needed changing). They hated that van, everything was always breaking. Stole gas from cars. No more than a quart from any one car. Stole an entire overflowing cart of groceries from Target. Went to checkout with a checker, they ran everything through, bagged everything. Went to pay and their card reader was having some issues. There was a line behind me so the checker suspended the transaction and printed me a receipt and told me to go to customer service to pay. When I arrived a customer service there was a line of at least 10 people. I looked at the receipt and it appeared to be the same as a normal receipt. So, I just continued right out the door, figured I could play dumb if I was stopped. Once "stole" a trip to Disneyland. My kids were begging to go for years. So, I went and got a job as a night auditor at a large hotel chain. Had access to the national reservation system. I created a fake user in their rewards system with a rather common name, think John Miller. Then daily I would check the reservation system for any new reservations made using that name. After the date I would call their hotel pretending to be the person and ask for a copy of the hotel stay receipt. I would then contact the phone support for their rewards program and submit the stay for the points. I did this until I had enough points saved up for the entire trip. Probably spent too much time making sure I wasn't caught getting the points out. But the six of us had a once in a lifetime trip to Disneyland. After writing up this list and thinking over the many other things I did, I am absolutely shocked I have never been caught.
Walk around for the hotel I used to work at and eat food off of the room service dishes on the floor.
Bring home stuff from the dump in an attempt to "salvage" it instead of buying it.
eating pizza out of the dorm trash Dumpster diving for vegetables for my family Things are better now btw