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File: 12828841225.jpg-(104.52KB, 400x358, 1252029557034.jpg)
269191 No.269191
Hey /baw/,

I recently signed a lease on my first apartment, and will be living on my own. I'm really nervous about my financial situation, and am planning on working 30-40 hours a week (on top of working an unpaid internship for 20 hours a week), and am foreseeing myself barely making rent each month.

Therefore, I would like to know how to live on as tight of a budget as possible. How much should I expect to send on living expenses every month? How/where can I get the most for a small amount of money? What, besides laundry and food, should I prepare to spend money on? Will there be enough for me to buy weed? How do I live as frugally as possible?

Thanks for any and all ideas, /baw/!

Expand all images
No.269192
GET

A

ROOMMATE

No.269193
>>269192
Sadly, I'm renting a studio apartment that is barely big enough for a futon :(

No.269194
>>269192
BUT HOW WILL HE GET HIS SPANK ON

No.269198
>>269191
Don't eat out. Learn to cook cheap healthy(ish?) meals.
1 energy saving light bulb per room. Don't leave anything on standby. An old guy from work unplugs EVERYTHING when he's not using it or leaves home. A few months ago he paid $12 for all of his electricity usage.

No.269199
... Peanut butter is high in calories and generally low in price. Think of buying foods based on particular nutritional needs.

Don't forget basic toiletries. I'll think of more later.

No.269201
Buy EVERYTHING with power consumption in mind. If you can, order things online instead of in-person. Get coupons. If you eat out, do it at cheap places. Shop at low-price boutiques. Buy used. Learn to love piracy (a $300 computer can save you thousands on games, movies, books, and music.)

No.269202
Plan your meals out in advance, and only buy what you need to prepare them.

No.269205
>>269202
Some things are fine in bulk so long as he/she plans to eat them. Rice, pasta/powdered drinks, etc. cereal goes stale surprisingly fast once opened.

Expiration lifetime for milk: skim>low>2%>whole

No.269206
>>269205
Skim is shit, though.

I'd recommend Silk, but that's kinda expensive.

No.269207
>Will there be enough for me to buy weed?
>How do I live as frugally as possible?

Wow...

>>269206
Skim is made by taking real milk and mixing it with water. True story, I saw it done.

No.269208
File: 128288777881.jpg-(63.93KB, 300x525, 125939142292.jpg)
269208
>>269207
Hey man, I'm just wondering. It's not a necessity.

No.269209
>>269206
My roommate used to buy silk but switched to rice milk because the soy stuff spoiled way too fast. Granted, the early stages of soy milk spoiling manifest as "thick and unpleasantly sweet" so it's still drinkable.

No.269210
>>269208
If you're seriously concerned about living frugally, no you can't. Granted, my definition of "living frugally" is consuming nothing but water, crackers and vitamin pills.

No.269213
Invest in a large, easily sealed bag of brown rice. Oatmeal's not a bad idea either.

No.269214
Forget Savemart or whatever supermarket is popular where you live, and seek out the stores in the hood - lower-income areas, ethnic stores, whatever. I get a months worth of veggies, rice, beans, bread, fruit, etc. for less than thirty bucks. And you really don't need meat. Spices/herbs will be dirt cheap and last a long time, and if you learn to cook simple stir-fries, soups, etc. you'll be eating well. Use a hot plate if you don't have a stove, or even if you do as it can be cheaper than using the stove. There's also food banks out there, run by churches and colleges and the like.

If you need to buy something, try thrift stores, junkyards, and dumpsters first. Shoot, if you see something by the side of the road check it out. I always find chairs, sofas, tables, even my favorite pair of sneakers I still wear in empty lots and stuff.

Also, find out local peak hours for electricity and gas. You may end up doing laundry and cooking at bizarre hours, but you save money. Never turn on lights unless you really need them, use power packs for all outlets and switch them off when you're not using anything.

If you don't have a car, walk. If you do have a car, walk. Try carpooling or something, and only drive when really necessary.

Take short, cold showers. You'll get used to it, and it really wakes you up in the morning.

You don't need cable or even a tv, not if you have internet. Cancel any pricey cell phone contracts with texting and unlimited minutes and shit, you don't need that.

That's all I got.

No.269215
Also, there are ways to put off paying your bills. Mix up companies and stuff like that, then call and spend a few hours on the phone explaining, complaining. If you persist and play your cards right you can get away with it, but don't do it too much.

No.269216
>>269210
Oh yeah, WATER. Drink only tap water. Hunger can be calmed by water.

Pro tip: Backwash can make bottled water taste funny. Leaving the sports tip opened allows air in and it will taste fine. I don't know how it works, I just know it does.

No.269226
Yeah, cooking at home (With Dan Eaton)...but how does one do this when you have laziness and/or coming home late in play?

No.269228
>>269226
Cook ahead and freeze it. Overcome your laziness. After a couple of months you'll get so used to cooking that it'll be easy and you won't be too lazy to do it anymore.

No.269250
You want to get the maximum nutrition and fiber for your money and frugality? Just buy box after box of Total cereal.
http://www.totalcereal.com/nutrition.aspx

Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Add in some cheap stew and soup to supplement the enzymes and protein you NEED in your diet and you can eat /healthy/ for around three dollars a day. That's assuming you eat an entire box everyday, which is unlikely since there's probably six servings IN the box.. so.. eat as much/frugal as you please.

Assuming three dollars a box, that'd be about a thousand and one hundred dollars a year. Five hundred and fifty-ish if you don't eat enormous bowls worth like a tubbo every day.

No. If you're living hand to mouth, you need to be amusing yourself in renewable, replenishable ways and not buying weed. Even playing old video games and using pennies worth of electricity would be money and time better spent than buying weed, because you'd be doing the equivalent of smoking the same joint you'd have bought with the money but allocating those resources somewhere else.

You also want to save your money and not buy useless, trivial shit. If things are that bogus, then you're most definitely going to feel the crunch when something INEVITABLY goes wrong for you, be it a cavity, illness making it so you can't work, car trouble, family member getting ill, or what have you. An entire years worth of rent carefully squirreled away, as soon as you can acquire it.

When you can, buy quality products. Shop around. Look for obsessed nerds on the internet who've essentially become obsessed with the quality of a particular trinket; they exist. For instance, a good thermos and some campbell's soup will keep your meal hot for lunch. Not warm, not tepid, it'll keep that motherfucker hot.

As stated elsewhere, ask about a roomate. Try and find one that'd agree to the terms and you'd be able to tolerate them.

No.269252
i hope you enjoy ramen because youre gonna be having it a lot

No.269255
also smoke mad weed itll help deal w/ being broke not like these pussies on p4c who think playing super nintendo is a good replacement

No.269258
>>269255
>implying playing oldtimey vidya isn't performed on weeeeeeeeeeeed

No.269262
File: 128292157883.jpg-(33.68KB, 500x375, deeeeeeeez.jpg)
269262
>>269255
ilu 2

No.269267
Let her pay for it

No seriously I lived in the woods for two months on nothing but rice, peanut butter, and vegetable rationing. No electricity, books and outside only. Hardcore or go home.

No.269269
File: 128292581060.jpg-(73.27KB, 406x197, 1261601373613.jpg)
269269
>>269255
This.



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