[TheProdigalModern]

In several threads on CGR of late, there has been much discussion between members about being in less than ideal financial situations. So here's a thought: how about a thread dedicated to little tricks that make life a little more bearable for those of us who can only afford the finer things on payday (if we're lucky).

My first contribution is this post, which details how to cook rice and beans in the microwave so one's palette can take a break from Ramen every once in a while.

Note that one does not have to be currently living check-to-check to participate in discussion.

EDIT: Not all contributions have to be food related. For example, one can talk about making their own laundry detergent, or the most efficient way to kill rats.

[Chinchilla of Doom]

Well, one thing I do to help change things up is eat Ramen dry sometimes. This may sound weird but it is good. You crush the Ramen up before you open the pack, poor the pack into a ziplock bag or a dish that has a lid for it. Open the seasonings and dump it into the bag or dish, close it off and shake it up. Then you just eat them like chips. It is just a change if you happen to be on the Ramen diet.

[ICallHimTurtle]

A package of thirty small corn tortillas is $.88 in my neighborhood. Buy the cheapest in-season veggies once a week and you constantly have a changing flow of tacos, tacos, and more tacos. Add rice for a twist.

Wrap anything in a lettuce leaf. A head of lettuce also runs about $.90.

Learn to love veggies without dressing. If you can't, start off squeezing a lemon or lime over them until you can. Eating a whole raw bell pepper makes for a filling, $.50 meal.

I have more. I'll be back.

[Pauler]

eggs are a pretty cheap source of protein...i could eat an egg in a fortilla all day. really cheap meal.

[bobthecockroach]

There are a lot of real foods which are just about as cheap as ramen:

Bananas
Beans
Bread, especially if you bake it yourself
Brown rice
Cabbage
Carrots
Chicken, leg quarters or whole
Corn
Eggs
Lettuce
Oats (make your own oatmeal)
Onions
Potatoes
Squash
Sweet potatoes
Yogurt

These things can all be had around $1 a pound.

Here's an idea of how to put it all together. Get a small chicken (around $3.50 at $1/lb), 2 onions (around $1), a pound of carrots ($1), and some brown rice (we'll use $0.50 worth). I'm going to assume you have spices and mayo already.

Boil the chicken with one of the onions and a few carrots. Remove chicken and strain stock (throw away the spent onion and carrots). Chop up fresh onion and carrots and saute in the pan. Add half the chicken meat back to pot, plus the stock and a cup of brown rice. Season to taste. In 45 minutes, you'll have delicious chicken soup.

Take the remaining chicken and mix with a little mayo and some spices for delicious chicken salad.

I've gotten 6 person-meals (3 meals for 2 people) out of a single chicken this way. Total cost around $6, or $1 per meal.

[Pauler]

+1 on the leg quarters...dark meat tastes better anyway

[TheProdigalModern]

Here's another tip for those with small children:

Rather than buying the really expensive cloth diapers, learn how to fold a receiving blanket and just buy a diaper cover for the days at home.

[Chrysostom]

No smart phones or cable tv. Strip down any other monthly service costs that you can. (Here's looking at you, DVR. An Internet connection and Netflix subscription can replace all that, and you won't be caught watching TV for no reason ten hours a week.)

No frivolous trips to Starbucks, or whatever is like Starbucks to you. (I hate Starbucks but could spend $5000 a year at Half Price Books. Cigarettes are definitely bad. And going to bars.)

Eat out only as a planned social function. Cook other days. This especially includes breakfast and lunch. Bring your lunch to work.

Take out cash at the beginning of the month to cover all discretionary expenditures. Seeing the cash leave your pocket will make you want to spend less, and when it's gone it's gone, unlike with a credit card.

Research and plan every purchase in advance. Know what you want and be willing to wait until you find what you want at a good price. For instance, if you're buying a bed, be willing to walk out of the store and/or come back for a sale if the price is too high. If you're buying a TV, wait for a sale -- it might be good to go without a screen for a month or two! If you're buying a car, leave the dealership if you're not getting the deal you want, on the car or the trade-in. If your car (or whatever) died and you have to buy now, you don't have the luxury of walking out, so find five different cars you would be willing to buy and find the cheapest one that's reliable and clean in the range of mileage you're looking for.

Buy everything used. This works for everything from clothing at Goodwill to lawnmowers to video games. I love craigslist.

Of course, generally avoid used electronic hardware (televisions, computers, etc.), but do build your own computer. With a few instructions printed out from a friend's computer it's really not that hard. Or find a friend who can do it. This works best if you have a small group of people who all have the skills and tools to do something for the others, so between the whole group you're covered.

If you're not buying used, at least buy things at a deep discount. Know what you need months in advance and wait for it to go on sale. Big days see huge sales at TJ Maxx and outlet malls.

Stay a few years behind on new technology; if you lived without it this year, you'll live without it for the next three years. I normally like to buy stuff when it's in the third generation; right when they are making the switch, the final second-generation models will sell for a tiny fraction of their original price, because they've got to get the stock out of the stores to make room for the next stuff.

Make your Christmas presents, or buy them the week after Christmas. Or at least have the money saved up to buy them by Thanksgiving. I normally either develop a things I would like to have and put them on a list, so that people can get me things I really enjoy and I don't throw money away during the year at every cool new thing I want, or ask for gift certificates. Gift certificates are a good way of going out to have fun without developing a habit of going out so much that it gets costly and stops being so fun, and instead of having junk pile up at your house you do something social.

Fix things until they die. Fix them yourself unless the tools to do it would cost more than hiring somebody (or buying a friend pizza and beer, if that friend owns the tool).

Use a library card.

Take an inventory of everything you own that will need to be replaced, from cars (and car repairs) to couches. Figure up their cost and their lifespan. Each month, save the needed money. For instance, if your car will be $12000 to replace in ten years (I picked the price because it's easy to do the math), save $1200 per year or $100 per month. If your TV will last 10 years and cost $400, save $40 per year or $3.33 per month. Then you pay cash for everything you buy, and if there is any month leftover in a month you know it is really, truly extra money that you don't need. We normally buy whatever dishes are on the clearance rack and keep them until they break -- yes, that means we put something like $1 a month into that short-term-savings account so that we can replace glasses and plates and colanders and pots and pans in five or ten or twenty years.

Trade down on your big expenses, i.e. transportation and housing. You can almost certainly live in a smaller place than you do -- just make sure to keep it clean and picked up! And if you are married you can probably make it on just one car unless you have a work vehicle; the other vehicle can probably be replaced by a bicycle, motorcycle, or public transportation.

Look through everything in your house once a year and throw away everything you didn't use during the last year. If you have it for a very particular purpose (say, you have one suit and only wear it to weddings and funerals) that's OK, but otherwise pitch it. You'll start to hate how much stuff you're throwing away and therefore start to buy less stuff. Having trouble with your clothes? Once a year, turn around every hanger backwards. After you wear the item, replace it with the hanger turned back the right way. One year later, you'll know what you didn't use -- throw it away.

Learn to love empty space. Instead of filling up your house with stuff that sits around, try to create space in which you can do things yourself, like dancing or reading or brewing beer.

Do it yourself if possible. My wife cuts my hair -- something to do together that's basically free and doesn't involve digital media. Cook food instead of getting pre-packaged foods.

Drink water instead of soda, juice, or beer. (That may be a bit extreme. I like it though.)

When you take a vacation, go places that are cheap, like visiting out-of-state friends or going camping.

Have a minimal cell phone plan, or if your lifestyle doesn't require it cut the cell phone altogether.

Avoid iPod, iPad, GPS, and whatever other nifty gadget comes around unless you absolutely need it and/or can get it for cheap. For instance, the HTC Flyer, a good tablet, was recently reduced in price from $500 to $100 at Best Buy -- now you can own a tablet, and hopefully you've had a year or two to figure out whether you would really use it. If you just absolutely will not use maps (do it yourself! no gadgets.) a decent GPS can now be purchased for under $50.

Go out to the park or lake at least twice as much as you go to a mall or other shopping place.

[to_be_released]

My favourite recent discovery is bacon hock. Just boil it with veges of your choice for a few hours and you have a delicious soup that costs relatively little. I tend to be extravagant and add half a bottle of beer at the beginning too though.

[TheProdigalModern]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Go out to the park or lake at least twice as much as you go to a mall or other shopping place.

If you have kids, buy a zoo membership, especially if your local zoo is part of the Reciprocal Zoo Program. Our local zoo's membership is super cheap, and we often use our free zoo admissions rather than going to the park; likewise, we've gotten into a lot of places we would not have been able to afford without our FOTAZ card.

The initial costs paid themselves off in the first two months.

Use a library card.

Yes. For Pete's sake, yes.

Eat out only as a planned social function. Cook other days. This especially includes breakfast and lunch. Bring your lunch to work.

This seems like obvious advice to me (we ate out once or twice a year when I was a kid, and that included multi-day vacations), but I cannot count how many people I have heard complain about not having enough money who eat out four or five times a week. $20 can stretch a lot further in the kitchen.

[Ted Logan]

Learn how to use your library's library-share program, if it participates in one. Then, get your movies from all the libraries in the area and cancel Netflix.

Go through your pantry and bathroom and write down all your regular purchases (esp. toiletries, food, etc.). Then go to a warehouse club (Sam's or Costco) and figure out how much each product costs per ounce/item/etc. to buy in bulk. Then comparison shop each item on the list at your local Target/Wal-Mart, etc. Now you know which items are really cheaper at Sam's.

Here's a hint: Meat and fish are much cheaper at Sam's. And they freeze well.

[ICallHimTurtle]

Freeze meals.

Freeze vegetables you know you won't finish off before they go bad - most everything defrosts well into soup and this is the season for soup anyhow.

Cook a bag of chicken (boil, it's healthier) and leave it season-free in the fridge for quick grabbing on - you guessed it, tacos.

Really look at the bills for the month. Make a list of can't-get-rid-of (car insurance, health insurance, rent etc) and a list of really-dont-want-to-live-withouts (Netflix, cell phones, etc). Now cut throat eliminate one thing from your RDWLOs. Just do it. If you still miss it in a month, retart the service. You'll likely be just fine without it.

Don't buy anything fun when you first see it. wait a week or so. You might forget it exsists (yay, not spending money) or it could be on sale then. It's worth finding out.

[bobthecockroach]

You are really obsessed with tacos, aren't you?

[Mara]

When I make ramen, sometimes I will wisk an egg up and put it in right after I add the little flavor packet while the water is still boiling. Also add some mixed vegetables. That way you have a delicious soup that is less annoying and boring than plain ramen, and it's still cheap.

I got a little George Foreman at Goodwill for like, $3. Cook whatever cheap food you want on there.

Get a cheap sewing machine. Mine was $100 refurbished on Overstock.com. You will be able to fix all the clothes you thought you'd need to throw out. Also, modify them if you're getting bored but can't afford new clothes. Also learn to sew your own clothes because lots of times that's both cheaper and cuter.

[ICallHimTurtle]

Originally Posted by bobthecockroach

You are really obsessed with tacos, aren't you?

Absofreakinglutely. There isn't much you can't stick in a tortilla.