Thinking about being poor

Every once in a while I catch mentions of a community called poor_skills and I decided to go check it out.

I read the last 20 entries, and maybe that isn't enough to get an idea of what the community is really like or anything but even after combing through the memories I kind of blinked because I didn't see a lot that had to do with the sort of things that I've picked up as mad poor skillz.

A couple of years ago, matociquala sent me a box. She mailed it to me all the way from 'merica. It made me cry. It had one of the nicest bean mixes for chili I've ever had, lots of red beans, some ramen pride, peanut butter oreos (because face it, you need treats) and all kinds of last-forever staples in it - plus a bottle of 100 vitamin pills that were basic and no-nonsense.

I was in rough financial shape, rough mental health shape. stillnotbored completely saved my bacon with a cash injection that wended its way through makeshiftdaisy to get to me, just when I needed it to get to me.

But I've had a lot of years of experience being poor. squeezing a nickel until it shrieked. and I know lotta you have been there too. and lotta you have crawled out from under debt. But the thing about poor skills is that sharing them is wealth, and I want to spend a bit of time talking about the poor.

Here's my first question:

When you hit a month where you aren't going to have enough for everything, what things do you do to make things stretch a bit farther?

( I always worry about where my next meal is coming from. )

What do you do?