Food banks. Look at your local church, synagogue, or mosque. A lot of them do community outreach and have some kind of food bank.

If you're skipping meals or you have $5 'til next Friday, the food bank is for you. Don't feel like you're taking something away from someone "more needy." It's you. You're needy. Take the help. That was a hard lesson to learn in my 20s.

I'm not poor but this always helps everyone. Wait for a while before you buy the thing off your shopping list. Wait for a week and reconsider whether you indeed need it.

If the answer is still yes, buy it. It is a must do for expensive things. Never break this rule for any massive purchase like a car or something!

Get a chest freezer. It's much more efficient for long-term storage than an upright fridge with a freezer because the cold air doesn't spill out when you open it.

Toss your incandescent and fluorescent lights. Get LED bulbs (not smart lights, just white LEDs). Where applicable, install timer switches.

Fuck cars, get a bike. A simple, sturdy one, like an onafiets. They run on toast and determination.

Understand the difference between having enough money to buy something and being able to afford something.

Unsubscribe from music/video streaming services. Return to the seven seas.

Maybe engage in some light tax evasion.

• Get a cheap subscription to a 24h fitness with warm showers, lockers and wifi.
• Combine with a library card.

This will allow you to live in your car or be homeless, in relative(!!!) comfort, and still be presentable enough to hold down a job.

Learn to fix things yourself. Mend your clothes, fix your bike or car, patch drywall, whatever. Learning to do things gives you the option of to save money doing it yourself. If you don't learn, your only option is to pay someone else to do it.

Take care of your teeth.

SLPT: Get depression! You'll lose all interest in most things, instantly cutting spending on those things by 100%!

I know credit cards can be a slippery slope for some, so learn how to practice financial discipline before getting one.

That said, if you're not paying with a credit card, you're paying at least 2 percent too much for everything you buy except the things that can't easily be paid for with a credit card.

That adds up big over the years.

Remember a lot of effort and money is spent into brainwashing us from young ages to be constantly be buying shit we don't need and to feel like we are living bad lives if we don't have it.

Remember it's bullshit, remember that you are more than the fucking trinkets and landfill filling they want you to trade all your time for.

Boycott shit, find any reasonable moral cause as a good reason not to buy something. There's almost always a good reason not to buy something that you don't need.

learn the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and make sure your money has a most bang for the buck in regards to shelter / food / safety

The library has all your entertainment if but it does require a change of mindset

stay away from anything that only has one type of use, find things that can be used for multiple uses and try and buy it used if possible

Thrift stores sell clothing for pennies on the dollar. You can put together a professional wardrobe for less then a new pair of Levis

It requires a bit of financial discipline, but having a credit card that you religiously pay off in full every month can be a really powerful budgeting tool when money is tight. It lets you combine paychecks or borrow from a future week's budget so you can take advantage of bulk prices or a really good sale price to stock up on things you use a lot of. And once you get stocked up on all your staple items, the money you would have spent on those things gets freed up for other things for weeks, or maybe even months at a time.

Speaking of stocking up on bulk items, my Costco membership has saved me a ton of money since I've had it. It might not make the best budgetary sense for everyone, but my membership fee more than pays for itself just with what I save on gasoline. Even when they don't have the best price on something, often the quality you get for the price still makes a lot of their stuff worth it for me. But even if I don't find a deal on something it's always nice to be able to grab a huge rotisserie chicken that I can make meals out of for most of a week for $4.99.

Wearing thick clothes instead of paying for heating.

Brush your teeth twice a day. Floss daily

Go for a 20 minute walk a few times a week

Don't have a pet

Prevention is much cheaper than dentists and doctors in America

Pets are amazing but if you're searching the couch for extra change for a meal they don't need to be in your life.

Buy solids, don't buy liquids. Solids are cheaper specially if you buy in bulk.

Don't buy drinks at fast food restaurants.

Eat less meat.

Drive less.

Pasta with cheese.

And beeing born in a wellfare state kinda helps ngl

If you have a Sam's or Costco in your area, you can get past the membership by using a gift card. You can also buy a gift card without a membership. Sometimes they're sticklers about it if you're there super early, because that's apparently "special members hour" or some shit, but the worst that happens is they tell you to leave.

If you can save up $15-20 for a 25lb sack of rice, it'll last about 100-150 meals, which means it's about 10-20¢ per meal. Just keep it in a plastic container to keep bugs out.

Get some cheap frozen vegetables and bulk, dried beans and you can eat pretty good for like a dollar per day.

Honestly it's kinda cruel that buying in bulk saves a ton of money, but the people that need it most can't afford to.

These two meals kept me more or less healthy as a student, even through "omg I have 10 eur to last me 2 weeks".

1. Lentils and rice form complete proteins when eaten together. Lentils are a staple, and very cheap. They should be bought dry. Look for Indian recipes for daal for inspiration, or just cook with some broth and fry up some garlic and onion to throw in at the end.
2. Fill up a casserole with potatoes to boil, but leave some room on top, use a lid and don't fill up water so it completely covers your taters. Mackerel wrapped in aluminium foil with some aromatics inside like bay leaves, lemon slices if you're not a fan of fish. Place the fish on top of the potatoes when there's 25 min left on them. This dish also consumes very little electricity, but most importantly it will provide you with plenty of omega 3, vitamin d and all macros you need. Super important for those who live places where you get little sunshine through the winter months!

A huge part of living poor is buying and selling items when you no longer need them. This applies to a lot of things but I have the most experience with cars. For the love of God, research exactly what you're trying to sell. Learn everything about it, it's features, age, learn how to fairly and objectively grade its condition, and learn what the actual value of it is (not just what you want to get). If you don't know exactly what you're selling, there are so many people put there who will try to get one on you by lying about it. The other day, I had someone tell me that my car wasn't worth as much as I had it listed for "because it wasn't one of the manual ones" for a model that was only released in automatic.

If you have any public drug coverage and you can't afford food, you might be able to get your dr to "prescribe" food (stuff like Ensure, Resource, etc) and have it filled for free from public exceptional coverage.

Cook your own food. Ready made meals will always be made with as much cheap non nutritional filler as possible. Learn how to use a few spices, buy produce that is cheap with the season and keep track of weekly discounts in your local stores. It will save you money, you'll eat better and it's rewarding to have a tasty meal in the end.

Also I'm surprised how many people don't seem to understand pricing in general. When comparing prices, see the price per weight or volume. That is money/kilogram or money/liter (substitute with freedom units). Money per package can be deceiving if you compare 75 money for a smaller package or 95 money for a larger.

Edit: If the need to learn spices makes you overwhelmed, start out with some spice mixes! Pick a couple of different blends that are different, like one Cajun Mix and one Mediterranean and one oh idk something else culturally generic. Also salt, pepper, paprika and bullion. There. You can make lots of different sorts of foods and learn on the way what spices you like. Don't be afraid to experiment. Don't get discouraged. Some stuff will turn out meh, but others will make you go wow. All of those are learning experiences for the future!

Buy the whole damn chicken, it's always cheaper, protein for 4 meals.

Take beverages with you from home.

You can fill an entire wardrobe with kmart clothes for $100, it's cheaper and more practical than even op shops most of the time. Maybe just don't buy your shoes from there.

Bottle sauces and seasonings can last a long time, and can dramatically improve the diversity and quality of your home cooking. Basic chicken, rice, and greens can be turned into a dozen different dishes depending upon the sauces.

Avoid subscription services like the plague.

There's always a few exceptions, but name brands are rarely worth it.

Buy expensive shoes. Well, let me rephrase that. Buy GOOD shoes. A good pair of QUALITY shoes will save you money in the long term as they will last a lot longer than buying many pairs of cheap shoes.

Don't take on debt if at all possible. If you use a credit card, try to pay it off each month. Don't get one with annual fees. Get one that has cash back not miles or points.

Learn to make your own coffee instead of buying Starbucks or whatever. A decent hand grind will last for a decade and cost around $50. A no name pour over dripper and filters are a cheap way to make coffee at home. Buy beans and keep them in an air tight container and they will be good for a month.

You can save money if you go without eating at least one meal a day.

Here's the trick I used when I was young and poor. I worked for cash with an estate liquidator, and I saw the passion some of the customers had for their collectables. I decided to develop that flavor of passion for a collection of $20 bills.

For me, the hardest part of saving money (assuming it's even a possibility) is avoiding the trap of saving to spend. The savings itself has to become a goal, and that can be really, really boring.

Another tactic I used was to always save double the value of a large planned purchase: if I started with $500 and I wanted a $200 item, I'd save until I had $900 before spending. That way my stack never felt like it was diminishing.

Cook all your meals in advance. Pasta, potato gem casserole, and a Thai red curry can give you roughly two weeks of lunches and dinners if you alternate well. You can add breakfast bowls of eggs, cubed ham, and potatoes and they’ll keep for a week, minimum (I don’t know how long exactly because a dozen eggs gets me six meals).

I usually pay around $50 every two weeks for food, plus a bit more if I’m running low on coffee or milk.

If you just eat egg fried rice using ingredients from Aldi you’re able to bring your weekly food costs down to about £2-£3 a week, I lived that way for about 3 months during the cost of living crisis. Sure it was only 1000 calories a day but I was able to get all the nutrients I needed from the ingredients.

A lot of times you don't need to buy containers, you can reuse the ones where your food came from.

For example inside my freezer there are three ice cream pots, but none of them has actual ice cream - it's tomato paste, chickpeas, cat food. In the past I've also reused margarine and requeijão pots to store leftover food, as makeshift planters, etc. The requeijão pots even worked as drinking glasses in my uni times.

Eat rice and beans for every meal.

Don't eat three meals a day

Buy tools from pawn shops and learn to service your vehicle or bike

Cold showers and dark rooms

Pick up a sewing machine from a thrift store

Basically DIY as much as possible. And steal anything you can.

My work made me get dress clothes, my solution was thrift shop bargain bin, just pick the clothes you like as long as they fit or are too big, and get them fitted.

It was cheeper then going to Walmart and getting worse clothes.

Not a hack necessarily, but worth repeating; if you can't afford to pay it off right away, don't put purchases on your credit card. Don't make the same mistakes I have in the past.

That said, if you can afford to pay it off, credit is probably a better choice than debit for most purchases. Build up your credit score and earn those reward points.

Sign up for a health savings account and USE IT. (United States specific advice.)

It lowers your taxable income. The only caveat is you have to remember to use that money to buy things you were already going to buy anyway. Convenient hack to know what you can and can't use: Doordash now labels HSA-eligible items at CVS. You don't have to actually use Doordash to see which items you can buy with your HSA card.

I've saved literally a couple thousand+ dollars and a shit load of time by cutting my own hair.

Buzzed is easy mode if you've got the head for it (definitely NOT a good look for everyone, so proceed with caution).

Actual styles are doable by feel / with a double mirror setup, but that ofc comes with a learning curve, and it WILL look janky until you get a feel for it.

I spent $30 on an electric clipper over 15 years ago - paid for three haircuts since then, which were all mandatory purchases in basic training. Easily the best $30 I've ever spent.

Also, super short hair takes like two drops of shampoo per shower, so if you go the buzzed route, you'll save a lot on hair products too.