How do you deal with being broke?

Crime. That's the answer. I don't suggest or recommend it, but people who genuinely can't survive or achieve any meaningful quality of life while participating in the social order will violate it instead. Some people shoplift; others engage in elaborate plots to rip off their landlords and creditors, but there's no squaring the circle. I'm not in the same boat, but I've been there, and it's only a stroke of good fortune that kept me from a very different road.

Hey man, first off I'm sorry for the situation you're in. I'm not sure if you are looking for commiseration or advice, so if I offer some please know comes from a place of love.

I was in a similar spot to what you're describing. I am not going to suggest that you can budget your way out of poverty - that's absurd, the only long term solution (aside from fixing a lot of broken systems) is more money.

That being said, this is something that made my situation more bearable. I cut up all my credit cards. I created two checking accounts, one for bills and one for everything else. I added up all my monthly bills and divided them by the number of pay periods in a month. I split direct deposit so that one checking account got the bill money and the other the rest. I never touched the bills account outside of depositing money and paying bills - I kept the physical debit card locked in my closet.

This helped me keep on top of my bills and keep an eye on how much discretionary money I actually had to spend. I found the alternative was piles of late fees when I forgot that x bill was coming out of this pay check and I stupidly bought a donut that week or whatever (man it sure is expensive to be poor).

Like I said, it's not a solution and I don't know your situation. No amount of budgeting is going to help if you don't have the income to cover your expenses, and I wish that that fact wasn't treated as a moral failing by so many people.

It ain't pretty, but here's how I got through it until I started bringing in good money:

1. No takeout or eating out ever
2. Get a water filter pitcher and a nice water bottle. Drink only water.
3. Every paycheck, take out $200 or whatever you can afford. This is your "fun and gas" money. Your gas, hobbies, social life, and dating comes out of this fund. Whatever is leftover when your next paycheck hits goes into savings.
4. If you can rent a physically smaller place, do so. It will save on utilities.
5. Don't buy a car unless public transportation or biking is not viable in your area.
6. Meal plan with the goal of zero food waste. So if you plan to buy an onion and will use half of it in one meal, make sure you have another meal planned that week that uses the other half. Do this with every ingredient. If you're careful and creative you should never have to throw away food. - On this note, get good at cooking. It's much cheaper to cook from scratch.
7. Cancel your streaming services and learn to pirate safely.

This works but isn't a great way to live. You need to combine it with a plan to either make more money or relocate to a cheaper area while maintaining your current income.

Buy fewer candles

To echo what some people have said, if you haven’t changed jobs in the last year or two; you absolutely should do so.

As you’ve realized, there’s only so much you can do on the cost side to have things balance. Cost of living has risen relentlessly, but thankfully in many areas wages are finally growing too, and new hires usually get the higher rates.

So not changing jobs frequently, especially in the industries you mentioned, is just leaving money on the table.

Aside from that, definitely look into trades, but also look into local government, healthcare (like being a patient scheduler at a hospital), really any industry you are looking to break into as a career.

They really need the help now, especially for entry level positions, and if you do a good job, you could parlay that into a career in an industry you’re excited about.

So spend like 30 minutes each day looking for jobs, and don’t stop until you’re hired. Remember, even if you end up hating it, you can always quit and get rehired immediately in industries you’re more familiar with, because they also desperately need help too.

I'm not really the correct person to answer this, since I'm not struggling to the same degree as you are.

However I once heard a good tip on how to save money. Most people, when they receive their salary spent it first on the necessities (food, rent, etc) and then save the remainder (if anything is left). But instead you should first save a percentage of your pay before spending on any necessities. That way, your brain will try to make the best use the remaining money to survive the best it can

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You get some space by taking a better job and/or better budgeting

OR

You become numb to the grinding system

I realized that paying rent was like throwing money into a bottomless pit. Obviously buying a house was out of the question so I bought a used RV and moved into that. I added solar panels and all the VanLife type stuff and now my biggest expense is for the storage unit I put all my stuff in. No more rent, no power, water or most other bills. StarLink is expensive but with all the other expenses eliminated it's not bad at all.

Are you living with a roommate? If not, you can save money by doing this.

Have you thought about changing careers? Look for federal, state, and city programs that will pay you to learn a trade. Or look for a job that has on the job training — like an electronics or factory job, or doing tech support.

Do you qualify for assistance programs — like food pantries or food stamps? There’s no shame in it. Helping you get back on your feet is what these programs are for.

If you don't have immediate obligations such as kids, older, or sick family members/friends.

The industry is full of crap but I went from food service to driving a semi. 4 week school paid for by the company(after signing a 1yr contract) do that one year knowing it's going to suck and then find something local you like or stay on the road and do online school/self study. Most all of the big US based companies have partnered with online colleges to heavily discount the cost.

I did it as an emergency to save for a year and get out but ended up liking it and now work in safety with no school, just experience.

Going to be USA centric because I don't need you doxxing yourself, just giving you ideas of what to look for where ever you happen to be.

If you've got solid internet access and enough work/life stability that you can start doing research into any government assistance programs and community groups that help navigate the processes that are in the area.

I live in the USA, and my partner and I finally got poor enough that we could get enrolled in Medicaid (Medicare is for the old folks). Partner found that the Medicaid would pay for a pretty serious surgery they'd kinda been needing for years (the final price that the government paid was a bit more than $30,000).

Back when I spent more time in Reddit, there was a post on in r/AntiWork about some USA government assistance in paying for internet (and possibly a cheap smart phone). I looked into it, found we qualified, and the process wasn't too hard to navigate on my own.

There is a program called LIHEAP (i think that's the name) that is assistance in paying for energy bills. We didn't qualify for it last year when I looked into it but my good paying job last year was temporary and now I'm in a job making about 600~800 less as a part-time but permanent employee. I should probably find the website and see if we're poor(er) enough to qualify for some help paying for electric bills.

Food stamps (WIC, SNAP) for assistance buying groceries. This one can get weird as they tend to be run state by state in the USA and the requirements can often times be super shitty. If you've got a stable job, even if its shitty, that might make things easier.

Look around for local food pantries and see how they work. Don't be surprised if they're run by churches and you've got to sit through a sermon before you get a bag of groceries. You might get lucky and the pantry is funded by a grant and needs part time workers they will be willing to kick a bit of paid work you're way (assuming you have the time).

Its desperation money, but there is Amazon's Mechanical Turk program. Piecemeal work online or doing survey's for a few cents a pop. It can help buy a tank of gas or replace a cheap busted cell phone but I've never made much more than that when I spent a whole lot of time on it. When my anxiety about money gets really bad and I need to put the energy somewhere I'll fire up my account. I'm pretty sure this has an international reach so it won't be geo blocked. FYI, it doesn't play will with VPN's.

I've tried a few "do consumer survey's online for money" websites and the only one that I ever had any "success" with was called InboxDollars. And by success, I mean that a few times over the years, I could spend many hours during a month and scrape together about 30$. Though I think its a USA based company and its geo locked. FYI, it doesn't play well with VPN's.

During the pandemic in the USA, i spent most of the time without work of my own (I live on a working farm with my spouse so one of us had an income) and spent about 18 months out the first three years of the COVID pandemic selling blood plasma. If you've got two days a week that you can spend hooked up to a machine that drains your blood, separates it, and pumps in back into you (and leaves you feeling pretty crappy for the rest of the day) and can handle lying pretty still with a huge needle in your arm, the pay was kinda okay. I'd get kicked in the summer months when it got too hot for my body to recover well enough between visits but I also have to do outside farm work that you might not need to do. If you do this regularly, it does leave some pretty gnarly scars in your elbow pits, which can lead to some amusingly random conversations with strangers in public.

In the USA, its seems like the US Post Office doesn't like to post their open jobs outside of their internal job posting database. Though it seems like USPS jobs are either "work crazy hours, where ever we tell you" or "barely work any hours".

I spent about a year and a half working at a University museum as a museum curation lab technician, no experience needed, didn't have to be a student or plan on going into the field. Which, maybe it was just me being lucky, but it was a pretty sweet job. Flexible hours, chill work environment, chill coworkers, surprisingly decent pay, got to play with old arrow heads and spear points and pottery sherds and sort through boxes and do paperwork about what was in them... the two negatives were that in my case what I found was a temp job and I spent an whole lot of time alone without human interaction (which I'm super cool with, but not everybody else is). This is another one of those things that probably won't be posted on public job search websites so you're going to have to dig around local university/colleges with museum collections and find their internal job posting site.

So yeah, I know in my mind taking advantage of assistance programs feels "wrong" but I've had to start getting over it and the things that I've managed to figure out how to apply to and qualify for have definitely been worth it.

A lot of the good answers are already posted. I'll share my experience.

A bunch of people I know, including myself, rose out of retail hell through customer service jobs. My first one was making $55k/year (in 2023 dollars. This was a while ago because I'm old) and jumped decently after a year. Plus it was steady work at a desk with insurance. I switched to another company doing the same kind of thing after a year or two, and was able to transfer internally to IT. A couple years later I made the leap to engineering. I don't have a computer science degree. It was all experience and teaching myself.

A bunch of other friends took similar paths, and now have higher paying jobs.

But this was in new york city, where there are a lot of startups looking to hire people. And because the companies were small, the jobs weren't a cubicle hell where you read from a script. I got to actually help people troubleshoot when I was doing IT. That first job I could just talk to people like people.

I don't know how different it is now or in other parts of the country. I'm not sure how much the pandemic and AI hype has changed the market. But getting a first foot in the door is really helpful. You can meet people and get on the job experience.

A lot of job listings might require a college degree, but enough experience can be a substitute. Also knowing people helps a stupid, unfair, amount.

Something had gotta break soon. Right? Right? How can this go on like this. I look around and how is not everyone collapsing?

I absolutely feel your pain and was in your situation for a long time. For over a decade as an adult, I lived well below the poverty line and was homeless for a couple stretches.

I obviously don't know you or your situation beyond what you shared, but I believe that you can improve your life just like I did. I was so poor and struggled for so long that I finally had enough and vowed to never be in that situation again. While the mindset helps, it was a long time of extra effort that got me into a comfortable position.

For me the biggest help was no one thing; it was a bunch of incremental improvements over about a decade. A jump to different jobs that pay even $1.50/hr more buy breathing room. I know you're not "buying too much avocado toast," but there might be ways to stretch your necessities budget; I hear that sometimes things get missed when using self checkouts.

Depending on where you are, there are hopefully food banks and living assistance services in your areas. If you need internet and don't have it, libraries are great places (and you can still check out books and movies for entertainment).

I wanted to write code for a living, so I got a computer science associates degree (not even a bachelor's); I went to school in the evenings and delivered pizzas when I didn't have class. This was on top of my day job. It was no picnic; I had a few meltdowns from being overworked and exhausted. You don't even need to go the school/degree route. We need skilled tradesmen. Pipe fitting, welding, carpentry, electrical work, etc... are always in need and they can provide a good quality of life.

My general view is fuck corporate loyalty. If you can jump ship and make more money elsewhere: do it. If you can't afford some recurring bill: stop paying it. You are more important than those business.

Look into assistance services now. Always be looking for a new job that will pay more. Identify a five year career goal and work toward it. It's not a today solution, but that was basically how I escaped being crushed by our system.

I wish you the best.

Gotta either cut costs or increase pay. When I was living on $600 a month I roommated up, I applied for food assistance (SNAP), I bought a shitty craigslist car rather than picking up a car note, and I stuck to cheap cell carriers.

The last one is a place a lot of people could save a few dollars. T-mobile has a plan called t-mobile connect that is $15 a month with a few gigs of data. Works fine. Actually still use it now that I have a better job.

Ultimately you need to make more though. Think about all the skills you’ve gained in food service and retail and apply for another job you think you’d be good at. Imo anyone can do low level office work, for example. Sounds like you’re in the US, so keep an eye on Craigslist and Idealist.org (two engines where the jobs available are usually actually available unlike most search engines). Make it a habit of scrolling through and forming an opinion about what you would/wouldn’t like. Make a resume to fit (use chat gpt to help). Lie about things you’re pretty sure you could handle no problem but have no experience with. Once you get a better job do the whole thing again with the new experience to pad your resume.

Can you donate plasma or white blood cells to the Red Cross? I go to their main center in Philadelphia and they pay $50 for a presceen appointment (1 hour) and $450 for the donation (3-4 hours).

I honestly just take as much care of myself as I can afford and hope for the best.

Ask for a raise. Find another job.

Keep a separate savings account. This won't increase your income but it's absolutely vital that you do this. I fully understand that you don't have money for this, but here's the idea: if you're already broke at the end of the month, then what difference does it make if you're broke one day earlier every month? Let's say you have a payout of €3000 monthly. That means you have €100 for each day of the month. Put €100 in a savings account and you'll go broke 1 day earlier, but you now have €100 saved for unexpected shit. Keep it up for a some months and you'll have enough saved to deal with moving/changing jobs etc. Eventually you'll adjust your expenses so you don't get broke even if you set the money aside. You can figure this out. This is how my wife and I saved up for our marriage. By going voluntary broke before it actually happened.

Okay, once you have some "financial security" saved up, do you have a budget account? Keep a budget account so you don't overspend. Only transfer the excess to your spending account, so you don't spend money that was supposed to pay for the rent/electricity/internet/food. Whatever is in excess is safe to spend.

If this is not possible, then your financial life isn't sustainable. Ask for a raise. Find a different job.

If you can, move back in with your parents

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I just cry.

If you don't mind sharing, what education do you have, and what are you currently doing for work?

I’m still living with my parents. I’m in my 30s. I’m unemployed. Yeah, I’m a failure.

stress eat

I crash at my friend's house.

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I'm assuming you are in the US. The problem with being broke is it is stressful. Stress impacts decision making, causing a cycle. The US is a capitalist society that educated people to behave as socialists with regards to business, career management, and employment.

The people that REALLY need financial planning advice can't afford it. Those that can use it to go from rich to richer.

The best thing you can do is get some help going through your expenses to see what you can optimize. Once you start getting a little bit of a breather, you will feel a lot better.

I've been following the FIRE community for close to a decade, so if you want, I can probably help you find some fat to trim.

This is going to be from my very American perspective on being broke. Your circumstances may be significantly different.

I used to be in your boat. I started working in the trades and being an apprentice at the same time. It wasn't amazing pay to start, but it was enough and significantly better than the minimum wage I'd been earning before.

The way I managed for years on minimum wage was the following:

1. Live with others. Spread the bills around, have some good times, and save money.

2. Food prep and creation. Spend a bit of money to save some time and effort. I own a rice cooker and a breadmaker. The rice cooker is a bit extra, but the breadmaker is wonderful. Just load in the ingredients, set it and let it go. You can go to work or whatever and come home to an awesome loaf of bread. Another lovely one is a slow cooker. I spent 2 hours and 12 lbs of chicken with other ingredients and made 7 meals for 2 prepped and in gallon bags that can just be dumped into the cooler and turned on.

3. Side work or donations. If you don't have family to rely on, another solid source of income is helping the elderly. 70+ year Olds often need help with daily tasks, from yard work to light bulb replacement. It may be a bit awkward to put yourself out there like that, but if you can put forward a decent enough impression at first, and you're honestly there to help, they will pay you a bit and be very thankful. As for how to find the elderly, either wander around or take on a political canvassing job. The listings for political flyers on where to go usually have an age listed with an address. You could also donate blood or plasma. It's very simple to do and (at least in my area) a quick way to get up to $100 per visit, which they allow up to 8 a month. Only annoying part of that is the diet restrictions. Hell, even a cooler with some Ice and bottles of water on the side of a road On a hot day can yield some mild results.

4. Couponing/second hand shopping/flea markets. Self explanatory. You can save quite a bit on food and some other stuff if you are willing to sacrifice your precious time to travel and hunt for deals.

5. {Risky} credit card. If you use it responsibly, there is free money to be had by spending money you were already planning to spend anyways. Getting a card with cash back, even with awful interest rates (mine is sitting around a lovely 26%) can be fundamental in earning you a bit over time. The way to do this is very simple. Pay for required items with the credit card, pay off the card at the weeks end. It doesn't do much for your credit score, but earning card points on money you already have to spend is the goal. The thing you want to avoid is having a remaining balance on that account near a pay period. If that even starts to get away from you, it won't be saving anything and actually costing you.

And finally 6. Government assistance. If you simply cannot make ends meet, applying for food stamps and/or medical insurance is something you should do. People generally don't want to think they need it or just don't know how to sign up for it. Having a bit of savings on food and at least some medical safety/help for any prescriptions is always useful.

The thing you will definitely run into as you more than likely know is a complete lack of free time.

When I had a job that didn't pay enough, I did side work. For me, for a long time, that was reffing mens hockey.

Another time I was struggling I approached my boss and said I know I'm not your best employee right now, but I want to turn it around and get into a higher paying position. What do you need me to do? Then I did it, and moved up.

5 yrs ago we moved to anew city and I started over in a new thing. I took a job that didn't really cover our bills, and my wife and I had to make some cuts.

But I wanted certain freedoms like the freedom to do my hobbies or take a vacation, so identified ways to earn additional income through the job I had (in my case it was handling little repairs like replacing smoke detector batteries and light bulbs, installing missing door stops and changing deadbolts). I've kept grinding until I took over for my boss, and I continue to handle repairs also. Effectively I work a job and side job at the same time 6 days a week. I work fucking hard, but I had nice vacations with my fam this summer, live in a good house and drive a good vehicle.

So honestly - and while I don't think this is how it should be - in the system we have, I just grind harder. I am amazed at my ability to do this now in my 30s and now 40s compared to how lazy (in hindsight) I was in my 20s.

By the way! I'm also pretty happy now because my job is (mostly) ok, I don't dread Mondays or anything most weeks.

I used to go over to my friends and they would feed me. They weren't much better off than me but they could afford to get some extra ramen and KD.

What's your social network look like, OP? For people in your situation, your friends and family will have to be your safety net. Shared resources can also bring expenses down.

What do you do for a living?

Do you have roommates? If not that is rather expected as a single guy with no family. Check you budgets but if you're working a mcjob, likely will not see any real future. Mcjobs are for kids or those that just want some spare cash or don't need the 'responsible' type of job. Job shop as many say here. Just do it. Keep in mind that real career type jobs that can eventually pay higher require you to take a real investment in what you want to do. Pick something that fits you in other words.

Sorry if it is kind of tough love advice. Most other posts have covered your typical suggestions but ultimately it comes down to solely the direction and effort you take.

Not in the same boat as you as I got decent financial education about saving money from my parents. Okay legit advice here. You have only two options. Earn more OR cut your expenses. The best is doing both. There's of course a minimum to expenses. You have to reflect on every part of your expenses, make a list of all fix costs that are not immediately changeable (rent, electricity, water etc) then make a list of changeable expenses (food, restaurant visits, cell phone contract etc). Then a list of completely redundant expenses that are not needed for survival which you've done in the last year/365 days. (New TV, cell phone, expensive clothing etc). Compare all of that and analyze what you can cut down. If your rent is high and/or your apartment is too big for you, move into a smaller one with the saved up money from above cost cutting. And on the side look for better paid jobs and change jobs/companies every 2 years. It's too much of a hassle to discuss with your employer why you should be paid more just look for other companies, statistics show this is the best strategy to get a salary increase. Sounds like your situation is pretty dire, so start right away! All the best, mate, hope it helps.

This isn't your situation, but this is how we did it while living very paycheck to paycheck. Plan and budget. We had a plan for everything. It hurt, but we planned our store trips, our meals were the sales and manager specials. We knew how much gas we were buying and which kid had birthdays and gifts to buy for, and we shopped ebay gift cards and scrapped by. We also made hard decisions, and it sucked. We cut cable, and other non essentials, we almost never went out. We were able to plan a path out, we refinanced our house, by taking a title loan on my car. We consolidated our cc debt.

What I'm trying to say is, you find a way. Maybe you can work towards a promotion, or a new career. Or find a different living situation which would be cheaper to help sort it out. Try not to lose hope, try to find a path to prosper. I'm pulling for you.

Similar to what others have said you need to make some changes. Figure out how the game works. Get educated. Find a new job, get certs, go back to school, rehab your credit, find a cheaper place, make moves.

What do you currently do for work? Are you open to changing careers?

Same, I honestly think it will end up with becoming a thief for food, probably living hidden in a house that doesn't belong to me spend the time in a sleeping bag too hungry for move, waiting to dying.

Organize with socialists, make use of mutual aid. Provides an IRL version of what you're seeking here- uou are in no way alone. This is how most people live and it is by systemic design.

There's a lot of power, and value, in making local irl connections so that when you need help or just to talk to people, you'll know that you have options. Also, some options take time, so getting on top of them now will pay dividends. Examples include food stamps and subsidized housing. Finally, lefties sometimes like to help each other get better jobs.

Of course I can also suggest ways to live cheaply, but there is a hard limit under this economic system and you might already be there.

Also please feel free to DM if you want to talk about anything.

Consider a genuine reboot.

Switch neighborhoods. Towns. Regions. States. Countries. The point is, change things up, big-time.

Don’t half-ass it, either; turn a page. Make a 1-year and 5-year plan. Get a room, not an apartment. Structure a budget. Learn a trade. Work out.

You can try to check which expenses could be avoided, look for a better job, study to get a better one in your spare time, get a part time job, do some random tasks in Upwork, etc

You could also legally move to another country and work remotely, earning $1k USD/ month should suffice to have a decent lifestyle almost anywhere, although gentrification is becoming an issue in some places.

Coming back to the stress, you could talk to a therapist and see what could help that situation. Maybe some journaling and life planning could help you identify what's going on with your life and how you can deal with it.

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find a non retail gig that most people wouldnt like to do that you wouldnt mind doing.

When I graduated university with an art degree I learned Linux and became a system engineer. Ten years later I'm not even close to broke. I'm doing quite well for myself. I taught myself everything I need to know about Linux, bash scripting, ansible, docker, picked up python, some php and JavaScript(node). I'm starting a side hustle selling custom built light fixtures and WLED installs for home construction. Im always working on new pieces to sell and looking for more custom installs.

I suggest joining a domestic terrorist organization. Become the solution. Accelerate our fall into a true third world nation.

Back in my twenties we never went out, no cellphones, set goals, and did things cheaply.