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What's the poorest thing you've done?
I was listening to an old Ricky Gervais XFM show and he was talking about how when he was a student he had to wash his clothes by putting them in the bath with him and some washing powder and splashing them around. Reminded me when my housemate used washing up liquid in the washing machine as he had nothing else. Then I was thinking of the week I had to spend eating basics noodles cause they;re 11p a pack
Lived beyond my means and rack up substantial debt over a decade
Cut up a load of smoked roll-ups to make new roll ups
zombie fags
Never heard that expression
but I like it..
in bad times used to buy a 3kg bag of frying chips from Lidl for about 40p I think
and just live off that for a week (using the same oil to fry them in throughout)
A week?
I spent my last three months at university eating those noodles (they were 10p in my day though). Not sure how I'm still alive. Still had to cash in a jar of pennies so I could pay for printing and binding my dissertation.
have bought like about 40 packets of noodles and a bottle of ketchup at the supermarket
no self checkout. Felt pretty awkward.
Would have been OK in Lidl
you just give them one, tell them how many are in your trolley (add a few) and they type it in. I often see people buying trolleys full of things like cartons of skimmed milk for some reason.
Fried flour and water in a pan
and garnished it with brown/tomato sauce my housemate stole from wetherspoons. Had to do this for about 5/6 days
Lived in a squat in Tottenham
with about 30 people and one toilet. Too many tales to tell. Not a very nice time in my life.
ps nothing poor about hand washing, I love it.
Oh man, that sounds amazing.
Tales please
Which tales
Toilet tales
Drug tales
The amount of pets everywhere tales
The crazy Hungarian tales
Crazy week-long party tales
Cooking tales
yes please
Duck tales
A woo hoo
Regularly wiped my arse...
...with pages ripped out of the Thompson Directory
"Piles, Doctor? B-b-but... how?"
<3
my ex housemate utilised economy white bread for this same purpose
ohh i once used a copy of my CV
that was not pleasant
was probably worse for the prospective employer you sent it to, tbf
once lived in a house with a plug-in air freshner
*shudders*
When I first moved to London, the month before I got my first salary paid
I had about £10 to my name and so managed the following:
- Bought the super cheap tescos own speghetti for 27p and tins of ratatouille - pretty good pasta and sauce for under a pound.
- Managed to blag a few free bus rides by producing just under £1.30 (the price of a bus ticket back then) and saying I had no more money.
- Bet a guy in the office over something I knew I would win, winner got lunch bought for them for the week.
- Went into hair salons and offered to be a hair model a few times, got free haircuts that way.
- Ashamedly went on a few dates with a guy just so I could eat a meal that wasn't Tescos own pasta. He even bought me my first oyster card. Poor guy didn't even get a kiss.
was the office bet
"i bet i'm not going to sleep with you!"?
Different guy from the date guy
but I didn't sleep with him either.
a sinister bet by the guy if that's the case
Or just a sucker for punishment
might as well just go for loads of haircuts in a month if you can't afford the cinema i guess
This one time at uni
I was so poor and all I had left in the kitchen was onions, garlic, beef mince, tinned tomatoes, red wine, herbs and spices, and some spaghetti.
I literally had no choice but to throw them all together and see what happened, and eat whatever the result of it was.
Never again!!1
:D
I spent the next three years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk, and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can't get the spices right!
Was pretty much flat broke most of the time when I lived in Canada, mainly survived on toast
Due to this, I once ate an entire black bin bag of 'dill pickle' flavoured popcorn that my housemate had brought back from the shop he worked in as no one was buying it. I also once helped eat an entire black bin bag of gone-off pink nougat bars. Fun times.
- didn't have money for the magic bus so showed the driver a 'code' on my phone and said it was an e-ticket (worked)
- didn't want to buy a student card (€10) so for six months I carried about a crumpled up letter from the university and my passport so that I would get student discounts
- asked a man in a kebab shop to buy me chips (which he did)
- regularly take my own cans in to the pub
-
- when I lived abroad briefly I couldn't afford to buy kitchen utensils or a kettle so used a saucepan to cook everything, including boiling water for tea :(
I did this for about 2 months when I first moved into my new flat
see also cooking microwave dinners in a saucepan.
I still do this
nowt wrong with it, kettles are for chumps
when my parents came to visit they were disgusted
and turned down a cup of tea
pfft...well la-de-da!
perhaps you should lay down a trail of rose petals for them next time too
:D
even your poverty stories are posh as
i shopped in morrisons once
;)
To be fair,
being poor seems like great fun. I don't know what impoverished people are bothered about.
ate raw spaghetti
due to lack of power, and sauce.
Thank fuck I'm not a student anymore
paying in coppers at the corners shop for a 4 pack of carlsberg
that was pretty grim.
Is this kik's new handle?
fu
The poorest things I do AT THE MOMENT
Never ever getting Taxis ever
Buying half lager shandies
Not going on dates
making my own pack lunch every morning
Only buying meat for meals about twice a week
Running and exercising outdoors rather that @ a gym
oh god i fucking hate people who never get taxis
i hate taxis
except for the karaoke taxi we got twice in one night once
I'll get a taxi if someone else suggests it
but I'll sit silently in a huff the whole journey. How's that for a compromise?
well it's more that I know I should get the bus
because it's really easy and often only a tiny bit more inconvenient for a massive saving, but I'm just always like 'pleeeeeaaaasse can we just get a taxi!'
poorest thing I've done
was bus it to & from work from Twickenham to Tower Hill every work day for a month or 2, took hours but I had to do it to get out of my overdraft, it was like 1 bus from twickers to Hammersmith, 1 from Hammersmith to Oxford Circus, another from OC to Tower Hill, something like that
What the hell is this kind of statement supposed to mean?
I'm lazy and hate being made to get the bus
fucking hell casseroles
Who the hell gets taxis in London?
It costs an absolute fortune and is often no quicker than public transport as you sit in traffic most of the time.
*high pitched, whiny, mimicking voice*
"ooh it costs and absolute fortune and is often no quicker than public transport as you sit in traffic most of the time."
+ only having non-penetrative sex (saves on jonnies)
+ having a beard (saves on razor blades)
+ growing my own lettuce and kale (both are pricey items in supermarkets)
eh?`
Just whip it up the bum m8
I never ever get taxis (actually that's a lie,
the last and one of only two London ones I've ever got was a free Uber ride)
I make a packed lunch every morning
I rarely buy meat (maybe once a month)
I run rather than have a gym membership
^I don't think these are "poor" things, that's just my... lifestyle?
its a lifestyle of poverty
Personally I'd like to live like a early 20th centry aristocrat
Taxis everywhere, lunching out every meal (either alone or accompanied), being a member of a sports club where I play tennis and bowls and such, then retire to the club bar for some shabs and bants
^this apart from the meat
I buy meat.
Taxis are well expensive.
Save loads by taking a packed lunch.
Who pays for the gym? Just run or lift sacks of bricks.
4/6
actually buying a pint of Tennents in the Union
Because I couldn't afford the extra 30p for a Guinness.
Just once, though. After that if I only had enough money left for a Tennents I'd just call it a night.
PEOPLE WHO
refuse to drink tennents
it's bogging
I'm really not a very snobby drinker. I'm particularly not very discriminating when it comes to lager. But I'd rather drink Carling than Tennents, because at least it tastes of basically nothing whereas Tennents tastes foul.
all cheap weak lagers taste almost exactly the same
any genuine belief that one particular cheap weak lager tastes significantly better/worse than another cheap weak lager is nothing more than pure habit and self-delusion. this is fact.
i too used to not drink tennents
because i was an inexperienced cheap lager drinker and someone told me that tennents was terrible while fosters was 'pretty good' and i naively assumed this was fact. and then i came to my senses and stopped pretending i could tell the difference between cheap weak lagers.
what about people who refuse to drink cheap weak lagers
at all? where are they in this equation?
I would rather not have a drink at all
than drink Carlsberg/Fosters/Carling.
allowed
you can drink whatever drink you like to drink, fitzcarraldo. it's only the pretending there's a difference between things which are exactly the same that i am taking issue with here.
have you given cat_race your password?
go away fidel, you have no place here
bet you only drink imported craft beer and artisan cocktails
you're having a total nightmare here t-shiz
nah, she's just dropping #truthbombs
as if I'd drink beer
i'm having the time of my goddamn life, pal
Tennents has a weird metallic tang to it
Even on tap.
All cheap lagers are created equal, except for Tennents.
aye the tennents metallic aftertaste is rank
don't get me wrong fosters are carling are barking too
an important part of growing up
is realising that it's best just not to drink a beer if you don't like it
I'm not quite there yet
and you also like green bananas
If you're actually tasting cheap lager while you're drinking it
I think you're missing the point somewhat
naw
who's up for getting epimer to do a blind lager taste test?
alright, but you're buying
i'm just gonna buy you three pints of tennents and you'll never even know
AHAHAHAHA. ha.
I'll know by the cold hard lump it gives me
Right around the diaphragm.
bet you 25p
you won't
this is getting too rich for me
Ahm lot.
You've never tried Tesco value lager
I couldn't manage more than four sips. It's rancid. Fosters and Carling are pretty wank, but they're heavenly compared to that shit
I've had that...
If you get it really, really cold it's just about drinkable (insomuchas it tastes of fuck all except cold).
that's true, i haven't
THEN YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS TAKING PART IN THIS DEBATE
i revise my assessment to
"cheap weak lagers that you get on tap in pubs"
HAPPY NOW?
Delighted
This is exactly the result I was fighting for.
<3
tesco lager is alright (not the extra value stuff mind)
yer
not very good that is it
neither is that 2% co-op lager.
boiled up a handful of brown rice for me tea
when staying on my own in a student house over summer
piled all my clothes onto the bed to sleep under
Waited by the bins next to the shop
for when they threw out their out-of-date sandwiches.
Aside from that I was living on pasta and jarred sauce, which I would stock up on like crazy whenever it was half price.
Student days.
I tell the bus driver I am getting off earlier than I am
so I can save 50p on the bus fare. I haven't gone as far as to ask for a "three stop hop" for a quid though. I walk a lot to save even more of said bus fare.
I always take a packed lunch to work, often leftovers. Picnics if we are out in the day. I save leftover rice from takeaways, freeze them, and add that to homemade dishes. That is assuming I have bought rice with the takeaway, I have been known to cook my own and just pay for the curry if I am forced to take part in a takeaway. I ate the prawns out of a thai green curry recently and there was a load of leftover sauce. That went in the freezer, ready to be added to some salmon or chicken I cook up one day.
I go out of my way to visit different shops, supermarkets and the like to get the cheapest of various items.
wait, are you reheating that rice?
Yep
takeaway rice, frozen, defrosted, eaten cold or hot. Never had a problem. Deal with it.
yer ma!
this post is, for once, absolutely what the thread deserves
My Audi
Is 7 years old.
That's just reaching peak age for an Audi...
My Audi was 16 years old when I had to have it put down :(
I don't like to think about the end
Too troubling.
I am already conscious of it looking a bit old though when I go to Waitrose, so might get a new one. Can't the judging looks!
Can't
*take
Bulk bought 72 chicken and pea frozen pies from
Farm foods with my housemate. Had two a day. Repeated.
the poorest thing youdidwas to buy 72 pies?
check out Marie Antoinette over here
You need to understand
That I think we spent £6 in total. Not each.
Imagine what those pies would taste like. Worse.
Oh and
Obviously do one, J. Have you even seen pork that's not pulled (excepting your mother) in the past year?
I'm genuinely surprised that the openign response to this thread...
...wasn't 'your mum'.
standards are slipping
I'm genuinely surprised that this thread
wasn't the response to opening your mum.
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4451003#r8194394
I got this delivered from Tesco the other week.
https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t1.0-9/p403x403/10437439_10100116424299413_1473551389015947844_n.jpg
That's not even all of them.
#yolo
WHY DID I PUT THIS HERE
That's what she said.
<3
Crumbs.
I've never been so poor as to had to resort to most of this stuff. When I was at university I was boringly careful with money. My parents gave me £200 a month to top my loan up but didn't exactly burn through it. Since then I've always made sure I've had savings in case shit got real.
My favourite poverty story was from that bloke from the Stranglers who was saying when he first moved to London he lived in the back of a van and ate nothing but Paxo for about 3 months. His shits must've been horrendous. Like curling out a lump of coal or something.
or steaming hot stuffing
Drank a beer I found on a wall on Saturday night
Using teabags that I'm not sure are communal - but fuck it it's tea
It was only like a third drunk when I found it, seemed a waste
was it tennents?
Worse
Carlsberg export
And then I spilt some of it on my friends pillow :(
I saw a guy do this with a beer yesterday
What made it stick in my mind was that it was midday and the dude was wearing a suit. Needs must I guess...
While at uni
Brought a 4 pack of Tesco Everyday Lager to a BBQ
Found and ate a tin of Mackerel for dinner on the way back from a night out
Swapped washing powder for value washing up liquid figuring it's pretty much the same thing. It isn't.
found... like found it in the street? : /
things have got pretty financially desperate at chez budget recently
we've been reduced to renting out one of the parking spaces, and i've made the 46 incher the principal television set instead of the 75er. to save on the leccy bill.
:(
a few times last year when we'd overspent a bit
We had to have only two courses at the bistro, and I'm ashamed to say this, she had the rump steak.
Rump! The lada of steak cuts
used to steal industrial sized public bathroom toilet paper
it absolutely wrecked my anus
when i could finally afford nice toilet paper it felt like i was wiping with fine linen.
shouldn't have
but I laughed at wrecked anus in work
I had some really shit meals at uni
I would buy the cheapest, shittest bread and use anything as a filling that I could find in the communal cupboards. Spam of course, I found tinned fish like sardines worked quite well. Anchovies was a nadir, I didn't realise what they were., I thought it was just another tinned fish rather than weird salty things.
It was only in my later years I realised you can live off lentils, beans and the like for absolutely fuck all. I even baked my own bread for a bit.
Ate a sliced, fried onion for dinner once.
More than once I've gone to another town for a gig or something
and rather than pay for a hostel I've just wandered round and round all night until the morning bus home.
I used to sit in the bristol subway (sandwich shop) after gigs when I lived in cardiff
once went and sat in my old uni library to read for most of the night
in the middle of exam time, and bumped into an aquaintance who was studying all night and knew i wasn't a student there anymore. tried to think of a way of explaining what i was doing there at 5 in the morning without sounding weird but i think i made it sound more weird.
I moved out when I was 16 to a houseshare with a coke dealer.
I had zero money, and I made a pot of porridge with water and sugar, and I kept it in the fridge and had one small bowl of it a day for about 2 weeks. Didn't even heat it up. That was mainly cause I spent my money on drugs and going out to Jilly's rockworld.
My housemates realised after a week of me being unable to get out of bed
that I hadn't eaten in about 8 days because I had needed to waste the only tiny bit of money I had left paying a police fine. After that I lived on a diet of sainsburys basics noodles (they've now gone up to 20p within the last year, how scandalous is that?!) bought for by them for about a month until the christmas break.
Oh, and various other things including
- Sleeping in 4 layers of clothes every night during a particularly harsh winter because we couldn't afford our heating bill.
- Getting our friend who worked at the Students Union to steal us a couple of bottles of vodka every now and then.
- I have never paid for the food on a date in my life. Consequently, I have never been on a second date in my life.
i used to do wash clothes in the shower with me actually
things like tights and knickers. would be well smug while have a scrub thinking i'm cheating life by washing my clothes and self at the same time.
used to karate kick the big fuck off toilet roll holders in the uni toilets and rob the massive toilet rolls - house mates would cheer as i strutted through the front door and held the roll up above my arms like simba.
haha when i was working for £4.60 an hour as a waitress and i was on the shop floor and some one would order a toastie i'd be like "one toastie for you one toastie for me, one slice of ham for you, one slice of ham for my mouth" as i was making them and then RAVISH it before my boss could come down from upstairs
in fact, wait, i'm still poor now . fuck.
not me but when i was about 13
i went with my friend to visit her dad as her parent's had split up a few months before. he lived in a bedsit. offered us some 'spaghetti on toast' for dinner, which we accepted. he then proceeded to heat up the tin by putting the unopened tin in the kettle (filled with water) and turning it on. amazing.
when i was a student i used to eat pasta with mayonnaise.
i still do a few 'cheapskate' things now because, y'know, recession and all that. self scan checkouts - most expensive veg through as carrots because they're the cheapest. often take my own beers or gin to the pub / gigs. growing our own veg as well now, which is pretty cool.
my grandpa used to work in a shoe factory and his work pals would deliberately make mistakes on the stitching so me and my sisters could get free shoes.
probably not the poorest thing he ever did though
he was pretty poor