“Foil Over Your Windows”: 30 Of The Best ‘Poor People’ Life Hacks

The public library is my best poor person hack. It’s cool in the summer, warm in the winter, quiet, there’s fun stuff for the kids to do, clean restrooms and water fountains. When my kids were little we kept a steady supply of arts & crafts, books, and dvds from our local library and it was a god send.

You can use vinegar, baking soda or dish soap to clean almost everything. You don’t need to spend money on a bunch of specialty cleaning products. Also, don’t throw away torn/stained clothing or towels. These are your new cleaning rags. Now you don’t need paper towels.

Find the nearest food bank and get yourself some food. There's no shame in that. In my experience they never gave you any expired/government type food it was all good quality stuff. I remember I got a whole chicken once. It fed me in my roommate for about a week the rest of the food lasted through the month.

It’s not exactly from “growing up” but when I was going to my community college i knew a guy that just kept taking one class a semester for a renewed student ID so he had access to the gym and common areas and library to keep occupied and sane while trying to sort out the rest of what was going on. The gym helped him stay healthy enough and get his daily shower and the school library kept him mentally occupied.

Beans and rice are actually quite nutritious.

Before you pay to have something repaired, watch YouTube and see if you can fix it yourself. Try to borrow the tools to do the job. Clean the tools before returning them in a timely manner, and it’s more likely they’ll lend them to you again.

Learning how to make food from scratch has saved me so much money. Also budgeting my life away; along with having a detailed list of bills owed. It’s important to know what money is going in and out at all times.

I also think it’s important to treat yourself to something, maybe even once a month, to something you want. Even if you’re drowning. I got so caught up in prioritizing bills and debts for a couple of years that I barely even looked at myself, now I try to treat myself to something every paycheck after my bills are payed.

I always bought the special offer 50c fruit and veg in Aldi. A lot of them freeze well so I'd chop them and freeze them. Fruit went into smoothies or on breakfast cereal, and veg went into soup or other dinners.

If you can't brush your teeth, eat an apple instead to clean your gums and freshen your breath, or use baking soda on a damp rag to gently scrub your gums and teeth.

Remember, just using a toothbrush is about 80% as effective as using toothpaste. Even if you can't afford toothpaste, brush any way.

Sleeping can help you in forgetting that you’re starving.

Potatoes are the cheapest and most underrated food you can buy and do different recipes with. Dinner was basically $0.15 each.

Still poor here. One of my hacks involves groceries. I only have one reusable bag for shopping, not a super big one either. If all the groceries I buy can't fit in this bag, I start putting things back. Usually, the contents of the bag work out to be $50 - $60CDN. It's a nice way of not going to overboard when getting groceries, and this keeps me within my budget.

1. Thrift basically everything. You can find really cheap clothes, furniture, kitchenware, and more in good condition for pennies on the dollar. Especially true if you go to a thrift in a a nicer part of town.

Not really hacks, but just what I did. I read somewhere that sweet potatoes were very nutritious. So I would walk to the store and buy a sweet potato every day, then go home and bake it in the oven and eat it, plain. Also also ate tons of rice and fried plantains. Plantains were cheap at local restaurants at the time, like a dollar for a big paper carryout box.

I worked at a place where coworkers would sometimes order food (not me because I was broke). I always offered to clean up and would snag their uneaten food for myself. I even went through the trash to pick out good stuff if they ate while I wasn't around. I know this sounds disgusting but I was so broke and hungry I was wasting away. My pay barely paid my rent so I had nothing left for food. This got me by for a quite a while. This was in New York in the early 90s and there was a recession going on.

Use every gym's free trial.

When I was poor and young, I would go to art openings for the snacks and free wine.

Quit wasting $ on restaurant food, buy store brand groceries and learn to cook. Don't buy bottled water, reuse a jug and fill with tap water (might depend where you live).

Buy generic brands! It's the same s**t under a different label.

Buy a pair of redwing boots yes, that particular boot company is a bit on the expensive side but you buy one pair. You have boots for a lifetime because if they break and you have the receipt, the redwing boot company repair or replaced them for 100% free or a discounted price as well a little bit of me and coil, and an old T-shirt can go along way to keep in your boots in good condition.

Never skip the discounted meat section of the grocery store, if it looks good & expires tomorrow or the next day you can have a good protein for half the shelf price.