A discussion forum vaguely associated with the webcomic Templar, Arizona.
How can I eat well for cheap? What are there ways to save money that I don't have? The answer: POORCRAFT.
I think we should resurrect this project, and if Spike doesn't compile it then we all can pitch in with illustrations, I'll put it together; Maybe we can still publish it under "Iron Circus Comics"?
Is anyone still interested?
I am very bad at being poor (even though I am) and not qualified to write such a book. READing it though is another story.
mioche
Member
I'd be up for it. I am zombie-resuscitating the old thread by listing some ideas here:
-super-cheap bulk produce stands. It usually costs bus fare to get there, but once you're there, you can get produce for a week and more to freeze.
-when patching your pants, for the love of your soft, fleshy digits, place squares of old styrofoam or something inside the pants for the needle to strike.
-buy shoes that have replaceable soles. Cobbling is not inexpensive, but it is cheaper than a new pair of shoes (and an expensive pair of shoes now, presuming you pick a sturdy one, is far superior to six pairs of cheap shoes a year if you can scrape the funds together)
Honestly we probably need a section devoted to "Art Supplies When You're Broke." I'm too cheap to buy stuffing so whenever I knit monstrous 3-D things, they're filled with stained t-shirts or old socks.
(note: I am faux-poor due to some technicalities like having middle class parents who will cover any of my critical failures. However, I am ace at having next to no personal expenses).
FOOD AND YOU
- Learn to cook.
- Beans and rice, in massive, multi-pound sacks. These are your staples. Kept dry, clean, and free of bugs, dried rice and beans are indestructible. And a diet primarily consisting of rice and beans sustains a huge percentage of the world. also, they're easy to cook.
There are a million ways to cook beans and rice. Add a bouillon cube and cook the rice in stock. Add tomato sauce. Make it into a curry. Saute some onions and mix them in. Try different spices. Stir-fry it in a little oil. Make it a soup.
- You are now vegetarian, or at least off red meat. Animal flesh is the most expensive protein you can buy.
- You're also off juice and soda. Make your own beverages. Iced tea, iced coffee, lemonade, lime-ade, you can do lots. Have two jugs in the fridge at once, so you always have something cold ready.
- Buy your spices at the dollar store. They're cheap (of course) and serviceable. You probably won't find special Himalayan pink salt of whatever-the-fuck, but you don't need it.
- Eat seasonally. Groceries are usually inundated with in-season produce right after the harvest, and hold big sales to get it off the shelves. Your life doesn't have to be endless plates of rice and beans. Load up on fresh, cheap produce when it's available, prepare big pots of stuff from it, and freeze it.
- STOP EATING OUT.
Do you have a freezer? Use it. Frozen veggies are often cheaper and higher quality than fresh shit, if you don't have access to a farmer's market or a store with a good produce section. Additionally, if a store has a special on meat you can buy in bulk, prep it, and freeze it (I like to freeze chicken, beef, whatever in a ziplock baggie full of marinade. It soaks in the marinade while thawing in the fridge). You can also make stock, soup, red sauce, gravy, whatever in bulk and freeze it in small portions in the fridge. Chicken or beef stock is easy as hell to make, assuming you have some bones and veggies. I save the crap ends of carrots, celery, and onion peels and freeze them until I have enough to make soup with. I throw it all in a pot with water, salt, and pepper, and cook until it smells done, then I strain and throw everything out and either freeze the stock as is or add meat and chopped up veggies to make it soup.
Giovanna
Member
So who wants to tell me how to cook rice without failing miserably? Because I am a SPAZ and rice tends to hate my guts. Maybe I'll stick to Costco-sized boxes of pasta.
Abandon
Member
Clothing:
One way that is pretty awesome to save money is to bleach your own designs on plain t-shirts, instead of buying an expensive one with the design already printed on it. The way I did it was to use Discharge Paste (terrible name for a product), following the tutorial on Instructables. The cool thing about discharge paste is that you can use it for silk-screening as well as simply painting onto the fabric.
You can end up with a great looking shirt that you designed yourself instead of paying silly amounts of money for some fancy shirt that is not original.
Instructables is a good website to mention in this thread anyway, as it has thousands of tutorials on how to do things yourself, which is usually much less expensive.
Food:
This is an absolutely amazing money saver as well, especially if combined with Brigids advice on freezing everything.
So who wants to tell me how to cook rice without failing miserably? Because I am a SPAZ and rice tends to hate my guts. Maybe I'll stick to Costco-sized boxes of pasta.
Buying a rice-cooker make cooking rice utterly foolproof. I have one and I love it. It has a timer, cooks white rice, brown rice, rice porridge, and more, and will keep what it cooks warm as long as it's told.
Hobby Lobby and Michael's and the like has really cheap featureless monochrome t-shirts. They're not nearly as nice as the ones from a real clothing retailer but they are -really- cheap and they last long enough to justify a $3 or $4 purchase.
A possible book outline?
Poorcraft: An Introduction
- What is Poorcraft?
- Who can do Poorcraft?
- Why bother with Poorcraft?
Chapter One: Housing
- Living communally will always be easier than living alone
- How to set up a commune / co-op, or What to look for in a communal home / co-op
- Ways to keep the bills low, if you live communally or not
Chapter Two: Food / Clothing
- Which foods are cheapest
- What to buy, and how to buy it
- What to grow, and how to grow it
- Some words on nutrition
- Goodwill!
- Drug stores!
- Craft stores!
Chapter Three: Cooking
- Cooking in bulk
- Canning / freezing
- Some recipes
- Communal cooking
Chapter Four: Entertainment
- Free stuff is everywhere!
- Fairs, festivals, parks
- Discount movies, theaters, clubs
- Hosting parties on the cheap
- Getting into events for free or on the cheap
Chapter Five: Skills, Employment and Education
- A word on college educations
- The library: Your good, good friend
- Internships and apprenticeships
- A weekend fucking around with C++, and other things that'll put you a mile ahead of conventionally educated peers
- Leaning basic carpentry, wiring, and plumbing
Chapter Six: Transportation
- Bikes, trains, and buses
- Car-shares and you
- Life without a car in America
Chapter Seven: Get it for free
- Freeganism
- Dumpster Diving /Curb Crawling
- Craigslist / Freecycle
Chapter Eight: Pitfalls
- Fake Frugality ("Real Simple" magazine and other ploys)
- Phony Environmentalism / "Green" Marketing
- Theft! Don't steal, idiot!
- Shady dudes and chicks, and how to deal with them
Chapter Nine: References and Resources
italics = I would love everyone's input on this, as my own knowledge is limited
bold = I don't know the first thing about this, help me with this section!
So who wants to tell me how to cook rice without failing miserably? Because I am a SPAZ and rice tends to hate my guts. Maybe I'll stick to Costco-sized boxes of pasta.
Questions I would have for the book:
- Is making your own alcohol cheaper than buying it?
- What would the cheapest way to travel be? How would you "poorcraft" your way through a backpacking trip through Europe, for example?
- I would like to rank the suggestions in the book by difficulty, from Beginner to Median to Advanced. whaddya think?
- What sort of warnings would you include?
- Where would the "pets" section go?
- How would I begin to approach a section of medical care?
Also, Working title:
POORCRAFT: A Cartoon Guide to Frugal Living
Hi, folks. I'm new here. Spike told me about this thread so here I am. I'm going to be publishing a guide to frugal living in the next six weeks or so and have been talking with Spike about doing an expanded version with plenty of her thoughts, artwork, and general collaboration. The suggestions here are great. I love Wagner's ones in the old thread, especially since they look a hell of a lot like mine. Metal Teenager, huh? Nice. Sadly, I'm ungawdly busy for the next twelve hours but I'll be back as soon as my geeky body can handle it.
Btw, while what I *really* want is for everybody to wait two months and buy my beastie, there are some great books out there already. Food Not Lawns is wonderful. Also if I had to give only two suggestions to somebody serious about adopting the low-cash life, while there are plenty of excellent ones above, two that people should take verra seriosly are:
1. Get a superb messenger bag and ideally carry an itty bitty expandable bag inside of it. You never know when you'll come across the good stuff and having the right bag makes all the difference in tons of aspects of low-budget life.
2. Strip out the junk. Get rid of the umpty-zillion cracked mugs from tag sales, the cheap pots that are impossible to clean, the lamp you never get around to fixing, the random clutter that you've been meaning to use "any day now" since Johnson was president. A key to keeping with a frugal life is to live with a small number of very useable and beautiful things and ditch the dreck. Then customize what you have to (learn how to stain, paint, refinish) so you can be happy with the stuff that needs just a bit of help. In a hundred different ways, this will keep you going when it's been a while and you're tempted to spend rent money ("I can pay a week late - nobody will notice") on something stupid. Settle in, have some tea in your elegant china cups (there are plenty at Goodwill if you don't need them to match), relax by the light of your vintage candlesticks (see above), lean back against the vintage throw hanging on your mahogany and cream checkerboard pattern wall and remember how good you've got it already.
You'll know when you're doing it right. It will be when you see folks in some yuppie restaurant or end up glancing at a Pottery Barn catalog, and feel sorry for those poor shlubs who have to tolerate such shoddy and crass lives.
Giovanna
Member
Everything that can go wrong with rice usually goes wrong. It burns, it's undercooked, it boils over, it's like I'm cursed. Rice cooker sounds like it might be a good investment.
A Poorcraft comic would need mascots.
This is Penny and her dog, Nickel. I like Penny because she's
- ethnically ambiguous.
- cute, but not beautiful.
- practical-looking, but without being aggressively bohemian.
- easy to draw. This took me about ten minutes to draw and ink.
- easy for other people to draw, should it come to that.
The style is slightly "1930s cartoon" with bendy noodle limbs and Pac-Man eyes, but I think that would draw people to the book. You would be hard rpessed to find someone who didn't find that style charming.
Very nice. Not to mention in the 30's there were often cartoons about hobos and poor people and the like.
I would be willing to do pages or illustrations for this if need be, but I don't think I could be witty enough to come up with the copy on my own.
Questions I would have for the book:
Is making your own alcohol cheaper than buying it?
We've got some friends who do home brewing, and I'd be more than happy to crunch the numbers with them this week. I'll get back to you on this with more precise numbers.
How would I begin to approach a section of medical care?
I am all over this idea.
I have no idea if I'd be able to help with any content, but I volunteer to proofread and edit, if it's needed.
A dummy page.
Obviously the whole thing couldn't be straight comic pages, that would take a long-ass time. But i imagine even the text pages could have a hefty dose of illustration, like this one. I'm using some of Rustin's tips on indoor gardening to do a demo.
OKAY NO MORE ART FOR NOW GOTTA DO TAZ LATER GATORS
Questions I would have for the book:
- Is making your own alcohol cheaper than buying it?
Yes, plus once you've gone blind, you'll save a lot on electricity.
Abandon
Member
Another note on home brewing:
It can take about a day or two to fully steralize everything for making your own beer, and you have to have some way of keeping it at a constantly warm temperature (I forget the exact temperature for beer, I'll check later) for the entire time that it is brewing. It is worth the result though.
I was going to suggest that I could get in contact with a friend of mine who brews his own PoitÃn to ask him exactly how he does it, but as Woods pointed out, having people go blind after trying to make their own 90% APV drink might not be the best plan.
By the way, I would love to help out with this as well any way I can.
We should probably have a section on basic sewing/knitting/repairing clothes, incidentally.
Abandon
Member
- What would the cheapest way to travel be? How would you "poorcraft" your way through a backpacking trip through Europe, for example?
Last year I was backpacking around europe for a month, and from talking to the other travellers I picked up some nice hints for saving money.
If you must stay in a hostel, be sure to book it in advance, and try and work out how close it is to anywhere you are going to be visiting while in the country. If you find a dirt cheap hostel that costs 15 euro in a taxi to get to and from, it's not really worth it.
Also, be sure to check out websites like Couchsurfing, which is all kinds of awesome. People register their house if they are willing to put up travellers for free on their couch for a couple of nights, in exchange for meeting a new person and swapping stories. Be sure to check out the review scores of the people, some may be slightly shady, especially older men who specify only accepting young female tenants.
Zip-lock bags. I cannot stress this one enough. Live with these. When faced with a hostel stay that provides free breakfast, these little bags will let you stretch the snagged food out for a few days at least.
Avoid tourist traps. That means buying anything outside of a supermarket in most major european cities is a big no.
Don't be afraid of eastern europe. The difference in price is just silly (two euro fifty for a litre of really nice, high quality wodka versus paying 12 euro for a vodka and coke in a club) and there are some really startlingly beautiful places to visit for free.
In terms of what to pack, taking your own medication, alcohol-based hand wash (after a day solid on a train you will appreciate it), travel soap and detergent for washing clothes, and your own camera will all be very handy.
Decide what you want to do before starting out. If you have specific destinations and activities planned, you will be less likely to get bored and spend money on random crap.
Finally, remember, there are worse things than sleeping on the street (provided you have a properly insulated sleeping bag, not the kind you would take over to sleep on the floor of a friends bedroom when you are ten).
fishcake
Member
gol durnit you darn city-slickers dun know the firs' thing 'bout huntin' game
I am serious though. I myself have never hunted, but I know people who do, which is good enough. If you happen to know a few friends who hunt (and not just for sport), and you still wanna have meat in your diet, it wouldn't be a bad idea to cozy up to them. Sooner or later they're gonna get the big one, and their fridge ain't gonna be big enough for all that yummy flesh.
Get used to nonstandard meat, though. The crowd I personally know have relatives who hunt seals, which resulted in seal flipper pie finding it's way to my doorstep.
Would there be a good place for any simple financial tips?
I find that setting your money up in a way that doesn't let you drop money on useless crap easily is a really easy way to save a ton of money. I have a savings account and a checking account. I only keep a certain amount of money in my checking account, and i try to never ever ever ever take money out of my savings account unless it is an emergency. I just pretend that the savings account isn't even there and that the money inside of it is unusable. When I get a paycheck the money goes into my checking account, and then I keep however much I need to replenish my checking balance and shove the rest into savings, never to be seen again until I really need it. Because I am only thinking about how much money I have in my checking account and not how much money I have overall, I don't get that "extra" money burning a hole in my pocket, begging me to spend it on useless crap every month. It's a really simple step but it has helped me tremendously.
I myself have never hunted, but I know people who do, which is good enough.
God yes. I've never hunted before personally, but I've lived around hunters all my life and I absolutely love wild game. Venison is delicious, as is rabbit, pheasant, bison, elk, squirrel, and whatever else you might russle up. It is delicious. A lot of people are all "hunting is cruel" but I feel that the animals have better lives than their factory-farmed counterparts, because they get to run around in the wild before being eaten.
Abandon
Member
That tip about the saving is really a good one, Kory. I used to get paid weekly, and had a savings and current account. I set up a standing order so that the morning after I got paid every week, X amount of money would automatically transfer into the savings account. That way, you can spend all of your money every month while still saving up quite a nice lump.
I've never hutned, but I've always wanted to and would LOVE to hear about any inexpensive ways to catch/hunt/kill game.
I've always thought of it as a fairly expensive hobby, but I could be wrong.
Would something about snaring rabbits or pheasant be appropriate? And maybe home meat and egg production could go in the "advanced techniques" chapter....
I've always thought of it as a fairly expensive hobby, but I could be wrong.
It CAN be a super expensive hobby, but it doesn't have to be. I work for Bass Pro Shops, and we have a giant range of hunting stuff, from super duper expensive luxury crap to simple cheap stuff that gets the job done. However I've never done it myself so I don't know any specifics for hunting. I DO know that fishing is pretty damn cheap! Bass Pro sells rods and reel sets for as low as 20 bucks, and while there are a ton of different little plastic baits out there, a cup of nightcrawlers is good enough to catch fish. And fish are delicious.
I set up a standing order so that the morning after I got paid every week, X amount of money would automatically transfer into the savings account.
Yeah that's a good way too! I think I have my parents to thank for getting me into the habit of just putting a chunk of all my money into savings, because they forced me to put half my Christmas/Birthday/Gift money into a savings account. It sucked when I was doing it, but was great when college rolled around and I actually had some money. The whole idea of just routinely shoving a little money aside is so easy and helps so much for saving.
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