10 Frugal Lessons I Learned From Being Flat Out Broke

10 Frugal Lessons I Learned From Being Flat Out Broke

By Michelle   Saving Money   Invested Wallet

During the years I attended college, and shortly afterward, when I was about 21-22 years old, I was flat out broke. I was living in the middle of a big city all by myself and paying my bills on a server’s salary. I had zero savings and was living paycheck to paycheck just to get by; frugal living was a necessity.

To paint you a better picture of my situation, allow me to elaborate.

My Apartment 

My apartment was old, tiny, lacked air conditioning, and had bars on the windows. It sat right on the edge of downtown–I could either walk right out of my doorway toward one of the best hospitals in the area or left into a lion’s den of run down and disheveled housing, loiterers clearly up to no good, and bars on the window of every business along the sidewalk.

The drain in the bathtub was often clogged, and I usually ended up taking some sort of disgusting, lukewarm bath/shower hybrid every time I wanted to get clean. The sink in the kitchen had to be fixed multiple times before it functioned properly. I had no microwave–just a very small and very old oven.

Speaking of things I didn’t have — furniture. I had no furniture, save for a cheap Ikea armchair, an old wooden table with two chairs that came free from my Grandma’s house, and a mattress that I had classily placed directly on the floor of my bedroom.

My extremely small TV and a DVD player had been gifted to me by a previous boyfriend. They were propped up on top of a crate which also sat on the floor. I had one or two plastic shelving/drawer units scattered around to hold random things like shampoo bottles and bars of soap. My apartment was depressing, at best.

I would venture to guess that most would have considered it unlivable upon seeing it in all of its glory. Back in those days, I was taking frugal living to an extreme — and not because I wanted to. I was just completely and helplessly flat out broke.

10 Frugal Lessons I Learned From Being Flat Out Broke

1. I Can Live Without Things, but Not Without People

Surprisingly enough, my biggest problem was not that I had practically no money or objects to my name, but that I had virtually no friends. Meeting people in a big city is hard, especially if you don’t have the money to hang out in bars, museums, or wherever else you go to meet people.

Obviously, there are free ways to meet people — but I didn’t know what they were. I had spent most of my teenage and college years playing team sports, where friendship came with being teammates, and I had no idea how to go about meeting new people.

As a result, I ended up spending most of my time alone, which I do enjoy and certainly miss now that I have had children and sacrificed any sort of alone time I ever had. (Seriously, why do your kids want to watch you pee?) Despite that, being alone pretty much all the time can get a bit overwhelming after a while, even for the introvert’iest of introverts.

Eventually, I began to long for more people in my life, but I can’t remember ever wishing I had more things to fill my empty apartment. More relationships would have been enough for me.

2. Living Above Your Means Is Even More Stressful Than It Is Stupid

The reason I ultimately decided to move back home from my apartment in the city was a mix of loneliness and fatigue. I was tired of worrying if I was going to be able to pay my rent every month. I was tired of not being able to take a single day off of work, even if I was sick because missing one day of tips would send me straight into the red for the month’s bills.

Working just to live is exhausting. At some point it just became silly. I couldn’t even afford to go out and do any of the stupid fun things that the kids my age were doing. Why was I punishing myself and my finances when I had a warm, comfortable, and (most importantly) free home to go live in? My parents would have loved for me to move back home, so what was I waiting for?

After all, what is the point of living in a big bustling city if you can’t afford any of the bustles?

3. Frugal Things Are Fun Too

I had three main sources of entertainment when I lived in the city: people watching, going to the library, and feeding the ducks. I was basically an 80-year-old man trapped in a 22-year-old girl’s body.

People Watching

I often found myself jogging or walking around the city, both for exercise and just to see what was going on that day. My favorite area to go for prime people-watching was High Street, downtown’s main drag. Walking those sidewalks, I frequently wondered if it had been named for the state of the people who traveled it on foot.

City people are a different breed of people. They are exciting, outgoing, flamboyant, and just plain entertaining. So much different than the buttoned-up small-town folk that I grew up around. I found endless entertainment, just walking down the sidewalks, and observing. Never paid a dime for it either.

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