Capitalism is hell so thought it be best we all have a space to both rant a bit and also give each other some insight on how we best get by. Remember that you don't wanna put anything too incriminating or personal since wreckers are always looking for dirt but maybe you can tell us about your "friend".
Mind you this isn't a neoliberal "pull yourself from your bootstraps" comm poverty will not be eliminated by simply making "better" individual choices instead think of this comm as a safe place to vent about surviving under capitalism and a place to share whatever hard earned knowledge you wished you knew of earlier.
To add from this from my sources never steal from Target they are more vicious with shoplifters.
I used to spend like $60 a month on streaming platforms. Justified it as “the one thing I do for myself”. Fuck that. Torrenting is faster cheaper and more reliable. There’s no missing a month even if my internet gets shut off I have my full library. Hell, I’ve run a little netbook off of a generator before to watch a movie
Internet where I’m at for the cheapest package is like $35, but the point still stands
EBT is well-worth applying for if you haven't. They'll means test you or whatever, but just deal with them and once you're on you'll be feeling a lot better about food stuffs
Hard earned knowledge: being straight edge saves you a lot of money.
You can get food stamps just say you are homeless.
Question: do you all feel limited in what jobs you can ethically do because of being a leftist? I feel like 50% of jobs are simply off limits due to not wanting to earth a living being an oppressor or exploiter.
Debt is a fuck. Student debt is a big fuck. Especially when you have no hope of ever paying it back since you have no degree, and no middle class income to show for it because mental health happened.
I'll try to get the Street Fight finance zine uploaded. Its really good for this.
I've been a patreon guy since 2016. Got a big backlog of physical zines that i need to archive.
Oh shit, i forgot about this. Lifes been hectic since the . I'll have a google drive up by monday.
Guess I can go first in recommending thrift shops when hunting for clothes :deng-drip:. May not always have what you like but I'm in the opinion if it made it to a thrift shop it's probably gonna last you a while. Also learning how to sew is super handy for making clothes last.
Going off that if you normally wear men's style clothing thrift stores tend to have poorer inventory when compared to women's style clothes. If you are fairly skinny then women's pants are usually fit fairly well, but shirts and jackets tend to not fit at all. Additional thrifting tip: spend the extra time (if you can) to go to the thrift stores in the rich areas every so often. They tend to have better quality and nicer looking clothes. It isn't totally uncommon for clothing stores that close to donate the dregs of their stock to thrift stores. It's still fairly good quality stuff though. One more thrifting tip: Goodwill and comparable chain thrift stores often have special "high end" and "low end" stores. The low end stores tend to sell in terms of weight of items sold, and the high end stores are likely to have designer or high end clothing. They also usually have nice suits if you are looking for something to do a job interview or the like in.
So I don't know, maybe this is obvious and common knowledge to those among us who try to be thrifty, as it seems like it's the kind of thing that must happen quite a lot. But a friend of mine was telling me about how clumsy she can be when shopping for groceries at a store with self-checkout. Like not a big trip for stocking up, but just grabbing a few things, usually using a hand basket instead of a cart. Being a good, environmentally conscious person, she always brings her reusable grocery bag from home and just keeps it in the bottom of the handbasket while she shops. Sometimes she'll accidentally drop smaller items (usually only one, sometimes two though) directly into that bag while shopping. Upon checking out, those items just never leave the bag during the scanning process, and the stuff that is scanned just gets piled on top. She doesn't even necessarily realize they weren't paid for until she gets home. Oops.
She told me she doesn't know how risky this is, but has been doing it for close to a couple years and has never had an issue. Said she figures if she ever did have an issue, it's not implausible that she simply didn't notice there was an item that went directly into the bag and never got scanned when paying, but maybe that's naive. I'd be very curious to hear whether or not others think my friend is being foolish and has just been super lucky so far.
That's really helpful to know, thank you. I've often wondered what the policies, either de facto or de jure, were for different chains or even individual stores (but not enough to investigate). I take it you just plain don't get the one-off freebie at walmart if the product is >$25?
My friend only has experience doing the self-checkout thing in regular grocery stores, but I'll be certain never to follow her lead when it comes to target. Might be worth mentioning though, that target does seem to have relatively lax requirements when it comes to returning products for store credit. I was successful in "returning" a vacuum cleaner I did not buy at target to their returns department and got a card with the cost of it credited to it. I would guess that's pretty dependent on the individual that you're dealing with in returns, but I only tried this because someone else had told me it worked for them. Whatever the case, fuck target especially for the shit you're describing.
Good to know about the situation at walmart. Again, thanks. I almost never go to walmart, but wonder if I might feel all the more satisfaction were I to lift there.
Genuine congratulations to the that person. I'd imagine that must have been a frightening experience for them (to put it mildly) but fuck yes if they got off ok (as it sounds like they did) then that's awesome to hear and I honestly kinda inspirational. But yeah, I can tell it really does take being smart and careful, especially if it's to be a regular and consistent thing.
Self checkout seems like the worst possible place to do it with all the cameras
I'm not sure I get this part. With what my friend was talking about, the only thing thing that really could be caught on camera happens away from the self-checkout. Yeah, items aren't scanned, but only because they're already in the bag, and unless the camera is directly above the opening of the bag, there would be nothing for it to "see" as being amiss. I do get that it's only at the self-checkout where anything less than legal really happens, if done with even a tiny bit of finese, the cameras should see nothing. They could however see the item going into the bag earlier, while shopping. I don't know, I could well be missing something, and suspect that's probably the case.
As for mask, yeah... I don't think the friend I keep talking about here would ever have started trying to do this were it not for the (perhaps false) confidence that wearing a mask provides.
Re cameras at checkout: Yeah, but they shouldn't be able to see that there's something already in the bag. If a camera caught you putting something in the bag further back in the store while shopping, and then I guess if they verified that the item never left the bag during checkout that could make sense. But it seems like it would be the first part to worry about at least as far as anyone spotting any "activity." I mean, you're not doing anything at checkout other than checking out the items in your basket.
A mask is generally understood to beat facial recognition the vast majority of the time [etc.]
Good to know for sure! You may not be an expert as you say, but you've had the necessary experience, and it's appreciated. I'd expect this kind of thing may be well-known in certain circles, but I certainly didn't know that, so thanks. Awesome. It does make sense, and of course it's applicable to a lot more than what we're talking about here.
Oh yeah, no I totally hear you. The nerve-wracking part for my friend, so she said, is definitely at the checkout, not during the shopping when she "accidentally" puts whatever in the bag. Because up until checkout, nothing untowards has taken place. And I certainly have taken a gander at all the little black bubbles in the ceiling and walls nearby the self-checkout area.
An unexpected item in the bagging area probably would give me a heart attack if I were her, but my friend said that's just never happened to her... so far anyway. BUT, as she explained it to me, that only happens when something is set on the side of the scanner where there's a weigh scale. The crumpled grocery bag brought from home never even has to touch it. Like you said, business is actually done in areas without all the bubbles in the ceiling.
Right! I know you didn't do that. Me either. My friend makes it sound tempting, but I don't plan on doing it myself any time soon. But it makes for fascinating discussion at the very least. :owl-wink:
Don't forget the sharpening strop.
Shit works on cartridge razors once your rip off the "moisturizing" strip.
Chest freezers and buying in bulk will cut your food budget down a lot, especially chest freezers.
You can freeze almost anything for a month or so, and pre-frozen packaged food can last years.
Clipping coupons for certain frozen items like Boca burgers or Frozen pizzas can cut the price in half when they are on sale.
Buying in bulk is definitely the way to do food if you can. It costs more in the beginning but you'll make dividends in saved cost and in health benefits.
Get a vacuum sealer off Craigslist or at Goodwill (trust me, 3 are there right now collecting dust). Save all your old food or, if you choose to live the omnivorous lifestyle, buy reduced meat and freeze it.
Get a pressure cooker (manual ones are relatively cheap; electronic ones are slightly more explensive). It will pay for itself in under a month. 70 cent bag of lentils, stew vegetables, and some leftover/thrifty meat is a week of meals. Also, pressure cookers are nice because they're fairly portable. Take it with you camping if electricity is available. Tangent: learn how to cook with a cast iron skillet.
Speaking of camping: it's the last way to have an affordable vacation. Fuck hotels and airBnB. Whether you have a tent or a van or a towable trailer, camping is the cheapest way to go and stay just about anywhere. For the truly frugal,, watch some YouTube vids on urban camping (I just recently camped out in Pittsburgh - shit was awesome and basically free).
If space permits where you live, get a deep freeze chest freezer for your garage or spare corner.
Shop at Aldi. It's more cost effective than the 99cent store.
Self checkouts at stores are usually where I seem to mistakingly forget to ring up 10-30% of everything I totally intended to buy. Places where I've had the most success: Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and nearly every grocery store. I don't do this at Target because they have on-site security, or Costco because they're about as ethical as a company can be in this hellworld.
If you like whiskey: look for bonded bottles of shitty brands. They're still cheap but taste remarkably better than nearly everything out there including somewas expensive blends. I highly recommend Mellow Corn and Evan Williams Bonded (white label).
It sometimes pays to buy big purchases in states with no sales tax. Similarly, if you know someone in the military or who works government, buying big purchases on base (like a tv) is tax free.
Long term investing (lol I know): fuck stocks. The best investment you can make now is upgrading your house (again, lol) to solar. If you can afford it, your return over 20 or so years will be 5x or more what you buy it for now, not accounting for inflation. There are ways to DIY it, including buying all materials from Harbor Freight and online but it seems you have to be pretty dedicated to do it this way.
Going to second thrift stores, depending location and store you can sometimes find functioning like new, or functioning but ugly things like crock pots and blenders which will save you a lot of effort and time spent on meals. Soups are the best, they're cheap, warm your home somewhat and they're easy to eat on bad teeth.
Dollar type stores (99 cent store if you're in CA) are good for staples like rice, pastas and beans if they're out at your grocery stores. Ethnic markets and pharmacies are other places to look for the three staples. Same for frozen vegetables, they're less than a third of the price of fresh and they're healthy and still taste reasonably. I'd also recommend getting spices in a bag vs the container, tend to be more and cheaper.
If you can get flour at your local store (I can't at mine, shortages are wild) you can try diy your own pasta without a machine, it takes time but if you have time its totally worth it at least once, its delicious, it'll be much wider than store bought but it won't take nearly as long to cook and it'll have a stronger flavor.
If you have space or are allowed access to land you can grow quite a bit from food scraps and seeds from things you get at the store that may grow in your climate. If you have access to a reasonable amount of light through a window you might be able to grow a small herb plant like dill in a pot, to have something green in your house imo is good for the mind. Fertilizer is nice but not necessary, you'll still get a yield, it just won't be say 100 tomatoes per plant, more like 25-60. If you have a lot of time to invest in gardening you can boost your yield without store bought fertilizer through your method of choice and the sweat of your limbs. Just a warning, lots of plants will cross pollinate, I had bell peppers next to jalapenos one year, that was disappointing.
On bad teeth clove oil/oil of eugenol is great at numbing pain until you can be seen by a dentist/dr. Ground cloves work too, just not as well.
To extend the life of electronics in general, and minding safety, imo its worth trying to learn how to solder, this is another thing I've had luck finding at thrift stores but you can get one on aliexpress (a year ago I got a functional one sale for about $17, idk what that equals in 2021 prices) and practice desoldering-soldering on electronics stuff people throw away. If you want to work on computers/car electrical you'll need at least an ok multimeter to go with it, sometimes you can find one at thrift stores or on sale at tool & hardware supply places. If you live in a big city you may be able to loan some (maybe even all) of this stuff from an electronics, plumbing and electric, specialist computer, or even hobbyist-style jewelry store (if you ever need electroplating stuff for gpu/mobo check there), usually there's a deposit though.
Something most can do is just keeping whatever computer dust free and in an environment with reasonable humidity (ideally not too hot) , maybe dust it out once every couple of months, more if you live in a dusty environment. There's lots of how tos on youtube, just keeping a rig clean and luck and you might be able to keep it for years.
Sort of similar with cars, if you can learn basic maintenance for it, keep up with it if possible, or at least know what the lights mean that can go a long with for preventing future problems (likely need oil if the genie light is on, break fluid if the break light is flashing, water if its hot, and so on). There's all sorts of youtubes for car fixes, just be wary that older cars may be easier to learn to fix but they tend to be rusty, so it's easy to bust a piece off anything if you're new or even just unlucky. Autozone and hobbyist shops will usually loan you all sorts of equipment out last I checked for a deposit.
I realize some areas have different laws on if you can even work on your own car at home. If you live with others and they have cars too check each other taillights+headlights+break lights+signals for function once a month, might save you a ticket, might.
.....some places made it illegal to fix your own car? what the fuck?
Yes, you have to fix the car in a garage, but none of the house have garages. Its obviously a big fuck you to poor. Its a law even in this rural as fuck place I live in, the cops will start driving by your house like crazy if you they spot you doing car repairs tho and seem to give you about a day to repair before you they fine.
damn, thats fucked. My BIL taught me car repair on the driveway of a suburban condo while stripping down and refurbishing a super fucked up drift rocket he got for cheap. Kinda place that would totally call the cops on us if they knew it was illegal.
Tool libraries should be a thing, they could have a garage with jacks and stuff.
Just have to work faster than the cops can circle and order parts first. When I was in the city the library did tool rentals, it was mostly sewing and yard stuff, but as a short man being able to rent a sewing machine to hem pants was gold. Forgot to add libraries usually (not always)have seed banks/donations where you can pick up seeds for a garden.
Issue with garage with jacks would be liability of people getting hurt or clunkers getting stuck for too long. It is a good idea, just not sure how to make it feasible.
