Crazy things you've done to save money

I got engaged to a skinny girl so I could buy a smaller ring.

I've heard of people doing this, but I could never do it myself. I'd be way too scared of getting busted.

I worked at restaurants all through college so I could eat...once a day. I started classes at 8AM. Then, go to work around 5PM & eat. Get off work around 10PM, then started homework until midnight or 1AM. Repeat for 8 years. Sigh.

You got it wrote:

Joe Paterno wrote:

I was a big douche bag trying to get a rise out of anonymous people on the internet.

I thought it was pretty funny.

that guy that did it wrote:

camped in the woods for 7 months

Did you really? Can you give some details? That sounds very interesting.

Went to all the lunchtime public meetings I could find in my city when I was a grad student. Toward the end of the semester loan money was running low. They always provide lunch at the meetings and it's usually actually pretty darn good (elected officials have to be at these things, so they provide food that is up to the standards of various borough managers and such).

They do take role and notice who is there, but I was a student in a city planning program at the time, so I could just tell them that I was there out of pure interest in the subject. This wasn't entirely false. A lot of the topics were interesting and pertinent to mys studies, and I also got to meet with a lot of the local officials. But I certainly wouldn't have been going to 2 or 3 of these meetings every week absent the free lunch.

Public meetings are really an underutilized source of free food. I was almost always the only person at the meeting who wasn't required to be their out of professional obligation.

ive been buying 40s instead of nice beer. you pound one after going for a run and it gets you drunk and only costs like $2.

Say Word wrote: At one of my old jobs, I used to steal toilet paper from work. I'd go in on Sundays and take a roll or three.

Are you saying you wasted gas to drive to your work to steal TP? You could have saved wear and tear on the car and gas by buying TP on the way or way home from work.

You really don't sound too smart with this stragegy.

seriously folks wrote:

ive been buying 40s instead of nice beer. you pound one after going for a run and it gets you drunk and only costs like $2.

Hard liquor is even cheaper.

I used to read the newspaper at the library every day to save 50 cents. This was just before the Internet arrived.

mwwwin wrote:

Take a flask to a bar...this can be a $75/night savings in many areas...my favorite is flavored vodka and just order waters - drink 1/3 of the water down, hit the bathroom and top it off with vodka...

I was teaching for 20k a year and my brother was still in school and bar backing. We didn't turn the heat on in our old apartment and we relied on residual heat from our surrounding neighbors. We ate ramen and leftovers from his job. Slept in my childhood single bed and he slept on the floor. A good night drinking was a twelver of Beast Light for $4.98 and a couple $.99 burritos. He used to wear army surplus combat boots out to the bars. We would get a dozen vanilla vodka airplanes (10 bucks) and he would tuck them in the top of his boots. Get to the bar and we would both get a coke (designated driver = free). Head to the can and drink vodka coke all night. Or he'd hit on an older chick, get her to buy us a couple beers, drink it, head to the bathroom, and pour in the bottles.

Had more luck with the ladies that 2 years than any other 2 years of our lives. And we had NO money. Work, run, eat, drink, try to get laid. And spend as little cash as possible.

Quit going to Starbucks for coffee, started making my own at home. Did you know that if you buy your coffee in bulk and use self-check out, you can tell the machine that you are buying something else in bulk like a dinner roll, and pay $1.50 instead of $8.50 which is what the coffee would have cost?

To save money on dry cleaning i used to donate my work clothes to goodwill, take the tax credit then go back to the goodwill and purchase my own clothes (no dry cleaned) for a couple dollars.

That's pretty smooth!

Love coffee wrote:

Quit going to Starbucks for coffee, started making my own at home. Did you know that if you buy your coffee in bulk and use self-check out, you can tell the machine that you are buying something else in bulk like a dinner roll, and pay $1.50 instead of $8.50 which is what the coffee would have cost?

So you steal?

Awesome!...funny how some of one's best times were their poorest times as well...perhaps because your mind/body is the real source of entertainment and you're not bothered by the silly material things...

asdasd wrote:

Love coffee wrote:

Quit going to Starbucks for coffee, started making my own at home. Did you know that if you buy your coffee in bulk and use self-check out, you can tell the machine that you are buying something else in bulk like a dinner roll, and pay $1.50 instead of $8.50 which is what the coffee would have cost?

So you steal?

Little known fact: vending companies often throw out "stale" product. That just means anything that reaches an expiration date. Some companies will wipe the date off chip bags so people don't complain, but, you can get a lot of free food if you ask. Also, most charitable organizations won't accept this stuff.

I wanted to call our company Crap in a Bag, but, couldn't convince the boss to do it. He thought it was hilarious. Imagine if you saw a big old vending truck drive up with Chester the Cheetah and the words "Crap in a Bag" three feet tall on the side of said fat wagon...

I can attest to this. A few miles away from where I work, a Frito Lay distributor has a warehouse. Once they remove expired product from store shelves, they bring it back to the warehouse and put it in a dumpster. If we were driving by, we'd swing in the parking lot and take a look in the dumpster and there would be full bags of Frito Lay chips, etc. and most of it was still good.

That gets me thinking, I'm gonna start a thread: "how to get free stuff...and things companies won't tell you they get rid of". I bet people could rack up if they knew all the little untold secrets.