Three ways to save money by reducing joy

Stephanie Coombes
3 min readJul 14, 2024

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Boy howdy I sure do wish I had a dollar for everytime I heard about the “cost of living crisis”. If I did, well, I probably wouldn’t be considering selling my molars to pay rent, haha.

But here we are! My rent is due every single month for ever and ever and I, once again, am trying to find ways to spend less money.

That’s the tricky thing about the modern world, isn’t it? Living does come at a cost. We can’t just sit in a swamp, eat toads, and become a cautionary tale for the local village children.

So with the employment market tough and my feeble swamp-starved body in CONSTANT need of being housed and fed I have to come up with innovative ways to save my precious, coveted dubloons.

While I think listacles can, largely, listicle my balls, I know the internet loves them. So here are some simple money hacks YOU can use today.

Get a side hustle!

In Les Miserable Fantine found the time to sell her hair while working as a prostitute and managing her fatal tuberculosis. So what’s your excuse?

These days you don’t even have to wait for your hair to grow a suitable length to satisfy the poxy wigmaker. You can just hop on your phone and start working for Uber or Uber Eats (depending on your level of desperation and poverty).

Assuming you don’t get killed on your little scooter while delivering McDonalds to some thankless hungover fuck in the driving rain, you could probably make enough extra money to eat out every now and then.

If you don’t do this…

Stop eating out!

Want a break from whatever gray fucking slop you’ve been gobbling up since you made it in jumbo bulk a few nights ago? Tough shit!

Variety is the spice of life but you, my friend, are a long way from the silk road.

It’s frozen vegetables, some kind of minced meat, and the sense that your life isn’t really working out how it’s supposed to. I mean, weren’t we meant to derive some pleasure from existing? Isn’t enjoying a good meal one of the most fundamental human acts?

What’s that? It’s time to crack open a millionaire’s skull and use their goey brain as war paint?

No, wait! Wait! Have you instead thought about….

Buying in bulk!

Why you can buy all kinds of things in bulk! Toilet paper, washing liquid, hand soaps. It turns out all the most boring purchases you make in a week can be bought in quantities much larger than you actually want them.

So Instead of spending $15 detergent you need to keep your clothes clean and hygienic, you can spend $25 and have it last almost twice as long.

Then, every time you go to use the washing machine, you can ruminate on how you were forced to make a conscious decision on that purchase. That utilitarian, desperately boring thing wasn’t something just picked up because it was needed.

Oh no. That’s a privilege for the rich. In your one precious life YOU had to think about it.

But it’s not really helping, is it?

Bulk detergent won’t help you retire well, or buy a nice house in the suburbs. You’re just nibbling at the crust of an enormous shit sandwich you’re still pretending is lamb. You’re scared. If you look at the sandwich, really know the largess of that turd, you might not ever be able to take one more trepidatious bite again.

But, God help us all, the crust is disappearing. The turd is getting ever closer to your lips. What next, you ask?

What next?

Who knows, haha! But I sure hope I’ve given you a few fun tips which will help make the next rent payment to your rich boomer landlord a little easier.

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Stephanie Coombes
Stephanie Coombes

Written by Stephanie Coombes

Stephanie's an award-winning journo with a taste for the weird. She writes about culture, society, and unseemly stuff she finds on the internet.

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