by Jette Nightingale

When I was 19, I brought home a measly $275 a month, yet I had an apartment in Chicago and a hoppin’ social life.

Sure, when you are 19 and on your own you aren’t supposed to be rich, but my best friend and I were so broke it’s amazing we managed to get by at all.

Now, life seems so expensive and complicated we recently stopped to ask each other: How did we make it on so little money?

The answer is Punk Rock Money Management. Here is how we — and all of our broke friends — lived it up on pocket change.

Food

1. Get a job at a restaurant. We ate everything we could get our hands on during our shifts, then we boxed up and took home our employee meal. We weren’t too proud to take home other peoples’ leftovers to feed us until our next shift, either.
2. Eat with the Hare Krishnas. Once a week, they open to the public for a meal that’s free or by donation. They have excellent vegetarian food and you don’t have to participate in any religious services.
3. Wait for the Dunkin Donuts to close and then fish the discarded donuts and bagels out of the dumpster. One of our friends used to do this. She picked up the trick while squatting in cities across the U.S. There is usually one separate, sealed bag with only donuts and bagels in it. But, dumpster diver beware: don’t eat anything even vaguely questionable.

Fashion
1. Use the Salvation Army as your own personal closet. We had a friend who would walk in wearing one outfit and walk out in another, without paying a dime. She took clothes off the hanger and put them on, then she put the clothes she had worn inside back on the hanger.
2. Use your friend’s leftover Manic Panic. Hair dye can eat into a punk rock budget, especially since Manic Panic costs $10 a pop and only lasts a couple of weeks. We dyed our hair whatever color we could make from friends’ Manic Panic leftovers on more than one occasion.
3. Get used to washing clothes by hand. Invest $1.99 in some clothes line rope and hang it all over the apartment. Wash wash wash by hand and hang it to dry, because laundromat quarters really add up.
4. Use Castille soap for everything. It’s a concentrated soap you can dilute the hell out of. It’s a great body soap, face soap, bug repellant (insects can’t stand the eucalyptus variety), and you can wash your clothes with it. You can use it as shampoo in a pinch, too. See? Not all punk rockers are dirty!
5. Sewing with safety pins. Learn to look at thrift store clothes in a new light — alter them and make them cool , while keeping them together, using safety pins, grommets, duct tape and seams sewn with embroidery floss.

Home Economics
1. Live with as many roommates as possible. This, of course, has the disadvantage of forcing you to deal with many potentially irritating people in close quarters. And there is always one roommate who eats all the peanut butter and never buys you another jar. Otherwise, it’s a surefire way to cut expenses as long as you have no long distance service on your home phone and make everyone use their own calling cards!
2. Don’t pay rent and stay on various friend's couches for free until they kick you out. We had a few people couch surf with us back in the day. We never let them stay more than three months.
3. Use your beer bottles as drinking glasses. One six pack of High-Life can turn into six drinking glasses with a little soap and water. We drank water (tap, of course) from Corona bottles for years. You also don't need tupperware. Just reuse all the jars and bottles the food you buy already comes in.
4. Shop for furniture the night before garbage day. We dumpster dived couches, rugs and bookcases then gave them a good cleaning. I once picked up a metal kitchen island and spruced it up with black & white checked contact paper. Dumpsters are your friends. We’ve gotten everything from skillets to bookcases through the years.

Transportation
1. Make friends with people with cars. Forget owning your own — too expensive! Don’t be shy about bumming a ride.
2. Get an old retro bike, a chain and a padlock. Even in a Chicago winter, riding your bike is free and the EL costs $1.50 one way. Those chunks of change really add up.
3. Walk. We had a roommate who wouldn’t even pony up the $50 for a bike, so he just walked everywhere — rain, sleet or snow. If you hoof it, leave your shoes outside the door to air out every day, for your roommates’ sakes.

Punk Rock about town
1. Hang out at bookstores with coffee shops inside. Take someone's leftover coffee or get a refill using their cup, read a magazine or book, enjoy the air conditioning/heat, wash up in the bathroom, take a nap in a comfy chair, ask to take home any leftover coffee/pastries and hope you don't get kicked out. You can also bring your own book and do this at a normal coffee shop.
2. Pay in pennies. Comb sidewalks and furniture cushions/pockets looking for change, then try to pay for things by counting out all of your pennies. Sometimes cashiers will get annoyed and just give it to you. Our friend Sharon did this at Subway all the time.
3. Dress up with hardware. Find and keep useful stuff like duct tape, wire, plastic wrap, markers, etc. so you can make outfits and jewelry for nights out.
4. Never pay for a hotel. When traveling, sleep in an abandoned building or in your car when you travel. Wash up in the bathroom of the local coffeehouse.
5. Pack a flask. Buying real drinks at nightclubs is too rich for punk rock blood. We’d pack a thermos or a flask with whiskey, then just order Cokes from the bar all night. Here is where $1 will get you far — bartenders don’t mind so much if you tip them every time you order a coke. Stiff them, and you’ll probably get thrown out.
6. $5 is your limit for cover charges. If it costs more, walk away. No self-respecting punk rock band would charge more than $5 at the door anyway!


All of these tips added up to one cheap life! I don't know if I have the heart to completely go back to Punk Rock living on a dime, but remembering how we lived on nothing has reminded me that you don't have to spend a lot of money to be happy or to have a good time.