Unsolicited Money Saving Advice

That will help you survive the coming economic depression.

Practically Social
16 min readSep 21, 2022
Sardine can, photo by author Zachari George

I grew up poor. By poor, I don’t mean middle class. If you combined both of my parent’s incomes, they might have made $50,000 per year during the late eighties. My father was in the Navy before that, a lowly E3. Mom kept things going while he was on “PACs” across the Pacific. After that, he primarily did unskilled labor; my mother was a respiratory therapist. We didn’t have the finer things in life.

Later, we moved to the country. Once a month, my parents would take us out to eat at Ponderosa (a nasty steak and buffet place), a Chinese restaurant, or a smorgasbord in the county seat. It was a big deal. We didn’t go on family vacations. I wasn’t on a traveling baseball team.

I wore the cheapest new clothes, and we often shopped at thrift stores. I went to school with wealthy farmers whose parents purchased designer clothes. If I didn’t wear them- and I didn’t, they insulted me. Such it was for me. I grew up poor, though still wealthy by a world standard.

Though people generally don’t turn to the poor for their financial advice, I’d like to think of myself as uniquely qualified to speak about how to save money, especially now that I’ve survived the pandemic on less than 35k per year. As an adult, you’d think I’d be…

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Practically Social

Licensed clinical therapist and social worker. Host of the mildly edited Practically Social channel. https://bit.ly/3cjg5j4 Catalyst, deep diver, Dad.