Survivng when you're broke - tips on how to get by

Get unbroke and make a point to never see broke again. Anyone with the means to post on Internet forums should be able to figure something out.

Tell us your plan Miltownkid!!!

Well tips…

  • get some friends that would be able to help out during rough times
  • reduce rent as much as possible. You can find something for 3-5.000 if you looked
  • Start selling shit you don’t need
  • get a job at a restaurant
  • sleep in a park and shower in bathrooms
  • walk/ride a bike everywhere

Which one? I have some winners I think.

It’s a work in progress, but I’ve started this to track how I go about it. There’s some cheesy stuff in there now, I threw it together one day: fi-blog.com/

Two bags of instant noodles. Five packs in each bag.
My personal preferred brand and flavour for flatbroke-fried-noodles is President’s 肉骨茶
It’s in a orange and white striped package and is usually 55nt for a bag of five. Sometimes Wellcome has sales though, and they’re maybe 40nt.
2 * 55 = 110

A carton of eggs, 10 eggs.
1 * 33 = 33

110 + 33 = 143 for 5 days

Don’t eat breakfast. If you’re this fucking broke, you probably don’t wake up early enough tae eat breakfast anyhow.

Flatbroke-fried-noodles

Add a bit of water in the frying pan, enough to soften out the noodles but not drown them. 100-200ml per thing of noodle. Put the oil packet in too, and enough salt to make you happy. Stirfry until the noodles are not wet anymore, but not burnt either. Just ummm…dryish. Turn the gas off. Crack an egg on the noodles. Poke it around. Turn the gas back on for a little bit if the egg isn’t cooked enough to your liking, or if the thought of slurping raw-ish egg repluses you. But usually the remaining heat is enough to cook it mostly.

But that raw yolk makes it yummy.

Repeat at noon and night for the next 5 days.

By the end of the five days, or sometime in there, you’ll get quite sick of noodles.
You can take 10nt, go to Wellcome and treat yourself to some Kaiser chocolate. Fit for a Kaiser, it tis!

I hate being broke.

[quote=“nedarg”]Not that I intend to lose my job but it would be good to have some ideas if I had to get by on the cheap for a while.

Nick[/quote]

I think some of the replies here didnt read the OP properly. Nick isnt in financial trouble, he just thought it would be an interesting topic to find out some money saving tips for Taiwan :wink:

Taiwan seemed to be a mich friendlier place than Japan. When I stayed there last time, people were always shoving food at me… It got a bit ridiculous after a while!

Hopefully Nick you can find a good bunch of people to hang out with. A friend in need is a friend indeed :wink:

I don’t fully appreciate the value of the 100 NT note. It’s worth 3 USD today; yet as just one 100 NT note, it seems of less value and easier to part with. It’s probably that way with most everything I purchase. I’ll try to be more aware of its value.
I think Nick is on the right track. We probably need a frugal living sticky for savers to support one another. Few of us are prepared for financial emergencies.

I eat the foods at work… saves a ton of money which I tend to spend on weekends and stuff… I dont know, I hate saving on food because you really can’t save that much, unless you want to eat mantou every day for all meals (which is unhealthy) or eat really shitty meal. It helps to live close to work in order to save on transportation however if you work in an expensive part of town (like Shi pai or tian mu) then the rent cancels out the savings quick. Try cheap places like Danshui… you can get decent place for about 5000, anything over that (for a one bedroom taufang) is overkill in this area. It would take forever to commute to work if you work in say Xing Dian area but live in Danshui but then most americans commute at least an hour in heavy traffic and rent in expensive places will cost more than rent in danshui plus transportation to your workplace.

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Use both sides of the toilet paper.

It all adds up…[/quote]

Use public toilets, where the toilet paper is free! Just help yourself from the handy plastic bucket which is always provided.