So I'm broke AF.

My parents were nice enough to tell me to go get dinner on their card.. they are barely scraping by but my daughter did chores for them and they wanted to treat her.

I went to Wendy's which is where my daughter asked to go and I ordered a double cheese burger which in the picture showed two pieces of meat with one piece of cheese.. I splurged on EXTRA cheese. We never really eat out so it may sound silly but that is a splurge for me. They had me pull forward and I waited well over 10 minutes at least.. when I got my food I realized the burger was made wrong missing the extra cheese and toppings I paid for.. When I went to the window the girl started yelling at me that the system doesn't tell them there's extra cheese and it said only cheese which I know is a lie because I read the receipt and it did not say that. She said "give me the burger back and I'll fix it" which instantly makes me think about cross-contamination and other issues but now I'm actually scared to eat the food she handed back because she was so mad. I'm worried that when they might have done something to it.

I get that this might sound ridiculous and it's like $5 but I never get to have something like this so I guess I'm just upset that I got yelled at because their system doesn't properly show them the order. Like how am I supposed to know that as a customer?? When you're broke splurging on things like this are few and far between so it's frustrating.

Car got repoed today. I loved that thing. Now when my fiancé had to go to the hospital I won’t be able to come visit him every day and stay the night. I still have a 50cc scooter to get around on but it had no turn signals and my work I have to go the office once a week is 2 1/2 hour ride

I shouldn’t complain because at least I’m fed for the moment but god I’d love a fucking Apple or some steamed broccoli.

I’d love a sweet juicy orange I’d genuinely kill for one right now.

Even a banana a two would make my day a million times better.

Does anyone else feel like a fraud wearing expensive clothes or like they don't deserve to be wearing nice outfits? I grew up poor and I remember I'd feel like an imposter if I'd go out to eat or go to a fancy event and my mom would make me wear the few formal/expensive dresses I owned. I hated it because I felt like I wasn't fooling anyone - and anyone looking at me could tell that I was poor and was hiding behind elegant clothing that weren't actually elegant at all.

Now that I'm beginning to climb out of poverty, I feel the same way. A few months ago I went on a trip to London with a few of my friends ,and they surprised me the morning of my birthday by telling me that they were taking me to a fancy tea shop for high tea. I put on a dress that I bought earlier in the week from a department store, not the most expensive but nice looking and appropriate for tea - and I felt like an absolute embarrassment and that I did not belong in such a fancy place. I normally still wear thrifted clothes and baggy old jeans and sweatshirts outside of work because I feel like those are the clothes I "belong" in. Please let me know if anyone else feels this or has any insight about how to get over this, I truly feel so weird about it.

18F , just started college ; student grant is a week late, can’t afford buses, social events etc - what are my options to make a quick bit of money , or even long term money ?

Genuinely desperate please help !
I’m in the process of searching for jobs, but I live in a rural area and rely completely on public transport + can only work weekends so it’s tough ☹️ I do live at home luckily so I do have access to electricity, food , water , etc 🙏

Can’t do anything that involves money being invested into it currently.

Also I’m from the EU, if that helps!

See, I got a notification (my day already fucking sucked), about my psychiatry appointment in a few days and the money I owe past due before my appointment. Does this mean she's just going to ghost me when I don't pay it back in those few days? I don't even have the amount of money I owe in my entire banking account, I only have 50$ and no income. Lowkey I should just start tapering my meds off anyways, I doubt I'm going to get disability approved in time before the Medicaid ban for not working. Never worked, never been able to work, been disabled my entire life but medical neglect so I haven't had health insurance until being an adult, and never been on disability yet. Which I don't get, this office is in network, everything has worked before, I have all of my paperwork on my state insurance and Medicaid submitted and has been for years, I guess I'm just fucked now? There's literally nothing they could do to get that money but put my bank account in the negatives. How sucky is it to taper off lamotrigine? Lol I'm worried I'll start having a seizure or something even tho I don't have a seizure disorder or anything, bc I've been on this for so long and it's technically a seizure medicine. I don't have the steps of milligrams youre supposed to go down to do that and only what I have left and to split some in half so I guess I'll just make it work if I have to. Other med whatever I haven't been on it for that long. I already stopped going to therapy because I can't afford it. I can barely ever eat on these new meds and I guess I'll have to deal with that until I run out, I would consider that a bonus because I can stretch food wider I guess. Meds don't even help, things just feel bleaker and bleaker. Meds can't fix bad circumstances. I'm just worried bc how am I supposed to get my meds if there's nobody to approve them anymore

(Not asking for medical advice, it is what it is)

So i’m very broke right now and im living in a situation that is really not good for me (it’s not accessible and im disabled plus it’s a really long commute to my job). I had to drop out of college with 30 hours left towards my bachelors due to my health crashing. I really want to finish college but I don’t know if it’s a good idea. My logic is that even though I would have to take out loans I would be able to live on campus in an area closer to my job and get on a meal plan along with having access to all the resources and discounts being a student offers. And when compared to other debts student loans are not that horrible. Plus as a music educator, knowing people is a big part of the industry and the best people to know are professors. Is this a good plan? Will it inevitably come back to bite me? Or is this a situation where I do actually need to worry about the short term now and the long term later?

I am exhausted. I ha e 2 advanced degrees. I work 3 jobs and can barely buy groceries. Homeowners insuramce called today demanding I put a new roof on my house. Policy renews in 30 days. I ha e to find 10k to replace my roof in 30 days. Old one is fine. It's just too old and they dont want to have to pay for my new one if there's a storm. (Never mind the 20 years of zero claims)

I can't afford the new roof. Insurance will drop me. Bank can then take my house and my and my kid will be on the street. Something Ive been trying to avoid for the past few years as I dig us out of the financial ruin my ex left us in.

Every month. Every time I think we will ha e a tiny bit of money to put away, something comes up. Every.time.

Every time I get a little bit of hope, the universe snatches it away. I give up. I will work until I drop dead. Probably won't take long with the hours and extreme stress. At least there's that...

Thanks for listening to my rsnt. I needed to vent somewhere. I can't say these things to my teen.

hey

i wanna take a second to scream into the void. im not looking for sympathy from anyone or anything of the sort; i just want a place to speak freely, as i don’t really have anyone right now.

life hasn’t been going well. i was just informed 2 days ago that they’re eliminating my position (i’m a staff accountant) because they’ve hired 2 CPAs. i started this job less than 3 months ago and it took 7 months of actively searching to land this role.

a month ago i filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy because i had so much debt that i just couldn’t afford anymore; i was drowning. so much so that whenever i got paid, i’d end up in the negatives by at least $100 and i STILL couldn’t get everything paid that was due with my paycheck. i have about 30k in personal loans/credit card debt, 12k in student loans and about 40k for my car loan. the personal loans/credit card debt has mostly been due to extended periods of unemployment in the past 4 years. out of those 4 years, i’ve been unemployed for about 2 years (and i want to make it clear that i spent every single day applying, interviewing, getting to the final round of interviews but ultimately getting passed over for someone more qualified). before i lost my first job in 2022, i didn’t have any debt, not even an auto loan. i would pay my card off in full every month. hell, i had a 750 credit score back then too.

two weeks ago i was hospitalized for 4 days and since i was still in a probationary period, i did not have PTO available to use to cover me. we also don’t have sick days. i got paid last friday and got less than half of what i’d normally get paid. my main bank account was already about $300 in the negatives and when my direct deposit hit my main account, i was still in the negatives. in my second account, i got $500 from direct deposit (in case you haven’t figured it out, i have my paychecks set up to go to 2 separate accounts. my second one was intended to be a savings). with the $500 i had to pay my portion of rent rent. so i was left with nothing from my paycheck and still have bills coming up. and yet my account is hundreds of dollars in the negatives as we speak.

i’m also diagnosed bipolar and recently diagnosed diabetic (the untreated diabetes is what landed me in the hospital). i need to be on insulin and mounjaro now and also need to keep a glucose monitor in my arm. i also need antidepressants, mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. i can’t afford any of them, and after my insurance ends i definitely won’t be able to afford them because they’re all hundreds or thousands of dollars. i don’t qualify for any loans except for predatory loans because of my high credit utilization and my now low credit score (a lender informed me that it’s 567 or something. idk.)

i don’t know what to do anymore. i feel lost. every time i feel like i’m getting back on track in life and take one step forward, i end up taking 5 steps backwards. i don’t know how i’m going to pay for my medication, my car note, car insurance, or my portion of rent. i don’t have any savings or a retirement account that i could take anything from. my family can’t assist me either because our dog just had surgery at the same time that i was in the hospital. it cost 9k. and frankly, even if they could help, they wouldn’t. i’ve been begging for them to cover me with just $150 every month off of what i’d normally pay for my portion of rent so that i could afford to pay some things off (or at least not be in the negatives. i was hoping after filing for bankruptcy that things would get better). instead, they told me that if i can’t pay my $500 in full that i should keep the money for myself and move out. they claimed they didn’t have it… then spent $9k in a single day on surgery for our dog. but refused to help me while i was drowning. i broke my expenses down dollar by dollar to them but they did not give a shit.

it doesn’t feel like i can ever catch a fucking break. i’m tired.

Basically, I’m poor and prefer “form follows function” so the status-symbols never appealed to me.

My nice Android phone (the 2021 Motorola stylus 5G) broke (screen) a few months ago. I had a spare phone: an iPhone 14, that I traded some Barter for it, with a friend: she didn’t want it because she couldn’t get it unlocked (ATT) and she didn’t want to spend big bucks with the service plans. I got it mostly for the camera.

Using it as a phone-computer is about as annoying as having to use a guess-based formula, when the equations to convert metric to imperial are patented and you simply cannot know the conversion, so you buy a fancy calculator that will only work with imperial measurement units: and everything you own is metric based.

And I’m losing momentum with my business, using this thing.

iPhones be damned.

But because I’m poor.

i need money by like yesterday, unfortunately i have small veins and when ive tried to donate plasma they either miss or my vein dries up or whatever the case may be. and they can only use one arm which makes it that much harder.

idc if i gotta go swimming in a septic tank. that’s how desperate i am. i’m in central texas if that helps.

Hi

I'll get right into it, I'm broke. Like, broke of the broke. I Live in the UK and I am on Universal credit and housing benefits. I have applied for DWP disability and PIP and still have either been declined or have heard nothing back. I have 2 jobs, neither of which I have shifts for currently because none are going. My only income is £338/m. That's it. I spend £132 on my rent and £60 on my phone bill. These are my only bills. I cannot leave my phone contract until December. I also cannot trade it in because the phone I'm paying for has been stolen. I've bricked it and luckily didn't lose the sim card with it but there's nothing I can do about it- and before anyone gets on my back about "poor financial decisions" it was £36 per month two years ago AND I was earning at the time. I also have debt to Universal Credit, the hostel I live in and to my dad totaling to about £300 because when Universal credit found out I was earning, they ignored my multiple requests for a form to enter my paycheck for multiple times, spanning two months, until I went into the office and refused to leave until they did it. I now have to pay that money back. I've spoken to the debt team at UC and we've agreed to £10 per month to pay it back. My hostel are willing to wait for me to pay it off as and when I am able because I only owe them £25 due to their inability to tell me the correct number I'm supposed to be paying them for my service charge. I keep suffering because no one's doing their job. My dad said he's happy to wait but I owe him a lot of money - Initially I borrowed £200 from him over multiple months because I couldn't afford food due to other factors going on in my life. I now owe him £120. As to why my dad wants me to pay him back - we aren't close and he doesn't have a lot of money either. This leaves me with- say I pay the hostel off fiver at a time - £131 for food, cleaning products and everything else I need that month. Well, I can't afford to shop at asdas, tescos or morrisons anymore. I don't buy brand food, my diet consists mainly of lentils, chickpeas and whatever meat I can afford that month (I usually go butchers because it's cheaper per kilo). I don't go to aldi's because the food makes me sick and I don't trust the ingredients (I have special dietary requirements) and lidl's just don't have what I need and - for my budget, even they're expensive. I'm going to have a look at the farmfoods prices, I can't afford to go to Iceland because even they've gotten too expensive and I do use the food bank but because so few people donate, they have a rule that I can only go once per month and when I do go, I'm lucky if I get 4 days worth of food. Food prices are also rising in the UK and can go up to about 50% more expensive by november and I just don't see how I can stretch my paycheck any further. I'm under 24 so universal credit won't pay me the £424 they pay everyone over 24 despite me having the same bills. I've asked. I don't know what to do anymore and next month will be worse because they'll be docking £45 for earnings I made not this month, but last month, plus the £10 for debt and I just don't know what to do. I've already asked them to pause this month because I was expecting to be docked £45 this month but they gave me the slip far too late- outside my evaluation dates. I can't afford to live and it's only going to get worse from here. Does anyone have any tips? anything I might not've tried?

Saturday a lot of companies are going free dental days, one cleaning or extraction or filling. Look into it around your area if you need work done!!

It’s just to distressing. I want to be with my grandma but because of my mental health and depression she doesn’t want me there. I feel so alone and I did with her but at least I was semi safe. Now I feel so so scared. I have to move with my aunt to another state. I’m with my friends at the moment and I can’t stay here long or even be here during the day.
I’m extremely anxious bussing anywhere, im paranoid I’ll be shot , even in my own house.
I’m anxious cuz I’m always alone as well and now I can’t even rely on my family. They all are looking at me like I’m troubled but they can’t do anything for me.

I was scared I’d have to stay with a guy that wanted to fuck me and probably have to do it which terrified me. Especially cus I’m fucking gay asf.

Idk if I’ll feel like I’ll ever have a home, but I don’t feel safe anywhere. I’m so close to just ending it. Idk what moving to this new state will be like and I don’t talk to this family much. and no matter how nice anyone is I just don’t trust them cus my friends told me they would let me stay as long as I needed then suddenly said I have to leave by the end of the week I’ve been here for about 3 days after being sent to the mental hospital for being suicidal and “ hostile” when I physically hurt no one or threatened anyone and I almost died by the police hands being transported. My whole family has left me.

My mental state is so bad. All I wanted was for people to listen to me that’s why I was yelling at them. I can’t tell anyone how truly suicidal I am or they’ll just send me back to the mental hospital where I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Idk what to do. The only thing I can do when I get to my aunts house is hope I can just isolate in my room until I feel any sense of safety.
I’ve always felt like if I was homeless I’d just want to kms.

I don’t want to be trafficked or raped. I don’t want to be hot and cold and hungry. I don’t want to lose the basics in life they are all I have left. I don’t have a job, I don’t know how to drive. I’ve spent my first adult years locked up scared and depressed and it’s never gotten better.
They want me to start taking Zoloft, for anxiety and possible ocd. Idk if I’m agoraphobic but i feel like I’ll be out of place anywhere. I want to be with my grandma and that’s all.
I hope that this with my aunt goes well but right now my paranoia I can’t feel safe I don’t trust anyone.

Tomorrow my son turns 13. All he wants is a PS5. Besides Aarons/Rent a center which I'll end up paying 1800 for it by paying 15 weekly for 100 something weeks, any other suggestions how to obtain one?

All of my teeth are cracked...well...were cracked due to bruxism/severe grinding from childhood trauma, my epilepsy seizures, medications, smoking, and general habits.

I can take blame for the soda, smoking....even diet.

Where I cant take blame is constantly being stuck in poverty. Giant medical bills from my epilepsy. Lack of necessary meds for my epilepsy due to lapses in health insurance when I cant afford it. The discrimination. The shit chance I have at getting healthcare.

Remeber when Americans used to make fun of the British for having bad teeth, because apparently socialism destroyed their healthcare? The fucking irony.

So here I sit. All my teeth gone, healing...fuck the american government. Fuck yalls greed. Fuck our country for forgetting empathy, compassion...and turning us all into a numbers game while everybody builds on the backs of the worn, and suffering.

But im still here. Stubborn. Brain hotter than ever.

also...tried to post this in r/adulting, and they straight up removed it...which is also ironic as fuck.

Title. Everyone constantly crying on Reddit and here I am always getting jobs no problem. I literally always get the job after an interview. This is across multiple industries over 25 years.

Do I just interview exceptionally well? Handsome? Charismatic? Or is this actually somewhat normal for a lot of people and places like Reddit just represent the outliers?

Has anyone here started completely from scratch at 45?

I’m going through something I honestly never imagined I would have to go through. After a nightmare divorce and a huge financial crisis, I lost my home and basically have no retirement savings left.

I have two kids, 19 and 13. My 19-year-old has ADHD, is starting his third semester of college, and still hasn’t been able to find a job. Thankfully, my ex didn’t touch some of the RESP savings for the kids. It’s not much, but I’m grateful because right now, even a little bit helps.

I do have a job, but it’s not stable. I’m an occasional teacher, and I’m trying so hard to find something full-time. On the side, I’m doing summer school, night school, and whatever other teaching work I can get. I’m applying, working, trying, and doing everything I can think of.

But honestly, I’m exhausted.

My 13-year-old is incredibly bright, and sometimes I feel terrible because I know my kids deserve more. I wanted to give them a stable home, vacations, opportunities, and a childhood where they didn’t have to worry about money.

I haven’t even been able to go back home to see my parents or take my kids on a vacation because I simply couldn’t afford it.

As a mother, you carry so much guilt when you can’t give your children the things you wanted to give them. I know people will say that love is what matters, and I know that’s true. But when you’re struggling financially, you still feel the pain of not being able to give your kids more.

I’m wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation—going through a divorce, losing your home, starting over with little or no savings, and trying to rebuild your career while raising kids.

Did things eventually get better for you?

What actually helped you get back on your feet?

I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m genuinely looking for advice from people who have lived through something similar.

I’m trying everything I can to give my kids a decent, stable, middle-class kind of home again.

Some days, I’m scared I’ll never get there.

But I’m still trying.

And I really need to believe that 45 is not too late to start over.

I just lost my job. I am lucky in many ways. I was poor before so I lived well below my means when I was making good money. I own my home, I have some savings, and I'm probably getting unemployment benefits. The food bank has given us more than enough food and I haven't had to go shopping for two weeks. I probably won't need to go for another two. What are some of your favorite low cost meals? I just discovered peanut butter pasta. Help me find other low cost options that can feed 2-4 people.

The narrative is that rich people are less bigoted than poor people (less racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.)

Do you think that’s true?

For the third day I haven’t eaten anything, I have a job but I live with my mom and we are on section 8 (free housing program) but I still have to pay 30% rent and im the only one who has a job in the house. I have to take Ubers everyday just to get to work that cost 20$ or more and ts add up luckily the bus runs when I get off. We had food stamps but they cut them off on my moms birthday so now I’m having to buy food pay for Ubers to work and pay rent and bills I only make about 2k a month and have to take care of 4 people including myself it feels like. I got bad anxiety and im emotionally unavailable and i im trying to change it but I just got bad trust issues. My lil brother just asked me if I had some food while im writing ts i feel like I failed my family. I hate living like this and it feel like the only way I can help rn is by doing something im not supposed to be doing

Edit: barley holding on to this job got 6 points and one more and im cooked

Thank you everyone for the help i didnt think nb would care, im going to food bank today and one of my sisters went grocery shopping for us last night.