How I Lived in San Francisco on $18K A Year

I know broke. I know it well. I've never really been able to blame my being broke on anything in particular except for maybe my penchant for setting my “financially successful” bar pretty low. I had a friend say to me once that he was pissed that he was almost 40 and wasn't a multimillionaire close to retiring like he thought he would be. I myself always thought that by 40 I'd be one step away from being homeless with an alcohol problem and so I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself approximately 3 steps away from being homeless with an alcohol problem. I've always lived in relatively expensive cities, the most expensive being San Francisco. For the time that I lived out in San Francisco I made the least amount of money that I've made since graduating college. By the way, I'd like to thank past Deidre for choosing an English degree backed up with a practical Theater minor. Good looking out. So how did I make it in San Francisco (and by “make it” I mean “not die”) on $18K a year in 2002-4? I'll give you the top survival tips I used:

Start off with some savings.

And by savings I mean the Starbucks card loaded with $350 that was given to me by my boss as a Morgan Stanley parting gift. This came in handy because I used it like food stamps. If I were on food stamps I'd be so mad at me for writing that. Anyhow, when I first got there I bought my groceries from Starbucks. I ate a crap ton of reduced fat turkey bacon sandwiches. I would take the bacon out sometimes and save it for breakfast. A twofer! I drank 4 large coffee's a day. That's right, I just said "Large", I refuse to call them what they want me to call them. I know, it's good to see someone in this world still standing up for what really matters.

Shop at the dollar store...for groceries!

Go to the dollar store and purchase your groceries there. It is like a scratch ticket every time you go in, you never know what kind of jackpot you are in store for. This is the reason why on any given day you may have found the following food stuffs in my cupboard (Cupboard? That's totally not how I would have spelled that word if I invented it.): Mexican cereal (My favorite being Choco Krispis), bread sticks, a jar of pickled eggs, pasta that turned immediately into liquid within 0.2 seconds of boiling or if the sun hit it directly for over a ten minute period, lunch loaf (I have no idea what it was made of, all I know is it tasted of sweet sweet goodness), chicken flavored crackers and canned smoked oysters ← either together OR separate. Yes, I ate canned oysters.

If you have a douche bag (DB) for a roommate, steal his food!

Normally, I don't take people's things. If my family members are reading this they are doing a collective eye roll. Fine family, let me rephrase, I don't take people's things without asking (since I turned about 20-26 years old). But in this case, I was starving, and my roommate was a DB so I felt justified. Let me give you, my loyal readers who total 4 to 5 people (tops), a smattering of his douchebagery (DB-ery). Once, upon my return home from an evening out with friends, Mr. DB looked me up and down and said, with a crooked smile that made him look like he had had a stroke, “Well, someone was on the make tonight." Ummmm...“On the make?” Is that you Grandma? What does being on the make entail? Does that mean putting on your girdle, getting drunk off a couple of Sidecar's in the speakeasy and hanging out with other loose women? For that I'm going to be on the make for your sacred Olive Oil and put it on my pasta tomorrow for lunch when you leave the house. Side note: Charlie, he was more protective of his Olive Oil than you are. Also, am I supposed to be capitalizing "Olive Oil"? But I digress, not only am I going to use your Olive Oil tomorrow, I'm going to use a lot of it. Like $2.00 worth in one serving. And I'm going to have approximately 8.2 servings. I mean honestly, have you seen the actual size of a serving of pasta? In what world? DB-ery smattering number two (I know that is not the proper way to use the word “smattering” but I'm going to use it like that anyways because fuck you). My roommate's reply to my asking him what CD he was listening to, “Oh this? This is the White Stripes. I can't believe you've never heard of them. I thought you said once that you liked music.” Really? Well, I do like music. You want to know what else I like? The fact that I'm going to eat your last Hershey's Miniature Krackel in the freezer and then I'm going to look at you with the confused dog head tilt when you ask me if I ate it. Over the year that I lived with Mr. DB I plowed through several bottles of olive oil, countless numbers of Hershey's Miniatures (I even ate the Special Dark which I hate, just out of spite), all his milk substitute products (which to me are one step up from drinking cough syrup), pasta, red pepper flakes and a crapton of honey. That's how often he was a DB.

Buy a super cheap futon.

If you can find a cheap futon it really helps. Preferably from a store that is within walking distance so you can take 3 hours to carry it 6 blocks away and up your 3 flights of stairs you your apartment. Yes, my own futon came in approximately 1,879 un-assembled (should be a word) pieces that I attempted to put together for 8 hours straight and instead ended up drunk (how else can someone maintain that level of frustration for 8 hours straight) with a minor stress twitch in my eyelid and sleeping on the futon pad next to 1,877 un-assembled pieces. So I did what any reasonable person would do and the following day I called my closest friend Adam and invited him over. He sat on the couch in the living room and talked to me while I sat in my adjoining bedroom and fumbled with different pieces of my “bed”, banging them together over and over in front of me like toddlers do with blocks. Eventually his brain could not handle this large puzzle sitting in front of him without stepping in. So he did. And I talked his ear off incessantly while he wanted to stab me in the throat. He put my futon together. (Side Note: Adam, being in San Francisco wouldn't have been one of the best times of my life without your friendship. Awe, PUKE. Moving on.)


Find a Bar with a Good Happy Hour

My favorite cheap bar had their biggest booze discount on Wednesday's, they called it, "Broke Ass Wednesday's". I know, I too want to meet the creative team who came up with that little gold nugget of a name. Anyways, between a two hour period of time, it cost a quarter for a pint of PBR. You can go ahead and read that again, a quarter. As in 25 pennies. Or what you spend on a gumball machine. Which I still use all the time. It's hard though to find a good gumball these days. Usually I almost break a tooth or two because they are so old. But a quarter? For a pint? I mean, I imagine those are 1920's prices. Clearly, I have no idea what 1920's prices were. But in my head, people, that's what they paid for beer. My friends and I would go with a couple bucks and get drunk with some of the local homeless folks. They'd also play old school rap and thirty-something nerdy types would come out of the wood work to relive their break dancing days. Broke Ass Wednesday's, it was a thing. And it was awesome.

Have friend's that do cool free stuff and have extra equipment to share with you.

Go camping on Angel Island! I did this, and it was fun. Yes, it was in the pouring rain. We slept in a tent borrowed by my friend who insisted we take his because it was big enough to fit all of us and "Yes, it's waterproof”. He then seemed to look mystified when a mote started to form around the edge of the inside of the tent. Luckily we seemed to be on a small hill and so we found refuge by the four of us sleeping in the middle of the tent. 

Go mountain biking! When a close friend of mine from San Francisco asked if I had ever been mountain biking, I responded with a resounding yes. In my mind I was an avid mountain biker for the summer I lived on the cape when I was 17. I didn't have a car so I would ride my mountain bike to work, or to parties, or out on the wide, paved path to Coast Guard beach from our house. In short, I thought mountain biking was anything you do when riding your mountain bike. Of course, when I went mountain biking with my friends outside of San Francisco it looked more like almost dying for approximately 5 hours in the hills of CA on my buddies mountain bike, the whole time wondering if I was going to crap my pants after I propelled myself down a ravine to my death. 

Go to a corn maze during Halloween with friends. This doesn't involve equipment, it is just free (or minimal cost) and cool. Much better than the less than ideal corn maze experience I had once in MA when I was working for the Boy's and Girl's Club. I was responsible for getting 4-5 children safely through the maze which ended up taking: approximately 2.5 hours, a lot of pretending that things were under control while hives were breaking out all over my body, 2 severely sun burned children, an incident of panic induced hysteria which involved someone (me) accosting a corn maze employee and sharply whispering in his ear “Get us the FUCK OUT OF HERE!” and, finally, touching upon some deep place of shame at learning the last group that made it out before us had been waiting for approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.

With all this money you saved you can then spend it efficiently on...

Paying to have your laundry washed and folded! Where they charge you exorbitant amounts of money because you are too lazy to do laundry. Also, yes, I let someone wash, dry and fold my undergarments. And no, I don't care. At all. Buy a $180 pair of boots that cost more than you spent on food for the past six months at the dollar store. Go to a restaurant one night that costs about half a month's rent for a nice dinner. And lastly, drink a crap ton of booze...at bars instead of at home....because it costs more!

So there you have it. I know exactly what you're thinking, I should be some sort of financial planner. That can be my backup if the therapy thing doesn't work. I'm sure you hadn't even finished reading this blog post before you had your bags packed for your upcoming move to one of the most expensive cities in the US now that you realize it's totally doable. Just remember all of the sound advice that I've imparted to you at zero cost. Maybe you could send me can of lunch loaf once you arrive. Happy cheap living.