Guide to Being Broke.

It’s pretty fashionable these days to have no money. Actually, fashionable has nothing to do with it. They were giving out money for free for so long and now they’ve finally come to realize that you can’t base everything off of people spending free money all the time, and now there’s less money and it isn’t free so much anymore, and so everybody acts like they have less of it even though they have the same amount as always, they just don’t have as much extra free money anymore. I don’t know how it works, but that’s what it seems like is happening. People finally got busted for living beyond their means, and now it’s really hard to sell a McMansion because nobody’s too big into pretending they’re rich anymore, and anyway those McMansions are an hour commute away from the city and gas prices are unstable. Again, I don’t know. I’m probably going to rent for the rest of my life because I’m broke all the time.

It might sound like bullshit, but I advocate being broke. I believe that I’ve made my perpetual broke-hood a choice. Really. I believe that. I could live in a nice condo or house and drive a fancy car and make a lot of money. I just choose not to. I’d rather live in a small, dingy shithole and ride a bike. Really. I would rather that. Is what I tell myself. I’m not sure it’s true. I think there’s also a pretty decent chance that I’m just a lazy underachiever and instead of getting off my ass to make some money and/or improve my “station” in life, I’ve decided that it’s better to lie to myself about how I’ve chosen a low-expense debt-free lifestyle that involves very little worry and not much in the way of commitment to any one institution as an employer or financier and how that’s the smart thing to do. It’s probably not the smart thing to do.

But I do know this: times are tough out there, but they’re not much more tough for me now than they already were. Which is more than a lot of people who did the “smart thing” and bought real estate and saved for the future can say. All of a sudden my regular, stupid, crappy life looks pretty good. At least I’m not losing anything. I can’t. I would starve to death.

Being broke all the time involves some amount of skill, and it has its merits.

The skill is all stuff like “knowing the train and bus schedules and loopholes in the system, like where free transfers happen because you can’t always afford the extra 25 cents it takes to switch from a train to a bus,” and “instinctually knowing where free food is and yet having the grace and guile while hungry to eat like a person who isn’t just there for the free food,” and “pretending you forgot to pay rent when really you know your check would bounce anyway until (supposedly) Tuesday, and/or making up excuses for withholding your check based on lease stipulations, like phantom cockroach infestations and fake out-of-the-country business trips that are really to your girlfriend’s house,” and, “always carrying a messenger bag with a change of clothes and enough food for two days in it because it might be more convenient and cheaper to crash at a buddy’s house than to take a cab home,” and such. It’s thrift store shopping for a “vintage look” that really is just dirt cheap clothes (that look like you might have paid a lot of money for them until you get up close and see the coffee stains between the stripes). It’s learning how to get the most food possible at the grocery store with a budget of 25 dollars for the week (hint – look at the “Net Wt.” number on everything and calculate value that way, you’d be surprised how much less on-sale breakfast sausage costs than baloney, and it’s not like baloney’s any healthier or there’s a law against breakfast sausage sandwiches, plus you can use breakfast sausage as a spaghetti sauce ingredient; or look at how much cheaper those dry beans are than the canned ones, and all you have to do is know you’re going to be hungry the next day and soak them; or think of Ramen noodles as “inexpensive chicken seasoning with extra free cardboard noodles you can use in a separate soup or stir fry dish”). You can do a lot with a little to keep yourself from starving. It’s good to plan it that way even if you have $40 until Tuesday instead of the $25 you pay, because that extra $15 in booze money is going to come in real handy.

A boss of mine at work recently told me “Ben, don’t live extravagantly. If you have to choose between a nice apartment that you love but is too expensive and an apartment that’s a little smaller but in your price range, go for the cheaper one.” I almost laughed in his face. What is it with these work guys where they think you’re one of them automatically, like all I want to do with the rest of my life is sell self-storage facilities and brag about my BMW and proffer unwanted financial advice to a guy who’s four years younger than me like I’m the wisest man he’s ever met when he’s the guy who’s doing just fine and I’m the one sweating bullets about this economy because I’m dating some hot little 25 year old whose skin is so sensitive she can only wear pure gold earrings? Dude, I’m not living too extravagantly. I’m skipping the electric bill to pay for the gas bill, and swapping from gas heat to electric space heaters in accordance with whatever bill I just paid for my shitty drafty apartment. I’ve got inextravagant on lockdown. You’re the one who’s in trouble, judging by the scant number of phone calls I’ve been answering recently and the way you’ve been talking to your owner about how unfair it is that businesses are being penalized for the poor life decisions of their employees.

Not that I’ve got a Schadenfreude thing going for this dude. Except I kind of do because he calls me “champ” all the time. And also that injustice of businesses-being-penalized thing is hilarious to me. It’s like he wants all people everywhere to disappear so he can just sell self-storage facilities to nobody in peace. Nevermind that regular people’s ability and desire to buy things is what makes those things valuable. Ordinary people have been getting burned left and right by the poor decision-making skills of the Enrons of the world for, like, centuries now, and you’re on business’s side when they’re stupid enough to stake their future on offering ordinary dudes what essentially amounts to a free house? What are all the ordinary dudes supposed to do when they get free money? Turn it down? No way. The whole reason we’re in this mess is because nobody turns down free money. You get all the money you can while it’s still free, and if somebody’s to blame, it’s the people who were stupid enough to give away the money. And now businesses and the bussinessguy higher-ups with their stock options are suffering as much as the ordinary dudes they employ, for once. You can’t just look out for yourself and expect everybody else not to do the same thing, bosses of the world, even if for the ordinary dude that means getting a free house for five years before the rate adjusts and they’re foreclosed on. Then it’s right back to renting and/or living at Mom’s house like they were doing before, only this time you’ve lost a ton of real money and they’ve lost points on a credit score. Joke’s on you, bosses.

Of course I have no idea what I’m talking about, and I'm fine with that. I do know for a fact that I was reading the fine print on a bag of frozen peas back when times were good. If you think of the current recession as the bookie coming to collect on a bad bet that a bunch of rich people made on the ongoing prosperity of the average American, I’m essentially a profiteer because I sold myself short way before things got out of control. All I have to do is calmly sweep the floor of the convenience store and tell the cops I didn't see anything. That’s the main merit to being broke all the time. Stability. It sounds pretty stupid because it is, but it does make for some pretty funny times when rich guys who call you “champ” every day are pulling their hair out over the market adjustment while at the same time telling you not to live extravagantly. That’s delicious irony.

Hooo boy. I almost blacked out there for a minute. I’m sorry. I got all hopped up on free office coffee and cold medicine on an empty stomach.

Couched in all of my deluded ranting were some dead giveaways of my attitude about credit. It’s a bad attitude. I have a bad attitude about credit. I keep referring to it as “free money.” Because that’s essentially what it is. Whether you’re a person or a company, if you default on credit, the only penalty is you have to declare bankruptcy or work out a deal and then pay off a fraction of the amount you borrowed. And it’s harder to get more credit later, for a while. How is that not free money? And how are the consumers who take on all this credit for houses or whatever else being stupid? As far as credit is concerned, defaulting is actually the most profitable thing you can do. The only thing that makes credit profitable for the creditors is if you keep paying it forever. If you default, they’re up shit’s creek. That’s what we’re watching now. People are defaulting, and the people who gave out the money are up shit’s creek. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that? Because you’re scared of your credit score dropping? So you can’t get more free money down the line? Screw down the line. Credit might not even exist down the line.

So you might think, reading this, that I have a mountain of debt. Nope. Opposite. Pulling off the whole credit default negotiation for profit thing takes resources and attorneys and energy that I don’t have. I’d rather leave it alone. And also I know how bad my attitude is about credit. I don’t even have a credit card. If I did, I’m pretty sure I would incur a mountain of debt. In a heartbeat. I don’t know exactly what I’d spend it on, though. I’m used to living inextravagantly. I even kind of like it. Maybe I’d start up a shitty business like a record store or something that had absolutely no chance of surviving. Maybe I’d just get all my friends drunk for like six months. I don’t know. I won’t do it. I’m too lazy and it would just make me worry all the time. I don’t need that. I’d rather choose to be broke, but honest. And if that kind of honesty means I have to occasionally lie about pretend roaches, then so be it.