Finances are hard. Sometimes you’re forced to make tough decisions on where your money goes — mainly, keeping a roof over your head — which leads to little cash for other things. Many Americans, unfortunately, find themselves in this situation, but it doesn’t mean you can’t survive. In this article, we’ll show you how to thrive on little to no money.
Your Mindset is Everything
How you view your journey of living on practically nothing is crucial to your enjoyment of the process. If you resent living on nothing, if you constantly wish you had more money to do with as you please, then every day will seem like an arduous uphill battle.
You can view your situation as a learning moment or a way to stay humble. So many people in this world have nothing, and you are no exceptional case either. You can find the lessons that come from such hardship. If you change your mindset even more, you can avoid viewing it as a hardship altogether.
Pick out the positives of your situation. If you’re the competitive type, try to make it a game to see how long you can go without spending any money. There’s always a way to spin a situation so that you can glean lessons, humility, and experiences from it, so keep that in mind as you embark on the journey of living with less.
Read Up on Frugal Living
No matter how bizarre your circumstances may seem — millionaire to homeless, for example, there’s bound to be someone who has experienced what you experienced. And they most likely wrote about their experiences so others could read about it.
There are tons of free sources on the internet on ways to live on nothing. Go to your local library to get your hands on some memoirs. Sit at the computer and Google phrases like “frugal living,” “thrifty living,” and “financial independence” as a start.
Use this Situation to Your Advantage
Minimalism has been taking off on a trend for a reason. People are shunning their useless material possessions in search of what’s more meaningful in life. You’re doing the same thing, albeit less voluntarily.
Minimalism is the idea of living with enough. Personal happiness doesn’t come from what money can buy. It comes from having the essentials covered to then put your time, money, and energy into more worthwhile endeavors.
Matt D’Avella is one of the more popular minimalists on the internet. On his YouTube channel, he said that when he embraced minimalism, he stopped chasing money for money’s sake. He stopped working so that he could buy more things.
He put his life into perspective, downsized his possessions to the essentials, and put his energy into building his YouTube presence and filmmaking career. He’s constantly learning how to grow and improve as a person as well as a creator, and it’s all thanks to the perspective change that minimalism gave him.
Perhaps you can do the same with your situation. Keep a journal and write down your experiences. Is your perspective on what’s important changing? Do you find yourself craving fewer expensive purchases?
While you might not have opted into this experience as D’Avella did, you can still find the success he did based on his mindset.
Time for Extreme Budgeting
Now that you’ve found ways to put a better spin on your circumstances, now is time for finding the best ways to manage your money.
To live on practically nothing, you’ll have to stretch every dollar you make. If you make literally nothing, you’ll have to find other ways to trade goods or services for what you need.
Let’s say you only have $20 to stretch across this week. You’ll have to find the most sensible way to make that money last you. You can’t order take-out, as that would pretty much blow your whole budget.
Instead, rice and beans would be the most nutritious food you can afford and feed yourself pretty well through the week. You could then save a couple of dollars so that you have about $10 left to do with as you please, which may mean buying hygienic products or other essentials.
No matter how much money you make, you can always find a way to budget it. And when it comes to budgeting smartly, you’ll have to use some psychology theory.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Budgeting
When you don’t have much money to spare, you need to make sure your basics are covered so that you don’t get sick or injured and run into problems.
That’s where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes in. It’s a 1943 theory expressed by psychologist Abraham Maslow which essentially states that humans need to have certain levels of needs covered before they can progress to the next.
These needs build upwards to look like a pyramid. Starting from the bottom and working our way up, these needs are:
- physiological (food, air, shelter, water)
- safety (security, employment)
- love and belonging (friendship, relationships)
- Esteem (self-respect, status)
- self-actualization (becoming your truest self)
These provide a general trend towards the needs humans prioritize when. For example, when you’re hungry, you tend to prioritize looking for food rather than self-actualization. Though more recent research has come out stating that the hierarchy of needs isn’t 100% true, that humans can skip around in their needs and still be okay, we still find this original pyramid important because it helps visualize and contextualize human needs.
When you live on nothing, you have to make sure your base physiological needs are covered. This means you have to find the resources to feed yourself and obtain water, or else your health will take a toll.
These needs must be factored into your budget. You can most likely find free water anywhere you go in the states, so purchasing a reusable water bottle could be worth it to cut down on later water bottle costs. You can also find free food programs for people who make below a certain amount of income, which can free up your food budget as well.
You have to budget smartly if you’re going to survive. Blowing all your money on new clothes to impress people doesn’t make you survive. Unless those clothes are to find a better job, then there’s some sense to that decision. Live the most utilitarian life, and you’ll survive on nothing.
Learn Useful Skills
With the internet at your fingertips, all you need is motivation, and you can learn anything. You can learn how to code so that you can create your own websites. You can learn how to build your own tiny home, or how to self-publish a book.
All of these skills are useful and can help you earn an income so that you have more money in your pocket. Digital skills especially allow you to work wherever you want, so you can hole up at the local library to write a few chapters of your book if that’s your gig. You don’t have to worry about securing your job if you can successfully muscle your way into the gig economy.
Learning new marketable skills help you survive when you have nothing to live on. It also occupies your time so that you feel like you’re doing something productive. You’re improving yourself when you diligently study how to learn a new skill.
You can also learn skills to help you save money. Gardening is a way to reduce the cost of the food you buy when you harvest your food. You can learn how to recycle old clothes to make into rugs, allowing you to forgo buying a new one.
You can learn to make your own laundry detergent, shampoo, soap, disinfecting cleaning sprays, you name it. There are internet tutorials for everything now. As long as you feel the need, you can learn skills that drastically cut costs. And living on nothing is definitely the push to learn these cost-cutting skills.
Learn to Save Money in Every Aspect of Your Life
It feels like when we go to the store to buy, say, laundry detergent, it’s like we’re paying for the convenience of having the item be made for you, rather than the quality of the item. Want a more efficient washing soap? You’ll have to pay extra for that.
There’s a recipe for nearly every common item you would need in your life. To save money, supply your own labor, and create what you need yourself.
But beyond DIYing everything in your home, there are other ways to save money on everything as well, allowing you to have a better quality of life while living on nothing.
Make Your Own Everything
We mentioned briefly previously that learning new skills can help you cut costs. This is especially true when it comes to making DIY versions of products you frequently buy.
For example, one of the simplest recipes for making your own shampoo is 1 Tbsp baking soda and 1 cup of water. Depending on how much you pay for baking soda, you just pay for $0.06/ounce when you use this shampoo.
This is definitely more expensive than constantly buying shampoo, which tends to contain harmful sulfates that can damage your hair. Baking soda is way gentler on your hair than a harsh sulfate-laden shampoo, so you not only save money but save your hair as well.
You can find simple to follow DIY tutorials for nearly everything you could use at home, including:
There are also practical switches you can do to save money as well. For example, stop buying disposable napkins for the dinner table and instead switch to cloth napkins. You can wash them when they get dirty and continuously use them. You can also rent books from the library instead of purchasing them from bookstores.
There are lots of ways to save money on the things you regularly buy. It will most likely cost more upfront since you’re purchasing the ingredients for these products in bulk. But the items you make will pay for themselves over time — especially when you can make multiple products from the same set of ingredients.
For example, let’s say a jar full of baking soda and water shampoo cost $4 because of the baking soda. A bottle of shampoo would cost about $5, already saving you money. And because you can replenish your baking soda shampoo, you’ll save much more money than if you continuously bought the $5 shampoo from a store.
Learn to be practical with what you have. Take stock of what you own and surmise what you can really make yourself. You don’t have to sew your own clothes if you don’t want to, but you can definitely switch to some form of homemade soaps and detergents.
Find a Cheaper Home
With rent getting more expensive in bigger cities, people are turning to alternative means to find cheap housing.
Take, for instance, the story of Brandon, a Google employee who lived out of a truck. He had just graduated from the University of Massachusetts — Amherst and was about to start his job at Google when he realized how ridiculously expensive rent is in the Bay area, and how he didn’t really need an apartment to rent, just a place to sleep.
With the ample amenities Google offers, like an employee gym and access to a kitchen, he decided to buy a van and park it in the employee parking lot. Though the endeavor cost about $10,000 upfront, it quickly paid for itself when he didn’t have to pay $2,000 in rent, utilities, and other expenses each month.
Brandon has been living in his truck for about four years now and has learned a lot about himself and the world from truck living. And he certainly has saved quite a bit of money from it.
You don’t have to live quite at the extremes that Brandon has, but there are definitely options to save a lot of money on housing if you’re willing to live frugally. There are stories of people living in storage units, people opting to be homeless by choice, and living in a van.
If these lifestyles aren’t available for you and you need to rent an apartment, find cheaper places to stay in the city you live in. There’s bound to be a cheaper apartment where you live if you pick up more roommates and perhaps a longer commute to work. Don’t give up looking — you can find a nice apartment cheaper than the one you live in.
Sites like StreetEasy, Zumper, Realtor.com for rentals, and others can help you in the process.
Ditch Your Car as Much As Possible
Cars are incredibly expensive compared to the amount of time you actually use it. Cars tend to sit unused in a garage or parking spot for about 95% of the day.
They guzzle gas, require hundreds of dollars in insurance, and heaven forbid you get into a car crash. Car repairs can easily put you down thousands of dollars.
If your city is bike accessible, the best option is to bike to work. The next best option would be public transportation or carpooling with a coworker to cut down on costs.
Cities like Seattle are very bike accessible, so investing in a good bike and helmet can go a long way in keeping transportation costs low.
New York City, Jersey City, Boston, and other cities around the United States also have great public transportation that further reduces the need for a car.
Sometimes your circumstances force you to commute to work by car. If you can finagle your situation, though, try to take the car out of the equation.
Be Smarter with Groceries
It’s a vicious cycle. You buy groceries for the week, work your way through your boxes of pasta and bags of avocados when you run out of milk sooner than expected.
You run to the store for more milk, but then realize that there’s a sale of onions. You could make caramelized onions tonight as a side for dinner, you think to yourself, so you grab a bag just for the heck of it. You also find frozen chicken burritos and a sale on rye bread that catches your eye, so you throw them into your basket as well.
As you check out, you realize you bought way more than you intended to. But you rationalize to yourself that it’s all stuff you’re going to eat eventually, so it’s worth it.
That is, until it’s not. You get busy with work and don’t have time to cook. Or maybe you’re too exhausted and find it easier to order take-out instead. The food in your fridge sits there and eventually goes bad.
It happens all the time — we buy food but eventually can’t eat it, so it goes bad. It’s a bad habit that’s not only bad for our wallets but bad for the environment since food waste is a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
The smarter way to eat is to go through everything in your pantry before making the next purchase. This means really going through everything — until your shelves in both your pantry and fridge are empty. Consider it an exercise in creative cooking.
Eating all the food you have until you have practically nothing before buying more groceries prevents food waste since you’re forced to eat everything you have. It also saves you money since you’re getting most out of the money you spend on food.
Cut Out Unnecessary Costs
We’re going to tell you something that hurts: you need more self-discipline.
We all do. It’s easy to spend money on a $10 smoothie because you wanted to try out the new smoothie location, and the “banana nut protein pack” caught your eye. With many delicious restaurants out there, you can eat delicious food and try amazing drinks, but it will mean a pretty high bill at the end of the night.
When you have nothing to live on, you need to cut down on every cost that isn’t crucial to your survival. This means cutting out subscriptions to streaming services, cable, avoiding shopping for clothes unless absolutely necessary, and going out to eat.
Again, consider the hierarchy of needs. When you have your food, water, and shelter covered, the rest is just for entertainment, status, or hedonism. Living on nothing forces you to make your needs a priority and put your wants on the backburner. You can eat out when you have more money to spend frivolously.
In the meantime, though, you’ll have to cut out all costs that aren’t necessary for your survival. It will be tough, but hard times call for hard decisions.
Find Free Ways to Entertain Yourself
While cutting out unnecessary costs usually includes entertainment, there are ways to still entertain yourself without having to pay anything.
One of the best ways to do so is to get a public library card. Libraries are great because they’re free to sign up for, and you get access to thousands of books, movies, and audiobooks. Most libraries also have computers free for you to use and sometimes organize free events in their facilities.
Look for free events around your city as well. No matter where you are, there’s always something going on that’s free — especially in bigger cities.
Lots of bars will have open mic nights in which people sing, do stand-up, juggle, or do whatever else they please. Lots of comedy events are also free, especially if they’re open mics as well. The expectation is that you’ll go to the bar and buy a drink, but you can probably get away sipping on water.
Living near a university also affords great opportunities for free events. Most of them are aimed for students, of course, so they might require student IDs. You could luck out sometimes, though, and find a movie screening that doesn’t require university identification.
There are also sites that help you meet other people over free events. The site Meetup is great for that. You can put in your interests and find, say, soccer groups, book clubs, societies for certain identities, and more. Most of the meetup events are free, and simply require that you show up ready to mingle with strangers.
Museums may also have free entry nights every once in a blue moon. Keep your eyes on the museum’s websites and sign up for any alerts that could notify you of any changes.
As a last resort, the internet is a great way to entertain yourself for hours. Sites like YouTube are designed to keep you watching videos far longer than you intended to. While the internet is accessible and entertaining, it’s best to use other free opportunities on which to spend your time.
Expand your comfort zone and put yourself out there. You never know what you could find or who you could meet at a free event.
Use Your Time Wisely
Living on nothing puts you in a difficult position. A common phrase in the United States is that “time is money.” Since you don’t have a lot of money, there’s a pressure to maximize your time working so that you make the most money.
Some Americans are forced to do so. Living paycheck to paycheck is an increasingly more common reality in the states, and people are often forced to take on a second or third job just to cover their bills.
Spending all your time working certainly makes the most financial sense if you’ll go into debt otherwise, but time is also crucial for decompressing and relaxing from your workload.
When you get those precious off days, how you use your time is crucial. You should take a couple of hours to unwind — that would be the best way to avoid burning out, and it allows you to get your mental health a much-needed boost.
But if you use your free time to start up a side hustle or even start up a business, you can get extra money on the side. Who knows, you might be able to quit one of your jobs as a result of the increased income you get.
Passive income is the name of the game, and there are lots of ways you can set up passive income on the internet. Starting up a blog with affiliate marketing links is one such way. Another way is to start up a blog with lots of ads on it. Over time, you get a paycheck for something you’re not actively working on, which is very enticing when you live on nothing.
Most passive income efforts require a lot of time and energy up front, but then keep giving you money even when you’re not working on it anymore. That’s why it’s so attractive — money keeps coming even when all the work is done.
If you can spare an hour or two a week, you can slowly start building your passive income network to help take the sting off of all the hours you work.
Those are some ideas for how to live on nothing. The main trend is cutting down on costs and maximizing the dollars you do manage to get. When you change your mindset and learn to live frugally, living on nothing won’t seem so hard.