Arts and Culture

How to Live in Denial About Being Broke

Updated: Aug 16, 2015 19:19
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Sure there’s plenty of ways to live in denial about your brokeitude.  For example, you can just start buying all kinds of shit and putting it on a credit card.  But unfortunately that eventually catches up to you, and you end up having to fake your own death and flee to Brazil.  It gets pretty exhausting really.

That’s why I’m stoked to have found the Cost of Living Calculator.  What it does is let you put in a dollar amount, and a year, and it tells you how much that dollar amount was worth back then.  For example, in 1913 $100 was worth $2,622.22!  If this isn’t the best way to live in denial about your shitty financial situation, I don’t know what is.

See, here’s the plan: Pick a year, let’s say 1956, and dress accordingly.  Then put in how much money you want to spend that day, let’s say $20, and plug that into the calculator.  When you do that, you find out that $20 was worth $174.81 back then.  Now start acting like you live in 1956, but have accidently landed in the future, and spend accordingly.  If you’re dressed like you’re from the 50’s and  act outraged every time someone tries to charge you  in 2015 dollars, they’re bound to let you pay 1950’s prices.  Right?

ugh…..apparently it’s  this kind of financial genius that still keeps me so broke…..

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.