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That you've had to do something minor like sell stuff in recycled trash, plasma, or criminal/borderline criminal like stealing, prostitution (I think it's morally okay but still considered illegal ) etc..
Summer of '71, got stuck in Athens, Greece with next to no money. Got by for 9 days with about $1 a day, borrowing small amounts from locals. Finally got wired money and paid them back.
Like Hoonose, when traveling a few times there was no access to money for a while, but I was never desperate because I could always wire somebody for some. Got by in Romania for two months in 1968 on about $40, but only because the currency exchange restrictions prevented me from using the travelers checks I had. Same in Nicaragua in 1991.
In Huntsville, Alabama, I was pretty down and out in 1959, but I could still be selective in job search and didn't have to resort to day labor or anything. A year later, I drove to Seattle and arrived there with less than $5, but quickly got a job (door to door magazine sales) that advanced me some money.
When I was a kid growing up in the 50s I rarely had any money. I remember scouring the field next to the road to find discarded pop bottles. I'd clean them and return them to Mayfair market for 2 cents each.
Pulled the back seats out of my firebird to find sticky dimes and nickles and a 2 door lottery ticket to buy a 6-pack of National Bohemian beer... Not my finest hour.
When my wife (then fiancee) and I first moved to California we were fresh out of college, did not know anyone there (she had only been there once for three or four days about a month before we moved). I had rented a room on a sailboat and paid of the month in advance. She did not yet have a place and intended to stay on the boat until she got a job a car and an apartment. We ran into some issues on our way there, and were nearly out of money, even though we arrived a week earlier than we had planned to. The boat had gone on a short trip and one of the masts broke off and was dragging in the water alongside the boat. It took them over a week to get back. We did not know what happened, just that the boat (my new home) was not there. I was about to start a lucrative new job, but we had arrived a week early. Then when I started work, I discovered it would be almost three weeks before I received my first paycheck.
We lived in a tent on the beach at a campground. It was not cheap and ate up most of the rest of our money. A fast food place called Del Taco had a special, two tacos and a coke for $1. We lived for weeks off of the change that was in the bottom of a bag my wife carried through college. She had thrown all of her change into it for 4 years, so there was a lot of change. We also dug all the coins out from under my car seats and floor mats. Each night we shared one taco each at Del Taco and split the coke. At work they had lipton cup o soup envelopes available in the kitchen for whomever wanted them, I ate that for lunch and brought some packets "home" from time to time. Because I was new, they often took me to lunch at nice places, I would order large entrees eat very little and take as much home as I could to give to my wife. We probably could have gotten an advance on my paycheck, but we were pretty naive and it never occurred to me to ask.
Months before we left and long before we ran out of money, I had bought an airplane ticket to fly back to Michigan for a friend's wedding. About a week into our near starvation, I flew back for the weekend to attend the wedding. My Dad loaned me $150 so we could eat. That was a fortune back then (300 tacos and 100 cokes!). We were all set until my first paycheck would arrive. When I got back to California, my fiancee and I went straight to the beach. I was wearing shorts, but we wanted to go play in the water, so I showed her a cool California beach trick I had learned during my internship the previous summer. I took my wallet out of my shorts, buried it in the sand and then put my towel over it. No one would be able to find it, but since I knew it was under my towel, it would be easy for me to find. I was soo cool, look at me, I know how to Californ!
After swimming and body surfing for a few hours we laid on our towels to dry out then got up picked up our towels and headed back home (the boat had returned by this time). When I got home, I remembered my wallet. We ran back to the beach and found a sand filled coke bottle I remembered seeing right near where we had our towels. We dug in the sand for an hour or more to no avail. It started getting dark, so we decided to give up and started walking home. That was the moment in my life that I was the most desperate for money. We were already losing weight and getting weak from our diet of one taco one cup o soup and some leftovers each day. I had no idea how we were going to survive for another week and a half to my first paycheck. I would eventually have to stop driving and ride my bicycle to work because we had no money for gas. We seemed doomed. All kinds of crazy thoughts went through my head as we walked towards home. Maybe I could sell my car, we could stand by the freeway exits and beg; steal beach chairs left unguarded on the beach and sell them to tourists. Could I sell a kidney quickly? I was incredibly mad at myself, how could I be so stupid?
As we walked home I got more and more desperate and angry. "Oh God!" I exclaimed in a fit of anger and kicked the sand - hard (it hurt my foot). Something largish went flying out of the sand I had kicked and landed on the sidewalk. I walked over to see what it was. It was my wallet. There was another coke bottle filled with sand near where I had kicked. We had not seen that one. We had been looking in the wrong area entirely. That search for my wallet and the subsequent angry walk for home were the most desperate I have ever been for money.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 06-29-2018 at 08:30 AM..
As a young man I got in the position where I had no money and had to sell my junk car to pay the rent and buy food. I was unemployed, uneducated and was with a pregnant wife. I wound up walking from the small apartment from business to business until I found a job at minimum wage. Found a roommate to live in the living room (furnished with old lawn furniture) to help pay the rent. Had to make payments to the OB-GYN to get a commitment he would deliver the baby (later paying the hospital payments for a year). Did not get another junk car for two years and walked or bummed a rides everywhere.
1970. At a Grateful Dead concert, found a great person to share the music with. Later, went to a Mens Room, and discovered on-the-wall condom dispensers, 25cents. Pockets were empty; it was a hard lesson about carrying change.
Was about to look into employment as a Gigolo after 5 months of unemployment in 2017. Overqualified for McJobs.
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