Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice?

Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by vaksel on Saturday January 10, 2009 @09:41PM (#428704)

cut your living expenses...have a car? sell it for a beater. Have high rent? Move to Bronx or Brooklyn or Queens or Jersey City(if your work is close to penn station). Or if your parents live locally, move in with them(I did this). Switch to a ramen diet....stop going out, stop buying shit. Stretch every penny. You won't believe how little you can live on, if you cut out all the bullshit.

Start working on your contacts...you have 7 months to build connections...so that if shit hits the fan, you have somewhere to go fast.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by asnyder on Saturday January 10, 2009 @10:55PM (#428760)

It's likely he doesn't have a car, most New Yorkers don't. I'd also recommend switching to a fruits and vegetables diet, instead of ramen. There are enough dedicated fruit stores in New York that make fruits and vegetables cheaper and healthier than ramen. In New York, an example of this kind of store would be "Three Guys From Brooklyn", or "Circus Fruits". With these sorts of stores you can easily bring your food expenses below $60 a month while maintaining a healthy diet.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by critic on Sunday January 11, 2009 @08:59AM (#429135)

If you are paying $1000 (with roommates) to $2000 (1BR or studio) in rent, saving a few bucks by changing your diet won't make much difference.

By the way, aren't programmers in hedge funds supposed to make $200k-$500k a year after bonuses and before taxes?

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by akronim on Sunday January 11, 2009 @01:48PM (#429393)

Sample bias - you only hear about the ones making loads because they're the only ones with noteworthy income.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by ryanwaggoner on Sunday January 11, 2009 @12:53AM (#428863)

With these sorts of stores you can easily bring your food expenses below $60 a month while maintaining a healthy diet.

Is that a typo? $60/mo eating fruits and veggies? I live in SF and I have a hard time imagining doing that here, let along NYC...

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by sh1mmer on Sunday January 11, 2009 @03:01AM (#428979)

You have to know where to go, what to buy, and what to cook.

I've been a vegan for a number of years now and I could live off $60/mo if I wanted to. The main point is convenience. If you don't want the effort of preparing food then it costs a lot more. Simple staples like lentals, rice, etc supplemented with vegetables is a crazy cheap way to eat.

In SF districts like the mission it's easy to get cheap fresh fruit and vegetables. A lot of it is supply and demand. If you shop at Safeway they have an expectation about your spending and price accordingly.

If you are trying save every penny shop where other people who have no money shop. That probably means neighborhoods you might avoid otherwise.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by sown on Sunday January 11, 2009 @07:40AM (#429091)

Please, tell me some of your secrets. I'm interested in cheap living/eating. :)

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by sgrove on Sunday January 11, 2009 @07:59AM (#429103)

Sounds like an excellent topic for a blog post - very hacker related, I would think.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by racyrick on Monday January 12, 2009 @03:14PM (#431049)

Stick to Superfoods!

Quinoa, Lentils, fresh veggies.

Jason Rohrer (of fame with game programmers) eats lentils for lunch every day.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by gravitycop on Sunday January 11, 2009 @08:08AM (#429108)

http://www.groceryoutlets.com

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by eru on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:24PM (#429592)

Oatmeal!

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by asnyder on Sunday January 11, 2009 @03:19AM (#428987)

It's not a typo. In the post I mentioned Three Guys From brooklyn, here's a link to their weekly circular. http://3guysfrombrooklyn.tripod.com/id4.html, note that the price listed for fruit and vegetables in that circular are about the average prices for all their fruits and vegetables. Certainly things like packaged foods will be a little higher, but if you purchase mostly fruits, vegetables, tubas (the average price of a bag of 5lbs potatoes there is $1.99), etc, in addition to a few packaged foods such as orange juice, you can easily eat for less than $60 a month.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by gravitycop on Sunday January 11, 2009 @01:00AM (#428875)

This can help: free food for hungry hackers:

http://images.google.com/images?q=food+not+bombs+san+francis...

http://images.google.com/images?q=food+not+bombs+new+york

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by ellyagg on Sunday January 11, 2009 @02:34AM (#428964)

I'd recommend sticking with ramen. There's zero chance that fruit is cheaper anywhere on a cost per calorie basis, ramen is easier to find everywhere, ramen is pretty tasty and you can take more calories of ramen before you want to throw up, you can take more calories of ramen before you have diarrhea, ramen stores compactly and easily, ramen doesn't go bad, and the health benefits of fruit and vegetables are greatly exaggerated ( partly by some folks whose interest in promoting them has nothing to do with their purported health benefits). I, for one, never get sick, work out all the time, am slim and stronger than 99% of the population, have good blood pressure and cholesterol, and, to cut costs, a significant portion of my diet is ramen.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by terpua on Sunday January 11, 2009 @02:59AM (#428978)

ramen + exercise > fruits/veggies + no exercise

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by oakmac on Sunday January 11, 2009 @05:56AM (#429063)

That is neither good nor accurate advice.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by terpua on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:49PM (#429655)

I was merely pointing out that if you have limited funds and running a startup, ramen and exercise is not a bad trade-off considering the costs of fruits/veggies are usually higher.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by racyrick on Monday January 12, 2009 @03:16PM (#431052)

Standard Ramen pretty much has no nutritional value. Add some veggies (first boil finely chopped carrots & celery, add frozen corn, broccoli, peas) then put in the ramen mix.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by run4yourlives on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:25PM (#429596)

Are you joking?

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by mhb on Sunday January 11, 2009 @12:33AM (#428837)

And if you're eating ramen, try to find some without the MSG that most brands have in abundance. Blech.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by tortilla on Sunday January 11, 2009 @10:51AM (#429219)

I'll also chop up some broccoli and add it to the ramen. Along with some shredded pork (MSG-free) and chili, it's a pretty tasty dish:

http://www.piermall.com/Chinese-Shredded-Pork-Sung-No-MSG-p/...

http://chowtimes.com/2006/05/21/shredded-dried-pork-aka-meat...

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by xiaoma on Sunday January 11, 2009 @03:18PM (#429483)

I for one think MSG is a good thing but for someone so concerned with it, I'm surprised you're recommending broccoli. Other than cheese, soy and tomato, broccoli is about as high in glutamate as a food gets.

http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/2486462

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by tortilla on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:53PM (#429670)

I'm not too concerned with MSG, but certain types give me a bad reaction (MSG in chips, Pho soup, ramen flavorings, etc).

Broccoli, no reaction and I can eat tons.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by Flemlord on Sunday January 11, 2009 @12:34PM (#429318)

> You won't believe how little you can live on, if you cut out all the bullshit.

No kidding. With my first startup I was living on hot dogs and hadn't left the house for months. I had literally reduced my expenses to mortgage, utilities, food. I stretched 3 months of living expenses into a year, although I ended up not needing it as we got funded after 6 months.

My one splurge was a good suit the first time we went on a fund raising interview.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by trickjarrett on Monday January 12, 2009 @10:14AM (#430516)

Not something I'd consider a splurge. It's a sizable business expense.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by Flemlord on Saturday January 31, 2009 @02:14AM (#459327)

> a sizable business expense.

No pun intended.

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by jyothi on Sunday January 11, 2009 @05:28AM (#429051)

Good advice. Live on bare minimum. Soon you would realize life isn't all that bad with half the expenses. At the same time, if you do enjoy spending or in other words for many these days getting frugal makes you feel inferior, insecure, might give a sense of failure in that case I would advice you get these feelings out first by speaking it out to someone as to why this is necessary and why this is good.

List down your expenses today, sit down and cut out everything that is not necessary. Scale down everything that can. And it doesn't matter if you don't sit in the Starbucks cafe or if your friends find you odd when you don't buy a fancy meal when you go out.

For rent see if you can pack it in a home office, or on a sharing basis.

Get all of these done in a month, if it gets dragged the feeling as i mentioned before gets too bad and pulls your spirit down as you would keep thinking of every penny.

Once you are lean, just put a expense plan and a plan for the company for the expected run way. Go crazy on execution. Good luck!

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Re:Ask HN: 5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Ad... by eru on Sunday January 11, 2009 @04:23PM (#429588)

Oatmeal is also cheap and perhaps more healthy than ramen.

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