15 Money Saving Tips From My 15-Year-Old Self

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Remember the days when you’d return from a weekend at your girlfriend’s with sun-bleached hair and change from your $40 pocket money? This is still possible.

1. Eat a sandwich before leaving the house. Where did all the sandwiches go? Let’s bring them back because you know, and I know “I’ll grab something on the way” is doomed.

2. Embrace your White Bread Taste. It’s a buried family secret that as a teen, somehow, I developed a White Bread Taste for Spam. It saves me from crying in to a $19 burnt bagel.

3. People watch at the airport. As a teen you were so enamored with the travel experience that you didn’t blow $106 on junk at the airport — you were going ON A PLANE!!!

4. Hang with your friends anywhere free and public. Parking lots, food courts, bus shelters; they haven’t become boring – we have. Grab a friend, a 20oz Slushie and head to the mall.

5. Spend hours on the phone. With an unlimited plan gasbag at length about absolutely nothing.

6. Wear bad gifts. That itchy grey poncho that Aunty Pat gave you for Christmas may suck, but you’re cold and it matches the $2K Bvlgari “timepiece” that drove you to Financial Fucktown.

7. Get out your piggy bank. Call it a Swear Jar – whatever. No one is above loose change.

8. Be a couch potato. Forget that you have a MasterCard and live three blocks from a Sephora to cure even the slightest inkling of boredom. Put on your PJs and vegetate.

9. Head to a video store/library. Shifting awkwardly past the Adult Interest Section was an experience within itself. Shut down UTorrent and hell, go outside and borrow.

10. Learn something from Mom. Or Dad/Aunty/Bob next door – any older person with a skill, and sit through a lesson with all of the irritation and gratification as an impatient teen.

11. Host a movie marathon. Three words: Mighty Ducks Trilogy.

12. Wear your jeans TO THE DEATH. It was 2002. I dropped $130 on Lee Low Riders and I rode those bad boys until my pubescent thighs bore a sizeable hole in the crotch.

13. Be in constant fear of college expenses. Only now, it’s called student debt.

14. Pay in cash money. Jam a $20 in to your pocket and head out, and like when you were a teen, when you’re out of cash – your night is OVAH.

15. Join a sports team. *This also gets you out of signing up to that bougie gym on your street.