Eating spam, stealing cutlery and embezzling

We asked around, and it turns out that budgetary crises are very common among students who don’t live with mom and dad. The results can be dire. We’ve heard stories from students and former students about what they did to get over their budget crisis that range from the comical to the degrading to the dangerous to the criminal.

I’m sure that some of our storytellers regard those times as dark episodes from their past that they’d rather forget. Unfortunately for them, the internet has a long memory, and their stories are way too entertaining not to share with you, our readers:

Mark from Memorial got his hair cut by a friend in a university bathroom stall to save $10!

Lina from Concordia diluted her milk with water to make it last longer!

William from Mt. Allison stretched his grocery budget by having nothing but concentrated orange juice for dinner!

Sheena from Memorial economized by stealing toilet paper from a campus bathroom!

Dale from Thompson Rivers University ate Spam™! (Not junk email; the inexpensive gelatinous canned pork product.)

Amanda from Simon Fraser University, who is quite thin to begin with, almost stopped eating entirely at the end of one semester, subsisting some days on a cup of bubble tea, which certainly wouldn’t be my choice as being the best nutritional bang for a buck. Her malnutrition contributed to a severe bout of late-semester depression, which forced her to quit all of her extra-curricular activities!

Jodie from Australia stole plates and cutlery from the university café and sold them as “complete sets” on eBay. Then she spent the money on beer and still couldn’t afford food, so she resorted to cutting slices of bread in half to make sandwiches (I’m in awe of her skill with a knife) and stealing gas from the boat her neighbour left parked on the driveway!

Another former student (who doesn’t want his name or university revealed for reasons that will soon be apparent) stole food from the restaurant where he worked until he figured out a way to hack into the computer system and embezzle money!

This is an advice column, so we are required to draw a lesson from these stories. Here it is:

Q: What’s easier, less risky and less degrading than scrimping, starving and stealing?

A: Sticking to your budget in the first place.