Welcome to the jungle, baby.

Hello & welcome to Broke Bitch Thrift.
My name is Hope, and I’m the content creator/chaos coordinator/hot mess who came up with the crazy idea to start this blog.

I’m going to provide you with all obligatory information upfront. This way we can get to the good stuff, & you’re not stuck here until paragraph five before realizing you give zero fucks about the blog’s subject matter and/or you’ve found a distraction that appeals to your interest more than I do.

I say all the aforementioned without a tone of sarcasm, I say it with the mutual understanding; I’m a stereotypical millennial, I’m impatient, & I hate when I go to a site/blog looking for something specific and can’t find it. i.e., I look up the ingredients for a recipe I find on Pinterest and I have to scroll past 50 ads, click “next” a 6 times, give the blood of my firstborn child, and click all the traffic lights in a CAPTCHA photo before I can find out how many eggs to put in my fucking cake.

**That’s if they even show the list. Sometimes you get that “YOUR IPHONE IS INFECTED WITH TEN MILLION VIRUSES OMG GIVE US YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER” message and your blood pressure rises to the point of “time to exit the screen before you lose your shit”.

My goal here is not to place you in a hypertensive state. My goal here is to provide you with resources to achieve what every girl out there strives to accomplish on a daily basis – look fabulous in quality couture, while exercising financial finesse. Look cute without having to count the days until your next paycheck. Not having to choose between the shoes or making your car payment on time. Never having to ask yourself if buying the handbag will trigger your overdraft protection.

**I’ll also thrill you with some DIY projects to spruce up your living space without breaking the bank (coming soon under the ‘culture’ icon) and content that could boost your mental & physical health without costing a fortune (coming soon under the ‘convalescence’ icon).

While the vast majority of us will never freely admit to holding financial debates in our heads while shopping, the truth is, it’s happening regularly. It doesn’t matter if your bank account is healthy, or in the blood red negative. It doesn’t matter if you’re working a professional job but you’re trying to pay off your student loans, or because you’re working a lesser paying job that accommodates a college schedule. Maybe you maxed out your credit cards to make sure your kids had Christmas gifts, or you have a really bad gambling problem. My point:

1. WE ALL WOULD LIKE TO BUY NICE THINGS WITHOUT PAYING A LOT OF MONEY.
2. I’M GOING TO WRITE BLOG POSTS THAT SHOW YOU WHERE AND HOW YOU CAN DO THAT.
I’m going to stop yelling now.

Now that we’ve established the subject of the blog, you may be wondering what makes me so damn qualified to write about it. You have every right to be concerned, and here’s why:

1.) I’m not a financial advisor, and I’m TERRIBLE at math. EMBARASSINGLY terrible.
2.) My page header literally contains the words “broke bitch” in it. Not only does that negate my cause slightly, but it’s quite derogatory. Someone might get offended.
3.) I built this entire website with a GED as my level of education attainment, so you’d essential be taking advice from a former high school dropout. That’s somewhat troubling. (frowny face)
4.) I enrolled in college for the first time at age 27 & I have a few credits to go before I get my associate’s degree, so I clearly have some debt building up. Kinda hypocritical? (I guess the silver lining here is once I obtain my associate’s degree, you won’t be taking advice from a high school dropout anymore)
5.) I’m now 31 years old; most 31 years old adults already attended college & are actually making a dent in their student loans, not increasing them.

The final aspect I have working against me as it pertains to blogging: every diary I started when I was in elementary school had one or two pages written in it before clearly abandoned and forgotten about. What makes this blog any different? (My brother also figured out how to bust the lock open on one of them, so having written proof my innermost evil thoughts and feelings was just going to serve as evidence against me, eventually. Why dig my own grave?)

I have two skills which I will openly endorse – I can write pretty well, and I can sell shit. As far as writing is concerned, I will allow you to make that call, as you’ve now become the “audience”, if you’ve made it this far into my first post. As far as selling shit – I’ve worked my way up from ground level in multiple careers because I was able to sell the company’s products/teach others how to sell the company’s products consistently. And make them a lot of money. Which does me no good at the end of the day, when I’ve been laid off from former sales jobs because my commission checks were more than my supervisor’s base pay. It seems like any time retailers begin analyzing company expenses, the first thing they cut is the employee with the highest commission payout.

Makes total sense. During the 4th quarter of the game, don’t pass the ball to Michael Jordan. Throw a three pointer with your eyes closed. Yolo.

(I’m by no means putting me & MJ on the same level.. I’m more or less wondering why people are easily sacrificed in a corporate sales environment when cutting expenses. Maybe start with things that won’t negatively impact your ability to help customers. For example, cutting back on printer paper, limiting the executives’ bar tabs when traveling, & I’m not saying to CANCEL the office holiday party that only those near company headquarters can ACTUALLY attend but perhaps forego the expensive caterer?.. maybe go with pizza? idk)

One more tangent before I get back on track here.. One former employer actually laid me off, handed me my last paycheck, and then gave me a $500.00 AMEX gift card I had won in a sales contest the week prior – essentially telling me “great job making me all that money last week, but go fuck yourself”. Well, thank you sir, but if I’m losing my employment because I’m your top performer, what kind of prizes do you dish out to the mediocre people who work here? Had I known that I could retain my employment by literally not trying at all, I would’ve done THAT.

I’m not bitter, I swear.

ANYWAYS.. It took me until my late twenties to ask myself a serious question and then come to a serious conclusion based on the answer. I’ve always been really good at making other people a lot of money. Why have I not become really good at making MYSELF money?

I had to start looking at my bank account. When you’ve gone quite a number of years blowing your money impulsively on everything just because you felt like it at the time, and your self-justification was “who cares bro, you can’t take it with you”, it’s difficult to suddenly stop the behavior. You’re like a dog who’s been shitting on the rug for years and randomly, your human decides to yell at you for it one day. You lack discipline, and the attempts to discipline yourself aren’t met with any results because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.

I knew I wanted to become a lawyer, so my school schedule had to be accommodated and I had to be able to pay my bills. After I added in those filters, my job options were narrow. I had to actually start analyzing my spending habits and verbally assault myself if I attempted to veer off track. Awareness was step one, finally quitting smoking was step two, and step three was addressing my guilty pleasure of buying clothes/shoes/makeup every week because no grown ass adult with responsibilities does that shit. Step three was the more challenging for me than ending my decade of smoking.

Straight-up denying myself the pleasure doesn’t work, so I had to find a way to almost manipulate my brain into compliance. I started to visit local thrift stores, and one in particular in my hometown has become my go-to because all clothing is $1. I made a promise to myself that for one full year, if I bought any article of clothing, it could only be from that thrift store. This way, it was substantially more difficult to go bankrupt at a dollar per item, and I simultaneously donated to charity with the purchase. Two birds, one stone. I kept my promise, & I didn’t have to deny myself the euphoria. Combine my newfound thriftiness with my knowledge of various retail tips and tricks from previous employment, having extensive product knowledge as a result of my impulsive shopping days, plus the street savviness of where to find cost-effective apparel online/instore – why wouldn’t I want to share that with all the ladies out there who are hustling hard to get somewhere in life, like me?

Contributing to my decision to go all-in on this blog publication & the first link I’m including on my page ever, comes courtesy of 1 AM impulse buy of a career reading from an astrologer called AstroLara on Etsy. I was unsure about purchasing the domain, and her reading came through my email as I was overanalyzing my life choices. Her reading was extremely accurate, aligned perfectly with what I was not only doing but thinking at the time of receipt, and gave me the jolt I needed to get my ass moving. Her prices are very reasonable, and she’s got pages of reviews from happy customers. If you want a reading by AstroLara to possibly gain some clarity around your career too, click here.

Additionally, I’m balls deep in planning my wedding. My fiancé & I are paying for everything by ourselves, so remaining budget conscious is imperative. I’ve spent the past year scouring books, blogs, Google, Amazon, and talking to other brides about ways to keep costs low without foregoing the fun. The big day is September 25^th, and trust me when I tell ya sis, wedding related posts are coming. Soon. Whether you like it or not. I have to unload my brain somewhere before it spontaneously combusts, and if the idea of spending $4,000 on flowers makes you want to projectile vomit, please stay tuned. We’ll talk.

My fiancé & I also began buckling down on fixing and renovating our house (& by my fiance & I, I really mean 98% my fiancé. I can only take credit for the non-strenuous portion, such as finding ideas online & asking him if it can be done, then asking 10,000 annoying questions about the process because I don’t know shit about building really anything, picking out colors schemes, & then getting irritated when he holds me hostage for 2+ hours in Home Depot). There are so many improvements you can do on your own that can really personalize and upgrade any room without adding debt and stress. I can’t wait to share our progress, and maybe inspire you to take on a project yourself.

Now is a perfect opportunity to capitalize off time spent at home, considering the pandemic has forced us to stay within our own four walls – why not give those walls a fresh coat of paint? Maybe demo one of them and open up a room? Hang a new piece of artwork on ‘em? Put your head through one or all four if you have to stay home for much longer? The world is your oyster, baby.

Looking forward to becoming best friends!

For astrology readings by the fabulous AstroLara: take me to Etsy
To get your own shirt with Biggie lyrics on it: take me to 6 dollar t-shirts
To chat, request a topic for a blog post, or tell me off: [email protected].