Hi. My name is HeadBum and I'm an addict – to sugar that is. Being the broke bum that I am, it's sometimes challenging to share that dependent love/craving/omigodgiveittomenow with my friends. Lucky for me, lots of obese Americans and corn subsidies have helped drive down the price of my crack. Thus, I can ask my bummy friends to a sweet tooth orgy and feel no guilt about assigning them each a sugar-loaded wonder. And if they complain tomorrow, well, sweetness has its price. Cheap!

Italians know food and deals. America, in its grand tradition of bastardizing cuisine, has embraced a budget-friendly version of Italian food. There is a wide variety of Italian cuisine and many potentially expensive ingredients. But we all know that isn't what you're going to serve your bum posse when they show up.

In SoCal we can go swimming most of the year, but even our sun-jaded minds link summer with swimming pools and drinks with little umbrellas. Now ideally there's a pool in your apartment complex or at your friend's megamansion, but chances are you're sitting high and dry and wondering where to take a dip. Lucky for you, LA has a bunch of pretty refreshing options.

I had the unfortunate luck of spending a significant amount of time in hospitals this past weekend visiting sick friends (an experience that is inexpensive, emotionally taxing, and fun if you've got the sense of humor for it). In the process I rediscovered one of the best kept secrets in cheap eats: the hospital cafeteria.

As my manicurist once told me, "of course you can't go to a job interview with your nails all raggedy." I might be paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Knowing this town, you can sabotage the interview you've been dying for with jagged cuticles.  Problem: Having spent the last couple months chewing them off, how's a bum to get presentable nails without blowing two weeks of grocery money?

Entertaining friends can be expensive. No one wants to serve something gross or run out of food. So what’s a broke person to do? 1. Go potluck (assigning foods usually goes better). 2. Make big quantities of inexpensive ingredients. Now Mexico is a bit on the sketchy side at the moment, but your taste buds can still venture down south without too much danger.

I’ve been wearing the same t-shirts and pants since high school, but now they’re starting to fall apart. What’s a poor boy to do? Luckily, there are a number of places in LA to find some über-cheap threads.