Half my childhood we were the kind of broke where you chose between meat besides hotdogs or the electric bill. We clipped coupons, shopped for sales, and made every penny count. Never in a million years would we have bought a single roll of toilet paper at any kind of markup; we'd have done without until we had enough to get it on sale. Course if we were that broke, I'd have been sent to knock on doors asking for odd jobs until I had enough to cover whatever crisis was at hand.