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#102 Dec 11 2013 at 7:44 PM Rating: Good
gbaji wrote:
But if you were to challenge me to live off just $100 for food per month, it would be really easy to do.


I challenge you to live off of $100 of food for a month. All 3 meals, starting January 1st. I expect daily receipts/updates/tallies. All food consumed counts, including drinks - alcoholic & non (like coffee). I recommend getting 1 $100 gift card & using it exclusively for all food/drink related purchases.
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#103 Dec 11 2013 at 8:00 PM Rating: Decent
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Omegavegeta wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But if you were to challenge me to live off just $100 for food per month, it would be really easy to do.


I challenge you to live off of $100 of food for a month. All 3 meals, starting January 1st. I expect daily receipts/updates/tallies. All food consumed counts, including drinks - alcoholic & non (like coffee). I recommend getting 1 $100 gift card & using it exclusively for all food/drink related purchases.


I already do (ok. excepting alcohol, of course). Not sure what your point is. I can sit here and say "I spend about $100/month on food" and you can sit there and insist you don't believe me all day long. Yet, several people have confirmed also being able to feed their families on about $100/month/person, so I'm not sure why this is some kind of special thing that I have to prove to you. So let's just say that I've already proven this as well as anyone can prove it over the internets, and move on.

Or, if you think it's impossible, how about you do something shocking and *you* try to do this. I suspect that you might find it's not as hard as you think it is. As I said, don't buy pre-packaged food, and you're 90% of the way there.

Edited, Dec 11th 2013 6:01pm by gbaji
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#104 Dec 11 2013 at 9:36 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I already do (ok. excepting alcohol, of course). Not sure what your point is.]
Big talk, complete lack of ability to commit. Not difficult to follow.
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#105 Dec 11 2013 at 9:41 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Omegavegeta wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But if you were to challenge me to live off just $100 for food per month, it would be really easy to do.
I challenge you to live off of $100 of food for a month.
I already do (ok. excepting alcohol, of course). Not sure what your point is.
You're the one who said it... Smiley: tongue
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#106 Dec 11 2013 at 10:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
I already do (ok. excepting alcohol, of course). Not sure what your point is. I can sit here and say "I spend about $100/month on food" and you can sit there and insist you don't believe me all day long.

I very much doubt you do unless you never eat out. That's nothing about you, it's just the simple reality that people pulling in a regular paycheck tend to not eat from the fridge three times a day, seven days a week but a single meal out can easily take up 10-15% of your $100 budget in a single sitting.
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#107 Dec 11 2013 at 10:41 PM Rating: Good
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Or, if you think it's impossible, how about you do something shocking and *you* try to do this


No way I could. Date night with the wife once a week tends to set me back $100 or more. You usually have an unhealthy obsession with proving that nothing you ever say is "wrong", so prove it. It'll be easy, right?
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#108 Dec 12 2013 at 4:53 AM Rating: Good
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I've had to live off of €100 worth of food in a month, it's definitely doable but it means a lot of bargain hunting if you want some variety or a little luxury and no way I'd do that to prove a point.
#109 Dec 12 2013 at 7:16 AM Rating: Good
gbaji wrote:
Omegavegeta wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But if you were to challenge me to live off just $100 for food per month, it would be really easy to do.


I challenge you to live off of $100 of food for a month. All 3 meals, starting January 1st. I expect daily receipts/updates/tallies. All food consumed counts, including drinks - alcoholic & non (like coffee). I recommend getting 1 $100 gift card & using it exclusively for all food/drink related purchases.


I already do (ok. excepting alcohol, of course). Not sure what your point is. I can sit here and say "I spend about $100/month on food" and you can sit there and insist you don't believe me all day long. Yet, several people have confirmed also being able to feed their families on about $100/month/person, so I'm not sure why this is some kind of special thing that I have to prove to you. So let's just say that I've already proven this as well as anyone can prove it over the internets, and move on.

Or, if you think it's impossible, how about you do something shocking and *you* try to do this. I suspect that you might find it's not as hard as you think it is. As I said, don't buy pre-packaged food, and you're 90% of the way there.


I said $200/month here, which I think is a lot closer to the national average.
#110 Dec 12 2013 at 7:35 AM Rating: Good
Excluding alcohol is, in any case, cheating. That's about half of your weekly shop magicked away; I'm not HRMC, gbaji, and that kind of accounting trickery won't fly here.
#111 Dec 12 2013 at 8:13 AM Rating: Excellent
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I can easily do $100 a month, excluding meals.
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#112 Dec 12 2013 at 9:15 AM Rating: Excellent
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Spoonless wrote:
You could probably budget for $150/mo around here. It wouldn't be a great existence, but it'd suffice.

15 lb meat (chicken breast and pork cutlets: sale $1.99/lb): $30
30 lb vegetables (peppers, squash, mushrooms, broccoli: sale $1.49/lb): $44.70
15 lb fruit (pears, apples: sale $1.49/lb): $22.35
4 doz. eggs ($2.50/doz): $10
10 lb potatoes ($2.50/5 lb): $5
25 lb rice: $20
2 gal milk ($2.25/.5 gal): $9

You can probably fit a multivitamin in there somewhere. Maybe coffee?

Now, I have the luxury of having five different market chains within a 5 mile radius from where I live, so I can usually find just about anything I need on sale. Things like cereal, yogurt, juice, etc. bring that total up very quickly. Taking advantage of the meat prices tends to rely on having freezer space. Frozen vegetables are usually pretty cheap, too. The bricks go on sale fairly frequently.

I think that the main issue when trying to live off less is that you generally have to buy a larger volume of an item to get a lower price, so starting out on a tight budget can be very rough. $150/month might get you all of the above, but on the weekly level, that's under $35 per week. When that 25-lb bage of rice can feed you for the whole month, it still takes out almost an entire week's budget to buy. If you started with a stocked fridge and pantry, this wouldn't be bad, but if you have nothing and are trying to get ahead, it can be difficult to do.

Edited, Dec 10th 2013 10:55pm by Spoonless


Bolded the key points here that makes this argument absurd (which you seem to recognize as unrealistic as well, in a vacuum). It's like one of those home makeover shows where they say they're doing a kitchen for $400 dollars and you're amazed until they pop in with the, "And we live right next to a quarry who donated granite countertops!"

I realize that this is a one-person budget, but it's not something that could just be multiplied by 4 to make it a four person budget. Even going with the assumption that this household has a stay at home parent who can cook from scratch, that this isn't a single parent or a two-income household, that has a vehicle and can buy things in bulk (walking a 25 lb bag of rice home from the store is awesome) this budget is entirely unrealistic. Some important things to take into account:

1. 15 pounds of fruit is not enough for a person for a month. A pound of apples is about 3 apples. At 15 pounds and a 30 day month, you're talking 1.5 apples a day...that's not enough to meet minimum requirements.
2. 30 pounds of vegetables (let's go with frozen, just because it's easier to calculate since we're not throwing out stems and all that). You can get 1 pound packages of frozen veg for $.99 fairly regularly even, so we'll go with $30 for 30 pounds if you stick to peas, corn, carrots - and let's say that there's 5 (1/2 cup) servings in a pound. Going with these assumptions, one person could meet minimum serving recommendations for vegetables with 30 (frozen) pounds in a month.
3. Meat I could give or take but you should be eating at least one serving of fish a week. That would blow this out of the water, unless you're talking canned tuna.
4. 4 dozen eggs- 1.6 eggs a day. Since you have no bread or cereal, is this the entirety of your breakfast? I guess it could go along with 1/2 cup of peas and half an apple. Hardly sustaining.Maybe you're having some rice too?
5. 10lbs of potatoes is around 25 potatoes. You could almost have one a day, which isn't terrible, if it wasn't such a huge portion of your groceries.
6. Rice: there are about 2 cups of uncooked (white) rice per pound, meaning about 4 cups of cooked rice x 25 = 100 cups of cooked rice. If this is a side dish, a half a cup per serving is probably ok, but as a main course, which is what you're talking about, I'd think a cup. You have about 3 1/3 cups of rice for your meals for a day. You enjoy that.
7. 2 Gallons of milk - maybe that works for you at half a gallon a week. This is definitely one of those things that is dramatically different if you have children. We go through 2 gallons a week sometimes, and Smash and I don't even drink it, we drink almond milk.
8. Perhaps most importantly is that this relies almost entirely on the "neighbor with a quarry" mentality - a fully stocked pantry and fridge (is this Chopped?). We'd need to add in salt, pepper, other seasonings, oil, butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, condiments, dressings, vinegar. You also have milk as your only dairy, no cheese, yogurt, etc (yes, I see you mention that they would be additional). If you have no bread, are you really not eating any or are you baking it? You'd need supplies for that. Even with a fully stocked pantry and fridge, you do have to replenish it. Then there's coffee, maybe juice, maybe peanut butter?

So, a daily menu: Breakfast: 1 egg, 1 cup of rice, half a cup of peas, and half an apple. Snack: 1 potato. Joy. Lunch: 1 cup of rice, a cup of corn, half an apple. Snack: half an apple Dinner: 1 cup of rice, 1 cup of carrots, .5 lb of chicken (about the daily recommendation of protein rich foods for a male). Before bed: half a cup of milk

When you get toward the end of the month and are out of potatoes for your morning snack, you can sub in your extra eggs you've been saving up!!

This would be ok for a day, or a week, but to have this be every day sucks. Like you said, it wouldn't be a great existence, and would likely be an emergency thing. This isn't a budget someone would "easily" stick to and it's total ******** if someone says they are when they have a choice. Again, not arguing with you Spoon, I know what you're saying - it's this kind of "snapshot" look that people use without taking all the variables into account that leave us, as a society, with totally unrealistic expectations of what "poor people should be able to do" with their food stamps.

Nexa

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#113 Dec 12 2013 at 9:52 AM Rating: Good
Some funny stuff I've found. The US spends less on food as a percentage of income than any other country in the world.

And the FDA has a pretty nice PDF that explains how much we spend on food, on average, at four different levels of spending, as of October 2013: A thrifty plan puts spending for an individual at around $40 a week, and a "liberal" (I assume in the "not counting" sense) plan at about $80 a week. Numbers are also included for couples of two (m/f) as well as families of four with kids of various ages. (Here is the source and links to older data PDFs.)
#114 Dec 12 2013 at 10:08 AM Rating: Decent
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Nexa wrote:
[
3. Meat I could give or take but you should be eating at least one serving of fish a week. That would blow this out of the water, unless you're talking canned tuna.

Well I just blew my budget right there. Solid white albacore FTW.
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#115 Dec 12 2013 at 11:21 AM Rating: Good
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Nexa wrote:
This would be ok for a day, or a week, but to have this be every day sucks. Like you said, it wouldn't be a great existence, and would likely be an emergency thing. This isn't a budget someone would "easily" stick to and it's total bullsh*t if someone says they are when they have a choice.

Smiley: tongue

Yesterday's food for someproteinguy:

Breakfast
Coffee: 20 cents (2 cups of coffee, $5-6 a bag, lasts about a week and makes ~60ish cups in that time. Sometimes we get free bags from my sister-in-law who works at Starbucks, and gets 1 free bag a week. We usually trade her some laundry detergent or shampoo or something we can get on sale for super cheap)
Yogurt: 33 cents (store brand)
Granola Bar: 33 cents (marked down to $2 from $4.99, 6 bars)
Muffin: Free* (came free with purchase of bread from the outlet, they give like 1 package of them for every $5 spent)
Egg Sandwich: ~40 cents (egg: 13.3 cents or $1.60 a dozen, meat: 15 cents or 20 slices for $3, bread: 10 cents or $2 a loaf, sometimes with cheese which will add another 10-15 cents)

Lunch
Carrots: 20 cents ($1.20 for a 2 pound bag)
Pasta w/ sauce: 50 cents (80 cents for pasta, 50% off older 80% ground beef $1.75, 2x $1.35 can of sauce, basil, oregano, salt, etc (about 50c for spices) divided into about 15 meals for the sauce, about 5 for the pasta)
Meat: 40 cents ($2 of chicken, baked, and used as leftovers for a few days, lightly salted and peppered)
Apple: 25 cents ($30 for 40 lbs of apples from the farm, 1 apple being about 1/3 of a pound)
Water: Free* (filled up the water bottle at the sink at work. Mooching off the man! Smiley: nod)

Dinner
Salad: 40 cents (in the loosest sense of the word only, 95 cents for dressing, $1.50 for lettuce - makes about 5 meals, dressing lasts longer of course)
Soda: ~15 cents (85 cents for a 2L of generic soda)

1 days worth of food for $3.16 (about $95 in a month).

I realize the muffin is free, but there's usually something like that in the mix somewhere. Maybe the coffee was free, or cheaper granola bars (these are the nice more expensive ones that just happened to be on sale), or bananas can make for cheaper fruit, or I don't have a meat with lunch that day. Different things come and go all the time, I'll eat whatever the store will give me for cheap. In the end it's a fairly average day. Family can actually eat a bit cheaper as they're at home all day and don't have to have things that are portable. I'm short on my fruit servings, and a touch short on veggies. Sometimes I'm better, sometimes worse. It depends on what we have and what is cheap. Filling out the food pyramid perfectly isn't the top priority.

We have a choice and we do it. Why? Because then we can afford to do things we wouldn't be able to otherwise. Take a vacation, get a new car, membership to the children's museum, or whatever. Thankfully if we slip up though it's not the end of the world, we don't starve, we just drive 18 hours in a day to get home early from vacation and not have to pay for that extra night in a hotel room.

But like I said 8 hours a week or so to plan the shopping trips. Not something I see your typical poor person doing if they're working 2 jobs, but something that's pretty doable for a middle class family with a stay-at-home parent. Really a middle class person that doesn't have to do it probably can pull it off a lot better than a poor person with limited time and options.

As for eating out that's almost exclusively McDonalds or a take-n-bake pizza. McDonalds is about $12-$18 for the 4 of us (3 McChicken for $3, 20 nuggets for $5, plus a large meal where we split the fries + drink), take and bake pizza is somewhere around $5-$10 and we can get feed the 4 of us with one pizza and maybe have enough for a slice or two the next day as a snack or light meal. There's also either a whole baked chicken, or a chicken "meal" from the market which are $6-$9 depending, and goes about as far as a pizza.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 9:37am by someproteinguy
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#116 Dec 12 2013 at 11:48 AM Rating: Good
You're only eating salad greens and dressing for dinner? That's not substantial enough for me. I'd be hungry again in two hours.

I'm with ya on the egg sandwiches, though - I make that for my breakfast, but I toss in some store brand sliced ham and a piece of cheese, and eat a banana or orange on the side with it. 75 cents total, maybe? I get free coffee at work, and free sodas too (which I understand is incredibly unusual and we're the only office in the company that does that, making all the other offices jealous.)
#117 Dec 12 2013 at 11:51 AM Rating: Excellent
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Catwho wrote:
You're only eating salad greens and dressing for dinner?
Yeah, but that's mostly a choice thing. The day is really heavy with the calories early on. I eat a heavier lunch and a lighter dinner. Partly because it's supposed to be better for you, and partly because it's harder to eat at home when I'm watching the kids in the evening.

I can be pretty hungry come morning though. Smiley: lol

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 9:52am by someproteinguy
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#118 Dec 12 2013 at 12:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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Iceberg lettuce and dressing for dinner every night would be the definition of "sucks". Feeding a family on that consistently would be only slightly better than setting them out to graze on the nearest lawn.

I suppose if you eat like a sparrow and make $2 worth of chicken last for days and can somehow get through 120 apples before they rot, it's perfectly reasonable though.
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#119 Dec 12 2013 at 12:11 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
Iceberg lettuce and dressing for dinner every night would be the definition of "sucks". Feeding a family on that consistently would be only slightly better than setting them out to graze on the nearest lawn.
They're eating for dinner what I'm eating for lunch the next day. So they had the pasta w/ sauce thingy the night before. Besides, it was green leaf, not iceberg. Totally different. Smiley: tongue

Jophiel wrote:
I suppose if you eat like a sparrow and make $2 worth of chicken last for days and can somehow get through 120 apples before they rot, it's perfectly reasonable though.
Apples also get dehydrated, or made into apple sauce. I don't know about your neck of the woods, but you can always find some fruit here for less than a dollar a pound. Meat will always get stretched (and almost exclusively bought when discounted), whether it's alongside a starch like pasta, rice, potatoes (10lbs for $1.49 this week!), bread, etc or tossed into the crock pot to make a stew.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 10:15am by someproteinguy
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#120 Dec 12 2013 at 12:16 PM Rating: Excellent
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We have a choice and we do it. Why? Because then we can afford to do things we wouldn't be able to otherwise. Take a vacation, get a new car, membership to the children's museum, or whatever. Thankfully if we slip up though it's not the end of the world, we don't starve, we just drive 18 hours in a day to get home early from vacation and not have to pay for that extra night in a hotel room.

Or...you could just find a job that pays marginally more and not have to live a life of fucking monklike slavish devotion to thrift that will lead to the never-ending resentment of you by your children. Jesus. What you're doing isn't admirable, it's insane. Let me repeat that: Not a good thing. Go make more money.
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#121 Dec 12 2013 at 12:23 PM Rating: Good
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This morning I had to report in to a different office, over on the other side of the river. There's a really yummy bakery over there; so for breakfast I got a cup of coffee and a big swirly, homemade roll thing with nuts and raisins on it. It came to about five bucks. It was really tasty.


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#122 Dec 12 2013 at 12:31 PM Rating: Excellent
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This morning I tracked a musk ox thirty-three miles before locating and slaughtering it. We will smoke and salt the meat and make it last all winter. The bones will be used to make tools ranging from knifes to tent boning to needles. We will use the hide for clothing and blankets. The less suitable parts will be turned into leather strips for lashings and our snow shoes. I plan to spend the winter carving the horns with elaborate designs that I will then sell at the spring markets. Total cost to me, $3 for the iron spearhead I bought from a merchant.

I don't know why all the other poor people don't do this.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 12:31pm by Jophiel
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#123 Dec 12 2013 at 12:40 PM Rating: Good
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Seems like it would be easier to just harvest lawn-bunnies with your mower.
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#124 Dec 12 2013 at 12:51 PM Rating: Excellent
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Smasharoo wrote:
Or...you could just find a job that pays marginally more and not have to live a life of fucking monklike slavish devotion to thrift that will lead to the never-ending resentment of you by your children. Jesus. What you're doing isn't admirable, it's insane. Let me repeat that: Not a good thing. Go make more money.
As the kids get older, have more activities, go off to college, etc. something like that will probably happen. At this point the wife not working, and me being able to spend more time helping out with the family are the priorities. In 10 years I may well be working a better paying job with longer hours, and the wife may have a job of her own. Until then, these are the choices we made. Hoping the extra time we spend with the kids will make up for some of the things we can't afford for them.
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#125 Dec 12 2013 at 1:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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At this point the wife not working, and me being able to spend more time helping out with the family are the priorities. In 10 years I may well be working a better paying job with longer hours, and the wife may have a job of her own. Until then, these are the choices we made. Hoping the extra time we spend with the kids will make up for some of the things we can't afford for them.

Your choices are bad and you should feel bad.
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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#126 Dec 12 2013 at 1:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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Smasharoo wrote:
Your choices are bad and you should feel bad.
Pfft, no need to feel bad. They got pills for that. Smiley: nod
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