Posted by Tim Stobbs on July 9, 2010
It’s been another week into my $25 challenge of eating on the cheap and you can tell we are going to have to start facing the hard decisions next week because this is what our spending looks like to date:
- Margarine $4
- 8 L of Milk $8
- 1lb Coffee $1.98
- Fruit (5 nectarines, 4 plums, 3 apples, 5 peaches) $5.82
- TOTAL $19.80 (79% of budget)
If the fruit numbers look weird there is a story behind that. We had done our camping trip and have a lot of left over fruit which I was planning on buying anyways. So rather than cheat I just transferred what was left from the trip to the challenge budget. The coffee I will admit was a purely luxury item. I don’t need it, but I REALLY like having a cup in the morning and we had run out. I might regret this choice, but only time will tell.
Overall the diet has been very similar to how we normally eat, we have just been forced to consider how we organize our meals to avoid waste. For example, last night supper was roast chicken, potato salad and carrot sticks. The leftover chicken will now be used for supper tonight in some rice paper wraps and then in some sandwiches for lunch on the weekend. Also we have had our meals planned out a full week in advance to ensure we are only buying what we need.
The other odd thing I’ve noticed is we are very careful not to overeat on our ‘treats’ that we have in the house. Anything like chips, nuts, candy or ice cream we are taking care to string out over the challenge so we don’t run out of all of that. Of course the backup plan can be to do some baking (cookies or a cake) but I tend to avoid doing that when it is hot out. I absolutely hate heating up the house on hot days when I don’t have to.
That last five dollars will likely be spent early this next week on some veggies. I’ve noticed we are approaching a lack of choice on those in the house (we have run out of frozen). So I’ll have to carefully shop for some more choices next week which don’t break the $25 dollar mark which likely means sticking to fresh veggies.
I think the easy part of the challenge is rapidly coming to a close and I’m going to have to start getting a bit more creative on what we are eating based on what I have in the house. It’s not like eating is actually hard, but rather its adjusting my thinking to eating around what you have rather than what you feel like.
So any shopping advice on what vegetables I should buy? I’ve still have some garlic, onions, carrots, potatoes from the pantry and then green onion, radish and lettuce from my farmer.
Posted by Tim Stobbs on July 2, 2010
Ok, here’s the deal. My wife and I (and two boys) agreed to do a crazy experiment of eating on just $25 for two weeks plus what we happened to have in the pantry or freezer. Initially I thought this could be easy, but I realized I’m wrong when it occurred to me that I will spend $8 just on milk (by the way I don’t know why, but milk here is CHEAP ~$1/litre). So this will take some planning to pull this off.
A couple of notes on the challenge. I had forgotten that I have agreed to a camping trip prior to doing the challenge, so I will be on vacation for about four days of it. To make up for that time we are just going to extend the start and end date of the experiment to make up that time. So all in total we started on June 28 and will end on July 17.
The first thing we did after agreeing to this was to take an inventory of what we have in the house. That way we can build a series of meals around what we have to help avoid buying more food than I need to. I won’t copy the inventory here, but we will do a post inventory to show what we bought and what I used from the pantry. Then we decided to avoid going shopping until later to ensure we REALLY need the food item in question rather than just want it.
To date we have only spent $4 on margarine which already taught me something:
Lesson #1 – When you are going very cheap you can’t afford to be picky over what brand you buy. What ever is on a good sale is what you buy. The margarine was about 50% more for the same price of our usual brand.
So far it going fine. Beyond being a little be more organized with meals I’ve personally not noticed much of a change in how we eat, but it’s only been a few days. Later on is where this will get interesting. I’ll do an update late next week.
Posted by Tim Stobbs on June 24, 2010
Due to an odd set of circumstances my wife has actually agreed to one of my crazy social experiments in spending. So starting in July for two weeks we plan to buy just $25 of food and live off that for two weeks (or just $0.45 per person per day). Are we crazy? Have I lost my mind?
No, instead I want to test a theory that food is a huge blind spot for a lot of people. We often assume we can’t cut back on our spending for a short while, for example if you get laid off. So I want to test a theory that with minimal money and what we happen to have around the house we should be able to each just fine for two weeks. Also I do enjoy the challenge of trying to cook with what every happens to be in the fridge. This just happens to be the extreme version of that.
Yet of course there are going to be a few ground rules in this experiment:
- This does not affect my wife’s daycare food (lunch or snacks during the week). That comes from a different pool of money and my wife is required to meet certain standards so those meals can’t be touched. Besides the entire month is planned out in advance for the daycare.
- I can use anything that happens to be in the house as of right now. I can’t go stock up before hand to make this easier on myself.
- My pre-paid orders at the farmer’s market don’t count towards that $25. I have already paid for those months ago. Also it isn’t much food and a limited selection since the season has just started. I can’t just eat salad for two weeks (beside the boys don’t like salad).
- We can’t eat out any more than normal. I can’t line up invites to eat at other people’s houses to escape this.
- If we have company I can’t exceed the budget. They will have to eat what ever I’m cooking.
I’ll keep you all updated with a couple of posts on this experiment during July. So stay tuned. How about you, have you ever managed to eat really cheap for a short while? If so, any advice for me while we do this?
