Well, I lived through the experience of living on $1.50 a day as part of the Live Below the Line Challenge–but it wasn’t easy, and certainly wasn’t without its obstacles. I’ll spare the details of how frustrating it is to eat on a $1.50 budget, because frankly, I think we all expect that. Here’s the summary: I drank cheap coffee at home (about .15/cup), made a smoothie with milk (.25), handful of spinach (.15), banana (.29) , a big scoop of peanut butter (.50) and ice cubes for lunch, and had a big russet baked potato (.39) with cheese (.10) and more spinach (.15) for dinner. Not horrible, but surely not my ideal eating day. Though I’m “swagging” costs based on portion size, I probably went a little over $1.50, just on those basic foods.
On the positive, I drank afar more water than I normally would, simply to “float” my hunger out a little longer and I resisted the urge to snack in the afternoon, and late at night. But an ideal diet? I think not. Beyond the food issue, however, the challenge brought to light some interesting realities that a person living in poverty must know all too well.
You can’t afford to get sick. My husband ironically fell ill with the stomach flu and had to take the day off work. (The fact that a person who is living in poverty doesn’t even have the luxury to do so was not lost on me). But, his illness also required me to take an unplanned trip to the store. The cost for for a bottle of generic Pepto and generic Mylanta was about $10. If you can’t afford such things, I guess you just suffer through it??
You can’t afford to “treat” your kids. Given the unplanned store outing, I had to take my three year old with me, which any mom will tell you, is an easy way to blow your entire grocery budget. I realize I’ve quite literally, birthed the beast in this situation, but my son can usually be bribed into compliance with a snack at the store. Because I believe you can’t put a price on your time or sanity, the cost of whatever the item he chooses is is usually not a major concern–as long as it’s remotely healthy. In this case, he chose a single serve Horizon chocolate milk. The cost of it? $1.29. I couldn’t help but note that for a person trying to survive on $1.50 a day, buying such an item would either mean that you, or your child, basically eats nothing else for the day.
You can’t afford errors of any kind. As part of our trip, we also had a movie to return to Redbox. The beauty of Redbox is that at a rental cost of about $1.30 a day, it’s far cheaper than buying a movie on demand (which in our house, costs $4 a movie). But, I’m assuming the folks at Redbox score most of their profits banking on just the fact that people won’t go too far out of their way to return on time. After all, miss a day, you’re out just a $1.30. Normally, I might have held off on returning the DVD: It was pouring rain outside, and I was sweaty and freezing and starving, having just logged a six mile run at the gym. But, I realized the importance of returning the DVD on time yesterday, noting that the seemingly measly $1.30 extra I would pay for its being late isn’t far from the amount a person living in poverty relies on to eat. So, I sucked it up. The problem? The machine was temporarily out of service, meaning I could either drive across town and waste my gas to save $1.30 or pay it. The occurance, but it made me realize just how stressful living on such a small budget must actually be.
And that my friends, is what I learned living on a $1.50 food budget. Let’s see what day two holds.
