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