PREcisely !
Posted on 09/23/2013 1:20:00 PM PDT by wbill
With the right PR campaign maybe we could get Yankees to consider kudzu a delicacy too...
This is basically my family’s budget, and thatincludes items such as razors, pull ups, and tp. I cook and bake. It’s that simple. I also garden and can. When I see gardens in our many HUD lots and smell feeshly baked bread from their kitchens I’ll start to feel a twinge of sympathy. Instead I see first-of-the-month shopping carts full of frozen pizzas and premixed flavored sugar drinks.
Dollars translate into calories, and people have very different calorie needs to avoid hunger. A 5’2 woman who weighs 125 pounds could easily assemble the needed calories on $5 a day, but a 6’3 male who weighs 210 pounds might not.
You can even treat your favorite date to a $1 Double Cheeseburger with all the trimmings at McDonalds.
How many are getting tats and the latest jordan sneekers?
$5 a day seems like a lot of money if you do your own cooking. Chicken is 70 cents a lb on sale. Cabbage, tomatoes, onions, etc are about 50 cents a lb. Potatoes are 30 cents a lb on sale. Heck, frozen pizza is $3 a day on sale, and that’s a full-grown adult’s recommended daily allowance. Even if you subsist on frozen TV dinners, if you buy the budget versions, you’ll never go hungry on $5 a day.
Box of Cereal (what's on sale this week?) for $2.50 and a gallon of milk for ~$4. Breakfasts for the week are taken care of. AND....if I'm feeling cheap, the store-brand cereal is $1.87, so I can save a bit there, if needed. Total cost....$6.50.
Lunches? Loaf of Bread for $2, or a $1.19 for store brand. Jar of PB for $3. Or, if I want, some ham and cheese, would be around $5. Total Cost? Top end, $7.
Dinners? # of hamburger ($6) and a thing of rolls ($1). That's 2 nights, at least. Package of pork chops ($5 for 2 nights' worth) and a package of frozen chicken for 2 more night's worth ($9 for 2.5 #, that'd be 2 weeks worth, so $4.50). Leftovers of some sort one night. And that's the week.
Total cost - $6.50 + $7 + $6 + $1 + $5 + $4.50 = $30 / even for the week. Leaves 5 bucks for a bag of whatever fruit is on sale, or veggies, or seasonings, or whatever. And, if I hit the sales (for instance, the frozen chicken is often BOGO) then there's more money in the budget.
Mrs WBill and I do this every week. What's on sale? What do we have coupons for? We eat pretty well. We just don't eat out, ever.
If I had $20/day or $140/week for a family of four for food, we'd be on easy street, comparatively speaking. I'd see a lot more steak and seafood. Might even put eating out back into the budget.
Without Coupons and Gardening Yes. And, it can be fairly Healthy if you have time to devote to shopping for bargains.
With Coupons and Gardening it can be done on less.
yep. Miss one meal in a year and you are “starving”
lol
and speaking of ...
When was the last time unemployment ‘benefits’ were raised? the max has been $450 a week for the last 20 years (that I know of)
If you really want to splurge, a six-pack of Piels Draft Style and a bag of pork rinds!
0.03 _ 1 multivitamin
0.20 _ 2 eggs
0.08 _ 2 whole wheat toast
0.50 _ 3 sausage links
0.05 _ butter
0.50 _ milk
0.08 _ 2 whole wheat bread
0.75 _ pbj or salami/cheese
0.00 _ water, tap from well
1.50 _ Chunky soup, or similar
0.15 _ saltines, 1/3 stack
0.25 _ sherbet, 1 cup
0.00 _ water, tap from well
- - -
4.06
*rarely* eat that much . . 5’11,185
A company local to me exports 'kudzu flour' to Japan. It's made from the roots, or the stems.
If it takes off, there are a fair number of locals who are sitting on a fortune.
Sigh. I could eat easily on $5/day, and fairly well.
The only way I could eat easily on $5/day would be hunting (successfully), once a week.
5.56mm
PREcisely !
See my post #47. Ditto what you said.
Now - there's no way that I could eat out on $5/day. That's why my family doesn't eat out. :-) Besides, Mrs WBill is a better cook than most restaurants.
But eating on $5/day can be done. And $5 per person per day gets even easier.
$5 per day is fairly easy to do in a balanced manner. You won’t eat ribeye steak, or drink alcohol but you can eat reasonably healthy on $5 per day.
Therein lies the problem. Most of these people aren't fat because they overeat per say but because the food they eat is mostly empty calories and thus the body demands more of the crap to do the same as fruits and veggies etc.
And there is the rub. Big Agri-business is mostly ingredients for processed foods which has the empty calories. And they get these huge subsidies from Uncle Sugar. Which in turn makes the processed food real cheap and people with low incomes buy the cheap food because then they can also buy Xboxes and Cell phones and such. If they would eat healthy and spend more time shopping for deals on good food they wouldn't be so fat. But because the government in essence subsidizes bad food the sheep graze on it and get fat.
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