Tuesday, September 16, 2008

a dollar a day

In my last post I talked about a photo contest my grandson Alan was entering.

The interesting thing about the contest was the premise.

Can you feed yourself for a dollar a day? In many places in the world, that would be an unheard of luxury, but even those of us who are pretty careful would find it a huge challenge.

Still it is worth a bit of consideration, at least for us.

We live on a very modest, very fixed income. Almost everything we consider necessities (insurance, gas, food, property taxes) are going up pretty seriously.

The only way I can hope to keep up and survive is to cut costs, and that ain’t easy!

So far this year our grocery bill has been about $2 a day for each of us. Pretty tight, but it could be tighter if necessary, I am sure. As I think about though, that price includes paper products, cleaning supplies and a few other things that are not really food items.

We come from a long line of scratch cooks. Our kitchen and pantry is veritable small scale grocery store, with stocks of almost everything we eat. Still I like ice cream once in a while, and miriam makes wonderful chocolate chip cookies (still) that go through a fair amount of spendy chips (we buy them in bulk which is cheeper). 


If we really had to, and we may at some point, we could cut out a lot, but for now it is an interesting intellectual exercise.

Cut our grocery bill in half? Hmm.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

My mom always thought I spent too much on groceries for the three of us. It was about what I spent for me alone before I came to live with my parents.

And you're right that a lot of the cost was not food but other stuff.

I did find that as my caregiving chores became greater that I had less time to take care of other things like cooking. Some things I couldn't do saved money.

By the way my wife and I also met when we were 6 and we have 11 grandchildren. But we've only been married 4 years this year.

Lori1955 said...

A dollar a day? I don't think it can be done. Although my grocery budget also includes paper supplies and cleaning supplies, I know the food still comes out to about $3 a day.

dave said...

Lori, I think it could be done, but it would be supremely bare bones. Just scratch basics. I think it is a good intellectual exercise though.

And yes, caregiving will make a huge difference on all of my life, as it goes on and gets more intense.

dave said...

Lori, I think it could be done, but it would be supremely bare bones. Just scratch basics. I think it is a good intellectual exercise though.

And yes, caregiving will make a huge difference on all of my life, as it goes on and gets more intense.

rainbowheart said...

A dollar a day? That would be hard for me to. I don't spend alot of money in the grocery store because I do put up a ton of veggies every year. I have been raised to believe that is what Southern Ladies do. I do buy pork and beans in the grocery when they are on sale..I have more pork and beans than I do anything else. But I do like some pork and beans right out of the can.