This actually looks quite delicious for a meal while living on less than $1.75 a day doesn’t it! Here is our food diary for Live Below The Line Day 1
Breakfast – this will be the same every day, a packet of oatmeal made with water. $1.29 for 10 packets = $0.13 each
Lunch – grilled cheese, made with no butter because I am not sure it will fit in the budget and 1/2 orange each.
Sunshine bread was $1.44 and contains 19 slices of bread. $0.16 for two slices of bread. The orange was $0.12 each. It is hard to guess how much cheese we are using per meal so I split the block into 5 pieces, one for each day. The cheese for lunch and dinner came to $0.30 for both of us/$0.15 each.
Dinner: Chili on a baked potato with cheese. We cooked up 1/3 of the ground but kept some to add to lunch tomorrow, combined this with 4 mushrooms and a can of beans with some of the pasta sauce.
Pasta Sauce $0.30, Mushrooms $0.22, Ground Beef $0.81, Beans $0.67, Can Vegetables $0.72 = $2.72 this will make 3 servings, two for dinner and one dinner size portion to shared for lunch tomorrow (although we pushed most of the beans to tomorrows serving). = $0.91 per serving. 13 potatoes per bag = $0.07 per potato. = $0.74 for dinner with the cheese calculated separately above.
Live Below The Line Day 1 Total Costs
$0.13 (breakfast) + $0.28 (lunch) + $0.15 (cheese) + $0.98 (dinner) = $1.54
We will have to budget more carefully per day, we were under today but the allowance is per day as well as per week (one of the other reasons we left $1 unused in the budget).
Today was not bad, oatmeal is gross but all that will fit in the budget and fills you until lunch but I really miss drinking tea, and milk. I tried but could not fit milk in the budget so water is all we will drink this week. I know from last year that tea will not fit in the budget so I just kept myself busy in the hopes that I did not find myself rocking in the corner due to a lack of tea.
I’m always fascinated when people try these kind of challenges because we take so much for granted. I am there with you on the tea. I have been trying to cut back on caffeinated products for health reasons and I really notice it if I don’t get my tea. Good luck!
To be honest, I am doing a lot better than he is without his coffee
He is amused with me not shoving “rabbit food” down his throat for a change, we would usually have a salad with something like last night’s dinner but salads are expensive!
Wow! Very eye opening indeed! Good luck