About 9 months ago Brad, Matthew and I were sitting on a balcony in Alexandria having a fairly long discussion. One of the topics we discussed was trying to live off $30 for a week, the general consensus was it would be possible. Somehow, today, I got challenged to actually try and do it. I went shopping today and it’s on… Oh and I spent $28.39!!!

Food for the week

Receipt and change

Basically the plan is to document each meal and see how the week goes.

There are a few rules:

  • I can’t use food that was in the cupboard; which is easy there was basically none.
  • I can’t deliberately get invited out for dinner.
  • Any free food I get, such as work lunches (which work pays for), are fine.
  • I should try and eat properly: 2 fruit + 5 veg daily, RDI amounts, etc…

And that’s about it… See you all tomorrow for Day 1′s write up!

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5 Responses to One week. $30. The Challenge.

  1. matthew says:

    wow…. that does not look like much food at all…good luck!

  2. AndrewB says:

    In hindsight after a few peoples comments it must be noted that the point here is to see if you can “eat for $30 for a week” … I fully recognise there are other costs involved in “living”.

  3. aric says:

    Awesome, I similar almost every week just because I’d rather spend money on other things.

    $5 for 1 LB of cheese
    $6 for 3 LBs of beef
    $3 in tortillas
    $2 for 1 LB of real butter
    $3 for 2 LBs of bacon
    $3 For 2 dozen eggs
    $3 for various condiments / seasoning.
    $5 for 3 or 4 cans of frozen Orange Juice concentrate.

    Too bad my:
    Rent is $590 a month
    Electricity is $120 a month
    Cable modem is $60 a month
    Gas for heat is $60 a month
    Car insurance is $50 a month

    So that is like $250 a week without gas and beer.

  4. aric says:

    http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/AUD/graph120.html

    Damn last time I bought something on ebay from Australia it was in 2001 or 2002 and it was about half.

    http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/AUD/hist2001.html

    Your eggs are twice as expensive there. Here in the US they are just over $1 a dozen.

  5. AndrewB says:

    @aric
    Good work repeating every week. I don’t know if I’d be able to repeat this every week. I like variety. I should also point out that I had certain conditions in that I had to eat fruit and vegetables – which may have left me with lower quality and/or less “full” flavours (a contributing factor to wanting variety).

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