Could you live on £1 a day?

[luke]

Could you live on £1 a day?

How much do you reckon you need for food and drink? Could you live on £1 a day? Given that a coffee on the way to work costs more than £2, then there's lunch, and you might call in at the pub when you leave the office, let alone what you consume when you're at home, you probably think no way.

But £1 a day is what 1.4 billion people worldwide have to live on – for everything, not just food. That figure is the World Bank's benchmark for 'extreme poverty'. This week, to try to raise awareness, and funds, a bunch of charities have got together and thrown open the challenge to 'live below the line' on £1 a day for five days, to anyone game to give it a go.

Partly out of curiosity, muggins here signed up with many thousands more worldwide, and most of them are right in the middle of their ultra cheap diet right now. I did my stint below the line last week, so I'm now in the happy position of knowing it's all behind me and I need not confront another bowl of brown rice for quite some time if I choose not to.

The results...

So how was it, I hear you ask eagerly? Well, gentle reader, I cannot claim that hunger reduced me to a wan wraith, though I may have contracted scurvy. I did a big (£5) shop at the beginning of the week, and then lived for the week on what I had bought – porridge for breakfast, hunk of potato omelette for lunch, rice and dahl for dinner, the odd oatcake (3p each) when hunger pangs hit hard in late afternoon - all washed down by tea (2p a bag) and water.

I saved up odd pennies and afforded a small cup of proper coffee (20p) on the last day. And yes, I confess, one evening I had half – only half, honest – a piece of Lindt chocolate from a bar I found in the cupboard. About 8p, I reckon, but it was the sweetest 8p of the week…

But while I was rarely hungry, one of the hard things was the gap left by the things I couldn't afford. Fruit, veg apart from spuds, onions and carrots, meat, treats and alcohol were all beyond my means. Yep, it was dull, dull, dull.

Another was sheer lack of choice. Maybe if you live like this permanently you become more creative with your cooking over time, but I really don't want to see another potato omelette for the foreseeable future.

The third is that when you can't have the food you want, when you want it, you get a bit one-track-minded about what you are allowed, what you've spent, how long till the next meal. Boy, was I boring myself by Friday.

Of course, as a friend pointed out, many genuinely poor people wouldn't bother cooking at all – they would simply buy £5 worth of spaghetti hoops, spam and own-brand biscuits and get by on them. Well, maybe so, but I reckon part of this challenge is to try and live in a sustainable, reasonably healthy way. And I did feel quite detoxed by Friday, after five days with no booze, very little fat and no sugar (almost).

But I wouldn't want to have to live below the line for any more than a week at a time – it really made me realise the luxury of choice that you take for granted when you have enough money.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/could-you-live-on-1-pound-a-day.html

i was going to post this the other week, cos i think its pretty easy, i've had to do it in the past. then today i got stitched up on some money which now won't be here until next wednesday. this comes after an expensive couple of months and after i had another client just disappear owing money - he's not checking his email ( i host it so i checked! ) his home, office and two mobiles numbers have all been cut off!

so i've got £6.55 to last me until next wednesday!

i had some chicken in the freezer, so i made a simple thai curry with some coconut milk i had, that'll last me until tomorrow. so i only really need a main meal from thursday until tuesday ... so i got a bit over a pound a day! luckily i got some baccy in, although i will probably have to blag some rolling papers from someone! i've just been through the kitchen and i've got rice, pasta, potatoes, garlic, loads of herbs and spices, stock, peas, sweetcorn, a few rashers of bacon, some red wine ( just for cooking, i doubt you'd wanna drink this cheap stuff! ), muesli, oats, various seeds and some other assorted bits and bobs! i've just used the last of my onions in the curry and have finished off the salad leafs and carrot that i had left.

in the past when i've been pretty skint, you can manage, but it can certainly get boring! with a little packet of mince, a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes, a tin of kidney beans you can get 4 meals out of that. have half the mince as a chilli, a quarter for cottage pie and the rest for spaghetti bolognese and get ready for mince overload! i think i will do that, add in some bread ( toast is always a saviour when skint! i've got jam and marmite to keep me going! ), some milk, i need to get some onions and carrots, probably get some cheap tinned fruit! might make a soup with whatever carrots and onion is left over from the mince meals along with the peas and sweetcorn. hopefully be able to stretch to a bag or two of salad.

i hate being skint ... and it annoys me when its down to other people being late with money! anyway, wish me luck!

so, do you think you could live on a pound a day?

[Brown Sauce]

after 20 years travelling there were periods of silly poverty. One week of mustard on bread for instance.
I once left the south of Portugal with 112 escudos, a kilo of brown rice and half a kilo of dried chickpeas. I spent the money on a big bag of sunflower seeds.
It took about 3 weeks to get to the French border, going round the bottom of Spain. I walked for most of the time.
One guy did give me 2000 pesetas, which I promptly pissed up.
I walked over the border to France, stuck the thumb out and a German guy in a merc pulled up. CD players in the car were a novelty and he asked what would I like to hear.Yello ? I asked, yup, look under the light cover and roll up !!
great lift.
Bit of a digression, but that was the desert after the main course of pretty well nowt.
Life on the road is mostly living off very little.
But I did it out of choice, so nearly always had a smile on me dirty face

And I have plenty of stories like that one ...

[SpursFan1902]

Live on $1.50 (or there abouts) a day? I can answer that in one word -- NO! I am just too materialistic and like food too much for that. I know me...

[Skylace]

I know I couldn't do it. And what's even more sad is that this is the reason why so many people in poverty in America are actually over, not under weight.
Healthy foods, fresh fruit, vegetables, etc are much more pricey and sometimes not covered by food stamp programs. So what are these people left with? Cheap fast food and horrible, heavily processed instant foods.

[luke]

[Skylace]

[Twirley]

I'm not sure I could do it. At least not for long anyway. 3 days tops, I think! Then, I'd want some meat.

[SquareEyes]

I'm willing to give it a try. Please all send a quid to my account and I'll let you know how many days I can struggle through on it