Act 38: Live for a Week at the U.S. Poverty Level

The US Government says that to be considered "poor" a family of 3 would make $19789.56 a year. That translates to $380.57 per week, so this week's task for The Boy, The Girl and I was to live on $380.57 for the week.  First I had to calculate our standing expenses.

$735  Rent  (To get this, I took my mortgage payment and subtracted taxes and insurance to get the cost of the dwelling itself.)
$225  Car
$90  Cell Phone
$90  Electricity
$30 Water
$30 Heat

=$1200.00 for fixed monthly expenses.  Since we are doing this for a week, I divided that by 4 and got $300 for a week's worth of expenses.

That left us with $80.57 for food, gas, and incidental expenses.

Whoa.

I took a moment to thank God that I don't have a kid in daycare, and sat down to make my grocery list.

The Boy, The Girl, and I had already strategized on how best to approach meals.  They take their lunches to school every day, so school lunch wasn't an issue (though under these circumstances, we would qualify for the Federal School Lunch program.)  Looking at the week, I saw that I had no catered lunchtime events- which meant I would need to bring my lunch every day.  I typically eat lunch out only 1-2 times a week, but at $10 a pop, that would have to go.  I also saw that there was no extra money in the budget for coffee, so I would throw $2 into the office coffee fund and just get my coffee there this week.

Breakfast and Lunches won't pose much of a problem - The Kids pretty much eat the same thing every day.  My lunches can easily be made from leftovers, and if push comes to shove, I can make sandwiches for myself too.  The real sacrifice is in variety.  We can afford to buy the quantity of ingredients to get us through the week, but we have to eat all of those things until they are gone.  That means a lot of peanut butter, the same 2 vegetable choices, and a lot of soup.

Our food for the week

What really worries me is the weekend.  I had plans to go out with my girlfriends, and will probably want to go out on Saturday.  There's really not much left to have coffee with a friend, and forget about going to a movie or anything like that.

Sunday:
We "paid" all our bills and then pulled $80 in cash for the rest of the week.  The trip to the grocery store was enlightening.  The Boy kept a tally of our spending with the calculator, and The Girl was in charge of our shopping list.  She was a stickler for not allowing off list purchases.  (Atta girl!)  When it came time to buy fruit for lunches, the boy noted that low sugar pears (in their own juice vs. in syrup) were almost $1 more expensive than their high sugar counterparts.  He and his sister conferred and opted to go with unsweetened applesauce, which cost the same as the sugary stuff - but with two additional servings (6, rather than 4).  They also negotiated a change in the menu (fish sticks over macaroni and cheese) by downgrading the from goldfish in their lunches to plain pretzels.


I spent most of Sunday taking the ingredients we purchased and making soup.  I made a large pot of vegetable soup and one of chicken noodle.  This is to help me pack lunches for myself during the week - as I try to avoid eating the high carb dinner leftovers that The Boy and The Girl prefer.  Since lunch out is not an option, I have to be extra careful about having lunches easily available.

After grocery shopping, we had $31.20 left

Monday:

• Breakfast - Instant Oatmeal for The Girl and I.  Grits for The Boy. 
• Lunch -  Kids:  PB&J Sandwich, Fruit cup Applesauce, Carrots, Goldfish Pretzels,  Me: Vegetable soup, PB&J
• Dinner - Spaghetti, Frozen broccoli

First, The Boy was still hungry after his grits, so I gave him a hard boiled egg.  The Girl decided that she wanted an egg too, so she ate that instead.  Luckily, The Boy took care of her oatmeal too.
The day went mostly fine, but I found I was nervous and aware of the fact that I could not spend any money this week.  In fact, I worried about it.  I found myself thinking very carefully about any errands or driving, because I wanted to conserve gas.

I underestimated the amount of food a growing 11 year old can eat, because The Boy was really hungry at the end of the night.  Without my knowing it, he ate 2 of the eggs I had "budgeted" for the week, and most of the lunch pretzels.  I tried not to fuss at him too much, but it really messed with my plan for the week!  Luckily, it will be just me toward the end of the week - and I can get by on the leftovers.

We seemed set, until the weekly email from school came.  The Girl has to bring a white tee shirt covered with 100 decorative items to her 100th Day of School celebration.  Oh, and it's the teacher's birthday next week, so the class parents are taking up a collection for a gift.   The shirts were on sale at AC Moore this week for $2.50 each, so that wasn't too bad.  The Girl wanted to use buttons, but a pack of 50 buttons was $3.  At $6, that was not doable.  We opted for one tee shirt and to use sharpies to draw 100 hearts on it.  (Thank you DPS for the use of a red sharpie.)  $2.67 for the tee, $2 for the birthday fund, and we are down to $26.53.  And it's only Monday.

Tuesday:

• Breakfast - Instant Oatmeal, Grits
• Lunch - Kids:  PB&J Sandwich, Fruit cup Applesauce, Carrots, Goldfish Pretzels,  Me: Vegetable soup, PB&J  
• Dinner - Macaroni & Cheese Fish sticks, Baby carrots Leftover broccoli

After the unexpected expense of yesterday, I was resolute to not spend any money.  I made it until 12:30.  The Girl's teacher called - she wasn't feeling well and needed to be picked up.  I left work early - which if I were an hourly employee would mean no pay for me - and headed to school to pick up The Girl.  She walked up to me in the school lobby, said Mommy, I don't feel good, and proceeded to vomit.  I grabbed a trash can and handled the situation.  On the way home, she asked for a Sprite - which is what I always give her when she's sick.  She looked so pitiful that I had to stop at the convenience store.  $1.32 later, she had her Sprite, and we were left with $25.21.  That night we had fish sticks for dinner.  I gave The Boy one of mine because he was still hungry after eating his.  (When did he get to be such a vacuum cleaner?)

Soup, soup, and more soup.
No danger of starving, at least.

Wednesday: (No Kids)

• Breakfast - Instant Oatmeal, Grits  Hard-boiled eggs.
• Lunch - Kids:  PB&J Sandwich, Fruit cup, Carrots, Pretzels  Me:  PB&J, Vegetable Soup
• Dinner - Black beans and rice.

Home sick with The Girl.  I am so sick of soup.  I used the slow cooker to make some black beans, so it will be black beans and rice for dinner tonight!  As you can see in the photo, I have plenty of food, but it's not a lot of fun eating the same thing for lunch and dinner every day for days on end.


Thursday: (No Kids)

• Breakfast - Yogurt cup
• Lunch - Soup
• Dinner - Leftover soup

I miss meat, and I miss salad.  I feel so blechy because my meals have been so carb-heavy.  The black beans and rice last night helped a bit, but I've eaten about 1/4 of the recommended amount of protein for a healthy diet.  The Greek yogurt this morning helped a bit, but I feel bloated and gross.

Also, I forgot to buy cat food on Sunday, so another $3.17 gone.  $22.04 left.


Friday: (No Kids)

• Breakfast - Yogurt Cup
• Lunch - Soup or Spaghetti leftovers.
• Dinner - Dinner out w. the Girls.  Supposed to order Thai Food... Hopefully, gas won't be too expensive this week and I can order an entree.  If not, it's going to be soup for dinner.  

I made it to Friday with $22.04 in my pocket.  Here's the dilemma:  I need to change the oil in my car, and I have dinner out with the girls planned.  The oil change will have to wait.  And because this is an experiment, I have the luxury of spending 12.5% of my food budget on a single meal.  However, that would be completely out of my reach normally.  Luckily, it turned out that I was able to get away with paying only $5.17 for my meal because my friends overpaid for theirs.  (My rule was no free meals, but I have good friends who found a way to help me out anyway.)  Let me tell you... After a week of vegetable soup, spicy shrimp with eggplant never tasted so good.  AND I had leftovers for the next day.

Saturday: (No Kids)

• Breakfast - Yogurt Cup
• Lunch - Thai leftovers
• Dinner - Thai Leftovers

I almost broke the plan because it was my dear friend Amber's birthday, but time was not on our side, so we made alternate plans.  I was headed out to see another dear friend, Chantal, but it was lunch time.  Since I didn't have any spare cash to grab any fast food on the way,  and I didn't plan ahead - whoops! - I had to run home to eat.  That detour cost me precious gas, and made me about 20 minutes late.  But I remained true to the plan.  I made it to the end of the week with $16.87.  Just in time to roll up to the gas station and fill my car, which was running on fumes, with gas.

I made it, but barely.

You know, it was easy to fixate on the lack of variety and flexibility in the food we had, but I cannot understate how stressful the whole week was.  I felt anxiety all the time.  Every time the kids asked to do something or buy something, I had to say No, we can't afford it..  And I cringed every time the kids asked to eat outside of our planned meal times.  It was very difficult to not be able to just provide for my children.  I can only imagine how it feels when this is an everyday occurence.

This week was hard: there's no way around it.  I lost a day and a half of income because The Girl was sick.  The car had to be serviced, and I put it off because I couldn't afford it.  Oh, and The Boy who was eating me out of house and home needs new school pants. I am so grateful that this was just a short-term simulation.  It definitely helped me to be more aware of how casual I can be about spending.  It's just stuff - until you don't have it.


By the way, if you want a taste of this for yourself, Urban Ministries of Durham has a great simulation called Spent.  It allows you to see how you would do making it through the month with all the obstacles and bumps that come along.  I used it with my students during a research unit on Social Action, and it was very eye opening.  Check it out!  Play Spent