--- Dennis Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> > "Earlier this year, I tried living on $141/month from food
> stamps. It
> > can't be done."
Well, it can be done, but it's butt ugly and hardly healthy. It's called the mac&cheese / ramen soup diet plan.
> It's simple math: $141 divided by 31 days equals $4.55 per day, or
> $2.27
> per meal. What happens is, you get through two weeks, and then
> there's
> nothing left.
I grew up in the grocery industry - dad was a supervisor for a large chain in the pre-Walmart days - and I used to bet my undergrad roomies and buds $25 that I could trim their grocery budgets by 50% if they'd let me show them the tricks of the trade. Earned a lot of beer money that way. Heh.
Here's a grocery list for $150 / month - 1 person, prices based on a typical Kroger-chain (not even Walmart) in the Southwest US:
Ramen noodles - 8 paks for $1.00 x 32 days = $4.00
(Some days, use the noodles only for "pasta" with a cheap canned sauce and then drink the broth for lunch, separately.)
Cheap large cans of tomato sauce, like Hunts or DelMonte -
10 cans x $1.00 = $10.00
Uncooked beans - pinto, navy or red - 5 lbs, $5.00
Generic brand mac and cheese in a box - 3 boxes for $1.00
30 boxes for $10.00
Generic canned vegetables - 2 for $1.00 x 30 days = $15.00
Large bag of rice - $3.00
Eggs - 3 dozen - $4.00 (or less)
Bread - Generic, store brand.75 x 4 weeks $3.00
Milk - cheapest brand - $3-4 a gallon, x 2 - $8.00
Margarine - cheapest - 2 packs of 4 sticks x 2 = $2.00
Bag of Apples - $3.00
Bag of onions - $3.00
Important -- Bottle of multi-vitamins - $15.00
Total: $85.00
That gives you $65.00 with which to pick and spend on cheap hamburger, cheap sausage, canned tuna (not albacore) on sale for 2/$1.00, really cheap bacon, ugly cheap weiners, bagged generic cereals, and assorted fruits/veges or condiments.
Don't know if food stamps cover frozen foods, but Banquet TV dinners (oh yum! ~~~barf) run betwen .90 and $1.00; Frozen pot pies anywhere from .33 each to 2.50.
Bottom line: It's do-able. But it is not pretty. The multi-vitamins are a must-have, and that's probably not covered by food stamp programs, but it's a necessary investment.
- Deborah