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There's an ongoing blog about a family of 4 or 5 that spends an average of $2 per person a day on food. A day. And they are worth over 1.4M or something like that. The couple is I believe in their late 30's or 40's and retired. Accumulating wealth at the expense of nutrition and taste. Incredible what priorities people have.
I understand for those that only can afford $2 a day for food but if you don't have to then just don't do it. Such deprivation.
Yeah, again, I would love to know how that's possible. I guess it's a lot like saying that a Toyota Prius barely uses any gasoline and costs little in gas money. That's true, but my Camaro is a V8 performance car, and it takes the best, most premium gasoline and uses that to get speed and power. And it's worth every penny. My body is the same way. I require A LOT of food, more than 100 grams of protein daily, and good quality Whey protein is about $1 per scoop, which is really cheap honestly, that's 24 grams of protein for just $1. That means you could get your protein needs met for just $4, if you wanted to drink it with water raw, which I don't, but I can understand that I COULD be doing that. That would still mean I'd need to find the other 2,500 calories or so somewhere else, though. Even inexpensive off brand cereal would still run $1 per breakfast with milk, very very cheap indeed, but the point is it costs money to eat well.
You go buy any container of fruit at the store, it's $4-5, and raw fruit isn't much better. I've done that route and personally didn't feel it was worth the hassle to save a few pennies on uncut fruit where sometimes I was getting quality I just didn't like -- you don't know how that pineapple really is until you cut it open, and at least at Safeway, whew, they suck at fruit. Their precut fruit I can at least check the date, tell what I'm buying, etc. Fruit is expensive, though, and if you're eating any fruit your costs will be higher. Your best bet for cheap fruit if you're being frugal is the bags of frozen fruit I buy, because those are very economical, like $10 for a bag of 10 cups of fruit, so I throw one cup into my protein shake per day and that's super cheap for what you're getting.
It's also a simple matter of how much you value your time (factor 1) and how much you enjoy cooking / cleaning up after it (factor 2). Since I value my time highly and I don't enjoy cooking at all, I wouldn't ever consider that a good way to save money. I just turned down a gig Tuesday for $700 for 8 hours of work. It's not because I might not like $700, I just don't care enough to bother doing work that's purely about the money and doesn't teach me anything, doesn't help expand my knowledge, or otherwise impact my life. I still made money on the gig anyway since it's my company running it, so the equation for me is work 8 hours and make $1,700 or work 0 hours and make $1,000 (or whatever my profit margin will be); I chose to maximize my hourly pay by not doing the work lol.
I never even said that lol I said it’s cheaper to eat a $5 Subway than to buy all of the ingredients for a sandwich at the store because you can’t do that, you literally will spend WAY more than that! Even a good loaf of bread is $4.69 or something crazy. Yeah, that’s frugal lol. So it’s true if you buy every ingredient at the store and eat the exact same sandwich for 5 days in a row you’ll save money because you could get the ingredients for maybe $15 at the store, maybe. Let’s not include mustard and whatnot though. But since most people don’t want to eat the same crap every single day that’s a horrible way to be frugal.
OK, you can just stop now. Your cluelessness is showing. People who buy their own groceries and eat at home all the time know how to eat a variety of foods at reasonable cost. I know. It's an alien concept for you. But it's possible to do.
There's an ongoing blog about a family of 4 or 5 that spends an average of $2 per person a day on food. A day. And they are worth over 1.4M or something like that. The couple is I believe in their late 30's or 40's and retired. Accumulating wealth at the expense of nutrition and taste. Incredible what priorities people have.
I understand for those that only can afford $2 a day for food but if you don't have to then just don't do it. Such deprivation.
What is the point of bringing up such an extreme example?
There's an ongoing blog about a family of 4 or 5 that spends an average of $2 per person a day on food.
The more you have at the table the easier it is to feed all for less cost.
The food costs aside (ftm), every other aspect of managing the pantry, shopping, prep work and trimming,
the cooking time, fuel costs... all of it when ÷5 (vs ÷1 or ÷2) will be much be less.
If you're really serious about cutting those costs then don't live alone
which will likely lead to tastier and more nutritious meals and a better social life too.
---
As to the food costs work out your values and multipliers; eg:
Breakfast @1X; Lunch @2X; and Dinner @3X = 6X for the day (vs their $2 per day)
allows 33¢ for a share of the pot of oatmeal (cooked from scratch) ..and trimmings
allows 66¢ for a share of the leftover meatloaf as a sandwich ...and trimmings
allows 99¢ for a share of the roasted whole chicken and vegetables ...and trimmings
Doing similarly while living alone WILL cost you more. It has to.
Yeah, again, I would love to know how that's possible. I guess it's a lot like saying that a Toyota Prius barely uses any gasoline and costs little in gas money. That's true, but my Camaro is a V8 performance car, and it takes the best, most premium gasoline and uses that to get speed and power. And it's worth every penny. My body is the same way. I require A LOT of food, more than 100 grams of protein daily, and good quality Whey protein is about $1 per scoop, which is really cheap honestly, that's 24 grams of protein for just $1. That means you could get your protein needs met for just $4, if you wanted to drink it with water raw, which I don't, but I can understand that I COULD be doing that. That would still mean I'd need to find the other 2,500 calories or so somewhere else, though. Even inexpensive off brand cereal would still run $1 per breakfast with milk, very very cheap indeed, but the point is it costs money to eat well.
You go buy any container of fruit at the store, it's $4-5, and raw fruit isn't much better. I've done that route and personally didn't feel it was worth the hassle to save a few pennies on uncut fruit where sometimes I was getting quality I just didn't like -- you don't know how that pineapple really is until you cut it open, and at least at Safeway, whew, they suck at fruit. Their precut fruit I can at least check the date, tell what I'm buying, etc. Fruit is expensive, though, and if you're eating any fruit your costs will be higher. Your best bet for cheap fruit if you're being frugal is the bags of frozen fruit I buy, because those are very economical, like $10 for a bag of 10 cups of fruit, so I throw one cup into my protein shake per day and that's super cheap for what you're getting.
It's also a simple matter of how much you value your time (factor 1) and how much you enjoy cooking / cleaning up after it (factor 2). Since I value my time highly and I don't enjoy cooking at all, I wouldn't ever consider that a good way to save money. I just turned down a gig Tuesday for $700 for 8 hours of work. It's not because I might not like $700, I just don't care enough to bother doing work that's purely about the money and doesn't teach me anything, doesn't help expand my knowledge, or otherwise impact my life. I still made money on the gig anyway since it's my company running it, so the equation for me is work 8 hours and make $1,700 or work 0 hours and make $1,000 (or whatever my profit margin will be); I chose to maximize my hourly pay by not doing the work lol.
Again, why do you hang out on this forum?
I'm really trying to understand.
Like...are you here to brag? Or are you here to shame people for living frugally? Or what? Because you clearly aren't here for the frugal living tips, since you seem to think you have it all figured out.
Like...are you here to brag? Or are you here to shame people for living frugally? Or what? Because you clearly aren't here for the frugal living tips, since you seem to think you have it all figured out.
Think there is a difference in the frugal-minimal and frugal-cheap people...
The frugal-cheap aren't minimal but they can't afford more, the minimal people are frugal because they don't want more but can afford it otherwise
Think there is a difference in the frugal-minimal and frugal-cheap people...
The frugal-cheap aren't minimal but they can't afford more, the minimal people are frugal because they don't want more but can afford it otherwise
That's true, but people in either scenario can benefit from some of the information on this forum.
If two people are looking for information on cutting their grocery bill down, for example, it doesn't really matter if they're doing it because they're broke or because they'd just prefer to minimize their expenses. They can still find use in much of the same information.
Someone who thinks cooking is a waste of time, however, might not find use in the same information and might not be able to share any helpful information.
I feel like that is what we are encountering here.
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