$2.00 a Day; Living on Almost Nothing in America

[Williamsmith]

Reading all this preparation stockpiling and caching of food that is occurring makes me curious about your plans to protect it when the time comes you need it. Very impressive, the potential...but how do you plan to share it with those who did not do the same. Have you seen anywhere this type of preparation being encouraged by the government in your neck of the woods. Is the community you live in generally as prepared as you are? Wouldn't it seem imperative not to have an imbalance of resources in order to reduced the chaos that might follow? Sorry for all the questions but it must be something you have thought over.

[Tammy]

My first real exposure to the question of stockpiling, protecting, and sharing was from the Laura Ingalls wilder book about the long winter. Two bachelors had a stash and ate well while the Ingalls were sharing the last potato when the train finally made it to their town with supplies.

This is the big question. Do we shoot to protect our supply? Do we open our doors to share and whole town had a few good meals before starving?

[Packratona!]

My first summer living on my own (during college) I shared an apartment in Silicon Valley with several other folks. We had a kitchen, but I had basically very little idea how to cook, and no car to get to a grocery store, and public transportation there was horrid. I also had nearly no $$$.

I purchased a whole restaurant-sized pallet of Top Ramen noodles and some other odds-and-ends at Costco/Price Club the day of my arrival. I lived off those all summer, learning to throw bits of veggies/spices/broth/eggs/oil/whatnot in with noodles to turn it into "real food". I threw away the pure-salt spice packet that came in the noodles. It worked out OK.


What kept me alive was that Colonel Lee's Mongolian BBQ was about a 30 minute walk from my apartment, and had an all-you-can-eat special for dinner. Several times a week I would walk down there, plunk down my $7.50, and eat every bit of meat and fresh vegetable Colonel Lee had. Eventually he'd come up to me and say "that's all you can eat, be gone!". Towards the end of the summer he'd given up, and would just start cooking up bowls of stuff for me when I walked in. I suspect I was his best customer.

When I moved back for real, I rented a house only a block away from his place, and gave him a lot of business :-)

Very cool story, thanks! I think part of frugal eating is learning all the tricks to use when you go out to eat. Such as, I carry my own sweetener packets wherever I go (either Monk's fruit or Stevia), and ask for lemon water. Make my own lemonade at the table with that. Restaurant eating is normally ridiculously expensive, unhealthy, risky, and I don't indulge in it unless more or less forced to. I try to convince others towards other alternatives when the suggestion to eat out comes up. When I do go out to a restaurant, I want my money's worth, and am almost invariably disappointed by the choices available.

[Packratona!]

If you purchase the bulk of your food storage foods in #10 cans, enough for a year the experts on the subject say it will take up about the same space as a twin size bed. I would say that's about right judging the number of cans we have in storage. We have a small food storage room in the basement. I am able to purchase many food items at a lower price at our regular grocery stores (beans, lentils, flax, chia seeds, etc.) and I vacuum-seal those in canning jars. My next move is to save enough money for a home model of a freeze-drier, but that's over $3,000. About the time we get through most of the food in storage, I'll have the money saved in my $1 account to pay for it.

It's just 3-years of the "Seven Survival Foods" and one year of that amount is the general use amount. I am systematic and keep a good inventory and rotation schedule. I can quickly tally how many servings of everything I have because I set our system up according to how we eat using the old "BASIC-4", and I know how many servings from the 4 different food groups we consume. So the trick is to have a plan to begin with.

I also stockpile single ingredient foods - and typically whole foods - not the more expensive meal type items. You will save money by stockpiling ingredients - and using those ingredients to make your meals. There are less than 50 different items. Everything from salt and pepper corns to chocolate chips.

I also donate at least 10% of our food (or the equivalent in cash from money not spent from the food budget) to the Food Bank and to the local homeless Mission. To date, I have $243.20 left unspent in our food budget (nearly 2-months worth).

That is awesome! How/where did you learn how to do this? Website/book suggestions? I would like to do this after we move to a slightly larger place in the country.

[Packratona!]

My first real exposure to the question of stockpiling, protecting, and sharing was from the Laura Ingalls wilder book about the long winter. Two bachelors had a stash and ate well while the Ingalls were sharing the last potato when the train finally made it to their town with supplies.

This is the big question. Do we shoot to protect our supply? Do we open our doors to share and whole town had a few good meals before starving?

Very good question. I like this article; some food for thought:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...sm/hunger.html

[lessisbest]

Reading all this preparation stockpiling and caching of food that is occurring makes me curious about your plans to protect it when the time comes you need it. Very impressive, the potential...but how do you plan to share it with those who did not do the same. Have you seen anywhere this type of preparation being encouraged by the government in your neck of the woods. Is the community you live in generally as prepared as you are? Wouldn't it seem imperative not to have an imbalance of resources in order to reduced the chaos that might follow? Sorry for all the questions but it must be something you have thought over.

This once was common sense..... Now I teach classes about it.

1. As already mentioned, we donate at least 10% of our food or food dollar budget to the Food Shelter and the Mission (for the homeless).

2. We share our food with our adult children and their families.

3. During the recession in 2007, when 50% of the workers where my husband worked were let go, we shared our food with many of the families until they could find employment. That's also when we increased our stockpile, should hubby be one of the next ones to be let go. It's the old story of the Grasshopper and the Ant (here's the traditional and modern version - http://patricksperry.com/2008/01/26/...e-grasshopper/.

4. In 2006 our little town was paralyzed with an ice storm and a long power outage. Hubby and I went to the townhouses behind our home and checked on the elderly people who live there and asked them if they had enough food and other necessities, to get them through. Being people who endured the Depression and WWII, they all were well prepared for at least a week without utilities. We also heard later that we were the only people who checked on them.

5. FYI - You need & use your food storage every day.

-You purchase ahead when the price is "right" - and that's just one way you save money. There is probably less than 10% of the food in storage that was purchased at retail price - nearly everything is purchased on sale - even my freeze-dried items are purchased at discount prices.

-You store what you use and use what you store. Essentially I "shop" at home first when planning meals.

-I've used powdered milk products since 1981 at a fraction of the price commercial milk in stores (both liquid and powdered). I've always purchased enough for our family for 1-year when it was offered at discount prices.

-About 70-80% of my food dollars go towards restocking food in storage, and the rest for fresh food or items purchased only occasionally.

6. The government does have information for emergency preparation available on-line, but I grew up in the country where "home food storage" was all the food you canned from your garden and stored in the cellar, the rabbits and chickens you grew for meat and eggs, the canned goods from the store you kept in the kitchen so you could weather being snowed in for as long as 2-weeks. Everyone was like that. Especially those who lived through the Depression and WWII.

I'll be generous to a fault to anyone who needs help, but a thief will find two of our best friends helping out - Smith & Wesson. (Repeat, see the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant - http://patricksperry.com/2008/01/26/...e-grasshopper/

[lessisbest]

That is awesome! How/where did you learn how to do this? Website/book suggestions? I would like to do this after we move to a slightly larger place in the country.

I'm a country girl - this is second nature, with a bit of new products (freeze-dried foods) thrown in. There are all kinds of resources on-line (free) and any number of books. You can even find some classes on the subject, especially where there is a friendly LDS Church. I teach classes on the subject at the Extension Office. Just do a general Google search on - home food storage - and that will get you started.

I didn't do it by-the-book, but tailored it to our personal needs, and learned from different people and great web sites as I went along. After going gluten-free, we had to alter many of the things stored. It can be as easy as setting aside $5 to $10 of your food budget each week and adding those sale items to your stockpile until you have enough food from ALL the food groups for a month. It also helps to know how much you use.

If you need some links for information and resources and books, I'll be happy to post them.

[Williamsmith]

Lessisbest I respect your enthusiasm and expertise. I think you are doing the community a marvelous favor by looking out for the vulnerable and suspect you have built a reputation for being generous with your stockpile. It would be hard to find someone who didn't know about your long term food storage cache. In good times and during short term crisis you would be a great asset to any community. But I suspect there are very few of you. As you said, you were the only one checking on the elderly during the ice storm and long power outage.

But let's say the power didn't come back on and your generosity began to threaten your very existence. Beyond The help of Smith &Wesson.......what are your plans for using that cache without sharing with others? Thieves are not the only people who will try to relieve you of your resources. The government might think it was a crime for you to be doing well while others died?

After all, what is the use in having a long term food cache, if you get it confiscated from you by what government Smith & Wesson can't eliminate?

[razz]

With all the doomsday scenarios being presented here, it seems extreme to load all this on one person to solve. At some point, you trust that things will work out after taking all the readiness steps possible. No one can solve everything. The question in the OP was preparedness, not solving extreme societal problems.

[Lainey]

Getting back to the original topic, this book is about *living* on $2 a day, not eating on $2 a day.

http://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Livin...rds=%242+a+day

It was a surprise even to the authors that extreme poverty like this even exists in the U.S.