What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day? • Hacker News Board

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#121

Post by sametmax » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 11:42 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #106

dluan wrote: post #75

I did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I end…

What would be the equivalent of $2 in the US?

Compared to where ? $2 isn't even worth the same, depending of the place you are in the US.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#122

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 12:15 PM UTC

barking wrote: post #115

arcturus17 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So after reading this your first instinct was to comment how you know better than the world’s greatest philanthropist?

Is he greater than, say, the guy who founded DFS Group, who has now given away all his wealth in line with his plan to do so which he set in place decades ago? Edit named wrong company initially

DFS as in the duty-free retailer? Given that they made their money from cheap booze & cigarettes, you'd figure they're starting from a pretty big karma deficit -- Windows may be responsible for a lot of things, but not lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#123

Post by roenxi » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 12:18 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #116

dluan wrote: post #75

I did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I end…

Could you guys share some strategies? The parent talks about beans. I wonder what Eyght did.

Assuming you can't go to direct barter, at $2/day you can no longer really ask someone else with specialist knowledge to do things for you as you have no way to compensate them.

You'd basically have to grow your own food, deal with getting some land to live on without paying rent, and the $2 couldn't go to daily expenses, it'd need to be saved up for basically capital expenses and surprises.

Realistically, you'd need a close-knit community of similar people in a commune-style setup.

I mean, $2/day for food probably doesn't get you a healthy number of calories after adjusting for surprise expenses. So alternatives must be found.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#124

Post by Symmetry » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 12:21 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #98

peteretep wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you threw the baby out with the bath water there; the other East Asian countries that embraced the west became much much richer much much faster after WWII. China just managed to dramatically shit itself from the Great Leap Forward through to the early 90s, and is now undergoing the growth spurt that it’s Eastern neighbours experienced decades previously.

They are also much smaller. If you compare China to India it didn’t do that badly after all

I think that if I had to live through the second half of the 20th century in either place I'd take India's moderate socialism followed by a slight loosening over China's extremes. Even if China is in a better position right this moment, it lost a lot of people getting there.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#125

Post by sireat » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 12:30 PM UTC

I have a friend who lives on less than 20 pounds a week in London (while paying 1500 pounds a month on rent).

How does he do it?

  *  By using perishable sales at Tesco and other places.

  *  By bartering for food

I saw him pick up a bag of ripe but fine peaches for 10 pence and a 3-4pounds of chicken wings for 99 pence. Loaves of bread were 10-20 pence.

This is not easy to do by any means because the competition is fierce. The scenes are reminiscent of Black Friday insanity in US.

Shows the economic realities of living in London.

Personally, I would rather try to pay less on rent and more for food but that is not always an option.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#126

Post by dgellow » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

tobr wrote: post #83

inamberclad wrote: post #46

I'm kinda put off by the production of these videos. It feels like some artsy vlog or artisan type video, but instead it's highres slowmo shots of someone's sheet metal hut and the sunlight coming through smoke and dirt while they slog through another day with nearly nothing to show for it. I feel like the videographers missed the point by trying to make it pretty.

Maybe not surprising when you go to the world’s 2nd richest person, a person whose net worth keeps increasing by billions per year, to learn what it’s like to live on nothing.

Bill Gates didn’t produce the videos himself ...

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#127

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

dluan wrote: post #75

I did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I end…

[deleted]

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#128

Post by proverbialbunny » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #116

dluan wrote: post #75

I did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I end…

Could you guys share some strategies? The parent talks about beans. I wonder what Eyght did.

The holy grail of cheap food is Italian. You can buy a large bag of noodles for pennies sometimes, and making sauce is cheap, but even pre made canned sauce is cheap enough to fit the $2 a day challenge. (If not $1 a day depending on where you shop.)

If you're desperate or just old fashioned, peanut butter goes a long way. Cheap day old sandwich bread or bagels found at a bakery, and cheese, like cheddar cheese slices, make $1 a day feasible. Bananas can sometimes be pretty cheap too.

Likewise, it's super cheap to bake food at home. This is how people ate during the great depression. They'd make pancakes, waffles, and other sorts of items. I don't know what the price of Bisquick is because I just make this kind of thing from scratch when I'm in the mood, but it's mostly the price of milk. Some items take an egg, but eggs tend to be optional when it comes to breakfast cooking, especially if you're making Swedish pancakes (so good!) or crepes or similar.

Then there is the standard:

- Rice

- Corn chips and beans

- Vegetables are cheap, and quite good steamed or as a stir fry.

- Potatoes. They can be had for cheap, are quite filling, and left over potatoes from dinner can be used for breakfast. eg, mashed potato biscuits.

- Chicken can be quite cheap, but you'd be using very little. You can make a soy chicken, veggy, rice dish on the cheap, for example.

- And as odd as it sounds, there are a lot of stack foods and dessert foods you can get in super markets that are filling compared to their cost. Eg, pretzels or Doritos. A larger bag is around $2 and can be broken up into multiple meals. Or, eg, at Trader Joe's they have a box of pralines for $2 that can fill one up for a day. These foods can add variety to the cheaper foods (like rice) by eating a bit a day.

And, possibly the most surprising bit, if you're living it up, at $3 a day: Trader Joe's has frozen pizzas for $2.95 that are not only quite good, one pizza fills me up for an entire day. They have tv dinners for $2 or $2.95 too, but most of the time I'll eat multiple meals a day, so this kind of premade food comes closer to $4 to $6 a day without necessarily trying to be cheap. Trader Joe's has good cheap food.

Ultimately, if you want to take on a challenge like this, be prepared to buy everything in bulk, and be prepared stop eating meat, or eating very little meat.

edit: Oatmeal and Cream of Wheat. A meal is ~20 cents and it will fill you up.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#129

Post by bilbo0s » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #121

amelius wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the equivalent of $2 in the US?

Compared to where ? $2 isn't even worth the same, depending of the place you are in the US.

So true.

Won't go very far anywhere in the US, but it'll go a bit further around Canton, MS than it will in Houston, TX. But yeah, you're screwed either way.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#130

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

proverbialbunny wrote: post #128

mettamage wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you guys share some strategies? The parent talks about beans. I wonder what Eyght did.

The holy grail of cheap food is Italian. You can buy a large bag of noodles for pennies sometimes, and making sauce is cheap, but even pre made canned sauce is cheap enough to fit the $2 a day challenge. (If not $1 a day depending on where you shop.) If you're desperate or just old fashioned, peanut butter goes a long way. Cheap day old sandwich bread or bagels found at a bakery, and cheese, like cheddar cheese slice…

Ultimately, if you want to take on a challenge like this, be prepared to buy everything in bulk, and be prepared stop eating meat, or eating very little.

Agree on the meat, however: Most folks that are poor simply cannot buy in bulk. If you are lucky you get paid once a month, but getting paid once a month also limits how often you can eat fresh vegetables. Canned might be your only option. If you don't get paid once a month, it doesn't matter if it is cheaper to buy 12 rolls of toilet paper if you can only afford the 4-pack. Or you might be able to afford bulk at tax time, but as soon as an emergency comes up, you can no longer buy bulk.

Not only this, but things like transportation and storage become an issue. You may or may not have cold storage, freezer space, or containers to store leftover/bulk food in. You may or may not have a vehicle of any sort to carry the stuff in. Even if you have transportation, you might not have the money to use it (or public transportation, if that is a thing where you live).

I'll mention that the unfortunate bit of $2 per day doesn't actually include only groceries, but other necessities as well. I don't know what the amount is in the states, but wherever it is, it doesn't leave a lot of room for anything but the most basic food. No spices. No chips since you can buy beans (or lentils!) and rice that last for multiple days cheaper than you can buy the bag of chips.