$20 (USD) Challenge

[Molis]

99c store in Southern California


Dinner (Panackelty)
2 Bag of potatoes
2 bag of onions
2 bag of carrots
5 canned corn beef
Croc Pot

Lunch:
1 loaf of bread
1 pack of cheese
1 pack of bologna
1 mustard

Breakfast:
1 loaf of bread
1 cube of butter
1 bag of oranges

$2 left over for a tall boy of Coors Light to end the week.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Water softener? The hell, America.

Hard water is a pretty common issue and some will say it's better for you since it's typically loaded with calcium and magnesium. The softner is mostly used for soapy-goodness and plumbing maintenance.

[shadowdasher]

Not only have I had to do this but for 2 weeks with $20. Aldi is an amazing place.

[Mihalik]

How close did you get and what was your total?

About 5$ for 8lbs of simple rice, about 3$ for 24 eggs, about 4$ for 1.5 gallons of milk. There 12$...you are surviving, would you ever want to do this? No.

[Biomega]

Let's assume that "survive" is intended to mean "you could subsist on this diet long-term without ill health effects", otherwise you could literally just fast for a week and save $20, or only eat bulk fillers like rice (see above), which doesn't work for extended periods of time.

7 days means $2.86 per day, means 0.95 per meal for 3 meals/day. With those numbers, you'll have to cook in bulk and divide, as it's unrealistic to buy small enough portions without waste at that budget.

You need adequate protein, fat, and carbohydrates, and should reach 2000 calories per day (women)/2500 calories per day (men) which is the generally accepted average daily intake to maintain weight (varies with many factors, obviously). Vitamins and trace elements are also required, or you'll risk malnutrition.

People can actually live on a lot less meat than people suspect given our modern diets. Meat used to be a luxury in most (agricultural) cultures, as it requires a lot of effort to raise in husbandry or acquire in hunting. A vegetable-rich diet using plants as sources of protein is sustainable, but let's say we actually want to grow over 4 feet and such, so we up the protein a bit. Chicken tends to be the cheapest in most industrialized countries, though local variation exists (pork is dirt cheap in some places, for example). Milk is another option; dairy in general is, however the more processing the more expensive things tend to get. In subsidized markets, milk can be VERY cheap. Let's say some chicken and some milk as the cheapest options.

Carbohydrates are the easiest to come by, usually. Lots of it in cheap bulk goods like cereals, so wheat, maize, and rice are good candidates for staple foods. Potatoes are also an option depending on area, as they can be very cheap in some places. Let's say a mix of all for some variety, but a substantial part of the diet would probably be found here as the cost/nutrition ratio of these foods is exceptionally high.

Vitamins and so on are best taken from fruits and vegetables - probably the latter, since fruit tends to be significantly more expensive; this, too, varies with local markets of course (I can buy a few kilograms of apples for $2 in some countries, or a SINGLE apple for 1.50$ here in Japan). Root vegetables tend to be the most economically efficient, so expect lots of carrots and turnips in your diet. Leaf vegetables are probably required for some nutrients, but will likely remain confined to the more boring ones like lettuce or cabbage, since the more "hip" ones tend to be expensive for various reasons.

So, in conclusion, you'll basically try to eat meat a few times per week, but not every day. Lots of rice, potatoes, and carrots, a salad every now and then perhaps. No processed food of any kind, very few spices and so on, no desserts or luxury foods. It's actually a fairly healthy diet - you may notice that people like athletes or body builders will often eat things like chicken with rice and spinach, or meat with potatoes, plus drinking a lot of milk. Of course, in very different amounts. A serious bulking diet of many thousand calories will cost you many hundreds of dollars each month.

There's also some rather famous dishes that you can make in line with these constrictions. Japanese curry, for example, is meat, potatoes, onions, carrots, and rice - all extremely cheap ingredients, stretched very efficiently with the use of spices and roux. No coincidence, as it turns out, since the traditional Japanese curry was, in fact, conceived of in its current form precisely in order to be both nutritious and economically efficient. Irish stew is another efficient dish, using small amounts of meat to accompany large amounts of cheap vegetables. These stewed dishes also have the advantage of being easily prepared in bulk and then portioned out, so waste is minimized.

Sample menu:

Monday - corn flakes with milk / baked potato with butter / chicken with rice and spinach
Tuesday - oatmeal / salad / vegetable pilaf
Wednesday - soup with rice / cut vegetables / peppers stuffed with ground meat
Thursday - cereal with milk / stir-fry / pork with mashed potato and turnip
Friday - vegetable soup / potato fritters / chicken with salad
Saturday - rice congee / salad / baked potato with side vegetables
Sunday - muesli with milk / stewed vegetables / chicken paella

It's hard to do exact math on whether the money works out, but it should be very cheap in any case. The key is portion size - people tend to GROSSLY overestimate how much food is needed to match daily calories, especially in highly industrialized countries that have a history of abundance reflected in average portion size (not naming any names, but it's the US). You can actually get by on surprisingly small portions, if you eat three meals a day. You don't need a whole chicken breast per person, for example, but since that's a convenient portion size people tend to go with that. Instead, just cook more chicken, cut it up, and THEN divide it into portions - you'll find it easier to serve "2/3rds of a chicken breast" and so on that way.
Also, processed foods are THE budget killer in most countries. And that doesn't have to mean TV dinners - even just things like sausage or bacon or cheese are usually significantly more expensive than alternatives on the same weight/calorie level. Spices etc. are of course luxuries as well, but given our established palates it may be very hard indeed to go without pepper etc. all of a sudden (salt, of course, is in fact an essential nutrient and thus required). But, used sparingly these flavor ingredients can actually be fairly insignificant in the overall budget. I guess you do have to go without saffron for your paella, though Heresy, I know.

Of course, all these thoughts are fairly generalized. Even accounting for differences in spending power and currency exchange rates, many countries have WILDLY different understandings of what food is priced how. Even within the same country, prices can be very different depending on where you live, or where you shop. It helps to know what you have access to, and to compare prices aggressively. Don't be lazy like me, who doesn't want to walk an extra 4 minutes to the supermarket not directly inside the train station, even though it's often 20-30% cheaper on the same items. Yeah, I suck. Also, sales matter - many shops will now use sales and special offers to attract customers, as they feel the grip of online retail slowly squeezing their neck. Yes, even groceries are coming to amazon, you can bet on it. Check your local supermarkets for current and future offers, and plan around that. Maybe some smaller shop has coupons you can use, or a good deal for larger amounts; heck, you can even haggle at the mom & pop shops, or try to (well, not in Japan, but...). Anything to squeeze out an extra buck!

[Rustedsaint]

Easy to do chunky soups that eat like a meal are on for 1.50 a can here(no need water) can start fires here to cook erm.
Regular soups are on for 12 for 4.50 (mushroom ,chicken, tomato)

[Schattenlied]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA The sad thing is if I hadn't put spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive off for a week. the would probably have flown right under the radar.

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spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive off for a week.

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spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive off for a week. That doesn't need to be a rule that is the actual challenge.

If you don't think you can survive for a measly week off only rice or only ramen you are seriously misinformed... A week is not nearly long enough for eating only 1 thing to cause a problem.

[Knolan]

Let's see, 20 USD converts to about 63 R$.

1Kg of cheap rice costs 2 R$.
1Kg of chicken costs 8 R$, less if you are willing to eat the less desirable cuts.
1Kg of a cheap fish costs 6 ~8.
5Kg bag of the season fruit (currently Bergamot) cost about 6.
800g of cheap non organic lettuce costs around 3, you can also get 1kg of carrots, onions or potatoes for about the same price.
A dozen of cheap eggs costs 3.

Yep, I guess it is possible to survive a week considering you drink tap water (I would boil it before), buy low cost products (in the case of the rice you would have to check for rocks and leaves, the ones that are already selected are more expensive) and if you don't eat bovine meat (that is VERY expensive when you compare it with fish/chicken).

You could possibly add some juice if you do it yourself, lemon juice is quite cheap to do if you have access to a blender. Milk would be nice, but I guess it would be too expensive, specially since you would want to drink it with coffee or a chocolate powdered mix, which are both expensive... maybe you could add some yogurt... not sure though.

[undeadmoon]

$2 for 2 dozen eggs. That's 3 eggs a day per morning, leaving me 3 for my salad.
$10 for 5lbs of chicken breast
$3.50 for 2lbs of spinach
$1 for lots of green onions.
$2 for cucumbers
$1.50 left for any other toppings

Man, I'd love these prices, eggs here are $2.19 a dozen on sale.
5lbs of chicken breasts for the most bargain basement quality is about $17
I don't' like green onions, but for the cheapest onion here it's about $1.19/lb
Cucumbers are almost a luxury food here, at $3.29/lb

Now, that's supermarket prices for one near me I just used an app to look up, but since I have a car and a membership to a wholesale club, I cut those prices in half, usually, however the challenge was to make it without a wholesale club, so I can't count it.

I wish the farmer's market near me didn't close, I'd have not needed the wholesale club membership to not get gouged and get quality food.

[Independent voter]

beans rice



and a scrambled egg

It's like what most of the world lives off.

Get the beans and rice from Walmart for cheap, a dozen eggs cost like $1.20 in the US. 5lbs of Walmart rice is $2.32, 2lbs of pinto beans are $3.38.

[Daedius]

Easily, from Lidl/Aldi.

[pewpmeiser]

How about I put the $20 in my wallet and just go out to my garden and get some stuff for free instead.

[Noomz]

Alright here is the challenge.

You get $20.00 (USD) or whatever that converts to where you are the challenge is to spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive off for a week.

So maybe get pencil or pen simple piece of scratch paper and write down the things you would get, make a list like a shopping list, then maybe price check on the items you would get, and post how much it came to.

Coupons are allowed.

(Rules: No Warehouse shopping this includes the ones with membership fees, cards or no cards, also no special hook ups not I know a guy who knows a guy. You can hustle per say all you want but the purpose of this challenge is to see if you can survive off $20.00 getting only the things you need, so no charities or churches either, no foodstamps or any other kinds of aide, no borrowing from friends or eating somewhere else for that week)

After:


So did you do it did you make it 7 days and 7 night on $20.00?

If not why not?

How close did you get and what was your total?

No, not doable at all. I'm Swedish, so somewhat different living prices too but I don't know wether it's cheaper here or not. You need between 400-500 SEK (500 SEK is 62 bucks) for a normal, nutritional weeks of food. Maybe on a good week with some solid discounts and coupons you can get something good for less.
It would be impossible to get a normal, nutritional meal for 20 dollars (162 SEK) per week. You might not die of starvation, but it wouldn't be what I'd call living.

[Tailswipe]

20kg of white star maize meal is enough to live off for a month. I'd use the few dollars left over to buy something with vitamin C to avoid scurvy.

[Doctor Amadeus]

If you don't think you can survive for a measly week off only rice you are seriously misinformed... A week is not nearly long enough for eating only 1 thing to cause a problem.

spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive

Yeah some stayed under $20.00 and some didn't and did this very thing, and yes a week is enough to cause problems. I would take weeks to progress until you had issues of malnutrition but the point is to live off this.

[cubby]

Farmers Market for fruits and vegetables. Water to drink. Done.

I had to do this once in the past. Not the most appetizing diet, but it is healthy and cost effective.

I'm not sure you've actually been to a Farmers Market - they are expensive.

@Mall Security - I don't think it's possible. Not at $20/week. I mean you might not starve to death for a couple of months, but you probably would, eventually. Unless we're talking about other avenues like food stamps, etc.

[Schattenlied]

spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive

Yeah some stayed under $20.00 and some didn't and did this very thing, and yes a week is enough to cause problems. I would take weeks to progress until you had issues of malnutrition but the point is to live off this.

You said for 1 week, 1, single, week. Once that week is done these people are going back to eating what they normally would, so it will never progress to malnutrition.

If you wanted this to be $20 a week for X number of weeks you should have specified that, you didn't, you said 1 week therefore it was answered as such.

[Doctor Amadeus]

No, not doable at all. I'm Swedish, so somewhat different living prices too but I don't know wether it's cheaper here or not. You need between 400-500 SEK (500 SEK is 62 bucks) for a normal, nutritional weeks of food. Maybe on a good week with some solid discounts and coupons you can get something good for less.
It would be impossible to get a normal, nutritional meal for 20 dollars (162 SEK) per week. You might not die of starvation, but it wouldn't be what I'd call living.

Thanks for being honest, Yeah I can say it is able to be done, and I believe I can do it, but truthfully even with some of these answers, I question some of the truthfulness of the responses.

But I don't do that, because if a person isn't being honest they know it, whether they respond that way or not. but yeah even doing it $20.00 a week is a HUGE problem and not sustainable or healthy.

[Elba]

spend it on food sustenance and nutrition to survive

Yeah some stayed under $20.00 and some didn't and did this very thing, and yes a week is enough to cause problems. I would take weeks to progress until you had issues of malnutrition but the point is to live off this.

You can easily live relatively healthy off of 20 bucks a week indefinably. Discounters are a thing.

[Doctor Amadeus]

You said for 1 week, 1, single, week. Once that week is done these people are going back to eating what they normally would, so it will never progress to malnutrition.

True, true, true, I was just saying that was the goal to be sustaining and nutritious, you are also right over all 1 week is not going to be damaging in general or over all, damage COULD be done, and some of these responses I could see some problems pretty quickly past a couple weeks or so.

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You can easily live relatively healthy off of 20 bucks a week indefinably. Discounters are a thing.

Sure they are a thing, but their are misnomers about discounters, they are not indefinite meaning a lot of times you can find prices well below what the market allows, but those aren't readily available every where, and for good reason, some of it has to do with competition, others has to do with demand.

For instance I would say outside of maybe "The Dollar Store" Here in the U.S you probably wouldn't find anywhere close to being able to survive off $20 a week. You do it YES, but that is because most do not, if most start doing that, those prices will go up, or their supply with vanish.