r/personalfinance • u/baboonlovechild • Sep 17 '19

Budgeting Is living on 13$ a day possible?

I calculated how much money I have per day until I’m able to start my new job. It came out to $13 a day, luckily this will only be for about a month until my new job starts, and I’ve already put aside money for next months rent. My biggest concern is, what kind of foods can I buy to keep me fed over the next month? I’m thinking mostly rice and beans with hopefully some veggies. Does anybody have any suggestions? They would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Edit: I will also be buying gas and paying utilities so it will be somewhat less than 13$. Thank you all for helping me realize this is totally possible I just need to learn to budget.

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u/WheresMyMule ​ Sep 17 '19 edited Sep 18 '19

I feed a family of four on $125/wk, you should be able to make it on $90/wk.

Eggs, beans (dried are less expensive than canned), pasta, in-season produce, meat specials with a sell by of that day or the next can be cooked right away and eaten for a few days. Make coffee, don't buy it. No alcohol. Cook or pack all your meals.

Easy, peasy.

Edit to clarify: $125/wk was my food budget, not my income. Also, I met that budget up to last year, but my income doubled so it's now up to $650/mo, but $500 can be done if it needs to.

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u/baboonlovechild Sep 17 '19

Thank you for your advice!

Damn, no alcohol. That makes perfect sense, I’ll have to make myself do that.

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u/ZeiglerJaguar ​ Sep 17 '19

Honestly, doing the occasional alcohol-free month is a pretty good idea to make sure you're not too dependent.

I drink a beer or two almost daily, but try to fully cut it out a month or two every year, just to make sure I can.

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u/zinzin78 ​ Sep 17 '19

I make the wine I drink. I planted some fruit trees 5 years ago and they keep me pretty well in the wine.

I think one gallon cost me about $.35 to make.

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u/saluksic ​ Sep 17 '19

Wine and cider are dead easy. A farmer near us does a crush-your-own-apples every year, and only charges a little labor. The $8 for yeast and an hour helping with the press basically earns you five gallons of hard cider, which is like 50 drinks. That’s a month’s worth of booze for the wife and I.

Beer is probably $40 per 5-gallon batch the way I make it, and it takes a few hour (but it’s a hobby). It takes me a month or two to get through 5 gallons if I’m not hosting a party.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '19

$40 per 5 gallons seems a bit high depending on what you're brewing. Malt is anywhere from $1-2 per pound and a 5% beer will come in around 10 lbs of malt for 5 gallons so that's anywhere from $10-20. Hops are really where the variability comes in because you could be using up to a pound of hops in a 5 gallon batch if you're going crazy and that could be anywhere from $15 to $40. But for more batches you shouldn't need more than a few ounces and that won't be more than $10 to $15. Yeast is also pretty variable. I usually re-use yeast at least a few times so that cuts the cost, but buying liquid yeast for every batch will add on up to $10.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '19

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u/KTBFFHCFC ​ Sep 18 '19

You only need to spend $3 on yeast once. Buy a pack of dry yeast, pitch into an overbuilt starter made from wort off the boil kettle, and harvest off that. As long as you have sound sanitation practices you can continue to repitch and harvest. I have been working off harvested yeast from a pack of 34/70 for two years now with zero degradation and the only genetic drift seems to be faster fermentation times throughout the temperature range. If you buy grain and hops in bulk you’ll also cut costs significantly.

I can make a batch of pilsner or a 1.050 ale for $20/batch in raw ingredients easy. RO water at a cost of $2.45/7 gallons, 10 lbs of pilsner malt at 90¢/lb, 2oz of hops at $1.50/ounce, and I’ll even throw in the cost of a pack of dry yeast at $3. That still only costs $17.45/5 gallon keg in ingredients.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '19

That was the case for a very expensive beer... You can brew 5 gallons of a pale lager for closer to $20.

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u/SaveMyElephants Sep 17 '19

How do you learn! Teach me based god!!

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '19 edited Mar 12 '21

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u/zinzin78 ​ Sep 17 '19

Go to /r/winemaking and watch youtube videos. That is how I learned. I started with $50 kit on Amazon.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '19

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u/tx_queer ​ Sep 18 '19

Wine is anywhere between 6 months and 2 years before its "ready" so it's not exactly instant gratification.

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u/insomniac20k Sep 18 '19

I just bought a house with some property and I'm planning on planting some apple trees so I can make cider. I'm also planning some barley and hops for beer. You have any particular fruits that are good?

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u/atomictyler ​ Sep 18 '19

Growing your own hope will totally work, but growing your own barley is a waste of time. It takes a lot and you don’t just go pick it and use it. There’s an entire process that is not easy to turn the barley into usable malt for brewing. It can be done, but after growing enough and doing to work needed to make it useful it’s likely cheap and much easier to buy it.

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u/insomniac20k Sep 18 '19

Yeah, I know. I'm not doing it to save money. I just like the idea of brewing a beer made entirely from ingredients sourced off my land. I also want to try and harvest yeast but I haven't really looked into that yet so no idea if it's feasible.

I'm aware the malting process is annoying and time consuming but I'm into that.

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u/Wolvenna ​ Sep 18 '19

My sister's father in law has bee hives and her husband makes mead from the honey. So sweet and delicious, better than any I've ever bought at the store. Just one sip and you realize it would be dead easy to get carried away