That's a translation of a social media post by Xue Yang, a 28-year-old woman in Shanghai, quoted in "Could you feed yourself on $70 a month? Chinese millennials are trying. The cost of living is weighing on consumers everywhere. But some Chinese, worried about making ends meet in a slowing economy, are taking this food-spending challenge" (WaPo).
That's a free-access link, so you can see, among other things, many photos Xue Yang took of her food. And 332.34 yuan is only $46. The social media trend is to stay under 500 yuan for one person — $70.
The translated words "frugality can be the primary productive force" really do need some additional translation to be easily comprehensible in English. I believe what she means is what Ben Franklin said: "A penny saved is a penny earned." The best way to progress financially is to conserve as much of your earnings as you can as you go along.
Frugality can be interesting and even fun, and social media can help. Americans could benefit from copying this trend, and, in fact, I'm sure it's already happening. Yeah. I found it. Here's "How to Live Off 100 A Month for Food" on TikTok. You only have to watch a few of these to hit upon the most obvious tip: Prepare your own food at home using basic, wholesome ingredients.
I note that there's a health bonus in addition to the money saved. Somehow I'm hearing that observation in the voice of RFK Jr.
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Here is a (hypothetical) story of 2 people.
Person A makes 100,000 a year..
Person B makes 75,000 a year?
Which is richer ?
Oh, by the way..
Person A spends 120,000 a year..
Person B spends 65,000..
Which is richer?
The one in the small house?
Or the one in bankruptcy?
There's an episode of Cheers where Woody and his girlfriend get fat because they're not having sex so that's something to keep in mind.
It isn’t obvious to me Americans would benefit from cooking at home or that they would eat healthier. I suppose if your alternative is fast food? Eating out in a city with a vibrant food culture can be both healthy and rewarding…
…I love the idea of the asian hawker center. There you can’t afford to stay home and cook…
The internet has just informed me that the titles of TV shows do not get italicized so that's also something to keep in mind.
I didn't have a frugality tag until just now. Went back into the archive to add it. Now there are 10 or so frugality posts — a nice variety of things! Check it out.
Interesting article. Not a lot of obesity going on with that diet. I eat considerably more food daily than they were describing even though I am very thin because I run many miles every week, but my diet is similarly frugal when I am on my own. Oatmeal and fruit in the morning, smoked fish and rice at lunch, barley and lamb stew for dinner tonight. I would estimate on the high side that this might total 5 or 6 euro, so under 200/month.
Does anyone remember the FIRE movement? FIRE = financial independence, retire early. It was in the news 6 years ago: https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-to-retire-in-your-30s-with-1.html
For 20 years I had a rental property in a college town. Definitely saw the decline in use of the stove over the years, with the parallel increase in pizza boxes,Chipotle wrappers and Door Dash bags in the trash.
There's a difference between frugal shopping and poverty shopping. It's possible to live on beans and rice while picking through the mark-down produce bin, but that doesn't make it ideal.
My daughters still enjoy ramen noodles while living debt free.
I don't know, I eat a lot of beans and rice, and I certainly pick though the marked down produce - and meat. I also own several houses. What you describe as poverty shopping sounds a lot like my shopping norm. Mind you, I probably spend vastly more on running shoes than most people...
Cheap is not necessarily healthy. Mac and cheese e.g. Rice has compensations if you add peas etc.
Miserly aj. 2. Of Jews: thrifty (derog)
Is this the return of the old knowledge?
Boomers had parents who lived through the Great Depression. Mom's could cook and dad's could fix things. While Gen X loved their Starbucks, we wondered why they didn't buy a coffee pot.
Cooking at home can be social and fun. It can be more nutritious, cheaper and save time.
Cooking can definitely be frugal and healthy for you. Fortunately, I like to cook and have had a lot of practice. Sadly, young people may have been raised in environments where cooking as a skill has not been taught. Schools have abandoned Home Economics.
Frugal doesn't always mean that you have to eat rice and beans...(although those can be really good too). Or that you can never splurge on that Pizza or Ice Cream or or or. Planning your meals, utilizing left overs, and strategically shopping for a well stocked pantry, can help. It is just the two of us so we can really stretch the food budget that way.
Example: Coscto Roasted Chicken. ( buy 3 at a time and freeze two) $4.99. Meal#1: thigh and leg reheated with salad, fruit, french bread. Meal #2: chicken tacos. chopped tomato and lettuce from breast meat. more salad and refried beans on the side. Meal #3: actually snack. reheat chicken wings and have with some cheese Meal#4, 5 & 6: Soup from the frozen carcass using dried beans or pasta that lonely carrot in the vegetable bin, onions, rice, canned or frozen vegetables whatever you have. Soup for days!.
Heh, imagine that. We have another episode of ,common sense isn't all that common. Geez.
Ramen noodles are a gift from God. Add some left over chicken, or a few shrimp, maybe cubed fish fillet, a bit of cut up left over cabbage, green onions.....anything really. Stir in a beaten egg. Possibly a tsp of peanut butter stirred in. Spice it up! Cheap easy and tasty.
My paternal grandparents (mid-1880s to mid-1970s) got their family of five, including three teenagers, through the 1930s depression on about $22 K per year in today's money. That's about 60 percent of modern "poverty-line" for that size family -- and they had no "food stamps", medical insurance, or any other form of socio-economic "safety net".
When they'd bought their house in 1924, with 40 percent down from money carefully saved for that purpose, there was an adjacent landlocked lot that nobody wanted to buy, so they got it for next to nothing, and even in the 1920s built a chicken house, planted fruit trees, and grew a huge garden, along with three beehives. He was still gardening in his early 90s.
Their foresight and general frugality carried them into and through the depression. The bank to which they owed their mortgage collapsed, and it wiped out a neighbor's savings. Grandpa kept on paying the mortgage, but he gave the money directly to that neighbor each month.
The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor in his 56th birthday. Even before Roosevelt's speech, he, my dad, and my uncle were at the recruiting center. The boys enlisted, and Grandpa (a WWI-vet colonel in the Reserves) somehow passed the physical and got back onto active duty. He told that neighbor he could have all the produce he needed from that garden in return for taking care of any "man about the house" things Grandma and my aunt needed with the men gone.
When I was a youth in the early 1960s, Grandpa gave me three pieces of financial of financial advice which guide me to this day --
a) The easiest dollar to make is the one you don't spend.
b) Compound interest is incredibly powerful, and the quality of your life will depend a lot on which side of that equation you choose.
c) If you're in debt, **every** dollar you spend is a borrowed dollar.
You don’t have to be poor or frugal to enjoy Ramen noodles.
Eating restaurant food weather faster slow is both expensive and unhealthy. Also, eating prepared food increases your likelihood of being exposed to E coli or listeria or salmonella or some other type of food poisoning vector.
Cooking in bulk and using your Tupperware containers and a freezer makes meal planning relatively simple.
Being thrifty is the essence of conservatism, is it not?
As with anything, the trade-off is time and boredom.
I cook 90% of my meals at home, and I only eat a small breakfast and a large Keto meal at lunch. Protein is expensive. I spend about $150 a week on groceries and that’s just for me.
Democxrats are working night and day to increase the price of evertyhing - like eggs.
Vegetables are the cheapest - so I assume D's want to do all they can to jack up veggie prices, too.
If you eat a lot of Chicken, Rice, beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes you can save a fortune.
I don't think I could survive on 70 dollars/month of food. It would be a challenge that would likely involve me eating a lot more eggs.
Paging Mr. Micawber
In the early Aughts, when I had three very little kids and was staying home with them while my husband worked his first post-MBA job, I used to do this thing called The Grocery Game. It was a website that took advantage of grocery stores' sale cycles. The idea was to buy six(? I think it was six) weeks' worth of whatever shelf-stable items were on sale at a particular store, using coupons and the store's doubling or tripling policy to minimize your bill. I regularly spent $50 a week or less for our family of 5 - but that's was all shelf-stable foods, which are often not the most healthful, of course: while I tried to focus on the ubiquitous rice and beans, clearly pasta, cereal, jarred sauces, and things like that we're in the mix.
The funny thing was, my husband was making the most money we'd ever had up to that point - I didn't "need" to economize that way.
Now, I pretty much shop the edges of the store with occasional forays into the aisles for things like coffee and anchovy paste and good canned tomatoes and stuff. Our bill is now for just two of us, and runs more like $100 or a little more, but it's almost all meat, fresh produce, eggs, some cheese.
I love to cook at home. I hate to grocery shop. My husband grew up poor and wants to shop every day. I give him a list of fresh fruit and veggies and meat but he still comes home with cookies and candy, things he never got as a kid. Monetarily we can afford it but health wise, no one can afford it.
This was a topic here about 10 years ago, when the Repub congress was taking on food stamp expenditures. It was $6 a day back then. Wonder if the new congress will take it up. Just need big bags of cornmeal, flour and sugar.
Lots of lard and a few eggs. Then sing shortenin bread with Dolly Parton.
Before I retired, I would bring to work a very nutricious yet very tasty lunch to work every day, gaining me a rep there as an excellent cook. But once every couple of weeks I'd go out with a colleague to one of the numerous nearby Cuban restaurants and fill up on vaca frita or lechon.
I was also known at work for food I would bring to our holiday communal lunches, like fried turkey and collard greens. When asked how I learned to cook, I said I was mostly self-taught, and that I learned to cook because I love to eat.
My wife and I rarely eat at restaurants, and I try to keep processed food to a minimum, but a little bit of anything is not gonna hurt you.
"Living below your means"
v.
"Spending your way to wealth & happiness"
Hmmm?
Household finance would be the bigger picture. That should be a mandatory course in high school for both sexes.
We live differently than many.
It is difficult/impossible to say how much a week or month we spend on food. I'm guessing $120. We shop every few months (big shopping) by going to the closest large town (160 miles round trip). Costco, Winco, Food For Less and buy in bulk and on sale: meat, fish, cheese (cheddar, mozzarella cheese freeze well), household supplies, dry goods, canned goods, frozen items etc etc etc. We might spend $300 to $400 a trip. But those items last for months or even a year (or two) in the 2 freezers and stored in the pump house. I haven't bought coffee beans, sugar, flour, cornmeal and other staples in at least 4-6 months. I might be cooking a pork roast that I bought in 2022. We are still eating the jam I made two years ago. If we had to, we could eat from our supplies for a year. Wouldn't be great, but it's food.
Weekly we go to our small grocery store and buy perishable items: dairy items, fresh vegetables, eggs. The freezers are full of the bulk items , divided into into meal portions, vacuum sealed, left overs, casseroles, cobblers from last summer's plum or apple harvest. I haven't bought walnuts in years. Our tree produces so much that I give a lot of it away or trade for eggs from our neighbor.
I was a follower of the FIRE movement around the turn of the century and it helped me retire at age 53. The Motley Fool website used to have discussion boards open to the public and there was a popular FIRE board where I was introduced to the concept.
"A penny saved is a penny earned."
It’s better, because you don’t have to report the penny saved to the IRS.
Pizza need not be a splurge. A favorite Pizzarea let slide their secret cheese. Fontina. Look around for it, and a tubed crust can be just what you come to love.
I hear people talk about cooking at home as if it is some kind of boring unpleasant chore. This makes no sense to me. I'm a very boring guy left to my own devices, but given half a chance or a tenuous excuse, I'll be shopping for an eleven dish Indian feast. And no, I am not gay. I only run as much as I do so that I can eat a lot and stay lean.
Since I only eat one meal a day this wouldn’t be too difficult.
Of course I’d bake my own bread, and I might have to give up my daily tall glass of whole milk.
Now they are older with good jobs, the daughters will drive across town to a good ramen restaurant. But there are other wonderful dishes that can be done cheaply. A warm tomato soup with a grilled cheese will go a long way.
It isn't difficult to find a church with a lunch offering of spaghetti and sauce, because you can feed hundreds cheap and easy with it, and those willing to pay a little will help the church make more.
The problem is when these meals become mandatory, either because others become too expensive or money becomes tight from a poor economy. It appears the latter is the problem in China.
I've always said ole Ben obviously didn't have to pay taxes.
A penny saved is two pennies earned.
"I don't know, I eat a lot of beans and rice, and I certainly pick though the marked down produce - and meat. I also own several houses."
I look for marked down items at the market, too. Aside from stopping at a sandwich shop for lunch once a week, I just about never eat out. The last time I went out for dinner was a couple of years ago when an out-of-town friend was here for a visit. I bought my first house when I was earning $32k/year (2004) and my second one when I was earning $40k (2012).
If you skip that daily Starbucks stop, bring your lunch to work, eat dinner at home and forego expensive destination vacations, you can save a quarter million dollars or more over the course of a 30 year mortgage.
Does anyone remember the Tightwad Gazette? I cooked at home and lived as frugally as possible while my husband was active duty and we had 3 small children. Eventually all 3 went to Catholic school and graduated from college without any debt. Lots of home cooking!
Try eating cheaply on a low carb diet…
Fortunately, we no longer have any need to eat cheaply.
"so I assume D's want to do all they can to jack up veggie prices, too"
Yeah like those mandatory organic carrots they keep shoving down our throats.
In college forty years ago I fed myself on $25 a month. I’m sure I could have done so cheaper and healthier, but saving time was equally important since I worked a couple of jobs on top of studying. Breakfast was a raisin bagel and a little paper cup of cream cheese, both 18 cents. Lunch was an apple or an orange. Dinner was ramen noodles (8 packs for a dollar) fortified with an onion fried in a tablespoon of butter. Cans of frozen lemonade were half the cost of other fruit juices so I kept a pitcher in the refrigerator and had a glass or two each day.
Friends were better off (one existed solely on take-out and restaurant food; for a year the only thing I saw in his refrigerator was a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream and those little packets of Chinese mustard). They would occasionally invite me out to dinner and sometimes buy ingredients and ask me to cook since I knew how.
Alcohol was an impossible luxury, as were sweets. The final month of my senior year I secured my first professional job in a city far away, and to celebrate I bought myself my first-ever bar of Swiss chocolate. Describing the experience of eating it would be a waste of time since there’s a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that captures what it’s like to be impoverished and taste good chocolate for the first time.
Frugality is fine, but not when it comes to having a nice bottle of port.
Young and frugal is wise.
Old and (unnecessarily) frugal is dumb.
You can't take it with you.
One is frugal when it doesn't matter too much. It leaves you to be able to afford the things that you feel are worth it.
These frugality challenges remind me of all the “New York on $10 a Day” articles in the past. Does anyone even attempt these kinds of articles anymore?
stlcdr:
Indeed. When I hear Frenchmen and other Europeans sneering at Americans as 'lacking culture' because we eat crap food, I think of the time I had $80 in my pocket and spent roughly $4.75 for dinner - two hot dogs and a papaya juice, eaten standing up at Gray's Papaya in Manhattan. Was that uncultured? I spent the other $75 on a ticket to the Metropolitan Opera (one quarter of the Ring Cycle, I think). It seems to me that eating crap food so you can afford the opera is a lot more cultured than splurging on food - even excellent food - and neglecting the arts.
Remember the $29 per week challenge? And then Gwentth Paltrow bought beans and showed everyone that you could heat healthy delicious food on that budget. The left tried to destroy her for showing how vapid their propaganda effort was.
"Old and (unnecessarily) frugal is dumb.
You can't take it with you."
Identifying what's necessary is the challenge, since most people don't know how long they're going to live.
Cooking at home promotes family life, and health care through personal choices.
I don't recommend spending it down to zero. Far from it. The daughter will end up getting plenty.
But when it comes to the choice between spending money or spending time; I now spend the money. And like 'Old and slow' said; buy the good wine.
It was wrenching to change to that mindset (I was very frugal in my youth), but it was the smart thing to do.
I always find it very odd that frugality isn't front and center in any discussion of ecology. This is the prime reason that I have concluded that things like the Green New Deal, and all of these United Nations Climate hysterics is fundamentally flawed, therefore fundamentally fraud. Nowhere is frugality discussed ! Of course, this is because it would represent a threat to the monied interests.
But: The best way to lower emissions around the world, is to make 'the thing', whatever it is, last longer, on an individual basis, across cultures. It would have a lesser impact on countries that are already poor, but the rich countries are known for their profligacy. I've been living carefully like this since childhood, and although I no longer need to be frugal, I am by nature and by choice.
"I don't recommend spending it down to zero. Far from it."
You're right- that's not a good plan. But how do you identify the spending limit? The best you can do is guess.
"But how do you identify the spending limit?"
We're far from it. If you're in doubt, you are not.
I'm not talking about buying yachts and sports cars. I'm talking about not skimping on groceries. And we splurge on travel. A 16-hr flight to New Zealand is intolerable in economy (I know from experience).
I'm GenX. Work has a keurig. I bought a refillable pod and bring in coffee for it. I usually eat at home (I live 2 miles from the office.). Cheap? I may not be the poster boy for cheap, but I'm in the running.
That's how I cook. Make a lot, refrigerate for later.
In the last dozen years I've finally gotten my weight under control, basically for the first time in my life (just passed 3/4 of a century a couple months ago)—excepting a brief moment during my 20's when a Berkeley doctor prescribed me “Black Beauties.”
At the high, I was at about 240 lb.; then started driving it down. At 220 lb. I toyed with the idea of halting my descent there 'cause the nice round number of 100 kg—but I still had quite a belly, so continued pushing it down. I'd imagined for years that 180 lb. would be a good “natural” weight for me to stop at, if I ever did manage to get my weight under control—but when I actually arrived there I still had a bigger belly than I liked, so proceeded further with my scrunched-down diet.
Finally, about a year ago, I arrived at the point where my fatty belly was reduced to just a tiny thing, almost invisible below my belt—plus it was at a nice round number: 165 lb., or just about 1-2/3 hundred pounds, which is 3/4 hundred kg—so there I halted: down altogether some 75 lb. or about 35 kg.
So, what is this diet that I've used to successfully control my weight—so I can just choose what weight I want to be? Now, I don't like diet protein mixes; not only do they almost uniformly not taste particularly good, but I have a feeling (whether correct or not) that they're generally just not of that high a quality. So, my diet is milk. One half-gallon of (1% or 2%) milk contains 80g (3 oz.) of protein, while only about 1,200 calories (2%), along with many vitamins and minerals (particularly calcium). I supplement it with a multiple vitamin. Sometimes I allow myself a special treat of a Hershey's kiss.
At any rate, where I live (far northern Calif.) half-gallons of milk cost about $3.50; we could do better if I bought gallons rather than half-gallons, but only one of the former will fit in our rather small refrigerator at a time, so half-gallons it (usually) is. Thirty half-gallons a month gives me an overal monthly food expense of just about $100—not counting the splurge of a steak or other major meal I allow myself from time to time.
"If you're in doubt, you are not."
I guess what I'm getting at is the difference between living in relative good health before passing away from a short illness vs. eventually needing long-term medical care. The amount of money needed in the latter case is significantly more than the former but in many cases, there's no way to know ahead of time which path you'll end up on.
I agree on the "groceries", BTW.
Hubs and I both love to cook and cook well. Often our large bulk cooking consists of chili, pasta sauce, or extra large pans of enchiladas. We break them down into small two-person sized meals and into the freezer. That’s a few weeks of weeknight meals from very little effort. Our local supermarket runs a Five for $5.00 special where a curated group of pork/chicken/beef/fish items can get you decent quantities for a reasonable outlay. That’s $25.00. Break those up into meal sized portions and there's a month of meal options. Any leftovers become lunch for me to take to work.
We gave up eating out because so many sauces and prep foods contain HFCS, a major trigger for Hub's gout. It's not worth going out and playing Russian roulette with days of acute pain thereafter.
"I guess what I'm getting at is the difference between living in relative good health before passing away from a short illness vs. eventually needing long-term medical care. "
Oh, I agree. I'm assuming the worst. Which is why I say the daughter will, hopefully, get a good inheritance. If the "worst" happens, it will be smaller.
Coscto Roasted Chicken. ( buy 3 at a time and freeze two) $4.99
Yep.
Plus when you're smart about buying or cooking in bulk, you get one of those food saver vacuum packers that lets you make any size plastic envelope for your portions, and go to town. Under vacuum, there's almost no freezer burn, and the plastic is tough - much tougher than cellophane wrap.
For what it's worth, frugality was a trend for awhile in the 1990s. Amy Dacyczyn published a monthly newsletter "The Tightwad Gazette" which blew up into 100,000 subscribers (including us). She started it to relate her experiences as a Navy wife whose husband was retiring after 20 years. She wanted a large family and a home, and she was determined enough to get what she wanted.
Note that she wasn't suggesting you cut out all spending; just that you decide consciously what you want and what you don't want.
Her success spawned imitators and encourage the Simplicity movement which questioned our unthinking desire to consume. Of course, it was co-opted by capitalists and took silly forms such as magazines devoted to simplicity that offered products to buy to make your lives more simple, which kinda defeated the purpose.
I have started to use chat GPT to create custom meal plans. You can use in the prompt that you want easy, frugal recipes. You specify the types of cuisines you like. You can specify the number people you are serving. It will provide ingredient lists and instructions. If you like the proposed plan you can then ask it for a shopping list. To be even more frugal you can ask that the meal plan incorporate ingredients on hand or on sale.
Along with 'eat less, exercise more' the advice 'eat at home' is so widely ignored... my wife and I eat out ONCE A WEEK. That is it. Everything else is home cooked. I just had coffee and whole grain toast for breakfast (still sipping coffee while I post this.) Lunch will be here. My wife pressure cooks super great meals with chicken, beef, ham added to beans, rice, okra, squash, green beans, etc... low fat high meals. 10x better than restaurants!
We even grow some of our own veggies.
And yes the bottom line is in the black each month.
I do. I buy fish and meat in the Safeway and Kroger clearance sections and freeze it. They have decent digital coupons sometimes like bone-in pork roast for 99¢/lb. Last week turkey was 73¢/lb so I bought two and froze one. Excellent quality, inexpensive produce can be had at the local Asian and Hispanic supermarkets. Cheese can be a good deal with digital coupons too. I wish there were Aldi's stores in my part of the country because their low/no carb wraps are half the price of Safeway/Kroger/Walmart.
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