Lesson Learned

To invoke a bit of Alicia Keys/John Mayer… “Yes, my rice burned, but I called it a lesson lear-ear-earned…”

I have to say – no exaggeration – that this week-long Eat Cheap Challenge has changed me, for good.

First, the obvious. I had no idea how little one could eat on. It’s good that this was a competition and not just “let’s eat cheap for a week,” because I wouldn’t have stretched my dollar nearly as far. I recall talking to Wendi on the phone a few nights before we started this thing, and saying “I imagine we will be hard pressed to eat even somewhat healthy for less than $25 next week.” Wendi, who had already been to the grocery store responded, “If you spend $25 next week, you’ve already lost.” Nothing gets the competitive juices flowing like a rivalry-raising statement like that. But it was true. I grossly overestimated how much money it would take to survive for a week. Even after having gone to the grocery store, I thought I’d be doing well to come in under 10 dollars. A few days in, 7 dollars (a dollar per day) looked doable. By day 5, I was determined not to break 5 dollars. And seeing as how both Wendi and I broke that magic plane, I’m pretty certain we pushed it quite close to the limit, given our rules. You can eat quite cheaply when you’re really trying.

The second light-bulb that went off was how much money I’ve been wasting (yes, wasting) on food. In today’s America, it’s a struggle to eat healthily. I had convinced myself that as long as I was buying relatively healthy food, no expense was too great. You can’t put a price tag on your health, right? So I allowed myself to go out to eat and buy 10 dollar brown rice sushi rolls from Whole Foods whenever I felt like it, all in the name of promoting my health. What I realized this past week, is if you are spending more than 50 dollars per week on food, you have no excuse not to be eating healthy. Although my meals this past week were not absolutely ideal in terms of health benefits, it wouldn’t take drastic tweaks to at least get to a reasonable standard. A few more fruits and vegetables, change the bread to whole grain, add some lean meat, and no one could realistically criticize your diet as leading you to an early grave.

So given that second realization, I see some permanent changes in my future. When I visited the grocery store on Sunday to pick up food for this week, I did it with a much more discerning eye. I upgraded the quality of the bread, of course, and purchased some fruit and other side items too expensive for challenge meals, sure, but I also realized that I can’t go back to eating out for lunch every day or dropping $30 for a "healthy" meal. Before, I was proud that my average lunch at work was a Subway meal deal that cost about 8 bucks – less than what most of my co-workers spent on lunch. Now I realize that I can make almost the same exact lunch for under 2 dollars. 6 dollars saved per day, multiplied by 250 work days per year is $1500. If someone offered you a brand new flat screen TV to start bringing your lunch to work, would you do it? I am.

Also, you won’t see me on Iron Chef any time soon, but I’m also realizing the benefits of preparing more of my dinners at home as well. I’m convinced that with a little effort, I’ll be able to make twice the amount of brown rice sushi at home, for half the price.

Of course, probably the most sobering, recurring thought of this past week, and probably what helped get me through the past 7 days, is that many people eat on very little money, not by choice or for a competition, but out of necessity. One of our readers posted that her sister literally makes a choice between food and medicine each week. I’ve never had to make a choice like that. Even during the last week, I could have stopped and bought a $25 meal at any time if I really wanted too, and that knowledge also made it easier to live like this for a week. However, I’m not leaving this challenge without a heightened awareness of how fortunate most of us are, and the knowledge that it would take very little for me to make a difference in how much someone else has to eat on per week.

It’s for this reason that I’ve decided to take some of the money I’ll be saving from the lessons I learned this week and putting it towards helping someone else.

The picture above is of Leonel – he’s 4 years old and lives in Haiti. I know that there are many different programs and ways you can sponsor kids – I got to sponsor Leonel here.

http://www.planusa.org/

I liked Plan USA because they let you choose the country of your recipient. It’s $24 a month, a fraction of what I can save if I just put a few of the lessons I’ve learned this past week to work. If you’ve learned anything from following along with this challenge, maybe you’d like to help someone else out too. I don’t ask that you choose the same program I did – just offering one option – just that you help someone. Thanks for reading!