Well folks, I made it. 7 days living off of $56.45. Here’s how the score broke down: 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup $1.78 Mickey of Alberta premium whisky $12.64 Red pepper $2.97 Green pepper $ 1.15 Sweet onion $1.12 Cilantro $1.29 2 cans of 6 bean mix $1.94 1 can of corn $1.47 .67kg of black beans $2.65 1.03kg of brown basmati rice $5.20 5 mushroom Mr.Noodle packs $1.65 1 box of Safeway brand KD $.69 1/2 dozen...
Yearly Archives: 2016
Who’s Got What It Takes To Live Without? Of course living on $56 for food, gas, entertainment, and booze for a week is crazy; it’s ridiculous, drastic, and near impossible. That’s the point! This challenge is supposed to be an exercise in extreme budgeting practice. It’s meant to throw you in an uncomfortable situation and see how (and if) you handle it. What if $56 is all you had? What if your world changed in a second and you had no other choice...
Self Inflicted Pain My first day of this new challenge was by far the most difficult. Being so busy rushing around with the end of last months cooking challenge I didn’t get a chance to go grocery shopping for this month. This meant when I woke up day one I was somewhat limited on my food selection. From 6am when I woke up until after 8pm all I had to eat was two eggs and two granola bars, which I had to...
Date night with Lee. My will is shaken, but not broken!
“Why only budget $250 for a month, that’s crazy!” Let me first begin with my motivation for this month’s budget challenge. I suck at budgeting This could be due to a lot of reasons but mostly because I am simply not a planner. Planning involves foresight, scheduling and attention to detail, all things I’m not naturally astute at (unless you look on my resume). I’m more of a spontaneous, adventurous kind of guy. I plan what I have to (the big stuff...
My name is Richard Groves. I’m 33 years old, a native of Kelowna, BC (one of the few who actually grew up here!) and I like long walks on the beach. I met Ryan about a year ago through the Kelowna Jaycees (Jr Chamber). I live a fairly frugal lifestyle. I walk to work so I won’t have any vehicle expenses to worry about this week (the 50cc scooter isn’t insured..yet!), I never really stopped eating like a Uni student...
THE CHALLENGE “In an effort to BE BETTERTM I’m going to challenge myself to live on $250 for the entire calendar month of March”. Ryan said it with a completely straight-face. I nodded and smiled and made all the right encouraging noises but in my head my initial reaction was ‘why would anyone actually want to do this?!’ My wife Lee and I, both being accountants, already run monthly family budget spreadsheets that we use to regiment our spending. We’re...
I had it all planned out. This was the last night of my 1 roast 3 meals challenge and I wasn’t going to let it kick my ass again. The first night was a marathon of beef cooking and the second was a chaotic pot pie experiment. Both nights I got distracted and both nights we ended up eating after 10 o’clock. But that wasn’t going to happen again. This time I had a plan. Step 1: Where did I go wrong?...
After making possibly the best roast I’ve ever had, I was feeling pretty confident with my cooking skills. I mean sure my friend Drew saved me from destroying my roast and dinners for the next 3 days but I was the one who slaved away to make it work. Thankfully Drew’s American Test Kitchen cook book had done most of the trial and error for us so I just got to follow along and look like a pro. Now it was...
Over the last few days my cooking challenge has really started to build some momentum. After investing into some essential meal planning hacks, I spent my evenings in cultural exploration. First I got to prepare Salt Fish and Ackee, the national dish of Jamaica with my friend Daniel who grew up there. Then Brittney and I were treated to an amazing authentic Chinese cooking night with our friends David and Sophia who went all out with cool Chinese robes, samples of traditional teas...
