Twenty-eight Days From Scratch: The Budget

It's time to talk dollars and cents! One of the reasons I hear many people give for preferring fast food over fresh whole food is cost. I cannot for the life of me understand how that can be. I might have mentioned this before but in college I ate quite well on about $20 dollars a week. Being vegetarian helps a lot and, during that time, I did not buy juice, fruit, eggs or cheese, rice or potatoes (I had to carry my groceries for a significant distance; potatoes and rice added more weight than I could justify) and I rarely bought tomatoes, bread or  pasta.

A few times a week I ate at one of the cafeterias on campus. That is when I would have fruit, rice or bread or some of the other foods that I did not purchase from the store. What I bought consisted of the following: One pound of split peas or lentils (I alternated each week), carrots, spinach, cilantro, oatmeal, peanut butter, lactaid milk (I liked the taste), onions, garlic, and a can of cream-of-mushroom soup (I hadn't noticed the MSG).

On Sundays I would combine the peas or lentils with the carrots, spinach, cilantro, onions and garlic and cream-of-mushroom soup to cook up a big pot of soup (but cooked thick, almost like a stew). I would eat a bowl of that for lunch and/or dinner. For breakfast I had oatmeal with peanut butter and milk (that's how my mama used to make it, ok). I also worked out five-days a week and I was in the best health of my life. I had never looked so good.

The Twenty-eight Days from Scratch challenge replicates that diet in many ways. I have a bit more variety built in (fruit, for example). Food costs have gone up - so I do expect to spend more. I'm setting the budget at $50.00/week.

My grocery haul for this week is:

One pound of Brown Jasmine Rice
One pound of Red Daal
One pound of Green Split Peas

.14 pounds of Fresh Ginger

Five pounds of Carrots
One head of Red Cabbage
Threepounds of Frozen Spinach
Two packages of Frozen Squash

Three Apples
Two pounds of Bananas
One bag of Frozen Pineapple

16 oz Egg Whites

The grand total: $33.88. I will eat for a week on what an average restaurant meal costs.

I have $16.12 left. I am running out of peanut butter and honey (I like that in my oatmeal) so I might re-stock on that. I like to get the big jars, though, so I might save some cash from this week and increase next week's budget so that I can get larger jars of each (which is more economical). I might also need to re-stock olive oil, onions and garlic during the week and I'm thinking to get some tofu for protein. There is plenty of room in the budget for that if I don't get the peanut butter and honey. Lets see which wins.

Why am I doing this Part II (aka The Prey that Got Away)

I have written a blog post about intentional happiness lifestyle design.  That post presents one aspect of why I am making the lifestyle changes that I am. This post presents another aspect of my decision.

Do you remember The Social Contract? Jean-Jacque Rousseau? The treatise on the relationship between the people and the government? Rousseau focused on the sources of political authority which he credited to "the people" rather than to a monarch who ruled by so-called divine right. His work revolutionized politics in Europe and significantly influenced the American Revolution.

There is another sort of social contract that threads the fabric of every society. It is an economic contract. In the context of capitalist industrialized societies, that relationship mainly lays between corporations and people. Basically, the corporations (i.e. the shareholders) own the means of production (sound familiar?) and the workers produce the products. The corporations sell the products and (here is the social contract part) distribute the profits between themselves and the workers. The corporations have a vested interest in the welfare of the workers, the workers have a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations. That's how it is supposed to work.

Then there are the banks. The banks make it possible for the corporations and the people to conduct business: Purchase and sell assets, finance large investments, store their money, and so forth.

There are rules and regulations that govern the transactions within this economic contract. They are intended to curb excess, prevent abuse, and prosecute it when it does happen.

The United States enjoyed a period of relative prosperity during the Clinton Administration. This got certain people thinking, hey, there is no limit, let's milk this thing for all it is worth. So they got rid of the rules, went hog wild, and then, eventually, as should be expected, it all came crashing down.

My issue is this: in the aftermath, the corporations and the banks (well, the people who run them, really) have made no effort to uphold their end of the economic bargain. It is much worse than that. They have coerced ordinary citizens (via the government) to pay to fix the mess that they made. Below I have posted an excellent video made by the political economist (excellent combo) and Brown University professor, Mark Blyth that explains this all quite nicely. (By the way, I find his accent super sexy.)

In the beginning I totally accepted the financial crisis hype, believing that allowing the banks to fail would lead to unbridled disaster. I believed that the bank bailout was unavoidable and prudent. Perhaps it was. However, the aftermath is unconscionable and I find myself growing more unwilling to participate in this nonsense.

So, I ask myself, what can I do to make big banks and multi-national corporations irrelevant to my life?

For me the answer lays in arranging my life in a way that has as little to do with mass consumption as possible. So, in addition to changing my life for the sake of living in the now and maximizing my happiness, I am also minimizing the stranglehold that consumerism has had on my life.

Imagine being free from worrying about money and the constant, grinding, soul obliterating obsession with the means of obtaining it and, rather, having one's needs met via direct exchange with other human beings. Imagine a life where what the "too big to fail" banks do has minimal impact because money is not the central mode of exchange.

Again, I am not doing this because I don't believe in industry and the economies of scale. I am doing this because our banks and corporations have not only betrayed and abandoned us to the wolves, they have become the wolves and they are feeding on us. Many argue that they always have. Fine. Whatever the case, I choose to be the prey that got away.