Can you feed your family for £2 per person per day? #2poundchallenge

Can you feed your family for £2 per person per day? #2poundchallenge

Seriously, can you feed your family for £2 per person per day? A few days ago, I saw a tweet asking people to take part in the #2poundchallenge. It sounded interesting and I just had to click on the link to find out more.

 

What is the £2 challenge?

Voucherbox.co.uk teamed up with UK charity Zamcog to present The £2 Challenge: Can you feed you and/or each person in your family for £2 per head per day?

The challenge is simple. We want you to feed you and/or your family on £2 per person for one day, and write about the experience. For each post published about the £2 Challenge, Voucherbox.co.uk will donate £50 to Zamcog to help the charity continue their goal of supporting Zambia’s most at-risk children through food and education.

The challenge will kick off on Monday January 16^th 2017 until the end of Feb, just when everyone is looking to save some money after Christmas.

It costs £2 to feed, educate and clothe a child in Zambia every day. In an effort to change the way we think about food, Zamcog would like the blogging community to cut down on their food spending and waste for one day.

Voucherbox.co.uk are always looking for a way to give back, and teaming our love of living frugally with this fantastic cause has meant that we are able to support the amazing work that Zamcog do each year.

 

Do I think this is achievable?

Definitely! As a Nigerian-Brit living in London, I know the media loves to talk about the extreme poverty in Africa. Yes there is poverty in Africa but so also is there poverty in the ‘West’. I joined this challenge because I feel a lot of us in the world could benefit from living a bit more frugally.

Before looking at my spending, I think I spend give or take close to £2 – £3 per day per person in my household. How do I know this? Two reasons:

1. My mom (God bless her soul) LOVED to haggle and she passed on that love to me
2. London is one of the most expensive cities to live in in the world and unless you have more money than sense, shopping around for deals is compulsory

 

What did I do?

The challenge talks about feeding your family per day. For my household, what works is buying in bulk and I have three to go to places:

1. Local outdoor market – I put my haggling skills to good use here
2. Aldi – Possibly one of the cheapest retailers I know, however, they do not do home deliveries
3. Sainsbury – You get regular discounts and nectar points. You can redeem your points to get further discounts

With a little human, it is important that fresh fruits and vegetables are included in our meals. Sadly though, in London (dare I say most of the UK?) fruits and vegetables are significantly more expensive than unhealthy food. One can easily live on £1 a day if one wanted to eat junk food only. Be that as it may . . .

 

Segilola and Little human live on £2 a day

For this challenge, I tried to buy things with as short a duration of use as I could manage, then calculated the price of each portion. So here goes:

Breakfast:

Nestle Golden morn cereal, about 80g = £0.48

Fresh milk, about 80 mLs = £0.04

Total = £0.52

Only my little human has breakfast, I don’t

 

Lunch:

Baked beans = £0.40

Plantain = £0.70

Turkey wings = £0.50

Total = £1.60

 

Snacks:

Bananas = £0.70

 

Dinner:

Scrambled eggs = £0.40

Toast = £0.18

Margarine = £0.04

Total = £0.62

 

Drinks

Water = £0.40

 

Grand total = £3.84

 

Growing up in London, all my family and friends drink bottled water and it’s a habit I can’t get out of. Secondly, I can’t tell if it’s a Nigerian thing but after dinner, growing up, we didn’t routinely get dessert and I guess that’s why I rarely eat any. I prefer to be filled up with healthy meals. Thankfully, my little human hasn’t gotten to expect dessert every night. She gets the odd treat here and there (especially freshly baked goodies) but not on a daily basis. I’m extra lucky she LOVES all types of fruits, so that’s where the bulk of our feeding money goes to.

So do you think you can feed your family for £2 per day per person? Why don’t you give the #2poundchallenge a go then?