The Poverty Line

Something my mil sent me today has got me thinking. A few years ago (2002, I think) she decided to spend 6 weeks living off the minimum wage. She is over 60 and her mother lives with her. She is a wonderful person; she sets a fantastic example to the world, by the things she does and everytime I come home from seeing her, I am inspired to follow in her footsteps.

Anyway, she decided to spend 6 weeks living off the minimum wage. Now, I'm not entirely sure how much this was, or what it was supposed to cover (of course I could try and find out!). It was slightly artificial in that she obviously has a lot of things in her home, from her 'previous' life, but I guess that would show how someone who had a well paid job (she doesn't, but has her husbands company pension) would cope on the minimum wage. She also didn't shirk away from buying things that she needed but could've put off until after the 6 weeks was up. For example, she needed a new pair of glasses (due to prescription change, not breakage) and so she figured out how she could pay for them on her meagre wage. I would've probably cheated at that point, but she didn't, and ended up just buying the lenses, rather than a whole new set of frames too.

I may ask her to see if she'll allow me to post her notes from her experiment, because I think they make interesting reading. She is also trying to find the accounts she kept from that period, so I'll ask about posting them too.

So, what did this get me thinking about? Well, I like to think that we, as a family, are fairly eco-conscious. I am aware that there are lots of things we are bad at, but we also do well in other areas; recycling, reusing, don't have a car etc. I make the majority of our meals and some of our basic foodstuffs from scratch. This is mainly for health and environmental reasons, no yucky preservatives, I know what goes in it, that sort of thing, but I was wondering whether this actually makes things cheaper too.
This also stems from a conversation I had with a friend recently. We were discussing programmes like Honey, We're Killing The Kids and she said that it was all well and good telling people to eat heathily, but in most cases, this means spending more money, particularly if you go organic. Now, I can't deny that in the supermarkets organic stuff is more expensive, but is this the case if you make a lot of your food from the beginning?

We don't really eat much organic food, although just recently I have found more items creeping into my shopping basket (partly cos I'm not worrying too much about the cost of food at the moment), but the reason we don't, especially with fruit and veg, is that the organic stuff is always wrapped in so much packaging, and to be honest, excess packaging is higher up my list of priorities than eating organic, which may be a bit skewed, but there you go.

So, what I thought I might attempt to do, is take some basic foods and work out which is cheaper, to buy my normal brands at the supermarket or to make my own.

For example, bread, biscuits, pasta (not that I make that myself yet), milk (making oat milk and comparing it to normal bought stuff and bought oat milk). I'm sure there'll be others, but can't quite think of them at the moment. This will also give me the opportunity to post some of my favourites and most commonly used recipes, which was one of the reasons I set up this blog in the first place!