I do love the hologram stunt you tried to pull while pretending to travel trough Czech Republic, clever P1na.

It could be poor management on my part but that's what I recall. I also lived in an apartment with no kitchen for a year and a half and that cost included a bottle of oil. It was 2 cans of chicken, a quart of cooking oil (couldn't find anything smaller), onions, a bell pepper, some small taco sized tortilla's and some shredded cheese. Normally I love cooking, but it's a pain in the ass when you budget for $5 a day normally and have to rely on a plate-cooker.

Nothing, I eat human beings, especially vegetarians. That's my way to eat "healthy" ; )

Talk to tiny, he gets some good discounts.

Tssss, that's what you get from wanting to eat ananas the whole year in our country ;)

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In response to OP:
My lowest period when I was tracking every expenses was between 60-80 euros per month. It could have been lower if I went to the food bank (coz I was eligible). Of course, as I'm bit of a fitness nutjob, it was mostly healty food.

Key thing is: do you have space to storage food? Like buying 10 kilos of potatoes, that's something you can't do if you rent a 15 m² studio. If you have space then get all the mail ads from local supermarkets, make comparisons, get the best deals and also make some connections with the guys from your local street market. As you live in America, I think you'll have it easy to buy food in bulks (like the 50 kilos bags of rice in Chinese supermarkets).

EDIT: and when you're low on money/food, being able to afford a snack or a restaurant is like Christmas and fun fact, girls mostly invited me to restaurants because they earned more than me, playing "Lady And The Tramp" IRL :o)

EDIT 2: Oh yeah, get a job as cook or assistant cook so you can take the leftovers at home (or eat them at your workplace), sometimes I could eat a few days totally for free ;)

*Walks in*

*Looks at thread*

*Walks out again*

o_O

Life advice: when I was on social welfare, I only had 350 euros per month so you better get used to lower your lifestyle for when things get rough

EDIT: I found back in my bookmarks the blog of a British girl who shares her "below the poverty line" recipes:

http://agirlcalledjack.com/

At the current exchange rate, no more than $200 per month. I'm saving a lot of money the last couple of days though, because I recently discovered that I was in fact capable of making yummy french toast properly :D

dayum. i spend like 300 singapoor dollars a month on food and i have a job. is belgium giving out passports?

okays. nevermind then. israel does sound pretty nice though, except it's in israel.

I don't blame you.

Hmmm although semi-unrelated, I remember reading about a student before who looked over nutritional charts, and took a specific combination of seeds that matched those requirements and blended them into a powder, then he just added the powder to water. It was bland (I think) but otherwise cost 1/4th the cost of normal for food, no chewing involved, easier digestion (already broken down pretty small due to the blender)... Meal time and cooking was reduced down to like 2 minutes per meal.

Damn I wish I could remember where I read that from... Going really on the cheap you could do that for a few months, or convert and live on it permanently.

If I really force myself to refuse my friends when they suggest eating out (or accompanying them but not eating and not paying, which makes me look like something of an ass, unfortunately), I can eat very comfortably and healthy at about $30 a month (where I live). I have meat about once or twice a week, but have vegetables/salad and lentil/pea/pulses protein with some bread or (much more rarely) rice every day, with the occasional orange juice when I can find one, and an occasional 250ml milk box (I'm a grown man, I don't think I really need all that much calcium any more now).

Probably had the shittiest (:D) time with bathroom function ever.

EDIT: Oops. My math broke. I meant 100 PKR a day, which is 3000 pkr a month, which is about USD $30, not $100. $100 would have me living in luxury :D.

I can easily spend about $250-$300 a month on food. My daughter and granddaughter live with my wife and I --and my granddaughter goes through quite a bit of milk, which here is more than the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

We have, however, started eating a lot healthier by buying all sorts of vegetables to snack on and trying to avoid the "instant foods" of the freezer section. Green bean, snap peas, radishes, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, carrots, celery --we eat a lot of these uncooked and you can really make a fairly decent dip with Greek yogurt (which tastes almost like sour cream) and some spices to make ranch dip.

When it comes to proteins, we usually end up with the low-end hamburger (don't go too much on the fat percentage) and chicken. We have one of those "NuWave" ovens that uses the infrared convection cooking and it's awesome, you can get one of those roasting chickens (which ends up cheaper than the cut up parts), season it and it ends up nice and juicy, and something we can store for later.

Wise choice for wanting to eat healthy!