Budget Challenge: Live Below The Line


livebelowtheline

Live Below the Line is a global poverty awareness challenge that is taking place April 29-May 3.  Participants in Canada will have a budget of just $1.75 per day for five days – a total budget of $8.75

The idea is that you get sponsors and/or donate the difference between your regular food spending to Below the Line (or you could donate in person to a local poverty initiative/charity of your choosing) but talk about it and make others aware of poverty.

Why $1.75?

The international Extreme Poverty Line was defined by the World Bank as $1.25 US dollars a day, in 2005. Our usual response to this would be, “that’s not so small, US$1.25 actually buys quite a lot in most developing countries”. Unfortunately that’s not true – the US$1.25 figure is calculated using Purchasing Power Parity – which works out how much you would have to live on each day if you were living in extreme poverty in the United States. There are currently 1.4 billion people doing this worldwide.
Converting this to the 2005 equivalent for Canada and adjusting for inflation, living below the Extreme Poverty Line today would be the equivalent of us living on $1.75 a day.
Frugal February was quite the challenge, and I know some of the Toronto SmartCanuck’s members managed $100 spending for the month – but that included them using items in their cupboards and stockpiles.  This challenge does not.  So how do you feel about living on the less than price of a large Timmies each day, just for 5 days?

Interested in joining this challenge? Find out more at Live Below The Line


8 responses to “Budget Challenge: Live Below The Line”

  1. Kerri says:

    I would assume that is per person? If so, a box of KD at .50 cents or beans at the same price plus water for drinks, it could be done.

    • FallenPixels says:

      Yes, per person
      I am sure it could be done, but I wouldn’t like to live on that for more than 5 days

      Some years back some Toronto people (a politician, a doctor and a few others) did a similar challenge -they had to live out of what you would get from the food bank for a week, it was pretty harsh

  2. ibbica says:

    @Kerri: yes that is per person. But of course the point isn’t that the challenge “can’t” be done; there are a lot of people who survive in extreme poverty. And while the “challenge” is to try spending that much on food and drink, for people actually living in extreme poverty that number has to cover everything else too – housing, transport, education, health, etc.

  3. tobiwobi says:

    That’s impossible – while I would be able to feed myself to survive (barely! – nutritious food out of question), this means no money for transportation to get to work, no electricity and water and cellphone (since they do cost $ per day)?

    • FallenPixels says:

      They are asking you to live on it for food – they know we have bills etc we can’t just give up

  4. Opus says:

    If you bought a loaf of bread ($1.00) a carton of eggs ($2.00) a can of beans (.69) a pkg. of dry pasta ($1.00) a frozen can of juice ($1.00) a litre of milk ($1.50) and a few cans or pks of soup ($1.00) or a bag of carrots or potatoes ($1.50) you could definitely make a few recipes to last the 5 days. I saw it in a budget book.

  5. David says:

    Opus – skip the beans – eww! 😉

  6. amy says:

    I signed up for the challenge weeks ago and am super excited! I plan on buying only what I need and in bulk. It has been harder then I thought but definitely teaching me a thing or two. I can easily do this with the use of coupons, but since I don’t think that is the point, I’m not going to be dipping into my coupon stash this time.


















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