How To Live On $30 A Week

[Music] so food is one of the largest expenses that we have in our lives in fact it actually comes in at number three only behind housing costs and transportation costs so the average American household spends about seven thousand seven hundred and twenty nine dollars per year on food alone so in this video I'm going to show you some ways you can cut back on food expenses while still getting plenty of nutrients and the things that you need to keep yourself very healthy and so what we're gonna do in this video is I'm going to show you what I've personally done to save some money on food but still balancing that out with eating healthy foods I think there's kind of this misconception that it's very difficult to eat healthy for little amounts of money hopefully we can debunk that today in this video but we were actually pretty hesitant to make this because you know people have very different goals and agendas when it comes to eating food and nutrition and look I'm not a dietitian I'm not a nutritionist I'm not a doctor this is what works for me this is what I've done in the past I spend a little bit more money on food now as my budget has been increasing as my income has been increasing but I'm going to show you what I've done in the past and look everybody has different goals some people want to lose weight some people are trying to gain weight some people are gluten-free or vegan or they only eat meat there's just so many different types of diets out there that this is not a one-size-fits-all video what you need to keep in mind for today's video is that this is really oriented on getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to eating food so we're looking at the most calories we're looking at the most food possible for about 30 to 40 dollars per week and and let's just get started with this let's actually go over the grocery store right now I'm gonna give you a lot of different tips and tricks that you can use to cut back on cost quite a bit so let's just go do that now alright so we're at Walmart here or Walmart whatever you want to call it either way I've never met someone who actually enjoys going to Walmart I really hate this place but the truth is it has the cheapest food possible so if you're gonna go to a place like Whole Foods you're gonna pay double the price for really no reason for the same food so we're gonna go in the Walmart there's other cheap stores too like all the is very cheap as well maybe you have some other ones around where you live that are a lot cheaper you probably know the cheap stores and the expensive stores go to the cheaper stores if you're really trying to budget and save a lot of money on food alright so in the store we picked up a number of different things one of them being a massive bag of cheese now this is about five dollars which is kind of going over budget but this cheese I throw this in everything that I'm making and it really is pretty great to eat and then we got some rice which is about three dollars a $3.14 and this is kind of a lot for rice but it's some better rice and what you might get at Walmart brand we picked up some frozen strawberries we picked up some oatmeal for two dollars and 46 cents three loaves of bread for a sixty-seven cents per piece we're really carving up here but you're really getting a lot of bang for your buck I had a place like this and like I said earlier if you go to place like Whole Foods you're gonna pay triple the price for some of these items that we're getting here for so cheap and we also picked up some tortillas for two dollars and 28 cents we picked up a head of lettuce for a dollar 28 then we picked up a full many pounds of chicken for only about nine dollars and 73 cents now generally when I shop these days if I am getting me I like to get things that are going to be a little bit more sustainable options but for this video I know some people it doesn't fit the budget to get organic free-range chickens so because of that for this video we're just gonna have to go with this chicken here but like I said as you increase your budget you can really expand out further or you can cut out meat entirely it's obviously up to you and it depends on your goals for yourself it's really a personal choice now we've also picked up a couple of other things as well we picked up some oranges for only 68 cents apiece and we picked up this this baby spinach for two dollars and 56 cents it's really not that expensive to find some greens to add into your diet and I think it's really important to add that in there instead of just kind of eating bland food all the time and not really getting anything else now there's also a couple of other things when we go back to the apartment that you'll see that I already have like some peanut butter or maybe some eggs or a bagel that I picked up at the local bakery but in total this entire run for food which honestly is probably going to last me much more than a week costing about $35 total for many pounds of rice beans a massive tub of oatmeal a lot of chicken and a lot of other different types of foods for about 35 dollars in total so let's go back to the department and let's see what kind of food we can make for this price all right so we just got back let me show you everything that we got and we're gonna run over the different types of meals that were gonna make so this is everything right here and you know honestly this is about $30 worth of food which is pretty cheap to be honest looking at the amount of calories that we got and honestly there's things in here that are gonna last a hell of a lot more than just a week like this rice right here is gonna last a long time so we're gonna run over each one of these meals few different breakfast options a few different lunch and dinner options as well but what I like to do is start with the base so if you can start with oats or start with beans or start with bread or rice this is how you're really gonna get a lot of carbs and kind of extend a meal because if you're just gonna eat carrots for lunch maybe that works for some people but for me that doesn't work and I probably just keel over it I need more calories my metabolism is kind of like a furnace so let start with breakfast and then we'll move on to lunch and dinner so let's just do that right now all right so one of my favorite options for breakfast is just a simple bagel with some eggs and some spinach and maybe I'll throw some cheese on there as well and sometimes I'll go with a couple of bagels if I'm really extra hungry but this bagel I got for about 65 cents at my local bakery and then these eggs were a couple dollars for a dozen eggs so then what I'll do to make this bagel really crispy is I'm gonna put this in simultaneously with the eggs so these pans they've been through a couple Wars I've gotten a lot of good use out of them but let me just show you how I do this with this so I'll just take my stick of butter put it on there is how you make bagel toast boom no need for a toaster just let it simmer right there really nice and then simultaneously we're gonna take these eggs and we're just gonna crack them and put them right in the pan just like that nice fried egg now usually I'll do a couple today I might just do one you know let's throw another one in there each egg here disgusting [Music] [Music] all right so my special little secret is this baby right here it's my crock-pot now I take a lot of pride in this I used to make fun of people for having crock pots but honestly this is one of my favorite ways to cook food because it's so easy I mean there's really no excuse to not make food for yourself if you have something like this people say they don't have any time to make dinner right because I get home from work at 6 o'clock and then they have to go do things and take kids of soccer practice and all these other things having a crock-pot is something that can really save you a lot of time so usually what I'll do is in the morning just open it up throw some things in it so I got some ingredients right here one of my favorite foods to eat are potatoes so literally this potato probably cost me maybe 10 cents if that honestly it probably was even cheaper than that so potatoes are so cheap and you can actually live off of potatoes almost entirely now obviously it's not getting all of your nutrients but if you saw that movie I think it was the Martian with Matt Damon and he lived off of potatoes for a long time but there's actually a lot of truth to it so if you're gonna get a starch potatoes have so many nutrients so I'll usually just wash these potatoes chopped them up maybe dice or maybe slice them depends on the day obviously you know and then I'll just store them in the crock pot with a number of other things I like to start with the base as I said earlier so I might throw some rice in there maybe some pasta or some chicken I might throw a chicken breast in here or two this is I think a family size crock pot so that is good for like five people I had a smaller one before but I found that I like to just make something in here like a stew or a soup and just start it in the morning you get home from work or you get back a few hours later and you have food ready to go it's just ready to go right there for you to eat so I'll chop up potatoes onions are incredibly cheap I mean each onion here is less than $1 apiece and is gonna last you a long time you get a lot of great flavoring and then carrots this bag of carrots was a dollar 29 and these are organic carrots I actually got these at Whole Foods I was just trash-talking Whole Foods but they do have some good produce you can get for relatively inexpensive especially things like carrots I mean this is so cheap they're getting so many good nutrients in them but I like to put a lot of vegetables in my dinner so you can literally just chop these things up go some chicken in there throw some seasoning in there and we're good to go and then if I fill this crock-pot I can go and eat this for a couple of times in just one week and the entire thing filled might cost me two dollars three dollars to fill the entire pot and it's really really great so that's kind of my secret for dinner sometimes I'll make a steak or some some grilled chicken on my stove or maybe some some baked ziti it really kind of depends but I like to keep things very simple maybe that's just me I'm not Anthony Bourdain I'm not a chef this is just what I do so actually if anybody wants to cook for me let me know please just help me out because I'm struggling here alright so one more thing that you want to really think about is having a sharp knife now this one is a super cheap knife so it's kind of dangerous I had a very expensive knife but when I moved out of my other apartment I think my roommate might have it might have fallen off the truck I'm not really sure but I gotta go get a better knife because I'm probably going to cut off my fingers slicing these potatoes with a cheap $2 knife that I got at Walmart so and get a really nice cook kitchenware and it's going to end up saving a couple ligaments or fingers on your body okay so for lunch I literally eat the same thing almost every day which is just peanut butter and jelly you know sometimes I'll go meat and cheese but uh yeah so you can make a few sandwiches here this loaf of bread it was 67 cents it's Walmart brand it might not be too great for you but if you're really trying to cut money then this might be the way to go so you got to make at least a few of these sandwiches usually I'll make three for lunch and then as far as what kind of fluids you drink I really only drink water juices are really expensive they're sometimes kind of a waste obviously soda if you're drinking soda that's not good for you especially all that sugar so I really try to cut back on sugar as much as possible I only drink water so I have my Brita filter so when I sliced my sandwiches I only cut them diagonal I don't know who cuts them like this it's just really weird so you got to cut them like this or else it's just a no-go for me I won't eat them if they're straight up and down like that just a weird thing I guess all right so another thing that I eat a lot is pancakes this this box of pancake mix was I think it's like three dollars in something and there's literally 39 servings of pancakemix in here for $3 so this could last you more than a month of eating pancakes and there's so many things you can mix in there I mean I usually just throw some bananas in here which by the way this banana was 10 cents 15 cents I think he's about three bananas per pound for at forty nine maybe thirty nine cents per pound for bananas and so the entire breakfast here is about a dollar tops at most probably less than that I would put these pancakes at about 50 cents for breakfast or you can eat them for dinner throwing some chocolate chips or some other types of fruit as well and it works pretty well so let's get started making these and I'll show you the outcome you know as you can tell I'm not really a chef these aren't the most beautiful pancakes you've ever seen but I'm not too picky it works for me so that's a general idea of what I eat and you know I make a lot of different things with just those basic ingredients but the important thing to remember is that if you can just go with the base ingredients you can get really creative on the types of foods that you make if you have certain things and you have your proteins you have your vegetables you have your fruits and you can really start to mix them and make all kinds of interesting dishes now you might have noticed that I'm definitely not a great cook you know I'm getting better at it but I'm not good I'm not good at it all but I think it's the thought that matters or the effort maybe but what I did notice is that if you're going to say buy organic foods I know a lot of people they want to buy organic but it gets pretty expensive what I would do is there's something called the Dirty Dozen which is essentially some fruits and vegetables that are usually hit with a lot of pesticides things that have so many chemicals on them that if you want to get something organic get something from the Dirty Dozen you can look that up just a quick Google search but then there's other things that have really thick peels so for example avocados or bananas or even oranges are things that generally I don't get those organic because I don't really see the need for it especially when they have those thick peels and you can just do quick google searches to find which things are better off getting organic and which ones are not better off getting organic so you might have noticed a common theme throughout these videos is that we really focus on finding ways to cut back on the things that don't really provide that much more value in our so instead of spending four hundred dollars per week on food by getting crab legs and scallops and things that are very very expensive taking that money and spending less but still getting plenty of nutrients maybe chicken or other types of protein we don't judge anyone whatever type of diet you want to have for yourself you can still do it relatively inexpensively and with these ingredients here they're probably in the last more than a week with a couple pounds of rice a couple pounds of beans with all those potatoes this is some of the most calorie dense foods you can possibly get if you enjoyed the video make sure you subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one and if you want to help me cook food please help me cook food because I need help it's barely a joke alright that's a video thanks I'll see you buddy next time [Music]

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 1,178,271

Rating: 4.7724781 out of 5

Keywords: how to eat cheap, living cheap, cheap eats, living on $1 a day, living on $30 a week, living for cheap, nate o'brien, grocery haul, save money on food, how to save money, budget food options

Id: kqUHQ8AylbY

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 10 2019