One of my former students, Erika C., recommended that I read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
after she read about our $3 a Day Diet project.
I downloaded it on audio and I am finding it fascinating. The author took this idea to the fullest - choosing to live on minimum wage for two years, doing minimum wage jobs.
I still think she had some of the benefits of being from a higher SES - most notably, she knew it was an experiment and she could quit at any time and go back to her real life - something that people who are really poor cannot do and do not have the comfort of knowing.
One of the comments she made about cooking in particular that struck me was that many poor people do not have access to a full kitchen - especially urban poor. This brings out one of the realities of my experiment - even though I will be restricting my resources to $3/day in consumables, I will still have access to a full kitchen - a nice stove, nice oven, microwave, pots, pans, etc. And a refrigerator and freezer, of course.
When my wife and I relocated to San Antonio, we lived in a hotel room for six weeks with our three kids and two cats. It was truly unpleasant. One of the contributing factors to our misery was that all we had to cook with was a microwave and a hotplate, making it difficult to prepare food in our "home". We did try to cook in the room when we could, and we made some reasonably good food, considering.
Would I want to live like that? Of course not. Could I live like that? Sure. Preparing meals for five on a single hot plate cramps your style, but it can be done.
after she read about our $3 a Day Diet project.I downloaded it on audio and I am finding it fascinating. The author took this idea to the fullest - choosing to live on minimum wage for two years, doing minimum wage jobs.
I still think she had some of the benefits of being from a higher SES - most notably, she knew it was an experiment and she could quit at any time and go back to her real life - something that people who are really poor cannot do and do not have the comfort of knowing.
One of the comments she made about cooking in particular that struck me was that many poor people do not have access to a full kitchen - especially urban poor. This brings out one of the realities of my experiment - even though I will be restricting my resources to $3/day in consumables, I will still have access to a full kitchen - a nice stove, nice oven, microwave, pots, pans, etc. And a refrigerator and freezer, of course.
When my wife and I relocated to San Antonio, we lived in a hotel room for six weeks with our three kids and two cats. It was truly unpleasant. One of the contributing factors to our misery was that all we had to cook with was a microwave and a hotplate, making it difficult to prepare food in our "home". We did try to cook in the room when we could, and we made some reasonably good food, considering.
Would I want to live like that? Of course not. Could I live like that? Sure. Preparing meals for five on a single hot plate cramps your style, but it can be done.
I read that book shortly after it was published. It is a good read and really puts things into perspective, such as when the author mentioned that she had to work for an hour at Walmart to purchase a $7 shirt there...something that some of us who have had annual salaries may not stop and think about when making a similar purchase.
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