Day 4: Live below the poverty line – £1 a day

• Breakfast: 30g of coco snaps + office milk
  
• Lunch: Tin of the faithful tomato soup + token pitta
• Dinner: chilli con carne from a tin served over toast
• “Treat”: value bag of onion rings

Wow what a day! The challenge is amassing quite a following I’ve had over 2,300 views since launching on Tuesday  (790 today from around the world before publishing this post!).

Thank you for all the good luck messages it’s great to hear you’re enjoying the blog and that the challenge is helping people think more about what they spend.

From the feedback on the blog I’ve decided to extend my sentence to a month! Apparently it takes the average person 21 days to form a new ingrained habit so let’s see if my days of splurging a fiver a pop on lavish lunches and blithely dropping £3 at Starbucks are behind me… 

I’ve also got some big plans for the blog, I’ll keep you posted as these develop!

Morning started well with the coco snaps proving a faithful starter. But by midday I’m utterly ravenous, those spaghetti hoops didn’t provide much sustenance last night. I hang in there barely able to concentrate on my work for longer than five minutes at a time. I can’t determine whether my newly acquired attention span deficit is due to poor diet or is just ‘that Friday feeling’. 

Invitation lands in my inbox for a group lunch out to the local cafe… this is awkward I can’t afford to eat! I agree with colleagues to neck my soup first and follow them on afterwards for the conversation (on the proviso that the banter is worth the food envy that awaits me).

Menu looks particularly unhealthy with bacon appearing to feature in 80% of the dishes. I particularly liked the ‘lighter option’ breakfast- which gives the diner an additional slice of bacon instead of those pesky sausages… As the food arrives my smug observation only humours me for so long before I find myself sipping bitterly at my tap water whilst the gannets snaffle down the spoils.

I ask Laura what she made of her “sell out” cottage pie, the verdict- average, the price -£7.50 and a horrified response when I point out this is more than my food costs for the week. Conversation turns to my challenge and we realise that everyone around the table would have blown the budget in this one sitting…

I mask my value onion rings in an empty packet of superior crisps left discarded on one of the tables and munch along to be sociable. 

Return to the office. I still can’t concentrate as well as usual. I also develop and awkward peeing and tea drinking synchronisation with a colleague in insurance litigation – that’s the fifth time we’ve found ourselves at the kettle and in the bathroom together today. Worried I’m now looking a bit stalky and ponder whether the malnutrition has manifested itself in some kind of psychic ability….

Back at the ranch. Sit down to relax, I’ve got chili con carne out of a tin on the menu for the next two nights.

Find out tomorrow how this little banquet pans out! Day 4 done!