Save the leftovers

It's our third night of living below the line for Save the children.  There are no 'leftovers' living on a pound a day.  As the meal ends Arthur sings 'Castle on a Cloud' - a rather depressing song about child neglect and poverty.  Freya cheers us all up with the story she's been doing at school about a Matchstick Girl who goes to live with her Grandmother.  Unfortunately Jago recognises that actually it was Han's Christian Andersen's Matchstick Girl of 1845, who joins her grandmother in death through cold & starvation.

Making do without Tofu

£24.84 is the precise amount of money we have calculated to spend on food for the next five days - 16p clear of the £25 limit set by livebelowtheline.com.

Live Below the Line is a campaign that's challenging us to live on the equivalent of the extreme poverty line for 5 days (£1 a day, 5 days, 5 people = £25).  That's not strictly true, as clearly we have a roof over our head, money in the bank and I suspect a rather more comfortable standard of living generally, but I was chuffed when we suggested to our three children to do this, they weren't exactly excited, but were at least prepared to give it a go.  1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty (equivolent to less than £1 a day) - that's one in five of the world population.

  

Since then both me and Nikki have spent a bit of time going through the figures.  There was a brief moment when we realised our budget would not be stretching to tofu, although noodles are cheap and we will be doing  a stir fry.  I was more disappointed with the complete lack of drinks - even teabags were looking like a luxury.I don't think the kids have quite realised how lacking the menu-for-the-week is looking in terms of food they like - I can see it'll be a real tester for all of us by day three.  Fruit are also looking rather costly - we'll have to limit apple juice, and considered if we should still buy fairtrade bananas (non-fairtrade bananas are by far the cheapest fruit our kids will eat and we could find).Please find out more by visiting the site.  It's not too late to join us, promote or sponsor:

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/marcusbelben
https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/nikkithorpe
https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/arthurbelben
https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/jagobelben
https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/freyabelben