Seeking help: survive for 3mo’s till sep 1 using 300 euros for food

31 comments

1. Good luck, that’s not possible.

   How did you come up with this stupid idea?

2. Sounds like you faked your VISA fund requirements and now your cooked. This, of course will be impossible and stupid, but you do you.

3. Check discounts and specisk discounts at stores.

   There are free food giveaways for people in need.

   Check online if you can buy cheap soy (if you eat it)

   Maybe also see if you can fish or collevt berries when tje time comes.

4. Sorry if this feels like a rage bait or anything like that. I know 300 euros sounds unrealistic these days.

   I’m just genuinely curious to hear everyone’s thoughts so I can learn and build a plan around the advice shared here. Thanks again

5. I mean you might be able to make it work if you literally only eat noodles and plain rice. Besides that I’m not sure how you intend to keep a balanced diet on what amounts to about 3,5€ per day.

6. Eat cheap carbs, cheap vegetables and get protein from beans etc. Probably doable if you can cook decently.

7. You can start dumpster diving. Grocery stores throw away valid foodstuff

8. 300 € divided by 92 days = 3,26 €/day. That’s enough to eat a diverse, healthy buffet lunch at the university cafeteria every day, plus have maybe some porridge / self-baked bread at home.
   Good luck, let us know how it went (if you’re still alive by the end of it)

9. Lol, I don’t know how you could think this is possible.

10. Rice and beans. It’s gonna be a long and miserable 3 months but it’s somewhat doable.

    Please don’t go to the food bank.

11. Cook yourself

12. On summer is good time to collect and recycle bottles and cana from streets/parks on the weekends. Youll get exercise and money to add to your budget.

13. You don’t eat less when you run, wtf is that? A hour of jogging at your weight is closer to 1000 extra calories which is probably 35-50% of your daily total energy expenditure. That food is going to cost you.

    Edit:without trying to run and lsoe weight, I’d say it’s doable. Easiest way is imo to intermittent fast, eat megalunch at school cafeteria and porridge/rice and beans otherwise

14. Just gonna give you the inside tip, do curry cabbage, buy curry and white cabbage in Lidl, get minced meat on discounts, buy rice and carrots wherever that isn’t k market, broth cubes from pirkka, this is food for less than 2 euro a day, did this challenge for a month and ended up using 87euro for me and my girlfriend during an entire month, also making Indian daal with couscous and buying bread to dip from the app ResQ club, 5 euros for about 20 euro worth of bread and freezing it, I reckon if I put more effort in it I could do 1 person for 35 euro a month this way 🙂 Hope it helps!

    – it doesn’t require a lot of meat, the fullness of the cabbage dish is from the cabbage and letting it soak up water while boiling + rice, be generous with curry, makes it very tasty and not spicy due to water boiling it into the vegetables.

15. You can get rice in bulk from Asian food stores, myllynparas macaroni is probably the cheapest pasta. There’s the carbs covered.

    Protein will be tough and is usually most expensive, protein rich quark or rahka is probably your best bet, ~2€ for 45g protein, say goodbye to meat on that budget. Edit- saw some other good ideas here like eggs and beans. But I’d recommend some kind of animal protein (if you eat it) rather than just beans.

    I’d recommend spending some of this money on a multivitamin because your food is going to very bland and nutrient deficient. Then if you have any extras you can put for spices and seasons, butter, etc.

    Good luck, sounds like an extremely boring diet! If you want to spice it up you can forage for some fresh berries haha

16. Rice and beans.

17. the cheapest, most efficient and simplest thing to do?

    rotate potato/rice/quinoa etc. with eggs/meat/fish. this has you covered with like 80-90% of what your body needs, the only things you might be low on are some vitamins.

    if you somehow have extra money, you could add vegetables, dairy, fruit, nuts and that basically gets you to 100%. take wholegrain over refined grain too

    if you: hunt for discounted single-ingredient foods like I mentioned; keep as much variety as possible in your diet; don’t waste your money on processed junk that you don’t need then this should be possible. if you’re trying to lose weight then yeah a slight caloric deficit means you spend less on food

    canned fish and no additives peanut butter are really great too. tons of protein and healthy fats for long, steady energy

    this is a great idea, don’t let anybody tell you it’s impossible. good luck

18. I’ve tried to manage with 100e per month and as long as I was lucky it was kinda doable. Lucky meaning that I found those -30% items after 2100hrs, which made it -60%. But that was before the 2022 and the current inflation. And even then that wasn’t a healthy way to survive. And you doing it for three months in a row, at the current state? Nope, not a smart idea in any way or form. You’re too young to gamble with your health like that.

    Rather than “only this much for three months”, try to set 25e budget for a week, and try to keep it healthy. Don’t punish yourself if you go over the budget. Just see how much it costs to eat healthy per week and try to stick to that.

19. You buy 146 kilograms of xtra pyttipannu. It is 98 days until September 1st, including today, and xtra pyttipannu contains 1490 kcal per kilogram. You get to consume 2220 kcal per day.

20. I did this for several months in university (in the United States), not because I wanted to, but because I was very poor. It was NOT good for my health. I had a cup of instant noodles for both lunch and dinner, and oatmeal for breakfast. That is not a nutritionally balanced diet. I had no energy, felt irritable constantly, messed up my menstrual cycle, and even my skin broke out and developed terrible acne.

    You need fruits, vegetables, and protein in your diet or you will develop nutrient deficiencies, and it can mess up how your body produces important hormones.

    If you don’t *have* to do this, I really recommend rethinking such a small budget.

21. What I once dis was to give me a budget of 200€ or so for a month, and then gradually decrease it until I did find the sweet spot for savings and living quality. 

    I don’t think spending only 100€ a month is possible, if you want to have a healthy diet

22. If you don’t have to, but just want to learn how to budget better, just do it on in theory. Getting nutrient deficiencies will not teach you to budget better. Of course you can safe money by only eating noodles but you don’t need to do it for knowing that, what new knowledge does it give you to actually live on such a diet

    Nutrition is probably the spending category where it’s least worth to save money at. Or said otherwise spending your money for good and healthy food is the best investment

23. Textured soy protein is cheap, around 3-4€ for 500 grams that feeds your protein needs for 5 days. Noodles are really expensive, with the price of one bag you get almost 1kg of pasta. 3-4€/Day is dooable, but not the best.

24. Alanya market at Itäkeskus has Very cheap meat and chicken especially if bought in bulk and then you can freeze it.

25. There is this old video by Life of Boris, while this wasnt made for Finland specifically, and of course prices have changed since then, I would still have a look at it https://youtu.be/UKfmRhfuI8g?si=dVB9kQCIuovaVCxD

26. Use chatgpt to do grocerylist

27. Peat soup, Rice potatoes. And go fishing, freeze the fish 48h before eating to kill parasites.

28. I believe it’s possible, but very difficult. Prepare to dumpster dive, beg or steal, and only buy buttloads of rice and dried beans. Very cheap, no flavor, and missing some micronutrients for sure. You won’t be getting much vitamin C for example, or many other good stuffs. Well, I suppose if you can spend money on transportation, you can go to forests to forage. Get those berries.

29. 300€ per 3 months or per month? 100€/month you can probably do with porridge/rice/pasta/potatoes and stay alive but you will not have enough energy to go regularly jogging and you will be in a bad mood. 300€ per month is about how much i used when i lived alone and i ate comfortably without overthinking what i bought. 200€ per month is probably a good challenge if you want to learn to budget and eat somewhat healthy. Still most of your stuff would be rice/potatoes/pasta and preserved/frozen stuff. If you want fresh veggies and fruits, onions and carrots and bananas and stuff on sale are probably your best options.

    If you shop during the last hour the store is open there are usually better sales.

    You can also check out fiksuruoka or matsmart websites, and ResQ app.

30. Beans and rice. You’ll be sick of it even if you use spices. This is a generally stupid idea but whatever

31. I wouldn’t recommend increasing your exercise if you don’t have enough money for food – if you run you will need to eat more!!! In my experience too running makes me REALLY hungry compared to something like walking so I’d specifically avoid that

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