Eating once a day is a pattern of consuming meals that Keita George and an increasing number of parents adopt to forego food expenses. These parents prioritize the adoption of this spending system to financially support their hungry children’s needs. Many children can’t afford to eat as the living expenses problems skyrocket.
George, a 27-year old single parent, considers herself to be thrifty. However, with the inflation rate at its one of the highest at 7.3 percent at the latest since the beginning of 1990, food prices have gone up to 7.1 percent.
A mother to a daughter who’s turning four soon, George is careful with the ways she spends her money. George turns potato peelings into chips. She bakes, and dries fruits so she can have the opportunities to put nothing valuable into waste. Just in recent times, though, George has started a vegepod business to earn a source of livelihood for herself and her daughter.
Junk foods are luxury items George isn’t able to afford. So, she spends $140 on groceries buying carbohydrate foods to feed her toddler daughter. Pastas, potatoes, rice, and breads are staple foods George buys. A $3 broccoli head is available for consumption for three days if George’s daughter doesn’t eat it in its raw form, prior to eating it for snack.
George maintains different several individual bank accounts. She splits her funds of living expenses amounting to $492 when making deposits in each of these bank accounts. George debits her bills and dog caring fees from the money she puts in some of these accounts. Additionally, she has opened and is maintaining a special bank account where she deposits $10 each week to set aside for the expenses of other needs her daughter may incur.
George and her daughter’s three-bedroom house rent costs $237.50 per week. The other expenses she has are groceries. So, at the end of the month, she only has $94.50 left to pay for her bills.
According to George, it’s hard to save money for rainy days. One specific example is George incurs a bill of $1,000 medical expenses when her dog was run into by a car in February. She has been paying this bill through Afterpay all this time.
Furthermore, George goes on road trips in a diesel car to her daughter’s preschool and other neighborhoods in Christchurch. She has fibromyalgia and other health conditions that cause her to be unable to walk long distances.
