Fralick Family Econ Experiment #9 - $2 A Day

                                  

Several months ago, Hannah and I watched the documentary "Living on One Dollar." Given our families history of economic experiments, this was dangerous fodder for Fralick minds. But Hannah chose it, then she came up with this:

"Mom. I want to do this as our next experiment. For real. I stayed up last night making this simulation, sort of like what those guys did, and I figured out how our family could do it. We would draw from a hat what our pay was that day. Some idays we find good work and get paid well. Other days we getting shorted money. And, some days we have to going without any money at all."

"Wow, thats pretty detailed. And, hard core! So what average are you working with?"

"A dollar a day per person. That's it. And, I want it to include stuff like housing and the internet. They did it in the documentary and we have done enough experiments I really think we can do it too."

"So, how long do you want to carry this on?" I ask, a little fearful. Our last experiment was 40 days of no grocery shopping. It got pretty desperate there at the end as far as fresh food was concerned, and I decided long experiments are not my thing.

"We can do it however long, but i think two weeks would give us a good idea of how hard it would be," she says.

With this, I take a long look at our life of privilege and relatively decent nutrition an begin negotiations. "Okay, how about 10 days. It's summer and I don't know if I can do it much longer that that. The other thing is, $1 a day per person is not sustainable in the United States, even just for food, without running into some serious malnutrition problems. You guys are still growing. I'm not ready to take on that sort of liability."

"But they have a whole program you can duplicate," she argues.

"And, they did it in Guatemala," I retort. How bad is it for me to shoot down her bravery like this?

"I'll tell you what." I say. "Lets start with $2 a day, per person, and if we easily beat it every day, we can reduce it. K?"

"Okay, but can we make it random like, my little simulation?" she asks.

"Again, lets see how it goes for a few days with a set amount and then see if we could stand to have a day without the $2."

"Fine. But that takes a lot of the fun out of it," she says. I laugh because food insecurity isn't fun or funny, but we are making it a game anyway.

If you are confused about the content of this post, what i mean by our family's economic experiments, or how we could do all of our family food on just $2 per person per day, stay tuned and follow along. Tomorrow is Day 1.