Meals and Budgets

Posted by shush

August 7, 2013

Budgeting is hard work.
As a parent you have to make sure that there is food on the table for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus food in the kitchen cabinets for snacks. And if there is some extra money, food for guests that suddenly appear at your door.

And that is only if you have the money to spend.

Here’s another way to look at it.

I have four kids, 1 teen, 1 adolescent, and a preschooler. Different appetites.

If I was to do the math I would be able to write it like this.

6 kilos of chicken quarters = 72 pieces
where each quarter is chopped into three pieces, that is, the thigh chopped in half plus the drumstick.

For a poor family with four kids, that 72 pieces would be viand for 6 days for breakfast, lunch and dinner with one chicken piece each child for each meal. Which is this equation:
4 kids X 3 meals X 6 days

For a not-so-poor family, it might go this way,
2 teens eats 2 pieces per meal
1 adolescent eats 2 pieces per meal
1 preschooler eats 1 piece per meal
If those 72 pieces of chicken were divided among these kids, it would become this:

A day’s consumption:
(2 teens X 2 chicken pieces) X 3 meals = 12 chicken pieces
(1 adolescent X 2 chicken pieces) X 3 meals = 6 chicken pieces
(1 preschooler X 1 chicken piece) X 3 meals = 3 chicken pieces
Total for the day = 21 pieces of chicken
Thus, the 72 pieces of chicken would be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 3 days plus another breakfast.

At 146 per kilo X 6 kilos, that’s a cost of 876 from the budget for 3 days’ meals.

With 876 divided by 72 pieces it’ll give us the cost of each piece to be about 12.17. That would be excluding the cost of the cooking oil, condiments and seasonings, and cooking fuel used.

72 pieces of chicken is good for 6 days for a poor family or 3 days and a meal for my children. That doesn’t include the cost of rice and drinking water.

In a month, a family of six consumes:
31 breakfasts X 6 persons = 186 breakfasts
31 lunches X 6 persons = 186 lunches
31 dinners x 6 persons = 186 dinners
for a total of 558 meals a month for a family of six

If each raw small piece of chicken costs 12.17 multiplied by 558 meals is equal to a cost of 6,791.
Let’s add estimates of the other costs.
LPG for a month = 800
Cooking oil for a month = 400
Seasoning for a month = 200
A 50-kilos sack of rice = 1,700
558 meals of 1-pc chicken = 6,791

Gives us a total monthly cost of 9,891

If the minimum daily wage is 255 multiplied by 25 working days, that’s a gross monthly salary of 6,375. But, of course there are still some amount deducted from the gross monthly salary before it could turn into take-home pay. And when the take-home pay is given to the budget manager in the family, you wouldn’t need to be a genius to know how much of the money should be spent for food alone.

Which means, if all the money would be used to buy food, the breadwinner in the family wouldn’t have money left to use as fare for another month of work. I find this both very funny and very sad.

Funny because it makes someone happy to get a job.

Sad because they usually don’t realize that after working so hard the whole day and forging through traffic and standing in a bus going to and from work, their take-home pay isn’t enough to even feed themselves much less pay for the fare to and from work. Because not that many people bother to compute their expenses against their take-home pay.

Momhood, Money

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.