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| Me today |
The idea behind the £10 a week challenge
The idea for living off £10 a week originally came in the summer of 2010 when I was told how much my student loan would be for the following year. I wasn't eligible for any grants and the loan was so small it only just covered my rent (I went to Brunel, so the housing prices were London-level), and even with my minimum-wage weekend job, I panicked and thought I would have just £10 a week to spend on food and everything else once I'd paid my monthly bills (gas, electric, water, broadband, mobile phone) and car costs (I owned my car but still had to pay for insurance etc, which wasn't cheap as I was so young).
Like everything in my life, when I panic I plan. I plan in order to have a bit of control over a situation and put my mind at ease - to show myself I really could do it if I had to. I told my parents, and my parents being very comfortable - and this is where my immense privilege comes in - told me they would support me so I wouldn't have to live off £10 a week.
I'm fully aware how incredibly lucky I was, and so many parents are unable to support their children through university like that. However, by then I had already come up with my plan, and intrigued, I wanted to see if I could genuinely live off £10 a week for the University year. I declined their offer, and decided to go with the budget and turn it into a charity challenge to try and do some good and raise some money for charities that meant a lot to me.
Then that evening, we got a call telling us my aunty had passed away very suddenly, and at a very young age. This made the decision even easier, and I chose to support two charities that had supported her during her battle with Lupus and APS/Hughes Syndrome, in addition to Tommy's (who helped me after my first miscarriage in May 2010, and also then helped me after my second in 2018), and Home Start, a charity that dedicates volunteers to helping families with young children living in poverty or who just need a bit of extra help if a parent is disabled or suffers from mental health issues.
Flaws in the challenge and how my mindset changed
Immediately there were flaws in the challenge. I was very young and as it was so rushed, I didn't really consider certain parts of it. Like would family holidays count? What about when I went home on the weekends to work at my part-time job? I just sort of muddled along but looking back, if I did anything like it again I would absolutely consider all of these before starting. Likewise, my mum did a classic mum-move and filled my freezer drawer (I was in a shared house so only had one drawer for my stuff), my cupboard, and my fridge shelf before I started, so I already had pretty much everything I could need to keep me going. She bought me huge bags of pasta and rice so I didn't really have to re-stock those at all.
Now, this wasn't a challenge to try and live how those struggling in poverty live. It wasn't trying to emulate that, it was purely a personal challenge to see if this privileged young woman from Surrey could essentially go nine months without new clothes, going out, entertainment, concerts, good food, eating out, and all the things I was blessed to be accustomed to. In some ways I regret creating a slightly problematic charity challenge out of some people's real day-to-day lives and struggles. But having grown up going to Catholic schools where we were encouraged to only eat rice for one day each year to show us how those living in poverty feel, at the time I didn't really think about how it could be slightly crass to raise money by playing poor out of choice.
Despite this I don't regret it. I raised over £2000 for charity and learnt a huge amount, and if anything it was a very personal journey that allowed me to consider those with less than me in a more empathetic view. For example, I used to vote Conservative, now I tend to vote Labour. I'm slightly unusual in that I voted conservative when I had very little myself, as that's how everyone I knew voted, and as I grew in my career and earned more money and paid more taxes, I switched to Labour. I guess I realised that everyone, no matter their upbringing or socio-economic status, deserves the basic human rights of education, healthcare, a home, and food. Usually it tends to be the opposite - people want handouts while they are poor students, and as they earn more and pay more taxes, they turn Conservative because they don't want to lose their money to supporting others.
I also now donate each week to food banks (and please, if you give a food bank donation, think of the small things that may brighten someone's day like giving chocolate and biscuits etc, instead of *just* pasta and tinned vegetables!), and at Christmas I do a 'big food bank shop' each week leading up to Christmas throughout December.
The experience and unhealthy diet
Despite having a freezer drawer and cupboard stocked before I started (already a large advantage over people who genuinely have to survive on £10 a week), my diet was unhealthy. Not only because I couldn't afford fresh fruit and vegetables each week, but because I didn't know how to cook with them. I was twenty and had very little cooking experience, I didn't know how to cook cheaply with cheap ingredients. And fundamentally I think this is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to the alignment of poverty and obesity.
If people aren't taught to cook, or if they don't have the instruments to cook, then they're not going to make healthy meals. Like me, they'll end up living off pasta and tinned tomatoes, cereal, rice, baked potatoes, and crumpets. They might have jelly for lunch, as I did one day. They might even treat themselves to chocolate and biscuits instead of vegetables, just as I did, because they're sick of eating tinned food and stodgy carbs.
So if my diet was unhealthy because at that age I could barely cook and just didn't have the confidence to try cooking new things (one big worry was always that I would buy expensive ingredients, and destroy what I was trying to make so it would all be a waste and I'd be left with something inedible), despite having recipe books at my advantage, I think it gives you a good idea of why so many people living in poverty also struggle with cooking.
There are now bloggers out there, in particular Jack Monroe, who have done an absolutely incredible job of producing free resources online, as well as cookery books, on how to live on a very small budget and cook delicious, simple and healthy meals. Back then no one really produced cookery books on budget cooking, and there was little information online. And although we can tell people to just look online or buy a cookery book, what if they can't afford the internet or to buy a book? And what if libraries don't carry Jack's books? And that's before we even take into consideration those who are disabled and might struggle with cooking and utensils etc.
Ultimately, as long as it costs less to buy a pack of pasta and pack of biscuits than a box of blueberries or multiple items of vegetables to create a decent meal, obesity and unhealthy eating will always align with poverty. The government doesn't need to add calorie labels to menus, it needs to increase access to fresh and cheap fruit and vegetables, as well as accompanying proteins like meat and fish.
Despite eating far less during the challenge than I would before the challenge, the unhealthy foods I ate meant I had gained around 3-4kg (almost half a stone) by the end. Granted, this isn't a huge amount, but over time that all adds up.
What I would do differently
These days I'm a much more capable cook, and I honestly have looked back through my old blog posts and wondered what on earth I ate and how I survived. If I did the challenge again, or found myself living in poverty and struggling to put food on the table, I would absolutely use Jack's recipes to help me. Her meals all cost pennies per portion, and her recipes make it seem so easy and simple to cook. She uses a lot of tinned fruit and vegetables but turns them into decent and reasonably healthy meals!
I also seemed to buy a lot of chocolate while on the challenge, and honestly, I wouldn't take those small treats away if I had to do it again. It was something that made me happy, but I would buy own-brand chocolate instead of 60p bars. When you're living off pasta and potatoes and unable to go out and enjoy yourself with friends, buying own-brand chocolate is a small price to pay for a bit of happiness and comfort each week.
Challenge-wise, I would do many things differently. The rules would be different, it would be more thought-out as well as being more sensitive to those who genuinely have to live off just £10 a week. Despite being absolutely cringed-out by so many of those old posts, I won't be editing any of them or deleting them. They're a window into that time of my life and although embarrassing at points in their naivety and ignorance, I'm still proud that I managed to raise so much for charity and stick to it even when it got hard. I will never forget the day I could finally go shopping again. It was back in the days when leggings were fashionable (lol) and so I'd been walking around in my leggings that had holes in them, and a cardigan that was also full of holes. Buying new leggings and a cardigan were such simple things, but for the first time I felt truly grateful for my purchases.
These days I have a very good job and earn a considerable amount of income each year. It still blows my mind to look back at when I would work on a reception desk earning just over £5 an hour, and look at how far I've come. And although I've worked hard and carved out my career all by myself, much of my success has been as a direct result of the life my parents gave me and the privilege I had of just being born to parents with generational and earned wealth. Without my education, I wouldn't be where I am, and without my Dad's contacts, I wouldn't have got that first internship.
I'm still very budget-conscious and always love a good deal or offer, but am also immensely lucky that I can buy things without really worrying about the cost. A far cry from those student days, and something I like to pay forward in my charitable donations in addition to the large amount (just under 50%) of tax I pay. Recognizing and accepting our own privilege is something we need to be unafraid of, it needs to be talked about more openly and I'm not ashamed to admit that I was able to build a career because of my upbringing. But why should others, who are just as capable as I am, suffer and not be given opportunities just because they didn't have the same socio-economic (and, let's face it, white) upbringing and privileges, as me? I think this is one of the key reasons why I'm more socially liberal, and why donating to food banks and supporting charities is so important to me. We can't fix the issue all by ourselves, but we can help with our vote, our voice, and our money.
