I can almost understand where you are getting $40 for the day if you went out and bought all of these things and didn't divide any of it by the number of servings you get out of it. But if you actually think that it will cost you 40 dollars for all of that food for just 1 day you have no concept of how much food from a normal grocery store costs.

And you say that just vitamins and protein cost you 140 a month? http://www.meijer.com/catalog/produc...LAID=396694015. This will last you way longer than a month and costs 43 dollars. Any similar whey protein product will cost around the same amount. And it's not like there's much difference between whey protein and any other pure protein supplement (other than maybe you getting ripped off massively).

I mean seriously, what the **** is this? Are you two conspiring to make up obvious bull**** to piss off people who aren't so ******ed? I seriously don't understand how you could possibly think this **** costs 40 dollars a day.

A lot of this stuff I don't eat so I am guessing at the price.

oatmeal -- no idea but I figure 0.25-0.50
Banana -- no idea but I figure 0.30
Orange Juice is just under $6 for a big bottle that you get just under four large glasses from it so $1.50.
Melon -- no idea but i figure with some waste as it will go bad 0.50

So $3 for breakfast

Bread -- about $0.10-0.25
Cold cuts -- $3 for a nice sandwich. I know some people think one slice of meat is a sandwich but it isn't.
Other toppings when you factor in waste $1-2.
Apple $0.15-0.20
I'll use $0 for beans since I have nothing to even guess at.
Milk $0.50

So $5-6 for lunch

2 chicken breasts $10 + some sort of seasoning $1-3.
Potatoes with seasonings $2
Veggies and stuff to use on them $4 when you factor in waste.
Milk $0.50

So $20 for dinner

So we are at $30+snacks. A power / protein bar is $3-5. Two coffees for $3.05. Maybe a Red Bull for another $3.

Right so? I said $140 for protein + vitamins. I use Animal Pak now which are normally $74.99 but you can usually get them for $56 on sale. That gives you 22 days so even on sale it is $86 when you factor in sales tax for one month (30 days). Before that I use to use GNC Ultra Gold Men's and they were $83 a bottle which was less than a month's requirements. Protein I prefer a different brand but it is still in the same price range ($52 for 5LBs).

Stuff costs what it costs. Obviously geography is a factor but I can verify the prices of at least the stuff I buy on occasion if it really would make you feel better. When I'm talking groceries I'm talking about Loblaws or Metro the two big national chains in Canada. I could pay considerably more going to boutique grocery stores but that would be stacking the deck. I could also pay considerably less going to places like Food Basics and Price Chopper but that would be gross.

About the only thing that anyone could argue over is that my chicken price is based on never frozen, skinless, boneless chicken breasts. If someone wants to get them with the bone still attached you pay about half.

I love you so much for this post, it made my day even at 1:22 am. You are the biggest nit ever, but sometimes that's not a bad thing.

Just wanna interject that geography plays a huge role in food costs. When I shopped in Boston, I remember the eggs costing $4/dozen, here in Minnesota I just bought a dozen eggs literally this morning for $.88. And all the stuff here is way fresher and higher quality too.

Only read like the first 10 pages of this but it makes me wonder do people actually understand how low most people's wages are? 40k USD a year is a lot more than most people make even in western countries, many have to struggle to reach even 30k. I'm currently studying to become a chef, and at current wages I won't make 30k a year working 40hr/week and that's AFTER 10 years of work experience. Of course in Finland we have free (as in paid from taxes) healthcare, which is worth a lot but still. With 1M I'd buy a nice apartment and live like a king for the rest of my life.

I just did some calculations and noticed that it's pretty much impossible for me to ever make a 1M USD unless I win the lottery. Thus 1M for the rest of my life sounds pretty sweet, even without investing.

This is exactly what I am talking about. For most of these things, you'd be hard pressed to have to pay half as much as you claim in the US outside of areas like new york or LA. Anywhere in MD, which is slightly above average cost of living in the US, none of these things cost this much, and some of the items you listed will never cost as much per serving as you claim.

Orange juice, for example, is typically $3.29 around here for a carton, which is a little more than 4 glasses worth. However, I've never gone to a grocery store that didn't have 2 for 1 sales on orange juice nearly every time I go. I mean sure, 1 time out of a 5 I actually have to pay $3.29 for one thing of orange juice, but it's pretty rare.

Oatmeal, if you buy it in the 30oz canister is only $3-5 for 30 servings.

Your prices on the dinner are just insane, though. If you go to any
grocery store and go to the meats, you can get a 10 pack of thighs for under 10 dollars, so even if you are eating 3 of them you aren't spending $10 for one meal on chicken. Obviously you can spend more on boneless meat, but if you have a membership to, e.g., Costco, you can get a huge bag of boneless chicken breasts for about 3 dollars per pound.

Beans cost .99 per can, at most, which is 3 servings. Most places it's cheaper (around .50/can). You could argue that you want to eat name brand rather than store brand and it'll be closer to the .99/can, but the foods are identical, you're paying for fancier packaging. You could also buy dried beans and cook those for massively cheaper, but that requires a bit more effort, and I never do that because beans are cheap as hell anyway.

Milk costing .50 per serving is outrageous. Assuming you drink 8oz of milk every time you have milk, that puts you at $8.00 for a gallon of milk. This is way beyond the average cost of a gallon of milk in the US. Typical prices are less than half of that.

Carrots and broccoli cost $4 for an entire pound of carrots and nearly a pound of broccoli on top of that. These are based on average US prices which you could find by searching google for 2 seconds, or just going to the USDA website.

I also don't find it necessary to spend $3 on two cups of coffee when I can make better tasting coffee for <.10 per cup at my house.

Maybe where you live things actually cost this much, but claiming that they cost as much as you say anywhere except in "bumble**** midwest" is ******edly misinformed.

EDIT: Power bars are not $3-5. You could buy them on amazon, ship them anywhere in the world, and still pay less per bar. Also, I can find the size you are talking about for animal pak for $20.50 online. So you're talking about a 3.5x markup for the same product.

I can't remember if its been mentioned or not, but I would count on being able to draw down from principal in the future as needed, as well as reinvesting any remainder.

Plain turkey? Is that the reconstituted, brine infused variant? Obviously it is. But lets get away from that fact that this is only ~85% meat and 15% extra fluids, or that it doesn't really resemble actual meat.

Half a leaf of lettuce per sandwich? McDonalds is more generous on a Big N Tasty. Lets try 3-4 leaves. (I'm making a pretty ridiculous assumption of 20 leaves as is). Oh. And everything magically stays fresh forever?

Your prices are absurdly outlandish or you eat sandwiches that are literally fit for a pauper. Also, Mayo isn't "3 bucks". You need the price of a single egg yolk and half a cup of oil. And egg is like 10c and the oil is ~2 bucks, maybe more.

Or are you making the argument that you can't eat well, but you can eat cheaply? In which case, I'd totally agree.

Did you see my stipulations? I want actual meat that isn't 1) water infused 2) compressed gibberish. This seems like a fun game where you can search and search and search for a place.

Also, I'd like to point out that PJA made an outlandish lie about the price of tomatoes. Read the link. Verify for yourselves.

This may be YOUR criteria, but it was not the criteria stipulated in the OP. So roommates are def. OK.

For those doubting it cannot be done easily, remember you will have somewhere around $1 million tax free at age 65 from your Roth IRA, your $200,000 home will be paid off at 40, and your home furnishings will be paid off in 4 years. This means that in 4 years you will have almost $15,000/year freed up to spend on non-essentials, and in 15 years over $20,000/year to spend on whatever you want, even accounting for 3% inflation on your essential living expenses.

Your net worth in 15 years will be $770,000 in today's dollars with 3% inflation, not counting your home probably went up in value as well, your Roth IRA, or any additional savings not spent from your $15,000/year non-essentials budget over 11 years.

30 year bonds are currently yielding 4.67%, which is actually better than 4.5%. Although certainly sensitive to inflation risk, some shielding is obtained from rental income + home value. The Roth investments could also engage in securities that perform better w/ inflation.

$200k for a home makes me smile. US real estate prices are so cute.

No one is discussing the scenario you're describing.

New 3br 3bath homes in LV can easily be found for $200,000. And they are not in slums either.

Just responding to the OP about the $1,000,000 thing. And $416/month for food should be fine. And if I want to spend more, I can certainly do so.

there are tons of beautiful foreclosure homes that are 2000+++ sq feet in vegas for 20-40k or less... sure you might need to hire a few people to fix it up...
I just posted a job on craigslist offering 8$ an hour and I have gotten 377 replies in less than 24 hours...

if I randomly came into 1M tomorrow, I would start looking at buying at least 3-4 pieces of property for a total of 150k MAX, but I would definitely not rush into buying them as the market probably needs to correct another 75-90% before we hit a bottom imho.


fwiw I eat 100% organic food and eat extremely well and I spend about 10 dollars a day on food. Buy in bulk, buy things on sale FTW? It's not very hard to do...
If I won the million I would definitely increase to 15-20$ a day on food, but there's only so much food I'm capable of eating in a day... I cannot possibly imagine averaging any more than 20$ a day on food even if I was worth a million.
(fwiw I dont eat any animal products, dont drink any alcohol, so I realize I'm a minority here -- you will find a very very strong correlation between extremely wealthy people and less animal product consumption). By extremely wealthy people I mean billionaires though.

Power bars are like $1-1.25 here, but I only make power bars from scratch personally.... even if I had a million I would make them for myself or get someone else to do it because commercially made powerbars are terrible

milk is 1-1.50 per GALLON where I live,
pound of meat is .50-1$ where I live
organic milk is like 2-2.5 / gallon
organic meat I don't really know but if you're willing to buy half a cow at once and throw it in your freezer, that is like $3 / pound
half a (organic) tomato is like 75 cents
pound of )organic)brocolli is $2
pound of organic carrots is 1.50-2$
head of org lettuce is 2-2.50
organic beans = 1$ per can

So thremp: putting 1m in the stock market is certain to go busto?

lolwtf

or were you saying if you take out any money over that 1m in gains + dividends?

No but for someone who would be cool with this $30k lifestyle I say it is greater than even money that they do.

The stock market would probably not be the most wise investment to generate passive yearly income.

If the goal is to grow a portfolio over 40 years, then the stock market makes much more sense.

I beg to differ. What you say is true if someone practices buy-and-hold, but any vehicle that moves, that has finite semi-variance, is an ideal candidate. So the stock market (long only) would be a perfect candidate (assuming one knows HOW to trade that to make a living at it, and in my limited experience, damn few do). -Ralph Vince

I haven't revisited this thread in a while, but JFC... if you are counting pennies per slice of bread, you aren't living comfortably at all.

NOt sure I like this idea, wouldn't a judge likely come after our 1M nest egg to pay back investors? Also would we still be able to hold securites if convicted?

The fact that you could be down 40% after 2 years with investments in the stock market means that you can't invest in the stock market in order to make this work. 30k is about as much as one could make without having drawdown potential.

Q: If you had 1M dollars to live off forever could it be done?

No.

Math. Try it out. Seriously, I've explained this numerous time. It is a certainty that you will go busto with the variance examples I gave above. It is only a matter of time.

Trading = Job IMO.