Living on Less: Saving on Feeding

The unemployment as well as poverty rate in Nigeria is alarming, and my family and I seems to add to the count. Trying out different gigs daily to earn little money to support my family. With the little income coming in, Living on less becomes a necessity.

I will share the money saving and management skills we apply to be able to live on my little monthly income. Let's start with one of the basic needs of the family - FOOD

Cheaper Source of Animal Protein

Protein is an important nutrient that should be incorporated in everyday meal, but animal source of protein like fish and meat are expensive. So to cut back on expenses on meat or fish, we keep some local Nigerian chicken extensively, during the day, they go out to hustle for food and at night they return to their pen. Sometimes we give them leftovers we got from event centers (I do join the catering team on weekends as usher in events, so at the end, I will gather all the leftovers and take them home to feed the chickens. We slaughter some chicken monthly, and at the rate they are multiplying, we may never run out of chicken. Also the hens get to lay eggs, and we do take out some of the eggs for consumption while they hatch the rest. I have had the thought  to add turkey to the population, but they are expensive. But I plan to buy a male and at least one female as soon as possible, hopefully they will get to mate and produce offsprings.

We don’t eat just chicken and eggs!

The old cliché that variety is the spice of life applies to us as well. They are bushes around our apartment so I’d set traps to catch bush rats, rabbits and squirrel, we also get to each snakes as well – I’m scared of snakes, so the snake trapping and killing is done by a friend, and I get to have a share of the catch. Snake meat you said? Yes snake meat, and it’s delicious, sometimes gives a smoked fish taste – depends on who prepared it and how. We also get to eat meat. There is a stream not far from the house, but the fish doesn’t come as often as I would like – it’s seasonal and I’m not the only one that has access to it. So I’d supplement by buying smoked fish and sometimes frozen fish from the market.

This helps me save the money that would have been used to purchase expensive fish and meat from the market. This money is then channeled to take care of other needs.

Other Food

Veggies: We have a small backyard vegetable farm where we grow some vegetables like Ugu (fluted pumpkin leaf), bitter leaf (to prepare better leaf and also used to prepare egusi soup), and spinach. Though they are not always available at the required quantity, when that’s the case, we do buy some from neighbours or the market to augment it.

Fruits: There are mango and orange trees within the compound, we and the close neighbours have access to them. We also have a paw-paw tree and little banana plantation behind the house. Some of these fruits are seasonal, so whenever they are avaible we have access to fresh fruits. One of my siblings likes apple, so we get to buy apple for her, whenever we can. 

Farm: We have a farm, few meters away from the house where we cultivate some crops like maize, yam and cassava. The land is not large, but the produce gets to last a few months. We store the maize (sometimes dry and grind them for the chicken) and yam properly. Then mum process some of the cassava to fufu and the rest to garri.

These are some of the food we are able to grow, I forgot to mention plantains. The rest, we buy from the market. We may not be rich and buoyant enough to buy what we need, but mother earth has blessed us with some resources to help out. And we plan to maximize the gifts of nature.

Buying food

The food we cannot grow we buy! One of the popular foods in Nigeria is rice. And my siblings love to take tea. And I, mum and two other love beans. So we always make budget, draft a shopping list and buy at the beginning of the month, what we will need for the month. I don’t have a job yet, but I take little gigs here and there to make some money. And I give most of it to mom for keep. At the end of the month, we’ll check how much have been saved and make our budget within the amount. Mum takes care of the foodstuff shopping.

Her shopping strategy to manage the little money she has got:

• Before going to shop, she makes a shopping list and always sticks to it! She writes the list with estimated cost. Then after buying all on the list and some amounts are still left, she we buy other stuffs she needs.

• She buys in bulk! The reason for the monthly shopping is so that she can buy the stuffs in bulk. Buying in bulk is cheaper and helps save a few cents.

• She doesn’t buy from huge supermarkets and shops, she goes to the local market where she gets most of the stuffs fresh and for the best price. Most goods from supermarkets are pre-packaged, hence more expensive than the loose produce at local and street markets. And she is good at bargaining, so she almost always get stuffs at the lowest possible price.

• After purchase, she stores them properly to avoid spoilage and wastage.

Cooking Food

Mom loves to cook soup and stew in bulk and fill them in containers to be frozen. Then we take in bits to warm whenever we want to eat. This helps save cooking cost. The source of heat for cooking are gas, firewood and saw dust. We get saw dust free from wood mills and firewood from bushes, we also buy especially during rainy seasons. We have a locally made cooker that uses wood saw dust and firewood, which we use when we want to cook in bulk or prepare long cooking food like beans.