COULD you live on £1 a day? Kath Kelly, a language teacher from Bristol, bet her friends she could live on just £1 a day for a whole year, partly as a means to save up money for a wedding present.
In the attempt, she discovered a whole new lifestyle: enjoying free food and wine at gallery private views, rediscovering the art of hitchhiking, going for free make-overs in department stores and spending a lot of time in the library. She even colle
cted £117 in loose change lying in the street – though, sportingly, she did not spend it. And like any good story, she found true love along the way, which just proves that a cheap date can still be fun.
Perhaps we should follow Ms Kelly, and look for discarded pennies – surely that counts? The Royal Mint reckons there are 6,500 million 1p coins not accounted for – stuck down the settee or just thrown away. That is a cool £65 million.
There is little doubt that living on £1 a day would be extremely difficult – if not downright impossible – for the vast majority of us, given the day-to-day pressures most face, particularly those with families.
However, we should not forget that a lot of people do live on £1 a day or less. The World Bank estimates that about one fifth of the Earth's population – some 1.1 billion people – subsist on a mere $1 (57p) a day. And they do it every day for a lifetime.
The full article contains 257 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
