Spending $10 a day for a week sounded manageable, until I was quickly humbled when two meals and a bus ride brought me well over budget.
Rising costs feel like a permanent fixture in society, from higher energy prices driven by global conflicts to daily necessities hit by “shrinkflation”.
Online, Singaporeans have been vocal about these pressures. One Redditor, for instance, lamented that affordability feels increasingly out of reach, especially for students and interns.
To see how far $10 a day could go, I took on the challenge for a week — how hard could it be, right?
Trying hard to stay within budget
Day 1 began promisingly: a 30-minute walk to save on transport, followed by a $2.20 plate of cai fan (economy rice) for lunch comprising two vegetable dishes, earning me pitiful looks from my colleagues as they tried to slip me food.
Scroll to continue reading
By mid-afternoon, a mixture of hunger and fatigue had set in, as I struggled to string together coherent sentences at work.
Somehow, I made it home after another long, slightly delirious 30-minute walk. Dinner was thankfully provided by my parents — along with a lecture on why this self-inflicted Sisyphean task might be doomed from the start.
For the next two days, I skipped breakfast, determined to prove that my $10 budget was entirely possible.
Hawker meals became small comforts: $4.50 Ipoh hor fun, $5 char kway teow, $4 chee cheong fun. Though carb-heavy and light on protein, they provided just enough nourishment to tide me over until dinner.
Despite sticking to low-cost meals, it only took one social activity to blow my budget. Catching up with a friend over dinner cost $8 in a mall food court, before I caved and took a bus ride home.
Together with lunch, the day’s expenditure shot up to $15 — not my proudest moment.
Days 4 and 5 coincided with the weekend. I followed my mother to the wet market, where she doubled as a self-appointed tour guide, and watched with admiration as customers haggled with astute precision, pride thrown aside in pursuit of a better deal.
We emerged with five types of vegetables for $7, enough to last us for a week. Factoring in the cost of other ingredients, I worked out that each home-cooked meal would cost roughly $2 to $3 per person — a fraction of eating out.
Buoyed by this small victory, I embraced another cost-free activity — swapping an $8 drink at a cafe for a bottle of water and a picnic mat laid over a grubby spot at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park. But my triumph was short-lived as the skies opened up, leaving me thoroughly soaked.
As much as I tried to romanticise a frugal lifestyle, I spent the final two days of the challenge fending off a cold and quietly counting down to freedom.
I had gotten used to the hunger, but the brain fog that descended in the afternoons persisted.
