Living on $2 a Day

After reading my article “Becoming Wealthy on $2 a Day” in Back to Godhead Magazine, my good friend Prabhupada Das wrote to me saying that I was throwing down the challenge that the benchmark for simple living should be at $2 a day. He then asked when Gitagrad will reach that target of spending.


I posted the content of the BTG article on this blog almost a year ago, but if you want to see the BTG article, which has lots of photos from Gitagrad, follow this link.

Here’s my reply:

Well actually we are already at that goal, albeit prematurely, because we could sure use more income at the present. We take in about 600 hrn. (Hrivna, the Ukrainian currency) per month from selling paneer at the Sunday feast. This pays for some vegetables, grains and spices for the week, for phone expense (which we reduce by all using the same carrier, for which calls are free), and other miscellaneous items. One of our Partners-for-Life, Bhakta Jenya, takes care of the electricity bill each month. The other big need right now is firewood, but the men scavenge that from the nearby forests.

We reduce our food bill by purchasing no processed foods, and of course by eating what has been grown in our garden. Despite the fact that we lost most of the crops, we still produced quite a bit, and are now harvesting cabbages, beets, pumpkins, sunflower seeds, and green tomatoes. Right now, aside from food, we have very few expenses. 600 hrn. is about $75, for 5 people, for the month, which is about 50¢ a day, each, so we are way below the Millennium Development Goal target. For 5 people, at $2 a day, for 30 days = $300 for a month. It would be nice to have such income to develop our community. If we had more we would undoubtedly increase the standard of our Deity worship. And increased income would go to capital expenditure in the form of buildings, tools, greenhouses, animals, etc. So as long as we are below budget we can take this credit to offset other expenses, as they come up later, such as seeds, tools, etc.

How do we get to such a low level of expenditure? For one thing we eat quite simply. We have some dairy but not much. Only several times a week do we use butter, and once in a week or two will we will have paneer ourselves. The only person taking milk on a daily basis is Sakhi Vrinda, the 5 year-old daughter of Ekanatha Bhakti and Rasamanjari. And the only sweets we have is halavah, about once in a week. Typically we have kasha (grain cereal of some sort) for breakfast, and kitari or soup, gretchka (buckwheat) or rice, and a subji of cabbage or potatoes or both. For salads there is cabbage salad, or potato salad, or beet salad. And because we have a paneer business, for drinks we typically have sweetened whey, or else apple compote from our trees, or water.

I believe that not having a refrigerator also keeps the food bill lower, because we simply bypass the entire dairy section of the store. In the winter months we can keep things cold on the porch. Dairy is fresh the day we use it from the cows next door. We make our own sour cream and butter as by products of the paneer business.

(Speaking of dairy, of our cow Kartika turns out to have reproductive problems. We have been trying to get her in a family way unsuccessfully for almost a year. The vet said that she was raised for slaughter which means that they fed her a diet high in grains and this somehow affects the development of the reproductive organs. He said there is a 50-50 chance she could conceive if given vitamin therapy, so we are giving her vitamin injections once a week. If that fails then we will purchase another cow this spring).

In our Gitagrad Charter, which is the written ideology of our community, I explain that those who come to live here must bring sufficient clothing for 3 years. They should not expect that we have funds to buy clothing. So the members either bring what they need, acquire it by donation, or by some other exchange. For example, the devotee who does the paneer trade is also an astrologer. Typically, as this is a brahminical activity, he does not charge any set fee for consultations, but accepts donations. Recently because he needed winter shoes he did astrological readings for several days to acquire the necessary funds. We do not include such income and expense in the community budget, since it is a private expenditure. But such purchases are rare. Our members will also purchase from the used clothing store to keep spending at a minimum.

Unusual for a yatra, the Kharkov yatra has three dentists who are devotees, and who joyously donate our tooth care. Another devotee in Lithuania who is an optometrist provides my eye care and contact lenses as a donation. When devotees come to visit they often make a donation of supplies.

Not having a motor vehicle keeps our expenses way down. Gasoline is expensive at US $1/liter. Another thing that keeps expenses down is not having a store in our village. Thus there is no running off to the store to get some item that we may have run out of. Instead we just do without. The closest store in the nearest larger village about 10 km away, and the bus only makes that trip 3 times a day, so a visit to town for anything means a half-day adventure. Therefore we don’t have many of those. One trip to the store on the way back from the Sunday Feast is typically all the shopping we do. We spend time instead of money to go around, by taking busses. Also, sometimes visitors come by car and we arrange for them to bring the heavier or bulkier things that are difficult to transport by bus.

At this point we have no funds set aside for health care, and fortunately everybody is mostly healthy. In the past I have contributed money for health care for my translator Jaya Mangala and his wife. Medicines are also less expensive here than Europe or America, and typically packaged in small amounts to be affordable.

I should point out that we target the $2 a day threshold for ongoing maintenance, not for development or infrastructure. Infrastructure has so far come from gifts from our Partners-for-Life, such as the houses we live in, the wood saws that we use (a table saw recently purchased for sawing firewood ($80) was donated), the well pump, etc. We need more housing though. There are more devotees who want to join us here but we have no housing for them. Next year we would like to raise $30,000 to build 3 houses, and repair the existing ones. We also need to build a craft building for a weaving loom, clay products, etc. And of course as the community grows will need to build a temple.

While we are talking about reaching the Millennium Development Goals, we should mention water. The EU has mandated that in just several years they are going to impose heavy fines for Europeans using more than 60 gallons of water each, per day. Where are we at there? In my house here are two large water containers that we fill every other day. One holds 80 liters, the other 50, which is the equivalent of 34 US gallons. For my bath I use a 12 liter bucket, twice a day. That’s 24 liters, with the rest of it being used for cooking for the community of 6, washing dishes, and cleaning the floors, etc. Everybody here bathes with a bucket since there is no running water, so for 6 people that is 144 liters per day for bathing, which is 38 gallons. All the cooking is done in my house, so other water use is minimal, except for Kartika who consumes about 20-30 liters a day. So that comes to about 85 gallons every two days for 6 people and a cow. Of course all of this water comes directly from the earth, costing nothing either for delivery or for discharge.

Now, one may say that if we factored in all of the donations we receive that this would bring our daily expenses above $2. Possibly it would. But that is not how we do our accounting. Sri Krishna, Who is the owner of everything arranges the care for His devotees. He has many ways at his disposal for dealing with that. We consider donations as gifts from Him, and we happily reciprocate by worshipping Him with love every day.

It seems we can give a good example to the EU how to live in a sustainable way, and be happy in Krishna Consciousness. Living simply by reducing the unnecessary demands of the body reduces stress and demands on time. It is pleasing, satisfying, and easier to be Krishna conscious because there are less artificial demands on the body, mind and ego.