The Efficiency Is Everything Cookbook [pdf]
efficiencyiseverything.com
efficiencyiseverything.com
I have seen HN dispute 19k/yr living, so I also wanted to share with HN, the 3 things that allowed 2 people to live on $19,000/year. We lived like this for 3 years as my wife got her Doctorate.
>Health Insurance- Don't pick the wrong one. Too often I hear people choosing 'a good plan', but the reality is, the Payments(preimums) + Max Out Of Pocket exceed the cost of a Bronze plan.
>Used cars are better than new. Nothing quite like not caring if your car gets a ding. Nothing quite like not having a car payment.
>Stop eating out, the 6$ meal is 6x the cost of the meals in the cookbook. Doing a Calorie Per Dollar comparison is a wakeup call for value.
Thought this is useful for everyone. I'm planning to study another round of Calorie, Protein, and Nutrient Per Dollar data. Any requests?
I didn’t realise how much of my day revolved around food until I planned out every meal in advance and eliminated the need to!
And since you're only using what you buy on sale, they taste different every time!
Learn what doesn't need peeling. Potatoes - don't peel. Cucumber - don't peel. I don't even peel carrots. Just rinse and scrub.
Being lazy, I buy frozen vegetables to bulk it up. Don't buy anything if it's not in a clear bag, otherwise you're buying expensive chopped carrots.
For things that are canned and "require" rinsing, rinse in the can.
Anything that involves an oven takes too long. Find out where you can use the microwave instead.
When I make a stirfry, I put the potatoes in the microwave first to mostly cook them, then finish them in the stir fry. Same for carrots if I'm feeling a softer texture.
If you're parking for work, invest in a good set of glass Tupperware-style containers that seal well. Don't buy a big set: you won't use 75% of them. I just buy plastic cutlery and keep them in my desk at work and dispose 50/50 (sometimes they'll fit in my container to take home, other times they won't and I don't want to deal with it).
Square should be better than round.
These are 2 compartment, which sounds even better. This is the style you want:
We got ours at Sam's Club.
High protein per second foods-
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-fastes...
Cooking protein faster-
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-part-2...
Foods that can be prepared in under 3 minutes, sorted by calories per dollar-
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/3-minutes-of-effort-calor...
Would be a good opportunity to reduce expenditure while increasing caloric intake.
Ofc, I’m talking good fats only. Animal fats mostly. No oils.
Occasionally use peanut or vegetable oil but only for frying.
Olive oils are often fake, unless you are paying around $20 for a small bottle.
Also, can you elaborate more on why you don't use plant fats for cooking? We do the opposite here, so I'm curious.
First, I avoid most of the m vegetable oils in general. Not just for cooking. The only exceptions is olive and coconut. Most oils are high in omega 6 fatty acids. This skews the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 that our body desires. But cooking or heating the oils makes them even worse. It destroys good properties, oils become rancid / oxidizes during heating.
I just don’t see the reason to even use veg oils. Food tastes so much better cooked in butter or ghee, or bacon fat, or beef tallow.
what?! fake as in, it's synthetic? Or fake as in not really olive oil, but it says it is on the label?
Never heard of synthetic yet. But I’m sure that’s coming.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/where-to-buy-real-extra-v...
In Spain we have best quality for under 5€ l, so I guess globalization has not arrived to oil.
But for the average person buying a used car will result in huge reliability problems, being stranded on the side of the road multiple times and you’ll end up paying thousands for repairs anyway. Yes, we all know that one guy who bought a used Toyota and never had problems. There’s a reason why it’s an anecdote about “that one guy I know.”
I don't know anyone who buys second-hand who has had significant issues. So if anything your claim about anecdotes would be inverted for me.
That's an order of magnitude more than people on the edge could dream of having all at once or hoping someone would loan them. 2k+ is an effort to save up.
Used cars are an amazing deal. It's riskier sure, but that is the reality of being poor. No one is paying thousands of dollars to get an old subcompact repaired, it's going right to the scrappers. I think you are underestimating the reliability of ~8-12 year old sub compacts/sedans. Fluids, pads and belts keeps most early 2000's Asian cars going well into the 300s.
Will still include backup cameras etc.
If you buy a new car, you're paying for the fact that it is new, even if you can't see it. I did a quick search, and found a gorgeous Audi A8 that looks like it's new for 6k. You can buy a crappy old car for about 1k. So anything in between should get you something modest. Most people I know buy used cars, and I rarely have heard anyone having troubles with them (IDK, are American cars less reliable?). If you buy a relatively new used car, you get all of the advantages you list, and none of the disadvantages.
My rent was about 8.5 times of that last year (for the whole year of 2018, I paid $28,800). I lived in Manhattan (in NYC). The salaries for programmers is higher though. The average base salary (in NYC) is around $144k[1]. With bonuses and stock though, it can easily reach $200k per year. And it gets even higher in the SF Bay Area.
The funny thing is employers are so desperate for programmers that they're willing to hire anyone who can code. You definitely don't need a degree, and you could even be a college dropout. Coding bootcamps have been sprouting like crazy all over the U.S. for the past few years. (And recruiters like Triplebyte helps people without degrees or CS backgrounds get high-paying jobs.[2])
[1] Triplebyte measured NY's average to be $144k (which my experience confirms): https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary
That's also what sets the used car market, of course. Is that specific Audi or Range Rover going to cost more in maintenance than that Honda or Toyota over the next 5 years and 50K miles? I can't say. Are those 20 Audis/Range Rovers going to cost more than those 20 Honda/Toyotas? I'd bet a large fraction of my net worth on it!
I'm not sure where the idea that most working-class people have $17K lying around to drop on a new car, so they can avoid carrying insurance/worrying about dings comes from, but it doesn't match my anecdotal experience with solid, working-class people.
Our family could relatively easily afford any non-exotic car, paying cash for new. The last 3 cars we bought were a 1998 Mercedes diesel with 188K mile on it, a 2005 CR-V with 167K miles on it, and a 2014 LEAF (new, with $10K in tax credits on it). Over that ~10 year period, I bet I haven't spent $4K on maintenance across that fleet and still have the Honda and LEAF. Only significant repair was Honda clutch ($1500), tires ($600), then a bunch of wear items (serpentine belt tensioner, brakes, a battery, an exhaust repair $400, wipers), and oil changes. The items with dollars above are farmed out; the routine wear items and oil changes I do in the driveway.
One could argue just using a vitamin pill for micronutrients, and optimizing protein/dollar for macros.
Current plan is to collect the data, match it to recommended amounts of nutrients/calories/etc... and see what the outcome is.
I fantasize that it tells me to eat ~50 calories of flour a day, but until the equations are finished its merely an outlier.
Here's my request - assuming data for a corpus of recipes with ingredients and ratings, plus food nutrient data and prices, I'd like to pull top n most nutrient-dense/price recipes and order by rating per regional cuisine.
Tailor your diet to your needs, are you exercising mentally or physically or both?
Organ meat is relatively cheap because people don't like it. But loaded with nutrients. Another good one is sardines. You are getting the whole fish and bones and people don't like sardines either.
Some keto diets are heavy on using coconut oil for fat, which is cheapish for the number of calories you are getting.
I usually make combinations with: 1. Vegetables (for vitamins): beans, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, tomatoes, bell peppers 2. Meat-like (for proteins): Ground beef, chicken, meat replacements 2. Filler (for carbs): Potatoes, pasta, rice 3. Optional extra's: Sauce, cream, cheese (cheese is expensive though!)
This allows me to cook fairly quick and cheap.
Substitute some sort of more traditional cheese and some roasted unsalted peanuts in the above recipe and you'll probably enjoy it about as much and feel better afterwards.
https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Based-Budget-Delicious-Recipes-...
I’ve been cooking entirely plant based for three years now and cook almost all my own meals. At first I was following recipes but now I just keep a well stocked cupboard and improvise. The results are a little variable but I enjoy cooking this way more. But the basis of my diet is legumes and whole grains with as many fresh fruits and vegetables as I can handle. It’s very cheap to eat this way.
Cutting food costs barely matters when 40% of your weekly cost is actually paying for a roof over your head. But living in a nice place, in a good neighbourhood, etc, can't really be substituted.
You can offset some of that though by being able to brag about in which neighborhood you live.
This line of thinking reminds me of a tip on gift giving: if you have fixed amount of money to spend, go for the category of items in which you can afford the best item (vs. spending the exact same amount on a cheap item from a more expensive category). E.g. an expensive scarf instead of cheap coffee machine. The reasoning is that the recipient will look at your gift relative to the category it belongs to, and not evaluate what else could be bought with the same amount of money.
Hamburger mush - 1 lb ground beef, beef bouillon (enough to make ~2 cups of broth), 2 tbsp flour, water
Cook and drain ground beef, add bouillon + flour + enough water to be liquidy, let it cook on low until paste like consistency. Serve over rice with vegetables (mushrooms, broccoli, cabbage, zucchini, bokchoy in any combination are good)
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Chocolate quinoa - 1 cup quinoa, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/4 cup chocolate protein powder, honey
Cook quinoa. Mix cocoa powder and chocolate protein powder with some hot water, enough to make a sauce. Add honey to taste, mix with cooked quinoa
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Greek yogurt alfredo - 2 tsp butter, 1 tsp garlic powder, 3/4 cup greek yogurt, 1/2 cup grated parm
Melt butter in small pot or pan, add garlic powder, mix in yogurt. Set heat to low and stir in parm until it's melted. Serve over pasta and vegetables
I hate to come off as a snarky purist, but there isn't need to go to weird italofusion combinations if you want variable, vegetable heavy diet based around rice, pasta, or legumes. In South Italy we cook vegetable and olive oil based sauces in the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta. Then you mix these together while finishing the cooking of the drained pasta. Every single vegetable is fair game. You just need a good source of fat, which is served by olive oil. The pasta or lentil base gives you protein enough that you only seek meat or heavier protein sources every fourth meal or so.
Speed: If I have to spend more than about 15-30 seconds in preparation, then it's out. Somewhat longer cooking time is ok if it's mostly unattended. I buy ingredients pre-cut/tinned and this tends to be location dependent.
Cost: This is entirely location dependent. I start meal design with what is cheap/good/suitable at my local supermarket. It has to be a regular item because I'm not going to waste time looking for deals each week. My average meal cost is less than 2 euros and that's with ingredients that are not the cheapest.
Health: This is dependent on what you want to believe, but I've gotten exceptional results from merely avoiding sugar and processed carbs of any sort. It's not extreme in any way but it ends up limiting your choices broadly because vendors sneak sugar and processed carbs into everything.
Do you have any recipes or expectations?
I would consider something along the lines of a Paleo or Mediterranean diet to be a healthy choice.
https://www.amazon.com/Five-Ingredients-Minutes-Jules-Clancy...
Edit: Wait no actually it's even worse, it implies extra virgin olive oil will not smoke?
> Vegetable oil – as mentioned, can be replaced with other high heat oils like peanut oil. Butter will burn, olive oil will smoke. Extra virgin olive oil costs pennies more, I always get it over olive oil.
There were quite a few recipes that started with browning hamburger and onions.
And I suspect that during my generation, families that still cooked had a lot of these kinds of meals, usually prepared from memory.
So the cookbook is hardly a shock to my sensibilities.
"1 (10½oz) can of cream of chicken soup"
and quit.
Here's my entry into the efficiency menu:
Take a crockpot/slow cooker, throw in stew meat, frozen peas/corn/green beans, a lemon, an onion, garlic, sriracha, cut up a few potatoes and carrots, a can of chopped organic tomatoes. Cook for hours. Done. Probably 5 minutes of prep.
You could probably live exclusively on that. Low salt.
That was supposed to be a time saver, but the idea is to have the roux.