Thrifty shopper lives off £1 a day

A thrifty shopper has revealed how she survived living on £1 a food - a DAY.

Katie Timms said she managed to stick to the budget - but it left her 'miserable'.

She spent the week eating basic foods such as beans, bread and soup - spending less than a quid a day.

Her Seven day shopping list was:£6.83 of items from Tesco£6.83 of items from TescoEight Tesco Value Chicken Burgers- 97pOne tin of Tesco Everyday Value Sardines in Tomato Sauce- 34p1Kg Tesco Everyday Value Oats Porridge- 75pSeven Rosedene Farms Small Pears- 49pTesco Value tinned tomatoes- 35pH W Nevill's Wholemeal Brown Bread- 45pTesco Value Strawberry Jam- 39p1Kg Tesco Root Vegetable Pack- 49p400g of Tesco Value Passata- 35pTesco Value Kidney Beans- 30p700g Tesco Jacket Potatoes- 49p1Kg Redmere Farms Brown Onions- 59p125g Tesco Everyday Value Mozzarella- 47pTwo packets of 500g Hearty Food Co Spaghetti- 20p eachTotal- £6.83

Katie, a journalist at the Plymouth Herald, said: ''I spent a week seeing if it was possible to limit my food shop spend to less than £1 a day.

''And while I managed to stick to budget, I was absolutely miserable.

''I'm not a morning person as it is but being faced with a bowl of lumpy, tasteless porridge oats - made with water - made it all that little bit worse.

''However, there are people who don't have the luxury of being able to be choosy about what they eat, and struggle to find ways to make their money stretch.

''The average person in the UK spends between £56 and £81 a week on food, including takeaways and eating out in restaurants.

''Many students and low-income families do have to learn how to cut back and save on their weekly food shop, and there have been many attempts to live on £20 and £10 a week, but I took it a step further and challenged myself at £1 a day, totalling less than £7 for the week.

''To make it as easy as possible for somebody to replicate this weekly shop, I decided to purchase all of the items on my list at one supermarket.

''I chose to shop at Tesco as it is the closest supermarket to my house.

''I also decided to stay away from yellow stickers, as reduced items cannot always be relied on if someone was to replicate the £1 a day challenge.

''Armed with a calculator, I paced the aisles asking myself if I had really thought this through, would I manage to buy a full shop for less than £7, or would I just blow it all on cheese?

''After one whole hour and 28 minutes, I had £6.83 worth of items in my trolley, and I desperately tried to find something for less than 17p, but as the staff called out over the tills that the store was closing, I decided I probably couldn't have got anything that would have made a difference to my week anyway.

''After I had piled my shop into the bag, I wheeled my trolley out of the store, and to the car-park.

''The bag in the trolley had tipped over, and a packet of my spaghetti split open and landed all over the floor.

''Even though I did have money to replace it, I knew for this challenge to be as accurate as it could be, I couldn't just go and buy another packet.