Jon Holato

For my readers that have followed this series of posts documenting my quest I thank you but am sorry to say this will be my last post on this topic. Perhaps there will be other 30-for-30 items to come.

From a top-level perspective this was hard to complete, probably a 7 or 8 on a 10-scale with 10 being the worst. The starvation factor was not as big of an issue as I initially anticipated. With $30 it is possible to buy a lot of food, albeit of little nutritional value. As for me, I would say I lost about 5 pounds over the course of the experiment, with the most occurring in the final week. Monetarily, I would guesstimate that I saved roughly $150. Not a lot you say? Well remember, I wasn’t spending a lot of money on food in the first place.

What did I learn? First off I learned to appreciate the food that is given to me. I have never been one to go hungry during my lifetime. Even as things were rough at times when I was a child, my father always made sure we had food on the table (he is a great cook I might add). Over the course of this past month I had to eat a lot of the same thing, over and over and over, and it gave me a deeper gratitude for the plentiful and flavorful food that I am blessed with on a daily basis. There’s goal number one achieved successfully if you can remember back when I stated my goals in the first post of this series. My subsequent goal was to save money to help pay off credit card debt from Christmas and to get a Zune. Well, in light of recent events, I am no longer interested in getting a Zune and will be holding out for the iPhone. As for the credit card bill, that will have to wait for mid-month’s paycheck and this last one went toward bills.

The first thing I stated I would do is make a donation to a charity. I will keep this pledge and before I make any payments on my credit card or put any money away for the iPhone I will make a donation to Save Darfur in the amount that I saved by doing this experiment, $150. There are people who have it much worse than us suffering daily all around the world, the very least we can do is recognize them and offer whatever help is in our means. God Bless!