Starting May 1, I will be attempting to live on just $2 a day for an entire month.

Okay, actually, it's $10 a day, including food. But I have to set aside my grocery money in a separate budget of $248, leaving $62 in cash for my daily spending. Tomorrow afternoon, I will go to the bank and withdraw that $62 in $2 bills, and I will add a single bill to my wallet every day until June 1. It's simple: unless I'm at the grocery store, I can only spend the cash in my wallet.

Why am I doing this? There are a number of justifications.

First, to be candid, because I think it will make an interesting hook for a cover story about the economy which I'm working on for an issue in June.

Second, I've been wondering out loud to my friends if we are on the cusp of an economic depression, and I want to explore what it might feel like for someone of this coddled generation to experience that. (I believe the next depression will be not one of job shortages, but credit shortage, forcing people who have become entirely used to invisible money to revisit the notion of cash, but I'll explain my reasoning on that as I go.)

Third, almost everyone I know my age is broke, and they all want to do something about it. This experiment is a handy way to jumpstart conversations about that, since money is the last great taboo topic in America (more on that theory later as well).

Fourth, I'm in enough debt, personally, that I sometimes find myself uncontrollably crying. Talking about my personal finances will be gut-wrenching, akin to the first before-the-group speech at an AA meeting, or a long-postponed session in the confessional. I'm hoping that forcing myself to come clean about my situation will help me fix it, and maybe reveal something about what's normal and abnormal amongst my peers, and Americans in general.

Fifth (the reasons just keep coming), I want to rediscover just how expensive Santa Cruz really is. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was shocked to discover that in many ways, the city, even with its notorious reputation for having a high cost of living, is cheaper than our fair hamlet. And there are some lists that place Santa Cruz as the second most-expensive place to live in America, period. What does this mean as the credit crunch deepens? There are enough desirable aspects to this place that people gladly skate the edges of poverty to live here (I know, I'm one of them), but when push comes to shove, will Santa Cruz, by necessity, instantly gentrify? What effect would that have on the city and its future?

At any rate, the scope of the experiment is wide, even if its execution is fairly simple. I'll try to post updates on my daily travails here, though some material is going to be withheld for the cover story (don't want to blow the whole wad).

My best friend -- who just lost her job in Rhode Island, speaking of economic downturns -- thinks I'll last a week, tops. After pre-paying all my bills for the month of May and closely examining my spending patterns so far in 2008, I think she's right to be doubtful. But where there's a blog, there's a way...

UPDATED TO ADD: Just talked to mom, and she thinks I'm absolutely insane. "Even 30 years ago, I was spending $5 a day just on lunch." Must have been before the 99-cent value menu was invented. 

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