It’s easy for him to say. With a net worth of half a trillion dollars, Elon Musk He could live on old caviar and moon cheese if he wanted to. But according to Tesla CEO and SpaceX Founder, Surviving in America requires no more than a dusty apartment, a computer and some discounted hot dogs.
Before becoming the richest man in the world, Musk set out to prove to himself that even if all his big ventures crashed and burned, he would still be okay. Literally. In a 2015 interview on StarTalk Radio, he said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson“In America, it’s much easier to keep yourself alive … so my threshold for existing is very low.”
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To test that threshold, Musk challenged himself to live on just $1 a day for food. Her grocery list? Hot dogs, oranges, pasta, green peppers, and a large jar of sauce. “You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while,” he said with a laugh.
For perspective, that $1-a-day budget would break down to 33 cents per meal. In today’s economy, it can’t even buy a loaf of bread in many cities. And for the more than 44 million Americans struggling with food insecurity, Musk’s self-imposed challenge reads less like resilience and more like an exercise in luxury.
Still, the point wasn’t to romanticize the struggle—it was a mental exercise. “If I can live on a dollar a day, at least from the point of view of the cost of food… Well, it’s very easy to make $30 a month, so I’ll be fine,” he reasoned.
In the mid-1990s, when Musk first tested his $1-a-day living challenge, grocery prices looked very different. All-beef hot dogs average about $2.03 per pound. Today, the same pound of hot dogs runs more than $5.20, based on the most recent federal data. That’s a 150% jump, making the meat much more valuable.
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At the time, a loaf of white bread cost less than $1 in most stores. Now it averages about $1.87 — not as dramatically, but still nearly double. Pasta, one of Musk’s go-to survival foods, has also grown. Once 69 to 89 cents a box, it now sells for an average of $1.50 to $2. The numbers show that Musk’s “low threshold for survival” diet didn’t just age — it advanced.
But frugality did not end when the money started flowing in.
In 2022, Musk’s former partner Claire Boucherknown as Grimestold Vanity Fair in 2022 that his bare-bones lifestyle continued well into his billionaire years. Once, when their mattress blew a hole in her side, Musk refused to buy a new one—he told her to get a spare from another house.
Grimes said their shared $40,000 rent had no security, nosy neighbors peering through windows, and so little food that she once resorted to eating peanut butter for eight days straight. “My brother doesn’t live like a billionaire,” she said. “Brothers sometimes live below the poverty line.”
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And maybe that’s the throughline: for Musk, discomfort was never going to be a deal breaker. He doesn’t need luxury to work – just a mission and a floor to sleep on. “I feel like I can be in some shitty apartment with my computer and be fine and not starve,” he said.
But for millions of Americans who aren’t CEOs, who don’t have a degree from Penn or connections in Silicon Valley, the idea that survival is “easy” sounds less persuasive and more disconnected.
Still, something about Musk’s framing is revealing. Whether it’s rockets, EVs, or peanut butter on repeat, he always bets that the discomfort is temporary — and that survival, however bare-bones, is just the first step to something bigger.
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The article Elon Musk Says It’s ‘Easy to Survive’ in America—He Lives on $1 a Day Eating Hot Dogs and Chili, Says His ‘Low Threshold for Existence’ originally appeared on Benzinga.com.
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