Long before Musk became a millionaire at 28 or the driving force behind Tesla and SpaceX, he put himself through a unique experiment: surviving on just $1 a day.
As he explained in a 2015 interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on the StarTalk podcast, this was less about necessity and more about proving that he could thrive as an entrepreneur, even with almost nothing.
“My threshold for existing was pretty low,” Musk told Tyson.
As a freshman and sophomore at Queen’s University in Ontario, Musk lived on a monthly food budget of $30, relying heavily on hot dogs, oranges, pasta and jarred tomato sauce.
Occasionally, he added green peppers into the mix to break the monotony. “You sort of just buy food in bulk at the supermarket,” he explained. But he admitted, “You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while.”
For Musk, the experiment wasn’t about enjoying life or maintaining good health but about proving a point to himself. He wanted to know whether he could survive on minimal resources and eliminate fear of financial instability as he pursued his entrepreneurial dreams.
“If I can live for a dollar a day – at least from a food cost standpoint – it’s pretty easy to earn $30 in a month,” he reasoned. “So, I’ll probably be OK.”
In hindsight, Musk acknowledged that the experiment might not be as feasible today as it was in the 1990s.
Speaking to Business Insider, he warned, “I would not encourage anyone to live on $1 a day. That would not be super fun. Also, I did this back in 1990, so a dollar went a lot further back then.”
Adjusted for inflation, $1 from back then is equivalent to about $2.42 today, meaning Elon Musk’s $30 monthly food budget would amount to roughly $72.60 in 2024 dollars.
To put it into perspective, according to Chowhound, a 15-ounce pack of Oscar Mayer hot dogs costs about $3.94 today. While Musk’s frugal experiment in the early ‘90s might have been feasible, replicating it now would be significantly tougher – and likely less enjoyable.
As Tyson pointed out during the podcast, living on so little was “a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go.” Musk agreed, calling it an essential step in his path toward building companies that would one day reshape industries.
“In America,” Musk said, “it’s pretty easy to keep yourself alive.”
