Codes of Living-2

Let's Continue Our Account on the Facts of Turkey:

Yesterday we started our article to see if there is a magic formula for this business. We had begun to make a calculation on the realities of Turkey and our standard of living.

We make our calculations to find the income level that a middle-class family needs for a standard life.

The first expense we found yesterday was the cost of housing. We had decided on a monthly rent of 2200 liras. So far, there has been no objection or contribution from anyone. But I thought of another expense. We did not add to this housing expense the apartment, concierge or dues expense that many of us usually pay.

Depending on the environment we live in, I think we all need to keep the common areas in our houses clean, to clean the stairs, the door and the window, to plant a flower or two in the garden, to take care of the grass or to sweep in front of the door. So it's a little, but I think it would be logical to think of at least 100 liras a month as a dues expense. I say let's revise our accommodation expenses as 2200 + 100 liras per month.

Feeding Expenses in Our Account:

Yes, let's go back to our account. Today we will begin the most difficult part of the account, feeding expenses.

I myself make do with 1.5 meals a day, but usually our country standard is 3 meals a day. Coffee under, lunch and dinner. In between, tea in the afternoon and fruit in the day. I think we should do the math in this order.

When I was little, we used to drink tea after dinner in front of the TV, and a plate of fruit would come, peel them carefully, slice them, and eat them with pleasure while watching TV series of movies throughout the family. The Fugitive, Dallas, Tiny House, Charlie's Angels, Star Trek, Commissioner Columba and other famous series, young people do not know, but the old ones will surely remember. The television broadcast was also black and white at first, then the color broadcast began. While dinner was being eaten, the evening bulletin was watched, a classic of every family.

How everything has changed now, we don't even have a TV at home anymore. We removed all but the wall-mounted one. The wall is also unplugged. Now we watch everything on the internet, it is much more practical to watch the things that interest you anytime and anywhere, we don't even watch the news, you are already aware of everything instantly, waiting for the evening news to follow the news seems a bit ridiculous to me. You don't even need to take home a daily newspaper anymore. They all fit on mobile phones.

Yes, nostalgia is nice and our topic is long. Prices change every day, everything is increased every day, it is good that there is internet, instant access to market prices makes it very easy for calculation.

Let's start with breakfast, as the name suggests, we have recently joined our culture to have a snack before coffee, the ancients used to drink a bowl of soup in the morning, you will brew tea, you will prepare orange juice, you will fry bread and grease it and eat it, you will have a decent breakfast with sausage, olive cheese, shelving, eggs from the shelf, where such things used to be, breakfast culture once existed in our lives. There would be a hangover of tarhana soup in the pot on the sheet pillar, they would throw a couple of wood under the stove and heat it, and everyone would drink a bowl. And then everyone would go about their business. I still drink a bowl of soup some mornings like I used to. It is healthy. Breakfast is now considered the most important meal of the day, but it used to be missed. I don't know which is true, thousands of years of experience or new methods of modern times? Russians do not put a bite in their mouth in the morning until almost midday. The lady got used to it a little bit because of me, and she started to eat breakfast in recent years.

A normal adult will probably be full if he has two cups of tea in the morning, 100 gr. of feta cheese, 7-8 olive grains, 2-3 thin slices of bread, preferably fried, butter and jam or honey on top of it, and one boiled egg next to it. If there is also pan-fried sausage, I think it is possible to get up from the table completely satisfied. Everyone is eating different breakfasts, some may prefer coffee instead of tea, or a glass of orange juice, cold tomatoes and peppers are not bad, for example, it is possible to enrich our breakfast table even more. On the Internet, sometimes we have state elders who share photos at the breakfast table with forty kinds of breakfast dishes, but our family is a middle-class family, I think that's too much.

I am used to breakfast in the morning with a big plate of salad and omelettes or menemen, for example, since it is not possible to find sausage and olives here, it does not taste like a standard breakfast, so I found such a solution in my own way. I don't like coffee very much, I usually drink tea. I also love tea without sugar, I feel the taste of tea better without sugar.  But many of us couldn't give up sugar. My brother-in-law puts half a cup of sugar in the tea, for example, how he drinks so much sweet tea, I don't understand at all.

I will reduce the amount our school child eats very slightly in the calculations. It varies from child to child, but let's imagine that ours eats a little less than that of adults.

The whole family, including our father, sits together at the dinner table every morning and evening.

Our father eats lunch at the pita near his workplace, except on Sundays. Working hours are legally a maximum of 45 hours per week. If we say that we come to work a little late on weekdays and come to work early on Saturday, we fill this maximum time by working five hours more on Saturday. We have a bowl of soup, a pita with minced meat and a glass of buttermilk on our menu, which I accept as normally enough to be satiated. Some businesses pay for lunch separately, but it doesn't really matter, we'll think of it as added to our salary. We will pay for it ourselves.

When I was working as a project engineer in Ankara, I used to eat pita with minced meat at Kebab 49 on Bulletin street with my friends at the workplace in the afternoons, they would give seasonal salad next to the pita, and our menu is in my mind from there. Kebab 49 is in place. If I can find the prices on the Internet, I will buy it from there.

I say let's calculate that our school children and his mother eat lunch together at home after returning from school.

Whether our dinner is a bowl of soup, a plate of juicy food, sometimes rice or pasta as well as a meal such as meatballs, chicken, fish, our national drink is buttermilk, maybe even sometimes a cacık or a jug of compote and we will not forget a large plate salad.

We make lunch a little lighter, we don't add soup, our father eats more of the bread, and if he eats the bread less, our mother and child will probably be lighter like this.

On weekends, we have a barbecue at a picnic with the family instead of lunch on Sundays in the summer, and we eat together in a restaurant in winter or in the cold months. I will calculate the cost of this meal equally, I think the price of a meal in a medium-cost restaurant and the cost of barbecue meat at a picnic are almost the same. I think everyone has the right to a family-sized event one day a week.

We will also calculate the food expenses of our baby in the swaddle. He's still very small. I hope the cost of food will not be too much.

I think this much presupposition is enough, if no one has any objections, let's start by calculating the monthly cost of standard breakfast.

It was really a heavy subject, it was like I was writing a thesis. It's too late again, let's continue the account tomorrow.  Tomorrow, taking into account our presuppositions, let's first calculate the monthly food amounts we need, and then shop together in an economical market. When the account comes out, maybe we will make a comparison with the tea bagel account.

Love and respect from Moscow for now.