Living off $1 a day convinced Elon Musk he could do anything with his life

Very misleading headline.

The article states a food budget of $1 a day. That's, well, not terribly difficult to achieve, especially for short periods of time before low levels of malnutrition start to manifest their symptoms.

I can't speak for the US, but here in the UK, you would be unable to live in a tent or van for that much. I would even go so far as to say that being homeless on $1/day equivalent (e.g. count any gifts at their market value) is impossible.

Why is this important? Because the debate about income inequality seems to often make its way towards these sort of bikeshedding arguments about how the poor spend frivolously, ignoring the fact that a cable subscription is really rather irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

I'd be curious to see this adjusted for inflation.

That said, monastic approach is interesting. There is something personally appealing in this type of control.