History Main / ImprobableFoodBudget

* Played with in the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' series.
** Gumshoe's salary is so low that he can only afford the cheapest of instant noodles despite being a police detective. Justified as he's often incompetent, though one suspects Edgeworth would never actually let him get too poor, and that his moments of competence are generously rewarded.
** Phoenix and Maya are often noted to be poor (which makes sense, given how Phoenix is only seen taking a case every few months), but Maya loves to eat and often insists that Phoenix takes her out for burgers to satiate her hunger. On several occasions Phoenix is made to host large, end of game feasts for the protagonists as well.
** Ron [=DeLite=] notes his wife loves the finest things in life, including food, [[spoiler:thus his need to become Mask*[=DeMasque=].]]

* Unlike in the games where you receive money upon winning a battle, characters in ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' are never seen making any money. Despite this, Ash and his friends never have any issue buying food. In contrast, [[GoldfishPoopGang Team Rocket]] always find themselves on the verge of starvation and are shown taking several part-time jobs to make money.

* Unlike in the games where you receive money upon winning a battle, characters in ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' anime are never seen making any money. Despite this, Ash and his friends never have any issue buying food.

* As noted by [[Blog/DasSporking Mervin]] in her sporking, ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' has Bella living with her father, who is implied to not make a lot of money. She's somehow able to always cook foods like steak and potatoes, with enough money for her dad to order pizza when he wants her to have a night off from cooking. Mervin also pointed out that the werewolves supposedly live in poverty, and yet Emily is able to make endless amounts of food for Sam's pack, who eat a ''lot''.

* Subverted in ''Manga/OnePiece''. At one point, Luffy berates his crew for them not having enough money. They immediately (And violently) respond that all of their money goes into feeding their BigEater captain.

* Inverted in ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' where the crew never have money for food even though they take bounties for millions of woolong. In one episode a bounty they catch is several million woolong and presumably they spend it all on repairs ... were repairs exactly 2.999 million woolong? It's extremely improbable when dealing with millions in cash that they couldn't keep even 500 for food. This could be justified in that the series doesn't follow a regular timeframe, and it could be months later when they run out of cash. Also, it's implied that woolong's value is similar to that of the Japanese yen, that is, closer to one cent than one dollar.

* ''Manga/MissKoizumiLovesRamenNoodles'': One has to wonder how Koizumi can afford to go to all those Ramen shops she goes to every episode.
* Unlike in the games where you receive money upon winning a battle, characters in ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' anime are never seen making any money. Despite this, Ash and his friends never have any issue buying food.

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/EllaEnchanted'': How a door-to-door watch salesman (and a lousy one, at that), manages to feed and clothe his entire household is not explained well. However, [[spoiler:the cook is a fairy]], which might explain why there's [[AWizardDidIt enough food to go around, at least]].
* The film version of ''Film/SleepingWithTheEnemy''. In addition to Laura having FriendsRentControl, she's able to afford plenty of luxuries like brand name food products - this is after she's fled her abusive husband and set up in a ''really'' fancy house on apparently only a part-time librarian's salary. And she's also been paying for her mother's stay at a nice retirement home. This is AdaptationDecay as in the book she had to live on oatmeal and beans for months after escaping.

* ''Film/{{Bubble}}'': Martha and Kyle are struggling to make ends meet while working menial factory jobs, yet they go out for donuts before work every day and eat takeout for lunch.

* The Mad Hatter and the March Hare's teaparty in ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''. They go around the table to reach fresh cups and, despite Alice's wonderings, when they get back to the start not only do they have more tea and dessert, but also more clean plates and cups. Of course, magic (via Time, who stopped at 6:00 p.m. because the Hatter offended him) is implied to create the new stuff and enable the guests to eat and drink perpetually. It's AllJustADream, so...
* The ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh'' gang. For most intents and purposes honey, bread and condensed milk seem to constitute their entire diets, but ''none'' of them earns any money whatsoever. Does Christopher Robin buy their food for them? Rabbit seems to grow and produce everything, and everyone else mooches off of him. At least in the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon. (Piglet and Eeyore, at least, have diets that can be foraged for; "Haycorns" and thistles respectively.)
* In the YA book ''Dicey's Song'', from ''Literature/TheTillermanFamilySeries'' by Cynthia Voigt, the title character falls victim to this trope. She's in a home economics class in her new school, having spent the last summer leading her younger siblings to find their grandmother from several states away, on foot, after they were abandoned in a parking lot by their mentally ill mother. The assignment is to draw pictures of groceries you could buy to feed a family on a limited budget. She draws things they ate on their journey, like bananas with peanut butter and stale doughnuts you'd get for little or no money from a bakery the day after they were made. The teacher, who knows she doesn't like the class, thinks she's being sarcastic and gives her an F, writing that no one could live on meals like that for long.

* As noted by [[Blog/DasSporking Mervin]] in her sporking, ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' has Bella living with her father, who is implied to not make a lot of money. She's somehow able to always cook foods like steak and potatoes, with enough money for her dad to order pizza when he wants her to have a night off from cooking. Mervin also pointed out that the werewolves supposedly live in poverty, and yet Emily is able to make endless amounts of food for Sam's pack, who eat a ''lot''.

* The ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' cast's ability to regularly visit bars may not seem so unlikely, till JD claims they're so poor that they have to sneak one another into movie theaters in backpacks. Turk and JD, as residents, also started stealing a bunch of food and toilet paper from the hospital and working part-time at clinics while they were still paying back their loans. Elliot was still being supported by her wealthy parents at the time.
* In ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'', Hal and Lois are able to make and ruin three lavish evenings (including a limo ride, a roast dinner, and dinner at a fancy restaurant) in three nights in a row. Yet another episode clearly shows Hal resorting to blackmailing his in-laws to afford a new refrigerator, and Hal and Lois' cars were ([[ProductPlacement oddly for television]]) both over ten years old throughout the series.
* Averted in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', where at least a third of the series dealt with their perpetual lack of food. One episode has the crew buy a load of the most unappealing looking crackers, and still fight over people taking more than their share.
* Subverted in ''{{Series/Frasier}}'' when Niles has to economize due to Maris' divorce lawyers bleeding him dry and with Roz and Bulldog when the whole KACL staff is temporarily fired, but it's hard to imagine how everyone in Seattle can afford to get coffee at the Cafe Nervosa on a daily basis or how Martin can afford overpriced imported dog food on a retired cop's pension. Daphne hangs a lampshade on this when Martin gets some premium jerky made from fillet mignon for her wedding.
* The Series/GilmoreGirls never seem to cook, and eat out constantly and in large amounts, even though Lorelei probably isn't making tons of money running the inn. What's more, they aren't carrying any extra weight. Lorelei probably weighs 120 soaking wet. This is often lampshaded to varying degrees throughout the show. At one point, Rory comes back from college and notices that Lorelai is cooking. She takes this as a sign that her mother is in real financial trouble and turns out to be right.

* Up until the final season, Series/{{Angel}} and his employees are poor, yet it's very rare for them to actually cook something instead of getting take-out or going to a diner.
* ''Series/ICarly'' uses an odd variation on this trope: they don't seem to ''eat'' beyond their means (indeed, "spaghetti tacos" are something of a TrademarkFavoriteFood, and they've made a RunningGag of the kids turning down the extras proffered on a stick at [[LocalHangout The Groovy Smoothie]]), but they ''waste'' copious amounts of food in the webshow.
* One episode of ''Series/{{Dinosaurs}}'' had Earl, Robbie and Charlene after consuming a drug with appetite and happiness-inducing properties wake up with a bad hangover being surrounded by dozens of buckets of half-eaten food, right after it was declared Earl's been out of work for weeks and his wife Fran reported their bank accounts are depleted.
* The main characters of ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' spend almost every night at the bar. Food aside, their alcohol budget must be astronomical. Barney could afford this, but a kindergarten teacher with a shopping addiction? This is lampshaded occasionally.
* Joe, Owen, and Terry from ''Series/MenOfACertainAge'' eat at their fave diner at least three times a week (which is 3x an episode). Owen owns a struggling car dealership and has a wife/3 children and a mortgage. Joe is divorced (likely paying alimony and child support), has a mortgage, and has a [[spoiler: gambling problem]], and in the beginning Terry was an unemployed actor.
* Typically inverted with Charlie in ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', as he's shown to have a desperately small food budget that includes purchases not fit for human consumption. Played straight in "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters", when Charlie and Dee buy what must be hundreds of dollars worth of exotic meats from specialty grocery stores to convince themselves they aren't cannibals (might be justified if Dee's doing the buying, since she and Dennis both get money from Frank).

* Norm and Cliff on ''Series/{{Cheers}}'' seem to be at the bar every night, and Norm for one drank a ludicrous amount of beer whenever he was there. His incalculable bar tab was a running gag.
* Carrie on ''Series/SexAndTheCity'', whose sole source of income for most of the early series is writing a newspaper column. On top of her [[FriendsRentControl nice apartment in Manhattan]] and her extensive [[AllWomenLoveShoes collection of shoes]], she also seems to eat out ''all the time''. In one episode she remarks on how she never uses her kitchen and her oven is for storing sweaters.

* The prequel to ''VideoGame/SakuraWarsSoLongMyLove'', ''Kouya no Samurai Musume'' (roughly, "The Samurai Girl from the Wild West"), takes this trope to extremes. Gemini and Juanita win $100,000 in Las Vegas (this is set in 1928, so this would be equal to more than a million in 2010 dollars). A few scenes later, after an in-story elapsed time of only a few weeks, it is implied that they have spent the entire amount on food for themselves. How they can afford to eat in times when they ''don't'' have such sums of money flowing in is not clear.
* Vincent from ''VideoGame/{{Catherine}}'' must spend a lot of money at the bar every night. Lampshaded when Katherine calls out Vincent on how much he spends there, telling him that he must stop to save money for the future.

* Coop from ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'' pushes this one to ridiculous heights, constantly eating as much junk food as he can while being a bona fide [[TheSlacker Slacker]].

* In ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'', Scooby and Shaggy eat copious amounts of food; it's practically their defining trait. Yet the gang doesn't appear to actually have any flow of income at all, except in rare cases where the plot demands that one or more of them has a job. It doesn't appear that they're paid for solving the mysteries, and none of them actually have a job. Most continuities make Daphne explicitly wealthy, however, so perhaps she's treating them.
* WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants is paid less than a dime a year, and he can still afford to pay for his food and Gary's. And Patrick's essentially, because he's always over.
* The conclusion of ''WesternAnimation/TheHairBearBunch'' episode "King Klong Vs. The Masked Marvel" had the superintendent ordering Peevly and Botch to give the bears anything they wanted as a reward for helping Peevly win $500 at a wrestling match. The bears order virtually every edible thing they can think of, and the keepers run back and forth delivering the stuff out of nowhere.
* ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse'': In "House of Scrooge", one of Scrooge [=McDuck=]'s [[CuttingCorners cost-cutting measures]] for the club is a lighter menu. [[WesternAnimation/FunAndFancyFree Willie the Giant]] takes umbrage that he is only served a single olive; [[WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}} Timothy the mouse]] is fine with it, but Scrooge reminds him that he has to share "the family plate" with other mice.

* And in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' as well, where almost a third of the series dealt with their perpetual lack of food. The other 2/3s? John going crazy, and Wormholes.

** They also do also eat in a lot and Monica is frequently shown cooking for and hosting everyone else. How she pays for 6 people's worth of groceries is never explained, though it's possible Chandler and Ross (her neighbour/later boyfriend and brother respectively) might pay her back or contribute to the food bill.

* The conclusion of WesternAnimation/TheHairBearBunch episode "King Klong Vs. The Masked Marvel" had the superintendent ordering Peevly and Botch to give the bears anything they wanted as a reward for helping Peevly win $500 at a wrestling match. The bears order virtually every edible thing they can think of, and the keepers run back and forth delivering the stuff out of nowhere.

* Inverted in ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' where the crew never have money for food even though they take bounties for millions of woolong. In one episode a bounty they catch is several million woolong and presumably they spend it all on repairs ... were repairs exactly 2.999 million woolong? It's extremely improbable when dealing with millions in cash that they couldn't keep even 500 for food. This could be justified in that the series doesn't follow a regular timeframe, and it could be months later when they run out of cash.

Now, as any professional chef will tell you, it is absolutely possible to eat gourmet meals using simple and inexpensive ingredients, so it ''is'' possible to invoke this trope in real life. But for the most part, the characters who fall into this trope don't cook... rather, the most frequent thing they make for dinner is reservations, usually at a restaurant two or three steps up from the Burger King's price range. Even worse, they usually spend the whole time having plot-relevant conversations and [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodSandwich don't even eat the food in front of them!]]

* ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse'': In "House of Scrooge", one of Scrooge [=McDuck=]'s [[CuttingCorners cost-cutitng measures]] for the club is a lighter menu. [[WesternAnimation/FunAndFancyFree Willie the Giant]] takes umbrage that he is only served a single olive; [[WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}} Timothy the mouse]] is fine with it, but Scrooge reminds him that he has to share "the family plate" with other mice.