Feeling deprived isn’t part of our budget plan

I’m surprised by my naiveté. When I declared that we were taking a serious look at our food budget and attempting to cut it in half, I thought the decision was largely a dollars-and-cents issue. We reasoned that we’re spending more than we wanted, so we just needed to cut back.
The situation is far more complicated than I first thought. In the last few days before I went shopping again, breakfast was utter chaos. Our three oldest children were so frustrated that we had run out of our customary breakfast fare that they were all crying. Honestly, I felt out of sorts too, grumbling to myself when I was out of coffee and half and half, and feeling crabby when I had to field questions about what we were having for dinner.
I didn’t realize how much we depend on the familiarity and convenience of certain foods. When we ran out of yogurt and didn’t have the kind of cheese we like, for example, we felt deprived. Those feelings of deprivation mean that the pendulum of our food budget adjustments has swung too far the other way.
While we don’t want to spend thoughtlessly on food, we don’t want to be slaves to our budget, either. We want to be as intentional with our food dollars as we are with other parts of our budget. We still want to shop and eat in ways that leave us feeling happy and nourished.
As my husband and I discussed our budget for the coming month, we talked about the parts of our plan we need to revise. But our cost-cutting food plan also has benefits that we like. First, we both agreed that we were glad we raised our budget consciousness and learned that it’s possible to scale back what we spend. Now, we can adjust our food budget so we have more freedom to buy what we enjoy, but not so much flexibility that we return to our old ways. For now, we’re increasing our bi-weekly budget from $150 to $200.
Second, we want to continue using the cash-only approach to eating out. Having a specific parameter in place makes meals out an event we can look forward to, not just a budget-gobbling habit. Though we blew our eating out budget the first week, we stuck to our plan and spent only what we had set aside. When we went out to eat at the start of another two weeks, the opportunity excited us.
Third, we both appreciated how some upfront meal preparation paid off over the following two weeks. I bought hamburger in bulk (at a phenomenal price) and made spaghetti sauce, meatballs, sloppy joes, and taco meat all at the same time. I froze the meals in family-size portions, so we could pull out what we needed the night before and spend just a few minutes boiling noodles, grating cheese, or making a quick side dish to get dinner on the table.
Finally, we want to revisit our list of goals – such as buying a woodstove – that prompted us to trim our food budget, and we’ll create a more specific plan to accomplish them. If we’re going to continue making changes in the way we spend our food dollars, we need to see tangible benefits. Right now, we’ll take the money we’re saving and transfer it into an account we’ve earmarked for our goals.
Even with a few bumps along the way, budgeting can work. We’ll keep adjusting our budget until we find a balance that lets us save money while shopping wisely and eating well.

Use frugality to fund your goals

For all my frugality, I still have an Achilles’ heel, a small but significant point of budget vulnerability. Ironically, thrift stores, those bastions of economy, sometimes threaten to sabotage my well-laid plans.
The notion of a beautiful lamp, just waiting to be unearthed, a vintage cashmere cardigan lurking in between polyester blouses, the possibility of finding retro tumblers for our 1978 pop-up camper literally quickens my pulse when I walk in my favorite shops. But when my husband recently suggested I create a thrift store fund, I realized it’s time to rethink those frequent forays.
His suggestion reminds me that frugality isn’t an end, but a means. In other words, it doesn’t matter how much money I save on a pair of thrifted designer shoes, if buying them is keeping me from reaching my goals. I can string together as many frugal practices as I can conjure up, but this misses the point of living with thrift.
Frugality for frugality’s sake can make you feel like Sisyphus, the king in Greek mythology who was forced to spend eternity pushing a giant boulder to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down again. If sticking to a budget (or the very idea of starting one) feels like drudgery, or even a punishment, it’s time to see your budget through new eyes.
Using frugal practices as a way to get what you want is empowering, even exhilarating. It’s packing your lunch, not as a way of denying yourself the pleasure of a meal out with friends or coworkers, but as a means to use the money you would have otherwise spent to take your dream cruise to Alaska. It’s kicking the habit of buying new books in favor of borrowing titles from the library so you can buy a new sewing machine or jigsaw.
Without something to motivate you, your budget can become a giant stone in your life. One way to nudge that stone from its place is to write down five things that you love. Don’t censor yourself while you’re making your list—just write.
Maybe travel or music makes you feel fully alive. Perhaps it’s the notion of living by the water someday or opening a business that excites you. Photography, crafting something with your hands, horses, writing your memoir, finally getting all of your family together, being debt free—whatever stirs within you—write it on your list.
Next, choose something from your list and begin thinking about ways you could indulge this passion. If it’s photography, could you use your favorite photograph to make a canvas print for your dining room? Or what about getting a new camera or taking a photography class to sharpen your skills?
When you settle on a way to tap into your passion, estimate how much it will cost. Say you want to make a 20-by-20 inch print of the starfish you snapped at the beach, which you find will cost around $100. Now ask yourself how you can adjust your budget to save the money you’ll need.
You can use coupons when you shop for groceries and stash the money you save. You can calculate what you spend on eating out each month, cut that amount in half, and squirrel away the savings. Funnel all your change into a jar, or be more adventurous, and color your own hair instead of going to the salon.
Whatever cost-saving measure you take, be diligent to use the money to help you reach your goals. The lesson for me in all of this is to be frugal, but always with purpose.

Determination, imagination essential for sticking to a budget

My plan to dramatically scale back my family’s food budget is in full swing. Last week, I withdrew $200 in cash from our bank account--$50 for eating out that I tucked into an envelope for later, and $150 to buy groceries for the next two weeks.
With cash in my wallet, I headed into the grocery store with four children, a calculator, and – unknown to me – a smuggled toy hammer. The scene played out like this: while I tried to concentrate on shopping, my 4-year-old used said toy hammer to pound on cereal boxes and ripe cantaloupe. Meanwhile, my 2-year-old attempted to hoist a $6 watermelon and topple pyramids of apples.
After I confiscated the hammer and contained the hoister of watermelons, I pulled out my tiny pocket calculator, so worn that half of the numbers and symbols were missing. The baby on my hip batted the calculator from my hand several times. I had to let my 5-year-old steer the cart so I could keep a running total of everything I was buying.
At the end of a stressful hour in the store, I rolled up to the register with $147.30 worth of groceries in my cart. Overwhelmed with relief to have stayed within my budget and to be leaving, I reached for my debit card and paid for my groceries. I was loading my car when I realized I’d forgotten to use the cash I pulled from my account. Nobody said this budget-conscious shopping was going to be easy or go smoothly on the first try.
When I got home, I finalized my menu and thought about lessons I’d learned already. First, I realized that if we are to stick to a new grocery plan, I’m going to have to retrain my brain and concentrate on what I’m doing. This means leaving the kids at home and making a more comprehensive list.
I’ve always paid attention to sales and compared price per ounce, but I now need to ratchet up my efforts. I weighed grapes and apples (which I’ve admittedly never done before) and thought about every item I picked up. I didn’t just toss our old standbys into the cart, but thought about more cost-effective ways to eat the foods we enjoy. Instead of pudding cups, for example, I bought prepackaged cook-and-serve pudding at a fraction of the cost. I plan to refine this even further and make homemade cooked pudding with the recipe my mother used every week when I was a child.
Second, I acknowledge I’ll face a few budget hiccups. I had to plan a meal for a group of 11 women, and for a family camping trip. These situations were both out of the ordinary, but still required me to stay within the limit I had set. A budget won’t help me if I break it every time something unusual comes up.
So, I got creative with my menus. For the camping trip, several families worked cooperatively to make meals. I agreed to make breakfast, which allowed me to use items I already had in my pantry and freezer to make two pans of pull-apart caramel rolls. They were a big hit with the crowd and kept my budget intact.
For dinner with my friends, I prepared an elegant meal of homemade miniature quiches, a garden salad with greens from my own patch, rhubarb soda, and apple crisp . I was able to pull it off by imaginatively using resources I had available to me – and that will be the key to living well on a budget.

Lower food bills can move us closer to debt-free lifestyle

I wish I could say that after all these years of writing about money, I’ve reached some sort of financial nirvana, a place where our budget effortlessly hums along. In truth, we hit budget bumps and have starts and stops every month like everyone else. Nevertheless, even if it were possible to find perfection, that isn’t the point of a budget.

A budget isn’t a static template that we lay over our lives; it’s a spending guide that flexes with our family. For us, one of the most exciting things about a budget is that it constantly offers us opportunities to see our finances with fresh eyes. When we see where we’re spending, we can shift our priorities.

It turns out that we’re getting ready for a major shift in our family budget. When we recently calculated our total monthly food expenses, we faced a sobering truth. In June, we spent over a $1,000 on food for our family of six, and in the five months prior to that, we averaged over $800 on groceries and eating out. We know we can do better. We want to do better.

We’ve challenged ourselves to cut our food budget in half, not as a way to be stingy, but because we want to stretch our money. We’re looking for creative ways to get the things we want and need with the money we have. Ultimately, our goal is to be entirely debt free, so we plan to take half of what we save on food costs and apply it to the principle balance on our mortgage. We’ll devote the other half to projects for our family. We want some fun things, including a family trip and a playhouse for our children. Some practical items, such as a new vacuum and a woodstove, also are on our list.

Cutting our food budget in half may sound like a daunting task. How will this even be possible in a family of growing children who are voracious eaters? We’ll start with what we spend on eating out, which averages over $200 a month. By packing snacks and lunches instead of heading for the nearest fast food restaurant, we’ll whittle down what we spend on eating out to $100, which we plan to take out in cash and keep in an envelope. When the cash is gone, there’s no more eating out that month.

We’ll use the same all-cash approach with grocery shopping, because I know how easy it is to spend more than I’ve planned. Case in point, when I stopped at the grocery store with four items on my list for a camping trip, I walked out with 10 and spent three times as much as I had planned. With cash, that won’t happen.

We’ll also have to carve out more time for food preparation and change the way we do some of our shopping. This means rethinking items we mindlessly put in our cart, including pudding cups and granola bars. Juice won’t be a morning mainstay, but will become an occasional treat. Even pantry staples like egg noodles (Here is the Cowgirl's Country Life blog where she has a great recipe for Chicken and (Egg) Noodles) that seem inexpensive will be foods I buy the ingredients for and prepare at home - for a fraction of the grocery store price. We’ll keep trying different strategies until we find budget-stretching ideas that truly work for us.

I’ll be sharing my journey to reduce my food bill with you in future posts. And I encourage you to share your best cost-cutting ideas with me. E-mail me at cdenman@acce-online.com or leave comments below. Adventures in frugal living are more fun when we experience them together.

Children never too young to learn value of frugality

Sometimes, living a frugal lifestyle means my husband and I go against the grain of modern society and its demands to have the shiniest, biggest and best of everything. We put value on making the most of our money and living within our means. We like simple pleasures that are richly rewarding but don’t break our budget. We live frugally, not as an end unto itself, but because our frugality allows us to have a life we desire. Frugality isn’t about deprivation (or about washing out plastic sandwich bags or reusing sheets of tinfoil). It’s about finding new, less expensive ways to get the things we need and afford more of the things we enjoy. It is a creative challenge.

We work hard to “walk the talk” of frugality with our children. We are teaching them to spend money wisely and carefully consider what they want. As our children learn thriftiness, they share the satisfaction and rewards of this kind of lifestyle. We have to consistently teach them how to live this way, so we’re dedicated to intentionally using our resources well.

For example, we have a 5-year-old daughter who desperately wants a scooter. I’ve seen them in retail stores for $30 to $50, but I’ve also seen them at rummage sales on occasion for half as much. We’ve told her that we will spend up to $20 on a scooter, so this means that she can contribute some of her own money, wait for a retail sale, or hold off buying a scooter until we stumble upon a secondhand one. Since we’ve set a budget, we don’t have to say “no” to the scooter when she asks. Instead, we can remind her to keep an eye out for what she wants at a price we can afford.

These types of conversations, when we discuss what we can and cannot afford, are common in our home. To us, it’s important to demonstrate to our children that we have a limited amount of money and that we need to make wise choices about how we spend it.

It’s also important to us that our children see how planning ahead can be a way to enjoy life and still keep a budget intact. Throughout the year, we pick up inexpensive gifts that we tuck away in our birthday box. Right now, we have cupcake kits, rolls of stickers, a floor puzzle, books, and sundry other items in our box. When one of our children receives an invitation to a birthday party, we can avoid an extra trip to the store and a last-minute scramble to buy a gift. We can choose a present from the box instead. And, by stocking up on gift wrap when it’s on sale, we also have paper and ribbons ready. Planning and buying ahead pays off for us with stress-free solutions when birthday parties roll around.

We’ve also discovered that planning fun activities close to home stretches our money and gives us many opportunities to spend family time together. In fact, we’ve found that the more often we’re away from home, the more we tend to spend. So we try to plan activities nearby that cost little or no money and that draw upon a child’s natural affinity for simple pleasures. We take picnics, blow bubbles, wade in the creek, go for walks, fly kites, and run through the sprinkler.

As they grow, we know our children’s likes and interests will change. We know they may want and need things more costly than a $20 scooter – but they don’t ever have to outgrow loving affordable, uncomplicated things.