<$Wednesday, August 29, 2007$>
The Food Problem - Link Roundup
| I'm a bit muzzy-headed this morning. Not sure if I overdid my workout, or didn't get enough sleep, or if the Benadryl I took at bedtime didn't wear off completely, or some combination of the above, but I was pretty woozy there for a while. I'm better now, except for the brain-fog that's refusing to lift. So please forgive any incoherence or errors in this post. At any rate, as you know if you've been reading this space, I'm trying to tighten up our food spending, because we've begun to spend way too much on food for just two people, and we simply can't keep going on that way. I've been doing some online digging for solutions, and in the process I rounded up some links to some pretty good info. But before I share them, here's some background. Our Situation We rent the upstairs half of my mom's house. Our "kitchen" consists of a mini-fridge, a microwave, and the recent addition of an indoor grill. We have access to my mom's kitchen and are able to store a few things in her refrigerator, but a lot of people live in that house; the kitchen is usually pretty crowded and not at all an enjoyable place in which to cook, and real estate in the freezer is at a premium. In short: the standard advice to cook meals and freeze them for later just doesn't work for us. We don't get to do a lot of cooking, which means we rely a lot on pre-packaged meals. Which in turn means that we get really bored and downright depressed with our options and tend to relieve our boredom with fast food. Bad us. Also, buying in bulk is not an option, since we don't have any room to store anything extra. What We're Doing Right A lot of the standard food-budget advice is stuff we already do. I never go grocery shopping without a list, for one thing, and I almost never deviate from it. I usually have a snack before I go so that I'm not tempted by every little yummy-looking thing I see. I rarely splurge on lattes and mainly drink the free drip coffee at my office, and keep a bag of grounds at home for the weekends. We're not snobs, and we already buy generic or store-brands when possible. We do the bulk of our shopping at the Super Wal-Mart, which, much as I loathe going there for many and varied reasons, consistently has the best prices, even if they don't have the greatest selection. What We Could Do Better Planning. We don't do nearly enough of this. Usually, right before I go shopping my husband and I both think of the things we typically eat that we're out of, and make a list. We don't really plan out our week. I keep a stash of convenience foods at my office to eat throughout the week, and when grocery time comes I automatically restock everything. Planning our meals would probably not only force us to think about our spending, but keep us from falling into the rut that leads to boredom and the fast food fix. Communicating. We're really lousy at this part. We're both so determined not to let finances be a source of conflict in our marriage that sometimes I simply avoid the topic with my husband, which is counterproductive, I know. I need to be better at keeping him informed on what our spending limits are, and at pointing out when something on his list is simply too expensive. Keeping track. My current budgeting method is basically to start with the amount of my paycheck, subtract all of the bills that are due that half of the month, subtract a comfortable amount to go into savings, and then divvy up the rest into a blanket "Grocery Fund" and separate-but-equal personal spending allowances for my husband and myself. After that, apart from keeping track of how much money is left in the fund, I don't really track where it goes. Also, the Grocery Fund covers food, drinks, and certain OTC medications that we both take. Personal care products, health supplements and other non-food items that we don't share come out of our allowances. I think I need to start breaking down the grocery budget into categories and include room for these last items. That might mean we have to make due with smaller allowances, but if we're not having to spend them on vitamins and hair product, that shouldn't be a big deal. Now to the links. Advice Like I said, much of the advice in these articles simply doesn't apply to our situation; but that doesn't mean there's not good stuff in there. GRS has a great post on Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget. The comment section is chock-full of both good advice and links to more good resources. Yet more can be found at this Lifehacker article that backtracks the original post. Oprah's web site (yeah, I know) has a good article challenging the notion that healthy eating is expensive. This ABC News article is full of pretty standard, but still good, advice, as is this article from ClubMom. Money Savers For those who are able to cook, The Healthy Hillbilly Housewife has a lot of healthy, budget-friendly recipes. Frugal Cuisine is more focused on frugal than on healthy, but her cost-effective Chinese-influenced recipes might be just the thing we need to add some much needed variety to our diet. OrganicCoupons.org gathers up a lot of good health food coupon resources. Grocery Coupon Guide is also a good starting place for finding coupons and other money saving offers for a wide variety of things. We shop a lot (too much) at Wild Oats, so I signed up for their newsletter to receive in-store coupons and be alerted to sales. Mambo Sprouts has a good selection of printable organic grocery coupons. I mentioned this one earlier, but Coupon Mom is another good coupon resource. I like that they have a list specific to Wal-Mart. I haven't seen anything on there yet that covers the things we normally buy, but I'm still keeping my eye on it, just in case. I think I have enough info now to develop a strategy. Hopefully, through better budgeting, planning, and taking advantage of the coupons and resources listed here, beginning next payday I'll be able to reduce our grocery spending while still providing us with a sufficient variety of healthy foods. I'll let you know how it goes. If you have any tips or ideas for us that might be better suited to our situation, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. Labels: frugality, healthy living, money management, spending |
