Evolving Personal Finance » food
Frugality in Moderation
Most of the time I consider being frugal a virtue. Emily and I strive to live within our grad student means, so that necessitates cutting some frills from our lives. However, we need to be careful not to take this too far. There was a time in college when my friends and I moved from frugal to cheap that caused a great deal of tension within the group. In retrospect the whole incident was silly, … Read entire article »
How Do You Decide How Much to Spend on Groceries?
It seems like a simple question, right? So far, how much we budget for groceries has been determined by how much we do/can spend on groceries. Last year we tried to cut back to $300/month on groceries but realized that was too low, so we reworked the rest of our budget to allow us up to $360/month. I’ve identified four factors that influence what food we buy: health cost sustainability convenience Right now those four factors have found an equilibrium and … Read entire article »
Filed under: food
Consistent Grocery Budget Fail
Confession: We have exceeded our grocery budget every month since September. Several of our budget categories, including groceries, are supposed to be a maximum amount spent, with whatever is left over at the end of the month to be transferred into savings. Instead, for groceries we have had to take from other budget categories to cover it. How did we get into this mess and why haven’t we turned it around? Last May we lowered our … Read entire article »
What’s a CSA?
I have mentioned our CSA on here a couple times and I am a big proponent of CSAs. I absolutely love ours – the food is better-tasting than what we can get in the grocery store and it has exposed us to many new foods (Swiss chard, collard greens). Many people ask me what a CSA is so I thought I’d write a little primer. What is a CSA? A CSA (or Community Supported Agriculture) is basically … Read entire article »
Filed under: food
(Workouts + Vegetables) * Insurance = $$
In November I realized I was being rather irresponsible with our family finances because I didn’t know what the deductible and maximum out-of-pocket amounts were for our employer-sponsored health insurance. We don’t get a choice of plan and seem to change insurance companies yearly so I hadn’t checked our coverage for our current plan (Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina). I downloaded the 86-page pdf booklet for our plan and found what I was … Read entire article »
Filed under: food, found money
How Much Money Am I Eating?
Recently my husband has accused me (jokingly?) of eating the greater part of our grocery budget. I eat low-carb/low-sugar and am considering transitioning to Paleo. Right now I’m still eating conventional meat, so that’s not as expensive as it could be, but I eat a lot more meat than my husband does. His staples are cereal, rice, etc. So I decided to evaluate. While I wouldn’t call this a typical week, it’s at least a random … Read entire article »
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