Pennywise and Pound Foolish or am I the Fool?

As I may have mentioned Mike and I are following the Dave Ramsey plan to save and prosper. Anyway, I have been looking for more ways to save and stumbled on another frugal grocery shopper who followed Dave Ramsey via ‘the web’.

It turned out, I spend three times as much on groceries per week as her. Now true I have a larger family (by 2) but still--three times as much?! I read her money saving tips and one thing stood out. Her fresh produce consisted of one item--3 yellow onions. My produce on the other consistently represents 60-70% of my entire bill. She went on to discuss buying discounted milk in bulk (she freezes it) and then any mark-down meat which seemed to almost always be ground beef--I am not sure what mark-down or discounted means but I am thinking it means about to go bad. She also mentioned she went to a health food store and bought a few items like organic whole flour (no meat, eggs, dairy or produce) but only bought items that were marked down--actually she said she only bought items that were marked down.

I told Mike about her grocery bill and rather than saying ‘we should try that’, he actually said ‘I bet she goes to bed every night feeling like crap."

Now we are not the world’s greatest eaters but I try very hard to get the best organic produce, dairy and meat (sometimes the meat is only hormone free but it is at least hormone and preservative free---the animal and animal by-products are actually my biggest ‘must’ for being organic (and humanely treated--but that’s another issue)). I honestly feel this has helped our family stay healthy. We don’t have any sort of indigestion issues--no meds or over the counter medicine are in our cabinets (except baby Motrin for when our kids might get sick with very high fevers--and that Motrin always expires half-full).

But is this worth spending three times what this frugal shopper is?

I would love to save more money but I certainly don’t want to risk my health doing it.

But am I?

Is it really better to keep your kitchen free of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, artifical food colorings and flavors, growth hormones and animal antibiotics with a smaller bank account or is it better to eat whatever the FDA says is acceptable and have extra money in the bank?

I don’t know. I can tell you I feel well. Head aches, stomach aches, groggy feelings are pretty rare in our home---they mostly show up during a vacation or after a serious ‘out food binge’. But I can also tell you I’d like to save more money. I have talked with other shoppers who shop like me and my budget is much less. This gives me comfort....but spending three times more than this other person----geesh, I dunno know.

Blogger world--what’s your take? Is the healthy diet worth it? Will spending all this money be an asset for my body 20 years from now or will it make no difference?

Getting healthier

Overall, we're a pretty healthy family. We get our groceries at Whole Foods (so no partially hydrogenated oil or high fructose corn syrup), we avoid processed and fast food and try to eat a good variety of veggies. But we have our weaknesses--I love baking something sweet with the kids about once a week, I absolutely prefer white pasta over whole wheat and everything always seems better with bacon. So in this New Year, I'm going to try to make a few changes to improve our diets.
First I am going to be more dilegent in all of eating 'the rainbow' of veggies at least every three days (basically this is just what it sounds--I want to serve everything from red tomatoes to purple eggplant since a variety of colors guarantees a variet of nurtients and antioxidents). Note I said 'serve'. The baby will easily eat all the veggies--he is in the eating 'honeymoon' stage and loves everything from red bell peppers to spinach but my 3 yr. old is in the 'yucky' stage and getting him to eat anything but bread has been an issue. My older girls both went through this stage and thankfully the 9 yr old has returned back to veggies world and is gladly gobbling up her sauted kale; the 6 yr. old is getting better but it takes a lot of prodding. I am not pushing my 3 yr old to eat the veggies too much in hopes, he will come back to enjoying his veggies soon--it is just very difficult to watch him turn down everything but a grilled cheese.
Second, I want to up our fish intake. Currently we have wild salmon approc. once a week. I am planning on adding more wild fish to the diet and I hope we will 'go fishing' at least twice a week.
Third, I want to once again try to replace the white pasta with whole wheat even if it is only 1/2 and 1/2. I personally love pasta (my true weakness) so this is going to be the toughest. Pasta makes almost all veggies awesome!
Finally, I want to cut down on coffee and Starbucks. I usually get an organic Chai twice a week. I'd like to cut down to once a week. I love brrewing coffee at home--I'll try to limit it to homeschool days and maybe Sunday since I am not crazy about church coffee.
And that' about it. I have a baby sleeping on me, my laptop is out of juice. It's time to sleep and get reeved up for tomorrow!