I’m not honestly sure how people are feeding their families in this economy. Hopefully they have fantastic paying jobs and full bellies.
I am having my older kids read the Dave Ramsey book, “Total Money Makeover,” and they are beginning to make their own financial goals. My daughter hilariously budgeted $100 to feed herelf for a month. This is when I realized that we do a terrible job of setting an example.
Furthermore, I have no idea how much people spend on food. But even the cheapest eggs at the grocery store are $4 a dozen. A quick calculation of our egg consumption shows that $100 wouldn’t cover the cost of eggs, coffee and necessities consumed in a month.
For the first time in years, I stopped to look at the price of pasta sauce. A single jar was several dollars with a premium jar costing more than double. Doing the math, assuming our homemade sauce made with premium San Marzano, Costuloto Genovese and Amish paste tomatoes would fetch a comparable price, we figured we had over $2,000 worth of pasta sauce. Likewise, bone broth cooked down from the bones of our own animals would be worth several dollars per quart. But the flavor of homemade bone broth is absolutely stunning, making the best soups.
Reaching into our freezers, we find a supply of meat that we raised, some that we butchered and all for less than what is being sold. And it tastes much better, too.
Going through the grocery store trying to teach our oldest children who are knocking on the door of adulthood how to budget money for shopping and meal planning, we realized we aren’t sure how much normal people spend on food.
When I walk through the store with my wife, we usually pass most of the things because they’re food products or byproducts of food. We spend $80 to 100 every week or two buying some staples like, flour, sugar, vegetables, potatoes and dairy products. We get raw milk from a local herd share and the rest is from our homestead.
We try to save money and live frugally, opting to do things ourselves instead of paying a professional, but the minivan needed the transmission serviced, and the cold weather made it more noticeable.
I knew the guy who worked on it the last few times probably did something wrong because I was the one who did it. The fluid must reach a certain temperature in order to measure the fluid level. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a fancy tool, so I did the best that I could. Deciding to go to a professional, I called around. It would be several hundred dollars and come with a two-month wait. After some time searching the internet, I was able to find a certified procedure to get the accurate temperature and reading, and just like that, we saved hundreds of dollars.
The homestead life is finally starting to make sense: carefully planning the food for next year, grocery shopping for canned goods in our basement storeroom and mending and repairing what we can.
Recently, I began buying fabric to sew some shirts to replace worn and tattered ones from my threadbare wardrobe. Unfortunately, some of the new ones don’t look and feel like they’ll last more than a couple of months.
