Posted on 08/31/2022 9:03:48 AM PDT by grundle
Standing in my kitchen on a recent morning, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch later that day, it occurred to me that what would appear to be a fairly mundane (albeit delicious) task was actually so much more.
Maybe that’s because, during the previous month, I spent close to $700 on restaurants alone. That’s like a million peanut butter and jellies.
It was that revelation that inspired a month-long no-restaurants-or-shopping challenge I assigned to myself in July. I could not continue to ignore my mounting bills, and I could not go on living with the constant reminder and anxiety of my $18,000 of credit card debt.
Looking at my expenses, I made the difficult-to-me decision to cut restaurants and shopping out completely for a full month. No shopping for non-necessities. No takeout. No dinners out with friends. No “Let’s grab a drink!”
Aside from the ubiquitous PB&J, I found myself trying out new recipes, like this miso-glazed salmon and a kale Caesar salad I cannot stop making. And, as an unexpected bonus, I feel... really good. It may not be sustainable to make myself every meal for the rest of forever, but having a basic idea of everything I was consuming for a month really made me feel like I was taking care of myself.
I’m not sure what comes next. But as this month comes to an end, I have spent over $2,000 less than the month prior. I paid $1,000 off my credit card balance, put money away for taxes, and felt no anxiety about what my balance was while handing my debit card over to pay for some essentials. I didn’t get sick of peanut butter and jelly, and I have yet to miss a restaurant.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
My wife was born in Czechoslovakia and lived there until 18 until she fled there in 1968 with her parents and sister to Germany, leaving EVERYTHING they’d owned.
We talked about bananas once. She told me that “I’d never seen bananas that weren’t mottled and brown.” They didn’t get them that often and when they did, they were old and almost to the point of inedible. But they all loved them. Didn’t know anything better because they thought all bananas were like that.
Communist/socialist control. This is just one thing in the myriad of deprivations experienced under it. THIS! is coming to America under Biden and the Democrats if it isn’t stopped.
When did dining out for every meal become the norm? Used to be a meal in a restaurant was a treat.
” Especially the real cheap stuff that had an oil slick on top of it when you opened it.”
That is actually the sign of a natural peanut butter. All natural nut butters separate like that.
The ones that don’t separate are due to an artificial additive that keeps the oil from separating. But all of them contain basically the same amount of oil, you just don’t see it in the ones with the additive, but it is mixed in there just the same.
If she had spent some of that restaurant money on food storage preps, she could have simply suspended all discretionary spending and been fine and saved enough to pay off the debt in a short time.
Why? ANY expense that you can cut is beneficial to you. The less you spend on non-essentials, the better off you are.
People are happiest when they are happy with what they have.
When we were first married, we lived across the street from a butcher who practically threw away chicken livers, gizzards, and hearts. Add onion, fry in bacon grease, and viola! Cheap high nutrition meals.
“He doesn’t need to live off peanut butter.”
~~~
Agree
But I would also think it is common sense not to be eating out much or spending extravagantly when you are carrying credit card debt from month to month. People are ridiculously irresponsible with their basic finances, and in this day and age I am not surprised. Our government rewards people for being failures.
I have lean cuisine for work lunch, ~300 calories each and less than $3 each. there’s some pretty decent ones as well, taste wise
he will only do that for people with EVs
Restaurants and bars in big cities are a HUGE cash drain.
I admire restauranteurs, chefs, bakers and entrepreneurs working in that space - but eating out regularly is like having a gaping wound in your savings account
Wrong. Better to just whine and cry until Joe Biden needs to buy your vote.
Hubby’s favorite was banana bread...the more rotten..the better.
“I spent close to $700 on restaurants alone”
My wife and I, and our little dog, eat 90% organic.
We spend about $700/mo, sometimes a little more.
$700 worth of restaurant food would be friggin’ TOXIC!
Maybe...but I’m not so sure it was indicative of ‘natural’ forty plus years ago. It was just much, much cheaper by the giant tub.
I disagree. I think this was an important lesson about how we can satisfy ourselves with hard work and determination. Cooking at home costs so much less than eating out, and you can usually eat more nutritionally while you’re at it.
I have some girlfriends who like to eat out together once a month, and I tell you, rarely is the food better tasting than my own cooking. When it is better, it usually costs me an arm and a leg. Last night was one of those nights. That fancy dinner cost me $40 plus the tip, and I could’ve made nearly the exact same meal for $18-20. (However, I will say it was nice to not have to cook for a change.)
The PB&J’s won’t last forever, but the lesson learned will last a lifetime.
Crickets and cockroaches on the peanut butter. Yummy!
You fry your lunch in a wok?
Regards,
He or she (can’t tell from the name) hasn’t seen the Allstate commercials where the guy says to live on ramen noodles if you don’t have much money.
In my lean starting years I was doing (without knowing) the Dave Ramsey “Beans&Rice / Rice&Beans” diet along with the PB&Js. One thing I well learned was that you do need variety lest you walk by a cinnamon bun kiosk and ... (not a pretty memory)!
That was when I added sardines (home only) and later potatoes and pasta. Good protein and produces a good filled feeling. As an amateur historian, we fail to realize how LUCKY we are for the variety of foods we have available to us. I PRAY that our overlords do not make this generation the last with that fortune!
Regardless how some fellow posters have felt about this article and how the writer fell into the debt trap, this is a nascent conservative. The writer made and kept to a self-challenge to find a way to reduce spending. At some point, I pray, the thought will come about why can’t the government do the same?
One would think so, but we’d also have to consider where she lived. If it’s somewhere like NYC and she’s a renter then her options for food storage and prep that involved anything like freezing would be limited. My son lives in NYC and for years he bounced from apartment to apartment renting that limited him to using appliances that were already there. I admit he was fleeting and didn’t want to amass anything that would include a freezer, storage systems or anything like that because of the sheer problem in getting it moved from one place to another.
It was only after he and his new soul mate decided together in the condo she and he purchased they could consider themselves
‘permanent residents’ and willing to consider those measures.
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