Long ago, in the 70s , I was a single parent. We went through double digit inflation in the 70’s and I had a job that didn’t get a raise in three years. Our rent went from 145.00 to 285.00. Child support was sparotic at best and we didn’t qualify for welfare, or so they said. Needless to say, it was sink or swim. I already learned a lot from my mother about stretching your food dollar, but I set out to learn more. I watched everything I could find on our 10 inch black and white tv with rabbit ears, and got every book I could find in the library. Food was the most expensive part of our descressionary income. I cut the dry cycle on the dishwasher and turned off the heat on some of the rooms. December of 1972 we ate on 25.00 for the month.
Fast forward to the 80’s and things were better . It was a habit by then and we still economized on food. I was published in the Woman’s Day and Taste of Home.
On to the 90’s and beyond and my daughter had graduated from college and had been teaching children from low income families for years. She was getting feedback from mothers that were lamenting that they were running out of snap before they ran out of month. She , trying to help, told them my mother knows how to stretch a food dollar. My adult children convinced their not so tech savvy mother to start a blog.
And the rest is history.
I have written a blog almost every day for almost six years. It is my hope that I can reach people that need to stretch their food dollars. No one should go without proper food. I have heard horror stories of kids eating top ramen and potato chips for breakfast , lunch and dinner, and Sunday dinner being corn on the cob and watermelon.
A few changes a little at a time can change your habits to make it easy to feed your family on four dollars a day and keep a four to six week supply of basic food. The recent government shutdown is a good example of why this is necessary. Anything can happen from weather to shutdowns to other natural or unnatural disasters. Having a small stock saves money and gives you piece of mind.
We were already pretty frugal, but I set out to lower our food costs as low as I could without sacrificing good food. It wasn’t until I set out to write a class that it came to me that we were in fact eating on less than four dollars a day and grew a small stock. In fact, last year our grocery expenses were almost 5.00 a week less than four dollars a day. The usda has charts on line that tell you what your cost of food at home should be per your family ages and sizes. This is not adjusted for your States COL index
It happened one little step at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment