It makes me feel powerless when I see families trapped in poverty by poor choices.  I have a good friend living in poverty with no vehicle, minimal furniture, and no bank account.  He has a steady job, but is living a life by the feel good moment.  He spends his cash on cigarettes, fast food, and convenience store treats and then has nothing when a real need comes along.  I want to tell him, “Set aside your cash for necessities in labeled envelopes, then if money is left over, you can buy a treat.”  But he doesn’t see a need for change. 

I know another family, living a cleaner life.  They don’t buy cigarettes or alcohol, but spend little bits here and there, because they “needed a treat.”  Or “it takes too long to get a book from the library.”  Or “it was a decent price for this time of year.” At the end of the month they aren’t sure how to pay their looming bills.  All their extra indulgences adds up to hundreds a month–thousands a year, yet they don’t quite see where the money has gone. 

If you have to justifiy the purchase, then there’s a good chance you shouldn’t buy it.

Don’t think that I walk around juding everyone’s choices in their shopping carts!  I want you to have lots of good things. And I want you to have them when having them brings only good things to you.

When you are building a budget, plan for necessities first.  This means basic food, necessary clothing, shelter, utilities, basic phone, and gasoline.  If there’s money left over you can apply it to things that make your quality of life better.

Within the basic categories, think again about necessities first.  This applies especially to the food and clothing areas.  Next month, we’ll talk about clothing, so for now let’s focus on groceries.  Spend your money on nutritionally dense, life giving foods first.  This would exclude soda, gum, candy, pop tarts (sorry dear), crackers, cookies, chips, and dips.  I’m not saying that you can’t ever have these items, I just saying, wait.  After you have purchased what is necessary to live a healthy life, and you have money left over, buy a treat if that’s what you want to do.

Sometimes healthy foods are these treats that I’m talking about.  Strawberries are out of season right now.  They range in price from $5 to $2.50 a lb (on sale)  in my area.  They just don’t make the list for my basic foods at this price.  If I wait until April, I can buy berries for $1 a lb.  It would be silly to spend my limited money on expensive berries now and then not be able to afford enough basic food to make it within the budget to the end of the month.  But after i have purchased all our necessary foods and I have enough left over for fresh berries, then why not?

Making this shift requires us to stop acting like a “princess” and start acting like a daughter of the King of Kings. 

And sometimes this means bringing our family along for the journey.  Tune in tomorrow for ideas to switching the family to a healthy frugal lifestyle.