"brick by brick she's building a madhouse"

oh, coupons indeed. coupons can be great until you find yourself saving bundles on things you'll never use and didn't need in the first place. I do use coupons but I have a rule to only ever clip them for something I would normally pay full price for. Everything suggested are things we, being I, already do. I stock, I do tons of home made and we don't usually throw anything away (except for today because I made some refried beans a while back and I burned them something awful and I was forcing myself to eat them even though beans only cost 52 cents a bag but holyshit are they gross and I needn't suffer for 52 cents a bag so in the trash they went).

I'm not really worried about the 50 dollars a week. I know I can do it because I have done it many many weeks in a row. I'm simply nervous because I've never been so broke that I couldn't have some leeway with food. We're not so poor that I can't stock up on things or buy organic milk and yogurt, we're just practicing economy. I made a list of the costs of our meals and there are quite a few that come in under the dollar twenty I got from my equation freeing up some money for fancy expensive meals, maybe even two dollars.

I'm trying to school Matt about the food budget because it's never been his money before and he seems to think I can do everything I've been doing and spend less. We spend almost ten dollars a week on ice cream and butter and juice, all things Matt's need that Amy's don't and I could spend less on generic and margarine but when I suggest it he says, no. So, there's a lot of schooling to do. Not to say that we don't do generic, it's not about the generic because we do buy a lot of generic and he was raised on generic and powdered milk and margarine. He's not being a snob, he has crohn's and some foods make him feel better than others and it's certainly cheaper to be healthy and eat healthier food than to pay for doctors. I just have to lay things out carefully. If we want two gallons of ice cream and real butter we will have more meals with ground beef instead of steak and more chicken thighs instead of breast.

It means nothing to me because I don't eat any of that food, except for the butter. Most of my meals are already under the $1.20 per person per meal, because they're vegetarian. Little does Matt know he will be eating more vegetarian dinners for the sake of his ice cream. Life is full of sacrifices. I'm actually rather glad I wrote about this. I was feeling really nervous about the money, oh my god that's not enough!!! but when I looked up the costs of most of our foods and did the math it's really no problem at all. I'm so glad I did the research, I feel so much more calm.