Saturday, January 10, 2009

Accounting for Company

When I started this blog, the intention was to demonstrate that $7/day per person (the average that Americans spend on food) is plenty of money, even when buying organic/natural foods and eating a healthy, fresh foods diet (not the average American diet). I counted myself and my husband as two people, and my daughter as a half a person (not that I think any less of her), so that gave us a weekly budget of $122.50 for the family.

Now, the question arises, do we alter our budget in some way when we feed extra mouths? When we entertain, we can't be expected to stretch our daily allotment of $17.50 to feed eight or ten people dinner, can we? No, we really can't be expected to do that. But for the purposes of this blog, I consider it a challenge to myself to make up for spending beyond our budget over the long run. So, unreasonable as it is to be so strict with our spending, since part of our goal is to save money, it's important that we view these splurges as part of the whole, so they don't simply get written off, making us forget the realities of our financial situation.

We will not have to starve or compromise our health in any way to make up for our temporary excesses. But we will have to be smart, and patient.

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