So just what did I buy with my extra grocery money?

I know, we're all a bit curious how each other spends their money. So here's how I spent my "extra" money.

If you'll remember from last Saturday's post, I said that it looked like I'd have about $10 to $15 left in our grocery budget, at the end of each month for a few months.

All of your input really helped me to come to some conclusions.

• on a small grocery budget, nutrition counts
• I can make a lot of treat foods, like pop-tarts, but I can't make fresh produce or meat
• in winter there are always some holes in our diet, mainly fresh salads

So, while running some errands yesterday, I stopped in Trader Joe's and the Cash and Carry restaurant supply (down the road from each other). I had other items to pick-up, so used this time to check prices and make selections.

This is what I chose:

• 2.5 lbs of bagged fresh spinach leaves. The best-by date is Feb 20. I'll use this in both salads, as well as lightly sauteed with garlic in olive oil, for the next week, and any remaining spinach can then be lightly steamed and frozen. Spinach is high in folate, Vits. K, C and A, some Omega-3s, Vits. B1, B2, B6, and several minerals, including iron. Spinach also is high in oxalic acid and phytic acid, both inhibitors of iron absorption. To get maximum iron from spinach, it's best if bought fresh, then lightly steamed, and served with a source of Vit. C. ---- My garden spinach won't be big enough to harvest until sometime in late May, so this is something of a treat for us.
• 2.5 lbs of packaged whole mushrooms.  Mushrooms contain protein, fiber, the B vitamins, and many minerals, including selenium and copper. Mushrooms may also contain Vit. B12 (a vitamin otherwise exclusive to animal sources). The amount of B12 varies substantially. It's carried through a beneficial bacteria which piggybacks on the mushrooms.  ----  Mushrooms, when cooked, have a meaty texture which our family really enjoys, a nice change from so many of our vegetarian dishes. Fresh mushrooms can be sauteed in butter, then frozen. So if we tire of them, none will be wasted. I have a small amount of ground beef in the freezer. I'll add some chopped mushrooms to the ground beef, in a marinara sauce to serve over pasta tomorrow night.
• 13 bananas. Trader Joe's prices their bananas per piece -- 19 cents each. If I carefully select only the largest bananas, I can buy them for 39 cents per pound or less.   ----  This is our fresh fruit for the next week. They'll be good in fruit salads mixed with canned pineapple, or in smoothies, or just as is for fresh fruit.
• 72 count package of corn tortillas.  ($2.18, for 72. This works out to 36 cents a dozen. I see 12-ct. packages of corn tortillas at the regular grocery store for about $1.)   While I make our flour tortillas, corn tortillas are a bit trickier. The best I've been able to do with making my own corn tortillas is to make them half wheat flour, half corn flour. Corn tortillas can be frozen. When I buy a large package, I freeze some of them in ziplocs of 6 corn tortillas each.  ---- In choosing the corn tortillas, I was looking for something of a treat for our family. Corn tortillas are a change from most of our bread products. They can be toasted in the toaster oven, with cheese or butter/cinnamon & sugar on top. Or, they can be cut into triangles for making homemade tortilla chips.

For all of this, I spent $14.51. That was our "extra" spending for this month. I wonder what I'll choose next month?

The thing that I am content to live without -- for now: a personal cell phone

When your income is modest, but your goals are large, you find yourself analyzing every expenditure. This is a good thing. Being purposeful with spending that hard-earned income insures that your money is being used according to your values and goals. Intentional spending is empowering. By choosing where our money has gone, our own family has been able to achieve quite a lot on a middle class income.

There are a few things that our family has decided we can be content to live without. Over the next few weeks, I'll give you a glimpse into a few of them.



By looking around the train station, airport, bus stop, grocery store, or mall, you'd think it was a complete impossibility (in our modern life), to live without a cell phone.

I've never had a cell phone. And I'm really okay with that. You'd think I'd feel a few pangs of cell phone-envy whenever I glimpsed a happy texting, chatting, surfing person on their phones. I've never sent or received a text. I often joke with my kids to just send me a text to our landline, when they get to their destination.

All three of my kids have pre-paid phones. And as a worrying mom, I wouldn't have it any other way. But neither my husband nor I have personal phones. We feel okay, not being "connected" 24/7.


I've weighed the pros and cons of having my own phone, and here's what I always come back to:

PROS: if I had my own cell phone

• I could be reached in case of an emergency anytime, anywhere.

• I would have a phone for personal travel, both locally and for trips.

CONS: if I had my own cell phone

• I'm a single-track person. I don't multi-task all that well. When I'm shopping, driving, meeting up with a friend, cooking, or cleaning, I do best if I stick to my task at hand. I really don't want to drop what I'm doing to take a non-emergency call. And I don't do well talking on the phone and continuing with my work. Frankly, I am a bit annoyed when someone else tries to multi-task while talking to me on their cell phone. I have a couple of people who regularly call me while they're driving and running errands. I feel that I don't really have their complete attention for that phone call.

• When I am out taking care of my business, I prefer to do my work in quiet. Now that my kids are grown, grocery shopping is something of a joy, to be out and quietly making my selections.

• If I had a cell phone, my kids might rely on me to solve everyday problems, more often. Although I am constantly involved in my kids' lives, I think having me not being totally accessible at all hours of the day, has encouraged them to find solutions to their own situations. This has been a very good thing. Not that I want my kids to struggle or suffer, but this paid off big for two of them, one day, when they got lost in downtown Seattle. They were on foot and went the wrong direction. I wasn't available to help them. So they found their way on their own.

• The expense. A basic phone with pre-paid plan would be a minimum of $10 per month. This amounts to $120 per year. That money can be used elsewhere, for the time being.

Beyond these pros and cons, this is my biggest point. I am home almost all day, every day. We have voicemail, for those instances when I am not at home. Anyone can call me, at any time of the day, and leave a message. I simply don't NEED a cell phone for the majority of my hours. 

I don't travel to desolate places, or in the wee hours of the night. When I am out taking care of business, I am within a short walk of a nearby phone, and I am visible to passers-by, should I have car trouble or get lost.

Not having a personal cell phone actually keeps us current with car maintenance, which in the end keeps our cars serving us longer. And through the years, I have developed a good sense of direction, as I've had to rely on my own intelligence to find my way.

I don't have a career that keeps me out of reach of a traditional phone, or in need of making business contacts, all day long.

A cell phone for me, would duplicate the services of our land-line, which despite a growing trend of ditching the land-line, we still find it to be more useful than each having our own cell phones (try plugging your computer into the cheapest pre-paid Tracfone, for dial-up).


I do have to admit, there is the occasional time, when I am running errands or returning from my once-per-week job, around the same time that I know my daughters will need a pick-up from the park and ride. I don't know the exact time they will reach the park and ride, so our arrangement is for them call me at the 10 minute point before the destination. Then I can run over to get them. Well, if I am away from the house, I need to go back home to touch base with them, so I know when to pick them up. The worst case, so far, has meant that they needed to wait for 20 minutes, until I could get them. I don't view that as a horrible crime as a parent. Waiting builds patience and appreciation for others' time and schedules.

For the problem of wanting a cell phone while traveling -- my kids have been generous in lending one to their father or me, when one of us is traveling. I email friends and family in advance, regarding the phone number of one of my kids' phones, in case of an emergency.


Will I ever buy a phone for myself? Well, yes, I'm sure that time will come someday, as family finances become looser, or if I land a job that requires a personal phone. But for now, I'm content to live without one.