We're in the same boat as warilever with plans to become more YAWN-like. Right now we're living as frugally and greenly as we like because we want to and it's comfortable for us. Once the kids are school-ready, I'd like to return to work (for fun- get that!) and also invest more (in the house and in our future, financially).
YAWN doesn't bother me so much. It's amusing, right?
I don't necessarily see a problem with living a life considered "boring" - as long as I don't find it boring. If I'm happy with living a life in a pretty little townhouse in a nice little community driving a comfortable sedan and taking a small, but enjoyable vacation every year, what's wrong with that?
Besides, I don't think I would want the type of life that the gossip rags would want to follow.
You'd be surprised. There's all kinds of government information of just the sort you're looking for. For example, this cooking page has information on recepies for adding more vegetables to your diet, using spices and herbs, preparing and cooking game and fish.... Really, there's lots out there.
The thing is, the little book you're talking about is really hard to write, simply because you don't know where people are starting from. That information on game and fish might be very useful to rural poor, but not so much to urban poor. Somebody living in a transient hotel might need a book specifically written for people who had a microwave, but no stove or oven.
Even people who are drastically cut off from their own cultural background come with something, and your little book gets so much shorter if you can build on that. But, especially in the United States, everyone's cultural traditions are different. That rice cooker wouldn't be worth nearly as much to someone whose default starch course is potatoes (or bread or pasta or corn tortillas ...).
We are young, normal, and frugal, but not wealthy. We have made life choices -- parenthood, having me stay-at-home, choosing a job where my husband could do "good" -- that pretty much preclude wealth.
I think that there is a serious anti-materialist movement, and we are not all wealthy.
Runescape is a constantly evolving game, in a market situation you must first find out what the customer wants before you can make any dramatic changes. An example of this is when Jagex made the descision to remove PvP from the wilderness and add a trade limit, this caused many players to quit thus meaning a drop in profit, however it also saved Jagex a huge sum of money because of the legal issues before due to gold farmers ect.
-You must evaluate the situation before you go ahead with large scemes, sometimes the risk is worth taking but you have to be sure that you have enough 'true' customers to take that risk and be prepared for the consiquences incase it fails.
~Btw, I do indead play Runescape but I do not live in a small house and I am very far from poor.
I have two large houses (5 Bedrooms) in both Cambridge England and Bangkok Thailand.
Lots of movie theatres offer free G and PG rated films in the summer. Movies are a big bonding experience for our family and are also air conditioned! Eat before the movie to avoid buying snacks.
I am surprised that the USDA and HHS have not gotten together on some sort of healthy cheap eating program or small cook book or something.
There are so few people that have any understanding of what to do with a lentil or a bag of rice. I wish the food stamp program came with a recipe book, rice cooker and crock pot. It might be enough to help some people who are in the working poor to tackle that curve.
Another way to help keep food costs down is to grow your own. While gardening does take some effort and has some startup costs, it can be highly cost-effective (also keeping in mind savings in storage and travel costs) in addition to personally rewarding. Also, having fruits or vegetables ready to eat helps keep them in the front of your mind when you're deciding what to have for lunch.
If there are such people, I would hope they weren't the ones that came up with that name, since apparently by definition these people wouldn't be all that interested in drawing attention to themselves. I would decry any potential "yawns" from going out and calling themselves as such also, it would not only sound awfully pretentious, but also... no, it would really just sound pretentious.
I'm not really advocating a vegetarian diet, just one that's cheap and healthy.
There are hardly any known essential nutrients that you can't get from vegetarian sources. Really, B-12 is about it. That doesn't mean that there aren't some unknown ones--but if there are, they're either not very important, or else they sneak into people's diets some other way, because there are too many people eating too many different versions of vegetarian diets, and so many of them are prefectly healthy
Having said that, though, meat, fish, eggs, milk, etc. are all very nutrient dense. If you can afford them and like them, by all means include them in your diet. Personally, I like them, and I do. The typical American diet, though, has foods like that in huge quantities--way more than is healthy. If you're very, very poor, then it might make sense to eat all you can afford. Otherwise, eat less than you can afford. You'll save money and be healthier.
though I could still use the smaller space to back up my all-important thesis stuff plus a few personal files. I get nervous every time the thunderstorms roll into Missouri. Still have any accounts left?
What about asking the sewing machine companies to come up with a pattern for a reusable shopping bag? Then they could have a contest for the best made or best looking bag. Would you want it to have a pocket to hold your shopping list and a pen? Or a bigger pocket to hold an ice pack for frozen foods? A separate cloth bag to hold loose vegetables or fruit? Can you suggest any other features for the shopping bag?
When I first relocated to America after marrying my native born American husband, I was invited to his friends home a fair bit. Most of his friends kitchen looked like those from the magazines but the irony fact is that the women seldom cook in the kitchen and most of them eat out !
My kitchen is very small and I only have a rice cooker, 2 pots and 2 simple flying pans but I cook 3 meals a day and 7 days a week.
Whenever in the check out counter, I see the amount of processed food and the amount of $ that American consumers consumed and spent, I felt sad. Despite the fact that we ( I am an American now) probably have the most number of universities in the world but we have the most uneducated consumers !
I see a lot grocery consumers spend like $120 per weekly grocery bill with all the processed food but I spend like $30 per weekly grocery bill. That is because I cook lots of veg and meat is only to add on some flavor !
When I told people we lived on $20 weekly grocery bill for 2, my coworker asked me " How ? ". I said easy if you cut down your red meat and process package food !
I feel it is important to include animal fats and proteins in your diet. Many nutrients in plants are converted better by natural herbivores than by humans (natural omnivores). The trick is to get items that provide the most nutrition for example: Liver is a great source of folic acid, vitamins A, D, B2, B5, B12, and many trace minerals. I don't know how difficult it is to find liver in other areas, but my local butcher sells it sliced for less than $2 a pound. To save money on meat yet still get a meaty taste I have been eating liver about 2 times a week. It is an interesting exercise to look at the work of Weston A. Price. It makes a good case for omnivores.
Xin Lu,
that's because certain crops are subsidized in the US. The US farm bill heavily subsidizes five crops. If I remember correctly, those are corn, wheat, rice, soy and cotton. This means that food products made with these crops are artificially cheap while other vegetables are priced to market. The cheap price of corn and wheat also makes feed lot meat cheaper since those are the two basic components of cheap beef and chicken feed. This is also part of the reason why High Fructose Corn Syrup is so widely used, because it's cheap.
The government wonders why we have an obesity epidemic and at the same time they subsidize corn instead of tomatoes and wheat instead of spinach. Go figure...
1) To the person who wants to know why it only costs $200, this is not daycare. It's a 3-hour, 4-day-a-week preschool program offered by the Park District of our village. It is cheap even for that, but no, it's not an all-day daycare program.
2) It's also not a private or stand-alone preschool. If it was, I, too, would be concerned that they wouldn't have enough money to run the place and I would be the first to jump to their aid. But since it's part of the village government, it's really more like the water bill situation. The teachers will get paid, the building is a park building, and there aren't many supplies per se.
3) To those who want to know what I did with the money each month, well, I never really had it. I was worried at the beginning of the year how we would come up with the payment in addition to regular monthly bills, and on the months we weren't billed for it, it was a bit of a relief. Once we noticed, that is. We knew we would have to pay eventually, and we did talk to the office about it, but we were always hoping we would have improved our income or managed to lower other expenses before that day came. And basically, it did -- I now make a small income freelance writing, my husband got a small raise, and I've cut our budget. So sure, I spent the money instead of putting it aside for the preschool payments I knew would eventually come. I spent it on groceries, gas and the mortgage. Shame, shame.
You all have convinced me, though: I'll pay the bill up front. Now I just hope they'll process it before my 5% cash back period ends next week.
Lets not forget that how we shop also has an effect on what we eat. Supermarkets are set up to try and maximize the products we buy from them. Plan ahead, and make sure you shop with a purpose. Here are other easy tips one can use to deal with the high cost food.
It's interesting. When we moved to the United States we couldn't believe how cheap meat was compared to veggies. Chicken was a luxury when I was a kid in China, but here you can get it for 99 cents a pound on sale. On the other hand, bok choy could cost $2 a pound sometimes. We had a similar shock at the price of cooking oil, because it is really cheap here. It seems that the high fat things in America tend to be cheaper than leafy greens and fruits.
my son is 17 years old no 300 for him but i still got to support him and claim him on taxes how unfair.
im a single mom dads in jail likes little girls but he still lives better than us he at least gets three meals a day doesnt have any bills, no child support to pay.
how fair is this country getting maybe we should rename little russia!
Although I think that other people power can be abused, it can be very positive in a collaborative way. Few people can build businesses without help of some kind (I have many years of experience working on my own and it is extremely difficult to do everything a business requires, sales, service, accounting, etc. and do it well); hiring others either as an employee or contractor is really something that can benefit many people rather than just the business owner.
It's all good stuff. But if you're the sort of person who wants to use data like this to solve problems (rather than the sort of person who just uses it to inform decisions), it could really drive you crazy.
We're in the same boat as warilever with plans to become more YAWN-like. Right now we're living as frugally and greenly as we like because we want to and it's comfortable for us. Once the kids are school-ready, I'd like to return to work (for fun- get that!) and also invest more (in the house and in our future, financially).
YAWN doesn't bother me so much. It's amusing, right?
I don't necessarily see a problem with living a life considered "boring" - as long as I don't find it boring. If I'm happy with living a life in a pretty little townhouse in a nice little community driving a comfortable sedan and taking a small, but enjoyable vacation every year, what's wrong with that?
Besides, I don't think I would want the type of life that the gossip rags would want to follow.
@Lucille:
You'd be surprised. There's all kinds of government information of just the sort you're looking for. For example, this cooking page has information on recepies for adding more vegetables to your diet, using spices and herbs, preparing and cooking game and fish.... Really, there's lots out there.
The thing is, the little book you're talking about is really hard to write, simply because you don't know where people are starting from. That information on game and fish might be very useful to rural poor, but not so much to urban poor. Somebody living in a transient hotel might need a book specifically written for people who had a microwave, but no stove or oven.
Even people who are drastically cut off from their own cultural background come with something, and your little book gets so much shorter if you can build on that. But, especially in the United States, everyone's cultural traditions are different. That rice cooker wouldn't be worth nearly as much to someone whose default starch course is potatoes (or bread or pasta or corn tortillas ...).
We are young, normal, and frugal, but not wealthy. We have made life choices -- parenthood, having me stay-at-home, choosing a job where my husband could do "good" -- that pretty much preclude wealth.
I think that there is a serious anti-materialist movement, and we are not all wealthy.
Runescape is a constantly evolving game, in a market situation you must first find out what the customer wants before you can make any dramatic changes. An example of this is when Jagex made the descision to remove PvP from the wilderness and add a trade limit, this caused many players to quit thus meaning a drop in profit, however it also saved Jagex a huge sum of money because of the legal issues before due to gold farmers ect.
-You must evaluate the situation before you go ahead with large scemes, sometimes the risk is worth taking but you have to be sure that you have enough 'true' customers to take that risk and be prepared for the consiquences incase it fails.
~Btw, I do indead play Runescape but I do not live in a small house and I am very far from poor.
I have two large houses (5 Bedrooms) in both Cambridge England and Bangkok Thailand.
Not bad for a 13yr old eh?
;)
Lots of movie theatres offer free G and PG rated films in the summer. Movies are a big bonding experience for our family and are also air conditioned! Eat before the movie to avoid buying snacks.
I am surprised that the USDA and HHS have not gotten together on some sort of healthy cheap eating program or small cook book or something.
There are so few people that have any understanding of what to do with a lentil or a bag of rice. I wish the food stamp program came with a recipe book, rice cooker and crock pot. It might be enough to help some people who are in the working poor to tackle that curve.
Another way to help keep food costs down is to grow your own. While gardening does take some effort and has some startup costs, it can be highly cost-effective (also keeping in mind savings in storage and travel costs) in addition to personally rewarding. Also, having fruits or vegetables ready to eat helps keep them in the front of your mind when you're deciding what to have for lunch.
If there are such people, I would hope they weren't the ones that came up with that name, since apparently by definition these people wouldn't be all that interested in drawing attention to themselves. I would decry any potential "yawns" from going out and calling themselves as such also, it would not only sound awfully pretentious, but also... no, it would really just sound pretentious.
Jewel/Osco stores (in Chicago, at least) are offering a 10% bonus for every $300 of your check spent there.
All my finances are in order, so I'm using the money to help pay my upcoming wedding in Mexico. I guess I'm stimulating the wrong economy.
I have two children, an additional $300 per child.
I'm not really advocating a vegetarian diet, just one that's cheap and healthy.
There are hardly any known essential nutrients that you can't get from vegetarian sources. Really, B-12 is about it. That doesn't mean that there aren't some unknown ones--but if there are, they're either not very important, or else they sneak into people's diets some other way, because there are too many people eating too many different versions of vegetarian diets, and so many of them are prefectly healthy
Having said that, though, meat, fish, eggs, milk, etc. are all very nutrient dense. If you can afford them and like them, by all means include them in your diet. Personally, I like them, and I do. The typical American diet, though, has foods like that in huge quantities--way more than is healthy. If you're very, very poor, then it might make sense to eat all you can afford. Otherwise, eat less than you can afford. You'll save money and be healthier.
though I could still use the smaller space to back up my all-important thesis stuff plus a few personal files. I get nervous every time the thunderstorms roll into Missouri. Still have any accounts left?
What about asking the sewing machine companies to come up with a pattern for a reusable shopping bag? Then they could have a contest for the best made or best looking bag. Would you want it to have a pocket to hold your shopping list and a pen? Or a bigger pocket to hold an ice pack for frozen foods? A separate cloth bag to hold loose vegetables or fruit? Can you suggest any other features for the shopping bag?
When I first relocated to America after marrying my native born American husband, I was invited to his friends home a fair bit. Most of his friends kitchen looked like those from the magazines but the irony fact is that the women seldom cook in the kitchen and most of them eat out !
My kitchen is very small and I only have a rice cooker, 2 pots and 2 simple flying pans but I cook 3 meals a day and 7 days a week.
Whenever in the check out counter, I see the amount of processed food and the amount of $ that American consumers consumed and spent, I felt sad. Despite the fact that we ( I am an American now) probably have the most number of universities in the world but we have the most uneducated consumers !
I see a lot grocery consumers spend like $120 per weekly grocery bill with all the processed food but I spend like $30 per weekly grocery bill. That is because I cook lots of veg and meat is only to add on some flavor !
When I told people we lived on $20 weekly grocery bill for 2, my coworker asked me " How ? ". I said easy if you cut down your red meat and process package food !
Jamy
The "stimulus package" is $600 for individual and $1200 for a married couple. Where do you get $1800 from?
I feel it is important to include animal fats and proteins in your diet. Many nutrients in plants are converted better by natural herbivores than by humans (natural omnivores). The trick is to get items that provide the most nutrition for example: Liver is a great source of folic acid, vitamins A, D, B2, B5, B12, and many trace minerals. I don't know how difficult it is to find liver in other areas, but my local butcher sells it sliced for less than $2 a pound. To save money on meat yet still get a meaty taste I have been eating liver about 2 times a week. It is an interesting exercise to look at the work of Weston A. Price. It makes a good case for omnivores.
Xin Lu,
that's because certain crops are subsidized in the US. The US farm bill heavily subsidizes five crops. If I remember correctly, those are corn, wheat, rice, soy and cotton. This means that food products made with these crops are artificially cheap while other vegetables are priced to market. The cheap price of corn and wheat also makes feed lot meat cheaper since those are the two basic components of cheap beef and chicken feed. This is also part of the reason why High Fructose Corn Syrup is so widely used, because it's cheap.
The government wonders why we have an obesity epidemic and at the same time they subsidize corn instead of tomatoes and wheat instead of spinach. Go figure...
Gal
1) To the person who wants to know why it only costs $200, this is not daycare. It's a 3-hour, 4-day-a-week preschool program offered by the Park District of our village. It is cheap even for that, but no, it's not an all-day daycare program.
2) It's also not a private or stand-alone preschool. If it was, I, too, would be concerned that they wouldn't have enough money to run the place and I would be the first to jump to their aid. But since it's part of the village government, it's really more like the water bill situation. The teachers will get paid, the building is a park building, and there aren't many supplies per se.
3) To those who want to know what I did with the money each month, well, I never really had it. I was worried at the beginning of the year how we would come up with the payment in addition to regular monthly bills, and on the months we weren't billed for it, it was a bit of a relief. Once we noticed, that is. We knew we would have to pay eventually, and we did talk to the office about it, but we were always hoping we would have improved our income or managed to lower other expenses before that day came. And basically, it did -- I now make a small income freelance writing, my husband got a small raise, and I've cut our budget. So sure, I spent the money instead of putting it aside for the preschool payments I knew would eventually come. I spent it on groceries, gas and the mortgage. Shame, shame.
You all have convinced me, though: I'll pay the bill up front. Now I just hope they'll process it before my 5% cash back period ends next week.
Lets not forget that how we shop also has an effect on what we eat. Supermarkets are set up to try and maximize the products we buy from them. Plan ahead, and make sure you shop with a purpose. Here are other easy tips one can use to deal with the high cost food.
Dealing With The High Cost of Food
It's interesting. When we moved to the United States we couldn't believe how cheap meat was compared to veggies. Chicken was a luxury when I was a kid in China, but here you can get it for 99 cents a pound on sale. On the other hand, bok choy could cost $2 a pound sometimes. We had a similar shock at the price of cooking oil, because it is really cheap here. It seems that the high fat things in America tend to be cheaper than leafy greens and fruits.
my son is 17 years old no 300 for him but i still got to support him and claim him on taxes how unfair.
im a single mom dads in jail likes little girls but he still lives better than us he at least gets three meals a day doesnt have any bills, no child support to pay.
how fair is this country getting maybe we should rename little russia!
Although I think that other people power can be abused, it can be very positive in a collaborative way. Few people can build businesses without help of some kind (I have many years of experience working on my own and it is extremely difficult to do everything a business requires, sales, service, accounting, etc. and do it well); hiring others either as an employee or contractor is really something that can benefit many people rather than just the business owner.
It's called Nutrition Action Healthletter:
http://www.cspinet.org/nah/index.htm
It's all good stuff. But if you're the sort of person who wants to use data like this to solve problems (rather than the sort of person who just uses it to inform decisions), it could really drive you crazy.