As I was writing these past couple of weeks, I realized that while I’ve shared my story with other bloggers, I’ve never sat down to write the whole thing out for you! So here it is in all its nerdy, frugal food glory. I hope you enjoy!
Back in 2006, while on a road trip with my soon-to-be husband, Mr. Crumbs brought up the topic of finances. He thought that since we would soon be sharing bank accounts, we should talk about how much money each of us owed.
I remember not being too keen on the idea, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. We were about to share log-in ID’s and passwords and open each others mail. We might as well get it out in the open and over with, right?
Well my friends, I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say when you added up everything we owed, it was enough to buy a starter home in the Midwest. A NICE starter home. With upgrades.
And that was scary! Not just that we owed such a large amount, but scary just to look at our debt in terms of totals rather than monthly payments. However, to this day, that discussion was one of the best moves in our relationship.
Fast forward about a year and Mr. Crumbs and I are making ends meet, paying bills on time and paying a little extra each month towards our debtors. We looked for ways to trim our spending, with the first being reducing our dining out bill (which was easily $600). We also traded my always-breaking coupe for a more reliable and comfortable SUV. All in all, were enjoying life as newlyweds.
So naturally, we took the next step as a married couple and bought a house.
And then two weeks later, we found out that we were pregnant.
My Real Life, Frugal Real Food Story
Although we were paying our bills, our sum of debt was still quite large, and quite scary when you consider the mortgage we just added to it and that we were soon going to be responsible for a baby… someone that I heard was quite expensive.
We reigned in our spending almost immediately. There is no way to know what the future holds, but if we were going to ever get out of debt, we had to start cutting some big corners.
- We traded the gas-guzzling SUV for a small, compact sedan.
- We traded his large sedan for an efficient coupe that was perfect for his 100 mile daily commute (round-trip).
- And we cut our dining out budget even more, to just $40 per bi-weekly paycheck.
This was also the time we created our first official grocery budget. After talking about what we considered “fair and attainable,” Mr. Crumbs asked if we could do it all on $400 each month. I said we could certainly try!
A couple of months into our new food and dining out budget, we began to see the savings really add up. We were putting hundreds of extra dollars each month to our debt – not just $10 or $20. It was so freeing to see the balances actually MOVE down instead of slowly creep.
Halfway through the pregnancy, we talked about whether or not I would return to work. I wasn’t sure what to do either way, but I definitely didn’t want to rule out the possibility of staying at home. We decided to experiment with our finances and see if we could survive on one income.
The goal was to save all of my income (and use it to pay off debt and fund a 6-month emergency fund) and live solely on his.
Making the Cuts
In order to make this happen, we had to cut our expenses in half. So we…
- Budgeted tanks of gas per paycheck.
- Combined our cell phones and reduced the minutes to the lowest plan possible.
- Traded in cable for a basic satellite service.
- Reduced our internet to the lowest package.
- Even traded in our large trash can for the smallest.
We lived check to check, penny to penny for just over four months to give ourselves a reality check of what life would be like if I were to stay at home. And it.was.hard. It was all worth it though, because by the time our son was born, we had three months worth of living expenses saved up and had made serious strides towards our overall debt.
Related: The Secret to a Healthy Grocery Budget // 3 Things to Do Before Making a Budget
Seeing the progress we had made financially, it was easy to make the decision to stay at home with my son. I started a small business that earned just enough to pay for diapers and give us some breathing room each month. Our hard work was paying off!
And then when my son was 8 months old, we sold our house and moved to California.
Yes, there were costs associated with moving halfway across the country. Yes, we knew the cost of living would be higher. In fact, the rent on our tiny 800 sqft apartment was as much as the mortgage on our 1400 sqft house! But because we had worked hard at establishing a budget early on, we knew how to make it work. We knew how to live frugally and reap the rewards of saving money. In just one year, we had paid off half of our debt and nearly funded our six-month emergency fund!
Five months later, and just after my son had his first birthday, we found out we were expecting baby #2.
Having baby #2 didn’t worry me. It was the cost of having two kids in diapers that kept the wheels in my mind turning. I was worried that with the cost of diapers (and everything else) going up, we wouldn’t be able to save as much as we had been and it would take us even longer to pay off our debt.
Learning to Save More Money
That’s when I learned how to coupon. I played the drug store game at CVS, buying toothpaste and lightbulbs and gum so that I could earn rewards to buy diapers. Mr. Crumbs thought I was a little crazy at first, but when he saw our lone linen closet fill up with every toiletry imaginable – and our spending NOT go up – he was on board.
Once I had mastered CVS, I expanded my couponing to include grocery stores. I could get boxes of cake mix for a quarter each. Boxes of cereal for 50¢ and granola bars for less than $2. Getting as much food as I could for as little as possible became “my thing” and I was really good at it. Oh good, that Mr. Crumbs asked if we could lower the grocery budget.
Say what?! We’ve doubled the size of our family, yet you want to reduce our food budget?
We gave it a test run for a month and aimed for $300. There was a little less toothpaste, and a little less deodorant, but with some creative planning and shopping in bulk at Costco, we were able to meet the new grocery budget goal. This meant that we could be on target to pay off all of our debt before baby #2 arrived, and with God’s grace, we did!
Just before our daughter was born, we sent off a car payment – the last payment that officially made us debt free!
Related: Homemade Toothpaste // How to Make a Toiletries Budget
Ditching the Boxes
Fast forward to 2012, when Mr. Crumbs said something that would forever change how I viewed food:
“Honey, I feel like we don’t have any food in the house. We’re always eating out of boxes.”
Hmmm… I really wasn’t sure what to think about that. That was the food I was buying with coupons. And I used coupons because we had a strict grocery budget. Was I missing something?
Yes – the food! As I looked around the kitchen and opened all the cupboard doors, all I could see was box, after box, after box. It wasn’t food per se, but that’s what we were eating on a regular basis.
Boxes of cereal for breakfast. Boxes of crackers and granola bars for snacks. And boxes of cake mix for dessert. All bought because we were on a budget.
Trying to be an agreeable wife, I said I would start looking into our food and to try to buy more “real food” than boxes going forward.
Several documentaries later, (including Food Matters, Food, Inc., King Corn and Forks Over Knives) and I was convinced that our boxes need to go. Until that day, I never thought about how my eggs were raised never crossed my mind. Or the living conditions of the chicken I bought. Or how clean the stalls were of the cows who produced the milk I gave my kids.
I also didn’t relate my health to the food I put in my body. I see now that it’s a logical conclusion, but at the time, I didn’t see the link. The food I eat directly relates to the health of my body.
Mr. Crumbs’ gentle suggestion of eating more real food and less boxed food officially became my mission. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was looking for, but lots of things had to change. And the budget wasn’t one of them.
I began following some real food blogs and made small changes in our kitchen that didn’t impact our grocery budget. Then, I read the weekly circulars, read labels before buying anything and started to meal plan. Also, I carefully tracked my spending and told Mr. Crumbs when we were getting lower on funds so we could be on the same page.
Related: Why I Quit Coupons (and Saved More Money) // Best Foods to Make from Scratch // How to Eat Real Food on a Budget
Then gradually over time, by making one small manageable change at a time, we began eating only real food. It took us eight months to go from all boxes to no boxes – EIGHT MONTHS!
It’s also took us nearly an entire year to figure out what number worked best for our grocery budget. Now that we’re in the groove of real food, we’re feeding the four of us on just $330 each month.
Update: Our journey of real food eating and keeping a budget allowed us to reach our dream goal of buying a home with cash! You can read more about that story HERE.
Baby Steps
You would think that it would be easy to just stop spending as much, turn a blind eye and never buy a box again, but it isn’t. Real food is truly a journey, and it’s full of lots and lots of baby steps. I know this first hand. You won’t succeed if you try to completely healthify your kitchen overnight. That’s not me being pessimistic – that’s just being realistic! There’s too much to learn, too much to replace and too much to make from scratch.
But here’s what I do know, what I’ve learned from experience: It is entirely possible to eat real food on a real budget.
You can do it too.
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to talk to your spouse and get on the same page regarding a grocery budget. This post on creating a frugal grocery budget will walk you through the first steps. You Need a Budget Software helps us stay on track with our spending.
30 Minute Dinners Sample Meal Plan
Sign up to get instant access to my 30 Minute Dinners Sample Meal Plan, complete with recipes and step-by-step instructions!So that’s my story. Can you relate? Do you have any questions? Please share your story in the comments!
Well, our story is truly a journey. My husband and I ate a typical North American diet. When our first son was born, I became a stay at home mom and started making a few more things from scratch. By the time son #2 was born (15 months later) I had started reading a few real food blogs and realizing that I wanted to make some changes. I watched Food, Inc. We baby-stepped for a while…cutting back on processed, stepping up home made. I learned to make stock and read labels. I gave my second son goat’s milk rather than formula when he weaned. It ebbed and flowed but we were slowly moving more and more down the real food road. We had a third son and kept going. Then our middle son started showing signs of food allergies — his face would go blotchy after eating certain things. We started trying to figure it out. In the meantime we had a baby girl (4 kids in 4 years!). We went for scratch testing for boy #2 when he was just over 2 and a half and it came back with a bunch of things including the big one, corn. In our day and age, corn is in EVERYTHING. Apple juice (citric acid), bread (vinegar or glucose), all ice cream, anything with “vegetable” oil, even the alcohol used to make vanilla! So that was a huge giant leap down the real food path. From that point on there was no eating out, and we were about 90% from scratch. Then finally came the kicker. Our third son was diagnosed with autism just a few months ago. I knew that diet mattered, so we took him off gluten and watched. It was incredible. Within 3 days he was responding to his name with eye contact, pretend playing, and showing new emotions. I was convinced and decided not to go half way. So we started GAPS as a family and have seen huge improvements in our third son, and many improvements in the food allergies of our second son.
Looking back I can clearly see how God brought us slowly down this path that our son needed. If I had to go from a regular North American diet, to full GAPS, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. Or maybe I wouldn’t have even understood that my son needed diet changes! But little by little, one thing after another baby stepped us to where we are today.
Our challenge, though, is how to do GAPS with 6 people on a budget! I look at your numbers and laugh. We spend at least 3 times that. But what do you do when free range eggs are $5/dozen and that’s what your kids need for breakfast everyday and you can’t use potatoes, oatmeal, or toast to fill them up? It’a a huge challenge that I just haven’t been able to take control of yet, but hopefully we’ll get there.
Why no potatoes, Laura? That seems like the most innocuous food! Did it come back as an allergy? Have you tried gf oats? I’ve looked at GAPS, it’s hard and so structured, I applaud you for getting your whole family on it! Good luck with the rest of your whole-food journey… hopefully one day whole foods/organic/gluten free/nonGMO will be as mainstream as conventional foods are now!
I tried going from NAD to GAPS cold turkey, and it was hard! My son didn’t eat for the first 3 days, and even resisted the full GAPS, but I lost 25 lbs in one month, and lost the brain fog and felt amazing for the first time in years!! However, real life intervened, and we gradually lost traction, it just wasn’t sustainable. I’m trying to do the baby steps now, in hopes of going back to GAPS eventually. Congratulation on doing it the smart way, wishing you all the luck!!
We actually started raising chickens a couple years back. They are low maintenance and our kids love collecting eggs…plus, feed would be way under your $5 eggs! 🙂 I have also tinkered with gardening in the past and am hoping to go full throttle with that this year. Most produce can be frozen (or blanched and frozen) and can be completely organic. Also, hoping to create feed for the chickens to supplement their food. I feed a family of 6, as well as 5 preschoolers on $350 a month currently. While we do not eat an organic diet, I cook mostly from scratch with whole foods. Anything boxed has limited ingredients that I recognize! I have been able to encourage other women with stories similar to yours at recent speaking events – hope these out of the box ideas might encourage you too!
I hear you on the $5 eggs!! We don’t have any food allergies, but there are foods I avoid for environmental reasons, for preventative reasons, and for ethics. But maaan it does drain my budget! Reading this blog has me thinking that maybe I should out all that aside and do what we can ACTUALLY afford, meaning that we just stop buying organics (something my husband is always asking me to do)….But then I also think that our diet–which is pretty clean, and organic where it counts, as much as we can afford–has kept us healthy. So its a funny place I find myself. We live on a pretty strict budget, with no wiggle room for fancy things like cable, a second car, etc. But to me, right now, its worth it.
Thanks for sharing, Mrs. Crumb…its good to be thinking of always eliminating debt and making good financial decisions!
When you say $330 month are you figuring in 4.3 weeks in a month?
Hi Jean! I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, but we figure 4 weeks into one month. Our budget was based on pay periods, and we got paid every two weeks. That was the easiest way to figure “one month” without divvying up a paycheck into days. We’d calculate the budget for 4 weeks on one paycheck, then skip the next. Repeat!
Thank you for your story. We’ve come to the realization of the need for ‘real food’ as we are trying to reverse diabetes through lifestyle and diet changes. It works! Out with processed foods, in with “made from scratch” meals and homemade baked items (for special occasions). I enjoy your blog! Thanks for sharing your life with us.
Welcome to Crumbs Charlotte, and you’re right – it does work! We’ve seen significant changes in our health, and in our overall lifestyle that would not have been possible if we hadn’t started with food first. Thanks so much for your kind words – I look forward to ‘seeing’ more of you here! 🙂
Thank you for sharing your story! I love your website. Just stumbled on it yesterday and really appreciate everything you share!
Thanks so much Annie!! Welcome to Crumbs! 🙂
Having a BS in Nutrition/Dietetics from 1997, there was NO emphasis on preservatives, whole foods, etc or their affects on the body… I had advanced Food Chemistry classes and NO ONE EVER SUGGESTED THINGS BEING NATURAL
Fast forward 2004, my first baby, who has Down syndrome is starting to eat solids. I breastfed him until 8 weeks, we didn’t know he had Down syndrome, breastfeeding was not going well and as a first time Mom, I listened to the DOCTOR who told me “you gave it a good effort, you should be proud, now it is bottle time”. Feeling down because I didn’t BF him as long as I had wanted, when it came time for solids my inner Nutritionist and Economist knew I needed to make his food.
You get through that phase with all of your kids then they aren’t babies and you have a budget so you coupon and you live from boxes because you can feed a family of 5 for cheap!!!!! Then that 1st baby at 9 yo is diagnosed with Celiacs disease and then YOU REALLY START LOOKING AT INGREDIENTS! You already had a garden but it just got a lot bigger! The really odd thing is that you look at the pasta you were eating for .99 at Walmart and compare it to the new Aldi gluten free pasta 1.29-1.49 and you realize the gluten free pasta has NO PRESERVATIVES, NO CHEMICALS!
Two years into gluten free/natural/whole on a budget, we are still learning… You can’t coupon our needs. Gluten free and as whole/natural as possible for a family of 5! You have to think outside the box!
Hi Cori! Thank you for taking the time to share your story with us. 🙂 I can only imagine the emotional toll that these diagnoses would invoke, but God is so good to have brought you through it all! Thinking outside the box is definitely a must, and there’s no right or wrong way to go about the journey. I’m thankful you’ve found Crumbs, and I hope you continue to find encouragement and ideas to help you feed your family well on a budget, including the allergies! 🙂
Come to think of it, ‘Think outside the box ‘ would be a good title for a post on the pro’s and con’s of moving away from boxed foods. 🙂
i just found you thanks to a post on the nourishing home 🙂 looking forward to learning a LOT, and hoping to trim the budget and get rid of our boxes as well! thanks so much for all the encouragement and resources, you are blessing me for sure!!
Welcome Aima! I hope you find some helpful ideas here, and please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help! 🙂
I enjoyed the story of how you arrived to your food choices today. I’ve been a meal planner for some 20 years, and it is interesting how our menu’s have changed in that time. I seem to know a lot of information, but putting it into practice everyday, not just sometimes, has been the hardest thing for me. A year and a half ago I realized how much better I felt when I ate a low carb diet. I lost weight and had more energy almost without effort. This is what has led me to cook from scratch and persevere in the kitchen when I would really rather get out a box of pasta or eat a bowl of cereal. Now when I grocery shop I come home with mostly fresh fruit and vegetables. We buy meat in bulk from local farmers, and have reduced our dairy intake significantly. Doing this within a budget however is my next hurdle. I enjoy the posts you’ve written about how you do this. Thank you.
Hi Elizabeth! I know it’s tough figuring out food allergies, amidst transitioning to real food… those husbands sure can cause a ruckus! 😉 It sounds like you’re on the right track though, so keep up the great work! Thank you for the encouragement, and welcome to Crumbs! I’m happy you’ve found us, and I look forward to seeing more of you!
Love all your info! I never went the coupon route because we never ate enough of the foods to make it worthwhile. However, I am facing some health challenges and we (hubby and I) have been trying to eat a more healthy diet. The problem is that we have been having a hard time with a budget. Then I found your site! Yay! Here’s looking forward to a long and delightful relationship!
Welcome to Crumbs Betty! I’m honored that you’ve found us, and I look forward to seeing more of you! Cheers to eating well on a tight budget! 🙂
I have loved reading your blog over the past few weeks! We are a pretty frugal and health conscious family of five and I’m currently trying very very hard to stick to a grocery budget of $350. We do a lot of the things you recommend already (making our own kefir, stretching a whole chicken for a couple meals, lots of soups with bone broth, not a lot of meat, we buy beans and rice in bulk) and I am struggling to stay within my budget. I have cut out raw milk and stick with organic or non-homogenized, buy organic when possible but from less expensive stores like Aldi & Trader Joes, we get great local eggs from a neighbor for super cheap….
I meal plan monthly and then grocery shop for just what I’ll need and do a local produce co-op twice monthly and make sure to use what we get from that…
My question is do you have any tips on the most important things you do to save the most money? I just feel like there’s got to be something I’m missing…
I second this. Though I still buy raw milk. 🙂 And we have a family of. 6.
Wow, I totally missed this Becca – I’m so sorry! Thanks to Rochelle for giving it a little bump for me. 🙂
Most important tips… don’t buy snacks. Those types of foods (pretzels, crackers, etc.) will EAT up your budget and be gone in no time. If you want to buy just one box/month, then fine, but otherwise stick to fresh produce as it goes so much farther. Make big batches of pancakes each week, since the ingredients themselves are relatively inexpensive and can be dressed up in so many ways. Stick to inexpensive produce as much as possible, make the more expensive ones a treat like the snack items. We also waste very, very little food. I’ll skip the meal plan in order to eat leftovers, and even if we’re tired of eating them, we do it anyway (or freeze it for later) because otherwise it’s wasting our budget.
The road trip from TX to Cali was a long one, but I’m glad I could make it with you guys. I love how far you’ve come from where you started. I’m so proud of you! Miss you guys! Hugs!
I miss you! Thank you for the encouragement, and we couldn’t have made the trip without you. 🙂 SENDING BIG HUGS!
Thanks for sharing. encouraged to read .this month I’ve had to dramatically reduced the budget but still going over due to stock ups and company:/ Hoping next few months will even out.Thanks for reminding me that it takes baby steps:)
You’re welcome Di. 🙂 Hang in there – there are ALWAYS hangups in life. Something happens to throw us off course. Just keep going… one step at a time and don’t give up!!
Thanks Tiffany,Have a super day:)
When I was in middle school, I babysat for a family from church fairly regularly. One time they feed me dinner and hadn’t left yet, and the mashed potatoes tasted really weird. So I said, “Oh, these mashed potatoes are good. What did you put in them?” The mom liked at me strangely and said, “They’re just from a box.” I managed not to actually tell her that I had never had instant mashed potatoes before.
In other words, my mom loves to cook, and we didn’t eat much straight from a box–too expensive! But that’s not too say we exactly ate real foods. There was lots of Kool-Aid in the summer, packaged chips and cookies when we could afford them, skim milk, margarine, etc.
So when I got married, it wasn’t so much that I had to learn to cook, as I slowly learned to choose better ingredients and move away from the standard “healthy” diet (low fat, etc.). And honestly, a lot of the changes saved me money, like making stock basically for free rather than buying those weird cubes, and went along with other “green” choices I was making out of budgetary necessity, like eliminating paper towels.
But at some point you reach the point where you’re eating mostly whole foods and want to upgrade those, mostly meat, dairy, and eggs. And then it does get expensive. And I love love love your site for showing me ways to stretch my dollar and still get better quality food. You rock!
I enjoyed reading your journey. Very inspiring. Food Inc was responsible for big changes in our family diet too. We eat much more real food, but not too frugally. We cod do better with that.
Thanks Nic! The budget part stemmed from being in debt, but each family is different in that regards. I’m happy you’re on the real food train. 🙂 Welcome to Crumbs!
I love this post! What an inspiration.
As we make room for baby #4, we’re faced with many of the same struggles. Add food allergies into the mix, and it’s a recipe for financial disaster! I’m realizing that we are way better off doing more homemade, real foods because it’s better for all of us and especially for my son with food allergies. We’re slowly getting rid of the boxes and I’m finding that the kids are adapting well and making better choices since “junk” just isn’t available!
I also made a snack list with about 9 boxes that each have a picture of a health snack like fruit, yogurt, hard boiled egg, homemade granola bar, etc. and the kids can look at that like their menu and pick their snack foods. I actually need to make a new one too because of all of the great new recipes I’ve been trying like your potato bread 🙂
Thanks for being such an inspiration! I just found your blog this month but we are already trying so hard to reduce our budget. So far we are $100 under our normal grocery budget for this time in the month 🙂
Love the snack list idea! I’ll have to make up one of these for my son, so he’s not always complaining about how there’s nothing to eat, lol!
I love the story. Yup I was also sucked into the coupons. Then one day my husband was reading the back of all those boxes and we decided it was not worth the health of our family to eat those things. We have changed so much of what we eat and buy. There is still room to change but it is a road to travel. My husbands co-workers once asked if we were Amish because of all the foods we make and can. Thanks for sharing.
LOL! I think that’s the same reason I don’t coupon much now – there aren’t any for what I’m buying. Thank you for your kind words Susan!
Exactly, our problem. I sometimes envy people when they say they saved $X on their grocery bill. I look at my bill and think where did I go wrong? However, my husband and I have come to realize that there are no coupons for how we eat. Sad, but true. We slowly started changing how we ate similar to your story few years ago. We’re still not “there” yet with budgeting but, I’m taking baby steps to change things. With our family of 4 we got to. Thanks for this post 🙂
It is encouraging to read that you have a budgeting mind AND can eat real food. I’m in this tricky place where I am about to get married and am talking with the future Mr. about all these financial and health goals. I’m dealing with getting my hormone problems diagnosed and adjusting for food allergies, so it creates a lot of work. It is encouraging to think that someone else has been successful and healthy on such a tight budget. I just found your blog and really appreciate the free example. Everything helps. 🙂
Congratulations on the marriage Bethany! Getting all the issues with your hormones and allergies worked out is definitely work, but it’s entirely do-able. 🙂 I’m glad you’ve found Crumbs, and I look forward to seeing more of you! 🙂
Going on 27 yrs of marriage, wearing all the hats that come w/the Mrs. & Mom, we’ve gone through several phases of eating. Now its just Mr & I. I’ve gotten us to eating about 85% clean; no boxes at all, no can veggies. Dinner is protein & a fresh veg + salad or set potato; I make it from scratch. No pkg taco mix, etc. We both have lost 30 lbs this past yr alone. My biggest issue grocery only produce available. Hoping when Mr retires later this yr he’ll plant a garden again. Loved your story-we too, are debt free. The burden it lifts from your spirit is exhilarating; allowing you to focus your energy on more meaningful moments & people.
Great job Beth! It sounds like you are doing an amazing job!
When my husband and I got married not quite seven years ago, I knew how to brown ground beef, cook boneless skinless chicken breast, and add a helper box and warm up a vegetable. And that was what we ate, along with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Luckily for us, my skill set has improved over the years.
We went through a coupon phase as well, with lots of boxes, although my coupon phase was not as financially successful as yours sounds. I actually spent more money because I was jumping on so many “deals”. I’ve mostly backed off of coupons, although we still use them for the toiletries and paper products we still use.
So then I started making more and more from scratch. I took it slowly, and I’m a completely different person in terms of food than I was seven years ago, but from month to month there isn’t much change. I think the only new thing I did last month was cook with eggplant. But even one change a month is something.
We’re still on a really limited budget, which I have been tracking in excel for a few months now to keep me more on track (thanks for that idea of where you grocery money is really going – I loved that post!), but I can actually get a lot for the money if I spend it wisely, and don’t freak out about having 2/3 of my budget gone in the first week from stocking up on basic pantry staples.
Slow and steady change, that’s what I’m working on. Thanks for all the motivation here! I don’t comment often, but I love reading!
It’s all those little, seemingly unimportant changes that add up to be big ones in the long run. Buying a different peanut butter. Trying a new butter. It all makes a difference!
I appreciate you taking the time to comment Katherine. 🙂 Thank you for reading and supporting Crumbs!
PS – that “where’s your money going” post still gets me too, lol.
Thank you so much for sharing your story ! What an encouragement 🙂
You’re most welcome!!
My wife frequently quotes her mother, who always declared that it is the kitchen that makes it breaks a family’s finances.