I spend too much...

When your budget is nearly double what people who you think of as rich and consider themselves comfortable spend and when you realize how much more money you could tack on to savings or additional payments on the mortgage principal, you know it's time to reevaluate. Or something, right? I spend a ton of money on food. I think in actual practice it's just us eating the same as we always have (maybe a bit better, in some ways), just with two children and higher food costs. I know that a lot of frugal people manage to live on an amount that I think is absurd and I also know my husband would never go for the kind of food that would require, but practically speaking I rarely feed him more than two meals and a snack in a day. And one of those meals is a fairly inexpensive breakfast. While he does love steak, in the grand scheme of things steak isn't so very expensive for just one person. And the girls and I can eat whatever for all our meals...

Granted, I do have slightly picky eaters, well, finicky eaters, that is. And I'm the only one around here who ever eats peanut butter and jelly. And Felicity consumes milk like it's going out of style. But overall the food they like really isn't that expensive. So I just need to sit down and figure out where all the money is going and how to streamline for greater efficiency. I like salad a lot, but could I get more for my money incorporating other veggies into my weekly menus? (I mean, I already do, but maybe I should take it further.)

One of my biggest challenges lately has been trying to get enough to eat. For some reason around this age, Mary (like Felicity, I think) just nurses constantly...and I'm hungry all the time. I give Mary food as much as she'll eat it, but I'm still starving. So I need to make a plan so I can actually eat all the wonderful food we have in our pantry and refrigerators. :-P Anyway, I just really need to organize and streamline. Once I can get there, maybe we'll find smooth sailing. I've finally figured out, after four and a half years, that Josh's cravings can be reduced very simply and that having what he wants on hand is easy. So now I know to stock the steak and the chicken. ;-) And my own cravings, well, usually all I really want is a bean and cheese burrito, which is also fairly simple to keep in stock. So now I just need to get to work on making those things happen...

And then maybe I'll be energetic enough to get back to that guest room full of all our extra junk and we can get a bed set up in there. :-P