I’m curious though, do you think your lack of concentration stems from having a lot on your plate or is concentrating something you’ve always had troubles with?

Great analogy about the mattress. It’s true! Given how much time we spend in bed and, even more so, how important the quality of that time should be, it’s completely messed that we aren’t willing to invest in that more willingly.

We ate very well. We even had some folks over for dinner. We did not eat meat three times a day or even once a day, but people eat far too much meat (a hard sell here in southern California, let alone in Iowa). We did not go out to eat, we did not buy prepared foods, and there was no room for fancy coffee that takes forty seconds to order from places like Fourbucks.

I don’t imagine this would be possible in November in rural Iowa, but on the other hand there’s a reason our grandparents knew how to put up fruits and vegetables.

And cigarettes… Trav spends probably $30+/week, and he gets the best deals he can find, but what are you going to do? We ‘have’ to have them. (I say ‘we’ because I love him more than life, but I won’t live with him if he doesn’t have them. )

I pay almost $120/month for cable TV and internet and close to the same for two phones, but I feel I “need” those things.

I just checked my bank account, and in the last 4 weeks, I’ve spent $123 on groceries. That’s $30 a week, and that’s when I’m on a tight budget. I can spend $80-100 if you let me, but I can feed the two of us, healthily, on $30/week.

Healthy helps. Portion size and being aware. The three chicken breasts halves in my fridge right now will make six servings, instead of two before we started dieting. And I can justify spending $2.50 for a package of name bright light hot dogs now because we don’t eat an entire package in one meal anymore.

This is a long rambley post of numbers, but numbers are one of the ways I find control over my world. Money, carbs, percentages… I’m kind of a number freak.

But you also know how much I appreciate food. How I’m always wanting to try new flavors, create new things, and experiment with my tongue.(insert leer & eyebrow waggle)

What I wanted to say back at the beginning was that I honestly go grocery shopping with what’s left of my paycheck after everything else has been paid and we’ve eaten a meal out. As much as I appreciate food, love food, am comforted by food, you(or that author) is right in saying that I don’t make paying for it a priority. But maybe it’s because I am confident in my ability to cook and eat well on very little. I’m not worried that a $20 grocery budget means 6 days of ramen noodles. It might mean that I’ll have to get creative with that can of Dinty Moore stuck in the back of my cupboard, but I’m confident it’ll turn out just fine.

I definitely want to say that, for us, we would much rather have at least the upper of the middle class tiers so we could forget about having to ever budget the smaller stuff; we’re almost there, but not quite. But it’d be nice to say, “Hey, we want a new porch — ok, so let’s just save for about 4 or 5 months and we can pay for it, cash.” That’s kinda the scheme I’m going for, I think.
Nathan Pralle recently posted..What is Middle Class

I guess I see myself falling in a few categories though. My mentality is firmly middle class (frugal, sale shopper, keep a monthly budget, track spending, etc) but my lifestyle right now is probably more toward the top two categories. With two incomes and no kids, we pretty much do what we want. It just so happens that what we want is also pretty reasonable. We aren’t taking 10k vacations or something.

Once baby comes if I quit working, we go solidly into a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of existence. It will be…interesting!