I receive emails quite frequently from readers that ask me what they can do to get the rest of their family to eat more frugally and spend less money on anything from groceries to other household items, cars, entertainment etc. Last week a reader asked me what I recommended she do. She would like to cook more frugally and include plenty of beans and rice in her cooking, but her husband won’t eat it and ends up grabbing fast food instead. I’ve been pondering the issue for the past week or so, trying to figure out what to tell everyone that approaches me with a question along those lines.
Sure, I could come up with some tips to make homemade inexpensive meals more palatable, but those would only work occasionally, and probably not for long. Instead, I decided to approach the issue from a more general angle. What it really boils down to is the simple fact that you can’t force your family members to embrace a frugal lifestyle. Instead it should be a decision that is made by and includes the entire family.
First, I recommend you sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and write down exactly why you want to live more frugally. And don’t just write down “to save money”. If that’s your first thought, think about what you want to save the money for. Come up with all the reasons why living more frugally is good for your family and what it will do for you. For example, you may want to live more frugally so you can get out of credit card debt which would eventually allow you to worry less and even have some money for fun things like toys, new bikes or a vacation.
Another reason may be that money has gotten very tight because of a job loss or the likes and living more frugally will allow you to keep your home and put food on the table. Another great reason may be to simplify live and spent more quality time together as a family.
Take the time to get very clear about your WHY. Then it’s time to start talking to the rest of your family. I recommend you start with your spouse and then when the two of you are on the same page start discussing it with the kids.
A good starting point for the discussion with your spouse is to how much money you have coming in each month and how much is going out. Track your income and expenses for a month and write them down in a notebook or a spreadsheet. I like to group my expenses in related categories (i.e. all utility bills etc.).
Next go over the budget with your significant other and see where you can save, or what expenses you can cut out altogether. Don’t forget to talk about what you will use the “extra money’ you are saving for.
Be willing to compromise on certain issues. That high-speed internet package may not be worth the money to you, but it may be to your spouse. Allow for some give and take, but keep your goal of living more frugally in mind.
Once you and your spouse have a good grasp on how you want to change your lifestyle, it’s time to bring the kids on board as well. Find some little ways they can help make the change and find a way to compensate for anything you are “taking away” from them. Cutting out the cable bill might be a tough one for kids that are used to coming back from school to watch their favorite cartoons. Plan to spend some extra time with them instead, read some books or allow them to have a friend over to play.
If you are cutting “Eating Out” from your budget, have some fun with dinner and throw a pizza party one night a week, or set up a taco bar. Just have fun with it and come up with some fun alternatives.
When it comes to food, work with your family and try various different frugal dishes. There is an abundance of them out there. A good start is the frugal recipe section right here. Try new things, get the kids to help you cook and then have everyone rate the new dishes. Before you know it, you’ll have quite a few new family favorites and some other recipes that your loved ones can live with.
If there is a particular dish that you used to have at a restaurant or bought at the store, search for it by name with “copycat” or just “recipe” in your favorite search engine. You can often find some great recipes that will allow you to make the same or a very similar item at home for a fraction of what you used to pay for it.
Just keep in mind that frugal living is a family affair. Get everyone involved, listen to their ideas and don’t forget to remind them (and yourself), why you are making the change to this simpler, less expensive life and before you know it, it you and your entire family will have adjusted to this new lifestyle.
I appreciate everything you do to bring us this wonderful website. I would love to cook your frugal recipe for “Crockpot Calico Beans”, but I don’t have a crockpot. Do you have directions how to make it without one?
Thank you very much.
Linda Gartner
Great new format, thank you. Also, so good to see the focus on “frugality” as that was the main reason I joined HBHW a long time ago. It such fun to “save” and beat “the system”. Also enjoy occassional “treats” too. Keep up the great work.
This is to the reader who said she is trying to live frugally & her husband will not eat her cooking & goes for fast food.
Everything that Susan said is great advice & can help. If your man is a visual learner it might help you to ask him if ya’ll could put the bills into envelopes for the coming month. You would have an envelope for each outgoing bill including your lights & grocery budget. Be sure to have a separate envelope for everything! Then the food budget will be iron clad. (This will also help the robbing Peter to pay Paul, scenario that causes grief to the wallet sometimes)
Print out a page (or draw it by hand with a ruler) with 30 squares on it. Ask everyone in your family to write in a square their favorite supper dish. Fill in a few yourself then ask everyone what their second favorite supper dish is & fill in all the squares. Poof! You have just made a menu. This will also give you your shopping list for the week or the month, however it is that you shop. That, in turn, will also let you know (roughly) what your food budget for the month is.
Explain that you understand that things are not as free flowing as you would like them to be, but that you are willing to compromise on some pricey meals in favor of cheaper fast food alternatives if he would be willing to let you make a batch of a homemade version of some of the fast food he prefers.
As Mom, & chief bottle washer, you can rearrange the meals so that you don’t have similar meals four nights in a row. Be prepared for your goofiest child to write something like Lobster Thermadore & Fried pickles, & the youngest to write Cheese. It’ll be okay with slight re-arranging & we actually like fried pickles from time to time now! LOL (We had Frozen fried shrimp instead of Lobster though)
Back when I started lowering the grocery bill, we tried a new bean recipe 3-4 times a month, always followed by dessert.If you wanted dessert you had to eat the dinner (we didn’t have other desserts during the week)! We ended up over the course of 6-8 months finding several recipes we were willing to eat, and got used to beans. We now eat many beans (at least 2x/ wk), without dessert and without (much)complaint!
Linda – I have a recipe for crockpot beans which include the directions “or bake in 325 oven for 2-4 hours.” I have never tried that myself.
We are in the midst of a special needs adoption and when things got tight I sat the other children down and explained to them that we were going to have to sacrifice a little. But I explained just what we were sacrificing for, another child, and read some Bible verses to that effect. This way they were sacrificing for a purpose and were motivated instead of just suffering. I knew we were doing it for a good cause but I had to communicate that to the children.
That’s a wonderful lesson and way to handle it Kathy! = )
Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University is a great way to embark on a coordinated change in how you handle your finances. My husband and I attended the class and it was where we came together re: finances. We had never been completely on the same page re how to handle our money before. Look for a class near you at http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/locate-class/ After the FPU classes my husband and I are willingly experimenting with bean recipes. And it’s FUN!
Amy Dacyczyn’s book The Complete Tightwad Gazette is also a great resource for frugal living. It has inspired me. There are some great bean recipes in there too.
This is a great article…however it still might not work. I have been cooking, cleaning and living frugally for 3 years now..however my spouse does not. He feels that he works 50 hours outside of the home so therefore he is entitled. I keep my grandkids and stay at home and do what I can to pay off the bills my way. I get frustrated at times, but I have the weight lifted off my shoulders because I am doing my part. I cook the 3 meals a day, but it has to be meat and potatoes type meals. I do this for him, but I eat the beans and cheap meals for me, no meat to keep the food budget down. He eats out everyday, I only eat out when we go out, his choice. I just decided to do things to the best of my ability. Oh yeah, Dave Ramsey is great…I incorporate his methods also.
I can definitely understand this reader’s problem. My hubby was very hard to win over. And, definitely he will still not eat beans. Never tried a bean in his life (although I cannot imagine this). This mid Missouri boy likes MEAT and potatoes and he reminds me all the time about this fact! LOL. I was bragging the other night that I had made dinner using only 2 chicken breasts – homemade noodles – (thick like chicken and dumplings). He said “yea – it was good, but there’s not MUCH MEAT!” I told him to get over it. Not many wives would work all day and come home and serve their families homemade noodles. Good grief….LOL. He admitted I was probably right-laughing.
My husband grew up eating name-brand everything, not cooking as to reuse leftovers or really stretching a meal at all. They ate whatever they wanted. No money meant Dad would do the “money shuffle” and Mom never made accommodations at the grocery store. So…. fast forward to our home. We’ve been married 20 years and 20 years worth of bad habits and being totally unorganized until I said STOP! Now, he has his account and I have mine. We are responsible for separate bills. When he’s out – he’s out or he gets zapped with overdraft fees. Lots of months he received those and didn’t care until FINALLY it clicked. A terrible lesson, but as long as we were able to “rob Peter to pay Paul” (the money shuffle), our vicious cycle continued. But, there was no Paul to rob LOL.
One thing that I think helped at our house was that we meal plan together and take the plan to the grocery store. That way, he can see just what it costs to live as a carnivore and to live with all that name brand stuff. He just had no idea things cost that much.
So, I think getting on the same page and including your family in not only meal planning, but grocery buying helps and also prevents waste. Not only is my husband now eating lunch at home (he would write a bad check to eat out if that’s what HE WANTED, but now he eats up those leftovers so we aren’t wasting food anymore.
I don’t want to portray my hubby as a bad guy. He’s actually not. He just grew up with that silver spoon and really didn’t get it. He’d never had to live within his means and it was a huge shock to his system when he had to.
Definitely, there are some great scratch recipes out there. I even made bagels (my husband had never had one and he loved it). He has developed a love for my homemade cooking and raves about it wherever we are. I would also say planning ahead to have leftovers to reuse is a great key in having meals you like and look forward to (although I do love me a pot of beans and cornbread – however, some of my family members do not) so I work them in on nights when we are having other things so that one big meal carries on to 2 or 3 little ones, with all of us happy.
Good luck to all.
Great article! I’m lucky, my hubby’s got a Mexican Mommy and grew up on LOTS of beans and homemade tortillas, his favorite meal. : ) So far we haven’t been blessed with children, but it does have to be a Husband and Wife decision first and foremost. I remember when things were tight in our large family when I was younger. Mom allowed us input into meals, but the rule was it couldn’t cost more than $5 total for all 8 of us! That was limiting, but also helped us be part of the process of meal planning and learning to budget.
my family of six is still, in 2010, using the rule of ‘$5 dinners’
I am feeding a hardworking dad, me, 26 & 24 year old working men, 14 & 12 year old ravenous teen/pre-teen. It is doable without eating beans more than once a week.
Jenny, What is the $5 dinner rule(Seems I have heard of that)How do you make it work?