What it Costs to Feed a Family of Four

As I constantly debate about whether or not I should be a stay at home mom the main thing it comes down to is money. Because as always in life everything is about MONEY. I seem to always go over budget when it comes to food, so I’ve started to wonder if its not really just me, but if my budget itself is out of line. Which upon consulting twitter it appears as though it is my budget. $200 a month for four people (well 3.5) is pretty damn unreasonable. And that’s supposedly including my weekly Chipotle at $10.01, so obviously I always exceeded it by a lot.

I was directed to this MSNBC article by @PolPrairieMama which was helpful and referred me to the USDA breaks outs for a thrifty, low cost, moderate or liberal food plan and updated with prices as of April 2011. Basically my monthly costs would range between $530-$1030 for a family of four dependent on the plan. Which is soooo much closer to what I actually wind up spending monthly ($500ish) and also not remotely what I was expecting. I can’t believe food costs so much!

This also must be what The H is always talking about with the kids being expensive. They don’t seem expensive, but I suppose we do need to feed them and apparently that costs a lot of money, who would have known!

This is the link to the PDF of the USDA breakouts:

http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/FoodPlans/2011/CostofFoodApr2011.pdf

And…. Fail.

For the last two (three, four?) weeks I’ve just dropped the ball. On a lot. Mostly I’ve been frantically busy at work thus not giving me the time to balance my checkbook anally like a normally do. And there was Easter which interrupted my recording of what I eat, and exercising. Or did I stop the latter before that?

Either way what happened is simple. It’s what always happens. I’ve eaten too much, exercised none and spent lots. New news? Hardly. Theme that’s lost it charm? Definitely.

Ugh, even I don’t care anymore. I’m sick of writing the same old news, the same old failures. I’m bored with it. I’m over it. I can’t imagine how you feel about it.

I’m trying to be on the whole, “today is a new day” bandwagon, but I”m not feeling it. Fundamentally, I sort of don’t care.

I don’t care if I can’t afford to buy it.

I don’t care if I shouldn’t eat it.

I don’t care if I should exercise, my clothes don’t fit, I’m going to be a contestant on the Biggest Loser instead of watching it.

It’s not a priority for me.

I realize that I should really rearrange that sentence to say, I’m not a priority.

A part of me wonders if the reason I was so successful the last time I tried to lose weight and was so successful saving money and paying off debt before is that both occurred while I was in therapy. And both stopped occurring when I stopped therapy (well and also had a baby). I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of therapy. I could talk to a friend for a $25 co-pay a month. There was nothing wrong, everything was fine, it was just talking about my day. But maybe on some level something else was happening? Something else was working on my sub conscious?

I’m self-sufficient (right word?) enough to believe that I should be able to do this on my own. Which is why all those years that I should have been in therapy because there was something wrong I wasn’t. So why go when everything is honky dory? I think its the plague of all mothers that we always put ourselves last. There are so many other things, there are the kids, and the house and the husband, and the school forms, and the yard, and the dogs, and the dishwasher, and the garage door is broken, and we need diapers and we’re out of milk, the bike tires need air, have you called the plumber, when is there time for me amongst all that? (Also, all of the above sentences are true things I’ve got currently floating in my head.)

I can’t justify spending time exercising when there is so much that needs to be done around the house. I can’t justify not buying something for my kids because I know they would love it so much and/or need it. (Though while I needed a new stroller, I probably didn’t need to buy a Maclaren this weekend! But it provides me a very large amount of joy!) I can’t stop myself from going out to lunch because I love spending time with my co-workers and need out of this super hostile environment.

Sigh. I’m going to try again. Because like I’m always telling Bear, you have to at least try. So I will try and start small again. Not look back at the times I’ve failed or even when I succeeded, but focus instead on now and not then. (Also, remember Now & Then? What a great movie.) So as I drink my 240 calorie coke that I just bought for a dollar I will focus instead on good things I’ll do after I finish my coke.

Anxiety, Overeating and the Fear of Judgement

I know when it happens. When that moment that I want to just devour anything possible happens. It just happened now upon reading the H’s email that the MIL can’t watch the kids early enough for us to be able to see the movie (we already bought living social tickets and need to use soon) before my MN best friend’s birthday party on Friday. Within the same email he mentioned that the garage door is broken, and can’t be fixed but needs to be replaced. I got filled with the desire to eat – anything. And massive quantities of it. Then our IT Asset Manager came by asking me if I still had that loaner laptop. Yes, in fact I use it every single day, all the time, as the primary laptop in our house since my 2003 Apple is quite finicky and slow. They need it back tomorrow. I didn’t have the courage to ask if they would just give it/sell it to me after all he said all they’re going to do is wipe it and recycle it.

My co-worker, the New Mom, was then just telling us a story about how she cried in front of the Prof in a meeting on Monday just because of all the anxiety she had this past weekend. As she was saying that I felt the overwhelming urge to a) start crying b) hug her c) tell her all of my own woes. Instead, since we’re having a hallway conversation at work, I remained composed despite what was going on in my head.

This all happened in a span of five minutes. In those five minutes I went from being “good” and sticking to a reasonable diet all day to falling nearly to shambles. If I had the access I would have eaten three McDonald’s meals already. If I hadn’t spent the entire day in spreadsheets analyzing my budget I’d go home and pick some up for the family for dinner. But honestly we don’t have the $18 that would cost.

I feel like I’m holding in too much. The H falls asleep moments after we get to bed so I can hardly engage him in a conversation. Bear is up until shortly before that so I’m not about to talk in front of him. I don’t want to burden my friends. I always feel like I’m bothering them. It’s something in 26 years I’ve never learned, I can never seem to go to my friends with troubles. How strange, what else are friends supposed to be for? I fear judgment above all else.

While I was just in the pumping room I jotted down a list of things that are currently stressing me out. I had 17 items on the list. I ordered them by how much stress they cause me. #3 was what people think of me only surpassed by money (#1) and my weight (#2). Oddly enough two of three work related ones didn’t show up until numbers 15 and 16.

I can’t psychologically convince myself not to care. Almost all of my worries are in some way correlated to other people’s opinions of me, my family and my home. Only two single worries of the 17 are actually just about me. And one is the Prof. His ineptitude and negative demeanor only affect me, and thus its 16 on the list.  #17 is my back pain (which is directly related to stress). How interesting that of all the things that worry me the last two are the ones that are just affecting me. I’m not even going to list my 17 because of what you the anonymous reader could possibly think about them.

Feb Resolution/Detox Fail

So another month in 2011 has come and gone and I have met no goals that I have set. I’ve decided perhaps I’m just lazy, selfish and irresponsible. What it comes down to is a fundamental  I don’t want to that dictates what I do and do not do. What I do not do is exercise, eat well or keep budgets. What I do is eat McDonalds, socialize with friends, lay around and spend money. I seem to be acutely aware of my transgressions but have no actual desire to change anything. Its an awful situation to be in (and realistically a probably easily remedied one) because I know everything that I do wrong, but I just don’t want to change it.

In essence I didn’t exercise once this month. I started out really good entering in what I ate daily for about 11 days and then I stopped. That was also the last time I weighed in — eek not looking forwarding to seeing how that number has fluctuated in the last 3 weeks. I’ve definitely accrued new debt. I’m constantly kicking myself for the fact that I could have paid of all of my credit cards but didn’t and instead accrued back debt that I had just paid off. Oh and back in November didn’t refinance the mortgage when the rates were 4.25%. FAIL. I did per the detox email The New Godmother weekly my spending and the first week there was definitely a feeling of nervousness of showing actual figures to someone, but that quickly went away after the first email. I feel inclined to continue sending it weekly to her, but I don’t feel like its having the desired outcome. She now is aware of the same thing I am — we eat out too much. I buy the kids too much stuff. These aren’t things I didn’t know.

Something new I’m going to try for March is not carrying credit cards with me. If I don’t have them then clearly I can’t spend. What I’ll wind up doing is maybe taking cash out and I can only spend the cash I have on hand. This will become effective tomorrow. Because I’ve already had two happy hours this week and tonight is a friend’s birthday dinner. Maybe better would be only carrying the card when I know I have to spend something like tonight’s dinner or next week when I’m having lunch with a co-worker for her birthday. We’ll see. Clearly I need to get back into the mode I was in last spring thru summer when I was a debt reduction powerhouse. I think what helped is that I didn’t pay daycare for almost 6 months so I had lots of excess cash and what doesn’t help now is that I pay 3x the amount in daycare than I did last year. We got our state tax refund last week and are expecting our federal one any day now and the H gets his yearly bonus in 2 weeks which is great, what would again be greater is that with that money we would be in a great spot, in a lets go on vacation great spot, but instead its just short of covering all of our debt. And not accruing more isn’t really in sight. We still have not figured out what to do about the fact that Squeegee died and the SIL is going to be needing her car back soon.

And exercise? Well yesterday I should have bought the Living Social deal for the Bikram Yoga studio in Woodbury, but I didn’t. As much as I complain every single day that none of my clothes fit me (which they don’t) another month passes and I’ve done nothing to remedy it. It comes down to the excuse that I’m too tired, too busy and work too late. Which are also all good excuses because when you don’t come home until 6:30 by the time you make dinner, get everyone to bed you’re: a) exhausted b) its 10pm and time for bed and c) rather watch Idol in bed and eat double stuf oreos.

I can’t wait until Bella is 3 before I get my ass in gear like I did with Bear. Mostly because when Bella is 3 I intend for her to have a 1 year old sister by then and if I’ve added more pregnancy weight on top of this pregnancy weight well then my friend I would be huge.

Referenced Blog Posts:

January Resolution Sum – up

February Detox

2011 Resolutions

January Resolution Sum Up

So let’s see how I did on my new years resolutions just a mere 31 days into the new year…

• Get back to pre-pregnancy weight.
  • Well I haven’t weighed myself in a long time but I can’t imagine after all the Chipotle, McDonalds and other eating out this month I’ve come anywhere near this.
• Exercise
  • I quit the gym… so no.
• Financial/ Career
  • Because of all the eating out done I definitely spent more than I should have this month. Plus with the baptism expenses, Valentine’s Day gifts and The H buying me a birthday present (even though I told him going to Chicago was my present) we did not achieve this.
  • I applied for my dream job and met with an upper level co-worker and asked him to write a recommendation to the CEO of the company I applied at since they’re friends.
• Take better care of my dogs
  • Well I’ve been sporadic with filling the Kong for the dogs, but they haven’t done anything too bad while we’ve been gone with the exception of eating Bear’s Megamind mask from the ZooBoo.
• Be a better Parents and apply some of these Mommy Resolutions
  • Bella sleeps almost exclusively in her crib during the day — woohoo. We still have not started a bedtime routine though.
  • We are better about bathing the kids — but not great.
  • Bear still watches too much TV, doesn’t wash his hands enough and cleaned his room every day until he didn’t.
  • We probably did have family dinner at least once a week.
• Me and The H Time
  • For my birthday we had dinner together even though friends invited us to go with them. I strongly debated this, but in the end decided for us to just have dinner and it was really nice!

All in all I would say I’m 50% ish on track. With the February Detox I have great hopes for the next 28 days!