Best of Intentions

Today's blog was initially going to be about how to improve your financial situation. Having just spent over $200 on day camps for Kidlet, I feel like I am on weak ground. Ever notice that the Frugal Living type books always talk about the virtues of taking your children for day trips to a park in a different neighbourhod, or a long bus ride, or take advantage of free programs the library offers or instead of the swimming pool, turn the sprinkler on. The Living on the Cheap gurus talk about taking your children for picnics in the park, exchanging families for a day to give the kids a change of pace or have the siblings pretend they are all the same age. Notice all those are pluralized? It's like the writers and authours assume if you have one child, you must have tons of money and can just put them in camp the whole summer. I understand for larger families it's not as much the cost because they budget for it as trying to find camps that will make three different kids three different ages happy or in one case, triples with different interests. After a few changes in plans due to typos, plus some input from my son, for one week in the mornings in July he will be in a Swim/Craft/Games type daycamp and in August I'll have the experience of being without my son all day for a week while he indulges his love of science. I'll just spend the rest of the spring and all of summer penny pinching to defray the cost.

There are some ways to save money. I call it the nickel and dime principle. I find it's not the loonie or twoonies that tend to make me go gosh darnit, its things like spending $1.35 for a small fruit salad at Safeway because I was rushed and forgot to grab an apple from the basket. I have another friend who realized that if she brought four ounces of cooked meat to work, she could swing by McDonald's, order small fries and a side salad, put the meat from home in the salad and get her junk food fix while saving a few bucks. Another man realized that by Supersizing his weekly junk food indulgence, he was doing himself out of about $30.00 a year. He took that $30.00 and used it to make a donation to Samaritan's Purse at Christmas time. It's easy to industriously go through eight different flyers to get the best price on electronics or vehicle parts. It's hard to think about the ninety-nine cents here, sixty cents there that can add up over the month. If you don't believe me, try for the next month to at least analyze how frequently you spent the extra forty cents getting something big or the few extra dollars because you didn't bring a snack from home.

I have a special eating lifestyle that is in part due to food intolerance, in part due to the fact after I did it for about three months I realized even with the cost of mainly organic food and supplements; I was still saving about $25-30 a month depending on how well I followed Ann Louise Gittleman's Fat Flush Plan. I never realized how much money Fat Flushing was saving me until someone mentioned how much granola bars, animal shaped crackers and her special fancy coffees cost her every time she went out with the kids. Thanks to Fat Flush, I would bring my own snacks from homes, which were usually fresh fruit or vegetables plus cheese for Kidlet and water flavoured with homemade cranberry juice for myself. Under the category of like mother, like son, both my son and I get just as sugar buzzed off full strength fruit juice as we would off pop.

I think God blesses us with the wisdom to know what we can safely eat and what we can't. We need to respect other people's eating lifestyles. For some people, it could just be wanting to live more frugally, for others it could be food intolerances or even allergies. As well, all over the Bible are mentions of not over indulging. I don't think going to Wendy's or McDonalds will send you straight to Hell, although your doctor might give you Hell for eating places like that on a daily basis but I do believe that God would like us to think before we open our pocketbook or whip out our bank card to make a food purchase.

Proverbs 6:6-8 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies iin the summer and gathers her food in the harvest.