grocery shopping myths + the truth behind them.

everybody eats, so everybody needs to buy groceries. it seems like it should be a super straightforward thing, but in all honesty, learning to buy groceries (without going broke and/or eating junk al the time) was one of the hardest "adult skills" i had to learn not only are there about ten million variables when it comes to grocery shipping, there are a lot of "rules" and "methods" out there that are "supposed" to help make shopping faster/easier/cheaper/whatever. the main problem with a lot of these rules/methods/whatever, is that they dont really account for the fact that not all families have the same needs/preferences, and they definitely dont account for the fact that grocery costs/options vary widely depending on where you live (trust me, i could write a novel on the differences between buying groceries in rural arizona vs. southern california). 

over the past five years, ive tried quite a few of these different "rules" and "methods" that frugal living bloggers share promising huge grocery savings and frankly... theyre chock full of lies. ok maybe not like, malicious lies, more like well-meaning myths that got passed around without really checking how factual they actually are. so before i get started with sharing tips and tricks for eating healthy on a budget, here are a few of the most common "grocery myths" and the truth behind them: 

myth: you have to use coupons. 

truth: coupons are actually not an easy way to save money. can they be helpful? absolutely, but coupons alone will not solve your grocery budget troubles (trust me, its been over a year since i last clipped a coupon and were spending less on groceries than ever before). 

myth: you have to keep a database of prices and memorize "price cycles" 

truth: not really. if youve ever watched "extreme couponers" or read a lot of frugal living type blogs they talk a lot about these two things. frankly, both of these are HUGE time investments that may not be all that worth it (unless you live entirely off packaged foods). 

myth: you have to shop at a lot of stores. 

truth: nope (i only shop at one!) technically, if you wanted to get the BEST possible price on EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL ITEM you ever buy, then yeah, youll need to go to a lot of stores, but will this save money in the long run? probably not. 

myth: you have to buy in bulk. 

truth: it depends. im going to be completely honest: there are a TON of benefits to buying things (food and otherwise) in bulk, BUT its not necessarily practical for everyone/every thing. weve gone through phases of buying a lot in bulk and not buying anything in bulk and... its kind of a wash. 

myth: saving money on groceries is hard and time consuming. 

truth: absolutely not. again going back to the extreme couponers and frugal living bloggers, they make it way more complicated than it needs to be. i promise, the more you simplify your grocery shopping, the less youll spend, and the less youll want to rip your hair out. 

myth: healthy food is too expensive. 

truth: junk food is actually WAY more expensive. i know packaged foods have better "deals", but thats because theyre marked up so much. when you buy fresh food, youre just paying for the food, but when you buy packaged, processed food, youre paying for the ingredients, the processing, the packaging, etc., typically paying more money for less, lower quality food. 

myth: you have to have a "stockpile". 

truth: its better to just buy what you need. even though "stockpiling" food when its cheapest to last until its cheap again sounds like it would save money, it really doesnt: first, you have to spend the money up front to buy the huge quantities, then you have to store all of it, then you have to make sure you actually eat it before it goes bad. its also super time consuming AND gets you stuck eating the same things over and over again. 

saving money on groceries has a reputation for being a complicated code that needs to be cracked, when really, with some simple common sense, anyone can do it. 

have you ever run into these "grocery myths"? what are your thoughts on them?

other kinds of clutter (+ why they matter)

through my series on minimal living, I've spent most of my time talking about stuff. you know, the physical clutter that fills up our homes and gets in the way of what we actually want to do in life. cutting back on clutter is a huge part of moving toward minimalism, but as weve made our transition, we quickly realized that it wasnt just stuff closing up our lives. as we purged and cleaned and learned to live with less stuff, it became apparent that in a lot of ways, this "other" clutter was just as, if not more, harmful than the physical clutter we were working so hard to fight against. 
so what exactly do i mean by "other kinds of clutter"? i mean things like: 
digital clutter. all the files, photos, emails, etc. that are filling up your computers/devices. not only do these things get in the way of you finding what you actually need, they also take up valuable memory that you could be using for something more productive. 
mental clutter. all the mental "lists" we tend to make to try and feel more organized (things we need to buy, things we need to get done, plans we need to make, etc.), have a tendency to do the opposite and make us stressed out and frazzled. making a habit of writing them down can make a huge difference in the stress/anxiety department (this has been a huge one for me personally. yes, i do spend way too much money on notepads and calendars). 
media clutter. this includes both media media (tv shows, news, and the like), as well as social media platforms/accounts that you follow/watch but arent getting any benefit from. im not saying that all media is bad and that you have to live in a cave, but what i am saying is that when you start cutting out the stuff that youre not really into, it frees up SO much time and mental energy. 
false productivity. by this i mean all the little things we do to check off boxes on our to-do lists so we feel like were doing something but arent really. for example, i used to do a LOT of internet surveys (for money): almost every day id spend at least half an hour clicking on things feeling SO productive when really all i did was make a couple of dollars in gift cards. for a time this was a good way to make a little extra money, but as time went on (and life got more complicated) i realized that i was using a LOT of valuable time on... well, nothing really. 
unfinished projects. this one is a double whammy: unfinished projects take up physical space just by existing, and also mental space by reminding us that theyre there and need us to finish them. when the unfinished projects start piling up, make the decision to either get rid of them or actually finish them. and dont start any new projects until every unfinished one has met one fate or the other. 
time sucks. you know, those dumb little things you get sucked into for no apparent reason that you dont even enjoy (im not talking about recreational activities, im talking about the ones that serve no purpose. entertainment is a very important purpose). this might be phone games or facebook scrolling or clickbait articles or whatever, but youd be surprised at how much smoother life can go when you let them (whatever they are for you) go. 
overcommitment. much like filling up your day with false productivity and time sucks keeps you from getting anything really important done, overcommitting yourself so that every day on your calendar is booked with something does the exact same thing, just on a bigger scale. i mean, theres nothing wrong with being busy if all that busy-ness is intentional and productive, but nothing good comes from being busy for the sake of being busy.  
taking the time to deal with the clutter in our home really opened our eyes to the other kinds of clutter in our lives, and it didnt take long for use to realize that these types of things had exactly the same nasty side effects as the "regular" kind of clutter. this may seem like a kind of negative revelation, however, just like the stuff in our home, as we identify and address these other sources of clutter, were seeing the same kinds of benefits to the decluttering all over again. 
what are your thoughts on these other kinds of clutter? how do you deal with them to simplify your life? 

why poverty luxe?

last week i outlined what the poverty luxe lifestyle is, now today i want to talk about why we live poverty luxe. i mean, why dont we just dave ramsay ourselves to financial freedom? why dont we just work a million side-hustles to make more money? why dont we devote ourselves to being as frugal as humanly possible to save every penny we can? why dont we just accept that were poor and live "like poor people are supposed to"?

well, the short answer to that is because none of that is what we want. in fact, some of that is stuff weve tried, and frankly, it doesnt make us happy. why? (again, short answer here), is because all of those lifestyles require being obsessed with money: how much you have, how much you want to have, and how youre going to get it. 

the long answer is that while weve always struggled financially, ive always had expensive taste, and james has always had expensive hobbies. to make things even more difficult, neither of us were taught good financial management skills growing up. as you can imagine, our first couple of years were bad and the life we had made for our family looked nothing like what either of us wanted. we (and by we i mostly mean i) were pretty dang miserable: no matter what we did, we were always out of money with nothing much to show for it. 

after that i spent a lot of time reading about personal finance: different rules, different plans, different methods, and nothing really worked for us. a lot of the information out there operates under the assumption that you make plenty of money but are irresponsible with how you spend it (which is exactly the opposite of our problem), that youre trying to pay off a ton of debt (we didnt have any debt until this last year and only have a modest balance on one credit card because james had a bad year while i was in school), or that any kind of extravagance is completely off limits until you have a certain amount of money in the bank (im not even going to go in to why i despise this mindset). and dont even get me started on the kinds of stuff i found while looking for frugal living tips...

we wanted to make a better life for ourselves, both in the short term and the long term, but we also wanted to make sure that we werent saving "enjoying life" for some unknown (and not guaranteed) future time when wed have enough money to "deserve" nice things. 

so we learned. we adapted. we applied what we could from the research i had done but disregarded the rest. we figured out what was important to us and what wasnt. we figured out exactly where our money went and why we were running out every month. we cut back where we could to make room for the "luxuries" that made us happy (healthy food, disneyland, nice clothes, dinners out, etc.). weve spent the past five years figuring out the balance between the money we have and the life we want, and I'm glad we did, because even though we dont have a lot, were at least taking steps to making a life that makes us happy instead of making ourselves miserable doing what other people say we should do. 

and now, im going to start sharing some of the tips and tricks so that you can learn to love living the broke life too. its possible, i promise. 

are you out there living the broke life too? what do you want to learn?