3698: Eating Healthy On A Budget by Tania Brown with Financial Finesse on Saving Money

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[00:00:54] This is Optimal Finance Daily, eating healthy on a budget by Tanya Brown with FinancialFinesse.com, and I'm Justin Malek. This is our Sunday bonus episode, where I share an episode from one of the other shows in our network. And today's comes from my brother's show, Optimal Health Daily. You can find that podcast wherever you're listening to this. So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:01:26] Eating healthy on a budget by Tanya Brown with FinancialFinesse.com. Okay, I will admit it. I'm a little bit of a health nut. I love to run, do obstacle races, and do CrossFit, and decided to also do the Insanity videos because I felt I needed a little something extra. My husband just looks at me, shakes his head, and loves me enough to give me the Epsom salt when he sees me struggling to get off the couch, without commentary. Now that is true love.

[00:01:56] I also cook everything from scratch. I wish I could say that this was a result of a deep desire to provide the very best foods for my family, but that was not my initial motivation. I had one child who developed allergies to a variety of foods, and a husband diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. After a few months, I got tired of dissecting every package of food I bought to make sure that everyone could eat it. So I stopped buying processed foods.

[00:02:25] Whenever I mention this, I always hear how expensive it is to eat healthy. I tell people that when I added up the cost of the doctor's bills, medications, and hospital bills, I found that cooking with nutrient-dense foods actually ended up being much cheaper. My oldest son has not had a problem in at least a year, and my husband is not only down over 30 pounds, but has reduced his medication to the point where the doctor is considering taking him off everything.

[00:02:52] As a friend once told me, you are either paying the farmer or the pharmacist. I also learned that with a few strategies, you can significantly reduce the cost of eating healthy. The first key to eating on a budget is to meal plan. I found that we were wasting food because we bought it without a plan as to how we were going to eat it. I'm a little challenged both in time and thought to develop meal plans worthy of the cooking channel, so I quickly turned to online meal planners.

[00:03:22] eMeals is one of my favorites. For about $60 a year, you get an email sent to you weekly with seven meals. I double the recipe so we have lunch and dinner. You can choose from a wide variety of meals. 30-minute, slow cooker, which is a great time saver, diabetic, gluten-free, and budget-friendly to name a few. You can even match some meal plans to a grocery store so you can save on your food items. You also get a shopping list.

[00:03:50] I'm so rushed, I often forget my list. But with the eMeals app, you can always have your grocery list handy. This works great if you're single or have a family of eight. The crockpot has become my favorite cooking time-saving tool. You can put all of the crockpot items in a freezer bag and dump them in the crockpot in the morning. This is especially helpful on the days your kids lose their shoes, coats, homework, or whatever they decide to forget about that morning five minutes before you have to leave.

[00:04:18] The second thing I had to learn to do is prioritize exactly what I would spend my money on. Our doctor recommended as many organic meats and vegetables as possible to reduce our daughter's exposure to allergens. I only buy organic beef and chicken. I figured that if I had to choose, I would rather not have the foods pumped with antibiotics and hormones versus pesticides. I found a local farmer and partnered with a few friends to cow share. We actually shared a cow and split the meat.

[00:04:48] This got the cost of our organic grass-fed ground beef down to about $4 a pound. We also found another farmer and got organic pasture-raised poultry and eggs through a CSA much cheaper than in a grocery store. CSAs are community-supported agriculture programs that bring local farmers and consumers together to offer monthly supplies of fresh meat and produce. Some do this seasonally and others do it year-round.

[00:05:15] Many deliver the food supplies locally so you don't have to travel. Localharvest.org is a website that explains CSAs and can even help you find one in your area. As for my fruits, I only buy what they call the Dirty Dozen organically and the rest conventionally. The Environmental Working Group, ewg.org, lists the Dirty Dozen foods which they consider to be high in pesticides as well as the Clean 15, which are foods they consider low in pesticides

[00:05:45] and which some would consider okay to buy conventionally. Again, I am prioritizing. The Dirty Dozen are produce that are considered to have the most pesticides. Ferties, apples, spinach, lettuce, and strawberries are almost always on the list. A rule of thumb is that you can buy any fruit with a thick skin conventionally like bananas, pineapples, avocados, and mango. There are also veggies that have few pesticide residues that some consider okay to buy conventionally

[00:06:15] like onions, asparagus, sweet peas, cabbage, and broccoli. I also learned to get creative with veggies. I found the healthier pasta expensive, so I sub with veggies. I got a spiralizer that makes just about anything into a noodle, sweet potatoes and apples to name a few. I found zucchini to be the most versatile. Two zucchinis are inexpensive and make enough pasta for our entire family for dinner and lunch. It also absorbs the flavor of whatever you put into it.

[00:06:45] Better yet, you can spiralize it in about two minutes without having to cook it first. My five-year-old does it. Cook it if you wish in about two minutes. It cooks quickly and you have an easy meal. I use zucchini as pasta for everything. Spaghetti squash is also a good alternative, but I will admit I'm too lazy to cook it first. It took some time and a lot of whining, but eventually everyone's taste buds changed and now I get requests for veggies. My kids love them now.

[00:07:13] With a little bit of strategizing and planning, you can really eat healthy on a budget. You just listened to the post titled Eating Healthy on a Budget by Tanya Brown with FinancialFinesse.com. You've heard me talk about how I started tracking every dollar in and out of my life back in 2010. It began as a business school assignment and I liked it so much I never stopped. For years that meant a spreadsheet I updated by hand.

[00:07:42] Now, Monarch does it for me. It tracks everything, accounts, investments, savings goals, and spending all in one place. And going automatic showed me something my spreadsheet never did. My savings rate had slipped as my lifestyle crept up. It's like having a financial advisor in your pocket, flagging spending spikes before they become a problem. My favorite part is just asking the AI assistant, Can I afford this vacation without touching my savings?

[00:08:12] And getting a real answer. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code OPTIMAL at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with code OPTIMAL. Right now, when you buy more carpet at the Home Depot, you save more. During our Buy More, Save More event going on now, upgrade your carpeting with the top brands and save up to 15% off installed carpet projects.

[00:08:42] Installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot. Select from a wide assortment of carpet to fit your room, lifestyle, and budget during the Buy More, Save More event at the Home Depot. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. I love the quote that Tanya shared. You are paying either the farmer or the pharmacist. I know that when money is tight,

[00:09:11] keeping a roof over your head and making sure you have water and power are the priorities. It's hard to look beyond tomorrow and think about where the money is going to come from. So don't feel as though you have to buy organic everything all the time. As Tanya mentioned, prioritize. I've mentioned the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 lists on this show many times before. So take a look at those lists. Anything that's on the Clean 15, you can buy conventionally and you'll save a lot of money that way.

[00:09:40] Now joining a Community Supported Agriculture Program or CSA is also a great idea. Personally, when I joined, I found I was getting too much food each month from the CSA. I couldn't finish it all. So I decided to share the food with my family and then we split the cost. I was once asked, look, if you were only given the option to purchase organic foods for just three food groups, which would they be? And here was my response. Whichever three you consume most often.

[00:10:10] That's because the more often you consume those foods, the more exposure you're going to get. There's no point in me telling you to buy organic pasta if you never eat pasta. So think about buying organic for those foods you consume most often. Hopefully, it's whole fruit, vegetables, and lean proteins. All right, that's it from me for today. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being a subscriber of the show. I hope you have a great rest of your day. And I'll be back with our usual Sunday bonus episode in just a second.

[00:10:39] So I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits.