My Biggest Monthly Expense

Posted on October 3, 2010 2 Comments

Know what my biggest expense each month is?  I’ll give you a few hints – I plan evenings around it, I use it every three hours (or more!) and it’s always on my mind. Got it? It’s food!  I’ll skip the detailed history about my relationship with food and just say that I started buying mostly organics about five years ago, and in the past year have made an effort to cook more meals at home for my health and my waistline.

In the budgeting world, organics are a hot topic. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford them, despite being a one-income household. I shop almost exclusively at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, and it shows in my monthly budget. I spend more on groceries and restaurants each month than any other one expense (aside from rent). It’s a conscious decision that I feel good about. I like knowing that no added hormones or antibiotics are in my food. I appreciate that my meat isn’t washed with ammonias and bleaches, and that my vegetables aren’t sprayed with harmful chemicals. I’m skeptical that animals are treated better by organic farmers, but I hope it’s true. I also hope that the farmers are using sustainable methods that are better for the planet. Of course, it’s impossible to know without actually visiting or seeing the farm where the food comes from, which I would like to do someday.

Given that background, then, I wasn’t surprised to see the conditions of “big food” farms featured on the movie I watched last night, “Food, Inc.” (2008). I posted on Facebook that I was watching the movie, and one of my cousins – also in a single-income household, but with four kids and a wife in school – replied, saying in his area the difference between a dozen regular eggs and cage-free eggs is more than $2.00. Multiply this cost difference to an entire shopping trip for a family of six, and you can see why organics are such a hot topic.  One of my co-workers calls Whole Foods “Whole Paycheck.” Most average, working families would have to significantly increase their food budgets to afford organics.  For a lot of folks, that’s simply not an option due to income. For others, it would require a complete change in priorities. Would you be willing to give up car payment number two in order to afford organic groceries every month?

Admittedly I’ve not done the math to figure out the cost difference between buying organic vs. buying regular. But others have. One woman estimated buying organics resulted in a 37 percent increase in her grocery bill. Another study claims that people who consistently buy organics and other healthy foods spend 20 percent more than those who buy less nutritious foods. So as a concerned budgeter, how can I be such a big fan of foods that cost more? Even with all that I like about organics, isn’t a 20 to 37 percent decrease in my biggest monthly expense an easy way to grow my net worth and increase my savings for a home?  Shouldn’t I be solely focused on the bottom line?

For me, the answer is easy. It’s a matter of priorities. Yes, I want to grow my net worth and save for a home. But not at the expense of my health. If that means I have to have less home, car, or “things” to support my food choices, I’m OK with that. I know that my genetics aren’t great; preventable food-related diseases run deep on both sides of my family – heart disease, high cholesterol, stroke, diabetes, cancer – so the choices I make today could potentially save me health care costs in the long run. It’s an intensely personal choice. But it’s one that is worthwhile to think about if you’re in your 20′s – and before you start having kids – because the farther along you go buying cheaper calories, the more difficult it will be to make the switch in the long run.

I don’t know if I’ll always be able to afford organic groceries. If I were to lose my job, this is unfortunately one of the first choices I’d have to reconsider after all the easy decisions like cable and DVR. I feel pretty strongly that when I have kids, they’ll be eating organic foods, but it’s impossible to know whether my budget will be able to afford feeding extra mouths organically on a budget.

The benefit of budgeting, and constantly re-budgeting and evaluating your expenses, is that it gives you the freedom to make such lifestyle choices. If you want to buy organics, you have the option to build it in and ask yourself: what’s more important – cable TV or nutrition? If you’re looking solely at the bottom line, though, with no other context or consideration for long-term costs, I’d encourage you to read up on the subject and make an informed decision.

Category: Life
   Tags: food , health , Priorities

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