Budget? The Truth is Critical

Creating and living by a budget is nothing more than using an efficient system of running your household. It may not be easy to see the forest for the trees at first, but with practice you can see where your money should be going and where it should not be going.

The key to any budget, whether it's for a household, a business or a government (listen up, Washington!) is sometimes painful honesty about what you really need and then let the things that you don't need take a back seat for awhile.

What do you need? Food, clothing, shelter, medical attention at times, insurance, taxes... make your list (you'll need different categories and more of them) and then look back over your last few months and see where you spent what. Did it fit into your categories? Why not?

Write it all down and keep working at it until you can make sense of it. That's the hard part. We have a tendency to fool ourselves. That new shirt might have been a necessity, but it might very well have been an indulgence. Be honest with yourself, as much as you can.

Yes, honesty can be brutal. It can hurt, but you can't really control your money until you understand what you're really doing with it.

Eat better on a budget

Healthy eating on a budget means eating seasonally, avoiding processed food, sticking to basics, cooking from scratch and using coupons with wisdom and caution.

Eating seasonally might take some getting used to, but you'll get the best of food for the least price if you do. Produce which is in season means sweet and tempting strawberries in the spring lucious, juicy watermelon in the middle of summer, firm, bright apples in the fall and plump and tasty turkerys in early winter. Sure, you can get those things other times, but they're just not as good.

When you avoid processed food, you avoid paying for chemicals that you can't pronounce and your body either can't process or does it to its own detriment. Processing makes a food shelf or refrigerator stable at the cost of nutrients and flavor. Other, simple foods are just as easy to prepare and much better for you.

Basic food is food that covers all the nutritional needs without any fancy sauces or flavorings. No exotic or expensive tastes, but good, simple food that satisfies your hunger. Save the expensive and fancy food for special occasions and you'll enjoy them more, anyway.

Cooking from scratch is a necessity if you want to eat basic food because nobody else is going to make it for you. A pot of beans and a pan of cornbread is easy to make, inexpensive and oh, so good! Simple recipes may be harder to find than complicated ones, but it's worth the hunt. Google is your friend.

Coupons can be really good budget boosters, if you use them right. Never use a coupon to buy something you wouldn't buy in the first place. To save money, make out your grocery list, then go looking for coupons to lower the cost of what you need.

There you go. Lower your entire food bill and eat better, too.