Do you ever have fish and loaves kind of days? Weeks? How about a month?
Fish and loaves kind of times are those when you look at all the food in your pantry and think this is never going to make it all week/month. Your mind will say, "Never going to happen." While your faith says, "God is much bigger than this."
I call it fish and loaves because it reminds me of the little boy who offered his meager meal to the Lord. Jesus turned it into a feast that fed 5,000 men (not including the women and children it also fed).
We find ourselves in a fish and loaves kind of time. It wasn't exactly how we planned for things to go these next few weeks, but our plans are just that "our plans". Because of a budgeting error with how much income we will have this month our grocery budget has taken quite a hit. I had planned on having $250 more this month than I will actually have... which means that in the course of the next 2 weeks I will have $125 less than I had thought. This makes things quite a bit tighter.
To make things worse I've spent all but $55 of what I have to spend from now until the 18th of October. It's time to get creative. And to see how God will do big things with this small amount of money.
Now, I should also say that my cupboards aren't bare. I have plenty of beef in our freezer to get us by too. I have a 5 gallon bucket almost full of potatoes. And many other random items filling my pantry. We will not starve. Not even close. The difference will be how "well" we eat. I wish we had more vegetables and I'll have to be careful to spend that $55 wisely on frozen veggies instead of fresh ones. That's fine. Perhaps we'll even have to buy canned vegetables ... ahhhh! ;)
A friend recently told me that she stopped buying groceries for a month. She said they had plenty of food in their pantry and there was no reason to go out and buy more. Furthermore, her husband and her made it a game with their children to see what they could come up with for dinner each night. That makes my frugal side smile. They essentially made lemonade out of lemons... or more so they made a lot of baked beans in a lot of different ways!
The competitor in me says that I can do this with money to spare.
Hotsauce is far more practical and points out that we have a babysitter fund for this month that we will not be using. It doesn't make any sense to keep money in a babysitter fund while we go without toilet paper! But, what's the fun in that?
I have no doubt that no one is going hungry over here... but that a little more planning will serve us well. I look forward to seeing how God blesses us and how the kids will rise to the occasion of finding unique snack options!
How about you? What do you do with $55 and 7 mouths to feed for the course of 9 days?
*Note: While looking for a "fish and loaves" photo I found this website http://tentalents.org and read a few of the articles. I would recommend checking the website out if you're interested in "devotional type" articles on finances.
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I call it fish and loaves because it reminds me of the little boy who offered his meager meal to the Lord. Jesus turned it into a feast that fed 5,000 men (not including the women and children it also fed).
We find ourselves in a fish and loaves kind of time. It wasn't exactly how we planned for things to go these next few weeks, but our plans are just that "our plans". Because of a budgeting error with how much income we will have this month our grocery budget has taken quite a hit. I had planned on having $250 more this month than I will actually have... which means that in the course of the next 2 weeks I will have $125 less than I had thought. This makes things quite a bit tighter.
To make things worse I've spent all but $55 of what I have to spend from now until the 18th of October. It's time to get creative. And to see how God will do big things with this small amount of money.
Now, I should also say that my cupboards aren't bare. I have plenty of beef in our freezer to get us by too. I have a 5 gallon bucket almost full of potatoes. And many other random items filling my pantry. We will not starve. Not even close. The difference will be how "well" we eat. I wish we had more vegetables and I'll have to be careful to spend that $55 wisely on frozen veggies instead of fresh ones. That's fine. Perhaps we'll even have to buy canned vegetables ... ahhhh! ;)
A friend recently told me that she stopped buying groceries for a month. She said they had plenty of food in their pantry and there was no reason to go out and buy more. Furthermore, her husband and her made it a game with their children to see what they could come up with for dinner each night. That makes my frugal side smile. They essentially made lemonade out of lemons... or more so they made a lot of baked beans in a lot of different ways!
The competitor in me says that I can do this with money to spare.
Hotsauce is far more practical and points out that we have a babysitter fund for this month that we will not be using. It doesn't make any sense to keep money in a babysitter fund while we go without toilet paper! But, what's the fun in that?
I have no doubt that no one is going hungry over here... but that a little more planning will serve us well. I look forward to seeing how God blesses us and how the kids will rise to the occasion of finding unique snack options!
How about you? What do you do with $55 and 7 mouths to feed for the course of 9 days?
*Note: While looking for a "fish and loaves" photo I found this website http://tentalents.org and read a few of the articles. I would recommend checking the website out if you're interested in "devotional type" articles on finances.
Oh, such a fun challenge! So, you may go a few days without milk. No big deal. Our country drinks the most milk and has the highest rate of osteoporosis so I'm pretty sure we aren't getting our needed calcium from milk anyway. Water is plenty healthy. And, if you don't care about healthy, you can feed many hungry children for very little money quite conveniently with those little frozen pot pies :-) Or how about baked potatoes for a meal? Need some protein? Add an egg on the side. Huge bags of frozen vegetables at Sam's are $5 and they go much farther than canned. Although, maybe those have gone up too like everything else does everytime I go to the store! Do you have flour? You could make homemade pancakes for a meal and use jam for a topping if you are out of syrup. Anyway, just a few ideas. And definitely DO NOT touch the sitter money. Cause then maybe you can carry it over to next month and have an extra date night. At the library :-)
ReplyDeleteI love that you think this is a fun challenge! I do too! Hotsauce was going through the envelopes tonight and looking over the budget... he was ready to make adjustments. I think that's the provider/hunter that God has made him to be. I asked him to wait and see what we can do on this tighter budget. It's a chance for me to change my way of thinking. I know that I can be very frugal when it comes to making meals, sometimes I just don't feel like it. Or I have a craving that I don't want to resist! Also I am learning to be content whether in plenty or in want... in all things God provides!
DeleteBy the way, I love your blog's name!!