It’s official. We’re in a jobless recovery with unemployment rates above 10 percent–the highest since the late-1980s. Before we go off half-cocked and fearful about our financial futures, it serves us well to consider the term job-less. That’s right. It means fewer jobs than we’d like. But it doesn’t mean we’re out of work. There’s always plenty of that going around.
The problem is that we’ve become fixated on the cash economy–forgetting that like our grandparents, we can make much happen simply by the sweat of our own brows. Like in our own kitchens for example.
Here’s how a dollar spent on the food budget breaks down from the latest available USDA data (1996):
23 cents for the actual farm cost of the food item
38 cents for labor
8 cents on packaging
and 31 cents on the cost of doing business: factory operations, shipping, and advertising
Without putting too fine a point on things, we’ll save 10 to 40 percent on our food bills when we shop the bulk bins, cart our clean bottles back to the store for a refill on cooking oil, and do our own home-cooking. Not bad for a starting wage–and of course, when you take a flying leap of faith and embrace measurefree cooking, you’ll find your new job description entirely open to creative personal growth and whatever else grabs you.
Tags: Food Thoughts, frugal, home cooking, Thrift