Want to Beat High Costs? Start at Home

Commentary

The new cultural buzzword is “affordability.” Young people especially seek some sort of relief from perceived overpricing of food, housing, and energy. If this is a plague on the nation, what is its cure?

The first reaction is blame. Republicans blame former President Joe Biden; Democrats blame President Donald Trump. The poor blame the rich. The young blame the old. You know the drill. As a full-time farmer approaching the status of geezer, let me weigh in with some thoughts.

When Teresa and I married in 1980, we created an apartment in the attic of our family’s farmhouse so we could live cheaply and take care of my mom and dad, who continued living downstairs. I’m sure that the remodeling and the added kitchen were illegal without permits, but we proceeded anyway and lived up there for seven years. We didn’t ask and didn’t tell.

My grandmother lived outside our yard in what the Amish would call a doty house. When she passed away, my mom and dad moved over there, and Teresa and I, who had two children by that time, took over the whole farmhouse.

I bought my first car after graduating from college in 1979—a 1965 Dodge Coronet, three-speed on the column—from a neighbor for $50. We took our honeymoon in that car. We’d been married for 20 years before we spent a cumulative $10,000 on automobiles. Nobody needs a new car.

Teresa is a homemaking wizard, annually canning hundreds—800?—quarts of veggies from our garden. We milked a couple cows and made our own cottage cheese, yogurt, and butter. The Arab oil embargo in the 1970s spiked fuel prices, so, like many rural families, we installed a woodstove and quit buying fuel oil.

With our own food, no rent, no fuel, and cheap transportation, we lived on $300 per month when all our college graduate friends were trying to scrape by on $3,000 per month.

I can see the eyes roll: “But I don’t live on a farm and grow my own food.” If we lived a revolutionary, frugal (but incredibly happy) life compared with our friends, what can a person do today to combat affordability? Are we sunk? Are more inflationary bailouts the only answer?

In a spirit of encouragement rather than despair, here are some modern-day ways to combat affordability.

Buy Whole Foods—and in Bulk

Lunchables are $14 per pound in our grocery store and contain not half the nutrition of a pound of ground beef. Our farm produces pastured chicken—no vaccines, no genetically modified organism grains, no drugs—and although priced accordingly, our whole chicken is cheaper per pound than boneless, skinless breast from factory farms sold through supermarkets. You can cut up a chicken. Yes, you can.

Never buy anything from the breakfast food aisle. We buy bulk ingredients at a local Mennonite bulk food store and make our own granola; it’s to die for. Did I mention that Teresa is a wizard in the kitchen? We just went to an apple orchard and bought six bushels of apples; each one is good for about 20 quarts of homemade applesauce. The watered-down, applesauce-like substances at the supermarket are inferior by every measure.

Processed food is expensive. Heat-and-eat meals are generally sold for three times the cost of their ingredients. Never have we had more techno-sophisticated, gadgetized kitchens to make scratch preparation, processing, packaging, and preserving easier. Blenders, Instant Pots, crockpots, bread makers, ice cream makers, hot and cold running water—Great-Grandma would have given her eye teeth for these modern kitchen conveniences. Enjoy them.

And don’t even start on “I don’t have time.” Nothing takes less time than throwing some carrots, potatoes, onions, and a beef roast in a crockpot in the morning and coming home to a fully cooked, nutritious, off-the-charts-tasty meal. It requires minutes of prep and 40 watts of power: less than a light bulb. And like any skill, domestic culinary arts become easier and more efficient with practice.

Quit Buying Junk

The most exotic heritage potatoes are cheaper than potato chips. Convenience, snacks, and junk food are budget killers. Sugary, carbonated soft drinks should not exist. Period. Ditto for Twizzlers, gummy bears—you know the aisle. Stay away.

I’ve never bought a bottle of water. I’ve never drunk a cup of coffee. Get a good water filter for your municipal water, which is often fluoridated, so you can feel comfortable drinking it, and it tastes good. Hydrate with the real stuff and flee the toxins.

When I see what is in the average person’s shopping cart, I know why Americans are sick and broke. And I haven’t even mentioned tobacco, vaping, and alcoholic beverages. The list of unnecessaries is long.

Buy Directly From Farmers

Doorstep delivery is now competitive with brick-and-mortar shopping, and you don’t need to spend time or gas going to a store. You can do it from your bedroom, and your retail dollars will all go to a struggling farmer. It’s the most aggressive way to fund the good part of America’s food system.

Ordering food with DoorDash and Uber Eats is another budget crusher. Anyone shouting “affordability” who uses these expensive services is barking up the wrong tree. This can work in bulk. For example, right now our farm does a quarterly delivery to a group of Polish families in New York City. They’ve outfitted a garage with sausage-making and packaging equipment in order to further process our meat while enjoying polka music.

As a rule of thumb, if we put as much attention on solving problems as on complaining about them, we’d be far better off. This is true in many areas of life, not just food.

Quit Running

Park the car. Exercise at home. Enjoy recreational family time at home. I’ve never been to Disney or on a cruise, and I have no desire to splurge on either. Visit a local museum. Go on a picnic in the backyard. We call them “yardnics.” Meet your neighbors. Host a block party. Plant a garden. Put in a patio garden or container garden. How about a beehive on the roof to get your own honey? Cancel Netflix. Ditch the smartphone (I still don’t have one).

I’m sure that some of this sounds extreme. Still, when I see people screaming about affordability as they exit the supermarket with Coca-Cola in their carts, lottery tickets in their wallets, and Disney stars in their eyes, I don’t think that the problem is affordability.

The problem is self-indulgence and logic. Let’s not become mired in self-pity. Let’s resolve to defund unnecessaries and harmful things and instead fund—with both time and money—those things that historically develop happy, healthy people. That doesn’t require money; it requires intentionality.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.