November 19, 2025
My mother was born between the
Two Great Wars, in May of 1919. She was a girl of ten in 1929. Being a child of
a that era, by the age of ten she knew how to work around the house, how to do some
of the day-to-day jobs of living. Cooking and cleaning, and the mending and
making of clothing would have been her afterschool lessons and activities. As a
Canadian-born child of European born immigrant parents, and a child of the last
century, she would have been expected to do “women’s work” and then eventually marry
and become a wife.
But my mother also, with the
full blessing of her parents, as a young woman of eighteen went away to the
next city to attend nursing school. She became a registered nurse, and in fact
met her future husband (my father) at the hospital where she trained at. He was
a doorman there.
The lessons of living through
a world-wide depression, which was then followed by the austerity years of the
Second World War, ensured that her ways when it came to cooking and shopping
were frugal indeed.
You can imagine that such a
woman would raise her daughter to be frugal as well. She had three absolute
rules when it came to grocery shopping and cooking. First, make a meal plan for
the period of time for which you’re shopping, and based on the available funds.
Second, make a list of the items you need to purchase, based on the available
funds. And third, never shop on an empty stomach.
As an aside: that last is the
most important rule of all. You need only break it once to find out just how
important a rule it is.
I lived by those rules too,
and for the most part, I still do. They have served me well. We weren’t raising
our children during a depression or a global war, but we had three of them, and
somewhat spare means. We got through it all, and I have always believed that if
one can successfully navigate tough economic times, one will never truly be
frantic during such times again.
Our dollars have shrunk, our
expenses have grown, and we here in the Ashbury household have tightened our belts
accordingly.
I still know how to stretch a
grocery dollar. I have no qualms dropping “luxuries” from our shopping list. Chips,
desserts, and other little extras are nice, but not necessary. It is important
to treat oneself, but this can be done simply and frugally when necessary. The
secret is to plan for it all.
There are three adults to feed
in this house, and we manage to keep sufficient stock on hand, because I never
really strayed from my core practices. If I see a cut of meat on sale, i.e.,
25% off, I buy it and freeze it as soon as I get home. We now have a vacuum
sealer, and what a money saving device that is!
Sale items are only sale items
if they are items that you would normally buy.
Reducing portions in recipes
that call for meat is another trick easily done. Instead of spaghetti and
meatballs, one can have spaghetti and meat sauce. To make enough
meatballs for three, for example, one might need a pound of hamburger.
Spaghetti with meat added to your sauce, instead? A third of a pound of meat is
plenty. Making beef stew? Use a half pound instead of a pound and add extra
veggies. Not only money saving, but healthier!
When making scrambled eggs for
yourself, instead of two eggs, use one with a bit of milk mixed in. Growing up,
we used evaporated milk in our coffee as it was far less dear than using real cream
for that, and the evap did well in the eggs, too.
If you have access to the
internet there are a lot of places there to find hints and tips and hacks that
will save you money. You need only to look and then apply.
There is one more thing that
my parents had to their credit that helped them weather the tough and sometimes
uncertain financial times, and it is probably the most important asset of all.
They had a can-do attitude.
They believed that if they worked hard enough and smart enough, that there was
nothing at all on God’s green earth they could not accomplish. And that, my
friends, is my most important tip to you as well.
Too many people these days
seem to be allergic to hard work. Just because something is hard to accomplish
is no reason to quit. Nothing good comes easy, and not much in this life is
free, or guaranteed.
Make a plan. Learn to adapt
when necessary. And expect to have to try and try again until success is yours.
There are benefits to accomplishing something against all odds, and those
benefits cannot be purchased for any amount of money.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
