Friday, January 20, 2012

Kids and allowance

From time to time I get asked about if we give our kids allowance money, or how we go about it. To be honest, this is an area that I myself often wonder what the best approach is. 

For starters, I do not think our kids should ever be given "free money" on a regular basis (i.e. outside a birthday gift or something similar). 

But on the other hand, I also realize that kids' earning power and opportunities are limited to non-existent, while they need to learn how to handle money correctly from a young age. And it would get very tiresome to constantly have them asking me for stuff they want, because they have no money of their own to spend. 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Home birth "as safe as" hospital birth?

An older article from the USA Today reporting on a major medical study in Canada has been making the rounds on Facebook. The title sounds like it proves the point home birth supporters have been trying to make for years: Home birth with midwife as safe as hospital birth

But - this article irks me. Because the title is NOT accurate. Home birth, according to the study it quotes, is NOT as safe as hospital birth. In fact, the numbers given in the article show home birth to be ALMOST TWICE AS SAFE as hospital birth:
The mortality rate per 1,000 births was 0.35 in the home birth group, 0.57 in hospital births attended by midwives, and 0.64 among those attended by physicians, according to the study.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Affording organic - Part II - money-saving tips

Please click here to read Part I

In an effort to improve one's diet, one of two goals should be to replace unhealthy foods with all natural, whole foods alternatives. Instead of buying cookies at the store, for example, they can be made at home with whole grains, honey, and real butter for a very wholesome and tasty alternative that is usually also cheaper. Depending on individual tastes and habits, and your family's compliance in this matter, this process can take years. As with most things, it is a lot easier to start out right than to change later on.

Changing over to healthy products includes all areas of life, such as cleaning products, cooking utensils (non-stick, plastic, etc.), clothing (think toxic, but fire-retardant PJs for kids, new cotton  and/or dyed clothes, etc.), body care products, furniture (again, think of mattresses, curtains, etc. that are drenched in fire retardant) etc. but for sake of time this post is only dealing with the food aspect of it.

The other of the two goals should be switching over to all organic foods/ingredients. Cost can often be a seemingly prohibiting factor. Below, I list some of the things I have learned in order to provide our family with all organic foods without being a millionaire, or even remotely "rich". 


Monday, January 2, 2012

Affording Organic - Part I - PRIORITIES

This is a blog post I first started in October 2009. When I was almost done writing it, Blogger had a glitch and deleted the entire post without saving it! In June of 2010, I once again sat down and started writing this post, which I am finally finishing up now in honor of the new year. Maybe someone will make it their goal to switch their family to a more wholesome diet this year after reading this.


I think my great aversion to writing on this subject is due to the fact that there is no easy answer. I would love to give you tips on how to switch to eating 100% organic on your existing grocery budget, but for most people, that is simply not the case. Unless you are currently spending a fortune on eating out and buying processed foods and snacks/sweets/sodas, and are willing to stop all that cold-turkey and start making everything from scratch, you likely will need to increase the amount of money you spend on food if you want to switch to eating all organic. I think that most of my readers already cook many/most things from scratch, and live frugally in general. For these families, short of switching to eating rice and beans, eating organically will mean spending more money. That's the bad news.