If you know our family or have read other posts on this blog, you probably know that we greatly value our health and that of our kids. And we tend to take the most natural approach possible when it comes to healing from disease or sickness.
As health-conscious people, we invest a lot into our wellbeing. Outsiders looking in might wonder how we are able to do that without breaking the bank.
Well, I’m here to (hopefully) inspire you and tell you that it is possible! There is a common misconception that living a healthy lifestyle is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. It simply comes down to your priorities.
People spend money on things they care about, and while our family does invest a lot into our health and wellness, that often means not spending money on things that aren’t healthy or don’t foster healthy habits.
As a family of 7, it can be hard to spend wisely and save money, but with a willing heart and determined effort, it can be done.
Here are 12 ways we save money as a big family while keeping our health intact.
12 Large Family Money-Saving Tips
Tip #1: Buy In Bulk
This is kind of a no-brainer if you have more than 2 kids.
We buy a lot of dry and frozen food in bulk from Azure, which is sort of like a monthly grocery co-op. They have drivers who deliver orders at drop locations all over the US. We place an order once a month and pick it up at our local drop which is less than 15 minutes from where we live.
Azure is where we buy most of our grains, which we use to make fresh-milled bread, along with raw cheeses, dry beans, canned foods and other non-perishables.
(We recently learned that the company is Torah-observant, which is a nice bonus! We’ll never have to worry about picking up a drop on the Sabbath, and there are no unclean foods available for purchase on their website. Pretty cool…)
We also have a Costco membership, which we use primarily for healthy snacks, frozen fruits and veggies, and everyday household supplies like batteries, toilet paper and paper towels.
Tip #2: Buy Local!
We’re all about supporting local businesses, and since we value our health, buying fresh food in bulk from a local farm just makes sense.
Foods are often less expensive than they would be at the grocery store, and they’re healthier and taste better too.
Tip #3: Skip the Big Birthday Bashes
We did have a big party for my 40th, but aside from major milestone events like that one, we’ve never really been into celebrating with big parties. I’m an introvert and a homebody, so I generally prefer to be in the company of my closest friends and family members.
And big birthday parties can get expensive, especially with kids. If you choose to plan a party at a local gym or indoor playground, you’re usually limited when it comes to how many people you invite unless you’re willing to shell out big bucks.
To put it in perspective, if we paid $300 for a party that includes up to 10 people, our kids alone would take up half of the available slots, leaving no room for their cousins or other close friends.
It’s just not worth it.
For that reason, we prefer to keep it lowkey with the people closest to us.
We also try to minimize gifts as much as possible. Between grandparents and hand-me-downs from cousins and friends, our kids have enough toys and don’t need anymore.
But we also don’t want to foster a sense of entitlement, where our kids think they deserve a bunch of new stuff every year just because they were born, and display ingratitude when it’s not their “special day”. (We’ve actually had to deal with this on a few occasions with our kids…)
Instead, we try to emphasize gratitude towards our Heavenly Father for the time He has given us together, as well as hopeful expectation of a bright future ahead, thanks to His goodness and faithfulness.
This not only helps us save money; it prevents us and our kids from indulging in the unhealthy food that’s typically served at popular kids’ birthday venues.
Tip #4: Opt Out of Traditional Health Insurance
We rarely go to the doctor (another money-saving lifestyle choice!)
All our kids were born at home (praise Yah!)
They’ve never been “jabbed” (and never will be as long as we’re alive).
I’ve never had a mammogram and never will. (I believe they do more harm than good.)
I haven’t even seen an OBGYN since before our first daughter was born.
Unless someone is about to lose a limb from an infected womb or has a life-threatening emergency, we do our best to avoid doctors’ offices, urgent care facilities, or the emergency room.
We also don’t take prescription medications.
For these reasons, a traditional health insurance plan doesn’t really make much sense for our family. Instead, we participate in Samaritan Ministries, which is a Christian health sharing alternative. Not only is it much less expensive than standard health insurance premiums – it offers far more benefits:
- It supports the biblical command to “bear one another’s burdens” in a practical way by allowing believers to share the financial burden of each other’s healthcare expenses.
- I also love that it supports more natural healthcare choices and doesn’t limit you to specific providers. So, I can choose to see a chiropractor or a naturopath instead of a medical doctor, and even the supplements they prescribe would be covered.
Tip #5: Plan Your Meals
You’d be surprised how much money you’ll save by incorporating meal-planning into your weekly routine.
No more impulse buys at the grocery store. No more buying ingredients for meals you “might make one day soon” (and them going bad because it never happens.)
Here’s the most effective way I’ve found to do this:
- Make a list of your family’s favorite meals. I use the Productivity app on my phone for this.
- Go into that list each week and pick out 7 meals from the list that you plan to make for dinner that week.
- When you go grocery shopping (or order groceries for delivery), only buy the ingredients you need for those meals.
Make sure you make enough so that you have leftovers that can be eaten for lunch throughout the week. This pretty much covers your dinners and most lunches, so for breakfast you can keep a few common items on rotation. We like to take turns doing eggs with chicken sausage or beef bacon, oatmeal, pancakes, cream of wheat, homemade bagels and muffins.
Between our Azure drops, Costco orders, and trips to the local produce market, I usually always have the ingredients for these items on hand.
Tip #6: Cook From Scratch
We make almost everything from scratch at home. Not only does it save money; it’s also healthier because it cuts down on things like processed foods and prepared sauces that often contain bad ingredients.
We stopped buying store-bought bread several years ago and started making it ourselves, and within 3 weeks of doing so, our daughter was cured of a stubborn case of molluscum contagiosum that she had had for several months.
Tip #7: Homeschool
I realize that not everyone can do this, but if you can, I highly encourage it. Kids weren’t built to sit in a building for 8 hours a day away from the most important people in their lives. (I’m convinced that tradition was started by the enemy in an effort to break up the family unit. But that’s another post for another day.)
While we do incorporate some traditional schooling elements such as worksheets and writing activities, we keep things simple by emphasizing the 3 R’s (Reading, writing, arithmetic), along with useful life skills (cooking, cleaning, homemaking, building, etc.). And we try to teach everything from a Biblical perspective.
When I was in school, I remember learning things like statistics, calculus, world history and biology – most of which was useless memorization of “facts” that I don’t remember. I was never taught useful things like financial management. It’s no wonder that I went to college and completely ruined my credit with one bad purchase…
We also don’t plan to encourage our kids to go to college. If they want to enter a profession where it’s truly required, then we’ll support that decision. But as business owners ourselves, we hope to foster more of an entrepreneurial spirit. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs we’ve met were college dropouts.
Tip #8: Cut Out Sugary Treats
Soda, juice, crackers, cookies, candy … you name it. I see parents everywhere giving their kids these things like it’s nothing, and it drives me crazy! Mostly because it puts the temptation in front of my kids, and we try hard not to give them those things.
For one thing, a lot of those snacks tend to have unclean ingredients like pork gelatin.
But also, they’re just not healthy in general. And once your kids get a taste, they want more.
Bad habits are hard to break, and trying to logically explain to my toddler why she can’t eat those M&Ms is a battle I’d rather not fight.
When we do allow our kids to snack (which is rare), we try to opt for healthier options like nuts and seeds, celery with peanut butter, yogurt, or fresh fruit.
Snacking in general tends to foster unhealthy eating habits and picky eaters, and we refuse to become short-order cooks. Everyone in our house eats the same meals for dinner, and if our kids decide to be picky or complain about the food we put in front of them, they go hungry.
It sounds harsh, but children are smart! They aren’t going to let themselves starve to death. Eventually, they will eat, and if they’re hungry enough, they won’t complain about the food you give them.
We’ve found that they eat more healthy food and are less picky when we don’t allow unhealthy snacking between meals. Long-term this also helps to foster a healthy appreciation for a variety of foods.
If you want to save money and keep your family healthy, I highly recommend making these changes.
The book, French Kids Eat Everything is a great place to start if you’re looking for more information on the benefits of eliminating snacks as well as practical tips on how to do it.
Tip #9: Emphasize Quality Over Quantity
I’ve adopted this philosophy in most areas of my life, and it has made such a positive difference. Here’s what this looks like in practicality:
Eat highly nutritious foods like beef liver and fresh-milled whole grains. You’ll get full faster and find yourself wanting to eat less often, because your body is nourished for a longer period.
When buying clothes for your kids (or even yourself) purchase high-quality, heirloom items that will last and can be handed down through multiple generations.
Recently I’ve begun building more of a capsule wardrobe that emphasizes quality and luxury items made of natural materials like linen, wool, silk and organic cotton.
It’s more of an expense upfront, but these are timeless pieces that can be worn repeatedly for years. Especially if you stick to neutral colors and basics that can be mixed and matched to create a variety of outfits.
My new go-to brand for affordable luxury clothing items is Quince. I also really like Pact for organic cotton staples.
We also try to adopt this philosophy when it comes to toys.
There’s so much toxic plastic junk sold in stores these days. It lights up and makes noise and is overstimulating. If I’m being honest, it kind of makes me angry. No wonder so many children have sensory issues. They’re constantly bombarded by stuff.
Kids are so creative. Give them a box or some kitchen gadgets and they’ll be occupied for hours. Better yet, take them outside and let them play with the endless objects that nature has to offer. Sticks, stones, leaves, puddles of water … there are so many better, BPA-free options that don’t cost any money and foster health by maximizing their intake of oxygen and Vitamin D.
I’m not saying all toys are bad. The classic stuff – wooden blocks, dolls, puzzles, art supplies, even Legos – can stimulate the brain and encourage creativity. But I’m still a minimalist when it comes to those types of toys as well.
Tip #10: Stop Celebrating Man-Made Holidays
I realize I probably won’t convince anyone reading this to give up Christmas, Easter or Halloween, but it’s worth a shot, right? 😉
We actually stopped celebrating Halloween before we became Torah-observant or even realized how demonic in nature the holiday really is … after having kids, we became more invested in our health and simply didn’t want them partaking in the candy-collection ritual.
Our journey into Torah solidified our intuition that the holiday itself is evil and should be avoided altogether.
Christmas was pretty easy to give up after the fact, as we were never really into it anyway. Before we conceived Indie, Jereme and I had already agreed we weren’t going to do the whole Santa thing, because we didn’t want to lie to our kids. (Crazy, right?!) Besides that, the insane commercialism and sense of entitlement that the holiday creates is a huge turnoff.
Easter is typically celebrated with baskets of candy, egg hunts and bunnies – even though none of these things has anything to do with our Savior. The Easter ham that’s typically served at post-service brunches goes against our Father’s dietary instructions. And we’ve already discussed our sentiments on candy, so we’ll leave it at that.
Instead of these manmade traditions, we celebrate the Biblical holidays like Passover, Pentecost, Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), and the weekly Sabbath. Since doing so, we’ve experienced tremendous blessings and grown in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, as Paul often prayed over the congregations to whom his letters were written.
And isn’t that the purpose of our faith?
Bonus: we don’t go into debt buying Christmas gifts, and we stay healthy by not consuming ridiculous amounts of unhealthy sweet treats each year.
Tip #11: Boycott Target
You’ve probably seen the funny memes about the mom who went to target to buy one thing and walked out with $200 less and 10 more things she didn’t need.
Heck, you’ve probably been that mom, right?
(I’ll admit it. I have.)
But when they put their “gay pride and transgender inclusion” agenda on full-frontal display, I finally decided it was time to quit shopping there.
But regardless of what you believe about all that liberal B.S., I’m sure we can agree that avoiding Target is a huge money-saver in general.
Tip #12: Pay Your Kids for Housework
This is something we’ve only just begun to consider and slowly put into practice, but we plan on doing this more as they get older.
We don’t pay them for the small everyday chores that all of us should be doing anyway – like putting their dishes in the dishwasher after meals, picking up their toys, or putting their laundry away. If you want to raise healthy, functioning members of society that don’t grow up with a massive sense of entitlement, they should do normal, everyday housework as part of their required responsibilities without expecting to get paid for it.
But paying your kids to do certain things on occasion, like mow the lawn, tend the garden, clean the house, or even cook you a meal for an in-home date night, saves you from having to pay other professionals for those tasks. And they can use that money to buy things they want or need for themselves.
This also helps to foster that entrepreneurial spirit we talked about earlier.
How to Live Healthy on a Budget: Final Takeaway
If I could sum up this list in a few words, it would be this: prioritize the things that truly matter.
Yeshua said it this way:
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Matt. 16: 25-26
In other words, if we claim to follow Jesus, our priorities should reflect that. This is why we choose to invest in things that will better our health and avoid things that won’t.
I believe Yahweh blesses those who choose to honor him with their bodies and their lives. We’ve seen the blessings in the form of revelation: Over time, He has revealed various things to us that help us to continue honoring Him while saving money and giving us a lifestyle that allows us to spend time with our children and raise them up in righteousness.
What about you? What are some ways that you save money and stay healthy? Comment below and share your best tips!
