People often ask, “Isn’t Paleo expensive?” and I have to answer, “Yes, it often is!” In fact, if you were to follow all the prescriptions of the typical Paleo diet plan, you’d be paying a fortune between all the fresh organic produce, wild-caught seafood and pastured meats. After all, we’re talking about quality here – you get what you pay for and all that jazz. We’ve already written about how to shop Efficiently, Economically and Easily as well as Meal Planning affordably on a Whole 30 because it’s a hot topic.
That said, it’s not as bad as people might imagine since a big chunk of change gets returned to you when you stop buying chips, cookies, crackers, candy and breads. That stuff was 60% of my cart before, and now it’s not there anymore. However, we’ve replaced much of it with some higher priced goods and the result is a higher bill. The end result is that we’re healthy though, and as a mother, that’s my job: to keep my family healthy and able to survive in the modern world.
In order to make it work, I budget and plan to make sure Paleo doesn’t put us into foreclosure. Instead of sacrificing my smartphone (how would I obsessively post to Twitter without it?), we make other choices to make the Paleo lifestyle affordable for us. We’ve found that most of the keys to making Paleo affordable have more to do with managing expenses in other parts of your life, but I’ve broken down the 3 ways we make Paleo affordable with a family. Remember: just like you have to sacrifice cookies in order to live your optimal life, you might have to forgo that Lexus you’ve always wanted. You may not get to drive around in luxury, but we hope we can keep you from resorting to the 20 year old Oldsmobile.
Good advice about how to have a good life for less
