Page 20 - Workbook3E

C Four Key Focus Areas
There are four key areas in which careful planning and spending will reap great rewards in your quality of life and financial fitness. As always, you need to keep in mind the difference between wants and needs, and use your goals, values, and financial philosophy to guide your choices.
Basic Essentials...
All the aspects of your Spending Plan deserve careful consideration. However, there are four basic areas that can have a major impact on your overall success. They are: food, health, housing, and transportation. In studying the previous 2 Workbooks, you may have already begun to formulate a new world view on these issues. Now carefully consider the choices you make in these key areas, since they not only impact your spending, but your quality of life as well.
1 Food
Now that you’ve developed your Spending Plan in Workbook 1, you have a pretty good idea of how much you spend monthly on food. You may have also noticed food was one of your largest expense items. The average American family spends around 20 percent of their monthly budget on food: about 12 percent on food eaten at home, and more than 7 percent on eating out. It’s no wonder careful planning and greater care in how you spend money for food can have a major financial impact. The following suggestions will help you make wiser choices.
1. Learn from others
Through studying books, tapes, seminars, and even consultations with nutrition experts, you can learn the best way to purchase and consume food. In recent years, many experts have returned to the “simpler is
better” point of view where food is concerned. And often the simpler, less-processed foods are more nutritious and economical.
2. Ask yourself and your loved ones
How you think and feel about the food you eat is one of the most important aspects of your plan to improve. After studying the expert’s advice, develop a plan that best suits you and your family’s tastes and interests. Get everyone involved, let them contribute—you can all share in the planning and the success. If you don’t enjoy the food you’ve prepared, you’re not likely to stick with your plan.
“Unfortunately, we live
in a world that tempts
us with a great variety and abundance of food, and many of us eat not to satisfy physical hunger but to allay anxiety, depression and boredom, to provide a substitute for emotional nourishment, or to try to fill an inner void.”
~ Dr. Andy Weil
16 Workbook 3: Prepare for the Future