Here's a tough one... where do you draw the "frugal" line with it
comes to health?
A recent example from my own life: I have a child who is struggling
with an eating disorder stemming from an experience choking on ice.
At the onset, he developed a fear of eating that was impacting his
ability to get the nutrition he needed (and at his age, this was
critical to his growth and development). We started purchasing
nutrition shakes for him to drink while he worked on his eating (we
are blessed to be working with a top speech/chewing pathologist in
our area on this). When we started, I had absolutely no regard for
cost; whatever the shakes cost, I would pay it.
If you've looked, nutrition shakes are not at all cheap. The thing
is, they're far less expensive than dealing with the effects of
malnutrition. If you're comparing costs only in that way, then the
shakes make a lot of sense. That is where I started.
My son is doing a lot better now, but not enough that I feel we can
completely eliminate the shakes. But, now that I have time and room
to breath a little, I've got to thinking about the actual content
of those shakes vs. a homemade nutritional shake. We own a vitamix
already, so making complex shakes quickly and easily is no problem.
Looking at the shake's nutritional facts, I determined that I could
make a very simple shake that accomplishs almost the exact same
thing, for about half the cost, without even trying very hard. I
think I could actually get that cost even lower if I sourced some
different ingredients (I'm using Ovaltine as a cheat to make the
vitamin portion exceed the nutritional shake's vitamin amounts).
The takeaway here is this: when you're faced with a health
destroying problem, you'll often find that you're given easy and
quick options/solutions that cost quite a bit. As the problems get
under control, re-evaluating those options/solutions may save you
some money, even a significant amount of money. I'm thankful
for the "easy out", especially when life is hard, but I'm also
thankful for the thoughtful and frugal approach.
