Let Them Eat Rice & Beans!

Sooner or later in our lean times someone tells us, “Well, you just have to eat rice and beans.” Um, we’ve been eating rice and beans for a loooong time now; we never stopped eating them.

Last week our local grocery had a sale on dried beans so I bought some black beans to vary our weekly pot of white bean and vegetable soup. When we got home, I realized that they weren’t black beans but red and I already had a superabundance of red beans. No problem, we were looking for an addition to our menu; we’ll have Red Beans & Rice—my husband is an ace with seasonings. This is a week for using “what we’ve got”.

Dried beans are very inexpensive for the volume of food they make—a bag typically costs $1.29—on sale .99 and can make several meals. The catch is that they have to be soaked “overnight”—I put them in water mid-morning and begin cooking them around 4pm. It’s important to wash and sort them first—the bag instructions make sure that I know that the beans “are a farm product”, which means that there could be rotten ones or even rocks in the mix. They also have to be cooked about two hours, which can pad the energy bill. Perhaps if I soaked them longer they could cook less.

For these reasons I generally discourage people for sending dried beans to food banks; the amount of planning and preparation cooking dried beans takes is often more than a severely discouraged person can manage. But if you’re looking to stretch what you’ve got—they cost still less than a comparable number of cans of beans and have less sodium.

Stick Together

Financial strain is a leading cause of divorce. The irony is that divorce costs so much money that it only makes finances worse—much worse. In 2007, it was reported that the costs of a divorce in the U.S. ran from $10,000-$20,000 (If you have that kind of money to throw around I can think of some better ways to use it!)

Then there is the expense of two residences—two of everything. If you have children there’s the expense of child support, which many of the people who are ordered to pay, consider to be far out of proportion to their income. Those who are designated to receive it—often don’t and end up having to pay the costs on their own. Alimony may be another expense of divorce in your state.

Difficult times are the times to stick together as husband and wife. Be patient with each other. Listen. Remember what drew you together in the first place. I’ve heard marriage teachers say that if you can persevere; your marriage will get better sooner than you think (they say that statistics bear it out). But it does take a conscious choice.



I’m in no way an expert on this subject but I do know that divorce costs money in addition to tremendous pain. I do, however, know how to stay married through difficult times as my husband and I are on our thirty-second year of marriage.

Obvious or New

Many of the ideas I’m writing may be very obvious to some who have been at resource-stretching for a long time. Yet, I’m including everything I can think of just in case someone hasn’t heard; I learned long ago that not everyone has the same framework of learning or experience. Some of the practices will seem too small to make a difference but they can add up more quickly than you think. Most are things I’ve tried myself—maybe I read it somewhere but I’ve made them part of my life and now I want to share them with you. Even if you have plenty of money/resources, you may want to try some of these things for your health, the health of God’s creation and to free up resources to help others.

"All or Nothing"

An all-or-nothing outlook can trip you up in regard to staying afloat, “If I can’t have exactly the job I want—at the same salary I won’t have any,” (though there are certainly many advantages to working at what you’re best at and disadvantages to being away from your field but there may be some middle ground) or “We have to do without absolutely everything,” can do you more harm than good. Times are changing and jobs won’t be the same as before, besides you may find that you don’t need as much! Beauty and enjoyment can be experienced without spending a lot (or any) and you’ll find that they are an important part of thinking clearly and avoiding depression. Making gradual changes before the need is dire, can avoid shocking your system.