Four Self-Care Tips for a Tight Budget

I can’t listen to much news these days because our collective terror about the economy makes me freak out, hold my cash in too close and start crossing necessities off the list of expenses. Lots of us are being more thoughtful with our spending and saving these days, and this is good! But we may also be doing without things that are vital to our wellbeing. The following are some tips for staying healthy without spending a lot of money:

Tend to your nutrition.
Eating well can be done on a budget. This does mean meal planning and eating in. I think the best way to eat well and save money is to grow food! If you have a small plot of land, access to a community garden, a balcony, or even a sunny window, you can grow some of your own food for the price of seeds and soil amendments.

As far as shopping goes, many of us can feel torn between eating healthy, organic foods and not spending our entire paycheck on our groceries. Luckily, more and more neighborhood grocery stores are offering local, organic foods at cheaper prices than specialty health stores. (Yay consumer demand!) I’ve been looking around online at different lists of which foods are most important to buy organic, so if you can’t go totally organic, you’ll at least have some information for picking and choosing. The following foods consistently showed up as important to buy organic due to the high concentrations of pesticides or antibiotics they otherwise contain:

1. Baby Food
2. Strawberries
3. Rice & Oats
4. Sweet Bell Peppers
5. Milk, Yogurt, Cheese
6. Corn
7. Green Beans
8. Peaches, Nectarines, Apricots
9.  Apples, Pears
11. Cherries, Raspberries
12. Celery
13. Grapes (this means raisins too)
14. Coffee
15. Soybeans
16. Potatoes
17. Leafy Greens
18. Meat
19. Cucumbers
20. Tomatoes 

A couple of websites also mentioned soaking veggies in a 1/2 cup of white vinegar mixed into a gallon of water for 30 minutes to kill bacteria and chemicals. For fruits with a peel that you do not eat (bananas, kiwis, pineapples), there is often a smaller risk of ingesting pesticides.

Exercise!
You don’t have to belong to a gym to get a great workout… think walking, jogging, biking and jumping rope. You can also  get a few weights off of Craigslist (or a cheap exercise machine such as an elliptical if you have the space). Yoga studios often have amazing packages. Libraries have great workout videos, which usually provide a glimpse into bygone fashion eras and make you feel contemporary and stylish. If there’s a local gym or community center that offers quality childcare as part of the membership, this may make the expense worth the while for you.

Consult Health Care Providers When You are Sick and to Sustain Health
This is where I recently fell short in the self-care department. With so many of us underemployed, unemployed, earning low wages and struggling to pay rent or mortgages, I became convinced that acupuncture, counseling, and yes, even massage were luxury items. It wasn’t long before I was sore, tired, catching every cold that came my way and increasingly stressed out. So now I’m looking at how to take care of myself on a budget. My recommendation is that if you cannot afford the healthcare you need, look for people who can offer their services on a sliding scale. Go to www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org to find sliding scale acupuncture ($15-40 a session) near you. Don’t be afraid to ask practitioners if they offer sliding scale services. Lots of us do, but you may have to ask. And don’t put off seeing your primary care provider for acute or ongoing health problems–I promise it will save you money in the long run.

Take Time off From Work and Take Vacations
Did you see the word vacation and wonder when I was going to get back to affordability? These suggestions are all about investing in yourself and saving on the high financial, physical and emotional costs that come with poor self-care. For me, nothing is more rejuvenating than a short vacation. I’m always much more productive afterward, and feel more refreshed and content in my work when I take time off from it. My partner and I don’t really put aside money for vacations, so we have to find ways to scrape together a good weekend away. One way we’ve done this is by finding a group of friends who are equally dedicated to cheap vacationing. Everything is cheaper when there’s more of you to split the cost. We rent houses, cabins and yurts for a low price during the “off-season” (I don’t really care what the weather’s like if I get to relax and sleep in for a few days). In the sunny summer days we camp. Other ways to save money are to stay in hostels or find colleges that rent out dorm rooms for cheap in the summer months (contrary to popular belief, neither of these have an age limit).

How are you taking care of yourself without spending loads of money?

Advertisement