All posts by Avivah

Myth busting – I don’t have the time to be frugal

frugal strategies, personal development

Often people say they don’t have time to do money saving activities- they’re just too busy.

I empathize with how full life can be – overwhelmingly full, even.

There are two parts to my response.

The first is that very few people are completely honest with themselves about how they spend their time, and that leads them to think they have less time than they do.

Nine years ago I began tracking my time throughout my day, and I did this for many months. It was incredibly eye opening. It showed me where I actually spent my time, how much time I spend on those activities, and how much time I wasted with nothing to show for it.

Time tracking is like money tracking – it lets you know what you have and where it’s going. I’m not suggesting you track your time but I’m positive that if you did, you’d find you have much more discretionary time than you think.

I think just as big an issue as not having an accurate idea of how your time is spent, is the fact that no one wants to spend their time doing things that they associate with drudgery and deprivation.

Everything takes time. It takes time to shower, to get dressed, to make your food, to eat, to take care of your children and to drive to work. It takes time to go to the gym, or take a hike or a vacation.

Life is full of time consuming activities. Just like with money, it’s potentially empowering when you realize YOU get to choose to spend your time in a way that brings the most value to your life.

I deeply appreciate having peace of mind around finances. I like knowing that my family always has food and clothing, our bills are paid, and upcoming expenses are budgeted for. I like being relaxed when the holidays come around or when my children get engaged and married, knowing that I’m prepared for all of the related expenses. I like living without deprivation and without worry about debts. This is fundamental to my quality of life.

It’s not our income that has created that peace of mind, but how I spend what we have. Right now we have a comfortable income, but even throughout all of the years that our income was much, much lower (most of our married lives), living frugally has consistently created a high quality of life for our family.

So I spend time tracking our income, budgeting, meal planning, shopping carefully and doing a lot of things myself rather than hiring others to do it for me. I enjoy doing those things and have a sense of satisfaction around them. I see the value of them and I associate them with an abundant life.

I suggest that if you were to associate money saving activities with being able to live your life in the way you want, you’d also find enjoyment in them. It’s much easier, even with a busy schedule, to make time for the things you enjoy doing.

You have all of the time you need. But you have to use it intentionally, you need to be conscious and aware of how you budget it, so that it will add to the quality of life you want to have.

Avivah

Repair your clothing, don’t throw them away

frugal strategies, homemaking

I was sitting at my sewing machine working through a pile of pants to be repaired, when my daughter-in-law noticed what I was doing. She asked me if I could hem a skirt of hers, and I agreed, so she gave it to me. It wasn’t a major repair, it just needed a couple of minutes to sew and it was as good as new.

At the same time, a friend of my son came in and seeing what I was doing, asked me if I could fix his pants. Yes, I could, so he brought them to me and I repaired them as well.

It’s inconvenient and expensive to have your clothing repaired by someone else so most people will give or throw clothing away rather than deal with it. Replacing items that were overall in good condition other than the needed repair will cost money, and if you can maintain what you have so it lasts longer, you’ll be saving that money instead.

Basic things like replacing a button are super simple, but if you don’t know any sewing at all, you can find tutorials online that will demonstrate just about every sewing technique that you would want to learn.

I have a cabinet in my room where everyone knows to place anything they have that needs a sewing repair. It might be socks or tights, but usually are shirts that need buttons, pants that split in a seam, or something that needs to be tailored or patched. One son regularly gets his belt loops on the waist of his pants caught on door handles and they need to be reattached. Every so often I take out a pile, take out the sewing machine, and work through the necessary repairs.

My son really likes his pair of loafers, and wanted to continue wearing them even when the leather loop attached to the buckle detached, leaving the buckle hanging off to the side. I assumed I’d have to throw them away, but I took a look at them before doing so. I realized that the loops on each side had come unsewn, and thought I might be able to resew them.

I have a package of unusual needle sizes that are heavy duty, and found one that I was able to push through the leather. Less than ten minutes later, both sides of the loafer were sewn back on. If you look closely, you can see my repair but it’s not noticeable at a first glance. (The loose thread isn’t from my repair but I should snip it off.)

Why would I would waste time repairing these shoes, or fixing socks or tights? How much money am I really saving? It’s true that some things don’t cost that much. I can replace these shoes for 50 shekels on sale but although they aren’t expensive, ten minutes to save 50 shekels is still worth my time. If smaller items like socks are overall in good condition, I’ll fix those as well.

What about the time it takes? Aren’t I too busy for all of this stuff? Actually, these small repairs don’t take time out of my schedule since I take my sewing basket outside with me when I watch the kids play.

For the items that need the sewing machine, I wait until I have a pile – it could be two or three months – and then spend up to an hour repairing everything. That’s not a lot of time for what is usually at least seven to ten items of clothing.

Start to look at your items needing to be repaired with an appraising eye, and challenge yourself to repair an item that you would have in the past gotten rid of.

Do you do your own sewing repairs? If not, why not?

Avivah

How to track your money

frugal strategies

>> Avivah, could you share more details about how you track and budget? It’s one of those things we know we should be doing but never do. I’d love to get a better handle on tracking and budgeting, but even the idea overwhelms me. <<

I so much understand this! The more time that’s gone by without tracking, the more overwhelming it feels.

There’s a huge emotional relief that comes when you get clarity about what’s going on with your money. Even when you think it doesn’t make a difference to you not knowing how much you spend on what, there’s an energy drain from ignoring something that you know you should be paying attention to.

Get ready to do some homework – give yourself a week to get this done. Starting is the hardest part; once you’ve started, you’re on your way to bettering your financial situation so don’t put this off.

Step 1 – The first thing to do is to print out the last three months of your bank statements. Some people recommend twelve months and this is ideal since you can see your yearly spending pattern, but I think three months will give you a good idea and isn’t overwhelming.

You’re going to track two things: your income and your expenses. You can do this with pen and paper (that’s what I do) but a spreadsheet is a good option if you are inclined, and it’s nice to have the math done for you. Some people use budgeting apps; I’ve seen many recommendations for the YNAB (You Need a Budget) and Every Dollar trackers. They both have free versions. My husband once bought the paid version of YNAB and said it was very good, but obviously, it’s just a tool and if you don’t use it, it’s not going to help you. An advantage of the apps over a spreadsheet is the interface with banks in the US but I don’t know of apps that interface with Israeli banks. (If you know of any, please share that with us in the comments!)

Step 2 – Make a list of whatever income you have – salary, freelance, child benefits, disability payments, alimony, etc. Add that up and write your total income for the month, for each of the three months.

Step 3 – Now make a list of all of your expenses. You have two kinds of expenses, fixed and variable. Fixed expenses are fairly stable and predictable from month to month; variable expenses fluctuate from month to month.

Here’s a list of fixed expenses:

  • mortgage/rent
  • property tax
  • utilities – water, sewage, electricity, gas
  • insurance – car, life, house, health
  • communication – internet, phone, mobile services
  • building maintenance fee (vaad bayit)
  • tuition
  • day care/babysitter
  • extracurricular activities/tutoring
  • house cleaner
  • therapies
  • bank fees
  • debt repayment

Variable expenses:

  • food
  • take out/restaurants
  • baby supplies – diapers, etc
  • pet supplies
  • makeup/cosmetic procedures
  • haircuts
  • medical expenses
  • dental expenses
  • home maintenance
  • car expenses – repairs and maintenance
  • gas (for car)
  • transportation – buses, trains, tolls
  • clothing/shoes
  • computer maintenance
  • appliance/furniture purchases
  • holiday expenses
  • gifts
  • vacation

These aren’t going to include every possible expense, so add your own category if you find something that you spend on isn’t included above.

Now, total up the expenses in each category for each of the three months. Then total all of the monthly expenses for each month to get a total for your monthly spending.

You’ve done it – you’ve faced your worries about what you’re going to find, and you’ve tracked your expenses. Now give yourself a huge pat on the back for your accomplishment!

Once this is done, you’ll have solid information to work with to create your budget.

Is there anything that surprised or discouraged you? Don’t worry about it. This is just a starting place. There’s plenty of change possible to get you where you want to go.

Make a commitment to get this done in the next week. You may dread thinking about it but once it’s done it will be a relief and it will really help you.

Avivah

The little stuff really makes a difference

frugal strategies, personal development

Everyone wants to hear about a hack that will save them thousands a month. But there are very, very few suggestions like that out there.

If you want to cut your expenses, there are almost endless ways to do so. The problem is the small things seem so small and inconsequential that most people think it’s not worth their time and effort.

The truth is the little details add up and add up and add up. I can think of so many small things I do, and each one by itself doesn’t seem like it matters, but my ability to save as much as I do is a result of these small things combined.

I love frugality. I think it’s an incredible tool and for me it’s been expansive and empowering. It’s so unfortunate when people look at frugality as deprivation and doing without. That’s not what it’s meant to be and I understand the avoidance a person may feel if that’s what they think it’s going to be for them.

Frugality is about knowing what you want and spending your money on what matters most to you, so you can have the quality of life that you desire.

For example, for us it was really important that I stay home with our children, and I’ve been home full-time for the last 28 years even when we’ve had a very modest income. Many people will tell you that you need two incomes to make it, especially with a large family. Frugality made it possible for us to have the luxury of a big family, avoid debt and have a rich quality of life.

Your money is like a leaky faucet. Those little drips of water seem like a small amount, but they will run up your water bill quite a bit! And if you save those little bits of leaking money, over time it adds up to your benefit.

We were working with a small budget and a large family for a long time and as the years have gone by, our income has gradually gone up and our resources have grown. It’s been like a slow moving snowball that picks up more and more speed as it continues downhill. I wouldn’t be where I am now without all of those small, consistent steps, day after day, year after year.

Consistent small actions will lead to big results. I couldn’t have imagined a few years ago that we would have been able to pay off as much of our mortgage as we have – I mentioned how much we have left to one of my married sons last night and he was taken aback by how small the amount was – but we kept putting extra towards the principal and it’s been exciting and almost magical to see the loan amount and loan length melting away.

I’m going to write about different frugal suggestions and tips, and encourage you to think about what you can apply to your own lives. Everything won’t be for everyone but don’t make the mistake of dismissing the suggestions as not being big enough to make a difference. They absolutely will add up. As the saying goes, “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.”

Avivah


What I feed my family these days – zero carb/low carb

health, nutrition

>>After your last post I have so many questions.
1. How do you feed your little ones? Are they also on a zero carb diet? I have little ones who won’t touch eggs, so I’m trying to figure out if I can easily make a zero carb diet work for our whole family, particularly breakfast meals.2. Isn’t it more expensive to eat a zero carb diet, particularly with eating kosher meats?3. What would I give the kids for snacks while traveling? <<

My family is meat heavy, but some have no carbs, some minimal carbs and some moderate carbs.

I’ll preface with my perspective on eating. I don’t try to make carnivore foods that imitate high carb treat foods; I don’t experience any benefit in that for me. I’m changing my thinking about eating just as much as I’m changing the food I eat, and part of that shift is to see food as tasty fuel rather than entertainment or something to fill a space inside.

I eat like a queen but it’s simple and filling. Likely it will seem boring to read about; can it really be that simple? Yes, it really can. I’ve gotten clear on what I like and what feels good, and I stick with that.

I eat mostly ground meat, usually as hamburgers or meatballs, and hot out of the pan I top them with ground raw beef tallow. The heat of the meat partially melts it and it’s so delicious and incredibly filling. I usually eat a half kilo for a meal and eat twice a day. To keep costs down, I fill in with chicken wings and eggs but if cost were no issue I’d only have meat. My dairy intake is low. Occasionally I’ll have some cheese but I get a twinge in my hip a day or two later when I do. I sometimes have sour cream with sunnyside up eggs cooked in butter. That’s about it.

My husband started eating like this a couple of months after me, so it’s been 9.5 months. (He ate strictly zero carb for two and a half years several years ago.) He eats almost the same as me, except he prefers roast beef to ground meat and has more eggs than I do. Twice a week we prepare two or three roasts, slice it all up once it’s cooked and he heats up the amount he wants to eat at a meal. He used to have butter but after going zero carb realized it was the cause of breathing difficulties at night (who would have thought?!?). He made ghee (clarified butter) but that still wasn’t ideal for him so now he doesn’t have any dairy at all and he no longer uses an inhaler.

My fifteen year old son asked if he could join us in eating this way; I don’t remember exactly when he began but I think it’s been about three months. My only hesitation was cost – I’d love to have everyone in the family eat this way but I can’t yet stretch my budget that far. His daily breakfast is eight eggs in butter, an individual container of sour cream and now that they’re in season, an avocado. He prefers sour cream with 27% fat content, but since the 15% sour cream is much less expensive, he eats that as well. He usually has chicken wings, ground meat or roast later in the day. His comprehension of gemara and thinking skills have become notably sharper and his 30 year old chavrusa has commented on the change.

My twelve year old has been eating like this for 4.5 months. Earlier on I made more involved foods to pack for his lunch box like cold cut wraps and chicken bread, and every day tried to make different dishes. Like me, he’s settled into what he likes and it’s pretty similar from day to day: chicken wings, meatballs and hardboiled eggs. Very occasionally I send tuna or egg salad, cottage cheese and sour cream. We’ve seen some significant health improvements for him, he’s calmer and it’s easier for him to transition from one activity to another, and his teachers have commented about how fast he learns things now. His adherence has been good though he does sometimes eat higher carb foods out of the house, and sometimes has fruit at home.

He and my husband prepare a carnivore platter to take to shul on Shabbos mornings so he has something to eat instead of everything else served, which is almost exclusively white flour and sugar. This is some combination of hot dogs, cold cuts, meatballs, steak bites and devilled eggs (people around them have wanted to eat from their platter because it’s so appealing!). It’s very impressive how he sticks with this when surrounded by everyone else eating the standard kiddush fare.

Now for the three younger kids, they love, love, love meat and chicken. I send them standard lunch box fare – a sandwich or two, a fruit, a vegetable, sometimes a hardboiled egg or cheese. Before they leave in the morning all four of them have either chicken wings or hardboiled eggs, sometimes meatballs. For months I’ve started the day by cooking a pot of hardboiled eggs while cooking the meat or chicken main for ds12’s lunch box. When they saw there chicken wings that didn’t go into his lunch, they would ask to have them and it’s turned into a regular preferred breakfast for them.

On Shabbos mornings they have cottage cheese and sour cream with chopped fruit mixed in.

The three boys get school lunches that include a protein, starch, cooked vegetable – ds12 and ds8 bring them home and eat when they arrive. Ds12 just eats the protein. Ds7 gets lunch at school but dd7 doesn’t and as soon as she walks in the door, informs me she’s hungry and asks to make herself meatballs. Today I said I’d make her eggs instead, and she specified she wants meat eggs, not cooked in butter, so I cooked two eggs in tallow and crumbled in a meatball and she was happy.

The younger three have fruit as a snack, and dinner is usually low carb. It’s an ongoing challenge for me to make a meal that adapts well for ds12, and lately I’ve been making low carb meals that all of the kids eat.

Here’s our dinners from the last week- I make large quantities and the children eat as much as they want.

  • Sunday – tuna toasties (tuna, homemade mayo, diced pickles, mixed and then grilled on bread – no bread for ds12, just the tuna salad)
  • Monday – ground beef with sauteed cabbage
  • Tuesday – chicken giblets, sprouted lentil stir fry (carrots, onion, fennel, zucchini) – ds12 didn’t have the stir fry
  • Wednesday – thick chicken egg drop soup
  • Thursday – egg pizzas (large omelets with tomato sauce and olives on top)
  • Sunday – ground beef moussaka

For those who include dairy and/or don’t eat kosher, there are many more combinations possible.

As far as cost, some people would eat less expensive or more expensive hechsherim than we do and that would affect the price. Many people have said they don’t spend more eating carnivore than they did previously, since they no longer have to buy all the other items. I’m a very frugal shopper and I’m spending more on groceries than I did in the past.

When eating meat, there’s a satiety factor that can is significant and surprising. There’s much less need or desire for other foods, and as a result, the kids stay full longer and request fewer snacks after a zero carb meal. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that if I add a vegetable to my meals, then I feel more hungry and eat more meat with my vegetables than I would have if I only had the meat alone. It’s counterintuitive but that’s my experience, and it seems similar to what I see with the kids.

It’s been interesting for me to see their taste buds shift, particularly since when the twins came to us a year and a half ago, they were used to cookies for breakfast and jello snacks after school. I think part of their eating preferences is due to seeing two parents and two older brothers eating like this, so they have a very positive association with it and want to eat what we eat.

If you don’t serve eggs, you have dairy, fish, meat and chicken left. I’ve let go of serving stereotypical ‘breakfast’ food – what makes hamburger okay for dinner but unappetizing for breakfast?

Sometimes I want to make more variety for them and look up all kinds of ideas, but our children so strongly prefer plain meat and chicken that the response to my efforts hasn’t been very gratifying. They’re happier with a chicken wing than with all the different muffins and quiches and pancakes, so I stay with what they like.

When we travel, we make the same kind of things we have at home – meatballs and hardboiled eggs are easy. We took a bunch of these when we travelled for my son’s wedding in Jerusalem. There are foods you can easily purchase like cheese sticks, meat sticks, hot dogs and cold cuts (they have some sweetener added so not ideal but still a better option than other things). I’ve also made muffins that are a combination of eggs and ground beef and other ideas, but keeping it simple really is working best for us.

Avivah

A hike and aging in reverse

health

Today I went on a lovely and very rigorous hike.

I haven’t gone hiking for ages. I used to join a group of women regularly for hikes when living in Beit Shemesh but it’s been five years since I’ve had that opportunity.

As much as I enjoyed hiking, as time has gone on my desire to participate has gone down quite a bit. Until a year ago, I was experiencing pain in my right hip, left knee and plantar fasciitis on the sole of my left foot that was getting worse as time went on. I didn’t know what made it hurt but I knew that walking any distance made the pain more likely and staying off my feet kept it at bay. So I managed my pain by avoiding triggers.

Additionally, sometimes without any warning my right leg would go out from under me. It’s as if it didn’t catch when I would stand up or take a step. Just for a moment, not enough to cause me to fall, but enough to cause discomfort. It was very unnerving.

In January last year I began eating a zero carb/carnivore diet, and these pains completely disappeared. The hip pain has sometimes briefly returned when I don’t adhere to zero carb guidelines, and a couple of times in the last year my leg hasn’t ‘caught’. I’ve never had the knee pain or plantar fasciitis return even a smidge.

When I heard about the trip, I didn’t think about not going because pain isn’t part of my considerations any more. Until I was on the middle of the hike I didn’t think of how I used to feel not so long ago.

The hike was surprisingly rigorous, with a lot of steep and narrow paths. In one place we needed to use hands and feet to climb up, going almost on all fours with hardly room to place a foot. And at the end was a very steep extended section of a mountain that we climbed.

I did it all easily, staying at the front of the group the entire time, and not feeling any need to pause or rest at any point. It wasn’t until someone mentioned her walking stick helps her compensate for her knee pain that I was reminded that this is a hike I wouldn’t have been able to participate in.

After the first serious ascent, I looked down the way we had come and reflected that I never would have made it this far if I hadn’t changed my diet. If I had joined the hike, I would have gotten stuck at the ascension point and had to return on my own without completing the hike. I don’t think I physically could have ascended the paths that I did today, even if I was willing to suffer a lot of pain. I could just picture my dread seeing the climb ahead of and realizing that I wouldn’t be able to do it. (I took my dog with me, and even he had a hard time with the ascent.)

Today I was climbing without strain, without pain and with agility; there was no point I felt even a twinge of discomfort. I didn’t even feel sore or strained from the exertion afterward.

I feel very grateful to be enjoying a level of health and wellness that I thought was behind me, and to have turned back the hands of time. It feels like aging in reverse.

Avivah

Track your money, budget your money

frugal strategies

I haven’t been actively budgeting in recent months so I’ve spent some time in the last couple of days remedying that.

Though I haven’t been budgeting, what I have been doing is tracking our expenses. Tracking is knowing what goes in and out of your account, and is something you must do to be a good steward of your money.

Here are a few things I noticed when tracking our expenses:

Last month I noticed that our mortgage payment went up 630 shekels – and our mortgage is fixed so it shouldn’t have gone up at all. I looked into it and for some reason the bank started charging us for home insurance – despite having a different insurance provider since 2023. When our insurance agent checked this for us, it showed that our paperwork was all in order and the necessary notifications had been made to the bank long ago, so we’ll get our money back. But if I didn’t track our expenses, the bank would have continued to automatically deduct this amount every month for years.

This week I noticed that a transfer I made to a different bank didn’t show up. It turns out that there were two account numbers and I sent it to the wrong one – I corrected that and the money is now in the right place.

Two weeks ago I saw that money that was supposed to be reimbursed to us by the health clinic hadn’t come in by the latest date they told me to expect. I went back into their office, and within two days the outstanding 850 shekels was in our account.

Several months ago, the horseback riding stable we had one meeting with charged us for three lessons for two children (ie six total lessons), and one lesson for another – hundreds of shekels for lessons that never took place. I got that refunded as well, and moved the kids to a different ranch for lessons.

A couple of months into the academic year, I noticed one of the tuitions wasn’t being deducted. My husband called the yeshiva and let them know they hadn’t activated the automatic withdrawal plan we had set up. If we hadn’t realized that, at some point they would have realized we weren’t paying and we would have accrued a high outstanding balance.

My husband once ordered an Adobe product. Months later, we were still being charged a monthly fee of 45 shekels for something he had forgotten about and never used – he cancelled it and we’re no longer being charged that fee.

We have another ongoing monthly expense, a charitable donation for a cause that we committed to for a year – I don’t know how long we’ve been donating for but it’s been a lot longer than that. I was glad to contribute initially but now I’d like to shift our giving to a different cause.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of things that I found, but some examples of the kind of things that come up when you track your money. What you learn when you track your expenses can save you a lot of money.

Ideally tracking includes tallying the total spent each month in each area of spending (eg, food, utilities, clothing, health, leisure, etc) so you know what you are spending your money on.

In October we reached the financial goal I shared with you last year, which was to pay off the smaller but higher interest loan of our two mortgages. (When we refinanced the track that was adjustable to a fixed rate, the two tracks of the mortgage were separated into two loans rather than one). It was an ambitious goal and tracking was critical to our success, because I controlled for the expenses that would have otherwise drizzled out with nothing to show for them, and all of that extra money in addition to the savings went to the principal of our mortgage loan.

Now I’m thinking about what I want to set as the next financial goal. It might be paying off the second mortgage loan, it might be putting it towards something more investment oriented. I’m still reflecting on that; there are pluses and minuses and I have to confront my own conservative tendencies and ask myself if that’s serving me as well as possible. Whatever I end up doing, it will benefit our finances for me to tighten up my money management even more and actively budget our money.

Let me share with you what the difference is between the two. Tracking is noting all of your expenses after the money is spent, and knowing how much you spend in each area.

Tracking is a critical preliminary step to getting your finances in order. If you’re not tracking, it’s likely you don’t have an accurate ideal of where your money is going and your money is leaking out.

Once you’ve tracked your spending, budgeting is the next step. Budgeting is looking forward, and determining how much you’ll spend in each area for the coming month. When our finances didn’t have much wiggle room, I had to carefully budget and there was no such thing as not having a budget established in advance. There’s no way we would have avoided going into debt and had an expansive life without being very on top of the details.

Budgeting is when you ask yourself, “Although I’ve spent a certain amount in a category in the past, is this really the amount I need to spend? Can I trim my expenses in that area and funnel the difference into savings? If so, what amount do I choose to allot for each area that will allow me to meet my financial goals?”

Tracking shows that I spend a certain amount of money each month on food. Budgeting is when I decide to spend the amount I want to spend, and to do whatever I need to do to keep my spending limited to that amount.

Budgeting feels very different than tracking; it’s proactive, intentional and powerful. It’s when you commit to yourself, “I’m going to set my goal and I’m going to reach it!” A good budget is a wonderful financial tool. I’m setting some parameters in my budget that will challenge me and am looking forward to seeing if I can jump over what feels like a high bar that I set.

Avivah

Prices are going up but we’re still living in good times

frugal strategies, personal development

I’ve been thinking a lot about money and frugality lately, particularly with the price increases that went into effect.

The following costs increased in Israel as of January 1, 2025:

  • property tax: 5.29% increase
  • electricity rates: 3.8%
  • water bills: 3.4%
  • Value Added Tax (VAT): 1% increase (this is added to every purchase in Israel, other than produce)
  • National Insurance contributions: rates will increase from 0.4% of income to 1.2%, a 0.8% increase

Tax credits will be frozen, we’ve been told public transportation costs will go up, food will continue to go up – everything is expected to get more expensive. That’s not such a pleasant thought, particularly as we’ve experienced inflation and rising prices in the last few years.

I’ve read a number of articles about the price increases and the message of every single one is that they are going to negatively impact our society. It doesn’t resonate with me to tell people how much worse off they’re going to be, because I don’t like narratives that turn you into victims. It never benefits you.

You have choices in every situation that can improve your situation in some way. Sometimes life is hard, even very hard, but there are still better or worse ways to think about and deal with your situation.

My approach to these increases is to ask myself, and a question I encourage others to ask if they’re concerned about prices going up, how can I make the coming year as good or better than the one that just ended? Is it possible? I think so and that’s my goal for the year to come. For that to happen I’ll need to be more intentional about goal setting, budgeting and spending.

When people complain that things just keep getting worse and never get better, I wonder if they’ve lost sight of the bigger picture, as we live in a time of unprecedented abundance.

You have clean running water and indoor plumbing; chamber pots and outhouses aren’t the norm. You can take a hot shower inside your own home. You dress in clothes washed in a washing machine, you don’t boil huge pots of water to do the laundry or scrub it down at the river’s edge. You turn on your stove and oven with a flick of a dial – my great grandmother had a wood stove and cried with happiness when she got a gas stove. The physical effort you need to expend on a daily basis to provide for your needs is miniscule compared to the past.

You have stores filled with a variety of food products unimaginable to past generations and can find just about everything, regardless of seasonality. You have large quantities of inexpensive foods in every store in your country. You don’t have to stand on food lines waiting for hours for your one allotted loaf of bread, only to find out that there’s none left and then you need to stand on the next line for your allotment of potatoes for the week. You can buy whatever quantity that you want.

Clothing and household goods have never been less expensive and more easily acquired. You often don’t even have to leave your home – click on the computer to order and it arrives at your door a day or a week later. I have a clothing order that’s supposed to come today that I ordered from overseas less than three weeks ago; in the past my orders came within a week and I feel as if something’s not right for it to have taken so long to get here! When we get used to luxuries, we take them for granted.

Thrift and second hand stores are filled with items that are in excellent condition, often unused. My daughter volunteered at a clothing gemach and told me the quality and quantity of donations is so high that they don’t keep anything missing a button, needing any kind of repair or not in perfect condition or out of date. That reflects a level of material abundance that didn’t exist thirty years ago.

So being grateful will make you a happier person. Being more content and positive about life is worthy of the effort on its own. But when it comes to money, it’s not putting more money in your pocket, is it?

Maybe it can. When you feel grateful for what you have, you feel less entitled and more willing to consider different options. When you focus on all that you have, you need less. When you recognized you need less, you buy less. When you buy less, you have more money to put into savings. And that happens without feeling deprived and unhappy.

Avivah

Our family Chanuka party

parenting

It’s customary for families to have a family party on Chanuka and since we have several married children who will be having family parties on the side of their spouse (and those families have more married children who will be having parties for their families…), it’s a logistics issue to find an evening that everyone can come to. I didn’t want to wait until the last minute and not have an evening everyone was available, so six weeks ago I connected with my daughter in Jerusalem who usually does the hosting to plan a date.

Happily, all of the other family parties coordinated with our date – one son had one on Saturday night, one son and one daughter had a party on Sunday night, we had our party Monday night, and one son has a party on Wednesday night.

When children get married, the relationship with them changes and that continues to shift with time. Every family will have their own dynamic – ours includes living far from all of our married children, and having a wide range of ages that include children who still need a lot of supervision. Our married children visit periodically for Shabbos, but as time goes on and their families grow, naturally they come less frequently.

My husband and I discussed what we want our relationship with our married children to look like, and agreed that we don’t want to rely on them coming to visit as the only time we see them. For us to visit each family individually is right now not realistic, due to distance and work/school scheduling for everyone. Sometimes our married children get together and my husband and I agreed when they do this we’d like to make the effort to attend.

Last year attending the family Chanuka party was impossible, as the twins were so much in emotional transition that being in a group of people would have been overwhelming and been stressful for all of us. This year we’re in a different place and really wanted to be there, to spend time with our grandchildren and married children.

One daughter is in the US with her family, one son stayed at yeshiva and one daughter-in-law wasn’t feeling well, but otherwise everyone was there. And it was so, so nice to be together with them all.

It was low key and pleasant. We had a shared meal and everyone contributed something (except us, unfortunately the main dish I prepared was forgotten at home).

My husband planned an activity to do with the younger children, and exclaimed to me afterwards about how engaging all of our grandchildren are, and and how much he enjoyed spending this time with them.

We were pleasantly surprised that our younger four children were calm and engaged appropriately the entire time with hardly any need for input from us. That’s a Chanuka miracle of its own – that could never have happened even six months ago.

My youngest married daughter is a career coach and coordinated in advance with my husband a Chanuka-themed guided expressive drawing activity for the adults that she did at the end of the evening. When asked about it in advance I said I didn’t think this was the best venue for an activity like this because parents would need to be busy with their children, but I was completely wrong about that. The kids were busily and constructively occupied with the craft materials we brought while we did this activity. It was interesting to see as each person shared their drawing afterwards how reflective of their inner selves and aspirations each was.

It’s a lot of driving for us to get there – three and a half hours in driving rain on the way there, over two hours on the way back; we spent four hours in Jerusalem and got home at 2:30 in the morning. Today will be a day that I anticipate a lot of tiredness in the younger children that are likely to result in behaviours they’ll need guidance managing.

But it was worth being together with all of these amazing human beings who are our family. I’m so proud of each and every one of them, and my husband and I never stop feeling amazed and humbled by them all.

Avivah

My thoughts on cancer screening

health

I’ve had kids home the last couple of weeks almost every day for one reason or another so it’s taken me time to get this post out to you.

Before I get into the topic, since it’s the first day of Chanuka and every year people ask me for my recipe for doughnuts, I’m linking it here for you so you don’t need to search. It’s heartwarming to know that some of you have been making this recipe since I first posted my recipe here thirteen years ago!

****************

I’m going to continue to respond to questions asked about doing screenings for cancer. I’d like to start by addressing an underlying attitude towards screenings that you may not have considered.

The thought behind the need to do screenings, is that there are all of these scary things that can happen to us, to any of us, any time, randomly, and we need to take every precaution to catch them before they bring us down. Inherently, that leads you to think of yourself as a potential problem waiting to happen.

For me, thinking in this way would lead me to living in a perpetual state of low grade anxiety and fear, worrying that something could be wrong with me and running to get tested to reassure myself that I’m okay. Instead, I choose the baseline position that I’m a healthy person. This is not from a place of denial, but I actively choose to view myself as strong, healthy and capable; it’s empowering and psychologically healthy .

>> sometimes it is important to do preventive testing. My 40-year-old sister-in-law decided to go for a mammogram only because her close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and it scared her. My SIL had no symptoms whatsoever and was healthy and energetic. Sadly, she was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Boruch Hashem after chemo and double mastectomy and oophorectomy, she is in remission, but had she not done that mammogram, things could have been very different. <<

I am so glad to hear that your sister-in-law is doing well, and I’m not questioning in any way if this was the right decision for her to make.

I’m going to share some thoughts for you to consider – I’m asking you to not reflexively respond but to let the points sit with you for a moment.

I’ll begin with briefly referencing a summary by the American Cancer Society of concerns with the effectiveness and accuracy of mammograms that include false negatives, false positives, overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

You can read the link, but I’ll sum it up more briefly here: One in eight breast cancers aren’t picked up by the mammogram, leading to a false negative. That means there are women who have done the testing who think they’re fine who actually have cancer.

Over a ten year period, half of women having mammograms will get a false positive – they will be told they have abnormal results when they don’t have any cancer whatsoever. That leads to further testing and treatment, as well as stress and anxiety.

Finding a cancer that wouldn’t cause problems is referred to as ‘overdiagnosis’. There are cancers that wouldn’t be found and wouldn’t grow or spread if there hadn’t been a screening for them; they will not become life-threatening. It is possible to be completely unaware of the presence of the cancer, and live a long and healthy life, untreated.

Treating cancers that wouldn’t cause any problems is called ‘overtreatment’. When a cancer is found, a doctor can’t know which will cause problems and which won’t, so he will advise treatment for all of them. That means that a lot of women will unnecessarily undergo cancer treatment.

And finally, just because they find a cancer when it’s small doesn’t mean it can be treated successfully.

Mammograms also expose women to radiation. While the phrasing that is consistently used for all sorts of medical procedure is ‘the benefits far outweigh any risks’, there are a number of reasons for a woman may question if this is a screening that is actually to her benefit to participate in.

If you’re interested, here’s an article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: Mammography is dangerous and should be abandoned.

————————-

Let’s say that you do testing that shows you have cancer, and now you have to do something about it. Now what?

The standard of care is chemotherapy and radiation, and this is what doctors are obligated to recommend. It’s considered malpractice for them not to suggest that.

Chemotherapy is poison. The goal is for the chemotherapy to be more toxic to the cancer cells than the human receiving it, and kill the cancer cells before it kills the human. That’s how it works. It’s brutal, and the person who is ‘cured’ is one who can survive chemo. One day we’ll look back with horror on this barbaric treatment but currently this is our standard of care.

Another aspect of standard care is radiation therapy. According to the American Cancer Society, radiation therapy used to treat cancer is linked to the further development of cancer. So it’s a treatment that contributes in the long term to what it’s supposed to be eliminating in the short term.

Here’s an emotionally charged point to consider: When a person is diagnosed, treated for cancer and then dies, we make the presumption that it’s the cancer that killed them. We don’t question if the treatment contributed to their death, and if they would have lived longer and with less suffering without the chemo and radiation.

According to the genetic disease model, there’s not much to do in the way of prevention other than screening and preemptively removing body parts. People do what they feel they need to do to save their lives, and if this is the best option presented to them, then of course they’re going to do that.

Are the only ways to treat cancer with chemotherapy, radiation and the removal of affected body parts? Is there anything more effective and less toxic that can be done? Are there any preventative steps that can be taken?

Cancer researcher Dr. Thomas Seyfried has written extensively about cancer being a metabolic disease. This is counter to the prevailing view of cancer as a genetic disease. Metabolic therapies that lower blood glucose and elevate ketones will quickly reduce tumor growth, extend lifespan and in some cases cause complete remission.

Several years ago I was on a group hike with a bunch of women, and got to chatting with someone I hadn’t met before, who mentioned she doesn’t give her children sugar. Naturally, I asked her why. She told me as a lab researcher she’s seen what happens to cancer cells in a petri dish when they are given sugar- the cancer explodes. And she just can’t give that to her children to eat.

What fuels cancer cells? Glucose and glutamine. That’s sugar. Glucose immediately goes into blood stream and into the tumor cell. A tumor cell is one that has out of control division. The only way to shut down growth of these cells is to get rid of their fuel and transition the body to a fuel that the cancer cells can’t use to grow. Starve the cell and the cancer can’t continue to grow.

Unfortunately, cancer patients are generally told they can eat anything they want, and cancer wards tend to be filled with sugary foods. It’s interesting to consider the ethics of giving a patient chemo to kill the cancer cells, giving them no dietary guidance to reduce or eliminate sugar, and then following up their treatment with a hospital tray of sugary foods.

The highest risk factor for cancer are processed carbohydrates in your diet; the constant barrage of these foods is the highest risk factor for all of the most common diseases. Elevated blood sugar leads to systemic inflammation. Yet not only is that the standard diet, the dietary pyramid recommends high carbohydrate consumption as the foundation of a healthy diet.

***Edited to add – I am not suggesting that if someone is diagnosed with cancer, all that is necessary to treat it is a dietary approach. Not at all. There are other alternative therapies that I would personally look at in that case. What I am stating is that prevention is better than the cure and it would be wise to take a preventative and preemptive approach to minimize the development of systemic inflammation in our bodies that leads to all kinds of diseases. As such, diet is an important preventative factor to be aware of.***

Massive amounts of money have been spent on the ‘war on cancer’ but it doesn’t seem to me that it’s doing much good. Cancer rates are steadily rising – right now it’s predicted that one of every two people will develop cancer by the time he is 85. That’s downright scary, and if you believe it’s screening that will save your life, those statistics will probably send you running to do some testing to be assured you’re not one of those two people.

Though previous generations of my family had a high cancer rate and that would seemingly dictate that genetically I’m at high risk, I take a different approach. We live in a world of toxins and eating well won’t eliminate the poisons in our foods, air, and all the products that are part of our every day lives (for example, microplastics in just about everything). However, if I can change my diet and eliminate the highest risk factor, it makes sense to me to do that.

I’m not a passive victim waiting for cancer to strike me. There are things I can do to make myself less of a likely target, and I’d rather do them than participate in screenings and the follow-up treatments with all of the risks they entail.

Avivah