#budgeting

#budgeting

I've been reporting on food and affordability for NPR for our new series What's Eating America. And in talking to people, business owners and experts, I've picked up some strategies to help keep my family's food costs in check without sucking all the fun out of eating. Keep an eye out for those stories.

Choosing the right tools can make the work easier and more efficient. Gardening is primarily a hobby, and it can be hard to justify spending hundreds of dollars on it.

The USDA provides regularly-updated estimates of what an individual's monthly food budget should be, with 'thrifty,' low-, moderate-, and high-cost levels divided by genders and ages.

"I've lived long enough to see many 'worst times.' Well, if it is the worst time, what the hell can I do about it? Sometimes you have to take the apps off your phone."

When planning our budgets, we tend to focus on cutting costs. Yet, sometimes a little strategic spending can help to save money in the long term, by reducing our regular expenses and replacing repeat purchases of single-use items.

Luna Rosado, a single mother, has seen her gas expenses rise by $40 weekly due to a 30 percent increase in prices after the war in Iran. This has resulted in $160 less for groceries and other necessities each month, forcing her to constantly adjust her budget.

You made $150,000, but you paid off $75,000 a year and paid taxes. And ate food and stuff.

Both avid and casual skiers know that winter requires preparation. If you want to ski as many days as possible, you must have a game plan. After all, skiing is an expensive sport, so budget is typically one of the top considerations. But before you book flights, hotels, and lift tickets, or decide if you want to invest in an Epic Pass or Ikon Pass, you'll need to identify which ski resorts you want to explore over the course of a few months.

"For you to have money, you have to learn to live below your means but within your needs. How do you do that? You do that by simply purchasing needs versus wants. What is a need? Need is food that you buy at a grocery store. What is a want? A want is going out to eat at a restaurant and doing it over and over again."

That $50,000 goes toward turning a brand's "educated guess" into "metrics they're confident about," Titus says. Here's how that test and learn process typically works on Faved: A beauty brand, for example, will typically spend their first $15,000 to $20,000 on 10 differently priced collaborations with beauty or lifestyle influencers whose audiences fit their ideal customer profile. During this step, he adds, the brand's only goal is to figure out which influencer's content drove the most sales at the lowest cost.