Vegetarian on a Budget

By : Christina Law

I was a vegetarian all through out high school, but gave it up when I moved out of my parent's house at 17. Within the past three years I have gotten married, had a baby, and have been a struggling student. Both my husband and I are full-time students, him in Medical School and myself working on my Bachelors in Biology and Chemistry. As movement towards family, we mutually decided that I would be a stay at home mother and raise our daughter while continuing my education. With this decision, we agreed that we would take out more student loans to live off. As a consequence, we live off a very, very strict budget. As my husband began to travel for his 4th yr audition clinical rotations, I started having to maximum our budget. I sat down and went over all our bills under a microscope. I discovered that meat is the most expensive thing in our grocery bill, so I cut it out. That decision took our weekly grocery bill from $160 to $80!!! It saved my family $320 a month!!!! As a treat to ourselves for our wedding anniversary, we went to an expensive steakhouse and got filet and lobster tails. Later that evening I became violently ill. Words cannot describe how ill I was. Yet, my husband showed no symptoms or illness. We deducted that it was the meat and that my body was not use to eating meat anymore. I sat back and thought, how can meat be good for you if when you eat it and your not use to it, you become sick? I felt as though meat was a poison that you must build a tolerance too. I just cannot see how meat is healthy anymore.

My friend, who is recently divorced and a single mom came to me a asking for financial advice. I gave her the same advice with cutting out meat on her grocery bills. She did the same financial move as I did and cut out meat. She was thankful for the money I was able to save her. She came to me not too long ago telling me her first encounter with chicken after she had cut it out, and had the same violent sick reaction. So, I feel validated in the fact that meat is poison. I know this is a very liberalized view, but I just cannot see how meat is healthy.

I feel so internally clean and enjoy my vegetarian lifestyle. I do not suffer from eczema, acne, dry/painful skin, IBS, or colds/flu anymore. I have not been sick in over 3 years and I feel that my vegetarian lifestyle is the reason.

I hope you can use my story to show that becoming a vegetarian has many different motives and one can be financial.

PS. If every one of us inspired ONE person to go meatless imagine the difference we could make in ten years time. I am going to collect inspirational vegetarian/vegan stories to share with everyone. If you think your story will inspire others, please share with me by sending it to info@veglov.com. I will post your stories on this www.veglov.com blog. I believe everyone has his/her own story, I think it must be great when we can share our stories and inspire others. Let’s make the world a better place. ~ Xiao Kang.