MSNBC did an interesting piece on new research that examined where people shop for groceries and their obesity levels. The study followed 2,000 Seattle-area shoppers between December 2008 and March 2009. Conclusion: The thinnest people spend the most money on food. Just 4 percent of Whole Foods shoppers were obese, compared with 38 percent of shoppers at Albertsons.

At Whole Foods, an average market basket of food cost between $370 and $420; the same basket of food at Albertson’s cost between $225 and $280.

Lead researcher Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who studies obesity and social class, says it’s all about money: People who have the ability to pay $6 for a pound of radicchio are more able to afford health diets than consumers who buy $1.88 packs of pizza rolls to feed their kids.

“If people wanted a diet to be cheap, they went to one supermarket,” Drewnowski told MSNBC. “If they wanted their diet to be healthy, they went to another supermarket and spent more.” Just 15 percent of shoppers chose a gocery store based on its proximity to their home — the rest focused on either price or quality. “Deep down, obesity is really an economic issue,” Drewnowski said.

I’m somewhat skeptical — maybe because I never shop at Whole Wallet, and no one in my family is obese. I think obesity is a function of lack of education about which foods are healthy and which are crap; lack of time to read up on nutrition, plan and prepare healthy homemade meals, and get some exercise; and lack of discipline, because let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to order a pizza and watch TV at the end of the work day than to grill vegetables and go for an invigorating walk.

For me, the money issue is more closely link to the time issue. Consider two-parent households that have the wherewithal for one person to stay home or work part-time; that person can focus on creating a healthy environment – growing vegetables, shopping, cooking, and supervising kids so they spend more time running around outside than surfing YouTube.

But creating healthy menus for a family on a budget? Not that hard. For breakfast, we serve oatmeal, eggs, whole grain breads, and fruit;  for school lunches, I buy bagged salad on sale for $2, rinse, and toss into a Tupperware container with some raisins, sliced almonds and grilled chicken from last night’s dinner; add a piece of fruit in season and a granola bar, and voila – meals for three kids for less than $2 a person. (Yes I know it’s cheaper to buy the head of lettuce, but it’s too crazy in the mornings to be shredding the stuff.)

Tonight for dinner we’re grilling beef shiskabob with red, yellow and green peppers, onions, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and yellow squash over rice. Dinner for a family of five for $16, or $3.20 a head — nutritious, delicious and cheaper than fast food.

We base menus on what’s in season and what’s on sale, use the store’s loyalty card, occasionally clip coupons and make the most of leftovers. I get produce at the farmer’s market between June and October. (You can find one near you on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Web site.) And I shop at a warehouse club for the basics like skim milk, orange juice, whole wheat bread and bananas. 

Are you able to maintain a healthy diet on a budget? What’s your best tip?

My daughter left her cell phone in the back pocket of her jeans recently, and it went through both the washer and the dryer. (I realized something was up when I heard the thump-thump-thump in the dryer.) I assumed the phone was ruined, and suggested she start saving up for a new one. Silly me. Her friends at school told her to come home and put the phone in a bag of rice. My response: “Sure, and then go outside and wave it over your head and bawk like a chicken?” (Fans of “Dick Van Dyke” will get that reference.)

In any case, it worked. We opened up the phone and buried the battery and the cellphone in a plastic bag containing about one cup of rice for three days. We checked it after two days and the phone worked but the texting didn’t; that third day in rice revived the text function. Apparently the rice soaks up the moisture in the phone. (I did a subsequent search for “wet cellphone” it returned more than a million hits — so I appear to be the last person on earth to know this money-saving trick.)

Got any weird tips to rescue one of your belongings from a similar mishap? Comment here or email me at laura at laurarowley dot com.

If there is an industry rife with streamlining possibilities for smart entrepreneurs, it’s got to be the cell phone industry. Last week I pulled the charger plug out of my Palm Treo and the entire bottom of the device popped out with it. I headed over to Verizon with a simple request: Please fix my phone or sell me the exact same model, and I will go along my merry way.

This being the cell phone industry, neither option was available. Instead, the salesman suggested, I could exchange my dead Treo for a new Blackberry, which was free — but only if I mailed in the $100 rebate, and agreed to extend my existing contract for another two years. But this would require learning an entirely new phone, I said, which doesn’t even have a touch screen. What if I don’t like the Blackberry?

No problem, he replied, you have 30 days to return it, no questions asked – although it will cost you a $35 restocking fee. And if I change my mind after 30 days and decide to switch to, say, an Iphone? Then it would be the restocking fee plus $175 if you break the new extended contract agreement, he said. But no worries, it’s pro-rated.

Huh? Can anybody make this industry simply give the customer what they want?

And here’s a question for you IPhone users out there. Tell me if the product is revolutionary enough and the experience life-changing enough to warrant returning my new Blackberry (with the no-touch screen) in the 30-day window. As regular readers know, I’m a practical gal. I buy products (like used cars and generic groceries) because they are useful and do the job. Neither my self-image nor my self-esteem are related to said purchases, and I don’t even know who the Joneses are, much pay attention to what they think.

However, I keep running across such interesting IPhone apps that I am wondering if this product has crossed the threshhold from luxurious item to impress the neighbors to useful item that will grow in usefulness over time.  Would love to hear your response…within 30 days if possible.

In my moral values class at Seton Hall University, we were discussing some of the universal moral themes that researchers believe may be genetically hard-wired (see this article by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker in The New York Times Magazine). These are values that when violated prompt a universal moral reaction or a sense of outrage, across a variety of countries and cultures. The values are harm, purity, community/group loyalty, authority and fairness.

I think fairness is the underlying value that provokes disgust when we feel nickel and dimed by the products we buy and the services we use. Perfect example: Picture Day this week at school. Lifetouch, the vendor that seems to have a monopoly on school pictures in New Jersey, sent home the form to be filled out — photo sizes, back- grounds, cropping, retouching options, and an envelope for payment.

Frankly, I think school pictures are a waste of money, because I take waaaay better photos of my children. But the kids really want them, and of course we want the class picture, so I pony up $28 for each kid to get some 5 x 7s and 2 x 3s — that usually come home and go right into the drawer with the last eight years of school pictures.

This year, Lifetouch began charging $3 if you order a background in any other color than “traditional gray.” Now traditional gray would be better described as ”your child’s school picture will be taken against a concrete prison wall.”  If you want blue, or fakey reddish fall foliage, or the somewhat sappy patriotic background with the American eagle, it’s an extra $3.

Well anyone who’s ever used photoshop knows that  it costs Lifetouch nothing to insert a gray background or a blue one. The unfairness, the outrage! I felt taken, cheated, nickled and dimed. Filling out the forms the night before the photos, I ordered the gray. My daughter protested — she wanted the blue. I fumed that I wasn’t going to pay a $3 rip-off fee to Lifetouch (and actually wrote that on the order form. I need to take some yoga classes or something). 

The next morning I relented, and told my daughter if she really wanted the blue background I would throw another $3 in the envelope. “Nah,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter.” Interesting how the things we desire immediately don’t seem as important the next day. Perhaps I should pay Lifetouch $3 for a lesson in delayed gratification.

It’s been one month since we got rid of cable television (I wrote a story about it in my Yahoo!Finance column a few weeks ago). I’ve had all kinds of feedback — from parents who would like to do the same, to folks who think I’m some kind of Amish Luddite who should be charged with cruelty to children. But 30 days into our experiment, the results speak for themselves.

In the old days, we didn’t allow television during the school week, so my kids would usually gorge themselves on it during the weekends. Yesterday, instead, my oldest read an entire novel; my middle daughter had a sleepover and spent most of the morning playing Mancala and other games; and my six-year-old created a story about hidden treasure and drew the map, strapped on her backpack and went treasure hunting in the house (complete with a parachute made out of a grocery bag).

The household is quieter, calmer and more focused; it’s like a loud, unwanted house guest has finally departed. Even the dog is happier, because she always finds someone to play catch with her.  We still watch DVDs from Netflix, but our media choices are active, not passive. I do occasionally miss a little TV before bedtime, but I just read instead. And I did feel a little out of it reading about all the new fall programming in the newspaper. But will my life be ruined  if I never catch an episode of “FlashForward”? (Heck, if it turns out to be a cultural phenom, I can always order the whole season on Netflix.) 

I had lunch with a friend who is a senior editor at Consumer Reports, and he reminded me that the issue of a la carte cable programming has been around for years.  The truth is, if I had the ability to choose and pay for the channels I like — such as the History Channel, Bravo, Animal Planet, ESPN — I would have kept the cable. But when I have channels I hate shoved down my throat because of the way the cable company has chosen to “package” them,  the only choice is to opt out entirely.  Financially, it’s been great. We’re saving about $80 a month, or $960 a year.  

Do you have a story about kicking out the cable? I’d love to hear it.

For many employers, the fall season brings open enrollment — that once-a-year opportunity for workers to change their benefit packages. But the vast majority of workers stick with the status quo: A recent MetLife survey of 1,000 people finds 77 percent of employees plan to maintain current work benefits, while 10 percent plan to increase them and 11 percent will cut back.

Many workers don’t make changes because they don’t recognize the upside of some benefit programs. A 2008 survey of human resources managers found only 21 percent believe their employees have a good understanding of the company’s benefits. One issue is that workers may get little guidance: 40 percent of the firms in the survey require workers to self-enroll to receive benefits.

In a nutshell, an FSA allows workers to have money deducted from their paychecks pre-tax to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses as well as the costs of dependent and child care (including summer camp for children under 13 when both parents are working). I’ll explain the details in this post — but if you prefer the video version, check out my recent appearance on ABC News Now’s “Money Matters.”

For example, someone in the 25 percent tax bracket who spends $2,000 a year on qualified medical expenses (or a qualifying day care center) would save that 25 percent — or $500 — if he sets aside the money in an FSA and has his employer reimburse him for those costs. (You also save on Social Security, Medicare and state taxes, so the savings are even higher.)

By law, the maximum contribution to a dependent care FSA is $5,000; there is no legal limit on health care FSAs, but employers typically limit them to $5,000 as well, experts say.

Here are five questions to ask to make the most of your FSA:

1. Do I have expenses that qualify to be paid out of an FSA? Go to www.irs.gov and check out Publication 502 to see which of your medical expenses qualify, and 503 for child care expenses. (The IRS dubs them “Flexible Spending Arrangements.”) It can be anything from co-pays to eyeglasses to the cost of a weight loss program if the weight loss is ordered by a doctor.

2. How much do I spend out-of-pocket each year on these expenses? Get a firm handle on that number by looking back through your checkbook and credit card statements. Flexible Spending Accounts are “use it or lose it” – in other words, if you don’t spend the money you set aside, you forfeit it. So it’s important to add up the numbers – that will give you an idea of how much to set aside in the account. A mom of three I interviewed for my recent Yahoo!Finance article on this topic used Mvelopes.com to track her spending, so over a period of a year or two, she knew precisely how much to set aside for medical expenses for her child’s asthma and other costs. That will save her family hundreds of dollars over the course of the year.

3. What’s my tax bracket? This tells you how much you’ll save by using an FSA. Many people don’t know their bracket off the top of their heads. Assuming you filed the standard Form 1040, look at Line 43 of last year’s tax form. That’s your taxable income. (If you expect to earn more or have more deductions this year, just add and subtract those factors to get an estimate of this year’s taxable income.) Then go to irs.gov and look at the federal tax tables to figure out your bracket. Then multiply the amount you would put in the FSA by the bracket, and that’s roughly your savings. ($1,000 in FSA x 25% = $250; $1,000 – $250 = $750 in actual cost.)

4. How does my plan work in terms of reimbursing qualified expenses? It’s important to talk to your co-workers who have used your company’s FSA. An FSA is only as good as the plan administrator. Some companies have administrators that make the FSA very easy to use – for example, they’ll issue employees a specific debit or credit card for their FSA spending. Others require you to jump through a lot of hoops – for example, filling out and faxing paperwork to prove the expenses are qualified.

Ask your co-workers how responsive the plan administrator is, what their call center is like, how often they approve or reject claims, and what the appeal process is like. (For some people, the savings aren’t worth the time they have to put in to get their claims approved and paid for with their own money!)

5. What happens with my FSA if I leave the company or lose my job? You typically have to use the money before you depart. So if you think your job is in jeopardy, schedule those dental and medical checkups, get prescriptions refilled and get a new pair of eyeglasses. You can submit the paperwork as long as the expense is incurred before your termination. In addition, you can sign up to extend your FSA benefits under COBRA (you don’t have to sign up for the COBRA health insurance itself to continue your FSA). But you have to pay in the monthly amount you committed to, plus a 2% charge.

One last note: Aside from the open enrollment period, you can also make changes to your FSA plan if you have a qualifying life event – if you get married or have a child for example. For more on FSAs, see this Yahoo!Finance column.

by Alix, the M&H eco-czar

If you truly want to be more environmentally aware, we must discuss that car in your driveway. All of us have at least one (Manhattan readers excluded), and it’s the biggest contributor to our individual carbon footprints.

We can’t just get rid of cars. Certain realities of our daily lives cannot change. If you live in an area without public transportation and must drive to work, so be it. Your children must be dropped off and picked up, groceries must be bought, etc. We live in a car-based culture so driving is going to be our predominant form of transportation no matter what. We can make some changes, however, and here are a few:

Idle cars are the Devil’s Work. In a situation where you are idling your car, turn it off. This small easy change in your behavior will greatly diminish the amount of unnecessary exhaust your auto spews into the air. You’ll also save gas.

Don’t speed. You use more gas when you’re accelerating and braking all the time. If you just drive the speed limit, take your foot off the gas a bit more, and don’t slam the brakes you’ll save gas. This practice, called hypermiling, gained popularity when gas prices topped $4/gallon.

Buy used. Sure, hybrids and Teslas are the new it cars of the sexiest celebs (see George Clooney with his electric ride below) but if they really wanted to be green, they’d drive an old used Honda Accord. If you buy a used, er, excuse me “formerly owned” automobile, you are ostensibly saving the planet from further manufacturing pollution. (Yea yea, I know, I know… the cars will be made anyway so we’d ALL have to engage in this practice to really make it work… but hello?  GM is bankrupt. Clearly, something is changing here). For tips on buying used cars, see this post and this post.

Walk, Ride, Share or Carpool. This is the “Eat your lima beans” portion of the show. For so many people, their car is an extension of themselves so I realize this can be a non-starter. For the rest of us, let’s consider the benefits of walking or bike riding—it’s good exercise, you’re out in the fresh air, you’re maybe happening upon friends and neighbors and getting to chat (thereby strengthening your community). If you have an errand you can walk or bike to, give it a try.

If you can take public transportation but have always opted for your car, try to take the bus or train just one day a week and see how you like it. You might just find some perks to it…after all, when somebody else does the driving, you can read or work during your commuting time.

If driving is the only option, consider carpooling. Web sites like Carpool Connect and Eride Share can make it easy to find fellow commuters in your area, or just send out an email at your office. Yes, you might be forced into some annoying small talk before you’ve been sufficiently caffeinated but most carpoolers establish considerate norms of behavior (like no death metal on the radio and no mindless banter before coffee mugs are emptied). If you don’t need to commute daily to work, see if there’s a car sharing service such as Zipcar in your area; it may make sense to give up the costs and hassles of car ownership (storage, insurance, maintenance).

For the truly converted: We took our green efforts up a notch a few years ago and decided to live with just one car. My husband trains to work and we realized that the times we needed two cars were so few and far between, even occasionally calling taxis would be cheaper than insuring and maintaining two cars. It’s been almost three years now and we do not miss our second car.

How do you save on auto expenses? Comment here or email us at laura at laurarowley.com.

by Alix, the eco-czar

Buy. Less. Stuff. It’s that simple. Buy less stuff. When you buy less stuff you spend less money, so the economic angle is a given. When you buy less stuff you are also making a dent in the giant heaving mountain of garbage that almost all of our stuff eventually becomes. Buy less stuff and stem the tidal wave of consumption that for years has been the American birthright. It has also been giant contributor to the swirling gyre of plastic trash polluting the Pacific Ocean. This garbage dump is visible from satellite footage.

Buy less stuff is a simple rule, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Lest I get a bad reputation as a sanctimonious scold, let me be clear: I love nothing more than strolling through a swanky mall, shopping for wardrobe, access-ories, and cosmetics that I do not need. I love retail therapy.

Like a growing number of Americans, however, I want to save more money. The exuberant spending that marked the last ten years or so has been replaced by attitudes reminiscent of our childhoods when saving for a rainy day was the norm.

I still love to shop, but now I do it with a new attitude. I’ve had a paradigm shift, as they say. Now, whenever I am about to buy something, I take a moment and ponder, “Do I want this or do I need this?” When every item must pass the want-or-need test, far fewer items make it to the checkout aisle at Target. Perhaps initially shopping was not as much fun, but it’s like exercising an atrophied muscle. It might hurt at first, but when you get home and there is still that chunk of cash in your bank account, the pain will have subsided greatly. Like workouts, the more you do this, the easier it gets.  

If I find that the item I left on the store shelf is still haunting me days later, I’ll go back and buy it. But more often than not, I walk away from items in stores and never return to buy them. I have cultivated a strange sense of satisfaction when I walk out of a store empty-handed. I’ve discovered a strange power in my immunity to the relentless shills of our materialistic world.

As everyone with young children knows, there is a never-ending stream of stuff the world wants you to buy for your kids–from the patently unnecessary warmers for diaper wipes to expensive video games, to the way they rudely outgrow the shoes and clothing we buy. I think teaching them the lesson of want versus need is a vital part of my role as a parent. They almost always leave toy stores, Target, and supermarkets without the token piece of trash or candy they whine and plead for.

Another key to maintaining control with my kids is hand-me-downs and resale/consignment shops. Other kids are outgrowing their clothing and gear as fast as yours are, and somewhere in your town is probably a store like Milk Money where you can get great “gently used” kid stuff, cheap. If no stores near you are good, try handmedowns.com or e-Bay. (For the latter, just search on your child’s shoe size or clothing size.)

Changing my attitude has led me to discover a host of other ways to get what I need and want while still saving money or not spending any money at all.

The Library has been a huge “a-ha!” for me. I spent my childhood going to the library but somehow forgot about it as a childless adult. Now I don’t know how the parents of young children do without a library—you cycle through so many picture books with kids. As an adult, you can ignore both sides of the Kindle debate, still read whatever you want, and keep all your money in your pocket. Get yourself a library card and it’s all free: Books, DVDs, books on tape, CDs. I check out tens of books, for my kids and me, and if we don’t like a book there is not an ounce of buyer’s remorse. In fact, purchasing a book has become something reserved for gifts and very special book (i.e., a guide to gardening I’ll use all the time, or a picture book my boys adore)—a money saver for certain.

A few years ago we had a sofa bed that we couldn’t pay someone to take. We couldn’t even get goodwill to pick it up. Then we posted it on Freecycle and within 24 hours it was gone. We quickly discovered it’s a two-way street. Our big living room TV was free, and I found a piano for my neighbor as well. Register locally and you can receive updates of what’s available, post your own ‘wanteds’, or just visit the Web site whenever you want.

Craigslist is like visiting every garage sale in your area without leaving the house. Like eBay, Craigslist is addictive. Once you score a great deal—like $75 for the ideal table and chairs for my back deck—you check it for everything.

Like so many elements of going green, a big change came from a small shift in my thinking. My contribution to the planet’s garbage problem is smaller, and my bank account stays… well, small too, but not smaller!

For more on the less-is-more movement, see this link. Have you cut back on buying stuff? Comment here or email your thoughts to laura at laurarowley.com.

…to borrow a line from “All Star” by Smashmouth. It seems appropo given the magnitude of change the economy is demanding of people. Just this morning I did an interview on the Today Show about the growth of stay-at-home dads, and how couples can cope with the transition from a financial perspective.

One of the dads in the story talked about the loss of identity, which is a huge part of change (happened to me when I was laid off with 500 other people at my job back in 2001). There’s this weird black void you step into when you leave the old thing but don’t know what’s next.

My advice for these dads? Embrace the void, take time to hang with your kids, wallow in the mess, the frenzy, the tedium, the delight. You will look back on that downtime with a pleasure that most dads don’t get the opportunity to experience. At least that’s what my husband says, who stayed home for a bit with the kids while I worked full-time.

And though it sounds like a cliche, getting laid off really was the best thing that ever happened to my career.  Here’s the Today Show clip.

Editor’s Note: Please welcome Alix, a writer and married mom of three kids (ages 6, 4 and six weeks!) who will be guest-posting for the blog on a regular basis. I met Alix when she moved to New Jersey from Washington D.C. She’s a sharp, thoughtful freelance writer who’s spend the last 15 years covering health care, the arts, education and the environment. When she moved to Jersey she decided to clean up her act, environmentally speaking, and spent the last year figuring out how to reduce, reuse, recycle — and save money. She’ll show you how going green can be easy and cheap – and she’ll chronicle her eco-exploits – and other adventures in saving money — here.

When it comes to your groceries, it’s easy to excuse yourself from “going green” by saying it’s too expensive. Just look at the price of organic food. Still, there are good reasons to go for it and you can start by “cross-shopping” — the way you might buy a dress at Target and splurge on the accessories at a department store. In other words, you do not need to buy organic everything. I sure don’t. Certain produce, milk, chicken and meat always get the bump up to organic. A few tips:

-Organic milk always costs more, but shop around—Target offers a good price, I‘ve noticed, and the Whole Foods 365 brand is not certified organic but the milk has no antibiotics.

-The criteria to earn a “Certified USDA Organic” label can exclude produce that is grown without chemicals or pesticides. Find a farmers’ market near you to buy local, and ask the sellers how the food was grown. Produce that has a thick peel — bananas, citrus fruits and avocados — offers some natural protection against pesticides.

We love farmers markets!

-Use coupons. Mambosprouts.com focuses specifically on healthy, natural and organic coupons — just click and print. Organic producers including Stonyfield Farm, Annie’s Homegrown and Earthbound Farms offer coupons on their own websites. You can find some of these brands, and other organics, in bulk at Costco.

-Spend more on organics by spending less on those individual snack-sized portions. According to research from the University of Florida, packaging makes up one-third of all waste generated. Per-ounce, single-servings can be 50 percent more expensive, and generate twice the waste as products packaged in bulk. You can save more than $50 a year by avoiding single-serving food items, the study found.  Buy reusable containers and then purchase cheaply in bulk.

-Eat less meat. This is good for your body and good for the planet. Even Paul McCartney is advocating No Meat Mondays. A huge source of global warming is all the cows in our country, and waste runoff from the giant chicken farms near the Chesapeake Bay is poisoning the water. Alternative proteins are not only better for you and the planet, they are cheaper! Grains like quinoa, spelt, faro; any sort of bean; nuts, eggs—all of these are excellent sources of protein and much less expensive than meat. For recipes, check out the blog of Amanda Louden, a holistic nutrition educator in California and mom of two, who posts her recipes online at www.mydailydiner.com.

-Grow a garden! The cleanest tomatoes will always be the ones you grow in your backyard. Sites such as www.backyardgardener.com show you how to grow your own produce.

Finally, walk into the store with your canvas reusable bags in hand, ready to drop in your cart for checkout. I’m not going to try to sell you on the $0.10 per bag savings some stores offer. This is purely an altruistic move on your part. I will say that canvas or reusable bags are sturdier than paper or plastic so you will grow to prefer them. It’s a tough habit to start, however. So many times I was at the checkout with a cart full of groceries when I realized all my reusable bags were still in the kitchen. So I put the bags in my car. The frustration and aggravation at the checkout is considerably heightened when the bags are in the parking lot of the supermarket. Eventually I got into the swing of it, and now it’s a habit.

If you have ideas to save green while you shop green, comment here or send them to laura at laurarowley.com.