I couldn’t have been more than 8 years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
My mom and I were at Cub Foods, a no-frills store where you bagged your own groceries as they flew down this fancy mechanical belt. It was 20 minutes further from home, but it was a little less expensive than the other stores, so we often went there.
It was the holiday season, I think, because while my mom ticked items off her list, I was tasked with getting a very specific amount of cream cheese, which I can only imagine was for a cheesecake. (We never ever had cream cheese in the house).
While she lingered at the counter that I called the Meat Island, off I went to the dairy case. And there, surveying the choices of brands and sizes, I used my budding math skills to figure out that buying two smaller packages of cream cheese would be cheaper than getting one large one.
Oh, how satisfying that was to discover.
Victorious, I happily deposited the two smaller packages into the shopping cart, while proudly announcing that I had just saved the family a whole quarter.
My mother beamed.
Lately I’ve seen a lot of digital ads on how to stretch food budgets and make grocery bills cheaper.
They’re all something like How to cook more with less! or How you can feed a family of four on $50 a week – with flair! or How going meatless can save you hundreds AND snatch that waist! There are couponing tips and cookbooks and checklists.
It’s jarring to be marketed recipe books and DIY hacks on how to bootstrap your way through national economic upheaval and rapid societal, systemic change.
I understand the pull of the content – especially right now during this, the Season of Feeding People. There are family gatherings and holiday meals and the weight of making sure the table is pretty (Make a DIY centerpiece with evergreen boughs from your own yard!) and everyone’s fed and happy – even as the bills pile up.
It’s not that I’m angry at the content, or the creators. I’m just mad it has to exist.
Of course we all want to know how to make it work, make it stretch, make it do.
Heck, women are practically trained on it.
My mother, like most mothers I know, is a thrifty sort who can make a full meal out of a dollar. That’s not innate; it’s a skill learned over years of hard lessons and hard choices. Honing it to my mother’s perfection requires a combination of creativity, ingenuity, determination, and self-sacrifice.
By eight years old, I’d already internalized the lesson that women are the ones who manage financial constraints – by choosing well in the dairy aisle. By going to the less expensive grocery store that makes you work harder, that takes you out of your way, that takes more of your time. I learned that convenience is expensive. And that everyone’s time – except my mother’s – was worth spending money to preserve.
Sociologist Jessica Calarco once observed that “other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.” She’s right. We’ve structured our society so that when systems fail and wages stagnate and costs spiral, women are expected to catch everything that falls.
We’re expected to make it work. To stretch and plan and scrimp and still put a smile on while serving dinner.
In regular times, it wasn’t so bad to have this expectation. Frugality is a virtue; I quite like being thrifty and saving my pennies.
But being thrifty will not save you from a medical bankruptcy. Clipping coupons is not going to make a $30k yearly health insurance premium affordable.
Grocery prices have skyrocketed while wages have stayed flat. Corporate profits have soared while families struggle. And for solutions, we’re offered cooking tips. Budget strategies. Ways to be even more resourceful, more creative, more efficient with the dollars we’ve managed to scrape together.
But hidden within the hot takes and helpful tips is the insinuation that women should somehow shoulder the responsibility for the slow-rolling economic catastrophe we’re in. That somehow we have the tools and the ability to stop it.
Frankly, we should be insulted.
I don’t want a cookbook. I want a ten-point plan for how to achieve universal healthcare, paid family leave, a living wage, and a pre-Reagan era tax scheme.
Because the problem isn’t that we don’t know how to comparison shop or live within our means. The problem isn’t that we need better recipes or smarter couponing strategies.
The problem is that the policies governing our economy have been deliberately designed to benefit the people and corporations that are extracting wealth from our communities – while leaving working families to fend for themselves and fight over scraps.
Just as an example, take the expiring ACA subsidies. The ACA is used by 24 million people – enterprising small business owners, people whose jobs don’t provide health insurance coverage, and folks who work in the gig economy. (More than half are women, by the way.) When the subsidies that make that coverage more affordable lapse, monthly premiums will triple for millions of families. A friend texted me yesterday that her premiums for just herself will go up by $500 per month.
That’s not a budgeting problem. That’s not something you can meal-plan your way out of. And what’s worse, that’s money that will flow out of your bank account and into the sweaty back pockets of insurance companies – instead of being used by you in your community, supporting your local businesses, boosting your local economy.
Letting those subsidies lapse is a policy choice.
It’s a policy choice made by Republicans who have decided to prioritize corporations over families. Who shield companies from the regulations and taxes that would make life more affordable and more dignified. Who have systematically dismantled the protections that allowed previous generations to build middle-class lives.
Friend, the recipes for how to live on less keep getting longer and more detailed. But what we need is short and simple.
We need to vote out the people whose policy choices got us into this mess in the first place.
Not just this cycle. Not just when it’s convenient or when we’re inspired or in presidential years. But consistently, persistently, in every election, at every level – primaries, generals, special elections, school boards, state legislatures, Congress. Then we need to actually build the infrastructure to keep them out long enough to actually change the policies that created this crisis.
I don’t want tips on making my grocery budget stretch. I want a government that ensures grocery budgets don’t need to be stretched in the first place. I want policies that recognize feeding your family shouldn’t require a degree in home economics and a magic wand.
But mostly, I want us to stop accepting advice on how to cope when what we deserve is advice on how we fix it.
So as we head into 2026, by all means, plan your meals and clip your coupons if it brings you joy. But I hope you’ll save your energy for the work that actually changes things. Registering voters, supporting Democratic nominees who get it, showing up in every election like the infrastructure-building project it is, celebrating progress, holding Republicans accountable.
The people who want you focused on recipes are counting on you being too exhausted from making ends meet to focus on policy.
Don’t give them what they want.
Let’s make them eat their policies, friend.
Let’s get to work.
Actions for the Week of December 30, 2025
Friend, things may be heavy – but you can lighten that load by doing something small – a “small deed” – to bring about the world that you want to see. I call it Action Therapy.
That’s why in each Tuesday post I share a few “small things” to do. Typically those action items take the form of a Small Thing to Read, a Small Event to Attend, and a Small Call to Make or Action to Take. This still being a holiday week – the “in between” week that is traditionally tricky – we are focusing on Small Things to Read.
Small Thing(s) to Read:
Let’s start with this great and short piece by the Guardian, which starts: “Twice as many Americans believe their financial security is getting worse than better, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian, and they are increasingly blaming the White House.” It gets better from there!
Read the full article here: Nearly half of Americans believe their financial security is getting worse, poll finds
Next up, this great piece about Rural Democrats by Politico. If you’ve been a long time subscriber, you know that my daily work focuses on empowering and supporting Red State Democrats. So this piece lays out a lot of benefits that I’ve been championing for some time.
It starts: “Democrats are accustomed to losing in rural America — especially to Donald Trump. Now they’re hoping the president’s own policies might prove to be the leverage they need going into next year’s midterms.”
Read the full article here: Democrats spy rare opening in rural America
Thanks for reading, friend – I’m glad to see you here! You’re making a difference, I promise.
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Small Deeds Done 