Can You Get Rich With Burritos?

Even though I read lots of blogs dealing with (supposedly) frivolous topics, I am at heart a frugal girl. Married--thank heavens--to a frugal guy. And the parent of--even more thank heavens--two frugal offspring.

As a frugal girl, I crave contact with other frugal types. Sadly, with the exception of my colleague Merton, I have no one to discuss such topics as "What is the best stock-up deal at Piggly Wiggly this week?" Yes, even though I am a teacher of literature and love to show my students how certain words reverberate through Hamlet, I find such discussions compelling.

Needless to say, the blogosphere was a godsend to frugal girl in search of frugal friends. Sadly, most of the frugality blogs seemed to devolve into "Make more money blogs" stuffed with ads for payday loans. Then I discovered Mr Money Mustache. Get it?

A lot of people must be in search of frugal friends, because his posts get 100 comments! He's a guy who saved 3/4 of his engineer's salary for about 10 years and retired. Not to sit around, but to do other stuff. And yes, he has a family. While I don't aspire to early retirement (in fact, MR FS and I are at the age OF retirement), I believe in frugality as a general principle. So I've been blissing out reading through his posts. Ahhhhhhhhh.

One of his themes is "Get rich with." Get rich with the library. Get rich with your bicycle. These are not new ideas. Even the great Amy D of Tightwad fame admitted there was nothing new under the frugal sun. But how much more compelling to say "Get rich with" rather than "Save money with."

I have some new frugal apprentices this year: Miss Em's friends Mr C and his roommate C. They are Americorps volunteers. Mr FS and I send Miss Em off with 100 frozen homemade bean and cheese burritos each semester. We learned last year that Mr C was eating a lot of them.

Guess what? Mr C is a very smart fellow, having achieved knockout scores on his SATs and--we hope--on the MCAT. He learned how to make burritos himself. Then C started eating them. Now they make burritos together.

Can you get rich with burritos? They cost around 30 cents a piece. If you eat two or three for dinner a few times a week instead of the usual more costly options, well...you do the math. I may ask Mr C to work it out: he majored in Economics.