What is a luxury?

I've been on a mission to cut grocery costs.  With three adults in our house now, it's a fight to keep costs down.  Cause you know, the more I can cut corners, the more I can sock away in our savings account.  A few days ago, I came across hillbilly housewife.  The site has all sorts of information on how to cut costs in the grocery budget and still feed your family filling, interesting meals.  Of particular interest are her forty-five dollar and $70 dollar a week meal plans.  I used the $45/wk shopping list this past week and got everything I didn't already have for $29, using Save a Lot.  It's a lot of food and will keep my men happy for the next couple weeks.

One of the talking points on the site deals specifically with the issue of using margarine instead of butter, though the same point applies to a lot of other foodie choices as well.  So she says that when you have to cut costs and make your dollar stretch as far as possible, it's best to go with the cheapest option available.  Yes, I can hear you saying but what about my health?  What about my family's health?  What about this, what about that?  The reason you're shopping on perhaps $50 or less a week is because you're short on money or want to save money.  So you make sacrifices now to reach some other goal.  The argument about margarine vs. butter is one of luxury economics.  When you can afford to make the choice, you choose the option that's more expensive, better tasting, and arguably better for you.  

Margarine gained in popularity during the Depression years when city people couldn't afford to buy butter.  It's time to return to that mindset.  I would love to have boughten two pounds of butter and a quart of olive oil.  Instead, I got two pounds of margarine and a quart of veggie oil.  I haven't boughten vegetable oil in *years.*  But I needed to make my grocery budget stretch and I didn't happen to have a coupon for olive oil and even if I had, it probably wouldn't have taken enough off to make olive oil comparable to vegetable oil.