I think the "family" part is meant to be unbalanced. You are meant to be poor; it was pretty heartbreaking (!) choosing between food for my hungry son, or medicine for my wife.
I think the "unbalanced" part of it is that you can let your family go a turn of "Cold" and "Hungry", feed them the next turn, then they'll be back to OK. That's what I did my second playthrough at least; I ended it with a savings of $80 =P
While that is surely efficient, I suspect that choosing to do that avoids much of the point of the game -- like using an infinite ammo cheat in Resident Evil, or patching Oregon Trail so that you don't run out of food and can't get dysentery.
