I subscribed to the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover program a few days ago and am anxious to track and report my journey to financial fitness. I have read both of Ramsey’s books and found them to be very helpful. Ramsey has a “7 Baby Step Program” to achieve financial freedom. He has quotable gems of wisdom that make one rethink how money should be spent. “Live like no one else, so you can LIVE like no one else!”; has been the mantra of fans of Dave Ramsey. He also refers to many of the items we buy as “stuffits”, stuff we don’t need that only clutters our lives and homes and empties our bank accounts. After reading both of his best sellers, I tried my hand at Baby Step One, which is to save $1000.00 dollars and keep it liquid in a bank account or physically in your home. The reasoning behind this is that most expenses on our credit cards come form emergencies which are usually more than $300 but less than $1000. If you use cash, you avoid using your credit card which will cost you the added interest charge and let’s face it, who pays off their credit card balance every month? If there is an emergency that would require you to pull out your credit card, you use the cash instead. Then you restock your emergency fund to $1000 and go ahead or resume pursuing Baby Step 2.
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First, let me say something about cooking: Everyone can cook! I often hear women say, “I just can’t cook!”. What I hear is, “I WON’T cook”. Well, it’s time to suck it up people! The recession is at our door and we can no longer sneak past it on the way to the restaurant. Also, ANYONE can cook! If you can read, you can cook! There is so much help and support for you! There are old fashioned cook books to new media websites to find easy recipes. You can even go a more traditional route and call your mom, grandma or auntie! I find the web a terrific way to find new recipes that are easy to follow! The Food Network website even separates its recipes by technique, i.e. crock pot, grilling, baking, etc. Each recipe has a five star system to let you know it’s level of difficulty! I even found a web site that will let you type in ingredients you have on hand and then give you a recipe using those ingredients!
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There are so many ideas out there by experts who are also contributors to magazines and talk shows. The problem with these experts is that they are often testing their ideas in a lab kitchen or closet, not a real one like yours and mine. My tips are used in a real home, so you know they are tried and true.
Here’s how I save time in the kitchen. First, I plan my grocery shopping to take a few hours from the time I get my coupons together, shopping, unloading and organizing my groceries for the week. I know it sounds like an extravaganza, but trust me, it’s worth it. I am a busy woman and I never know when I will be called for an audition which takes me out of town for the better part of the day. I organize my kitchen so my husband or I can make meals with little effort. But it does take time.
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Now I DO love my Rachael Ray. She makes ordinary dishes take on a new and tasty personality. But Rach, as much as I love you and your recipes, I don’t always have the time you do for these creations. I do indulge in the money and time now and then and enjoy the delicious dishes. However, unlike Rachael, I do my own grocery shopping, storing, chopping, cooking and then there is washing dishes, pots, pans and cleaning a kitchen.
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Yes, you can buy your milk, eggs, bread and your Christmas gifts for your family during your weekly grocery trip!
Most grocery store chains have a gift card mall with gift card for everyone! There are gift cards for everything you can think of! Of course we are all know about gift cards to the book store and restaurants, but you should stop by and look at all the new and unique gift cards that are now available! Give your babysitter a gift card for gasoline! How about a fast food gift card for your postman? Your child’s teacher would love a gift card to Michael’s craft stores. What college kid wouldn’t love a gift card toward the purchase of an airline ticket?! Give that “hard to shop for teen” a gift card to a show store. My mom loves to go out once a week with her girlfriends for lunch and a movie. I am getting her some gift cards for her Girl’s Day Out.
You can find a gift card for any budget and anyone on your list!
I have always shopped year round for Christmas and enjoyed having everything done by holiday time. But, I did have to secure one whole closet for my purchases, boxes and gift wrap. I am able to store all my Christmas gifts in an envelope! Wrapping is so easy! I can use an decorated envelope or a small gift box or bag.
I don’t have to run around the mall looking for deals, I am crossing people off my list every other week, and I don’t have to worry about storage!
It’s time to take care of what you have! Let’s face it, times are tough and are about to get a lot tougher. Families in most homes across the country are rethinking their budgets. Every news program, talk show and magazine and news paper articles are featuring how your family can employ budget cuts. Budget cuts, like diets, focus on what you CAN’T have! I do agree cuts have to made in our family budget, but I am looking at enjoying what I have.
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“Black Wednesday” will be a date our children will study in their American History, economics and social studies classes. I hope and pray they are not going to be paying for the fall out of this crisis! If not handled correctly, hell, if even handled the only ways possible, may still put the burden of paying for this mess on our kids! I have two grown children. My daughter is in grad school and studying to get her Master’s in Library Science. ( A career she will shine in and love every day she goes to work!) My son is in his second year at Humboldt and studying stage craft. ( A career he has grown up around and so it is second nature to him!) My kids are hardworking and honest people. My daughter is looking for a job now. She is going to have enough of a challenge to land a job, especially when you consider so many Americans will be working well past retirement age just to make ends meet. She will be competing with many other people to get a job and once she gets it, she will be taxed to make reparations for the mistakes made by Washington and supporting mistakes for an economy she had nothing to do with!
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I recently had to defend my view on hiring household help. If you read a prior blog entry, you may know that I do my own housework, not by myself, my family helps too. In a nutshell, my thoughts are, if we dirty it, we clean it! We are the ones who eat off the plates, dirty the laundry and, last I looked, it was our hair in the shower floor! Why is it someone else’s job to come in and clean that? I have heard people say, “Don’t worry about it, the maid will clean it”. Why is it her job to pick up the glass I drank out of? I can take it to the sink and wash it!
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My husband made 4 of these Emergency Kits last Christmas and gave them to each of our immediate families. You can personalize them to match your needs and even do one with just food and water! Having these little luxuries in an easy to carry duffel bag would mean so much to us if we had mere moments to evacuate our home.
Keep this in an easy to find place. We keep our in the closet next to the front door. Also, you may want to add to it throughout the year. It would be a good idea to open it up and inspect it once or twice a year. Give yourself a visual reference as to what’s in there so if the time comes to use it, you’ll remember more easily what you have.
Putting all this stuff together may seem like a daunting task. If you take it little by little, you’ll see that it’s not that hard and it won’t be such a hit on your bank account. Before you know it, you’ll have an emergency kit and a sense of security knowing you’re covered if an emergency hits.
Can you believe it? Gas is over $4.60 a gallon and financial experts predict we can go up t0 $12.00 a gallon in five years and see this period in history as the good old days! The other day I filled up my tank and it was $65.00! I remember when I could buy 2 round trip tickets on Southwest airlines for less than that only two years ago! This is getting out of hand. The price of gasoline is on the lips of everyone and a hot topic for discussion and rant. A few months ago, people would pump gas and turn to someone else who was also pumping gas and find a comrade in the complaining about the cost to fill the tank. Now, no one says a word at the pump. They just stand there in stunned silence as they see the better part of their paycheck pumped into a tank of gas that may last them a week if they are lucky.
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