I am a Holistic Health Advisor with a Master's Degree in Nutrition. My partner is a Chef and we have a blended family with 5 children.
As a single parent of 2, I was able to still make things work while financially struggling with the help of food stamps. I was also one of the early children diagnosed with Celiac Disease in the US,which has driven my lifelong pursuit of using food for optimal health.
We focus on teaching people, and creating dishes, to help people learn how to make food that is:
- Quick
- Easy
- Delicious
- Nutrient Dense
- Budget Friendly
Here we go again! Yes, that’s right. Valentine’s Day is here again and it is time to show off our plumage to keep the fire burning with our partner. But what is the best way to do that without breaking the bank? That is a very good question!
With the beginning of the New Year, comes the standard desire for change. At least for the majority of us. Well, we happen to be no different in that we know that we can do better. Therefore, when we had our end of the year budget meeting to go over all of the numbers, we decided to make a big change with our budget.
We all want to start the New Year out right and change some things that aren’t working for us. For a lot of us, that means changing the way we eat and spend our money. So what if we tackle both of those topics in one fail swoop? Let’s dive into how to save money and eat right in the New Year to create some balance.
While we have a diversified retirement portfolio mix of Roth and Traditional IRA’s and a 401k, we have decided to get into another form of retirement investments. Real estate investment. As someone who has been engrossed in the real estate investment world with other investors for the past couple of years, I have learned a lot. So much so that we decided to take the plunge on our own. This is solely to diversify our retirement investments even more with the hopes of early retirement through passive income. However, we just made our first mistake!
I don’t know about you, but as our family keeps getting larger so does the cost of our holiday gifts. Due to this, we keep coming up with more and more creative ways to pile more presents under the tree for less. Sometimes, this can be tricky, since all of the kids want everything they see, plus we have family to buy for. And this doesn’t even include the food! But this year, we found yet another way to save money and keep below our budget.
This is the time of year where everything gets a little bit crazier and we all get a bit stressed out. The holiday’s can creep up on us, just like the end of the year, and when that happens we have a hard time deciding which way to turn. On top of the holiday madness, there is something even more important to think about. Our retirement accounts.
Every year, around Thanksgiving, people can be seen running around like chickens with their heads cut off, completely frazzled. Now, I realize there are a few different components at work here, but money is usually the root cause of this behavior. Where to find the money to pay for all of that food is really the kicker. But, this is something that we can resolve by creating a change with how and what we spend our money on.
When it comes to appliances, these are things that are must haves in our current society, not want to haves. Just because we must have them in our day to day lives, doesn’t mean that we must spend a fortune on them. Appliances are like cars in my mind. We need them but we don’t need all of the extra stuff they are trying to get us to buy. Not only that but certain brands perform longer and stronger than others. Since we have to have them, then why not save money on the initial purchase of a good product to save even more in the long run?
When it comes to household expenses, food almost tops the list. This is true of most American households, which makes it one of the best places to start cutting back to save money. But how is it possible to do that with the ever creeping price of food? Oh, it can be done! Sometimes, we just have to be a bit creative, but cutting the food budget is definitely something that can happen.
Editor’s Note: Hi everyone! Please welcome our new staff writer, Shanah Bell. Shanah will be sharing her story and advice on the blog twice/month. We thought she’d made a great second voice on the blog in addition to Laurie’s. Enjoy!
Teaching children about money, and the power that it truly has to make or break your life, is one of the hardest parts of parenting. As a family of 5, with the age ranges of our children vastly different, that gets even more difficult to navigate. How we need to teach the 5 year old is completely different than the way we can teach the 12 year old.
