Teenagers and Debit Cards?

Yes or No? That would be a resounding YES!!! We have a 13 and 14 year old in the house (18 months apart). This summer my daughter was asking again for a phone. I asked how was she going to pay for it. She said I could work for you. Then it hit me…okay I could work with this. I have become their personal ATM for the last couple of years–clothes, movies, eat outs, socializing with friends….it was getting out of control. We struck a deal….$5 an hour, and she pays for anything she wants to buy/do. Okay, now we are talking. The first 1/2 hr of the day is to tidy up their rooms and common areas. Then they can do laundry, dishes, floors, landscaping, pool, bathrooms, organizing closets, office filing, paperwork, anything I want/need done they are there to do.
We started with my daughter who is actually younger but more ambitious on this project since she wanted a phone. We went to the bank. She had to set up a checking account, which a student checking account is free for 5 years and then as long as you have 10 transactions per month it continues to be free. We needed her social security number and I had to be put on the account as well since she is a minor. They allowed her to get a debit card with her name on it(big deal to a teenager). We also set it up so that she would be declined if she didn’t have the money to cover the expense.
How does it work, we got the bank app all set up on all our phones. I have each of their checking accounts along with my own. They only have their account on their screen and no transferring. I can instantly move money from one account to another. It is amazing!!! They can work and bam, it is there.
Well guess what…..the kids are making wiser financial decisions. They no longer want to stop at Taco Bell….because I ask, are you buying? Response: “No, let’s go home and we can make something”. My daughter wants(not needs a new swim suit), I say sure you are buying. Is it worth say 7 hours worth of work, for a $35 suit? NO, well then I guess you can make due with what you have. Do you want to buy the decent mechanical pencils or the fancy ones? I will give you the money for decent ones, do you want to pay the difference? NO!! Okay, the regular ones it is. And every month on the phone bill date, I pull $30 from each account.

Don’t Feed The Beast

This is a great catch phrase to help you and/or others to focus on facts, positive thoughts and direct questions/answers between parties. Get rid of the hearsay, gossip, the “I want to hear your side of the story”, the he/she said, the third party accounts of situations and the judging of others. In any organization, group, collection of people, this always happens. I hate to say it but it is worse with women than with men. Recently I was in this exact situation, it was twisting me in knots, people coming up to me, me being just as bad as everyone else. It was eating at me for about 48hrs, I said enough was enough. So I began to hold up my hand when people approached me about the situation, I said, I am not going to Feed the Beast, I am through with it, no more. I will answer direct questions from the parties involved but I am not talking about it except with the parties directly involved. I didn’t want to hear anymore about what someone else said, none of that betters the situation, nothing gets resolved and it is emotional poison. Since I started using the phrase, how much easier things are, if someone else wants the situation to eat at them, their loss not mine. But by using this phrase and explaining you won’t be involved, you are rising above the junk and coming out a better person.

I don’t want to hear excuses, I want to hear solutions….

If we could all live by this. It has gotten me a good bit farther in life and co-workers and bosses really appreciate it without even realizing it is being done for them. It is a totally teachable method, even on 7 and 8 year olds. I actually use it on my kids. They now know when the excuses start flowing, I put a finger up to stop the rant and even start to open my mouth, they say “I know what you are going to say….I don’t want to hear excuses, I want to hear solutions” Well that is easy enough, so we begin the process of brainstorming and figuring out what can be done to fix things. Placing blame or excuses doesn’t get you any closer to the end game, it’s irrelevant to moving forward, so skip the step, skip the acid emotions and get to the solution already. Yes this is easier said than done, I know, and it takes practice. Scary how many times in one day you can catch yourself, but once you break the old habit and start using this technique, it will make you not only a more productive person but a happier one as well. Try it today!

lowesbuildandgrow.com–Awesome Saturday Morning activity

We discovered these about a year ago and have been having a great time with them ever since. Every 2 weeks they have a different project to build at Lowes for kids and it is free. I go on-line and register usually once per month, you can sign up for 2 workshops in advance. We go in, get a package of the project, we put it together with cute little hammers, they have everything in the kit that you need. The kids have an apron where they get a patch that irons on when the project is complete and a certificate. It is really quite sensible to do because if we need to pick something up we usually get it on our Saturday morning trip. We also do the Home Depot Little Builders, that is the first Saturday of the month. You can’t register on-line for those you just fill paperwork out when you get there. At Home Depot you get pins to put on your apron. All the projects are great, but I will warn you, the old finished projects start to pile up quickly.

Mustgo Dinners–Save time and money on Meal planning and clean up the frig

We grew up on Mustgo Dinners. My Mom used to say “everything in the Frig must go!” My kids think this is great because I put a little special twist on it, I create a menu to go with the “Dinner Evening Specials”. I go through the frig and list main dishes, side dishes, drinks, desserts. Now remember there isn’t any sense in giving choices out of the pantry or freezer, only include the items that you want gone out of the frig. The rule is nothing should be made, you can be re-creating or combining things in the frig for a meal option but don’t add to it–that is key. It saves not only on meal planning since everything is right there, money because we won’t end up throwing it away when it goes bad but it also cleans up the frig. Guess what we are doing for dinner tonight? 🙂

New Fountain Soda Dispensers at Burger King

Okay so it doesn’t take much to entertain me. We got some coupons for BK in the mail the other day. We hadn’t been to our local BK for a while so we figured we would give it a whirl. Those new soda dispensers are cool. It is very difficult for me to find fountain soda since I like to drink caffeine-free diet soda. They usually offer Diet Coke/Pepsi and a Sprite but never a Sprite Zero or anything like that. Well this new fandangled dispenser not only has Sprite Zero it has about 5-6 other caffeine-free diet options, including powerade zero. Who knew? In addition to having all sorts of kinds of soda options, they add in the flavor variations as well, ie Raspberry, Cherry, etc. I can tell you it was fully entertaining for our 7 and 8 year olds. We tried so many different kinds. Probably not cool and down right annoying if the restaurant is busy but we went when it was dead and had a great time with it. This was the first time I had seen it so I don’t know if everyone will be going to this or just select locations and/or chains, not sure but I thought it was cool.

Breakfast Enchiladas-Yum!

Over that weekend we were having brunch company, trying to figure out what to make, hubby started me thinking along the lines of breakfast burritos, well it turned into Breakfast Enchiladas and they were awesome. Very easy actually and I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it before.

Coat the bottom of a 13X9 pan with enchilada sauce, set aside. Then take a can of cream of mushroom soup and 8-16oz of sour cream(depending how much sour cream you like–I used what I had left of a 16oz container), and mix those in a bowl and set aside.

Now for the filling, you can use any of the following, I used eggs(12), drained-squeezed spinach(frozen), a couple handfuls, chopped up canned mushrooms–didn’t have any fresh, drained-squeezed canned tomatoes–I needed the fresh for other things later in the day, hey I said this was a last-minute change 🙂 We also had some sausage crumbles in the freezer. Mix all that together, and scramble in the fry pan. Make sure everything is well-drained or it will all separate and not be nearly as good. I had to split it in a couple different batches, when it came out of the pan, I layered with cheddar cheese and put a plate over so it would melt. Then when the mixture was all done, I scooped it into the shells, put them in pan, put the cream sauce over the top, covered with foil, put in 350 oven for say 20 minutes, then added cheddar on top, turn off oven and put back into oven until the company comes. Now if it starts to get crusty on the top throw the foil back over the top.

Or if you don’t want to do the oven thing, we had extra and were starving so we used the extra shells, stuffed the scramble in, used the cream sauce and a little salsa and ate them like that, that was awesome as well.

Small Acts of Kindness–Make your own day

You always hear the phrase, “it is better to give than to receive”. Don’t ask a 6 year old child that at Christmas :-), but I am talking about adults. And in most cases the phrase fits. So taking that into account, they say if you are feeling glum, stressed, whatever, doing something nice….doesn’t have to be big, can make you feel better, more so than the recipient. I was the recipient of that yesterday, it made me feel great, and I believe the guy was feeling 10 feet tall, and it really was nothing but thoughtfulness on his part. We were at the Y yesterday for Homework Buddies. We came in and at the table there was a Publix guy, he was doing paperwork as well as our Retiree volunteer that does the Homework with my kids. We had just come from school, we were at a function and I got “pinned”, a program we do for our volunteers where the kids make cards, and the cards and pin are given to the classroom hero volunteer. Anyway, earlier in the week an article regarding our program was in the newspaper, it was an awesome article, great picture, headline, etc. I was talking to the retiree and said, yes I will take her paper from Tuesday because I was going to laminate the article for the participants in the pictures from school. We went on and the guy was continuing to work and the kids were loud etc. I said to the guy, “you probably aren’t getting much done”, he said “actually it was great to work with no interruptions”, I shook my head in agreement because I totally knew what he was talking about. He went on to say that he didn’t mean to eavesdrop but he heard that I was looking for papers, he had called his store, checked with his people and made sure they held back the papers he had left from Tuesday, he had twelve papers, that I could go by and pick them up. How nice was that? It was so thoughtful and the papers didn’t mean anything to him. The kids were excited and jumping down and I was saying thank you and the guy was grinning ear to ear. I am sure when he came to the Y he had no intentions of doing nothing but getting his paperwork done but along with getting his paperwork done, he got a nice jolt of happiness thrown in. And it doesn’t hurt that I won’t forget what a nice thing that was and I will make sure I go to his Publix and let everyone I know, know what I nice thing he did.

Be aware of what is around, you never know what little thing can make someone else’s day.

Can you freeze fresh carrots? NO, you can’t.

Okay, so I knew in the back of my head that you cannot normally freeze fresh vegs without first blanching them. Some how I had picked that up along the way in my life experience. Well purely by accident I now know what happens to fresh carrots if you try to freeze them. Needless to say it can get crazy in our house in the mornings, especially if I don’t do lunch prep the night before. The other day I was in a hurry and I put an almost full 2 lb bag of baby whole carrots into the freezer instead of the frig…..grrrr. Later that day, I see the bag of carrots in the freezer, it took me a 1/2 a second to figure out that there was no one to blame in the house except myself. I knew they were probably ruined but I didn’t know what happens to them so I put them in the frig as an experiment. Finally after 2 days they thawed out, got brown and squishy. One of life’s little mysteries has been answered for us all.

Failure: There is a silver lining you just have to look for it

We have all failed at something at one point or another. It may not have been a going down in flames kind of failure but a disappointment, a loss or an underachievement. In an article I read, see link below,there was the following quote: “It’s almost impossible to ask those questions while yelling at yourself, “I’m a failure,” or “There’s something wrong with me.” But when you shift your thinking, you make it possible to see what you can control—your behavior, your planning, your reactions—and change those things. The troubleshooting skills that you gain in the process are what you need to reach your goals.”

My most famous “failure” or maybe it could be called a lemon I made into lemonade. I was convinced to go into “business” with another woman who was a para-legal in a law office. She was familiar with the foreclosure process and said we could flip houses, I would arrange the money and she would do all the leg work. After many hours of planning on my side and her side, she sent me to the courthouse with everything we needed and I was going to get our first property. Long story short, instead of buying a 3/2 house on 4 acres, we bought a manufactured home that had been investigated for being a meth lab….opps. Wow, talk about a jolt to the system. It was a complete failure, I was shocked, I am sure all the regulars at the foreclosure sales were laughing at us. I just remember saying, “I am not quitting”. In all actuality I couldn’t, we had money sunk into it. So we rolled up our sleeves got to work and turned that house around and sold it for a healthy profit within 30 days. It was never our intention to get into the flipping of manufactured homes business, but it worked, within 6 months, it was known down with the regulars at the courthouse, leave the manufactured homes for the “ladies” as they chuckled behind their hands. Our business venture lasted about 1.5 years, the market changed, other people caught on to our niche and it didn’t make sense to continue what we were doing, so we moved on. But it was good while it lasted AND it was something we would NEVER have considered before the “Failure” of our first attempt.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/3-Successes-Only-Failure-Can-Give-You-Leigh-Newman#ixzz1qOwgOBFw

What does the KISS term stand for?

Way back in the day, college, freshman year, I was in my first large auditorium class. I believe it was some kind of intro class, the only 2 things I remember was that we had to make a 5-10-15 year plan and the term KISS. The professor was some pompus guy and anytime I here the KISS term, I get a picture of this guy standing down in front in this huge lecture hall. So what does KISS stand for? Keep It Simple Stupid! That is it, it is sort of silly but I must say I have used the heck out of the term over the years and the guy did make it stick with me after all this time. So consider yourself “edumucated” for the day if you didn’t already know what this KISS term was 😉

Quote for the Day–

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
— Hans Hofmann

It has taken me some time but I am finally realizing that the more I put on my task list for the day, the less I actually get done, isn’t that interesting. When I came to this quote it helped remind me that less is more. What I need to do is focus on 3 pivotal tasks for the day, until those are achieved nothing else should be distracting me. Period. Wow, keeping to this philosophy really keeps me focused.

USPS latest to get more junk mail creating more revenue

I was reading an article regarding the USPS trying to generate more revenue. One newer revenue stream they have found is some on-line direct mail system small business can use by targeting certain zip codes. The article also referenced the potential for increasing postage to 50 cents, and consolidating distribution outlets. But in the article there was no mention of cutting down delivery days, so I figured I would do something different and create a poll, give your opinion.

Fun way to get kids to help around the house.

We had such a productive and fun morning as a family on Saturday.   Our son has discovered the card game Phase 10, and he wants everyone to play it with him.  We made a deal Saturday morning, the whole family will sit down and play 1 phase, the winner of the phase chooses something all four of us are going to clean in the house together.  WOW, what a great time as a family, we spent over 3 hours, no technology, no fighting, it was amazing, who knows if we will ever have such an event again but it was a great experience and got things around the house done that we hadn’t done in a long time. I am sure this would work with any card game, ie. uno, crazy 8’s, Kings Corners, etc. Now that I think about it we have used Kinnect, we’ve bowled as a family and winner choose as well.

Green Eggs and Ham? Fun and easy change of pace….

It was St. Patrick’s Day over the weekend and the kids came out of their rooms with green clothes on and said we want Green Eggs and Ham for Breakfast. I thought a minute. I had some spinach in the freezer, just a Ziploc bag that I had already thawed, chopped and drained for another recipe. I didn’t use it so I just popped it back in the freezer at the time. I got it out, defrosted in the microwave, scrambled some eggs, tossed the spinach in, dash of Lawry’s seasoning salt and cooked it….YUM!! We didn’t have any Ham but we did have bacon that I had previously cooked and froze so we pulled that out of the freezer, defrosted it, served with toast, and breakfast was great! Next time I believe I will use the spinach and add some mushrooms.

It is a 3 paycheck month for a lot of people, did you notice?

It is that time of the year again, did you notice over the last few pay checks that your cushion is growing in your checking account? That there is a little more time to hold onto your money before the bills are due? It is the extra pay cycle catching up with the calendar. Take advantage of it, grab that extra cushion before it gets sucked up by this or that and pay your highest interest debt down with it. Because you know if it sits in that checking account it inevitably will be chewed up and you will have nothing to account for the “bonus” you got. You may be asking yourself, well how can I do that? I don’t have it. Interesting, when you have payroll deductions taken out, that same amount is taken out each check, whether you have 2 or 3 paychecks in a month. You won’t even notice because you are in a system, but that extra payment you will notice in the savings, or if you sign-up for bi-weekly mortgage payments. It happens twice per year which gives you an extra payment on your mortgage every year, which I believe knocks off something like 12 years off a 30 year mortgage.

If you find yourself coming up for air twice per year because the extra paycheck helps you get current on your bills, it may be time to reassess where you are financially. Do you always hear the terms, living below your means, or above your means and never really knew what exactly that was? If you are living paycheck to paycheck and the extra check helps keep you afloat you are living above your means. If you can in fact can feel and use that extra money to pay down debt out right you are living within your means because you still have money to pay your monthly bills. Being a Financial Organizer, I use this example to help people see where they are relatively quickly. If you would like help getting your financial house in order and getting to the point where you can put that “bonus” to your highest interest rate debt, please contact me. As always unless I can save you 3 times my fee in one session, you don’t pay anything.

 

Ways to Fight Fatigue

I am all about keeping the energy level up and these articles are always friendly reminders to help me stay on track. Here is a cheat sheet to the article I found, the full article can be found at the below link but here are the highlights that we can all make some quick adjustments and gain some of that energy back, especially with the recent time change.

1. Don’t load up on simple carbs before Noon. The article said it will give quick highs but the lows will get you. Stick with high protein for breakfast. I believe I will try this and go with a Protein shake in the AM, or maybe add protein powder to the oatmeal.

2. High protein-High Fiber snacks. Eat when you get hungry or your body will go into starvation mode. I do this, which is crazy for our meal schedule but keeps everyone from gorging when it comes to meal times.

3. Take multi-vitamen for energy, makes sense. It said to keep your immune system strong so you don’t get sick as much.

4. Get your rest. It says to get 8 hours, but sometimes you may not need it. My personal philosophy is if the alarm isn’t waking me up that means I am getting enough sleep. But we are early to bed, early to rise people, my natural wake time is usually around 5am, very seldom do I hear a 5:15am alarm my husband sets. If I do, I know I need to get to bed early the next night to make sure I am getting my sleep.

5. Hydration is key. I am a firm believer in this. Get those 8 glasses in. When I am feeling sleepy or none motivated, I slug water, low and behold, my energy level rises 4 out of 5 times when I do this.

6. Walk at least 10 minutes a day. I agree, I hate to plan for a walk/exercise but I never regret it once I start moving, and 10 minutes won’t kill anyone’s schedule.

7. Breathe deep to relieve stress: a direct quote:

• Deep breathing exercise: Put your right hand over your stomach. Start by taking in a deep breath for 2 seconds. Then slowly breathe out for 4 seconds. Repeat for at least one minute until you feel rested.

I hope this helps you to tackle things better to get through the rest of the week, I know it has helped me to remember the basics.

 

http://www.oprah.com/health/Dr-Ozs-7-Day-Plan-to-Fight-Fatigue/1

A Twist on Italian Night for Dinner–Something Fun

I am always trying to think of ways to do the same old things in a different way to keep it fun. Spaghetti night can get old, so we have come up with something different. We do the pasta sample dinner. With Publix offering BOGO all the time on Spaghetti Sauce this makes it easy. When/If you have the kids with you at the Grocery store, everyone gets to pick a pasta sauce they think they would like best. White sauce, red sauce, chunky, traditional, whatever. All our different likes brings surprises to our picks, and it is interesting trying new sauces. What we do is cook up a pot of whatever pasta the kids picked at the store as well, yes I like to delegate shopping decisions, makes meal prep easier because they picked it so I know they will like it. Then we all sample the different sauces to see if our favorite is still the best or perhaps another gets our fancy. And since the pasta is hot, we just pour the sauce from the jar(gasp), stir and add parm cheese. That way the pasta cools to the right temp for the kids when mixed with the sauce, and makes for quick prep.

Don’t know….Google it, crazy how much info is out there

I have had some foot problems, didn’t know what to do. My foot hurt if I put any pressure on it, but didn’t hurt at all if I was sitting. No swelling, no bruising, no injury, no dis-coloration. No clue!! I googled it, low and behold, others had experienced the same thing. My husband took me to urgent care this weekend but the x-ray machine was down so we left and I continued to ice and elevate and started searching. Now I am learning that many others are going to urgent cares/ERs/GPs and being told ice and elevate but that doesn’t seem to be the issue with these people as with me as well. Right now I have a tennis shoe on, no pain, but no weight on it either. The advice people on Google said, save your time, co-pays and frustration and go straight to a foot specialist, since we have Aetna Open Access I called Aetna and they said yes the clinic I was looking at was in-network and I didn’t need a referral. I then went to the clinic website and it had an “ask a nurse” button, of course I am going to use it. I wrote in my issue, got a call back within about 6 hours. Talked it over with her, depending on symptoms I will be heading into the Dr., I feel so much more confident that I am doing the right thing and not second guessing going in or not. Either way, I will skip a few needless frustrating steps along the way.   Thanks to Google, I know I am not the only one who has experienced this and I am not going Looney.

What to do with a cake that is raw in the middle? Disaster to Delicious

We were having a sleepover party for our little girl Friday night, our plan was to have the girls help make the cake. As soon as they were in the pool, there was no getting the girls out, our daughter says, “Mom you can just make it”. Okay, but with everything going on and more girls arriving it got crazy, the timer went off on the oven, and I had my husband check if it was done and take it out. 15 minutes goes by and I go into the kitchen, the whole center of the cake is sunk. Ugg, now what to do, I would have to wait to throttle hubby until later now was time to divert disaster. First thing, flip it it onto a round pizza pan that I was going to use to serve it on, release the spring form pan, I then dig out the center that is raw. At this point I have a good 4-5 inch diameter hole down to the pizza pan, it looked like a donut. I get it all carved out, then throw it in the freezer to get it nice and cold and get out the Neapolitan ice cream I was going to serve with the cake and let it get a bit soft, not too soft just enough to get it to form. I then take the ice cold cake out, fill it with the ice cream, frost it, put the sprinkles on it, and throw it back in the freezer. It was time for the cake to be served. It turned out perfect!! The girls thought it was sooooo cool that I made an ice cream cake and every last piece was eaten.