Category Archives: Tips
Losing Weight and Eating Healthy while on a Budget
Photo Credit
Anyone who wants to lose weight or lose the belly fat must perfectly understand that to achieve that goal, diet and exercise should go together. Not just one, but both. But given our modern trying times, another key factor comes into the picture: budget. And honestly, it plays a very big role in your goal plan, especially if one adopts frugal living as a lifestyle.
While researching diet plans and weight loss techniques over the internet, I have found numerous articles that encourage dieters to eat high-protein meat like turkey, red meat, or salmon. Consume healthy unsaturated or monosaturated fat that can be found in avocado, olive oil, almonds, sunflower seeds, and the list goes on. Eat green vegetables like lettuce, celery, cauliflower and the list goes on. And every time I go to the supermarket, the prices for these diet foods are very expensive. Yikes!
As for the exercises, the famous action plan for dieters is to hit the gym. Most gyms require membership fees that do hurt the budget too.
So what do frugal livers do?
Start with the Right Mind
I think it starts with the mind. Why do you want to lose weight or your belly fat? Determine what motivates you, and create a mantra for it. Say it to yourself over and over again. While trying not to eat your favorite unhealthy food, say that mantra. When you get tired and your knees already hurt from too much exercise, say that mantra. If your motivation is weak, chances are you’ll be ditching your goals sooner than later.
Every body is Unique, Your Body is Unique
Listen to your body. Which time of the day do you feel most hungry? In spite of all the diet and exercise, why am I not losing pounds? How do I stop myself from grabbing another cup of rice, or ordering another round of drinks? And why do I eat less but gain weight and fat so fast? When you determine the answers to the questions above, then likely you’ll adjust your eating habits, self-control, and again, motivation.
Eating the Right Food
Now here comes the food part. Yummy, but in dieting, the word is sacrifice. Though it requires a lot of sacrifice, it does not have to be sad or deprived. Studies show that skinny people enjoy their food and do not gain weight easily because they savor it and chew it properly, before grabbing another. So try to enjoy your food on the table, and not devour it. And make sure to eat the right food. Right. Food. Set out a diet plan that is budget-friendly.
Eat oatmeal or whole wheat bread for snacks.
Eat less rice, hence you can save money.
Drink lots of water, it is cheap.
Eat a lot, and I mean a lot of fruits and vegetables. Eating a lot of it does not harm the weighing scale, even so, is more healthy and beneficial for your weigh loss goal. Fruits can be expensive, so try buying them in the market where the price is still within supplier price. Apples, mangoes, banana, are good options for breakfast or dinner. Then you can eat rice on your lunch. Or whatever makes you comfortable. I can not stress enough the importance of fruits in a diet plan, because it is highly recommended. I think it is one of diet techniques that is mostly ignored or overlooked. Fruits help flush the fat from your body, make you less hungry often, and do not make you feel bloated.
Avoid oily food, you don’t want to add more fat in your body.
Ditch the soda and other high sugar-content juices. Drink green tea, or hot water with lemon.
Here comes the hard part. Ditch the junk food and fast food. They contain a lot of salt, preservatives, and monosodium glutamate. When salt content enters the body, it retains water in the body which in effect, can make body look bulgy. They contain a lot of carbs too.
Exercise: Move a Lot
After knowing your diet plan, choose where you can exercise. You can jog in parks that do not collect entrance fees. You can do yoga in your home. You can lift weights using improvised tools such as a water bottle that contains sand, it becomes heavy. Other improvised workout routines can be the following:
At your home, try to do planking, push-up, and sit-up for 30 minutes everyday.
If you have stairs at your home, use it as a workout source. Climb first stairstep with left foot, then right foot. Step down using left foot, then right foot. Repeat for 5 times.
This is yet the best cardio exercise for me: jumprope. I swear I lost few pounds pounds after jumping ropes for 30 minutes everyday for 2 weeks. It is not just cardio, but also an overall workout routine that enhances muscle flexibility and mind-arm coordination. It works a lot of part of your body: arms, legs, knees, stomach, and thigh.
But if you have no time for exercise, go aggressively with your diet plan and try to move a lot. If your work involves sitting whole day, try to stand and have a short walk every 20 minutes. You can maybe go to the restroom, the kitchen, or talk to your friends. After work, if you live nearby, you can just walk the distance. Or if you commute, try to walk to the farthest jeepney or bus stop. At home, you can wash laundry standing up. Cook food. Watch the TV while doing something productive like cleaning. The key thing is try to move a lot.
Take it One Day at a Time
There are no shortcuts. And it takes a significant amount of work. Nothing that is worth having comes easy. Just like any goals in life, shedding a few pounds and fat in the body needs discipline, work, and honestly some sacrifices. But enjoy your journey and don’t be too hard to yourself. Make it a lifestyle and not just a one-time or weeklong phase. Just like in the practice of frugal living, spend wisely. So choose your food wisely. Choose your motivations wisely. And you’ll just wake up one day and realize you have conquered yourself, and the reward is you lose some pounds and fat. Success!
About the Guest Author
This guest post is written by Cathy Tejano, a technical writer, blogger and a vegetarian-wannabe. She blogs at Caterine101.com.
Frugal Real Estate Tip: Budget Your Way to Owning Your First House
There is no quick means of making a decision to buy your first house. It is easy to fall in love with the house of your dreams that fits your personality and needs, but there is some work that needs to be done in order to make that dream into a reality. Buying real estate is not only a big decision; it is a life-changing decision that needs planning.
When you begin planning for your new home, it means establishing a budget and knowing where you stand financially. Creating a budget and understanding your finances will make it a lot easier for you to begin the process of taking that leap into buying real estate.
Track Your Debits
The first step to establishing your budget is gathering all your monthly bills. This means your credit card bills, rent, utilities, student loans, and household expenses – everything. Separate all your bills into these categories so you can easily identify the needs versus wants in your spending.
Buy a log book or accounting book to keep track of all your expenditures. At the top of the log write down your beginning balance for the month, this would usually mean your first paycheck. Then continue listing your expenditures. When you receive another paycheck, if you are paid twice per month, list that as a credit and continue tracking your expenditures as debits. Your balance at the end of the month will give you an idea of where you stand financially.
Assess Your Debits and Credits
Once you have a nice log of your debits and credits for an entire month, you can now begin assessing where your money is going. For example, are you spending too much on eating out or the movies? Are you buying too much new outfits or new technology gadgets? This can be identified as the areas considered “wants”, which you can decrease or eliminate and put that money into a savings.
As you will need a certain percentage of the cost of a new home as a down payment, it is important that build your savings by cutting back on your wants. If you have excessive credit card bills, then you want to take that extra money and pay down those credit cards before you start saving.
Build Your Savings
Once you have established your budget, any monies left over in your budgeting account should be placed in a savings account. These monies should not be used for any emergencies, but for your home purchase. You can establish another savings account as an emergency fund. The amount that you have saved will be reviewed when you begin the home buying process.
Check Your Credit Report
A lender will check your credit history and credit score, so before he or she does this, you should do this on your own. There are many free sites on the Internet that can provide you with this information free of charge. Knowing where you stand in the financial market will allow you to attack your monthly budget to make positive changes to your credit history. This will also ensure that you get the best interest rates on your home mortgage.
In order for you to qualify for a home mortgage, your credit history, as well as your income and what you owe will be reviewed to come up with your debt-income ratio. How much you have saved and your work history will also be analyzed. Be prepared when deciding upon buying real estate so that there are no hidden items that will hurt you qualifying for a home purchase.
Photo above is used under Creative Commons License. Credit.
6 Grocery Store Tricks You Shouldn’t Fall For, But Probably Do
This is a guest post by Nick Simpson who works at Saving Star.
IMAGE CREDIT: Some rights reserved by Polycart
After literally millennia of selling goods to consumers, grocers have the art of the sale down to a science. The fact of the matter is that our buying habits, while diverse, aren’t all that complex. There are some basic techniques – tricks, even – that grocery stores use to increase their sales.
While you probably consider yourself a savvy shopper who’s immune to such manipulation, chances are pretty good you fall for some of these tricks, at least occasionally.
Here are some of the top grocery store tricks, as well as how you can avoid them:
Placement of convenience items. Do you know what the most common item that people shop for at the grocery store on an as-needed basis is? Milk. It makes you long for the days when the milk man delivered a quart each morning. Today, the milk is almost invariably located at the back of the store. The idea is that you’ll walk past those enticing fresh-baked cookies, or perhaps see that “two for one” sale on your favorite soup, and wind up making another purchase. Think about it: when was the last time you walked out with only the gallon of milk you went in for?
Premium items stored at eye level. If you’re looking for a can of green beans to go into a casserole recipe, you might not care whether you’re getting Green Giant, Del Monte, or even the store brand. Guess which one is placed at right around five feet from the floor? The most expensive of the three. The least expensive (usually the generic) is going to be placed at the bottom. Chances are there’s even a bright yellow tag somewhere between the two offering a discount – a discount that still makes the premium item more expensive.
Marking up complementary items. Retailers like to offer what are called “loss leaders.” Loss leaders are items that they sell at a loss (or in most cases it’s actually a minimal profit) in order to get you into the store. What you may not realize, however, is that stores often pair loss leaders with other, more expensive items. For example, if you walk into an electronics department to purchase a discounted remote control for your TV, there’s a pretty good chance that a display with the most expensive batteries for that remote will be right next to it (or at least nearby).
Volume sales. Stores can get very creative when it comes to getting you to purchase a number of items. One regional grocery store is famous for it’s “Buy 10, get the 11th free!” sales. With these sales, there are usually 20 or 30 items on sale, each for Php 50. For some of the items, this represents a 10-20% savings; for others, it’s pretty close to the normal retail price. By requiring you to buy 10 of the items, the store may not be making as much on each individual item but they’re getting you to spend more (and making more overall because of it).
Coupon confusion. Grocery stores take a number of different approaches to coupons. Some, for example, will match their sales to the coupons that they know manufacturers are currently putting out. This means you wind up saving significantly on a given item. However, some stores that offer store-based coupons will make sure that the full retail price is charged (before the coupon is applied) giving you a deal that’s not quite as good. Add in the sometimes-confusing policies on whether a given coupon should be doubled, and you’ll often wind up paying more than what you meant to.
Rewards for returning. One of the more popular approaches stores are using today is a cash back system where you have to come back into the store at a later date to use a given reward. So, for example, you might earn Php 250 in rewards on a given shopping trip. In your mind, you’ve saved Php 250 – even if you paid full retail price. However, statistics tell us that less than half of those rewards will be used before they expire. If you don’t get back to the store to use the rewards, you didn’t save a dime. Not only that, if you use the rewards coupon on another full-price item, you’re saving even less in the grand scheme of things.
By understanding some of the tricks retailers use to get you to spend more money, you can more appropriately plan your grocery trips so as to maximize savings.
Guest Author Bio
Nick Simpson is Social Media Coordinator at SavingStar, a leading provider of grocery coupons. SavingStar has pioneered the process of providing coupons online and has a rapidly growing customer base of happy shoppers that save money with their supermarket coupons technology.
How to Maximize Your Computer’s Internet Connection Speed
[ This is a guest post by Spencer Hogg from the BroadbandExpert.Com ]
In order to get the best from your high speed internet connection and maintain the highest speed, you first need to know just how good your connection is by performing an online speed test. Data transfer speeds vary with distance from the server, so try a few different locations to get a good average; this will establish a baseline with which to compare later speed tests.
Physical connection problems increase data packet loss, slowing your internet connection by forcing it to request the same data more than once; double check all coax connections are tight.
Once the quality of the connection has been checked, there are several steps to optimize your PC and how it uses the connection.
Regular system maintenance will not only keep your PC running efficiently, it will help maximize the speed of the internet connection. Data transfer speeds have increased so much since the days of dial-up that any problems with your computer can manifest as slower than expected internet connection, as the hardware and software struggle to keep up. Regular registry error checks, disk cleanup and defragmentation help to keep system performance at its best, but if your computer is over 5 years old it may be time to consider an upgrade.
Double check the amount of RAM and hard drive space available. A computer may have a super fast processor but without adequate RAM, or with an overly full hard drive limiting virtual memory, the internet connection will suffer. Closing unused programs help to keep RAM free to be used by your internet browser while RAM management programs can also be useful to monitor RAM usage.
If your home network uses a wireless router it is very important to enable the built in security features to prevent bandwidth theft by individuals within range of the wireless signal. Most routers also allow management of port ranges for specific software applications to improve internet data transfer speeds.
ReadBud, Let Cebuanos Earn Dollars While Reading
Photo by Mikyu Maglasang
Good news to all Cebuanos who love to read. You can now earn dollars while reading your favorite topics and articles online.
I know a lot of people who love to read and they read like volumes of articles daily. But what if you are given the opportunity to enjoy reading your favorite topics and getting paid at the same time?
Instead of wasting your precious time ranting and chatting in Facebook, you can start reading great articles in line with your interests. If you are into cooking or if you are interested about politics and current events, this is your opportunity to earn something while enjoying your favorite hobby.
On the other hand, if you are not into reading, this is your time to start loving this great activity. Frequent reading can polish your English skills and will make you an expert in your field of interest.
You can start earning while reading by signing up HERE. No registration fee. Happy reading! (:
Have you tried shopping online?
Devastated by the very unfortunate twist of event last 21st of August, I decided not to shop in that mall for a while. Well, I’m referring to that most heartbreaking moment when my precious bag was stolen by some heartless homosapien inside McDonald’s at Ayala Mall, Cebu. I won’t elaborate more about the incident because I will write a separate entry about it. It’s just very unfortunate that all my personal belongings were stolen along with my bag.
That is one of the reasons why I opted to shop online these days. Because of that incident I was left with no ATM and credit cards up to now. It’s a good thing that I still have my paypal account which I use when I make online transactions. And also, thanks to ShopWiki. Their free online service made my online shopping faster and hassle free. Whether you are shopping for cosmetics like mascaras, lipsticks, foundation, and concealers, or if you are looking for the latest gadgets like digital cameras, cellphones, and laptops – you can find them all at ShopWiki.
ShopWiki is like a mall where you can find almost everything you wanted to purchase online. From collectibles, food and beverages, pets, furnitures, DVDs to fashion and gift guides. This is the best alternative shopping portal especially for those people who got phobias shopping in malls infested by soul-less criminals.
Do you know the secret for a happy life?
Nobody in this bloody universe wants to feel sad and lonely. Everyone likes to be happy. Human beings NEED to be happy. But, what’s happiness without pains and sacrifices? How can you recognize happiness when you haven’t experienced loneliness or sadness yet?
It is inhibition-activation. Yes! In order for us mortals to experience the pleasure brought to us by happiness we need to inhibit ourselves from sinful pleasures and sacrifice a little so that when activation comes, our senses won’t be jaded. That way, we can ultimately enjoy the good stuffs brought to us by happiness. Hehehehe! I don’t know if you still get what I want you people to get.
Anyways, according to a famous psychologist, the secret to a happy life is POSITIVITY. Positivity in what way? Make a Happy Journal. It may be written in old school style like diary, notebook, or you can have the leisure of blogging and online journals. In your journal write only all the happy things, events, occasions that happened in your life or blog about your happy thoughts and musings. YES! All those wacky stuffs you did with your friends, happy moments with your loved ones, sight seeings with your comrades…everything and anything that exudes positivity and happiness.
Honestly, this is what I have been doing for the past few weeks. And it’s definitely effective! Hehehehe! So, what are you waiting? Fill your life with happiness! Start writing your Happy Journal now!!!
Ta ta,
EOD
