Healthy Cheap Food

Before whenever we would travel, it would seem like we were taking everything and the kitchen sink when we would travel, even if it was just a weekend trip. Between snacks, clothes, toiletries and toys for the kids, we would have a good trunkful of stuff for a trip.

Lately, we have cut back on what we take. I bought each of the boys a backpack and my husband and I each have a backpack. Now when we travel, we only use a single backpack each. If it doesn’t fit in the backpack then it doesn’t go. It sure has made our trips much more enjoyable.

Yesterday we went to the store. My husband does a lot of writing and sometimes needs to do some research on the topics he writes about. It’s not usual for him to buy research material at the store from time to time.

I was a little shocked yesterday. He has writing job about candy. He came up to me in the store with a bunch of candy bars and I tried to remind him about his diet. All he did was smile and put them in the cart. He looked at me and said, research! How can you argue with that? Sometimes he reminds me of a little kid.

One of the things that was the toughest and most no-brainer thing I could do as a parent was to start assigning my kids chores to do. I call it a no-brainer because I knew I should, but I never thought to do it. Children need chores to learn the value of work and responsibility. They need to understand that things just don’t happen, they need to help things along.

They didn’t like it at first,but now they take responsibility for the work they do and they enjoy it. They know what work they must do in the morning, in the afternoon and on the weekend. It has sure made our house run better.

I think the most important person in my life is my mother. She has taught me many things about life and she scrimped and saved to put me through college. Even when it was so tough, she took care of me. I know I caused her a lot of pain, but she always loved me and always did everything she could for me.

Now she is coming to visit. This is a great opportunity for the kids to get to know her much better and for her to build a relationship with them. I appreciate having her come for a visit and I hope it is a long visit.

Now I just have to get my husband to prepare the spare bedroom!

If you are really interested in saving money and controlling your expenses than you need a budget. A budget will keep track of all of your income while at the same time keeping track of all of your expenditures. You can easily at a glance see how your finances are. By keeping to a budget, you can save money and reach your financial goals.

That’s the advice always given, but it ignores one important idea. Your budget needs to be flexible in some respects. It’s a good idea to take a look at your budget every few months to make changes needed to keep your budget current.

I am starting to get tired of hearing nice platitudes. Sure, liberal usage of platitudes is how I was taught to write essays in school, but the truth is that they really mean nothing. Now, I am getting to the point of getting irritated every time I hear someone talking about the nice platitudes but lacking in substance.

Nice platitudes aren’t just the domain of Presidential candidates supported by Oprah. Many people use them without even thinking twice. I saw a quote when I was reading an article on Forbes just today. It said that “no one is a failure who had fun in life.” Ah, how sweet and nice. Unfortunately, it is far from the truth. A failure can have a lot of fun in life, in fact, depending on your definition of fun, a failure can have more fun than a successful person.

We normally do not go out to eat very often. It’s an expensive luxury that seems rather wasteful. I much prefer cooking at home where I can better control the quality of food that my family eats, but we like to splurge from time to time.

This splurge meant going out for pizza. It’s been awhile since the last time we went out to buy pizza, but it’s always a family favorite. We ordered a family sized pizza as always. When the pizza arrived at the table, I was a bit shocked. It seems like I remember the family sized pizza being a lot bigger.

I don’t know if it was a joke or an attempt at cost cutting. I know I’d prefer seeing a slight increase in prices while keeping the sizes the same. All of us went home a bit hungry and I ended up having to make up sandwiches anyways. What a loss.

I always tell my kids not to play the basketball near the house. I am always worried about them breaking a window. A window can be very expensive to fix so I make sure they play far out in the yard. When my boys play too close to the house I am always scolding them.

Today, I decided to toss the ball around with the kids. I didn’t play far enough away from the house, so guess what happened? I broke the porch light. Breaking the porch light was bad enough, but then we all had to pile into the car to make an unscheduled trip to pick up a new bulb. Ouch! Maybe I should listen to my own advice to the boys.