Have a Better Life

2011 is expected to be a tough year for us. Taxes are going up, salaries are going down, some of the incentives we had from government were removed and we end up having our income reduced drastically. People are afraid of having babies due to the severe measure that were taken by the government and those who have children opt to have only one.

We have reduced salaries and bad health conditions. We pay for public medical services but we end up having to look for private medical services which are fully paid by us.

Most medical and healthcare jobs are filled with people that prefer to work for the private medical system once they are able to earn more money than if they worked for the public one.

2011 is the year of extreme governmental measures to put us down, to reduce salaries, to make us become more sick and with less money for treatments, more unemployment, worse living conditions. I am not really seeing a good scenario for 2011

Image via Wikipedia

One of my dream houses would be an ecologic house in the middle of nature. I have this on my mind for long years. I love mountain houses, country houses, lodges surrounded by nature, the sound of birds, trees.

Living in a place where houses are made of cement and bricks makes me dream with a wood house, cabin beds, fireplace, grow my own vegetables and fruits, make my own woolen socks and shirts. Maybe a little snow outside during winter…a dream.

Friday!! The school routine is back and believe it or not it’s tiring. Both my kids go to school at the same time in the morning, but they have different leaving schedules every single day. I look like a cab from one place to another.

The weekend is here, but for those blogging and working online there is no weekend. I’m always checking my email to see what has arrived. Who knows I receive a job offer and I miss the timeline.

Sometimes I feel like searching for flight deals, and take my family to…some place.

Nevertheless, I can’t complaint. I’m doing what I always wanted to do, work from home, take care of the children, the house. After 22 years working in an office, I feel the need to be at home and have a different life. And believe me, I’m having a better life now.

photo credit: OakleyOriginals

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To fully understand the term procrastination, you need to do two things: understand its basic definition and find out why people procrastinate. You can, of course, put it to a stop by using time management techniques to completely beat it out.

We always hear a lot of people making excuses for not being able to accomplish anything. These are the people who simply and easily give reasons so as to make the inability to do something a valid one. When deadlines arrive, you see them panicking. Worst, ending up as depressed as they can be for not being able to achieve a specified goal or task. It’s not too late, though. If you happen to fall into procrastination, you have the power to change now. Here’s what procrastination is all about and how to overcome it.

Basic Definition

Procrastination is the tendency to hamper the accomplishment of a specific goal by delaying or postponing the performance of a task at a later time.

Why people procrastinate

People oftentimes get into the trap of procrastination because it becomes a means in dealing with emotional and physical symptoms that come along with depression. It may become a sort of relief but it’s just a temporary one. There are various procrastination styles. See which among these styles fits you:

• difficulty in organizing your thoughts and your actions too. Difficulty in being on track with a certain plan.
• tasks seemed extremely great that it becomes worthless for you to just simply try.
• negative emotions towards somebody may cause you to put things off as a means of punishing him.
• afraid of being disfavored.
• routines prompted you to become rebellious.

The procrastination styles mentioned earlier would possibly overlap in one of the following themes:

• self-doubt
• discomfort dodging
• driven by guilt
• habitual

When you have fully distinguished yourself from any of those procrastination styles, you should decide to get rid of it in your system by incorporating these time management techniques:

• make a list – initially you have to list everything you need to do. That is in no particular order yet.
• prioritize the items on your list – arrange the items on your list by deadlines. Or you can also arrange them by order of how important they are to you.
• use a calendar – come up with a calendar with spaces for you to write your notes. You can have separate sheets for long-term plans and separate pages for short-term goals too.
• accomplish the ones at the top of the list – take the item on top of your priority list and decide how long you can finish that specific goal.
• fill your calendar as you meet deadlines – as you meet each deadline, make sure to fill your calendar with new tasks to do. Just make sure that you don’t overbook yourself which might eventually cause delays.

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If you haven’t been much of a budgeter in the past now might be the perfect time to stop and think about putting one into place. The economy is in a pretty rough place right now with people losing jobs and being laid off left and right. It’s time to sit down and take a look at the income you have coming in and the money you have going out.

It’s sound simple enough (knowing what you have coming in versus what you are paying out) but so many people don’t pay attention or their spouse handles the bills so they again are still unaware. As stated above the economy is in a bad place right now so you need to know what’s going on financially.

Another reason to set up a monthly budget is because if you feel like there’s never enough money and you are always struggling to make ends meet but would like to be able to splurge every once in awhile and treat your kids to something.

It’s also a good idea to start teaching your children about money and budgeting. I can say from personal experience of growing up with never being taught about budgeting and the importance of saving that it eventually cost me lots of debt and headache! Get your kids on board as soon as they are old enough to understand the concept of what you are doing.

Mom’s Talk eBooks has a great guide, Guide to Family Budgeting that is filled with information on why your family needs a budget (aside from the reasons listed above), analyzing your finances and changing your thinking, planning your budget and how to do more with your money. You will also find tips that will help you show your children how to save and manage their money as well.

To grab your copy of Mom’s Talk eBooks Guide to Family Budgeting click here.

Saving money is the reality show of the moment. This new reality that is part of our world now make us do all the efforts to buy cheap, avoid unnecessary products, save energy, gas and water. We have to be prepared for the future, there are houses to pay, cars to be bought, kids need to have a steady future school program and we, the parents, are responsible to make all that we can to provide a good future to our kids and ourselves.

There are several ways to save money. Usually our fist thought is saving a percentage of our monthly but sometimes that’s not possible because the paycheck isn’t enough for the monthly bills, so how we can save when we don’t have enough?

Now here come some measures we can taken:

Start at our own Home

Saving money should be part of our way of life to make it most effective. It is best that the effort to save be shared by everyone in the family, even the younger members of the family.

Little Efforts

I work far away from home and on the way I have to leave my two kids in school so I can’t imagine my life without a car. Walking would be great if we were closer to work and school. Riding the bike would be a healthy alternative but with two kids it’s impossible. Sharing a car with friends and neighbors seems a great opportunity to save a few bucks but again it’s not possible. We all live and work in different parts of the city and there is no middle term.

Avoid the little temptations that may come my way. It is naturally fine to reward myself after a hard work every now and then, but staying away from splurging is the best .

Use Less and Save Energy

Electricity - I’m already used to turn off appliances that are not being used. Turning the Tv off is a little difficult, with so make channels available we always find a great program to watch.  The refrigerator is a struggle for me because the kids tend to open it an stare at the interior trying to decide what they want to eat. Energy saving bulbs are already being used in most rooms. They had an initial investment that I’m sure will be regained very soon. Sometimes they are offered as packages for the whole house and at sale prices.

Water - Avoid long showers – this one is difficult for me, the shower is the only moment I rarely have to relax a little and a few extra minutes are spent under water but I always try to be as fast as I can. My son loves to take a long shower so everyday it is a struggle to get him out of the running water. Don’t leaving the water running when brushing our teeth is something that I already educated my kids to do. We can save a few liters of water if the faucet is off.

Phone – My phone provider has a saving plan where we pay the same amount of money to every other providers. It’s really great. I don’t do long distance calls so I don’t have a special plan for it.

Gas - I have a membership benefits with one station. I usually fill up the tank when the prices go low and use all the advantages from the membership. Not having air conditioning in the car makes me save gas. I usually take advantage of open windows.

Small gestures can make a big difference when choosing to save money and the world.

Speaking of starting New Year with two steady incomes and card debt under control I must say that January 5th was definitely not a good day for news about our financial life.

To explain how things work, I have a steady income from my full time work, every month the same amount, I always know how much money I can count with. My husband has a very low steady salary and receives extra hours when he do them, meaning that if he makes 50 extra hours a month he receives his steady salary plus the amount for the 50 hours. Extra hours were a constant so we always counted with them to pay our bills.

Due to the crisis that is going on worldwide, bosses are cutting all extra expenses and trying to negotiate low salaries. On Jan 5th my husband’s boss said he had no money for extra hours so during an unknown period that can be of several months there will be no extra hours and if there is a lot of work and my husband has to do extra hours to finish the work, these hours are going to be paid at very low rates or even for free.
So, starting now, I have much less money to spend on a monthly basis. I really don’t how we are going to do it because we need that extra money to pay for all the expenses we have.

Measures must be taken and shopping is going to be affected. Learning to living modestly, cutting on no essential food is one of those. I know there are great bloggers blogging about saving on shopping and I really I’ve been reading a lot about it. So I made a short list of my priorities, here are 10 tricks to make me save money:

Make a list of what I need
Arrive at the hypermarket with only the money I will need to shop. Take a calculator and don’t go shopping when I’m hungry or depressed.

Check the cashier ticket
Claims increased in the last months. I have to check the ticket before I leave the cashier to avoid problems.

The hypermarket must stick with what is written in the leaflets give away with promotions.
In case there is a difference between the leaflet prices and what are in the shelves, I’ve got to claim the lower amount.

Don’t search in places with excellent offers but low price products.
I spend gas and I probably will get the product at the same price in another place or in another day.

Prefer cheaper products
Buying white brands is a good strategy to save some money and usually they are of the same quality of the well known branded products.

Go straight ahead to the section where the products I need are
Walking along main corridors just makes me buy products I don’t need

If I don’t need, don’t buy
I can’t get tempted by promotions/sales by buying some product I don’t need but as they are on promotion I want to take advantage of it. Valuing my money and thinking twice before spending it is something I always did but that sometimes I forget and regret later.

Be careful with the Take 2 by the price of 1
These products are worth buying if I really need them and use them. I have to make sure which is the unit price to check if it’s worth taking advantage or not of the promotion.

Teach my kids to buy
If possible I always go shopping without my kids at least. They ask for everything and most of the time I end up buying products they won’t use and they don’t need. Other times I get surprised with some product that show up in the basket that I didn’t knew about.

When you finish your shopping, take a close look to your basket.
Don’t feel shy if you really that you bought a product that it’s more expensive than one you found in another shelf that has the same quality and do the job.

If you have some more tips for me just leave a comment or a link so that I can check what you do to save money.