Here's How I Save Money on Groceries

Happy Saturday everyone! In case you’re wondering where the heck am I for the past days and why I haven’t updated this blog and how my Valentine’s goes…I just got myself up from being buried with workbooks, test papers and grades! It’s been a looooooong week and I’m glad it is Saturday- time to relax…take a breath and plunge on laundry and household chores. An hour from now, I gonna go to market to buy fresh veggies, fruits and fish. I gonna do my grocery for the week too afterwards.

Speaking of grocery, the average family’s grocery bill is usually one of the higher numbers on the family budget, right? There can be an enormous difference in what each family spends on their groceries, depending on many factors, such as whether you buy name brand, more meat, and more.

The good news is that this allows for a large amount of savings if we decide to be frugal with our shopping. Here are few simple tips I’ve been doing for the past years to save on groceries:

1.) Make a meal plan. You’ll know exactly what you need from the store before you go.

2.) Watch for specials and coupons in store newsletters, and plan your meals around them.

3.) Make a list and stick to it. If it’s not on the list, don’t buy it.

4.) Don’t shop when you’re hungry. That way you won’t be tempted to buy things that you don’t need.

5.) Only buy things you know you’ll use. For example, if your family doesn’t like broccoli, don’t buy broccoli in the hopes that they’ll eat healthier this week.

6.) Keep your eyes on the items on the bottom shelf where the prices are lower.

7.) Buy store brands when the quality is the same. Most of the time, it actually is the same product in a different package.

It’s pretty easy to be frugal once you realize how much money you’re actually saving with these simple steps. Keep a log of your grocery bills, so you can see how much of a difference you are making. The money you save can be added on your family monthly savings account, can be used for emergency expenses, and investment for your family’s future like buying stocks or gold or silver coins ( there’s a morgan silver dollars for sale available online). Stock investing is a very good way to take advantage of a growing economy and protect our investments from a declining economy. By simply purchasing gold or silver coins, a person can be assured that no matter what stormy economic climate is happening around them, they will have a shining shelter of protection. There will always be a high demand for these precious metals. In fact, many experts speculate that we have only just begun to see the beginning of the rise to prominence that gold and especially silver will soon enjoy.

This is how I manage my time

As a mother, wife, pre-school teacher and a part-time blogger, I badly needed to manage my time to take care of my family, my career, my spiritual life, my blogs and other things! In order to remind myself on what I needed to do each day and efficiently do each task, the following tips proves to be helpful and makes my day more productive:

1. Get a day planner and use it faithfully. I keep all appointments and reminder in just one place, my day planner.

2. Create a daily “to do” list. If you do this on your computer or mobile phone (sign up for free at Remember the Milk or Toodledo) , you can easily move around items as you prioritize the day. If on paper, you can code the items with numbers or letters for: Urgent, Need to Do Today, Can Do This Week.

3. Read your To-Do list first thing in the morning. Don’t open your Facebook account, Twitter, or email or answer the phone until you see the road map for your day.

4. Review your To-Do list at mid-day and end of day to see what was accomplished and what remains to be completed.

5. At the end of the day, transfer the items remaining to tomorrow’s or Monday’s list. If possible, remove any items that are not significant.

6. Let voice mail answer your phone while you are focusing on an important task.

7. Say “no” as often as possible when you have reached your work limits. I don’t do overtime at school or taking work home. When we are mentally or physically exhausted we don’t do our best work and we need to say so.

It’s easy to stay on track with time management once you commit to changing your daily habits. Just put the above tips into action and you should see more free time throughout your day.

Our Couple T-shirts

One way to spark the flame of love this Valentine's Day is to have cute gifts for couples for a chance to spice up the relationship and express love. For us, instead of having the stainless steel partnership rings, we opted for something affordable unique: couple t-shirts! Yes, I'm a nice girlfriend and he's a good boyfriend as always. Though we're already married for 4 years (+ 6 years being steady) , we still treat each other as newly engaged couples because in this kind of relationship setting , the guy continues to court the girl and the girl is always looking for opportunities to please his man. We don't want familiarity to breed contempt in our relationship. As married couples, we need some lovey-dovey ways to always light the passion even with couple t-shirts:)

The Facebook Timeline is coming, and are you concerned?

I'm not always on Facebook because I'm disciplining myself since I noticed that once I open Facebook I can't stop reading comments upon comments and walls of someone whom I never met but seemed to be my friend in Facebook. In other words, I've learned to stalk strangers involuntarily..Waaaahhhh!  My time is so precious that I couldn't let Facebook eat my time . It's one of the reason why I'm not active in social networking nowadays.

The newest news I read from Facebook is that the Facebook Timeline would become mandatory. The new Facebook Timeline is not the most popular feature that Facebook has ever introduced. Majority of the users seemed annoyed of the crowded layouts and superfluous issues. For many users, it's a real issue of privacy. The new timeline will allow people to dig up your past if they so choose.

Some users are already exploring the new profile look. But since it was still voluntary, I just ignored it and enjoyed my normal, everyday Facebooking. But now that Facebook  announced the switch to Timeline was imminent, are you concerned? Let me know what you think.

A friend of mine posted on her wall how we can keep our privacy once the Timeline rolls out to everyone. Read on and share this one also on your Facebook wall:

Hi, Friends/Family. As you probably know, I like to keep my FB private except to those I am friends with. So if you all would do the following, I'd appreciate it. With the new FB timeline on its way this week for EVERYONE. . . please do both of us a favor:

Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you'll see a box that says "Subscribed". Hover over that, then go to "Comments and Likes" and unclick it.

That will stop all our posts showing up on the side bar for strangers to see. But most important, it limits hackers from invading our profiles. If you repost this I will do the same for you. You'll know I've acknowledged you, because if you tell me that you've done it, I'll "like" it