June 13 2019

Tuna Salad

I recently made an old favorite that we haven’t had in quite a while. What did I make you ask? Tuna salad. Nothing special, you say? I beg to differ. Mine is not quite the usual recipe. I refrigerate the tuna before I make it still in the cans so it is cold and ready to serve right away. You don’t have to do this, but it is best to refrigerate for at least a couple of hours after making it if you don’t so everything gets cold and the flavors have a chance to mingle.

Karen’s Tuna Salad

6 cans tuna packed in water (not oil)
1-1/2 cups diced celery
1-1/2 cups diced green pepper
sweet pickle relish to taste
Light mayo to creamy texture

We (my daughter and I) figured out it doesn’t matter how many cans of tuna you use, the magic ratio of crunchy green stuff to tuna is 1/4 cup each of celery and green pepper for each small can of tuna you use. My daughter and I disagree on what type of relish needs to be used, she likes dill relish, and I can’t imagine it without sweet relish.

We drain the water off the tuna so it doesn’t make the final product all watery. I usually dice the celery to 1/4 inch or smaller, the tuna is fairly smooth and not as chunky as chicken for chicken salad would be, so I think it works best to have the veggies diced small, but you do what you want. Some times I get lazy and hurried and cut them bigger just to speed things up. I usually mix it all up in my 8-cup Pyrex glass measuring cup.

Stir in the light mayo and relish until you get the right combination of texture and taste.

Then I store it in small, single-serve plastic containers about 1 cup in each. This makes it quick to grab a container when packing lunches. We just take the bread or wraps we want to use with the tuna along in a separate bag or container.

We enjoyed it so much we ate it all up before I could take a photo to show you how yummy it looks, but if I remember to take a picture the next time I make it I will add it in. Obviously, you can use the tuna from a pouch or larger cans, but the small 5 or 6 oz cans are usually what they sell at Aldi, so that is what I use. So just adjust the recipe to fit the amount of tuna you are using.

Please let me know how you like this special treat. Remember that making meals at home and packing your lunch for work or school are great ways to save money.

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May 23 2019

Review: Everyday Millionaires

If you are a member of the over-fifty club like I am, you are probably pre-occupied with figuring out how much longer you will need to work for a living before you can reasonably retire and do whatever you want with your life. After reading the book, Retire Inspired (affiliate) by Chris Hogan, I began to think about retirement in a completely different way. Chris says that retirement is not an age, it is a financial number. I love that! I have also listened to all of his podcasts and was looking forward to his most recent release that came out in January, Everyday Millionaires (affiliate) by Chris Hogan. After hearing the commercials for the new book on his podcast  a bunch of times I decided I could spare the $20 and buy the book, especially since it came with so many cool bonus freebies and was less than I would likely have paid if I had waited and bought it from any bookstore, and then I wouldn’t have gotten all the bonus things with it. So I caved and bought the book.

I loaned the hardcover out to my sister so she could read it too and thought perhaps we’d have a book club type discussion about it, but I delayed getting started reading the ebook or listening to the audiobook mostly due to technical issues and not taking the time to figure out how to get them loaded onto my phone so I could get started reading. My sister read some of it but I think she got sidetracked and has yet to get back to it. I finally got the audiobook loaded and ready to listen to before a road trip in early April but then next thing I knew, the trip was over and I never started the book. Procrastination is nobody’s friend!

I finally got around to starting and before I knew it I was finished. Whoever said “Begun is half done” was so right! The book was a lot like listening to his podcasts with loads of stories from everyday millionaires. It was really cool to hear how normal people like you and I saved and invested and stayed debt free long enough to become net-worth millionaires. Reading this book really gives me hope that us normal working class people can become millionaires too if we stay focused. I really enjoyed Everyday Millionaires, but I honestly liked his first book, Retire Inspired so much more. I felt like my thinking was adjusted more after reading Retire Inspired than this book. But both books are well worth reading. Best $20 I ever spent and now I have a hardcopy I can loan out once I get it back.

Here are some books by Dave Ramsey that, while a little older, are still super valid and worth reading also.

Have you read these or any other awesome financial books that you would recommend? Please share them in the comments below.

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Category: Book Review, Goals, Money Saving, Review | Comments Off on Review: Everyday Millionaires
April 11 2019

Green Smoothie Recipes

My favorite green smoothie recipe these days is one born of trying to avoid the plague that is always going around work. I have been making this one a few days each week in an attempt to keep Hubby ( and myself) healthy.

Lazy C Green Smoothie
2 cups Orange Juice (with Calcium)
2 cups Spinach
3 cups Mixed Frozen Fruit Blend (peaches, mangoes, pineapple, strawberries)

These were created out of boredom with the recipes I usually use or because I needed to make a smoothie out of whatever was on hand.
I usually try to follow the basic recipe of 2 cups liquid, 2 cups greens and 3 cups fruit (some frozen, preferably). I find this recipe works best if at least one of the cups of fruit is a sweeter fruit such as mango, banana or grapes.

Purple Passions Green Smoothie
2 cups Kale (or Spinach)
2 cups Coconut Water
1/4 cup Beets (roasted)
1 cup Blueberries
1 cup Grapes
1 cup Greek Yogurt (Fat-Free)

Cider-Berry Green Smoothie
1 1/2 cups Apple Cider
2 cups Spinach (or Kale)
3 cups Triple Berry Mix (frozen)
1 Banana

For all of these recipes, measure the liquid in the blender first, then add the greens and blend until smooth. Add fruit and blend again until smooth. Make sure the blender lid is on securely and that the buttons cannot accidentally be pushed while loading in more fruit. Guess how I know this is important?

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I make my blender full of smoothie at night before going to bed and put them in the refrigerator in my favorite Tupperware cups with lids that include a hole for the straw and are practically spill proof. These days I usually split them into two cups, but sometimes I have a little extra smoothie, which I pour into the tall skinny snack-sized zip-top bags. I then stand it up in the refrigerator and pack it into my lunch and drink it at work by simply opening the zipper just enough to insert a straw and then sealing it as much as I can around the straw. This works great because these bags are made of thicker plastic closer to a freezer bag than the storage bags. If there is a lot left over, I just split them into 3 cups instead of two.

I learned all about how to make green smoothies in 2014 on SimpleGreenSmoothies.com.
I participated in many of their 30-day Green Smoothie challenges and made a binder with all the recipes from those challenges. I also bought their book, Simple Green Smoothies, and use it regularly.

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November 8 2018

Saving for the Holidays

Today, I want to talk about saving money during the holidays. Some families are large and some are small. If you have a list a mile long of people you want/need to buy gifts for, you need a plan to make that work.

First, grab some paper and make a list of all the people you need to buy gifts for this year. Do you have a budget so you know how much you can spend on holiday-related things? If not, that’s fine for this year, but hopefully, you will have a better handle on it next year after you read this.

Next, you need to remember what the holiday season is all about. It doesn’t matter which holidays you celebrate most of us believe the season is about being thankful and not just about doing all the things and buying all the gifts. It’s not about the gifts or the decorations or the food, well, maybe the food. Just kidding. The holidays are a time to get together with friends and family and celebrate spending time together and being grateful for everything you have in your life, including those loved ones.

Set an amount that you will spend on each person that fits in the budget you have without going into debt. That may be $1 per person or $100 or anything in between or maybe you are independently wealthy and the sky is the limit. You know your finances and what you can afford without going into debt. If you budget is tight, maybe you give gifts by family group. Maybe you pull names and each person buys for one other person. Maybe you play a game often referred to as Dirty Santa or White Elephant. The point is if it is too much either cut the amount you spend on each person or cut the list down to the number of people you can afford or some other creative way to stay within your budget and not dread the credit card bills that will be coming in January if you use plastic to stick to someone else’s idea of what a gift needs to cost.

Perhaps you are great at baking and want to make trays of cookies to share with each family or a loaf of banana bread or even a fruitcake, though that wouldn’t be my first choice on either the giving or receiving-end of things. Maybe you could make coupons or gift certificates for something you can gift without cost (your time) for things like babysitting, back massages, manicures, oil changes, car washes, house cleaning, taking down holiday decorations, you get the idea. There are things YOU can do that someone on your gift list would really appreciate having done for them. Maybe it is one on one time with a niece or nephew, maybe it is helping grandma clean out the attic or garage. You could record yourself reading a child’s favorite book so they can hear it every night without their parents’ sanity on the line.

Like to encourage reading? Find the perfect magazine for the people on your list. The subscriptions can often be less than $20 a year and then the recipient has future issues to look forward to and something new to talk about when they see you again.

Maybe a young family is struggling and would really appreciate a family membership to the local zoo or children’s museum. Maybe a teen would like movie passes or fast food gift certificates. There are so many things you can make or do for others that requires little more than your time and attention.

Make memories, not messes. Before giving gifts, consider whether the person will want to find room to store the thing and dust the thing you gift them. Consider giving clutter-free gifts. Gift certificates and food gifts are great because they get used up and can be a great idea again next year. Ask for ideas if you aren’t sure what to give someone. Maybe they would rather you donate in their name to a favorite charity instead of giving them a new sweater or tie.

Whatever you end up giving this year, keep track of it and think about how the amount you spent fit into your financial means. Should you cut back next year? Could you afford to do more if you planned better? Total everything up, and I mean everything that isn’t a part of your regular monthly expenses. Special clothing for holiday photos, special food for holiday gatherings, baking supplies, office pitch-ins, gifts for co-workers, greeting cards, stationery, postage stamps, decorations, live garlands or trees that can’t be reused safely next year, seriously everything. How much did it cost you? Can you afford that amount? Now, when do you want to start shopping for everything next year? August, October, November? Doesn’t matter when; that is up to you. Just figure out how many months you have between January 1st and the time you want the money to be in place so you have it to shop with. If that is August 1st, then you have seven months to save. Divide your budget number by the number of months and make yourself save that amount in an account that you don’t touch except to buy holiday gifts. It is that simple.

If you want to get even more budget conscience, add in the amount you need to cover the cost of birthdays and other celebrations for the entire year. Take that new year-long total and divide by 11 because you will have the money saved a little early and if you save 1/11th each month for the entire year, you have a little extra padding in your budget for things you forgot to add in or to splurge a little on yourself.

Here are a few resources I’d like to recommend:
FlyLady’s Holiday Control Journal
FlyLady’s Holiday Cruising Missions 
FlyLady’s Holiday Cleanup Missions

If you have other ways of budgeting for the cost of holiday celebrations or inexpensive gift ideas, I’d love it if you shared them with all of us in the comments below.

If you have been reading this blog very long it probably isn’t a surprise that I am pre-writing the November Thursday posts so I can focus on writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days (NaNoWriMo). Stay tuned and add yourself to the email list in the near the upper right of this page so you can be notified by email when I post something new and can read it right in your email if you choose.

Category: Money Saving, Planning | 1 Comment on Saving for the Holidays
September 13 2018

Saving Money on Food While Traveling

Last month, we went to an intense 3-day workshop in Atlanta that we knew would have long hours. We were also trying to continue eating reasonably healthy and trying to save money at the same time. So what did we do you ask?

Breakfast

Well, before we left home we were drinking green smoothies every morning for breakfast anyway, so I just made a few extra batches of smoothies and put each serving into a quart-sized zip-top freezer bag and put them into the freezer flat to freeze with the name of the smoothie and calories on the label. These did a dual purpose because they also acted as ice packs in the cooler on our way to Atlanta. They were only partially thawed, so when we got to our room, I left the next day’s smoothie in the refrigerator and put the rest in the freezer. Each morning we added a straw and drank our smoothie then pulled the ones for the next day out so they could thaw. That is how we dealt with breakfast, and it worked out very well.

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Lunch

Lunch was not much harder. We use a lot of the Ole Xtreme Wellness High-Fiber Low-Carb Wraps in place of bread in our house, so we threw a pack of those in along with cheese sticks and sliced turkey lunchmeat for wraps. We tossed in the avocado we had in the refrig so we could use it up. We also prewashed and bagged baby carrots, cherries, and pretzels in individual servings. This meant each morning all we had to do to pack our lunches was make our sandwich/wrap and bag it, then grab the additional things we wanted to have to round out our lunch that day. We also had a small selection of Clif Bars and some prebagged Orchard Valley Harvest Snack Packs Trail Mix. We had a couple of single serving sized bottles that we could fill with our own water or iced tea each morning to add to our lunch bag. Everything fit nicely in my Thirty-One Lunch Break Thermal bag and was enough to feed both of us.

This particular event offered lunch tickets for $20 a person to go through a buffet and fill a styrofoam carryout container to bring back and eat in the meeting room. Nobody really wanted to drive somewhere to get fast food because once you were parked you didn’t want to have to give up your parking space for the day as they really had a shortage of parking at this particular event center. Needless to say, Hubby and I were thrilled that we had been cheap and planned to pack our lunches and thus avoided the additional $120 it would have cost us to eat that buffet lunch for the three days of the conference. I’m not going to even pretend we didn’t think of that as a huge win! Continue reading

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