14 Ways to Save Money on Groceries.

Save money and trips to the market with these tips and tricks from Rebecca DiLiberto’s Penny Saving Household Helper. You’ll be surprised how simple it is to keep food at its best.

1. Line the bottom of your refrigerator’s crisper drawer with paper towels. They’ll absorb the excess moisture that causes vegetables to rot.

2. To keep herbs tasting fresh for up to a month, store whole bunches, washed and sealed in plastic bags, in the freezer. When you need them, they’ll be easier to chop, and they’ll defrost the minute they hit a hot pan.

3. A bay leaf slipped into a container of flour, pasta, or rice will help repel bugs.

4. Stop cheese from drying out by spreading butter or margarine on the cut sides to seal in moisture. This is most effective with hard cheeses sealed in wax.

5. When radishes, celery, or carrots have lost their crunch, simply pop them in a bowl of iced water along with a slice of raw potato and watch the limp vegetables freshen up right before your eyes.

6. Avoid separating bananas until you plan to eat them – they spoil less quickly in a bunch.

7. Put rice in your saltshaker to stop the salt from hardening. The rice absorbs condensation that can cause clumps.

8. Stock up on butter when it’s on sale – you can store it in the freezer for up to six months. Pack the butter in an airtight container, so it doesn’t take on the flavor of whatever else you’re freezing.

9. In order to make cottage cheese or sour cream last longer, place the container upside down in the fridge. Inverting the tub creates a vacuum that inhibits the growth of bacteria that causes food to spoil.

10. Believe it or not, honey is the only nonperishable food substance, so don’t get rid of the stuff if it crystallizes or becomes cloudy. Microwave on medium heat, in 30-second increments, to make honey clear again.

11. Prevent extra cooked pasta from hardening by stashing it in a sealed plastic bag and refrigerating. When you’re ready to serve, throw the pasta in boiling water for a few seconds to heat and restore moisture.

12. Keeping brown sugar in the freezer will stop it from hardening. But if you already have hardened sugar on your shelf, soften it by sealing in a bag with a slice of bread – or by microwaving on high for 30 seconds.

13. If you only need a few drops of lemon juice, avoid cutting the lemon in half – it will dry out quickly. Instead, puncture the fruit with a metal skewer and squeeze out exactly what you require.

14. If you’re unsure of an egg’s freshness, see how it behaves in a cup of water: Fresh eggs sink; bad ones float.


source: http://shine.yahoo.com/event/financiallyfit/14-ways-to-save-money-on-groceries-2447559/

Iron & Wine: Flightless Bird, American Mouth

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins

All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys

Then when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair

Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere

Have I found you

Flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth

Big pill looming

Now I'm a fat house cat

Nursing my sore blunt tongue

Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence cracks

Pissing on magazine photos

Those fishing lures thrown in the cold

And clean blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you

Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you, american mouth

Big pill stuck going down

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/flightless-bird-american-mouth-lyrics-iron-wine.html ]












message is to follow your OWN dreams and take CHANCES so you'll never have to wonder "what if".

The first verse:

About a man taking the easy way through life. He's "husstling" if you will, for money. Living the fast life, the good life for the time being however he's getting in too deep and getting too greedy "Digging too deep for coins" and when one gets too greedy in the underground, one gets sloppy.

"When the cops closed the fair" Refers to how he gets caught and the cops put an end to his fast life and easy money. He's forced to grow up “I cut my long baby hair”. He can no longer live the life he had and realizes he must change his ways.

“Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere” Dog eared-map may not make sense at first glace, but dogs ears may be referring to listening which leads to him being humbled and now taking advice. The Map may refer to him finding direction. Stealing a map traditionally means having stolen a path away from someone and in this case, “stealing a dog-eared map” refers to him taking the advice of others, and following a path that others would like him to follow. He “stole” the map; the path was not his own – it belonged to someone else; was the idea of someone else.

first Chorus:

“Have I found you, flightless bird” he’s unsure if he’s found his own path. If he’s found what he wants to do rather than what others want him to do. A bird that cannot fly may be seen by some as ironic. Birds are known to fly – they have wings to fly. If a bird cannot fly, it is not fully realized.

“jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth” This may refer to those surrounding him as well as his own thoughts. The “jealous” never want another to become a fully realized individual. Always wanting to hold the individual back; as the saying goes, “Misery love company”. “Weeping or lost you” may refer to him realizing this is not his dream. This is not his path, it is another’s path; not what he chose, but what has been chosen for him. “American mouth” is an analogy for the Freedom of speech. Had he spoken up when he had the chance, deciding on his dream rather than pleasing others, he may have been happy and not have had this “big pill looming”, this burden and suppressed misery.

The second verse:

This entire verse speaks about what he has become having followed a path that he believed was the right choice for others’ sake rather than taking a chance, doing something that may have been frightening but in the end cold have been worth it.

“Now I’m a fat house cat” refers to his present state. Unhappy with himself and the outcome of his life. He finds it too late for him to be able to change the past and no matter how much he talks it over, and complains about it, “Nursing my sore, blunt tongue” he will still be in the position he is in. He may as well hold his tongue from now on, keep from complaining about a situation that was of his doing. He is now forced to watch others who were not afraid of taking that chance. Others who pushed through the fear and, even though it may lead to places unknown, or may hurt them in the future, still took the chance “Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence ****s.” There is nothing stopping these young and fearless creatures. These “rats” have such a big future “Wide fence ****s” ahead of them and even though it may be scary and unknown, or may even be the wrong decision “Warm Poison” these rats still took that chance.

He now looks at his mainstream American life and resents it “****ing on magazine photos”. He tried to take the opportunities now, take those chances now, but he feels it is too late. Like “Fishing lures thrown in the cold”. He will not get any bites at this point. He not just throws those “lures” or dreams into the hands of God of “Christ mountain stream” and wait for his days to play out and come to an end.

Last Chorus:

In this chorus he refers to the “flightless bird” as being “grounded, bleeding or lost you”. When something is grounded, it has come to a definite decision. Whether it be in flight context, a “grounded plane” has been grounded due to complications and cannot get into the air, or in a completely difference context, “grounding your kids” meaning they are completely restricted. To add insult to injury, this “flightless bird” is not only grounded, but “bleeding” as well. He is not only “trapped” into his position, but he is injured and unable to recover. Being grounded has injured him, caused him to “bleed”.

He can no longer complete his dream, he feels he has missed his chance. Rather than the “big pill” slowly making it’s way down, the “Big pill stuck going down” is trapped in place

Read more: http://www.metrolyrics.com/flightless-bird-american-mouth-lyrics-iron-wine.html#ixzz1Cn6ZQJmL
Copied from MetroLyrics.com

PS: Thanks to Ms.RaeLee at metrolyrics.com for her wonderful insight

Memo From Your Child

1. Don't spoil me. I know quite well that I ought not to have all I ask for ... I'm only testing you.


2. Don't be afraid to be firm with me. I prefer it .. it makes me feel more secure.


3. Don't correct me in front of people if you can help it. I'll take much more notice if you talk to me in private.

4. Don't make me feel that my mistakes are sins. It upsets my sense of values.

5. Don't be too upset if I say "I hate you." It isn't that I hate you, but only that I need your attention.

6. Don't protect me from consequence. I need to learn the hard way.

7. Don't take too much notice of my small ailment. Sometimes they get me the attention I want.

8. Don't nag. If you do, I shall have to protect myself by appearing deaf.

9. Don't make rash promises. Remember that I feel badly let down when promises are broken.

10. Don't forget that I cannot explain myself as well as I should like. This is why I'm not always accurate.

11. Don't tax my honesty too much. I am easily frightened into telling lies.

12. Don't be inconsistent. That completely confuses me and makes me lose my faith in you.

13. Don't put me off when I ask you questions. If you do, you will find that I stop asking and seek my information elsewhere.

14. Don't tell me my fears are silly. They are terribly real and you can do much to try to understand.

15. Don't ever suggest that you are perfect or infallible. It gives me too great a shock when I discover that you are neither.

16. Don't ever think it beneath your dignity to apologize to me. An honest apology makes me feel surprisingly warm to you.

17. Don't forget how quickly I am growing up. It must be very difficult for you to keep pace with me but please try.

18. Don't forget I love experimenting. I couldn't get along without it, so please put up with it.

19. Don't forget that I can't thrive without lots of love. But I don't need to tell you all the time, do I?

The Happy Marriage Is the ‘Me’ Marriage

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Published: December 31, 2010

A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons.

But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is meaningful and satisfying. In short, they want a sustainable marriage.

“The things that make a marriage last have more to do with communication skills, mental health, social support, stress — those are the things that allow it to last or not,” says Arthur Aron, a psychology professor who directs the Interpersonal Relationships Laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “But those things don’t necessarily make it meaningful or enjoyable or sustaining to the individual.”

The notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first?

Not anymore. For centuries, marriage was viewed as an economic and social institution, and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership, and they want partners who make their lives more interesting.

Caryl Rusbult, a researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam who died last January, called it the “Michelangelo effect,” referring to the manner in which close partners “sculpt” each other in ways that help each of them attain valued goals.

Dr. Aron and Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., a professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey, have studied how individuals use a relationship to accumulate knowledge and experiences, a process called “self-expansion.” Research shows that the more self-expansion people experience from their partner, the more committed and satisfied they are in the relationship.

To measure this, Dr. Lewandowski developed a series of questions for couples: How much has being with your partner resulted in your learning new things? How much has knowing your partner made you a better person? (Take the full quiz measuring self-expansion.)

While the notion of self-expansion may sound inherently self-serving, it can lead to stronger, more sustainable relationships, Dr. Lewandowski says.

“If you’re seeking self-growth and obtain it from your partner, then that puts your partner in a pretty important position,” he explains. “And being able to help your partner’s self-expansion would be pretty pleasing to yourself.”

The concept explains why people are delighted when dates treat them to new experiences, like a weekend away. But self-expansion isn’t just about exotic experiences. Individuals experience personal growth through their partners in big and small ways. It happens when they introduce new friends, or casually talk about a new restaurant or a fascinating story in the news.

The effect of self-expansion is particularly pronounced when people first fall in love. In research at the University of California at Santa Cruz, 325 undergraduate students were given questionnaires five times over 10 weeks. They were asked, “Who are you today?” and given three minutes to describe themselves. They were also asked about recent experiences, including whether they had fallen in love.

After students reported falling in love, they used more varied words in their self-descriptions. The new relationships had literally broadened the way they looked at themselves.

“You go from being a stranger to including this person in the self, so you suddenly have all of these social roles and identities you didn’t have before,” explains Dr. Aron, who co-authored the research. “When people fall in love that happens rapidly, and it’s very exhilarating.”

Over time, the personal gains from lasting relationships are often subtle. Having a partner who is funny or creative adds something new to someone who isn’t. A partner who is an active community volunteer creates new social opportunities for a spouse who spends long hours at work.

Additional research suggests that spouses eventually adopt the traits of the other — and become slower to distinguish differences between them, or slower to remember which skills belong to which spouse.

In experiments by Dr. Aron, participants rated themselves and their partners on a variety of traits, like “ambitious” or “artistic.” A week later, the subjects returned to the lab and were shown the list of traits and asked to indicate which ones described them.

People responded the quickest to traits that were true of both them and their partner. When the trait described only one person, the answer came more slowly. The delay was measured in milliseconds, but nonetheless suggested that when individuals were particularly close to someone, their brains were slower to distinguish between their traits and those of their spouses.

“It’s easy to answer those questions if you’re both the same,” Dr. Lewandowski explains. “But if it’s just true of you and not of me, then I have to sort it out. It happens very quickly, but I have to ask myself, ‘Is that me or is that you?’ ”

It’s not that these couples lost themselves in the marriage; instead, they grew in it. Activities, traits and behaviors that had not been part of their identity before the relationship were now an essential part of how they experienced life.

All of this can be highly predictive for a couple’s long-term happiness. One scale designed by Dr. Aron and colleagues depicts seven pairs of circles. The first set is side by side. With each new set, the circles begin to overlap until they are nearly on top of one another. Couples choose the set of circles that best represents their relationship. In a 2009 report in the journal Psychological Science, people bored in their marriages were more likely to choose the more separate circles. Partners involved in novel and interesting experiences together were more likely to pick one of the overlapping circles and less likely to report boredom. “People have a fundamental motivation to improve the self and add to who they are as a person,” Dr. Lewandowski says. “If your partner is helping you become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/weekinreview/02parkerpope.html?no_interstitial

4 Money Mistakes That Can Destroy You

Not all money mistakes are created equal. If you forget to use a coupon when you buy that gallon of milk, it might cost you 50 cents. It stinks to pay more than you need to but the mistake costs you only 50 cents. If you decline the flood rider for your homeowners insurance and are hit with a flash flood, that's a mistake that can cost you dearly. Both are money mistakes, but one has a microscopic impact while the other hurts significantly.

Today, we're going to go over a few money mistakes we all make that have the potential to cripple you financially. These mistakes are common, have a significant impact, and are often very easy to fix.

Not Having an Emergency Fund

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. These past few years have been an especially trying time for a lot of folks and the last thing we want to think about is how it can get worse, right? Unfortunately, things can get worse and the only way we can protect ourselves is by setting up an emergency fund to help weather those disasters. It's very easy to forget about setting up and maintaining an emergency fund because we are so focused on everything else but car accidents and medical bills don't wait for prosperity to strike.

You don't want to be forced to put the next bill on your credit card, at double digit interest rates, and put yourself in a far more dangerous financial position. Experts recommend that you save anywhere from three to twelve months of expenses into your emergency fund. The more you have, the better. No one ever complained that a safety net was too large.

Failing to Set Financial Goals

You can't improve something if you don't measure it and you can't reach your goals unless you set them. As we go about our daily lives, it's very easy to get caught up in the day to day activities. We forget our longer term goals because we're so busy focusing on today or this week. Imagine the captain of the ship steering by the mile without any designs towards a specific destination -- it would be chaos.

The same is true for your life, financial and otherwise. Set financial goals and measure your progress toward reaching them. Celebrate the victories and learn from the mistakes. Without a set goal, it becomes very difficult for you to plan for the future and chart the way forward. If you have savings goals like a down payment on a home, track how much you've saved toward your home. If you have retirement savings goals, it's important to track those as well.

Missing a Credit Card Payment

When you miss a credit card payment, you will be hit with a missed payment fee that can cost you as much as $40. You will also lose the grace period on new purchases, which means interest on your purchases accrues immediately (if you are carrying a balance, you often don't get a grace period). Next, your credit card company may report this missed or late payment to the three credit bureaus and this will lower your credit score. From here, the door flies wide open since your credit score is used in so many unexpected ways. See how one missed payment can have such a disastrous and cascading effect on your finances?

Not Reviewing Your Credit reports

The government went through a lot of trouble to give you the right to review your credit scores every twelve months, take advantage of it. Through AnnualCreditReport.com, you can get a copy of your report from each of the credit bureaus. Review your reports at least once a year for errors because they are far more common than you think (in a 2004 report by the US PIRG, one in four reports had an error). If you do find an error, follow the FTC's instructions on how to dispute credit report errors. You don't want to discover an error when you're applying for a mortgage because the dispute process can take months to resolve.

Each of these money mistakes has the potential of crippling your financial life if you don't fix it as soon as possible. Why not right now?

Jim Wang writes about personal finance at Bargaineering.com. When he's not tackling money issues, he's usually looking forward to his next vacation and writing about it at Wanderlust Journey.

source: http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/111613/money-mistakes-that-can-destroy-you?mod=bb-creditreports

Men queue

When everybody on earth was dead and waiting to enter Paradise , God appeared and said, "I want the men to make two queues. One queue for the men who were true heads of their household, and the other queue for the men who were dominated by their women. I want all the women to report to St Peter."

Soon all the women were gone and there were only the two queues of men. The queue of the men who were dominated by their wives was 100 kilometers long, and in the queue of men who truly were heads of their household, there was only one man.

God said, "You men should be ashamed of yourselves. I created you to be the head of your household! You have been disobedient and not fulfilled your purpose!

Of all of you, only one obeyed. Learn from him."

God turned to the one man, "How did you manage to be the only one in this queue?"

The man replied, "I don't know. My wife told me to stand here.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF LIFE

* No point using limited life to chase unlimited money.



* No point earning so much money you cannot live to spend it.



* Money is not yours until you spend it.



* When you are young, you use your health to chase your wealth;when you are old, you use your wealth to buy back your health. Difference is that, it is too late.



* How happy a man is, is not how much he has but how little he needs.



* No point working so hard to provide for the people you have no time to spend with.