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	SIS TV Community / Non Scrapbooking Related / Can I get your perspective on some important life issues?? TIA

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BlessedinTexas Supreme SIS (13226)	# Posted: 25 Jan 2010 10:09 So I am in the midst of changing some things this year and wanted to get your perspective on a few things. First off, are you a planner and if so do you plan dinners, vacations, house cleaning, shopping, having children, scrapping and ? What is your method to your madness? Second, do you have a budget set up? What all is on your budget and do you save, put away for emergencies, scrapbooking, tithing and ? Lastly, what else do you do that makes your household run well? PS - Are you a spanker and or a time out mom if you are one? Does this work and if so how do you implement your punishments throughout the week? Thanks and I can't wait to hear all about what makes you "who you are"!! BiT
Jeannie the Intern Model SISter (2235)	# Posted: 25 Jan 2010 12:21 considering i am not a wife or mother I really don't qualify to answer any of your questions. but what does TIA mean? other than a mini-stroke? But i'll go ahead and answer your questions, this will probably be humorous: 1. I am not a planner. I rarely clean, unless its getting really bad. My plans to have children come after marriage. I have no method to my madness. 2. I don't have a budget. I try to save half my paycheck every 2 weeks, but that never happens. 3. I don't run a household. PS- I am more of a squirt water in her face type of mom, my kitten seems to respond well to that. but seriously, what does TIA mean?
weebbt Tracy Supreme SIS (13458)	# Posted: 25 Jan 2010 12:47 1. I plan the meals for the week, make a grocery list accordingly - saves money. I do not have any method for cleaning, usually wait until it's so bad that I'm going nuts before tackling it. 2. Our income is so up and down (we are self employed) that it's almost impossible to have a budget. I just try to pay bills first and then spend on fun stuff. 3. I'm not sure that my household runs well. To be honest, I'm pretty casual about housework and all that. I don't want to be a slave to the vacuum, and it's more important to me that my kids are being nice to each other than having their rooms be spotless. That said, I do expect them to pitch in with day to day chores like dishes and laundry and general picking up. As for spanking...my kids are a bit old now but when they were younger I used a swat on the bottom for major offenses or to really get their attention. Like when my son ran out in the street, he got spanked. When he threw a banana across the room he had a time out. TIA = thanks in advance
Thinkie Vogue SISter (3516)	# Posted: 25 Jan 2010 16:37 I have a to do list that also functions as my planner. And some other lists. I never ever get everything on my to do list done but it does help me keeptrack of what needs to be done and prioritize. I totally plan vacations, I compare hotelprices, airfares, trainfares, boatfares and check out what fun and interesting things our destination has to offer and what would be the easiest way to combine them so we can make the most of our stay in a relaxed way. for scrapping I have folders for the albums/pages I want to make, with photo's plus notes plus sometimes embellishments or memorabilia I want to use together. I have shelves above my scraptable on which are see trough boxes in different sizes with a lid. One for foam stamps, one for ribbon, one for my coluzzle folders, etc. I don't have a set budget, I can usually buy all the needs and a few little wants (like a few scrapbooksupplies). I save a lot of money by comparing prices and keeping an eye out for promotions (no such thing as coupons here) and shopping at a lot of different stores. I make a shoppinglist and only buy extra stuff if it's a really good promotion that I somehow missed on the internet (our grocarystores post almost all their promotions on their website every week). We have also tried different brands, if we didn't like the cheapest one, we tried the second cheapest one, and so on, so for a few things we use expensive brands but for many things we have found cheap brands that we like and that are just as healthy. I think our biggest foodexpenses are fresh fruits and veggies. We do have money left for fun things but most of it goes into our savingsaccount for vacations, since that's something we both enjoy. We don't spend the whole of our savingsaccount on vacations though and have a financial safetynet just in case. If we want something big we either wait for a promotion and/or ask all the parents to chip in as a birthdaypresent (my husband got a new bicycle from his birthdaymoney last year, I recently got a sewingmachine for my birthday). We keep a wishlist to enhance the chances of receiving the things we need/want for birthdays and Sinterklaas (our december gift giving holiday) from each other and others, and talk a lot about the vacations we dream of so that keeps us motivated not to spend a lot of money on other stuff. We don't own a car (we live in a city so rarely need one and if we do we can borrow my mums car), so that saves a lot of money, and we don't care much for expensive clothes (and actually both hate shopping for clothes!) and only buy clothes or shoes when something needs replacing. We don't have kids (and won't, my husband has no wish for fatherhood and my health would be a problem in taking care of little ones) so I suppose we have to do a lot less planning and saves us some stress/worries. The bunny does need a little discipline sometimes, I warn her first and if she keeps acting badly I'll give her a time out in her caige She likes to admit corporal punishment though, like biting when she's mad or when she wants you to pet her in stead of type on the laptop (she likes to lay beside me on the couch). The housekeeping always comes last, that is, our house is quite clean but I would like it to be even cleaner, but my husband is busy (does part of the housekeeping though) and my health limits my housekeepingskills (not much energy left after doing grocaries, cooking, taking care of the bunny and doing laundry). So I just rotate the part of the house that I dust or deepclean. We could afford a cleaning lady a few times a month but as long as it's not too bad we rather spend the money on vacations
lisalisa Style Addict (1335)	# Posted: 8 Feb 2010 19:10 I'm a planner, because otherwise nothing gets done. I don't always stick to my plan though, and I try not to beat myself up for it. I at least mentally list our meals, so i know what to put on my shopping list. Certain things for cleaning I try to stick to, Like cleaning out the fridge the night before trash day. For me, just keeping on top of paper helps. when junk mail comes to us, I'll often not even bring it into the house, instead I'll just toss it on the way through the garage. Unless it needs to be shredded. I'm not a good housekeeper though. When I'd try to stick w/ a schedule of cleaning like Tuesdays is dusting, Wednesday is vacuum, Thursday is bathroom, etc, it just didn't work for me. But I may try it again. Budgeting is a nightmare because like someone else said, I'm self employed, and my husbands job is affected by the weather. But I have to list on a calender when bills are due to make sure I don't forget. I don't have kids but I've been known to spank my dog when he's naughty. But to me yes there's a place and time to spank. Time out??? i've had success with that as a nanny/babysitter. I've also been known to pinch back and pull hair back when it's done to me. I know that's bad, but it was a reflex! Have you checked out flylady.net ? she's great at getting started on little things.
CarolynTracy Fashion Plate (471)	# Posted: 8 Feb 2010 21:08 argh. I just wrote a big long answer and then lost it - I got kicked off somehow. Sorry, no time to re-write, but I'll summarize and say that planning something once and having it become routine has worked well for us. For a long time I worked with a 4 week cycle of menus. Every Monday, I'd pull out the next one and get the groceries I needed for that week's meals. For camping we've got a couple lists we've made and keep on the computer; one for what to take and one for meals / groceries. Keeps things simple to not have to reinvent the wheel each time. And yes, I spanked when she was smaller and that was the only thing that would work. I have always tried to make the punishment specific to the 'crime' and to pick something that would work to help her remember to not do that again.
HarajukuChic Fashion Plate (317)	# Posted: 8 Feb 2010 21:46 1. I am a planner, I had a child in high school. The only way for me to survive was to plan everyday out. But, method was complete madness. I've changed some things and still refining them. I have two children now and married. So unlike before where my schedule was completely rigid, when we had Matthew (child 2) I had to learn how to manage a flexible schedule. I've learned it's really important to maintain a schedule. The kids really need it and it helps too. Cleaning - we pick up after ourselves daily but try and do a complete clean once a month. Small things over the weekend in the mornings so we have time to relax the rest of the weekend. I'd like to get better with cleaning so I've been following the FlyLady to get some ideas. Food - I do twice a week menu planning and cooking. It's similar to Once a Month Cooking (OAMC). I cook sauce and somethings in batches and freeze. I also cut and prepare things over the weekend. I bake cookies for kids for snacks and just somethings like that. But, that type of cooking has taught me how to get things prepared and ready. So, if you watch things like 30 min cooking (Rachel Ray) and stuff like that you can learn how to prepare things and have them ready for cooking fresh that evening quickly. I use MasterCook to help with my menu and shopping list. 2. Budget - Yes I have a budget. Only one of us is working right now so a budget is a must. I use YNAB, which I started using last year. I stopped because we had some financial issues. Now that we're stable I'm going back to it. It has a very interesting concept and methodology to get out of debt and start saving. 3. - What else do I do? I have a Palm Centro. I've had a palm for years even before it was a phone. I use Agendus to keep everything straight. I don't plan on moving out of this format, but I'm integrating it google. The set up Palm has works, but I needed something more so that's why I moved to Agendus. If you can find a PIM to work with you that would be good. I also do have a planner. But, it holds journal, sketches, a brain dump and other things that I need to jot down. It goes with me to school and work. I think the best thing to remember to do is remember you're human. You'll make a mistake. I was stuck on perfection and that made it more difficult. And if you're going to plan, yes plan to have fun. Reward yourself.
BlessedinTexas Supreme SIS (13226)	# Posted: 10 Feb 2010 11:32 Thanks for sharing some great tips, I will go and check out some of these ideas that are bolded. I just saw dina's post on the Once a month cooking, I have never heard of that but it has me very curious. Also YNAB..what is it? I found that when I completed my budget this past month, I will have to get the site that I saw myself really knowing where all my money was going and what it would take to get out of debt again. I had been debt free prior to 9/11 and am striving to get back there again. Have or are any of you living a debt free life with this economy? If so that is terrific and for those of us who are not, there is hope and you, like I can do this again!! Any others want to share their ideas? Diana
HarajukuChic Fashion Plate (317)	# Posted: 10 Feb 2010 22:46 BlessedinTexas: Also YNAB..what is it? YNAB is a program like microsoft money, Quicken, etc.. The difference is the concept that you stop living paycheck to paycheck to living on last months earnings, while getting out of debt and building a savings. It's really a different concept. I really like it. It wasn't easy at first. But, the effects of it and how I think about money now is a lot better. the site is youneedabudget.com Google current reviews and read those. Then go here: YNAB U and read about the concept. After that then you can decide if you want to do the trial or not. They have a 30 day guarantee. So, if you decide to buy it and you're not happy with it, you can get your money refunded. They have a friendly message board to. I post whenever I have questions. If YNAB is not in your budget right now you can follow almost similar concepts and adapt it to places like Mint.com or MySpendingPlan.com which both are free. I tried those first, but I didn't like the interface and how to assign dollars to budget. YNAB was easier to manage and it wasn't online. I'm still a little tripped about having everything online. I prefer importing my detail as a download. I hope I gave you enough detail