“Budget Babe” Robyn Moreno Shares Family-Friendly Tips for Saving and Earning More
Survey shows consumers want to cut costs at dinner table and bring home more ‘bacon’

Kalamazoo, MI January 15, 2009 Press Release— — Amid an economic downturn with increased unemployment, rising food prices and housing foreclosures, the nation’s consumers are focused on the bottom line – their own wallets.  In a recent survey (1) conducted by The Pampered Chef, 88 percent of Americans living in the Midwest said they’re making changes to help save money and relieve financial burdens for their families.  Two of the primary changes consumers say they’re considering are how they can feed their family for less and how they can bring in supplemental income.  With this in mind, The Pampered Chef has partnered with self-proclaimed “budget babe” Robyn Moreno, author of the newly-released book “Practically Posh: The Smart Girls Guide to a Glam Life,” to offer expert insights and tips on how to lead a budget-friendly lifestyle.  “We’re all feeling the pinch of the challenging economy,” said Moreno.  “But consumers don’t have to panic, I’ve got simple tips to shrink spending, starting with the dinner table, and also have smart recommendations for earning more income.  “Mealtime Solutions for $2 Per Person

Getting started can be a cinch.  A Pampered Chef business requires little investment – for just $155 a new Consultant kit includes a selection of high-quality products and business materials valued at more than $500.  Consultants also receive training to help them succeed, including interactive Web courses, videos, national and local sales meetings and other materials.

“Anyone can do direct selling,” says Moreno.  “Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, a college kid, a former executive or have a full-time career, it’s an easy, fun way to boost your budget.”

To learn more about The Pampered Chef, shop a collection of essential kitchen tools, or for information on becoming a Consultant, please call Cheryl Lynn Miller, Independent Senior Consultant for The Pampered Chef, at (269) 547-8571 or e-mail clynnmiller@sbcglobal.net.
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About The Pampered Chef®
The Pampered Chef, founded in 1980 by Doris K. Christopher and now part of the Berkshire Hathaway family of businesses, is the premier direct seller of high quality kitchen tools.  At in-home cooking demonstrations, called Cooking Shows, guests see products and recipes in action, learn quick and easy food preparation techniques and receive tips on how to entertain with style and ease – transforming the simple to the spectacular.  For more information call 1-800-266-5562 or visit http://www.pamperedchef.com.  The Pampered Chef is a registered trademark.

1 Omnibus survey of 1,000 consumers, ages 18 and over, conducted by independent research firm Wakefield in Oct. 2008
2 Prices are estimated and vary regionally

This is a wonderful article I came across.  It was written my Jim Burns, Ph.D. stating why it’s import for families to get back to the dinner table together!!

I’m happy to announce that over the past few years, more and more families are making the intentional effort to have regular, family-mealtimes.  Here are seven reasons why doing so is a great idea:

1) Kids who live in families that eat dinner together regularly are less likely to be involved in at risk behaviors.  According to the 2000 study done by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), children who don’t eat dinner with their families are 61 percent more likely to use alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs. By contrast, children who eat dinner with their families every night of the week are 20 percent less likely to drink, smoke, or use illegal drugs.

2) Families who eat dinner together regularly are more likely to have stronger, happier family relationships.  As families struggle to find amounts of quantity and quality time together, family dinnertime provides the opportunity for both.  When families hang out together and communicate, they grow strong and healthy.

3) Families who eat dinner regularly develop a stronger family identity.  Eating together serves to build a family identity.  Additionally, this family “routine” provides a sense of stability and security that provides kids with a positive environment where they can grow into healthy adults.

4) Families who eat dinner together regularly can keep in touch with each others’ lives.  Everyone – kids and parents alike – can keep up-to-date during your family dinnertime on what is going on with school, jobs, family life, and friends.

5) A regular family dinnertime provides natural opportunities for planning and problem solving.  Scheduling family meeting times to discuss planning, needs and problem solving can be difficult.  A regular family mealtime can offer a natural solution to the challenge.

6) Eating dinner regularly fosters learning.  When families who eat dinner together engage in a variety of conversation topics, learning is encouraged.  Kids who are exposed to regular family discussion times learn a broader vocabulary.

7) Kids are likely to receive better nutrition when eating dinner regularly with their families.  A simple, but true rule applies: when kids eat with their families, they eat better.  A family dinnertime means kids are more likely to eat a nutritionally balanced meal, lower in sugar and fat content, than if they prepare or purchase meals on their own.

From my family to yours – we wish you all a Blessed New Year.  2008 has brought many challenges for us all and I believe with our Lord Jesus Christ at the center of our lives it will allow God’s will to be done through us.  Our family has suffered and lost many things this past year but the one thing that is keeping us strong is our faith.  We have lost things but we still have our family.  My prayer for everyone is that the challenges of this past year make you stronger.  Put God in the center of your life and everything else will fall into place.

God bless and Happy New Year!!

I don’t know about you but I love getting a great deal.  After church on Sunday, I come home and go through all the circulars to see what is on sale and where I can get the best price.  Between the coupons I clip and purchasing sale items I generally knock $40 – $50 a week off my grocery bill!!  Now some people might be shaking your head in disbelief while others might be laughing thinking me an amateur to your money saving savviness.  I will admit there is still room to improve in my saving quest and would love to learn more from the “pros” out there. 

Recently I was talking with a friend about clipping coupons and was surprised when they said the reason they don’t clip coupons was because stores don’t double them any more.  After letting what they said sink in for a minute I asked so if you have coupons that would save you $10 off your bill you won’t use them because you can’t save $20?  They couldn’t answer.  That same $10 savings every week would add up to $520 in saving by the end of the year — Hello?? Who wouldn’t love to have that kind of extra cash come Christmas shopping time!! 

In the next few posts, we’ll talk about ways to turn that $10 a week savings off your groceries into $20, $30, even $40 off your grocery bills each and every week.  If you are willing to take the time & do a little homework before you head out to the stores you can save a lot of money.  I would love to hear your money saving ideas as well – please leave your comments and lets see how much we can save.

Christmas is almost here and the kid’s want a video gaming console, but which one do you choose? This guide will help you understand more about the Wii, the Xbox, and the Playstation.

Right click and Save as to download -> Choosing the Right Video Game Console (24) Posted by Lynette

 Below is a a Voter Issue Guide as circulated by the American Family Association.  I hope you find this helpful in determining who you will vote for this November and remember EVERYONE that CAN vote should.  Voting is not your RIGHT it is your RESPONSIBILITY!!

I think everyone would agree dinner time is a great time to bring the family together.  Well at our house we try to even make dinner preparation a family affair.  Everyone gets to be involved in making the dinner (something that my “Pampered” kitchen makes very easy to accomplish.)  Tonight we made what my daughter calls “Mom’s Crispy Pizza.” 

Pizza is my family’s favorite meal, but I get very tired of the same old pepperoni pizza so I came up with my own recipe – it’s both quick and easy to make as well as good for you.  Mom’s Crispy Pizza is made with two different types of cheese, chicken, sausage, bacon, and tomatoes and in the 30 minutes Domino’s takes to deliver to your door this pizza is on the table ready to eat. 

I start with cooking my sausage in my Small Micro-Cooker only a few minutes in the microwave then chop it using my Mix ‘N Chop (actually chopping the sausage is my daughter’s job.)  While she is chopping I roll out my pizza dough (I prefer Pillsbury pizza dough) on my Large Bar Pan, sprinkle with Italian Seasoning Mix and put that in the oven for about 6 minutes (follow heat instructions on the package.) 

Next I fry up 4 strips of bacon then slice them up and set aside with the sausage.  When the pizza dough is done we spread about 3/4 jar of pizza sauce (depending on your taste) on the crust from corner to corner.  Using my Rotary Grater, my daughter spreads a layer of Colby Jack cheese (this helps prevent the crust from getting soggy from the moist toppings.)  While my princess is busy with the cheese I shred my chicken breast (left over from the previous nights dinner as I usually always cook an extra chicken breast – great to use for lunches the next day or as a topping on my pizza) and dice up the tomato (my family won’t eat sliced tomato only diced).

Now we add the sausage, chicken, bacon, tomatoes and the kids add another layer of cheese (mozzarella usually bought already shredded) then back in the oven for about another 15 minutes (cook according to the dough package.)  When it comes out of the oven I cut into large squares with my Pizza Cutter and serve with my Mini-Serving Spatula.  Start to finish in about 30 minutes – it’s a family favorite.

I received the following email today regarding the current financial mess we (the US) is experiencing.  I had to share it since this seems to be the question of the day.  With all the finger pointing on Capital Hill, I think it’s interesting that this article spells out the very plan that is the route of the problem our banks are dealing with today. 

Every American needs to be registered to vote.  Unless you are dead or dialated, you actually get out to the polls and vote on November 4th!  I’m not telling you how to vote, just reminding you it’s not your right to vote — it’s your responsibility to yourself and your children.

Sincerely, Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association

The average U.S. household spends 13% of its budget on food, but savvy supermarket shoppers can save hundreds of dollars a month. Here are secrets from a couple of champs as reported by MSN Money article – Take a big bite out of grocery bills By MP Dunleavey.

Editor’s note: Join columnist MP Dunleavey and a group of women as they seek to strip away the myths around money, liberate themselves from debt and find financial sanity. Follow the ongoing quest of the Women in Red every other Wednesday in Dunleavey’s column on MSN Money.

When I was a kid, my mother would sit in front of the television with a dinner tray in front of her, and she’d methodically go through all the supermarket fliers, clipping coupons and writing her grocery list in her meticulous, fine print.

I thought she was nuts.

Under Paragraph 967P of the Geneva Conventions governing the relations between youngsters and their parents, I found my mother’s behavior strange and embarrassing, and I wanted no part of it. Ever.

Then a few decades passed, and I became a mom myself. Until recently I’ve been willing to make many lifestyle adjustments in the name of financial sanity, but cutting back our grocery bill wasn’t one of them. Spending about $400 a month for two adults and a baby seemed just about right.

Then I started reading the Grocery Challenge thread on the trend-setting, ground-breaking, take-no-prisoners Women in Red message board and learned that a single mother of two had cut her bill from $700 a month to about $260.

Was there sorcery involved? Enron-scale accounting fraud? Was Mom right all along? I had to find out.

You are what you eat

Because food is an essential, it sometimes goes unchallenged as a spending category in many people’s budgets.

You might groan inwardly when you see the total mounting at the grocery checkout counter, but for most hardworking, time-pressed people, it seems easier to cut back in other areas first: clothes shopping, cable services, vacations and other extras. After all, you have to eat.

But people may not realize that food is a substantial financial outlay for most Americans: about 13% of the average household’s annual expenditures, according to a 2005 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That includes about 7.5% spent on groceries at home and the rest on eating out.

Economists are quick to point out that because of numerous federal subsidies, Americans typically spend a smaller portion of their income on groceries than, say, most Europeans do.

But as I learned from the food mavens on the Grocery Challenge thread, living in the land of cheap grub is not a reason to become complacent. No, no! As these savvy shoppers will tell you: If you think you got a certain item for a great price, rest assured there’s a way to get it even cheaper — or maybe even for free.

The ugly myths of coupon clipping

Do you have to become a wild-eyed coupon clipper to slash your grocery bill, stuffing your car with stacks of supermarket fliers and driving checkout clerks bonkers with your wallet of wadded 50-cent-off vouchers?

Will your diet start to revolve around Hamburger Helper, dented cans of beans and stale coffeecake?

Not at all. In fact, people who choose to be frugal about food aren’t necessarily in financial straits — nor do they sacrifice their quality of life or their quality of meals.

“About a year ago I looked at our $700-a-month grocery bill, and I was horrified,” says Sue McDermed, a mother of two who lives in Southern California. “It was our third-largest bill, and I thought: I can do better than this.”

She challenged herself to cut her family’s food expenditures, she says, as part of a bigger financial rethinking of her own goals and priorities. Yet she doesn’t compromise on quality, usually buying as much by way of organic and natural groceries as she can.

Sharon Lustro, 51, could teach Warren Buffett a thing or two about buying low. She typically spends about $30 a week on groceries, she says, often leaving a store having paid no more than a dollar or two for a cartload of goods.

Lustro, whose household income is about $125,000, also does it more for the principle of the thing and because she prefers to invest her money in traveling and her children’s education.

“I’ve seen so many people go into debt so needlessly,” she says. “I knew one family that earned about $200,000 a year, and they had to declare bankruptcy. It’s your day-to-day habits that get you into trouble — what you eat for lunch, what you buy for dinner.”

Lustro, who works part time, says she spends less than two hours a week organizing and shopping — and her children will graduate from a top-notch college with no student-loan debt.

To clip or not to clip

McDermed and Lustro use different shopping strategies. As someone who used to work in grocery retailing, McDermed knows a handful of insider tips and tricks that help her to spend less. “Coupons don’t play as important a role for me,” she says.

On the other hand, Lustro is a devotee of the CouponMom Web site, a sort of miracle site that tells you which items are discounted at which stores in your geographical area.

Whatever cost-cutting method you use, both of these shopping mavens emphasize the following:

• Like any other diversion, the grocery game should be fun.
• By cutting back on your food expenses, you should not only save money but time.
• With the time and the money you save, your life will become less stressful.
• You will not lose your mind and end up camping out at your local Piggly Wiggly to be the first in line to nab that 2-for-1 grapefruit special.

Here are their secrets:

• Get to know sales cycles. McDermed says stores reduce their products according to a 12-week cycle, give or take. Let’s say your spaghetti sauce is normally $2.19 a jar; on sale it’s $1.99. That’s the phantom sale price, says McDermed, so hang in there while the price drops to two for $3. But don’t buy until it hit the rock-bottom price of, say, 10 for $10 or BOGO — buy one, get one free. That’s when you buy.
• Know your rock-bottom price. McDermed recommends keeping a price notebook for a while so that you get to know the rock-bottom prices for most items. That way you’re less likely to get sucked in by phantom sale prices because you know a steeper discount is around the corner.
• Spot the loss leaders. Those are the staggering deals — Tropicana orange juice for a nickel — that lure unsuspecting customers into stores, who then buy lots of other things they don’t need. “If you see an unbelievable deal, scoop it up!” says McDermed. Just don’t buy anything else.
• Shop off-list. Your mom told you to stick to a list in order to save, but Lustro disagrees. When she saw ground turkey on sale for $1 a package (a loss leader), she happened to have a $1 coupon for the same brand — and got it for nothing. She may not have turkey meatballs for a month, but when she does, it’ll be a free meal.

• It’s OK to pay nothing. Lustro is the queen of ruthless coupon deployment — going for doubles, triples and home runs — but she says it pays to know the rules of each store. Some won’t double the coupon if it exceeds the face value of the item. Asking is the best way to save. If you have a $1 coupon for Suave shampoo, which is $1.99, and it’s double coupon day, yes, you can get it for free.
• Become a coupon collector. You don’t have to depend on fliers (which Lustro organizes by date in a hanging file that she keeps in her car). Often supermarkets place coupons right next to discounted items. Lustro advises keeping the coupons, even if you don’t need the items right then. She asks friends to send her coupons they don’t use.
• Don’t play silly supermarket games. If an item is on sale, six for $3, don’t assume you have to buy all six, says McDermed. You can buy just one for the sale price of 50 cents.
• Stand your financial ground. Many Grocery Challenge shoppers note that hostile checkout people sometimes try to sabotage their savings efforts. The only solution is to talk to a manager — and be willing to wait in line for the checkout people who cheer you on when your bill comes to zero (and many do).

I know. This strategy sounds too simple to deliver big savings, but the gals who are committed to the Grocery Challenge say the results are real. A reader in Texas notes that they don’t get as many great grocery deals as other states, but nonetheless she has been able to cut her grocery budget from a range of $100 to $150 a week for two adults and four kids to less than $80 a week, just by signing up for the weekly paper. “We’ve since made our money back with all the coupon savings,” she says.

Published March 7, 2007

You should also check out the message board Women in Red Hosted by MP Dunleavey.  If you liked this post also check out Bargain Shopping = Free Money

The worst breakfast in America as reported in the article America’s Worst Breakfast Foods on MSN health & fitness on Sept 25, 2008. 

Bob Evans Stacked and Stuffed Caramel Banana Pecan Hotcakes

1,543 calories
77 g fat (26 g saturated; 9 g trans)
2,259 mg sodium
198 g carbs
109 g sugars
SATURATED FAT EQUIVALENT: 26 STRIPS OF BACON

SUGAR EQUIVALENT: 12 CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

SODIUM EQUIVALENT: 12 SMALL BAGS OF POTATO CHIPS

It’s not a good sign when it takes you nearly five seconds to spit out the name of your breakfast. This bad boy packs in more than 75 percent of your calories for the day, along with more sugar and fat than nine glazed Dunkin’ Donuts, and nearly as much sodium as five Bloody Marys.

Eat this instead!

3 Scrambled Egg Beaters with 2 slices of bacon and fresh fruit

314 calories
19.5 g fat (5 g saturated)
700 mg sodium
21 g carbs
18 g sugars
You can also check out Eat This, Not That! on MSN Shopping.

And, check out the new comprehensive guide for choosing the right meal for kids at more than 40 restaurants nationwide: Eat This, Not That! for Kids.