March 2020 – Gemma Means Jewel ~ Beauty Blog

Cleaning a House for Quick

This is totally my style. I also try to do one load of laundry each day. It keeps it from piling up and becoming the beast that takes all day to conquer!

I found this article, and now I’ve spent my entire evening reading about your home management notebook, menu planning and cleaning tips! I’m not sure how I’ve been doing this stay-at-home mom thing without you!

Now, I’m off to clean the ketchup from tonight’s dinner off the baby’s highchair so that I don’t have to do it in the morning when it’s all dried and crusty. You are so right!!

Woo I thought this was a fab post and really got me thinking to the extra hours I waist on cleaning. I plan to have my timer with me and see how much I can get done just to inspire me for less ‘I will do it later’ style cleaning…I bet in 15mins I could really change this kitchen from a riot of mess to a place to feel comfortable in…Oh no not toast on the lap top again….

Yep, this is my MAJOR problem! I need to clean as I go. I will definately try harder to put this in to practice. The one thing I have really been working on to keep up on is keeping dirty dishes out of my sink and keeping my sink shining (thank you Flylady!) It really does help me start my morning happier!

I know you hear this a lot but, I’m so glad I found your blog!!!

I am motivated to tackle my home with a new mindset.

My little tip: when loading the DW I put like utensils together for super quick unloading…spoons together, forks together etc. Cuts down on a bit of time and effort.

I have spent hours pouring over your articles, and I keep finding myself agreeing, relating and being inspired. One last thing, I appreciate that in these “politically correct” days you freely share the role your faith has in what you do everyday. It is so refreshing to see Jesus’ name used in a way that is not a curse word! Thank you and God bless!

Miscellaneous

How to clean your house with sage

I haven’t yet applied this because I generally do it but it is very nice to be reminded about how quickly our work can be done. Unfortunately I don’t seem to have gotten the message through to my family yet so I often come out and have to tidy up after them. One trick I learnt from my Mum was to wipe the shower or bath down every time YOU use it. Even if hubby or kids come after it will have been wiped down at least once a day and so you will have to use much less in the way of muscle power or chemicals. It doesn’t matter what you use to wipe it with – wash cloth, towel or squeegee – anything does the trick which is to stop the build up that eats into the surfaces.

This is a great post! I was re-organizing and cleaning an area in my kitchen yesterday and came across a magazine article I had saved that had this type of info in it. It was a great reminder. Seeing this again this morning means I really need to work on being better about this.

Here’s the motto at our house:

If not I, who? If not now, when?
Not that is always followed, mind you! But at least it gets you thinking as you walk past the basket of unfolded laundry.
If I would remove my husband’s shirts from the dryer promptly – I wouldn’t have the chore of ironing them!

But I often find that I’m changing a diaper or chasing after a toddler when I hear the dryer buzzing – and then when I’m done with the diaper or the chase I have forgotten all about the dryer. And so the clothes sit in the dryer and wrinkle and I have lots of ironing to do.

I do my 15 minute clean up as soon as I get in the door from work. I call it my “daily sweep” on my docket. (both your ideas!) It is pretty amazing how much I can get done in only 15 minutes and how much more I enjoy the rest of the day with those things done first.

I was just thinking about this this morning! And every other morning, when I wake up to dirty dishes in the sink. Maybe it’s a sign …

I was going to leave a comment…. but first I need to go wipe down the peanut butter on my counter top!

I try to do this daily sweep everynight before bed so the house is clean when I get up the next morning – before getting trashed again by th4e hubby, 4 year old and dirty, shedding dog!

Financial

Money Isn’t Everything And It Isn’t You

One of the downsides of having a personal finance blog is that you often get stuck thinking and talking about the same stuff – taxes, salaries, retirement, blah blah blah; sometimes you need to take a step back and enjoy the things in life that aren’t related to money.

Life is about happiness, not money.

The difficult thing about money is that when you don’t have much of it, you are almost forced to focus on getting more. The difference between earning $0 a year and $10,000 is seriously significant. It’s the difference between eating and not eating. The difference between $10,000 and $20,000 is also very seriously significant. Now take a look at the difference between $100,000 and $110,000… the difference is still “only” $10,000 but the actual impact on the quality of your life is much less significant than $0 to $10k increase. When you’re making $0, you want to make more and you try whatever you can to put yourself in a position to make more because each extra dollar you earn means you or your loved ones will eat that night. In that mode, money is everything because you’re fighting to satisfy your need to eat and need for shelter. However, the sickening cycle is such that even when you’ve “made it,” you’ll want more because you’ve already pegged your happiness to how much money you’re making. The happiest families are the ones that enjoy what they have, even if it’s very little.

You are not your income. You are not your assets.

The second point I want to make is that you are not what you make or what you own. Someone who makes $10,000 is not a worse person than someone who makes $20,000 or even $200,000. Do not let your annual income define who you are and don’t chase after that extra dollar because you want to impress your peers. There are some of the hardest working people, the nicest and kindest people, and some of the most generous people; busting their asses off for minimum wage. (the federal minimum wage is only $5.15, which means 50 weeks of 40 hours earns $10,300 – which is another issue entirely and a travesty of pretty epic proportions) I’d take any one of them working in a business I start over the hordes of useless middle managers in large corporations, even though the managers “earn” more in salary.

As always, if you have any thoughts on the matter, please do share!

Another possible result of a higher minimum wage could simply be more unemployed people. At some point it starts being more cost effective to buy a few Roombas rather than to hire that minimum wage McDonald’s lobby cleaner, or to just leave things dirty for that matter. Or for many jobs, to outsource them to China or India or wherever, where many will gladly work for less, under worse conditions. Also, in addition to students/teenagers, there are also people who take minimum wage jobs for the benefits, such as health insurance–for someone who needs it, that benefit alone might be worth enough to them that they’d work for free.

Chalk me up as a free market advocate, but I generally think the government does more harm than good when they get too involved with this stuff. They don’t accomplish what they’re trying to anyway, and they make all sorts of other things worse in the process of their failure. But hey, if it sounds good to enough people, maybe it’ll get them reelected…

Oh, that wasn’t your main topic? Capitalist though I may be, I agree wholeheartedly that money is far from the most important thing in life.

While I agree that raising minimum wage does have trickle down effects and higher costs here will lead to (or has already led to) outsourcing, you’ll have companies who will use US based manufacturing as a marketing point (American Apparel) and consumers who will appreciate that.

While I am a free market economy, Adam Smith laissez-faire type guy, I do recognize that government has long since given up to having the invisible hand do its dirty work and that if we’re going to meddle, we might as meddle the whole way and help some people out who really do need it. The working poor is one of the great tragic relics of our society, especially when you put them next to the non-working poor.

The beauty of discussion is that the topic goes to where the interest of the group is and I’m not one to stop it.

One of the ancient rules of economics: the “feel good”, “help people out” option is often the one that ends up hurting more than helping. This is a corollary of the ancient rule that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is…

People should check out the history of the minimum wage. It was not started by “nice people” who wanted to “help out” workers. It was intended as an odd sort of weapon against working women, advanced by people who bought into “eugenics” theories of the sort that were popular in the early 20th century.

I’m not even convinced there should be a minimum wage. The market should set wages. If I own a fruit stand that sells $5 worth of fruit per day, am I going to hire someone for $8 an hour to man that stand? That’s an extreme illustrative example, but I just think that businesses are created for their owners to make money, and artifically inflating one of their costs doesn’t help anyone.

Great point you make in the blog. People can sometimes have an unhealthy obsession with money that gets in the way of their true day to day happiness.

I would guess that most of you on here arguing against a higher minumum wage are sitting at home on your fancy computers, all warm in your nice houses, right after you came home from your salaried job. You have never seen the effects of how working your asses off all day for 5.15 can hour can affect you. Not enough money to pay the rent, feed the kids, pay the bills etc. I come from a community where a few rich people rule, and many live in poverty, all the while slaving their asses off to serve the rich, because it is the only job they can get…..

And someone makes the argument that we do not want to raise the costs for those business owners and corporations. How do you think people feel when fortune 500 CEO’s are bringing home 100’s of millions of dollars a year, and thier child has no dinner. There is something to be said for working hard and creating a good life for yourself. But there is also something to be said for helping others out and having some sesnse of compassion…..not just giving lip service to compassion.

Most people I know make quite a bit of money and then feel great if they give away 100 dollars in a year…..get over yourselves. I think the biggest downfall of our “great country” is our pursuit of wealth at all costs while those around us are suffering just to survive from day to day. We send money to Africa and what not, but we cannot pay people enough just to eat a decent meal.

It seems every day I am less and less proud of how this country runs itself.

I was just thinking of that very same thing this past few days. Of course, money is important. But like you say, it’s not everything, and it won’t make you happy in itself… but it sure makes lif easier.

Financial

SparkleTeddy eMagazine Review

Todd Romer, Executive Director of SparkleTeddy, sent me a few copies of SparkleTeddy to check out recently. I first saw a review of the publication on Get Rich Slowly and I was intrigued with the prospect of a personal finance magazine targeted towards college students. Before I heard of SparkleTeddy, I’d never seen a personal finance magazine focused towards college students so I think they’re definitely targeting an under-served niche. If you think about it, magazines like Kiplinger’s and Smart Money target an older demographic that actually has some significant income to put towards things like investments and retirement. When you’re in college, retirement is the farthest thing on their mind (they don’t have 401k’s, but they do have the option to go Roth IRA), so it’s not surprising that this is the case.

So, onto the magazine itself. The magazine has basically one main in-depth feature article with a bunch of one pagers surrounding it. The magazines I read featured Grady Sizemore, Miss Issa, and Danica Patrick; all young phenoms in their field. From the perspective that the magazine is about personal finance, the fact that the feature is all flash and not really actionable personal finance advice is a weak point. However, as a college student, I think that these type of pieces are interesting to read, even if they aren’t applicable to their daily lives from a personal finance perspective.

Now, the mini-articles they put around the feature are certainly relevant and in nice bite-sized nuggets that a college student would be able to read in about fifteen minutes and put to good use. For example, in the Grady Sizemore issue, there is a guide to build better credit, a guide to studying abroad, a list of top ten internships, and an overview of money market funds. In the Miss Issa issue, there’s a top ten resume mistakes article as well as an overview of tools to help you keep track of which of your deadbeat friends still owe you money.

Overall I think the features are interesting though not necessarily useful whereas the mini-articles are useful if you figure they’re targeting college students. SparkleTeddy is bimonthly and with an annual subscription price of $15.95, whether or not it’s worth it is up to you.

Thanks for the post and review of SparkleTeddy. We appreciate the time you took to look through the publication and provide insights. We always welcome to feedback that will make the next issue of Young Money better than the last. Since launching Young Money several years ago we still battle with providing the right mix of educational content along with other engaging content based more on todyay’s young adult lifestyle. So, we look forward to continuing our quest to provide an authoratative money and business magazine that keeps an element of fun and entertainment too.

Financial

DIY Tips to Save Money on Your Car

Anyone who’s ever owned a car – particularly one that’s been “pre-loved” – knows what an awful sink of time and money a motor vehicle can be. No single purchase, short of buying a home, will consume more of your resources over its operational life.

It’s important to make sure you are getting the best mileage out of your car – literally and figuratively. With that in mind, start with the biggest cost of a vehicle – gas.

The easiest way to save gas is to buy a more efficient car, but if you’re already rolling in a ’73 Chevelle, that’s not really an option. However, no matter what kind of car you drive, taking it easy on the throttle and the brakes will save gallons a year. There’s no need to get a Grand Prix start if the next red light is 100 yards away.

In addition, high-octane gas is a waste unless you have a high-boost, high-performance engine. Chances are, your cylinders won’t “knock” on the basic stuff.

Learning how to change your own oil, air filter and other basic parts can save you a lot of money as well, though oil in particular requires a decent amount of time and space.

Similarly, monitor and fix your tire pressure – tires are expensive, and keeping them at the optimum pressure reduces wear and tear while improving mileage.

Using deal sites to save money when shopping auto parts on the internet. There are two ways to find deals. The first is searching for promotional codes on coupon sites. A few that are popular and reliable right now are Retailmenot, CouponCabin or Diskonio. The other way is signing up for a daily deals sites.

Finally, take a couple of nice spring and summer days to wash and wax your own car – it’s relaxing and you save yourself some cash. Plus, odds are you’ll do a better job than the carwash.