Jill Russo Foster

Tips for Successful Personal Finances

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Saving money daily – eliminating expenses

What are the things you are willing to do without or do differently?

In our household, we do our own yardwork and save by not having to pay for a lawn or snowplowing service.  The trade off is that it takes time to do these tasks and we had to purchase the lawn mower, weed wacker and snow blower.  This can be a big initial expense.  But, we don’t have monthly bills.

Our town has private trash collectors, that’s another monthly bill.  We take our own trash to the transfer station and eliminated that bill years ago.

What are you willing to do or doing that have helped your finances?

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Saving money daily – our garden

As far as I can remember back, my family has always had a garden.

Ours in smaller, but we grow what we need.  Ever spring we start with herbs in a flower box, just outside the back door.  This year is rosemary, parsley, basil and cilantro.  You can start from seed or buy the plants all for a minimal amount of money and have fresh herbs all summer long.  When the weather turns colder, we will freeze the remaining herb for later in the year.

Our garden has tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, broccoli, peppers, kale and more.  There is nothing better than to be able to walk out into the yard and pick what you want for dinner.

Everything we grow is that much less that we buy at the store.  As August arrives, everything is starting to be ready to pick.  This saves money each and every trip to the grocery store.

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Having trouble keeping track of your money?

We all go through stages in our lives where money seems to be going out faster than coming in.  In my 20’s, I was a spender and learned my lesson.  Now, I keep track of my spending.  I want to accomplish my goals and live within my means.  It may sound boring, but it keep me out of debt.

If budgeting isn’t working for you, read this.

Money Makes The World Go Round

Today, I am doing a workshop, Money Make The World go Round at Empower Her for kids ages 8 to 11.  We are going to discuss budgeting, wants, needs with the help of a fun game!

Spring Cleaning Your Finances

Spring is a great time of year! One of my favorites, as the weather turns warmer and the days are longer. For us, it means more time outside and that can be from getting my garden planted and the thrill of fresh vegetables right in my backyard, to having meals outside; either just us or with friends and family. We can open the windows to air out the winter stale indoor air and sleep comfortably with the windows open all night. It means exploring the outdoors, maybe taking a walk in a new neighborhood or park, picnics and movies in the park.

With spring comes weddings and graduations – new beginnings. This can be true for all of us, even if we don’t have a milestone event coming up.

Traditionally, spring makes me think of spring cleaning and tackling the heavier cleaning throughout the house. We can do the same for our finances.  For the graduate, you can start them off with the gift of good finances – being able to start to plan their money and finance proactively and make planned purchases versus impulse buying. A great way to start would be the gift of my book, Cash Credit and Your Finances: The Teen Years.

For those who want to get your own finances back on track, 111 Ways to Save or Thrive In Five: Take Charge of Your Finances in 5 Minutes a Day will give you the push you need to get your finances in order.

You can order my books through my website or by order form. If you use the order form, you have the option of me personalizing the book. Just print the order form, fill out the recipient information section, and mail it to the address on the form or fax it to 203-504-7995. For the month of June 2017, we are also offering free shipping on all book sales that are ordered with the order form via mail or fax.

Click here to download the order form.

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Change Is The New Normal

To start, we have been making better food choices over the past few years. As we get older, I want to still be active and healthy. This is a journey with small changes happening. We are striving for 50% of our plate to be vegetables. Our proteins are certified grass fed meats and fish with no antibiotics and non-GMO all while staying within our food budget. We shop what’s on sale and plan our meals to get the most from our dollars.

It’s that time of year to plan our garden and have fresh picked vegetables right in our backyard, at a minimal cost for organic seeds. Love this part of summer!

Here are some of our favorites to get more organic vegetables into our meals:

•    Chicken Vegetable Soup making healthy bone broth with assorted vegetables.  This is great to have on hand when we are short on time for dinner – just heat and eat.
•    Lettuce wraps for lots of foods. Big leaf lettuce replaces the bread, wrap, taco and more. Inside can be anything from tuna to tacos – let your imagination run wild.
•    Fries are one of my stress foods. But as I make these changes, there goes the fried foods. Now we bake or grill vegetable fries. Try it – avocado fries are one of favorites, but you can use many other veggies.

We are changing our food for the better. This wasn’t done overnight, just small changes (or baby steps) to gradually improve our choices. Our first step was to eliminate trans fats/partially hydrogenated oils, then came nitrates and then GMO’s. This exercise was eye-opening when I went through our pantry and even more surprising reading labels at the store.

As you can see, we are eating more at home and taking meals/snacks from home.  Both are good things for our health and benefit our wallet too. More on the other areas of our lives that we have changed in the next issue.

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