Jill Russo Foster

Tips for Successful Personal Finances

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Saving money daily – eliminating expenses

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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

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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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Can you travel cheaply?

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My answer is always, yes!!!

We have traveled to lots of places and not spent too much. It does take planning, but we find it well worth it.

You need to search for great deals on the places you want to explore.  Look for sales, perks and discounts.  Research your options.  Right now we are researching an upcoming trip.  We are looking for a hotel that is centrally located and near transportation hubs.

Last year in Italy, we stayed at a hotel by the airport.  We were able to walk to the hotel when we arrived.  You might be thinking it’s not convenient.  This particular hotel had a fee shuttle to downtown Rome every two hour between 8 am and 11pm.  Yeah! No transportation costs.

For places to stay, we look for hotels / timeshares that have kitchen facilities.  It’s more cost effective to go to the market and purchase food than to eat our for every meal.  Plus, if possible, you can bring things from home.  No, you cannot bring meat and vegetables.  You can bring items that you only need a few of instead of buying a large quantity (think salt, pepper, steel wool, paper goods and more).  This is a photo from a beach vacation and what we packed in our luggage.

What do you do to reduce your travel costs?

 

 

What To Pack To Save Money

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Summer is coming and that makes me think of vacations. You might be saying, here they go again! You may be right, but not yet. There are a couple planned for later this year.

I wanted to offer you some packing tips that will save you money. When we head to a beach or resorts with pools, we pack our pool toys. Yes, you read this correctly. First, by using an airline credit card, we get our checked bags for FREE – only that makes this work. One suitcase is for us and one is a suitcase for toys. So this is in the beach toy suitcase:

•    Noodles / Rafts / Tubes / Snorkel Gear
•    Soft-sided cooler – we have one that the freeze pack is a part of the cooler
(one less thing to carry along)
•    Entertainment – playing cards, games, etc.

When we travel to a destination, we try to reserve a unit with a kitchen or at least a fridge. This saves us so much money by being able to make and bring our own meals. You might be thinking cooking on vacation – ugh! This can be as simple as having breakfast, beverages and snacks from a grocery store versus paying restaurant or resort prices. Picking up a bottle of water at the store is much more cost effective than buying a bottle at pool side.

Here’s an example of what we do. We bring as much as possible, especially things you won’t finish,  like steel wool, paper plates, herbs and more. Next, we place an online order (if that is possible) from the grocery store before we leave. Then we either pick up the order at the store or have it delivered to where we are staying. Having some or most of your meals at grocery store prices saves money.  Yes, we still do go out for some meals – just not all.

Remember that you typically cannot bring meat, fruit or vegetables out of the US and into another country. Usually, you can bring sealed items in their original packaging. Here’s one of our suitcases.

If you want a copy of my food packing list, email book@jillrussofoster.com and I will share it with you.

Planning a beach vacation

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We love the beach.  When we travel to a beach / pool destination, we bring along our own toys – noodles, rafts, snorkel gear and more.  Not only does this save us money (much cheaper than buying at a hotel or destination), we always have what we want when we want it. This works because we have free checked luggage with our airline credit card.  For more money saving tips visit www.JillRussoFoster.com and subscribe to our blog.

Change Is The New Normal

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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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