Endorsements

Almost as difficult as it is to find food my kids will eat, is figuring out how to customize Blogger! Finally I think I have my layout figured out and managed to add my two favorite endorsements... DAVE RAMSEY and EMEALS.
For the money conscious and especially those like myself who weren't ever taught how to save a dime, Dave Ramsey is a lifesaver. When Daddy Bear and I took the class it wasn't because we were so far in debt we were drowning. We actually had very little debt because we didn't have any credit! LOL We'd been living with a very low middle income from day one. The we added 4 kids and very little in raises. But things were starting to look up, Daddy Bear finished college and earned his MBA. He got a wonderful job with the feds with great potential to move up (at least monetarily!)
What in the world was I going to do with more money?  Sounds like a fun question but I was filled with dread knowing that I'd just spend spend spend and while we'd have double or tripled our income we'd still never get ahead. I couldn't save a penny to save my life but I didn't want to have 50K, 75K, or 100K+ coming in and nothing to show for it. I NEEDED to change and learn how. I signed us up for FPU and let me just say that in just a little over a year since graduating from the class, facilitating a class of my own and getting ready to facilitate a 2nd class, we've paid off over $37K in debt which really has wiped out about $300K (gotta make deals!) All of that was old business debt except for less than $5K in credit cards and a couple thousand in current and past medical bills.
In addition we've been able to install new carpet and furniture in our living room, new carpet and solid wood bunk-beds in one of the kids rooms, buy some new appliances for the kitchen etc...
So if could use a little help getting out of debt, learning how to save money etc, give Financial Peace University a try. It will be the best $90-100 you'll spend all year!!

My next endorsement is EMEALS. One of our biggest expenditures was food. I'd spend however much at the grocery store, double that by eating out then throwing away rotten food that I'd never got around to cooking! I was tired of wrangling 4 kids all day and I can't figure out what to make for dinner. Doesn't help having the picky ones either.  But emeals tells you whats for dinner this week, easy recipes to make it and a complete shopping list to boot. Now you can save more money by shopping with a list rather than winging it and buying everything you don't need and forgetting what you do! $5 a month, and they do all the work! The recipes are very easy and very tasty too. The ladies at emeals work to find recipes that include in-season foods. They use the sales adds for some of the store based lists to help save you even more money (providing you shop the recipe on time). I've been using them forever. They've since added on a lunch plan and breakfast too. I added on the lunch plan for a year but it's not working for my picky people. Emeals is just too darn healthy for them! I've also strayed from the dinner menu to work on the kids pickiness. I think they need to see "normal" foods like taco's and meatloaf, sloppy joes and spaghetti more often and i'll try to add on the more gourmet looking meals once I get them eating. I don't want to stop using them though so I've keep up my subscription and just save my menus each weeks to my computer for later use :)