Hi Friends!
I hope you have enjoyed my posts from the past few days — it is an overwhelming amount of information, but I hope you learned something!
I have wanted to write about this topic for months now, but I never knew how to fit it in with the rest of my blog. I usually write about my marathon training, or trying new recipes, or books I have read, etc. But I think part of healthy living is taking care of stress, and guess what — when we had tons of debt we were STRESSED OUT!
We can relax more, now that the credit card debt is gone. We aren’t debt-free now, but we have a plan and we are on our way — and that relieves most of my stress.
In case you missed one, or if you want to look back on them, here they are:
Monday: Steps to Financial Freedom
Tuesday: Budgeting and Paying off Debt
Wednesday: Getting your Debt Snowball Rolling
Other good resources to check out:
Baby Steps to Financial Freedom
Cathy brought up a good point yesterday, which was about using CASH.
I totally forgot to mention cash when I explained the budgeting process. Jason and I use cash for most purchases. We also use cash for our “fun money” — we take it out either at the beginning of the month or on payday — and that way, when the money is GONE it is GONE and that means no more spending. We use the same method for food: I take out the budgeted amount per week (let’s say we budget $400 for food/toiletries each month, so about $100 per week) — and that gives me 1-2 shopping trips and then we make due until the following week. Some weeks we have money leftover and we go out for dinner. Otherwise we only use our check card — that way it comes directly out of our account, but we have the convenience of plastic (used mostly for pumping gas!)
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Back to somewhat regularly scheduled programming 🙂
I have been running and I’ve been feeling GREAT — Tuesday I had a short 3 mile run and I finished in about 28 minutes. I played with the speed on the treadmill and that made the time go by so quickly. I want to start switching up the incline, but I’m worried that my knee will start hurting again, so I’m going to continue to run on flat surfaces this week. Next week I should be able to run outside (hopefully!!!) or I’ll start upping the incline.
On Wednesday I ran 6 miles:
And after some foam-rolling and stretching I was good to go! I made some “Shamrock Shakes” after our run:
Ingredients:
1 scoop vanilla protein powder 2/3 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk handful of spinach (for color and nutrients!) 1/4 tsp peppermint extract — I will use 1/8 tsp next time since this one was really minty! 1/4 tsp guar gum (to thicken it up – could omit) 5-6 ice cubesWe also got to babysit this beast all night:
He loved watching Top Chef with us!
*What are you doing for St. Patty’s Day? Today is actually the anniversary of our first date — 4 years ago! I’m still not sure what our plans are.
~Holly