Lilac City Momma

Budgeting

Essential Ways To Keep Costs Down At Home

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When you have built a great life for you and your family, it can be one of the best feelings in the world to live every day with them. However, one issue that crops up in most family households is keeping costs low, so that you can save for trips away together, or so that you can save for your children’s futures. Knowing where to start with cutting some costs can be tricky, especially when they are beginning to cause extra stress. Luckily, there are a number of solutions that mothers all around the world have put together, which have been proven to help you keep costs low and give your family the best life you can.

Set a budget each month

Every month, after payday, you will be able to create a rough figure of how much you can afford to spend once the essential bills have gone out of your account. Sitting down with your partner and making a list of what you need to buy that month and how much you can afford to spend on luxuries is a great way of helping you save money when you need to. Even if you don’t struggle for money, it’s always good to think about how your money can be put to better use in relation to food and education.

Lower your energy bill

The biggest kick in the teeth for many households is the dreaded energy bill. In winter months especially, this can go through the roof. Getting around this is much easier than it first seems. By making simple changes, such as switching from normal radiators to aluminium radiators, and investing in more blankets and throws, you can see a marked reduction in how much your energy bill comes to each month. Even better is the positive impact you will be having on the planet.

Buy food in bulk

Weekly food shops are the stuff of dreams to children, but the stuff of nightmares to most adults, even more so if you have a large family! Often, buying food every few days is less cost effective than buying in bulk, even though it may not seem that way at the time. This theory also applies to general household items like toilet roll and toothpaste. In the short term, it may feel as though you are spending more, but as the days go by, you will find that you have more loose change in your pocket. Ideally, you should keep a small amount spare from bulk buying to spend on fresh meat and dairy produce.

Start your own allotment

When it comes to buying your own fresh fruit and vegetables, you can minimize this cost even further. Having your own allotment in your backyard or in a specialized space means you cut out transportation costs of buying food. After awhile, the costs of your produce becomes so low that it may as well be free. You can grow anything from tomatoes to carrots, but if you want to get the kids involved, you could create a small indoor herb allotment for your kitchen windowsill.

What To Look For When Buying A House

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You need to take your due diligence when buying a house for your family or as an investment to ensure that you get value for your money and that the home you buy is suitable for the needs of your family now and in future.

Take your time to several houses in the market before making a decision lest you fall you fall for the sales pitch of a charming real estate only to later realize that you sold yourself short by buying an overvalued house or one that doesn’t fit your long-term plans.

So, before you commit pen to paper, here’s what you need to look for when buying a house.

Your budget

Your budget should act as a guidance into the kind of property you can acquire in the prevailing market conditions so you don’t waste a lot of time checking houses above what you can afford.

While budgeting for a house, also factor in legal fees and other transaction costs that may be involved in addition to the cost of the house.

More importantly, have your finances ready so you can complete the transaction as soon as you find a suitable house to buy. These saves you the agony of losing a prime property because the mortgage application was taking forever and the agent found someone else to take it up.

House design

Always have practicality in mind when buying a house. Of course, the structural integrity of the house shouldn’t be questionable. Don’t even spend any more time looking at a house that has cracks on the walls and fixtures falling off unless your plan is to renovate it and sell it. Even then you should have an experience professional give you the correct value of the house.

The way a house is designed could save you a lot of money when you move in. For instance, houses with large windows save you a fortune in electricity bills since they let in enough air and light that you don’t have to turn on your lights and air conditioners as you would do with a house squeezed between others.

Features

Ideally, the house you buy should have the features you want so you don’t have to call the home improvement services immediately you move in. However, you should assess the value you get for extra features because sometimes developers use them to inflate the price of a property.

A good house should have basic features like a Garage Door Opener System, water heating and safety features like a fire alarm system.

Location

The location of the house is quite important since it also determines the cost of the property and the security of your neighborhood. Obviously, houses in affluent neighborhoods cost more so it all comes down to what you want and how much you can afford.

The house should be surrounded by good roads and social amenities like schools and hospitals so your kids can easily get an education without enduring a long commute or lacking a place to attend to your medical emergencies.

Creative Ways to Landscape Your Lawn and Garden While Saving Tons of Money

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No matter where you turn, the cost of everything keeps going up while wages seem to stagnate. Even though minimum wage is slowly rising, inflation is rising much faster, which makes it hard to budget, even at the best of times. Why not look at ways to landscape your lawn and garden, which can make your home the loveliest on the block while saving you tons of money in the process? Have you ever thought of growing your own fruits and vegetables? What about herbs? Some of these have the most beautiful blossoms and foliage on earth, but the best part is the savings you will realize on your grocery bills. Here are some ideas to explore.

Tips for New Gardeners

If you have never grown any of your own edible plants, you may want to learn how to germinate seeds, when to plant and when to harvest. You’ll also need to know what kinds of nutrients your plants will need for optimal growth and how to care for them along the way. New gardeners should always check out sites like Lovebackyard.Com to find reliable tips on fruit and vegetable gardening.

Beware of Crawlers

If you have limited space, the one type of plant you’ll want to avoid is a crawler. For example, zucchini is a great squash to grow in limited space because it is a ‘bush’ type squash. However, spaghetti squash is a crawler that sends tendrils out, which can easily take over the entire space you’ve allocated to it! It is important not only to know when to plant your veggies but also you will need to know how your plant grows, especially in small spaces. In fact, even without a garden area, some vegetables and fruits do very well in pots or containers.

Companion Plants for Added Beauty

Then there are companion plants that do well when growing next to each other in your garden area. This is because they release nutrients the others need for optimal health, but sometimes one plant adds something that the other lacks. Consider for a moment garlic and roses as companion plants. There is nothing particularly appealing about garlic. You eat the bulb that grows underground but the leaves are simply green stalks shooting up as the garlic grows.

When planted next to roses, both plants do extremely well in their companion nutrient-sharing life cycles. What is lovelier than a rose? When it comes to landscaping, you might not want to invest in decorative plants, but when they nourish plants you are growing to eat, the expense is well worth it, wouldn’t you say?

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

You may not get it right the first year you try your hand at landscaping with edible plants, but over time, you will find that you really can save tons of money by producing many of your own fruits, vegetables, tubers (potatoes) and greens. Have you checked the price of fresh produce lately? If you’ve noticed just how expensive these commodities are, you’ll be happy to have your very own garden that also serves to add beauty to your lawn and garden. Have fun and may you have a bounteous harvest this year and every year to follow.

 

Bitcoin No Challenge To The Remarkable Resilience Of Gold

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For the past year, investors have been asking themselves whether they should be betting on gold or Bitcoin. Whether or not they’ve won depends on their outlook. The meteoric rise of Bitcoin made a lot of people wealthy overnight, but the volatility of Bitcoin plus its immaturity as an asset mean there’s a lot of uncertainty and risk. By comparison, gold has behaved the way it always does – as a reliable store of wealth.

Bitcoin is facing new challenges, though its valuation is still incredible compared to just a year ago. Governments are finally starting to catch up with the rise of cryptocurrencies and are introducing regulations. News that the Japanese FSA had warned Hong Kong-based Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, about operating in Japan without registration set back Bitcoin prices late in March and more crackdown headlines could adversely affect Bitcoin in the near future. There has also been talk in Washington D.C. of updating U.S. regulations for cryptocurrencies, particularly introducing new anti-fraud measures.

But regulations are short-term concerns and when you take the long view on gold, you have to consider thousands of years of history as a store of wealth. Many investors are concerned that destructive technology is more likely to radically alter Bitcoin in the long future than any technological upheaval occurring that would alter gold. Based in a man-made system, there’s little reason to believe Bitcoin will be relevant in its current form 50 years from now. On the other hand, people have been trying to hack gold for hundreds of years, ever since alchemists first claimed they could make gold out of lead. Gold, which is made in dying stars, has only ever been successfully made on Earth one atom at a time in a supercollider.

Gold isn’t going anywhere and whatever the live price of gold today the precious metal is going to maintain its value centuries from now. Investors should pay attention to the ups and downs of gold. Active investors can trade gold and silver or gold and Bitcoin to gain from day-to-day price changes, but long-term, gold is a forgiving asset.

For the foreseeable future, gold and Bitcoin are likely going to co-exist. It remains to be seen whether Bitcoin will become the kind of store of value that gold has proven itself time and time again. In the meantime, it’s easy to buy gold with Bitcoin thanks to online gold dealers like Silver Gold Bull. They allow you to directly trade gold and Bitcoin the way that you might exchange gold for silver and vice versa. Easily exchanging assets directly, without having to convert to cash, saves you costs and fees. Look into buying gold with Bitcoin through Silver Gold Bull if you’re looking to convert your cryptocurrency funds into an asset that’s known for stability. Every portfolio needs to be rebalanced from time to time. You can avoid overexposure to fluctuating Bitcoin prices by converting that excess Bitcoin directly into gold coins and bars.

Celebrating Mother’s Day As A Family On A Budget

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The woman your kids call ‘Mom’ deserves only the best things on Mother’s Day. There’s only one problem: the best things tend to be expensive. When spoiling the most important woman in your kids’ lives puts a strain on your budget, you need to think outside the box on the big day. If you want to help your children pamper Mom without going over budget, use these smart Mother’s Day tips to your advantage.

Tap into the true spirit of Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is one of the biggest shopping days besides the holidays, but it wasn’t always that way. Anna Jarvis, the woman who started it all, created Mother’s Day to celebrate what mothers do for their families. She recommended children spend time with their mothers on the big day.

“You’re thanking your mother for all the sacrifices she has made for you. So if you can’t be at home that day, you send her a handwritten letter,” said Katharine Antolini, a professor at the West Virginia Wesleyan College who wrote her dissertation on Mother’s Day.

Though old-fashioned, this idea of Mother’s Day reflects what mothers want today. According to a Mediabrands survey, nearly half of all responding mothers want to spend time with their family on Mother’s Day, while only four percent looked forward to receiving gifts and treats.

Curate a family experience.

Instead of buying an elaborate gift, clear your schedule so you and the kids can spend time with mom on her day. Some thoughtful ways to spend the day together include:

  • Watching a movie. Let mom finally choose what flick the family watches on Netflix. Cater the movie with all her favorite snacks, making sure there’s enough to share with everyone.
  • Experiencing spring. Mother’s Day arrives at a beautiful time of the year when most flowers are just starting to bloom. Take the family to a local botanical garden or butterfly conservatory and spend the afternoon marvelling at nature’s bounty.
  • Treating her to a homemade meal. Though family dynamics are changing, most families still expect mom to put food on the table. If this holds true for your family, surprise her by cooking her favorite meal with the kids. While everyone is occupied in the kitchen, let her relax in the tub with a bath bomb, a book, and a glass of wine.

Have a backup should things go off track.

Even when spending the day at home, your Mother’s Day plans can end up costing more than you planned. When you go over budget, you’re leaving your family unprepared should other expenses come your way. A loan is a great solution to your cash flow problems, but it can be tough for a young family to secure it through conventional means. When you’re struggling to make ends meet, get a fast installment loan online to help you through your financial crises. Only online lenders like MoneyKey provide financial assistance online. These lenders remove many of the barriers restricting families from getting the help they need with quick and convenient online loans.

You can help your kids pamper their mother without having to bust your budget. Put these tips to the test this Mother’s Day, and keep your expenses low by spending quality time with this special lady.