Money Saving Pantry Items

These items are versatile, don’t spoil easily and have nutritious qualities.

Raisins - A healthy snack or tasty mix-in for pancakes, breads, homemade granola, homemade trail mix and cereal. Raisins are also a sweet addition to salads, pastas, and rice dishes, or as a stuffing for chicken breasts or pork.

Garlic & Olive Oil – these two items go hand in hand. Almost any food that you prepare will require both these tasty ingredients.

Soups / Broth – A can of soup or broth (try using low sodium versions) can be added to fresh veggies, pasta, rice or roasted chicken and provide excellent flavor. Some soups are also used as bases for casseroles.

Pasta Sauce - A jar of pasta sauce dresses up noodles, naturally, but it can also spice up cooked veggies, jazz up chicken cacciatore-style, or cover ready-made pizza crusts or English muffins for instant pizzas.

Tuna – Beyond a sandwich, tune can also be added to noodles and veggies for a tasty pasta dish or it can be added to a bed of lettuce with olives for an excellent salad.

Oatmeal – This can be your staple for breakfast, but you can also use it when baking cookies, muffins or homemade granola.

Rice – Similar to pasta, rice is one of those versatile staples. Have rice with stir fry, in casseroles, as side dishes (think rice pilaf) or with curry.

Beans – Think black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, white beans, garbanzo beans…the list is endless! Beans are packed with protein and are great in chili, Mexican dishes, salads, homemade soup (think Minestrone), side dishes and even dips (think hummus)..

Pasta – Everyone likes pasta and these days, whole wheat pasta is readily available for a healthier option. The possibilities with pasta are endless, think spaghetti, linguine, macaroni and cheese, lasagna and stuffed shells.

Source: Yahoo! Food A Part of Shine

How to Get Through the Financial Crisis Without a Ph.D. in Economics

Kim Snider, CEO of Snider Advisors (which manages approximately 500 million dollars) and author of the new book How to Be the Family CFO: 4 Simple Steps to Put Your Financial House in Order, advises for Americans struggling to get out from under the yoke of the ongoing national financial crunch. Her concept is to turn heads of households into their family’s Chief Financial Officer, instilling the same principles of fiscal responsibility and management in regular folks.

Her advice delivers the heart of basic financial literacy through easy to follow steps:

Plan Prudently – Whether you do your bills online or the old fashioned way, every family can easily see what they owe in bills every month. Gather the paperwork into one stack, or create a computer file that details all your regular monthly expenditures. Combine it with your pay stubs and records of any other income. Now, you have a clear picture of your revenue and your payables. Moreover, you also have due dates for those bills, so you can match your cash flow (when you get paid) with when certain bills are due. Now, simply plan out what you’re going to pay and when you’ll pay it. Most companies mirror this procedure once a week, cutting checks on Fridays. You may not need to do it as often, but if you review your expenses once a week, you’ll always know where your money is and where it’s going.

Save Prodigiously – Saving money, to most families, is one of those things that always gets delayed for next paycheck. But saving is more than just trying to create a stockpile of cash for the proverbial rainy day – it’s about weathering the minor drizzles that come along every month. Unexpected car repairs, medical bills, home repairs, clothes for kids who can’t seem to STOP growing – these are all examples of flies in the budget ointment. If you can put away even $10 per week, it can help stem the impact of having your car’s alternator go belly up the same week you’re buying holiday gifts.

Invest Wisely – Take true advantage of your employer-sponsored retirement plans and 401K plans by allowing them to deduct the maximum amount from your paychecks. In many cases, employers match that money, so it’s tantamount to saving twice the amount for retirement. Plus, the more you save up front, the more you’ll benefit from the magic of compounded interest. The few dollars in cash flow you sacrifice now (which won’t hurt as bad as you think, because it’s PRE-TAX dollars) will be well worth it when you see your retirement balance grow later.

Manage Risk – Your biggest risk isn’t what you might think it is – it’s not about the financial markets or even your house burning down. Rather, the biggest risk for most people is the loss of your regular income. The vast majority of families who are in trouble today aren’t in crisis because of natural disaster or catastrophic illness, but rather, because someone in the household lost a job. You can hedge that risk by keeping your job skills current and competitive, and taking on a disability insurance policy.

Snider believes that if more people ran their household finances like a company, they would run smoother, more efficiently and with fewer crises both in the short term and the long term.

Why HSAs Can Help People Make Money As Well As Save It

The security of a Health Savings Account (HSA) is more attractive than ever, but there’s a unique bonus inherent in the structure of HSAs – the ability to invest your HSA funds in a safe haven, and build a bigger healthcare nest-egg for the future.

That’s why Rick Monello, CEO of Custom Health Plans, believes that agents will be far more successful offering their clients HSAs than they were last year, as long as they understand the appeal of the investment side of the equation.

Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, came about as part of the Medicare Reform Act of 2003, and they offer consumers a tax-free option for healthcare. With HSAs, consumers typically employ a high-deductible health insurance policy to protect against major medical expenses, while establishing a savings account to use for small, day to day medical expenses. What makes it affordable is that the high deductible policy is significantly less expensive than traditional HMOs, and the money they deposit into their HSA is PRE-TAX dollars. The law allows people to take money out of their paycheck and deposit it directly into their HSA before they pay taxes on it. So, not only do they save on their insurance premiums, but they are also able to save on their taxes. Moreover, HSA money can be used to pay for ANY medical expense, from over-the-counter headache medications, knee braces or orthopedic shoes. Anything remotely medical can be paid for out of that account, all funded with pre-tax dollars. Finally, at the end of the year, any money left over in the HSA account can be rolled over – tax-deferred – to use the next year. Flex spending accounts don’t allow that – if you don’t use it during the calendar year, you lose it.

These plans were created in response to the rising cost of health care with the intent to give the consumer back the control of their health care costs and in many cases reduce premiums by up to 50 percent.

These unique plans provide consumers greater control, more choices, tax advantages and are generally more affordable than their HMO and PPO second cousins, according to Monello. Plus, the interest in investing their HSA funds is growing.

According to a survey done by Cigna last year, more than 65 percent of HSA customers said they would be interested in putting their excess HSA funds into mutual funds and other types of investment vehicles that are traditionally safe havens for their money. When you consider that HSA funds come from pre-tax contributions, it’s like double-dipping. Not only do they save on their taxes, but they are also able to grow that amount through the investment options now available for them.

“Based on the current economic conditions on Wall Street, nothing in the marketplace can match the benefits of HSAs,” Monello said. “People are afraid to put their money in stocks anymore and they are looking for vehicles with tax shelters with attractive tax benefits. With HSAs, customers can solve both problems: where to safely put your money and how to provide incredible health coverage for your family. HSAs are a good alternative to kill two birds with one stone, provide affordable health care and tax benefits in an uncertain and shaky economy.”