Networking strategies can help you overcome the fear of trying to advance your career

This post is by staff writer Honey Smith.

I’ve written about the power of personal networks before. Unfortunately, lots of people find networking intimidating for a variety of reasons. Certainly, I used to! For me, breaking networking down into a system that I can follow helps me overcome nervousness and network effectively. Here are the two main networking strategies that I use.

Networking via “keeping it warm”

What it is: Keeping it warm is a pretty straightforward strategy. It means that you don’t wait until you need something before getting in touch with your professional connections.

I try to meet my grad school friends in the area every so often for lunch or a quick drink. I ask questions about their careers and lives and tell them about mine. If I hear about an opportunity that they’d be perfect for, I am proactive about letting them know.

Challenges with keeping it warm: This strategy assumes that you have the time, energy/health, at least a little bit of discretionary money, skills you are interested to market, and connections other people would find interesting. However, there are ways to get around these challenges. Setting calendar reminders can ensure people don’t drop off your radar. If you’re busy or sick or can’t afford lunch right now, an email may work just as well. This GRS article on job search advice even gives you some email scripts!

Why it works: Putting effort into keeping up with someone’s life and career, even when everything’s going great for you, has a couple of advantages. First, it means that they don’t view you as self-centered. Second, it means that their image of you is of someone competent and in control of their life. This prevents you from being the person who only contacts them when you need help. Regular contact also keeps you on the forefront of their mind if they hear of an opportunity that you’d be perfect for. Additionally, if you can help them first, they will be invested in returning the favor.

Who it works on: The main target for the keeping-it-warm strategy is former colleagues or even supervisors that you were friendly with. These are people who are familiar with your skill set. It’s like my friend said:

I already know you’re an excellent writer, so I don’t have to interview you. I just have to show you the nuts and bolts, and you’ll pick it up fast.

A significant percentage of jobs are either never advertised in the first place or are advertised but the company already has someone in mind for the position. That’s evidence of people out there keeping it warm.

My results: While the freelance work that my friend set me up with did peter out eventually, I earned almost $ 5,000 before that happened. I’d call that a success! And I’ve been able to send some work his way as well.

Traditional networking via group memberships and websites

What it is: This is what people usually think of when they think of networking. While you may have something in common with these individuals, they’re probably not anyone that you ever worked with directly. This may include people that you know socially but not professionally, or individuals you’ve never met but have something in common with as a result of your group membership (an example might be a college alum club or a professional conference).

Challenges with networking groups and websites: The issue with these sorts of groups is twofold. First, it’s easy to join (or be part of) a group, only to fail to put in the work (whether due to introversion, lack of time, or other factors) and then wonder why it’s not paying off. Second, even if you are putting in the work, it is challenging to come across as genuine when the whole point of the group is to (awkwardly) put people who (allegedly) have something (superficial) in common in the same space, whether physical or virtual.

Why it works: One of the reasons that this strategy can work is that everyone’s on the same page: If someone contacts you and references the group, then you don’t have to wonder what their motive is. Additionally, many people in these groups are ready and willing to help, but due to introversion, lack of time, or other factors, don’t end up reaching out themselves. They may be relieved if you take the initiative! Bonus points if you are friendly and attempt to make a personal connection so the exchange doesn’t feel clinical or self-serving.

Who it works on: People who are members of the group or website, natch. This approach does require a little more work in terms of demonstrating your fit, since the person doesn’t necessarily know who you are. Once a connection has been made, it’s important that you keep it warm. In other words, you want to think about making long-term connections. Since 9-to-5 jobs may be getting harder to come by, these types of connections may become increasingly important.

My results: In 2009, I joined the networking site LinkedIn and connected to everyone in my address book who also had an account. Within weeks, an alumna from my sorority who lived on the opposite side of the country had passed my name along to an editor who hired me to design an online writing course. At the time, my day job was furloughing workers due to the economic meltdown, and I made enough money with that one freelance gig to replace 10 percent of the salary that I’d lost.

More recently, I attended my local sorority alum club’s annual membership brunch. I ended up talking with a woman who used to work in a position very similar to mine before leaving to start her own business in a related industry. I made sure to get her contact information and sent a follow-up email. She’s already responded and we’re setting up a lunch. I’m looking forward to picking her brain about our mutual interests and sharing what I know in return!

Networking can be intimidating — but it doesn’t have to be

I really didn’t feel comfortable networking at first. But I found that, the more I practiced, the less intimidating it became. It didn’t take too long for me to build confidence and overcome my fear. Recently, by engaging in “pre-emptive networking,” I am starting to make connections before I need them. That way by the time I find myself in need, the groundwork has already been laid and all I will need to do is to reach out and ask for help.

Do you network regularly? What strategies did you find to be successful? Did you ever have reservations about networking, and were you able to overcome them? If so, how?

Get Rich Slowly – Personal Finance That Makes Sense.

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Nine Strategies for Stretching Out a Tiny Food Budget

We’ve all faced it at some point in our life.

Your next paycheck isn’t due to arrive for a week or so. You don’t have much in your checking account and there’s not too much in the cupboards, either. You need to put food on the table for the next week but you have only a tiny amount of money.

What do you do?

In this situation, many of the usual strategies don’t work. Grow a garden? Useless; you don’t have three months to wait for food to grow. Buy in bulk? How exactly are you going to do that with an extremely limited budget?

I’ve been in this situation a few times, particularly during my college years, but even a couple of times later on. It’s hard, especially when you have family members relying on you, particularly children.

Thankfully, there are a number of short-term strategies you can use that will help you stretch a handful of dollars across a surprising number of days, keeping food on the table for your whole family. Not only are these strategies useful during these short-term pinches, they’re also useful for day-to-day life in terms of keeping your food budget low.

Let’s dig in.

Clean Out the Pantry/Cupboards

The first step you should take is to go through your pantry, cupboards, and refrigerator and take stock of everything you have. There are several reasons for doing this.

One, people often have more useful food on hand than they think. It’s easy to forget about nonperishable items stuffed in the back of the cupboard or in a corner in the pantry. It’s also easy to forget about sauces and other items in the back of the refrigerator, still good but forgotten.

Two, it gives you a chance to get rid of bad food. This is a great chance to toss highly stale, moldy, or otherwise damaged food items that you wouldn’t otherwise eat.

Three, the process often inspires meals. Every time I dig through our pantry, I find myself plotting a number of meals from the things that I pull out of the cupboard. These are meals that aren’t even remotely on my mind before I start pulling out items, but I’m simply inspired by what I find.

Four, the packages themselves sometimes inspire recipes. Many packages include simple four or five ingredient recipes that can directly inspire you to make something.

Finally, it gives you a chance to make an inventory. Often, you have more components for a meal on hand than you think you do, even if you don’t have everything. Making a big master list of all of the stuff you have on hand makes it much, much easier to plan out some meals to get you through the rest of your lean period.

Another point of advice: the sell-by date doesn’t mean the “throw it away” date. Most of those dates, particularly on non-refrigerated items, simply refer to the date by which the manufacturer will no longer vouch for the product. That does not mean it’s no longer edible or usable. Look for obvious signs of spoilage, not a sell-by date.

This pile of food should help you along the path to at least a few meals (even if it means pancakes for supper!).

Scour the Grocery Flyers

Your local grocery stores each likely issue a weekly flyer outlining the items that are on sale for that week. Sometimes, the flyer includes coupons for additional discounts.

These flyers are incredibly useful. Flyers, along with all of the food you’ve pulled out of your cupboard, can provide all that you need to plan meals until you’ve got some money in your checking account again.

First, I look for foods that have a low “price per pound.” Fresh produce and meats usually have “price per pound” listed in the flyer, like $ 1.79/lb. Look for the fruits, vegetables, and meats that can be acquired at a really low price and focus on those items. What can you do with them along with the items you already have?

Next, I look for obvious items that complete meals based on what I already have. For example, if I already have pasta sauce but no pasta, I’ll look for cheap pasta. If I already have a pancake mix that just requires a bit of milk, I’ll look for cheap milk. You get the idea.

Then, I look for items that work as standalone side dishes. Potatoes, for example, can be turned into a number of side dishes with little effort. Flash frozen vegetable bags from the freezer aisle can also add nutrition to your meal at a very low price.

Finally, I check online for coupons on the items I’ve already selected from the flyer. If I can find even a coupon or two, I’m taking advantage of “stacking” where I’m using both the sale and the coupon to really chop down the price of foods.

Ideally, I’m mostly relying on the stuff from my cupboard for meals, but the items here can really complement those items and help me to make a lot of meals.

Focus on High “Calorie Per Penny” Foods

There are some foods that not only work in a lot of different meals, but also provide a surprising amount of nutrition for just pennies. They’re often on sale, dropping their price even more, and they’re actually pretty healthy to boot.

In my experience, six foods really stand out from the pack.

Rice is incredibly cheap and filling. You can buy twenty pounds of dry long-grain rice for less than $ 9 and, upon cooking, it nearly doubles in size, meaning you’re spending about a quarter per pound of cooked rice. Rice is like a blank canvas upon which you can cook almost anything, from adding sugar and cinnamon for something sweet to adding spices for a wide variety of ethnic styles.

Dry beans offer most of the same advantages of rice in that they’re already cheap in their dry form, but more than double in mass when cooked thanks to water absorption, dropping the price right down into the fifty or sixty cents per pound range. There are many different varieties of beans that work well in so many different contexts – side dishes, soups, salads, tortilla fillings, and so on.

Oatmeal is an incredibly healthy breakfast, contributing fiber and many other nutrients to your diet, and it can be acquired well below a dollar a pound dry. Oatmeal can be supplemented with almost any fruit or sweetener to make a distinct meal and it’s an incredible way to fill yourself up in the mornings.

Eggs can be found for as low as a dollar a dozen and is likely the best source of protein on this list. Eggs are also quite flexible as they work as food on their own in many different preparations as well as an ingredient in countless other things – egg drop soup, pad thai, and on and on and on.

Sweet potatoes are, like all of the other items on this list, cheap and flexible. They’re very nutritious and can be prepared in countless different ways, easily working both as a savory and a sweet food. Sarah is a huge fan of these, so they’re regularly consumed at our house.

Peanut butter rounds out this list. Peanut butter is almost constantly on sale and, again, can be used in a variety of ways such as sandwiches, pancake toppings, or even as an element in a stir fry.

There are other known “cheap” foods like ramen noodles, but they’re unhealthy enough that you should use them sparingly. A diet of mostly ramen noodles will have health consequences.

If your grocery list is mostly full of these items and items that are on sale at the store, you’ll be getting a lot of food for very little at the store.

Make Homemade Foods

There are many foods that you might be tempted to buy at the store but you can in fact make it at home with stuff you likely already have on hand.

For example, consider a loaf of bread. If you have flour and yeast in your cupboard, water from your tap, and an oven, you can make your own bread. There are countless variations on the recipe for a humble loaf of bread, but they’re all straightforward and easy to make at home.

The ideas are endless. Turn that homemade bread into croutons by seasoning slices, cutting them into cubes, and baking them. Make corn tortillas at home out of masa flour (it’s like $ 2 for five pounds) and water. Make tortilla chips by cutting up those corn tortillas and baking them. Make refried beans by cooking beans to death in a slow cooker (with some onions, green peppers, and oil). Make potato chips by thinly slicing potatoes, tossing on some seasoning, and baking them. I could literally go on all day, but you get the idea.

Quite often, you’ll have the ingredients you need for a lot of these simple foods already in your pantry, likely purchased for other cooking experiments. Try making some things yourself and you’ll likely be shocked by how easy it is.

Shop Alone with a Grocery List Based on a Meal Plan

That simple statement breaks down into three separate pieces, so let’s look at those pieces.

Shop alone When you shop with others, you’re asking to be distracted and not focused on the task at hand, which is maximizing the value you get from every dollar you spend at the grocery store. Your kids distract you. Your spouse will, too. Your friends certainly will. If it is at all possible, you need to shop without them so you can keep your mind solely on the matter at hand.

With a grocery list You should have a grocery list in your hand that lists just the foods you need to get through until you have your paycheck. Nothing should go into your cart that isn’t on that list. In fact, you should have a pretty good idea of exactly how much you’re going to spend as soon as you walk in the door – the grocery flyer should have told you that.

Based on a meal plan That grocery list should have been generated from a meal plan, which is simply a list of the meals you intend to have until your short-term financial situation improves. That meal plan, of course, is based on the food items you already have and those found in the flyers, so your grocery list should naturally contain mostly sale items.

It’s a pretty straightforward system, one that I’ve been using for years to keep our food costs cheap. It works regardless of your situation.

Shop at the Cheapest Grocery Store

If you’re buying anything that’s not directly from the flyers, you’re going to be paying the typical store price. The way to minimize the price on those items is to shop at the store with the lowest prices.

Around here, that’s usually Aldi, though Fareway can give it a run for its money on many items. The other grocers almost always have higher prices on the whole.

How can you figure out which local grocer is the cheapest? In a pinch, you should ask your friends and coworkers that live in the area for advice. What do they think is the cheapest one? If you have a bit more time, you can price check them. Make a list of fifteen or twenty of the items you buy most often, then go to several stores and write down the price of those items. Total up the prices from each store and you’ll quickly see which one is clearly your discount grocer.

I do most of my grocery shopping at Fareway, as it balances low prices and selection. Aldi is cheaper, but sometimes their selection is sorely limited, leaving me to shop elsewhere.

Shop at the End of a Farmer’s Market

Another cheap food strategy is to shop at the end of a farmer’s market and haggle.

When you see people getting ready to pack things up at the end of a farmer’s market, go up to them and make a lowball offer on the items they still have out there. If they’re selling cabbage for $ 3 per head, make an offer of $ 1 or even $ 0.50 for that head. If they’re selling carrots for $ 2 a bundle, offer $ 0.50 for a bundle.

The problem with this strategy is that you’ll get the items that have been picked over by the other shoppers and, quite often, the item you want is already going to be sold out. However, if you’re willing to work with whatever you can get to make a tasty and nutritious meal on the cheap, you can get a good discount here.

I like to use these kinds of purchases in flexible meals. I’ll often make a stir fry out of any vegetables I can get on the cheap – and some fruits, too. I can also make soup out of virtually any set of vegetables – just toss in lots of veggies with some salt and pepper and let it simmer for a long time.

Drink Water

The water coming from your tap should be your primary source for beverages. Not bottled water, not soda, not coffee, not alcohol – tap water.

Why? Tap water is practically free. It’s just as safe as bottled water. It’s not loaded down with sugar or other substances that you don’t really need. Plus, it’s a great way to fill yourself up before a meal so you don’t overeat.

By eliminating beverages from your grocery purchases, you can save quite a bit of money and channel that savings directly into food purchases that can provide some real nutrition and calories.

Leave the soda and the tea and the coffee and the alcohol behind. Stick with water.

Check Out Community Dinners

If you’re still struggling for short-term food options, look around your community for community dinners.

Many of the churches in our area as well as some of the civic groups have a “community dinner” on a very regular schedule where people give a “free will” donation in order to enjoy a meal. If you’re strapped for cash, don’t be afraid to go there and get a great meal for a dollar.

In my experience, these meals are usually surprisingly good. They’re a great way to fill yourself – or your family – up for just a few dollars or even for free if you’re really struggling.

It’s important to remember, though, that such meals run largely on donations. It is vital that you pay back this type of giving later on when you have more money in your pocket. If you enjoy a few meals there for free or for just a dollar or two, go back later when you can drop a $ 10 or a $ 20 bill into the collection jar.

Within a twenty mile radius of our house, I was able to identify seven regularly scheduled community meals that are either entirely free or based on freewill donations. If you’re looking for meals in your area, I suggest starting with the local churches. Check their websites or give them a call to see what they have on offer.

Final Thoughts

Almost everyone struggles with putting together enough cash for a meal at some point on their financial journey. It can be a heartbreaking struggle, too, especially if you have children at home.

All of the strategies in this article are short-term strategies to help get you over that financial hump. While they certainly can help over the long term if you keep doing them – and we certainly use most of them – they’re mostly useful for just minimizing your spending this week.

A good long-term strategy for lower food costs includes other things.

Buying in bulk Buying nonperishable foods that you use all the time in a bulk purchase can save you a lot of money. If you eat rice or beans multiple times a week, buying a 20 lb. or 50 lb. bag of the stuff will save you a quarter or more per pound which adds up to a lot of savings over time.

Making meals in advance Whenever you make a meal, particularly something that’s a casserole-style meal, you can make several copies of that meal at once without adding too much time to the equation. Then, you just pop those extra versions in the freezer. When you need a meal later, you pull one out and cook it. This allows you to buy the ingredients in bulk – even relatively perishable items.

Growing a garden If you have a little patch of ground that you can cultivate, gardening can be a very inexpensive way to get quite a lot of produce. Sure, you’ll have to wait a few months to make it work, but the rewards can be tremendous. There are few things more heartwarming than having a kitchen counter completely covered in tomatoes or cucumbers (or whatever your favorite vegetable is).

At the same time, if you’re struggling to buy food, it’s likely a sign that you need to rethink your personal financial situation. You may want to consider finding additional work, even if it’s not in your current field. You may want to start looking very carefully at your current spending habits. You might also want to look at major financial changes, like moving to lower-cost housing.

This might just be a moment in your life that you can survive, but it might also be the beginning of real change in your life.

Good luck.

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Ten Strategies for Staying Motivated Toward Your Financial (and Other) Goals

Goal-setting plays a pretty major role in my life. Over the last several years, setting and sticking with goals eliminated all of our debts, bought a home, and enabled a career switch – and those are just the financial goals.

At the same time, I’ve failed at more goals than I’ve ever achieved. I’ve tried to achieve countless things over the years but found myself falling short. Exercise goals. Writing goals. Weight loss goals. Personal growth goals. All of these have fallen by the wayside over the years.

This mixture of success and failure has taught me a few things about what it takes to actually achieve a big goal, and one lesson rises above all of them.

Goals are won or lost during the “dog days.”

I’ve talked about the idea of a goal having “dog days” before. A few months ago, I wrote an article entitled The Emotional Cycle of Change that dealt with that very idea. In that article, I referred to some research that describes how our mindset changes as time passes when we’re working on a major life change:

Psychologists Don Kelley and Daryl Conner actually mapped this phenomenon out very well in a sequence that they call “The Emotional Cycle of Change.” In it, they identify five distinct phases that people go through as they implement major changes in their life:

Stage 1: Uninformed optimism.

Stage 2: Informed pessimism.

Stage 3: Hopeful realism.

Stage 4: Informed optimism.

Stage 5: Completion.

Every single time, my goals have died during the “uninformed pessimism” part of this cycle.

If you’ve ever tried to achieve a goal, you know what that part is. It’s when the “honeymoon” of making a big change starts to wear off and you’re realizing that there’s still a lot of work ahead of you. You start hearing those little whispers in your head telling you to take the easy road, to splurge, to take a break today.

That’s the point at which a goal either succeeds or fails.

I’ve tried many, many approaches for getting past that point. The only times I’ve found success is when I’ve used some combination of the approaches below. Success usually comes when you stack up these approaches, creating a wall of motivation that keeps you from making a dumb mistake and forces you to stay on the better path no matter what that little devil on your shoulder might be saying.

Strategy #1 – Clearly Define Your Goal

I have never achieved any sort of lasting success with a goal that wasn’t clearly defined.

“Getting my money into better shape” never cut it. “Paying off every debt I have within five years” was a much better goal – and one that worked (I did it from 2006 to 2011).

“Becoming a writer” never cut it. “Writing 2,000 words every single day and sharing or selling everything I complete until I can do this for a living” was a much better goal – and one that worked (I did it from 2003 to 2008 and I still keep up the writing habit).

A sensible, achievable goal has these three components.

One, it’s extremely clear in terms of what you want to achieve. There’s no grey area with a great goal. It’s either black or white. You’ve either done it or you haven’t.

Two, it sets some sort of timeline for achievement. There’s a deadline, whether it’s a short-term one or a long-term one. You need to achieve something by some time.

Three, it gives you some flexibility in terms of how to get there. The first methods you try for achieving that goal probably won’t work perfectly. You’ll refine them over time. A good goal gives you breathing room for that refinement, letting you figure out better methods for paying off debt or a better routine for getting that daily writing done.

Without those components in your goal, you’re already off to a rough start. It’s going to be hard to have that goal providing any central guidance to you along the path because it leaves you without clarity, flexibility, or a timeline. You need those things to achieve.

Strategy #2 – Focus on Today

Your goal should set up better daily choices for you – and one of the best tactics for success is to just focus on executing those better daily choices.

A good goal requires you to make better choices on a very routine basis – usually a daily basis. That big goal makes it clear what direction those choices should be pointing compared to your normal behavior. If you’re going to pay off debt, it’s clear that your daily choices should revolve around spending less and earning more. If you’re going to switch careers, it’s clear that your daily choices should revolve around getting education and building professional contacts.

Whenever the going gets tough, stop thinking about tomorrow. Stop thinking about yesterday. Think about nothing but today.

What can you do today to bring that goal closer? Can you make good spending decisions all day? Can you put in a few hours of work on your big project? Can you hit the gym? Can you choose to eat a little better today?

A successful day that’s in line with your big goal leaves you feeling pretty good at the end of the day. Your head will hit the pillow and you’ll be proud of the fact that you stayed on track, even when it seemed tough. That experience will make the next day seem a little easier.

You are successful at your goal if you take positive action toward that goal today (without overshadowing it with negative action). Simply put, if you do that one thing over and over, you will achieve almost every well-defined goal you could possibly have.

The strategy of focusing on today is somewhat linked with strategy #4, using smaller “sub-goals.”

Strategy #3 – Have a “Buddy”

A “buddy” is someone who is striving to achieve a similar goal as you. That “buddy” provides several advantages

One, a “buddy” gives you someone to participate in goal-related activities with. If you have an exercise goal, a “buddy” is someone to exercise with. If it’s a cost-cutting goal, a “buddy” is someone to participate in frugal activities with. It turns achieving your goal into a social bond.

Two, a “buddy” provides inherent motivation. Knowing that a “buddy” is expecting you to exercise with him or her provides motivation to get up and actually do it. Knowing that a “buddy” is planning on making a ton of make-ahead meals with you this weekend convinces you to get it done.

Three, a “buddy” can help you through the low points. When you’re feeling low, a good “buddy” can help talk you through the challenge and help keep you focused on the big goal.

Finally, a “buddy” can help you plot strategy. When you’re struggling with a particular issue, like finding the right kind of running shoe or figuring out novel ways to cut your energy bill, your “buddy” can help. Not only that, you might also be driven to digging into information and ideas when your “buddy” needs help.

One great way of finding a “buddy” is to look for someone in your already-existing social circle that is working on a similar goal as your own. Is there someone you know working hard on paying off debt? Is there someone you know that’s taking a serious interest in investing? What about someone who’s newly committed to exercise? Talk to that person. Buddy up with that person. Make an effort to motivate that person. Find ways to share activities with that person.

You’ll both benefit.

This strategy of having a “buddy “is somewhat linked with strategy #8, restructuring your social circle.

Strategy #4 – Utilize Smaller “Sub-Goals”

One of the best strategies you can apply to a large goal is to break it down into a set of increasingly smaller “sub-goals.” Ideally, you’re able to break them down into goals that can be achieved in a week or two.

I like to use a jogging analogy. When I’m jogging, it’s often tempting to slow down to a very slow walk or even to completely stop. My strategy for getting past that is to set a small goal. I’ll look ahead and spot a tree or a parked car and agree that I can slow down once I’m past that. Usually, I can convince myself to repeat that “little” goal several times, finding new markers that indicate where I can slow down.

You can use that same idea for almost any goal. Instead of focusing on “paying off all of your debt in five years,” focus instead on something like “minimize food spending this week by making a meal plan and a grocery list and sticking to them.” Achieving that goal will free up money that you could then use for an extra debt payment.

I find that whenever I’m intimidated by a really big goal, breaking it down into a smaller goal like that makes it seem far less intimidating and far more approachable.

Here are three techniques for developing smaller “sub-goals.”

One, the smaller goal should be able to be finished within a week or so. It needs to be within a timeframe that you can really grasp so that you don’t feel as though it’s so far off that it doesn’t matter. Immediacy is vital.

Two, the smaller goal should directly relate to daily action. It should inform you exactly what you should and should not be doing for the next few days.

Three, the smaller goal’s result should feed directly into the big goal. If you complete this small goal, it should help the big goal in some way. It’s just like setting a short distance when jogging – when you achieve that little distance, it means you’re a little closer to that big goal.

This strategy of having smaller “sub-goals” is somewhat linked to strategy #2, focusing on today.

Strategy #5 – Minimize and/or Eliminate Distractions and Little Obstacles

Our lives are filled with distractions. When we’re dieting, the food in our cupboard and our refrigerator can be a big distraction. When we’re exercising, having to find our shoes and our workout gear can be a little obstacle that can push us over the top in terms of not taking action.

The best way to make a goal keep moving forward is to minimize the resistance against it.

First, take notice of what takes you off the path. What reason do you use to not get up in the morning for exercise? What’s the logic you use when deciding to stop at a store and spend money? Spend time thinking about those reasons. If it’s an obstacle, ask yourself how you can reduce or eliminate that obstacle. If it’s a temptation or distraction, ask yourself how you can stick an obstacle in the way of that temptation.

Second, get rid of easy-to-access distractions or temptations. If you’re trying to diet, cookies and chips in the cupboard are not helping you. Give them away. If you’re trying to save money, having “one-click” access to ordering things online is not helping you. Cut your credit card info out of those websites.

Finally, plan a routine that eliminates those little obstacles. If you want to exercise in the morning, have all of your necessary gear right beside your bed before you go to sleep at night. If you want to cook every meal at home this week, have as much of the prep work done in the morning as you possibly can so you have less resistance toward making that meal for supper this evening.

Distractions and obstacles are just little things that are surprisingly effective at convincing you to take your eye off the ball. Don’t let that happen.

This strategy of minimizing and eliminating distractions is somewhat linked to strategy #8, restructuring your social circle.

Strategy #6 – Use Visual Reminders

This is a technique that’s helped me a lot when it comes to goals.

When I first began to turn around my finances, I took a picture of my infant son and literally wrapped up my credit card in it. I made it so that I would have to unfold that picture and look at it to gain access to my card.

On that picture, I wrote in big letters, “DOES THIS PURCHASE HELP HIM?”

Every time I pulled out the plastic, I saw that picture and that question and it made me think. It almost always pushed me to reconsider the purchase and, quite often, it convinced me to just walk away entirely.

That visual reminder did an amazing job of trimming my spending at a time when I really needed it.

You can use lots of visual reminders like this. Take a picture of you at your heaviest and put it on the refrigerator door with a slogan that says “REMEMBER THIS PICTURE WHEN YOU CHOOSE WHAT TO EAT!” Tape a picture of your dream home to your rear view mirror.

Whatever the visual indicator of your goal or your motivation is, use it. Put pictures of that motivator wherever you can. It will constantly help you make the better choice.

Strategy #7 – Have Some Breathing Room

If you’ve chosen a goal that’s so tight that you have no room for a minor setback and no room for a mistake, you’re guaranteeing the failure of that goal. It’s as simple as that.

You’re going to sometimes have days where life interferes with your progress. You can’t go on a jog in the middle of a whiteout blizzard. You can’t make a giant debt payment when the transmission in your car suddenly fails. Bad things sometimes happen – it’s life.

A good goal pushes you but not in an unrealistic way. Here are a few ways to achieve that.

One strategy is to give yourself some off days. For example, my usual exercise routine occurs on five out of seven days of the week. I get to choose which days. If I really need to work one day or get some extra tasks done, then I can take care of things that day and simply exercise the next two or three days without letting my goal down.

Another strategy is to give yourself a small allowance. This is something I still do with my finances. I allot myself a certain amount for hobby and entertainment spending each month. Within that money, I can spend it however I want, but that’s my limit for the month. If you want to translate that to exercise, give yourself a bonus day off once a month; if you’re dieting, give yourself two meals a week to eat what you wish.

I find that goals that allow me a little bit of breathing room along my path to success tend to work better because I don’t feel that sense of complete failure if life hands me an unexpected situation. I don’t want my goal requirements to stand in the way of going out to dinner with an old friend, for example.

Strategy #8 – Restructure Your Social Circle

Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” While that’s not wholly true, it’s a pretty accurate rule of thumb for the broad choices we make in life.

If you surround yourself with people who are dedicated to fitness, you’re more likely to add fitness to your daily routine. If you surround yourself with people who are dedicated to frugality, you’re much more likely to feel that frugal choices are normal and good.

On the other hand, it’s awfully hard to be the one person who constantly exercises in your social circle and it’s pretty hard to be a cheapskate in a group of big spenders.

If you’re trying to make a change in your life, one big step you can take is to alter your social circle a little bit. Seek out friends that are focused on the things you’re currently focused on so that your choices mutually rub off on each other. At the same time, cut back on the time spent with friends who are making choices that are in opposition to your goals. You don’t have to cut anyone out of your life; just choose carefully who you spend time with.

This can give you the opportunity to cultivate new friendships while also keeping your eye on the big goal in your life.

This strategy of restructuring your social circle is somewhat linked to strategy #3, having a “buddy”, as well as with strategy #5, minimizing distractions.

Strategy #9 – Focus on Your Own Actions

It’s really easy to blame forces outside of our control for our failure in achieving goals.

It’s “the weather” that keeps you from exercising.

It’s “your boss” that keeps you from improving your career situation.

It’s “Obama” that keeps you from saving money.

All of those things have nothing to do with the individual choices you make each day. You’re the one that decides how to spend your time. You’re the one that can make the choice to go to the gym or exercise in the basement. You’re the one that can make the choice to spend some evenings getting additional career training or working toward a certification. You’re the one who chooses whether or not to buy silly things or put that money away for the future.

Focus entirely on your own actions, not the people or things around you. If you truly want to spend less money, you can always make that choice. You can exercise any time and in almost any space.

The action you take next is entirely under your control. Why not choose an action that moves you closer to the big goal you want to achieve?

Strategy #10 – Watch the Numbers

One final strategy is to use numbers to continually motivate yourself toward achieving a goal.

For example, when I first started our financial turnaround, I calculated our net worth every week. I used the change in our net worth as direct evidence that the choices we were making were actually improving our financial state.

Another example: when you’re trying to lose weight, use your waist measurement or your weight over time to show you whether or not you’re making progress. Check it regularly – say, every week – and watch the overall trend of the numbers.

While it’s unrealistic to expect improvement every single week, the average of the last few numbers should be lower than the average of the few numbers before that. I usually compare the most recent month’s average (the last four weeks) to the month before that (the average of those four weeks).

The ability to add a nice new number to your tabulation can feel incredible. When you can add a new low weight to your calculation or when you can jot down a new record high net worth, you can see right there in the numbers that all of your efforts are paying off and that you’re headed in the right direction.

For some – myself included – that can be incredibly powerful.

Final Thoughts

Goal setting and goal achievement is a major part of personal finance. Without the process of setting goals, figuring out how to work toward them, and then moving in that direction, it can be very hard to find a better way through life.

Of course, goals also usually mean life changes, and life changes can be difficult. It takes dedication to stick with a big goal.

These strategies can help with that dedication. Whether it’s altering your social circle or simply setting up a big visual reminder of your goal, giving yourself a little something extra toward achieving a goal never hurts – and sometimes it can make all the difference.

Good luck!

The post Ten Strategies for Staying Motivated Toward Your Financial (and Other) Goals appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Seven Clever Food Strategies for Stretching a Small Food Budget (and Nine Foods That Are Filling, Healthy, and Cheap!)

There are a lot of strategies out there for stretching a food budget, from couponing to meal planning. I’ve laid out our six-step plan for organizing cheap meals many times on The Simple Dollar, and it’s a routine we stick to almost every week.

Still, that’s not the end of the road when it comes to stretching your food budget. You can buy lots of cheap food at the store, but if it doesn’t fill you up, you’re going to constantly find reasons to snack and buy additional foods, which undoes the benefits of buying cheap food.

The best approach is to not just focus on cheap as your sole purpose in buying food. Instead, you should focus on finding a smart middle ground between cheap, healthy, and filling.

Cheap foods make sense – you want to spend as little as possible on the “food” portion of your budget.

Healthy foods make sense, too – healthier foods reduce long-term health care costs and provide some quality of life benefits.

Filling foods fall in line with “cheap” in that they reduce your desire to snack, thus reducing your food budget.

Here are seven strategies my family uses to hit this trifecta.

Eat Balanced Meals

Our family defines a “balanced meal” as one containing a roughly equal balance between carbohydrates, healthy fats, and protein. While we don’t stress out about perfectly balancing every meal, we try to balance meals across the length of a day. How do you achieve that? It’s actually pretty easy and you don’t have to stress out much about it.

The big trick is to have a diversity of foods in every meal. A meal shouldn’t be “mostly” any one thing. Instead, we try to mix it up by having some vegetables, some grains, and some proteins (milk, eggs, meats, some vegetables, etc.) in each meal. We don’t worry too much about fats, except that we try to avoid the unhealthy ones (trans fats).

Why do this? There are several reasons. For one, a mixed diet ensures you get the variety of micronutrients that you need. Plus, carbohydrates are usually cheap, but not very filling, while proteins are filling, but usually not cheap. If you balance things and have a variety of things on your plate, you can usually get a pretty filling meal without breaking the bank.

Make Each Meal Plant-Oriented

Plants are cheap and they’re healthy. If you want a healthy and inexpensive food plan for your family, you’ll base it around plants.

Our strategy is to fill more than half of our plates with fruits, vegetables, and legumes. For most meals, we’ll have a main dish along with two sides. Those sides are almost always vegetables, fruits, legumes, or rice, gently seasoned. We try to minimize what we add to those items, particularly when it comes to adding butter or cream or things like that.

In other words, we try to appreciate what the vegetables themselves taste like, not the butter or cream or salt you might add to them. Adding such things makes everything taste like everything else. If you find that you don’t like a particular vegetable, then skip it in the future. Seek out as many different vegetables as you can that you really like in their simplest form so that you don’t need to add all of that unhealthy stuff to them.

How do we do this on the cheap? We just buy what’s on sale, but buy a variety of those items. We’ll basically buy some of every raw vegetable, fruit, dried bean, plain rice, or anything similar that’s on sale that week from the flyer and we’ll plan meals around those items, using them as main dishes and sides.

If anything unusual comes on sale, we absolutely buy it. We never shy away from new things, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, and we try to make up our minds whether we like them in their simplest form or not.

Another tip: people’s tastes change, so don’t stick to preconceived notions. When I was really little, I loved tomatoes. In my later childhood years, I absolutely hated the things. Now, I love them again. I would have never discovered this change had I not been willing to at least try tomatoes again and give them a fresh chance. Don’t decide that you don’t like something just because you didn’t like it ten or twenty years ago.

One final tip: one bad meal isn’t a disaster. If you use an ingredient to make a meal that you end up not liking, it’s just one meal. It’s not a major loss. It’s still edible and you can just avoid that item next time. Don’t be afraid to try things.

Buy Fresh Vegetables and Fruits In-Season

For us, late summer is the best time of the year. All kinds of different fruits and vegetables are in season in our area and, in a good year, farmers are looking to unload lots of produce quickly. That means bargains.

In-season fruits and vegetables are cheap and fresh. It’s easy to find in-season produce by the pound for just a few dollars. You can make a variety of meals with those items and freeze anything that you can’t use.

Even better than the cheapness is the fact that they also taste incredible. The quicker the time between picking and eating, the better vegetables taste, in my opinion. For example, I’m not a big fan of tomatoes from the grocery store, but if I pick them from our garden, I usually eat a dozen cherry tomatoes before they ever make it in the house. They just taste better.

What if things aren’t in season or aren’t on sale? In those cases, I typically buy frozen fruits and vegetables. They’re surprisingly inexpensive, are often on sale, and taste quite good. I’d far, far rather eat frozen vegetables than canned ones.

Skip Convenience Foods – Or Make Your Own

One of the big draws of the modern diet is convenience. Our time is gobbled up by other things – work, commuting, parenting responsibilities, and so on. It is often really tempting to eat meals as conveniently as possible.

Convenience foods mean you’re paying a premium for the convenience, not just the food. I look at pizza as an example of this. I can make a large pizza very similar to what can be purchased at the pizza shop nearest our house for about $ 5 in ingredients and energy. Alternately, I can spend $ 10 to $ 15 there to buy a large pizza. The difference? Convenience. It’s not even really the “time” issue, since I can pull dough from the freezer and get a pizza in the oven in about fifteen minutes and it’ll be done in fifteen minutes, but it takes 30 minutes to get that ordered pizza. It’s just more convenient to order it – but it really does cost us when we do that.

The same is true for things like hamburgers. You might be able to match the price of a homemade burger on a dollar menu somewhere, but the homemade version tastes better and is far healthier. If you keep some patties frozen in the freezer so that you can pull them out at your convenience and take them straight to the grill, it’s pretty easy to put together some hamburgers at home at your convenience. They’ll be cheap and substantially healthier than fast food fare.

If you really need the convenience, plan ahead and make your own. Our biggest tool in the war against convenience foods is to prep as much in advance as possible.

For example, I’ll make a bunch of pizza dough, wrap the balls of dough in wax paper and a freezer Ziploc, and toss them in the freezer to use in the next month. That way, when we want pizza, I can just pull out that dough and defrost it, roll it out, toss on a few ingredients, and toss it in the oven. Sometimes, I’ll even make full pizzas a day or two in advance, storing them in the refrigerator or freezer.

I’ll often make large batches of beans early in the week in the slow cooker, then use them in two or three meals throughout the week. The beans are already cooked – I just pull out the container, get a few scoops, and add them to whatever I’m making. We do a similar thing with rice, too.

You can also make pure convenience foods in advance. For example, making individually-wrapped “Hot Pockets” doesn’t take too long at all (especially if you’re making a ton at once) and they’re far cheaper than buying them (even on sale), are quite a bit healthier, and (in my opinion) tastier, too.

Have Plenty of Fiber In Your Diet

Fiber isn’t a magic bullet for maintaining a healthy body, but it is very good at making you feel full without adding calories to your diet. There is basically no downside to eating more fiber.

Get fiber by eating whole fruits and vegetables. Get some apples and bananas and eat them as snacks when you’re hungry. They’re more filling than you would expect because of the fiber. Another great strategy in this department – high fiber, relatively low calorie, thus filling you up easily – is to eat some oatmeal for breakfast.

Minimize sources of fiber outside of foods. Due to the benefits to digestive health that fiber provides, many people supplement additional fiber into their diet. There’s no reason to do this. Just choose inexpensive foods that provide plenty of fiber, like apples and oatmeal, and eat them regularly. It’s cheaper and better for you.

Stop Looking at Food as Entertainment

With all the food-related cultural material out there, it’s easy to see food as a source of entertainment, which then encourages you to spend more on it by buying exotic ingredients and eating out at expensive restaurants. Let go of that.

Focus on untying your emotions from what you eat. Food shouldn’t bring you joy. If you feel a strong sense of joy prior to eating a meal, then you need to spend some time thinking about your emotional connection to food. While it’s fine to feel joy about a special occasion – a romantic dinner at a nice restaurant or a great meal with good friends – eating around the house shouldn’t be a source of significant pleasure in your life. If it does, then your emotions are clouding your ability to make good food judgments.

If you go out to eat to “spoil yourself,” make it worthwhile. Instead of eating out regularly at lower-quality restaurants, eat at home more often, skip those restaurants, and eat out on occasion at an exceptional place. If you’re going to eat unhealthy foods, in other words, you should do it less often and be more discerning about the unhealthy foods you consume.

Use a Smarter Plate Strategy

One big challenge with adopting more filling foods (like fiber-rich foods) is that you don’t mentally adjust the amount of food you should put on your plate. It can be really tempting to just eat as much as you used to, but doing so leaves you feeling stuffed and miserable. You can fight that, though.

You don’t have to clean your plate. I was raised on the idea that a person should clean their plate of all food or else. If you didn’t do that, you were being wasteful. In reality, though, leaving behind several bites of food when your body tells you that you are full is a really good move. You might waste a quarter’s worth of food, but you’re also listening to your body. This leads directly to another valuable point.

Put less on your plate to begin with. If you listen to your body and realize that you don’t actually need to eat as much as you usually put on your plate (leaving behind several bites), you’ll start naturally putting less on your plate to begin with. I find it a much smarter strategy to just put a small amount of food on your plate and then go back for more if you assess things later and decide that you’re full.

Nine Foods That Are Healthy, Filling, and Cheap

Want some suggestions on how to fill your grocery cart? Here are nine healthy foods you’ll find all the time in our house, along with some tips on purchasing them inexpensively.

Rice isn’t as cheap as it once was, but in terms of an inexpensive way to spice up meals in many different ways, rice is a powerhouse. Colored rices – brown, black, red, or wild – are better for you, but tend to be a little more expensive. If you can find a discounted deal on bulk brown, black, red, or wild rice, that’s something you should jump for.

Rice can be used in countless ways, from the backbone of a stir fry to the key ingredient in a casserole to a flexible side dish that can be accompanied by almost any spice. We consume rice at least twice a week at our house and consider it a spectacular “bang for the buck” food option.

Beans are absolutely loaded with fiber – which means they do a good job of filling you up – and if you buy dry beans, they’re incredibly inexpensive. A cup of cooked black beans, for instance, provides 30 grams of dietary fiber while only providing 2.8 grams (4% of the daily USDA recommended value) of fat.

In terms of filling you up without breaking the bank and without putting a bunch of junk in your system, it’s pretty hard to beat beans. Plus, they fit well into so many different meals, from a side dish at a barbecue to the core of a delicious burrito.

Oatmeal provides the backbone of many breakfasts at our house. We will often put steel cut oats in a slow cooker just before bed, let them slowly cook overnight, and enjoy a great breakfast in the morning (usually with some fruits added to the oatmeal for a touch of sweetness and nutritional variety).

Oatmeal is an incredible source of fiber and fills you up wonderfully with a surprisingly low calorie count. If you can find steel cut oats at a discount price, it will be one of the best food bargains you’ll find on your grocer’s shelves.

Frozen vegetables are an item that’s on sale all the time at our local grocer. Considering you can often get a pound of vegetables for far less than a dollar, it’s an incredible deal.

Frozen vegetables are generally flash-frozen shortly after picking, so they’re reasonably fresh-tasting and preserve a lot of their nutritional value. They’re usually unseasoned, too, so they can provide a very easy basis for many, many main dishes and work very well for a quick side dish, too.

On-sale fruits and vegetables are a great counterbalance to frozen vegetables, particularly when they’re in season. They’re easier to store (as they don’t require a freezer) and often provide a variety that isn’t available in frozen form.

This is where your local store’s grocery flyer really comes in handy. Check the store’s website and see what kinds of fruits and vegetables they have on sale this week, then use those items as the backbone for a meal plan for the week. This is exactly how Sarah and I plan a week’s worth of meals.

Whole grain pasta is substantially healthier than white pasta as it retains all three parts of the grain (white pasta loses the nutrient-rich bran). It usually sells for the same price and, in my experience, tends to be more filling than white pasta due to the increased amount of fiber.

There is a bit of a texture change from white pasta, but it’s one that you quickly get used to. For me, I find that I can eat about 30% less whole grain pasta and feel just as full.

Eggs are a food that, in moderation, provides tons of wonderful protein at a very low cost. A single egg costs less than a quarter – even if you’re buying cage-free eggs – and it provides a bunch of protein for your diet.

I find that starting a day with a small bowl of oatmeal and a single poached egg is an incredibly easy way to start the day with a lot of energy and leave me feeling content with a very small lunch.

Potatoes sometimes have a poor reputation for healthiness, but that’s mostly because of the incredibly unhealthy things people do to them – frying them, converting them into chips, or slathering them with butter and cream and bacon.

Try eating a baked potato as simply as possible, with just a bit of herbs to season it with. Minimize the salt, cream, and butter and focus on enjoying the potato itself, peel and all. It’s actually quite healthy and very filling.

Tuna is another item that is incredibly cheap and quite healthy and filling when eaten in moderation. I often see sales on multi-packs of canned tuna that brings the price per ounce incredibly low.

Tuna brings some omega-3 fatty acids into your diet and can be eaten in a number of ways. As with any fish, a little is very good for you, but moderation is the key.

If You Take Away One Lesson…

… it’s that the best way to eat cheap and healthy while keeping your stomach full is to eat a variety of things, focusing on fruits, vegetables, beans, and rice, and using your grocery store’s weekly flyer as a guide.

The post Seven Clever Food Strategies for Stretching a Small Food Budget (and Nine Foods That Are Filling, Healthy, and Cheap!) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Join Corey for a Special Wednesday Night Webinar April 30

I hope you can join us for a live educational webinar entitled “Game-Planning Strategies for Anticipating the Next Trading Day.”I’m excited to be presenting with Bennet McDowell’s TradersCoach.com as part of their popular “Wednesday Night Live” educational sessions.We’ll get started at 7:30pm EST (4:30pm PST).You can find the full description at the free webinar registration link (GoTo Webinar page) but we’ll be sure to cover the following topics:- Tactics for planning what to expect in the next trading session- Strategies for implementing the plan in real-time during the trading day- How to adapt quickly and effortlessly – without frustration – when unexpected events occur- How to frame intraday environments according to Day StructureI’m thankful to Bennett for the invitation and …

via Afraid to Trade.com Blog:

I hope you can join us for a live educational webinar entitled “Game-Planning Strategies for Anticipating the Next Trading Day.”

I’m excited to be presenting with Bennet McDowell’s TradersCoach.com as part of their popular “Wednesday Night Live” educational sessions.

We’ll get started at 7:30pm EST (4:30pm PST).

You can find the full description at the free webinar registration link (GoTo Webinar page) but we’ll be sure to cover the following topics:

- Tactics for planning what to expect in the next trading session

- Strategies for implementing the plan in real-time during the trading day

- How to adapt quickly and effortlessly – without frustration – when unexpected events occur

- How to frame intraday environments according to Day Structure

I’m thankful to Bennett for the invitation and can’t wait to see you there!

Corey

For more info: Join Corey for a Special Wednesday Night Webinar April 30

Afraid to Trade.com Blog

Join Corey for a Special Wednesday Night Webinar April 30

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