3 Reasons Bad Debt Will Always Let You Down

January 15, 2018 jacquelineobyikocha8 Comments

Image Credit: Pixabay

In our materialistic society, it is ever more difficult to resist the lure of stuff. We want our houses to be beautiful and filled with beautiful things; we want to go on holidays so that we can upload snaps to Instagram and show off our worldliness; we want everything and we want it now.

Unfortunately, this attitude can lead to some serious money troubles. High-interest loans might sound tempting but they can saddle you with far more debt than you thought possible and truly ruin your lifestyle.

Bad debt will always let you down and you should break up with it sooner rather than later.

Interest Quickly Racks Up

Bad debt is usually high-interest with a long repayment schedule that threatens your ability to make ends meet each month. Essentially, it is a debt that the customer won’t be able to repay. These debts are often in the form of credit cards, personal loans or payday loans.

Unfortunately, all of these loan types are marketed to people like you who want a better lifestyle now and don’t want to have to wait. And once you are on their list, more loan companies will market to you and encourage you to take on more debt making the problem worse and worse as your interest costs get higher and higher.

You Feel Stressed all the Time

Money is fundamental to living and if you are constantly worrying about whether you will have enough to do a food shop or pay your bills, your stress is going to increase dramatically. This will also have a knock-on effect on the rest of your health making you feel unwell and more susceptible to infections.

Even when your debt has brought you lovely things, the real effect is that you will look at those things and worry more about them being taken away than enjoying having them. You will probably regret that you stretched your finances so far in the first place. No amount of stuff is ever worth risking your health for and if you are worried about your financial future, you need to deal with the problem as soon as possible.

A Debt-Free Life Feels Impossible

When you are spiralling into further and further debt, it might seem that living a debt-free life is now completely out of reach. Don’t give up. However bad your debt problem is, there are government credit card debt relief options that can help find the best way to manage your finances and reduce your debt to zero, essentially helping you to get a fresh start.

These options range from financial counselling to help you create more sustainable spending budgets to bankruptcy. Whatever you choose, always ask a financial advisor for help and look for companies accredited by either the NFCC or the FCAA to help you out.

Reaching your debt-free goal will take time and determination. It can take years of effort to get back to a debt-free lifestyle that is sustainable and stress-free. But it is well worth it.

Start today.

In A Nutshell…2

January 10, 2018 jacquelineobyikocha11 Comments

Your present circumstances don’t dictate your destination. They only serve as your departure point. Keep walking through them.

Life · Lifestyle

In A Nutshell…1

January 4, 2018 jacquelineobyikocha5 Comments

In a nutshell…

Say hello to joy and happiness. They reside in you.

image credit

food · Health · Lifestyle

Feel Good Food For Everyday

December 22, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha4 Comments

Food is absolutely fundamental to our lives. We eat every day, cooking different meals, sourcing new foods at grocery stores, trying recipes from around the world. Food brings us together around the table but it can also provide a moment of solitary bliss in the form of a quick one-pot meal alone at lunchtime.

The flavours we go for and the choices we make aren’t just about enjoyment though. What we eat affects every aspect of our lives from our health to our weight and from the money we spend to the times we can save. Food can give us momentary joy, later replaced by frustration standing on the bathroom scales, but it can also help us to get the healthiest body we can.

Understanding foods and the benefits they bring is key to having a healthy, balanced diet that takes in everything from a bit of chocolate here and there to a huge bowl of steamed veg whenever you like. These are the foods that make us feel good every day.

Steamed Vegetables

A completely unsurprising first entry: steamed vegetables are fantastic for your body and will always make you feel good. You can choose from a wide range of flavours so that you can easily eat something completely different every day.

A good rule to go by is to choose from a wide range of colours when you decide which vegetables to eat. Dark leafy greens tend to contain lots of iron, carrots with their vibrant orange contain vitamin A and pulses like peas and bean contain plenty of fibre and protein to keep you fuller for longer.

Steaming vegetables is a good way to cook them as you don’t lose any of the vitamins or minerals to the cooking water. It is also significantly better than frying or roasting because this method doesn’t need any fat.

Sauerkraut

Another way to enjoy vegetables is to pickle and ferment them, as in the case with sauerkraut. The fermenting agent is a bacteria that is particularly good for your gut, allowing you to take in more vitamins and minerals and making you feel generally more healthy.

As a probiotic, sauerkraut does seem to help people who need IBS relief as it improves the functionality of the gut. Though it’s often unclear what causes IBS in each individual, it does seem that an imbalance in your gut flora is a possible cause of the discomfort you experience. Sauerkraut and other foods like kimchi and miso help to restore the balance by introducing new ‘good bacteria’ which allows your gut to function properly again.

One final reason to eat sauerkraut is simple: it’s delicious.

Dark Chocolate

Though milk and white chocolate are often full of sugar and fat, dark chocolate is a bit more forgiving and a little bit each day can be good for you. Lots of people find that dark chocolate is an acquired taste and if you are used to eating the high fat and sugar stuff, anything about 70% cocoa is going to be a surprise with its depth and bitterness. However, if you do like it, there are lots of reasons to love it.

Dark chocolate can help to lower your blood pressure, improve your eyesight and even help to increase your metabolism. Plus as it is sweet once you get past the bitterness, it can be the perfect alternative to a calorific dessert your main meal. Dark chocolate has also been found to help with symptoms of depression, lower cholesterol and seems to help with cognition too.

So if you are feeling stressed, trying to study for an exam and wanting to lose weight, dark chocolate might just help you on your way.

Fruit

Though people with diabetes will need to watch out for eating too much high sugar fruit, for most people, eating fruit is a great way to pile in on lots of vitamins and minerals. Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and limes are ideal for gaining vitamin C. This is important because vitamin C is shown to increase the absorption of iron, making citrus fruits the ideal companion for green leafy veggies. If you are feeling fatigued or you are trying to work out harder at the gym, up your citrus fruits to really make a difference.

Fruit, like veg, is also a good way to increase the amount of fibre you eat. This will help your digestive system stay regular as well as keep you fuller for longer. Lots of fruits are also good for helping to increase your liquid intake. Though drinking a glass of water is always a good idea, fruit is a simple way to introduce more liquid into your diet, keeping you well hydrated throughout the day.

Flax Seeds

There is a lot of research into the benefits of flax seeds including whether they might help to prevent cancers, lung disease and cardiovascular disease. While this research has not provided any conclusive evidence just yet, there is a wealth of optimism that the flax seed could be ideal for improving your health.

What it certainly does contain is plenty of fibre (a theme is developing with fibrous foods!) as well as omega 3, an essential fatty acid and lignans, which are what researchers are looking into as they may help to protect against cancer.

The foods we choose to eat are vital for our health and well being and finding the best foods can be difficult. As the science around what we should eat changes all the time, it can be confusing to follow the best advice as it changes so frequently.

One thing you can do is listen to your body. Think about how you feel after eating certain foods. Do you feel good and energised? Do you feel happy? Do you regret what you ate? All of these questions will help to indicate the types of foods that you should be going for. And if you are really committed to your quest, keeping a diary will help to isolate the foods that really bring you joy.

Gratitude · Lifestyle

This Joyful Morning…

December 18, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha11 Comments

I walk with the gentle wind touching my skin, its crispness a delightful contrast to the heated breeze of weeks past,

with my face turned to the sun that glitters off the face of the waters like a thousand stars, I stare at the simpleness, the glorious beauty of everything.

The birds chirp away, cars zoom past mere meters away along the highway, and they seem to be in a different time zone,

the man with his clinking bicycle rides past whistling in tandem to the music in his mind and a barefoot man hurries past me, earthing himself and getting feet tanned, I chuckle to myself, it’s all good.

Full breaths of the briny fishy sea air I take in, my soul is grateful.
my low medidative instrumental shuffles on, no words yet the chords reach deep inside and curl themselves around my bones; they are soul food for a torn spirit; it gives me healing.

Help me to be a vessel of your peace Lord. Though my humanness gets in the way most times and makes me a poor example of your peace, those moments that I have inhaled and held your peace, I can’t even begin to explain the exquisite state that it leaves my senses – filled with the vibes that everything is going to be alright and yes, to the heart that believes, everything will be alright.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Family · Lifestyle

Everyday Ways To Teach Your Kids To Be Responsible

December 12, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha23 Comments

If you don’t start teaching your children responsibility from a young age, when they grow up and get out into the real world, they’re going to struggle. Every parent knows that it’s important and there are all sorts of ways people try to teach them, like getting them to join a sports team or get a summer job. These are great, but if you want to encourage them to be responsible in all areas of their life, you need to be doing small things every day. Here are just some of the ways that you can teach your kids to be responsible every single day.

Image From Pixabay

Buy Them Nice Things

Before we get into how this teaches responsibility, remember not to go overboard and spoil your children because it will have the opposite effect. If you occasionally buy your children nice clothes from somewhere like Nicki’s fashion for children or buy them a new phone, it’s a good opportunity to teach them to value their possessions and not be careless with them. But this only works if you don’t do it too often. If you buy them something anytime they ask for it, they won’t bother looking after things because they know they can just get another one.

Send Them To The Shop

When I was younger, my parents would always send me around the corner to the shop if we needed milk. It was only a tiny thing but it felt like a big responsibility as a kid. I was eager to make sure that I didn’t make a mistake and so I acted responsibly. Sending them out to do small errands on their own is the perfect way to create a family that all works together to help out around the house. Just remember, wait until they’re old enough to be walking around on their own, and don’t start asking them to do the weekly shop for everybody.

Pay Them For Chores

Before they’re old enough to go out and get a proper job of their own, you can still teach them a good work ethic by paying them to do small chores around the house. Washing the car or raking the leaves in the garden are both good options. It teaches them the importance of working and you can start them off on managing a little of their own money. The key to making this effective is to only pay them for certain chores. They should still help around the house regardless, otherwise, they could get lazy.

Practice What You Preach

You can easily undo all of your good work if you don’t practice what you preach. If you’re constantly telling your kids to pick up after themselves yet they see you being messy, you’re sending mixed signals and they won’t listen to you. Always be aware of how you’re acting when they’re about and make sure you follow your own rules.

There’s no one way to teach your kids responsibility, you have to introduce it to every aspect of their life.

This is a collaborative post.

Family · Lifestyle

Excitement In The Outdoors This Christmas

November 29, 2017November 29, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha12 Comments

Image Source

Christmas is a truly wonderful time of year. With the world taking on a breathtaking hue of white, the temperature dropping very fast, and loads of little jobs to do, going outside will often be one of peoples’ least likely choices. Of course, though, this isn’t how the kids will feel. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the ways you can add some excitement to your child’s outdoors this holiday season. These can either be as Christmas gifts or as something fun in the run-up.

Sledging: When it starts to snow, a lot of people have an excellent opportunity. It’s unlikely that you live somewhere completely flat, giving you the chance to find some nice, slippery hills to send the kids flying down. Sledging has been a very popular winter pastime for hundreds of years. This makes it nice and easy to find all of the gear you’ll need, and it will just be a matter of doing some research to get all of the safety tips you might need.

Quad biking: Of course, in some cases, you might not be in a place where it snows, and this will make sledging impossible. Thankfully, though, you have an alternative; ATVs. Finding recommended 4-wheelers for kids will take some research. But, with your findings, it should be nice and easy to get started on your next adventure. Like sledging, you will need to adopt some safety methods before you get started with this sort of fun with your children. Along with this, it could also be worth looking for helmets and pads to keep everyone uninjured.

Snowball Fighting: Going back to snow, it’s time to think about another classic. Snowball fighting has been around for a very long time and is a great way to get the kids out for free. As long as everyone has a good pair of waterproof gloves, you will be able to handle the snow for hours at a time, and the kids will have loads of fun. You’ll just have to make sure to set up some rules before you get started.

A New Friend: Finally, as the last idea on this list, you could think of something much more long-term. A dog will live for many years, requiring walking throughout the course of its life. This sort of addition to your family will go down very well with children. With the right preparation, you could have this be the best gift of the year, arriving on the day itself. Of course, though, this is a very big decision to make.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working on some ideas to get your kids outside this holiday season. It can feel very uninspiring to go out when the weather is bad, and a lot of families will spend most of the season indoors. While there are no problems with this, it could be much more exciting to do some outdoor activities, as well.

Lifestyle

Anything For An Easy Life

November 27, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha21 Comments

It’s a sentence most uttered by parents and carers around the world: anything for an easy life. This doesn’t mean laying down and being taken advantage of, nor does it mean taking ill-feeling and accepting bad manners. No, wanting an easy life means accepting life as it comes at you and making it work for you.

If you find yourself laid up with an injury right before you’re due to go on vacation, you don’t need to cancel your break. Instead, make life easier and look into electric scooter rentals so that you can get out and about and enjoy yourself as much as possible. If you find yourself short of cash before the end of the month, get creative with the canned goods. You never know, you may find a brand-new recipe to appreciate. You can be the ultimate perfectionist if you want to, but unless you learn how to give yourself a break and relax, you’re never going to find yourself in a position where you can relax about life.

Image Source

Life passes by so fast, that if you spend all your time stressing over it and worrying about how you are going to manage, then you aren’t going to live an enjoyable one. Instead of waiting around for the next thing that makes you happy, why don’t you make yourself happy right now? We’ve got some awesome tips to make life easier for yourself right now.

Breathe. Any situation can be hard if you panic, but if you force yourself to stop and take some deep, cleansing breaths, you can find yourself managing your feelings and emotions before they have a chance to overwhelm you. It’s truly amazing what deep, slow breathing can do for your body.

Slow Down. Do you find yourself taking on a lot at work or at home? It’s time to stop being a hero. Share the workload both in your personal or professional life, and let someone else take the load off of you. You want an easier life, right? You have to make it happen.

Break Away. Do you spend most of your day staring at a screen? Whether you’re on a tablet, computer or smartphone, you need a break from technology. There’s no need for you to sit back and spend your downtime on a screen if you’re working on one all day long, as well.

Be Kind. If you treat others with kindness and yet spend time hating on yourself, now is the time to stop. You need to look in the mirror and say the kind words you say to others, but this time say them to yourself. You need to hear your own words and believe in them, because you matter, too.

Date Yourself. Take yourself for a morning coffee at a café with a newspaper, your drink being made by someone else can take the pressure off you to make your own, and it also means that you get a chance to relax. There is nothing wrong with self-indulgence, so enjoy it.

Having an easy life won’t happen overnight, but it can give you a freedom you’ve never experienced.

Health · Lifestyle · Wellness

Living a Peaceful Life Is Easier Than You Think

November 24, 2017November 24, 2017 jacquelineobyikocha12 Comments

Have you ever just wanted to throw all of your worries out of the window? Perhaps you just want to settle down peacefully, free of drama and worries and live out the rest of your life in peace and harmony with your surroundings? It might seem like a lot to ask for especially if you live in a busy city environment. Just take a look at this post from Time.com and you’ll find that by just living in the city, your brain could actually change for the worse. However, it’s important to remember that you can achieve virtually anything assuming you’re willing to put the time and effort into it. First, let’s take a look what why you’d want to live a peaceful life in the first place, then we’ll dive into some deeper considerations on how you can achieve a peaceful life.

Image Credit

Why live a peaceful life?

First, let’s examine why you’d want to live a peaceful life or how it even differs to your current life. You might be perfectly content with how you live now, but here are some advantages to a peaceful life that may entice you to change how you approach the world.

Peaceful living helps you remain calm and collected. The first major advantage is being able to remain calm and collected no matter what the situation is. By living a peaceful life, you’ll be able to find inner peace with yourself to prevent inner struggles from affecting your life. You’ll have clarity when making decisions and living your life, and you’ll no longer have to suffer from thinking about too many irrelevant things.

You’ll always find the silver lining no matter what happens. Misfortune happens to everyone at some point in their lives and we have to learn how to deal with it. As explained in this helpful article by PsychologyToday.com, there are ways to deal with unfortunate events and learning to live peacefully can assist this process by helping you find the silver lining during unfortunate events.

It helps you become more tolerant of people around you. If you’ve ever lashed out at someone because they just seem to annoy you or if you find it difficult to make new friends because you judge them too quickly, then living peacefully can help you settle that inner critic so that you’ll become more tolerant of everyone around you.

You can learn to seek forgiveness for your past mistakes. Maybe you’ve done something in the past that was really rude or hurtful to someone that was close to you, or perhaps you often get frustrated and argue with almost anyone. Using steps that are similar to the ones from TheHopeLine.com, it’s possible to seek forgiveness so you can atone for past mistakes. A switch to living a peaceful life will help facilitate this so you can get rid of struggles and conflicts to make way for a new beginning.

Being peaceful can help bring joy to your life and those around you. A peaceful life is a life of happiness. With no struggles to worry about and no negative emotions to cloud your judgement, you’ll bring happiness not only to yourself but to those around you who will be entranced by the calm and collected way that you approach life.

There are many others around the world that seek peace and you can be part of it. You aren’t alone on your journey to becoming a peaceful person. Online communities such as the one at Reddit.com will help you in your journey to live a simple and peaceful life that is free from conflict and struggles. They can offer advice and you can share your experiences as well.

Now that we’ve gone through the advantages of living a peaceful life and what it involves, let’s go deeper into the subject by explaining some important fundamentals that will help you live a more carefree and enjoyable lifestyle.

Image Credit

Commitments don’t necessarily mean what’s important

First, let’s talk about what it means to commit yourself to something. Commitment means that you are dedicated to a cause or activity. For instance, you can be committed to your partner and faithful because you won’t cheat, or you could be committed to your company so that you do everything in your power to make them more successful. Commitments are, for the most part, defined by you. You are the one that chooses to marry or stick with a company and you have the power to control that decision. As explained in this post at ThoughtCatalog.com, there is such a thing as being afraid of commitment. However, it’s much better to understand why you feel afraid of committing than doing it blindly and regretting it later in the future.

However, commitments don’t always imply that something is important. Just because you feel committed to your work, it doesn’t mean that your job is the most important thing in your life. Many people work jobs that hardly pay anything, but they find meaning in the work they do and that’s what keeps them going. Others find that they feel committed to their children, but until you realise what’s important about your children, you’ll start to feel like your commitment and sacrifices are just becoming a chore. If you’re not sure what commitments you should be investing in for your kids, then take a look at this article from AhaParenting.com and you’ll come across some fantastic advice that can teach you to become a better parent.

In short, learn to distinguish between a commitment and what’s important. Until you realise why you’re committing yourself to something unconditionally, you won’t get any sense of satisfaction or fulfilment from sacrificing other things to feed your commitment. Once you can tell the difference, you’ll find that you have a lot less stress on your mind and you’ll be far more productive throughout the day.

Image Credit

Take it slow and go easy on yourself

Another important thing to remember is to go easy on yourself. Sleep a little do nothing once in awhile and remember to indulge in your own hobbies. Sure, work can be difficult and time-consuming, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to take holidays off. It’s important to give yourself plenty of time to relax, and you can achieve that by focusing on your comfort. It’s the small things that count when you want to live a peaceful life, so look at articles and resources like Mattress-Guides.net to help you pick a great mattress to sleep on at night. You’d be surprised at how much better you feel after a relaxing night of sleep. Other factors can also affect your sleep quality such as your body temperature and what you eat before you go to bed. In short, try to focus on giving yourself more relaxation time and you’ll learn to appreciate taking life a little more slowly.

Spend more time with loved ones

You should also focus on giving yourself more quality time with friends and family. By planning trips together and indulging in enjoyable days out together, you’ll improve your relationships and find new ways to connect with the people that matter in your life. If you’re finding it difficult to have a stress-free day out with your family, this article at ACookingPotAndTwistedTales.com will give you plenty of fantastic advice that will show you how to reduce the stress of planning a day out. A day out can be a slow and relaxing event that doesn’t need to be stretched out. It doesn’t need a purpose either, it could just be for the sake of meeting up with loved ones to relax together.

Image Credit

Be content with your lifestyle

To live a peaceful life, you need to learn to be content with everything you have. For example, if you’re able to find little joys in everything you do, then you’ll be far happier than if you were to constantly think to yourself that you’re not good enough or that your environment isn’t good enough. Find what makes you happy and try to think positively about smaller things in life.

Just being able to sit down and drink a cup of tea after a long day of work should give you joy. Similarly, being able to sit down at your computer and chat with friends that are thousands of miles away should give you a great sense of joy.

Being content is all about looking at the better side of life. Small comforts should make you happy and frustrations should be dealt with swiftly and without much trouble. It doesn’t take much to completely change your life around so that you are more content, but if you ever need help then take a look at articles such as this one from ZenHabits.net to learn more about what it means to be content with life.

Living peacefully can seem difficult or even more stressful, especially if you aren’t used to thinking positively or if you have a job that’s incredibly stressful. Hopefully, these tips will give you a great start on your new lifestyle so that you can enjoy life in a new way.

This is a collaborative post.

Featured Blogs

Tag: Lifestyle

3 Reasons Bad Debt Will Always Let You Down

Image Credit: Pixabay

Interest Quickly Racks Up

You Feel Stressed all the Time

A Debt-Free Life Feels Impossible

In A Nutshell…2

Your present circumstances don’t dictate your destination. They only serve as your departure point. Keep walking through them.

In A Nutshell…1

Say hello to joy and happiness. They reside in you.

Feel Good Food For Everyday

Steamed Vegetables

Sauerkraut

Dark Chocolate

Fruit

Flax Seeds

This Joyful Morning…