Category: debt

debt, Family, Food, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Sneaky little veggies

Hannah Lucio

Finding different ways to add veggies into our diets is kind of fun. I noticed a few veggies I can sneak into our regular foods and it tastes amazing! Inexpensive and healthy.

I know people are going to recommend to me to take veggie pills and whatever else they sell to try to make some money. But me, I do not want them nor will I try them. I am not closed minded, I just don’t want them.  I really am just a mom trying to get us to love veggies. We should be eating our veggies anyway, right? Ok. So I wanted to share the ways I sneak in our greens.

  1. I make smoothies every morning for our family. I add a lot of greens in this because I feel like it is the best way to start your day. Besides black coffee 🙂
  2. I chop up cauliflower, bell peppers and broccoli into small little pieces. I add them to our weekly pizza. Have you watched the movie Inside Out? I can hear Anger saying, congratulations Hannah, you officially ruined pizza. Ha-ha!! Great movie btw. I also add them to my favorite meal. Black beans and ground turkey with taco seasoning. Oh my goodness this really yummy!
  3. When adding onions into a recipe, grate instead of chopping. It hides it well and our 3 year old never says anything. 

Just two simple ways to add veggies. And, the best part…..our 3 year old absolutely loves it! He eats a lot of it and has not complained about eating his veggies. The key to adding them to your foods is by cutting them into smaller pieces.  I hope this can help someone trying to add veggies into yours and your kids diets. Without pills.

 

Eat Organic

Live Healthy

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debt, Family, Food, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Dreaming of Spring time

Hannah Lucio

I absolutely love when the kids take long naps, Ha-ha! I can relax with some hot coffee, a few red vines and catch up on VanderPump Rules. HA!

red-vines-and-spring-blog

Over here on the East coast we have some pretty cold winters. Since it is really cold we are not able to be outside as much. So it is a little bit of a bummer. But, as much as it is super cold over here in the winters we absolutely love it. There are actual seasons over here. And we are not planning on moving. We are coming up on our second year in Virginia and it has been amazing. In the fall we decided to get a kid carrier to pull behind us on our bikes. We also decided to get a geared bike for me so I can pull them easier. My husbands work is a tad further that it used to be so I will have to pull them a little further. That is not a problem. I am actually excited about this challenge. I absolutely love fitness! The thing about Spring that I am so excited about is to be able to have fun outside with the kids again. Brayden will be old enough to be in the kid carrier with Maverick. I cannot wait to hear their giggles when we ride. And, now that we are not having anymore kids I can enjoy being active with them. I can teach Maverick how to play basketball, play t-ball and start running. We are also going to move into a house when our lease is up and that is equally exciting! I’m not sure how many other people are thinking that Spring time, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Until then we will be enjoying this rainy, colder and sometimes snowy weather.

I am really hoping everyone is having a wonderful beginning of the year! It not to late to start living healthy and a more positive simple life.

 

Live Positive

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breastfeeding, debt, Family, Food, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Kefir….no thanks

Hannah Lucio

I have been curious about how I would feel after trying a few foods. We have been getting sick left and right after we started letting our boy go to Sunday School. We are a family that never gets sick. Ok, maybe once a year and it last’s about 3 days total. Now, since he has been going to Sunday school every week we have been sick all the time. He loves Sunday school so that is not really an option to not have him go. So I researched things to “boost” our immune system. One thing it said was that you literally cannot boost your immune system. So I looked for ways to get more “healthy” foods into our diet. Every day I make our smoothies and that has seemed to help a little. I read to add a probiotic into our diet. Kefir is one of the most mentioned probiotic that I saw on the websites. So I got it and tried it out. I have to mention that we are not a family that drinks milk or has a high dairy diet. I do top our meals with cheese but not more that a 1/4 cup at a time. When we need a milk like product we use Almond Milk. We are not allergic to dairy, but it is a choice we make to not have a lot of it. I actually watched a few documentaries this last week and it said that cow milk is actually not made for human consumption. Very interesting.Anyway,  I started adding Kefir to our smoothies and after two days pulled the plug on adding it.

What happened?

I felt fat, bloated, sluggish and worse off. Oh and I gained two pounds in two days. Yikes!  Our oldest son started getting hiccups after drinking it. And since I am breastfeeding Ill add that he was fussier than normal. It is very interesting to see how our bodies react to certain foods. I did not know that our body would react that quickly and make us feel worse.

Today is the first day back to our regular smoothies and we are all good to go. I have my regular boost of energy with the smoothies, our  oldest son did not have hiccups and our little guy has not been fussy.

That just means no milk products. Besides cheese , ha! Also, we are just going to have to deal with getting sick if it means our boy is happy at church. If you are feeling bloated all the time or sluggish check your diet. When I eat a certain way I have tons of energy and lose weight.

I also cannot eat a lot of protein because I will actually gain weight. Even if it is just plain chicken or protein shakes. No matter what the meat of protein alternative, I gain weight. Now, that is quite opposite of what healthy sites or magazines tell you. I think we should listen to what our bodies are telling us. Because we are all different. In this day in age we can learn so much! We should be taking advantage of all the information that is out there. I literally watch a documentary every day on Netflix about foods. Take advantage of it, I really enjoy learning!

 

Live Healthy

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debt, Family, Food, Hair, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Happy 5 Years!!!

Hannah Lucio

It has officially been 5 years since I quit smoking! No, it was not a New years Resolution. It just so happened to be at the beginning of the year.

See, I met this guy. We went on our first date. That night I knew we were going to get married. I just knew it! I decided that night to quit smoking. Cold turkey. I did not want to lose him over some absolute disgusting habit. I had always wanted to quit and for some reason never had a “reason” to quit. Boy did I do an amazing thing by quitting. I am still married to that man and one day will write about our amazing story. It sounds to good to be true but it was truly meant to be. I love telling people about it!

I am so incredibly happy to have quit smoking and if you are wanting to quit, today’s the day!! Quit now! It is SO worth it!! It is not pretty, it ruins your skin, hair, you smell (yuck) and it is not healthy. And with the money you save you can also pay down your debt. Or save for a summer vaca, smoking is expensive ya’ll!

 

Live smoke free

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debt, Family, Food, money, pregnancy, prenatal, Stay at Home Mom, Women

Critics, marriage, babies-let them be your biggest motivators 

Hannah Lucio


The only place to take a full picture of myself is at church. So I took one. Finally. It feels weird to whip out my phone and take a picture. Of myself. At church. But I’ve thought about it week after week and finally did it. I feel SO darn proud of myself in taking control of my weight. 

See. I’m not “into myself”, I don’t think I’m “hot”, I really don’t think I’m pretty if you want to know. But I do know this. I have grown up struggling with my weight. My whole life!  I’ve been on so many different diets, weight lose pills and also tried to be bulimic. Yuck! I lose weight, gain a s*** ton, kinda lose it again, it’s all just vicious cycle. Until I got married…..that’s when I took control of my weight.

People typically say that when you get married you gain the marriage weight. People also told me when I got pregnant that I would never lose my weight. I  was literally laughed at. A lot. By more than one person. I told them that I wanted to be a fit mom and lose all the weight I gained. Good luck, they told me. I was told different stories about how they never lost their weight after pregnancy. What a let down. I was also told it was really hard because I would be SO tired and not motivated. Well crap, I thought. Just one more thing I didn’t need, negativity. I was thinking I really hope I am not like that. It got me down, a lot. It made me feel, well, horrible. And then I thought……CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! 

Here I am two babies later and 20 lbs less than when I got married. 20 lbs!!! I beat all odds apparently. I am that “fit mom” I wanted to be. I have a lot of energy. I like to play with my boys in ways that I would be able to if I had not lost weight. I can run around the playground, go on walks and show my boys what healthy living is. We are far from perfect about what we put in our bodies but we try to lead by example. I try to feed our family good foods but we also treat ourselves to regular junk foods. Remember your kids don’t buy their own foods, we do. Also, what we don’t have at home we won’t eat. I really believe that my consistent working out and watching what I eat has helped me. I drink my Smoothies every morning. Up your fiber content, drink plain black coffee instead of adding junk, drink water and stay positive. My body cannot process high protein amounts so I tend to eat more fiber foods. I do eat ground turkey, brown rice and black beans for dinner a lot! Omg it taste so good. 

Now that I have gotten to my first weight goal I can start to get to my ultimate weight goal. I would also like to be a motivator for others. If I could even just help one person get motivated to eat better and workout I’d be SO happy! I know it’s a new year and people are looking for ways to get their New Years resolution going. 

My advice would be to 

1. Start somewhere. 

2. Start small and work up

3. If someone is not helping you get to your goal but instead getting in the way, fix it. Distance yourself from that person. I had to do that because some people really do not want to see you succeed. I have many examples, if you want to just ask 🙂 I’ve actually stopped hanging out with a lot of people because they were not healthy for me. It might sound hard but it’s not. 

4. Stop making excuses. I’ve heard so many from people about how they cannot lose weight, eat healthy or go workout. Walking outside is free. A few dumbells are really cheap. YouTube exercise videos are free. Eating healthy isn’t that expensive. When I lived in California I used to shop at Sprouts, mega cheap and we had a ton of veggies and fruit. Over here in Virginia…..it’s a little more expensive. But we still buy it! Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Harris teeter are our go to for foods. No-GMO’s!!!

5. Start somewhere. Yes, I repeated number one because it is SO important to just start!!

Live healthy
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Christmas, debt, Family, Food, Hair, money, pregnancy, Sewing, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Get out of debt

Hannah Lucio

When we first decided to kick our debt to the curb it wasn’t that easy. When you grow up not being taught how to manage your money. Not taught how bad credit cards are, isn’t a high credit score good after all? I was taught to get a credit card and get a credit score. I was not taught how to invest. Budget. What’s that?I just knew I needed a job to pay my bills and hope to one day….Idk I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I did not have a dream of being anything. I didn’t want to be a stay at home wife. I actually never wanted to get married and have kids, that is a whole different topic. No Cinderella dreams over here. Ha! It is kind of sad when you think about it.  And here I am, married for over 4 years, two kids and stay at home mom. Interesting how thing work out for the good 😍

I read this Article from Dave Ramsey’s website today and agree with it all. We have literally done it all. Or gone through it.

1. The doubt was enormous but once we made our budget and starting plowing through or debt i was optimistic. 

2. We really got gazelle intense! I was looking in every direction on how to save and pay off. 

3. I listened to Dave Ramsey Podcast, all three of them. Everyday. While I worked out. Cooked. Cleaned. I loved it. It is SO motivating! I was able to learn so much. It also helped me give money advice to others. Pretty darn cool. 

4. Oh my goodness did we sell. We sold so much our dogs thought we were moving. Haha! No joke. We had about 1/4 of the stuff we moved with and it felt AMAZING! We live a pretty simple life now and I never want to go back to the “old us”. 

5. Bargains. Yes, varage sale is huge in California so I bought used everything. I tried to get as much free stuff also. A lot of people just want to get rid of things and I loved it! Of course I sanitized everything but I never minded second hand stuff. 

6. Budgeting. Not the most desired thing for me but I started to love it. This is such an important step when getting debt free. Tell your money where to go, every penny of it. 

7. Cash. It gives me a bit of anxiety to use cash….at Costco. But once I started using cash it got easier. I treat it like a game, a challenging one. I also save the change for a rainy day. It’s amazing how fast change adds up. 

8. Family. Yes. My husband and I were on board from day one. It would have been impossible to do this without him. 

9. Work hard was an understatement. My husband, he is amazing! He worked SO much overtime. He would work hard around the house on weekend to save money also. I also worked my hardest to make homemade everything and fix stuff myself. Sometimes a second job is needed. Thankfully we are doing it without. 

10. When you are able to see how the progress is going it can be very motivating. I have it written on our dry erase board. 

11. The word no. Oh gosh, that’s a hard one for me. My husband, not so much. He is good at saying no. Learning how to say no was probably one of the hardest things ever!

12. Packing lunches and making our own coffee was easy for us. We were already doing that and not to save money but to be healthy. I love black coffee! Love! I would spend $10 a day at Starbucks (if I only drank black coffee). That’s $70 a week and $3,640 bucks a year! On just coffee!! How bout food. You eat out for each meal. 3x $10 (the average meal these days). That’s $30 a day, $210 a week and $10,920 a year! That’s not including alcohol, going out, fancy foods. Just plain old fast foods. Coffee and fast a year (on average) would be $14,560. Its way cheaper to make food at home and brew your own coffe with no added stuff. And healthier! By far. I am 20 lbs lighter than my wedding day because of this 😃 a win win situation. 

13. Spending time with people who respect your process is ideal. It makes it easier.

14. Creative should be our last name by now. It is an important piece to our puzzle. 

15. We stopped my husband 401k since mine didn’t exist due to me not working anymore. 

16. Prayer. Ah yes. This is one thing I do a lot. Sometimes scream, cry and just talk to God about it all. Faith is what has kept us chugging along in our journey. 

Once again, Dave Ramsey has put together such a great list. If you are thinking about getting your finances together. The time is now! It’s never to late to start. We started when I was 31 and my husband was 33. It’s not usually fun in the beginning but once the train starts to go it gets better.  Believe me. We will also teach our boys how to Manage money, that I do know. I do not want them to be clueless about their future. I highly recommend you check out Dave Ramsey, listen to his podcast and start today. 
Live debt free

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debt, Family, Food, money, prenatal, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Living simple

Hannah Lucio

I just watched the movie The Minimalists last night and it recharged me. Living simple is something I have been “into” for a very long time. I’m not into collecting stuff or buying stuff to show off. I never have been. I’ve tried it and it really doesn’t make me feel better. 

Here is our story.

When my husband and I got married we had a lot of stuff. Mainly him. I moved into his place and I got pregnant about a month after we got married. We then decided to go buy a house. Like a “normal” person. We had a lot of debt and wanted to get a mortgage to add to our debt. Like normal. We went through 22 offers for homes and finally on the 23rd they accepted. This house was in the booneys of Southern California. We loved it, for the most part. I mean, we had a little over an acre, a simple old house and it was cheap. When we moved we had to get the biggest uhaul, took several smaller trips with our leased vehicle. And filled up friends vehicles for them to bring to our house. That’s a lot of stuff!! When I sat down and did our “budget” and calculated how much debt and money we had I got really sad. My husband wanted me to stay home after giving birth and we simply were in way to much debt. When I calculated how much we needed for me to stay home we actually would have needed $1000 extra just to survive and that would have been without groceries😩 My husband brought up this guy (Dave Ramsey) he had heard about and I researched him. We found his Podcast and after listening to it one time I was hooked! We immediately got on board and we literally sold 90% of our stuff we moved in with. It was kind of hard considering we lived pretty far from the city, but it worked! We turned in our lease and got 2 used vehicle. That lease term was still over a year left and then 3 years of more payments to buy it! Yuck! We paid off our used vehicles in about 6 months or less. Both, yes!  We paid off SO much debt with our “stuff” we didn’t really need. We actually sold SO much stuff that our we became freer in our budget. We had $1000 extra every month! How bout them apples. Ha I made everything homemade- bread, tortillas, pizza, everything. We grew our veggies and had chickens for eggs. It was a very simple life. I loved it! No cable, just Netflix and internet. When we moved over here to Virginia we moved with one car and one of the smallest uhauls they have. It felt great! We do not have a lot of stuff and it still feels great! We recommitted in December to living on a minimal budget so we can move into a house with a yard in June. We want a yard for the kids and dogs. We do not want a huge house but just something with a yard. And not buying! Renting. We will not be ready to buy for a long time. We also just cancelled our cable again and I am very happy about that. I am going back to making things homemade and it’ll help with our budget immensely. I hope that if you are thinking about living simple that I can encourage you. I can try to help you out on how to get back to the basics. We don’t really need stuff to make us happy. Our world has taught us that more is better. If we chase the world things we will never be happy. I hope you find encouragement through our story and if you have questions feel free to ask! 

Here are some of Dave Ramsey quotes that I love:

Live happy

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debt, Family, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

We Finally Did it!!

Hannah Lucio

I am so darn excited today. I have been going back and forth for the last two months. One day I say do it, the next day I don’t want to. I don’t want to “miss out” on what is happening. A few of my favorite shows have new episodes coming on this week . It is my way to drain my brain but also get the news and what is happening around the world. But Saturday night I said “That’s it, I am SO done with this crap”. So done with the junk on TV, who cares about the reality TV people. Oh my gosh I am a reality TV junkie, like seriously. Since Cox was closed yesterday we went today. I walked in with the cable boxes, phone modem and gave it all back! We CANCELLED Cable!! Wahoo!! I feel like throwing a party. I feel free from paying for stuff that does not help us grow in life. I will miss Impractical Jokers immensely! I am going to miss Fox News, badly! And all of the other stuff I watched.

 

Now, I can focus on things that matter. My husband, my kids, cooking and baking, reading books and reading the Bible. We have a huge goal to meet and kind of have to meet it by June so we can move into a house. Needless to say we will busy and do not need our TV slowing us down. I really do feel free now. Sounds weird but man oh man does it feel good. If you have been thinking about it, do it! Instead we have internet and Netflix, it comes to half the cable bill. It is also not as tempting for me since I am not a huge fan of movies. We will be saving $480 plus in 6 months just by cancelling our cable. That’s a great deal! Just do it! You will feel great and you get to save money!

Live wiser

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debt, Family, Food, money, Uncategorized, Women

So much for sticking to our budget this week….

Hannah Lucio

We set our budget and goals for last week and it didn’t go as planned. Thankfully we are on a budget and do not live paycheck to paycheck. I truly believe that if we lived paycheck to paycheck then we would have to have credit cards. Did you know that living paycheck to paycheck is actually considered normal? Yikes! I understand why people have credit cards as their “back up plan” but it in not the lifestyle we want to have. Thankfully.

Our oldest dog had to go to the vet because we believe she has a UTI. We took her in and an hour later and finding out she has arthritis (not really surprising at age 12) we spend $300. We will know her test results this coming up week. An hope it will not cost anymore for us.

Then, Friday around 4pm my husband and son were chasing each other around the house and rough housing. I was making brownies and I heard some “calm” talking from his room. I was going to go in but I typically like to have my husband and son have “guy time” and just let them be. Well, about 5-10 minutes later my husband came in and said we need to take Maverick to the hospital. I do not like those words but I know it’ll happen because boys love to play. I’m so thankful this is the first time. And I know it will not be the last. He was a trooper and so good for the dr’s and nurses. I wish he was that way with us all the time ha ha. Anyway, we found out he hyper extended his arm/elbow and the dr was able to pop it back into place. It was night and day after he popped it back into place. Once Maverick found out he could move his arm again he wanted to give me a hug and kiss. Gosh I loved that! We put his shoes on and he wanted to take a “tour” of the ER. So we walked around and came back in time to get discharge papers and we were out of there. It was really a great experience there and we were in and out in less than 3 hours. We are so thankful. So that was another $135 co-pay.

Going into this week we were thinking we were on track to save a lot this month by keeping under our $60 grocery budget. Things happen. We are saving an average of $120 a week on groceries and I feel lighter 🙂 Did I mention that being on a budget and making sure you get the right health foods you can lose weight? That is how I lost weight with the first kid and plan to do so with this second kid. I know we did not stick to budget because two emergencies came up with week. But it is such an amazing feeling when you can pay your co-pays or emergencies with money you actually have. And, not have to stress or worry how we are going to afford it. Or charge it on credit cards. Thank the Lord for opening our eyes and ears to a more positive way to live.  Thank you Dave Ramsey for showing us the way to financial freedom.

On to this week….goals will be met and positive thinking will be done!

Live healthy

Live less stressed

Live financially free

and

Live simple

 

 

debt, Family, Food, money, pregnancy, prenatal, Uncategorized, Women

Getting Back On Track

Hannah Lucio

Since we found out we were pregnant last year we took a pause on getting out of debt. Dave Ramsey recommends pausing paying off debt. Instead you save up the money you would put towards debt just in case there is an emergency/complication with the pregnancy. Now that our baby is born and things are going good we are getting back on track.

One of the main things we did to cut back on costs was not renewing our Costco membership. Costco is a dangerous place. I could go there and easily spend $200….a week!! And that would not cover everything we would need for putting meals together. Spending got a little out of control. So I told my husband I need him to help with our budget and keep me more on track until I get used to it again. I am typically the one who does it all but I wanted to get some help and encouragement from him. So far in the last two weeks we have managed to keep way under budget on groceries. We are also going to eat only healthy foods. We went to Harris Teeter today (my favorite store on the east coast) and got everything we needed for every meal next week and spent $59.00! I know we can cut down more on costs but I really want to get healthy foods still and not just cheap junk foods. We could eat top ramen instead and keep our food bill to $30 or less a week but our medical bills would increase because our health wouldn’t be that good. So we are trying to just balance it all out.

At the end of the month we will calculate what we have saved each week on groceries and apply that to debt. For example: we budget $100 a week for groceries, if we only spend $60 then the left over $40 goes to debt. I feel excited to get back on track with budget and health food.

We also are cutting out extra stuff like going out to eat. That typically can get out of control when you let it. We have been spontaneous in this area and not really controlling it. Not anymore. When I was pregnant the only thing I could stomach most of the time was the Chick-Fil-A Grilled market salad with honey mustard dressing. So it got a little pricey. I really love to cook and eat healthy so its going to be fun to get back to it. I will also be taking a before and after picture of myself and also weigh myself to see if there is a huge difference. I am curious how big of a difference it makes. I will try to update more to hold myself accountable and hope to help others out that want to get rid of debt. 

 

Live happy

Live healthy

Live debt free

And

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