Jana Says

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Summer birthday party ideas

by Jana 9 Comments

In case I didn’t make it clear yesterday, I love my birthday. In fact, I love all birthdays. I think it’s important that we celebrate family and friends on that day, if only to tell them “hey, I’m glad you were born”. And I think it’s perfectly acceptable to, on your birthday, tell everyone and anyone because “happy birthday” are nice words to hear.

One of the things I love the most about my birthday is the fact that it falls in June. June is a spectacular month to have been born. Now, I’m not knocking all the other months, but there is something special about being born in June. I think it’s the combination of school ending, summer starting, the days getting longer…everything. And another bonus? Birthday parties are super cheap!

As a kid, almost every single birthday party I had, save for my bat mitzvah, was outside in my parents backyard (or a sleepover party). Since they had a pool, it made for an easy set-up. Some cake, chips and soda, balloons, a volleyball net and we were good to go. When I was really little, they even had a magician come to one of my parties (it was actually pretty cool. I was 6, I think. He gave me a bunny tail. True story). It was also nice because I didn’t have to be as discriminating in who I could invite; I could ask my whole class or, as I got older, all of my random friends from different circles without excluding anyone. Let me just say that kids from all those different cliques made for some interesting parties.

I was always a pretty boring kid so my parties never really had a theme. It was just me and my friends, swimming, listening to music, watching movies…all that good stuff. But let’s say you have a kid who’s a little more exciting than me. What kinds of themes can you have for an outdoor birthday  that are fun, kid friendly and won’t break the bank? Here are a few ideas:

  • Pirate party–I totally stole this from a Fancy Nancy book, but it’s a great idea. You have the kids come dressed in pirate costumes, send treasure map invitations, decorate the backyard with signs that say “Walk the Plank”, have the kids go on a treasure hunt or play cannonball toss and serve pirate themed food like Shark’s Blood Punch. 
  • Sports/Olympics party–This is a little simpler. For this, you break the guests into different teams and have them compete against each other in games like egg toss, obstacle courses (the dizzy bat is a must), soccer shoot outs, etc. The teams accrue points and then, at the end, you can give out prizes to the winning teams, MVP on each team, best sportsmanship…things like that. It’s fun, physically active and then you don’t feel so bad plying them with cake and juice.
  • Garden tea party–A party mainly for girls, this is quite a fun alternative to a traditional backyard birthday party. The guests come dressed in their fanciest dress, like they would going to high tea. Food consists of finger sandwiches and fancy desserts, and the decor is flowery and girly. One interesting addition to a party like this is edible tea cups. After all, who wouldn’t love to finish their tea and then eat the cup?
  • Drive-in theater party–This one might be a bit more expensive, particularly if you have to rent equipment but I’m sure there’s a way to do it cheaply as well (hanging a sheet as a screen, borrowing a projector from a friend). At a party like this, you have the kids watch a movie outdoors and you serve traditional movie theater food like popcorn, soda and M&Ms. If you want to get really creative, you can create a concession stand and hand out fake money with the birthday child’s face on it. I’m not quite sure how you would decorate for this, but it would definitely be a memorable party.
For all of these party ideas, make sure you have enough sunscreen, insect repellent and all of the other necessities to ensure that your guests are comfortable. If it’s a daytime party, having pitchers of water is essential as well.
An at home birthday party doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Or expensive. Every single one of these party ideas can be done for between $50-$100 (with the help of your local dollar store and smart shopping at the supermarket). The important part is that you’re celebrating the birthday child. Not the money or the location. Trust me when I say that those at home parties will be some of your child’s most vivid childhood memories.

My financial distractability list

by Jana 12 Comments

One of the issues I’m working on in therapy is learning to manage my anxiety. My anxiety attacks are moderate to severe, especially when it pertains to work, and can be quite crippling. What a normal person would be able to manage with a few calming breaths turns into a full blown freak out session,  where I cry, yell, panic, and become so frustrated with myself and the situation that I actually can’t do anything. It takes a substantial amount of time for me to knock that anxiety down to a manageable level and by the time I’ve calmed down, I’m just depressed and angry at myself and the fact that I can manage stress like a rational person.

It’s a horrible, vicious cycle.

Managing these episodes is a challenge. Especially since I really don’t want to use medication. But I’ve learned that I can manage my anxiety attacks a lot better if I make a behavioral change. For instance, a few days ago I was trying to figure out why I cannot get blog posts to show up on Daily Money Shot’s FaceBook page (and I still can’t). The more I tried, the more I couldn’t do it. Which led to an anxiety attack ending with me throwing a pen and screaming a bunch of expletives to no one in particular and quitting blogging forever (note: pretty much anything can trigger one of these delightful episodes). It was definitely a party at my house that day.

In the midst of my shaking and hyperventilating and screaming and being completely ready to set my computer on fire, it occurred to me that maybe it was a good idea to walk away from my office for a little while. So I did that. I walked away. I made myself lunch and took the dogs for a walk. By the time that was done, I was able to think like a rational person and focus on the problem at hand instead of flipping out about everything under the sun and threatening to quit blogging (though there probably are some people who wish that would happen).

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My elbow bled and I fixed my spending

by Jana 14 Comments

Yesterday, while spelunking in my tupperware cabinet for a pitcher to make iced tea, I cut my elbow on the latch that makes the door babyproof. Let me tell you, it freaking hurt! A lot. And, in true Jana fashion, I cut myself on the part of my elbow that I can’t see except when using a mirror. Do you know how hard it is to stop the bleeding when you don’t even know where the blood is coming from?

Way more dangerous than it looks

At first I wasn’t concerned with the blood (mainly because I didn’t know I was bleeding). I was only concerned with how much it hurt. My elbow was throbbing, I was screaming at the latch for being a fucking asshole, I was yelling at husband for putting the pitcher all the way in the back of the tupperware cabinet (he wasn’t home to hear my tirade, however), and I was berating myself for being so dumb for cutting my elbow on a latch! That’s been there since we bought the house! But mainly, I just wanted it to stop throbbing. That’s when I decided it was probably a good idea to go look at the wound.

I knew I had cut my elbow, so I started inspecting it like a detective inspects evidence at a murder scene. But I couldn’t find the cut. I knew it was there; I had the pain to prove it. Since I couldn’t see it without looking like a dog chasing her tail, I went to the bathroom to use the mirror. And sure as I’m short, there was a bleeding gash on the one part of my elbow that I can’t see myself. I grabbed some tissues to prevent any more blood from seeping out of my arm and cleaned the cut. But it still hurt a lot. Because of the location of the cut, I had to just deal with the pain. Putting on a band-aid was impossible without some Cirque du Soleil contortionist shit so I just tried to stop bleeding and went about my day.

Then, like the flux capacitor came to Doc after he hit his head on the toilet, it hit me. The cut on my arm was just like my spending.

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Wedding Week: The Honeymoon

by Jana 9 Comments

My husband and I aren’t exactly good with timing. It’s perhaps why our daughter was born in December, we bought our house on the upswing of the bubble and why we got married exactly one month before he finished grad school. Yup. That’s right. One month. In fact, he was working on his thesis the morning of our wedding. How’s that for romantic?

Anyway, because he was in grad school and I was a social worker at a nonprofit, we didn’t exactly have a ton of money for a honeymoon. It was important to us that we had one and, given the circumstances of not knowing where we were going to be living after he graduated, we decided (fine. I decided) that we were going on the honeymoon after the wedding rather than postponing it. The problem was affording it.

We explored dozens of options, domestic, international, and tropical island. Due to the time of year and the fact that we could only afford a 5 day trip, most places were eliminated almost immediately. Then we looked at flight prices and even more places were eliminated. We were left with a few options and ultimately, we decided on going to the Bahamas. But the cost was still a bit daunting. However, in one of our smarter moments, we agreed that we were not putting the honeymoon on a credit card. To do that we did the following (and please be advised, I don’t necessarily recommend any of this. It’s just what we did):

  • Convinced my father to donate some of his airline miles to us to add to mine in order for us to get a free ticket. We still had to pay for one ticket but this greatly helped decrease the ticket cost. 
  • Went to an all-inclusive resort. It cost a little more upfront but reduced the overall cost. Especially when you factor in not having to pay extra for food, tips or anything else that chips away at your vacation budget. 
  • Used some of the cash we got for engagement presents to pay for the trip. Yes, we should have saved it for…whatever, but this just seemed like the perfect thing to spend the money on. Besides, it was gift money. And we needed it (insert loose definition of “need”).
  • Had a set cash budget for extra activities, like a cab ride and money to gamble with at The Atlantis. We knew we weren’t going to be able to have a lot of cash for extras but we wanted to have some. So we put aside a specific amount for each day and if we didn’t use it, we rolled it into the next. It’s how we each had gambling money (which I turned into a profit and then, because of my husband’s bad advice, lost in its entirety. Never. Again.).
If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things completely differently. But I don’t think it turned out so badly. I mean, it was 5 days in The Bahamas! Who can complain about that? Plus, we incurred no debt for it. Which, for two people living on less than $40K, isn’t too shabby.
Did you employ any creative money saving techniques for your honeymoon?

What to do when you just do not have enough income?

by Jana 7 Comments

The following is a guest post from Kylie Ofiu who shares real ways to make and save money on her blog. She also discusses her journey and goal to become a millionaire by 30 (which is 2015), while being an at home mom in Australia. She is the author of 365 Ways To Make Money, a freelance writer, owner of various blogs and an international public speaker.

We went through almost a year of no permanent work. My husband was signed up with a couple of agencies who got him work here and there and he was looking for a job. We had a little bit of savings and some money in our mortgage we were able to redraw but it took 12 months for him to get a full time, permanent job which is not something we expected.

We had 2 daughters to provide for and needed to cover all our expenses such as the mortgage, food, petrol, water, electricity, insurance, land rates and so on. Sometimes, even with an emergency fund, you do not have enough money.

So what do you do?

There were a few things we did. Firstly we looked at ways we could cut back.

FOOD: I sourced as much food as possible for free by learning where wild foods grew in my area that were safe to eat, joining a food co-op, letting friends and family know about our situation (we had a few friends who had friends who got large amounts of free food to share out to people who needed it, and we needed it.) I already menu planned, but I did it more carefully and truly watched what we bought and ate.

I made lots of our food from scratch and stretched things as far as I could. We don’t have coupons where I live, so instead I looked for reduced items when I had to buy food.

MORTGAGE: Once we were close to exhausting our funds I contacted our bank and discussed out situation with them. They gave us 5 months of no payments. Of course the interest would still accrue, but we didn’t have to worry about paying. If we happened to have extra cash we could pay to reduce the interest, which we did, but the pressure was off for a while. This is obviously a short term solution, but the bank was happy to help us since we spoke to them before we missed a payment.

BILLS: I called our electricity, gas and water providers to negotiate. We were now classed as low income which meant we would be entitled to a discount so I made sure we were getting it. I also researched everything on ways to save money on these bills such as uplugging things not in use, shorter showers etc.

We also dropped all unnecessary expenses, I entered a lot of competitions and giveaways so we cold use any winnings for gifts and we kept our eyes peeled for free entertainment in our area. We learned to barter a lot and do many things ourselves.

Reducing expenses will only take you so far though. We needed to find ways to increase our income. We were both looking for work, but nothing was forthcoming, so we had to think outside the box and find ways to make money.

Ways to make money

I needed ways to make money from home that were flexible because a couple of the casual jobs my husband had (and I mean very casual, as in no work some weeks) had the potential to go permanent so we didn’t want to say no when they called him for work.

  • Garage sale: This was one of our first moves. We went through everything we owned and looked at what we could sell. I listed things online and we had a garage sale at our house. It took a bit of work but was worth it.
  • Resell things: I looked for items to buy and resell. At second hand shops and garage sales I kept my eye out for books I know sell well here, Tupperware, brand name clothing and other things which were small, easy to post and I could purchase cheaply.
  • Writing: I was already blogging, which during this time saw me go from a small blogger to the owner of a couple of sites, an author, freelance writer and public speaker. Most of this happened about 8 months after my husband ceased permanent work and none of it was reliable, but it was something I could do which brought in a little extra money. The more I did, the more confident I became which lead to me seeking out more work.
  • Haircuts: I am a hairdresser and beautician by trade so was able to fall back on this a little and do friends and family. It is not something I enjoy, but it is a skill I have. Look at the skills you have and how you can make money with them.
  • Mending, ironing, lawn mowing, cleaning, baby sitting, paper deliveries, pizza delivery and other services were all things we considered doing as well. Actually the more we looked the more opportunities like that we found which were flexible and many able to be done from home.

It is not easy when your expenses outweigh your income but by being positive, keeping your mind and eyes open to possibilities and letting people know you are looking for work, happy to barter and so on you can relieve some of the pressure and get back on your feet.

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