Friday, February 5, 2010

Financial Friday

This has to be one of the worst times to be in debt. Interest rates keep climbing, making it more difficult to pay off old debts. Minimum payments keep climbing, making it more difficult to pay off old debts. The price of groceries, household goods, gasoline, and more keep climbing, making it more difficult to pay off old debts.

We have been trying to get out of debt for years now, but it seems we take a step backward for every two steps forward. We have made progress. We outright own our vehicles, and we have paid off some credit cards and other debts. Last year, we tried not to use our credit cards. We did all right until a few emergencies came up.

One exception we make to our no credit card usage rule is using our Old Navy card. We always pay off the balance after we use it so we don't have to pay interest. If we will not be able to pay it off, then we don't use it. We don't use it often. Following is an explanation of why we go ahead and use the Old Navy card.

My cousin's baby shower is tomorrow and I went to get her a gift today. We did not have the money in our budget for a gift, but we did have a ten dollar Old Navy Bucks Back coupon earned by our previous purchases.


This is what I found. I got the notepad so that I would not lose two dollars, but it is a nice pad that my cousin could keep handy in her diaper bag.


This is a copy of my receipt.

I am always looking for new money saving ideas, so now let me ask you. What do you do to stretch a dollar?

3 comments:

Mrs. Darling said...

Hi Brandi,
In response to your comment about walking over on my site here is what the fitness gurus are saying. A pound of fat equals 3500 calories. To lose 1 pound a week you will need to expend 3500 more calories than you eat that week. A 1 mile walk burns 100 calories. If you walk 4 miles in an hour you will have burned 400 calories so you can see how impossible it is to lose 10 pounds in two weeks by just walking a couple hours a week.

If you walked 8 miles a week you would only burn 800 calories. Theoretically you would need to walk 35 miles to lose one pound. To lose 10 pounds you would need to walk 350 miles thus it is impossible to use walking for weight loss.

Some people see results if they have been sedentary and are filled with fluid. Walking will help them get rid of excess water weight but of course that fluctuates and is not a measure of weight lost.

Where walking really has huge benefits is in our sense of well being and our cardiovascular health. Eventually if you walk enough you would also build up muscle that would in turn burn fat even at a resting heart rate.

Fitness gurus tell us that if you are really losing weight from just walking a few miles a week it is more due to the fact that you have changed your eating whether or not you are aware of it. Walking helps control appetite. Studies have shown that over and over sedentary people claim they havent changed their eating patterns and have lost weight by walking just a few minutes a day. If those same people actually chart their food intake they find that they are indeed cutting back on their food and thus the resulting weightloss.

This is one reason why women can be overweight and still be out there running marathons.

Its a tricky business for sure but its a battle I tend to win sooner or later! :)

Tammy said...

Re: Mrs Darling

Your message depressed me. I can't really exercise due to disability but I'm always looking for something I can manage to do in that regard... but if that's all that walking burns I'm not likely to find anything that'll do me much good lol

But I went and found a chart ( http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm ) and it seems how much you burn while walking is dependent on how much you weigh to start with. This chart shows brisk paced (4mph) walking for a 130 lb person at 236 cal/hr but a 190 lb person would burn 345 in an hour. So that 2 hours of walking for a light person would only burn about 500 but that same 2 hours for a heavy person would be almost 700...

I imagine it depends a lot on how fast you're walking and how long you spend each time as well (e.g. whether you're going aerobic or not).

3500 calories to burn a pound of fat is still insanely depressing to me though... I counted for several days and I only eat about 1500 calories a day so just cutting 3500/wk would be nearly impossible.

It looks like I was burning around 500 cal/hr when I was playing wheelchair basketball though - too bad I can't play anymore lol

Damama T said...

Brandi - That is amazing! I've heard of people getting free stuff like that but I've never actually seen it in action. WAY COOL!

Hugs, darlin!