Introduction

As men age, we are all looking for ways to stay healthy. Plus we want to make it as easy as possible so here are a few tips on easy ways to stay healthy and what health conditions you can help prevent.

Eating Right

I do not know about you but I do not cook. I let my wife, who is a stay at home mom, do all the cooking. She is very fussy on what we eat and is years ahead of our government. This year our government recommended we eat more whole grains, fruits, vegetables and fish that she has been feeding our family for years.

My wife fixes our meals using whole grains, no saturated fats and lots of fruits and vegetables. We do not eat much fish because of the mercury contamination, so we take fish oil supplements to get our required Omega-3.

Exercising

This is easier than you think. At first it may be hard to do, but once you make the commitment to exercise, it becomes a habit, and a very good habit to get into.

If you haven’t exercised for some time start with light work outs and then slowly build your exercise routine up. I started by walking a quarter of a mile each day. Then I started running a quarter of a mile and before long I was running in 10K road races. Also during this time I lifted lightweights gradually building up to higher weights.

Supplements

If you eat a healthy diet you do not need to take supplements. But as I mentioned, my family does not eat fish because of the mercury contamination contained in the fish. But fish is the best source of Omega-3 an essential fatty acid that the body needs.

So we take fish oil supplements to receive our required amounts of Omega-3.

Health Benefits

By eating the right foods, exercising and taking any required supplements can help prevent health conditions such as:

Heart Disease Prostate Cancer High Blood Pressure Heart Attacks Certain Cancers

These are just some of the health problems you can avoid, but there are many more.

Conclusion

These are some of the easiest things a man can do to stay fit. The hardest part is making the commitment to eat right, exercise, and taking the supplements your diet does not provide you. But doing these you can keep healthy and avoid many diseases and unhealthy conditions.

There are plenty of work from home no fee programs out there targeted towards stay at home mom looking to earn a little part time income. If you are looking for ways to make good part time money or even full time money you can still begin earning without paying some kind of program fee.

The opportunity to make money online from home these days is tremendous and there are millions of people earning from a couple dollars a day to a couple thousand dollars a day.

I have always been one to firmly commit to the fact that a legitimate opportunity has to be a work from home no fee program because those that ask for money are scams.

The only exception to this is when it comes to learning something new you will use to make money online. No different than starting a new job where you have to learn the ways your company does business so you can begin to be promoted within the business and earn more money.

Being able to use some of the best ways to make money online sometimes comes with the cost of an education to learn how to use the free resources, tools and websites available for everyone. this does not mean you always have to spend money or that you have to spend a ton of money. The honest truth you can pick things up for free and there are tons of real and even big name companies that offer work from home no fee programs.

Did you know that Walmart, Target, Macys, Guitar Center all have work from home no fee programs? All you have to do is learn how to use these types of programs to make money online.

Deciding whether or not you can stay at home after you have a baby can be a big decision. Emotions play a big factor, especially after holding your precious newborn for the first time. It’s hard to imagine leaving this tiny little thing with a stranger. On the other hand, you can gain a tremendous sense of accomplishment from your job that you couldn’t feel after a day of changing diapers and wiping up spit up. No matter how you face it emotionally, if you are considering becoming a stay at home mom at all, you first need to figure out if you can financially afford to do it.

Make a Budget

The first step you should take is to record your expenses. For at least one month,
better yet three, record everything you spend from latte’s to toilet paper to dinners
out. Everything needs to be accounted for. There is no need to go on a budget diet
yet, the goal is to find out how much you currently spend and on what items, so that
if you find you do need to scale back, you can recognize where to do so.

There are a couple of ways you can go about recording all of your purchases. One is
you can carry around a little notebook and make a note every time you buy
something. The other way is to charge everything you purchase with your debit or
credit card and use your monthly statement as your notebook of purchases.
However, if you choose to charge everything to your credit card, you must promise
yourself to pay off the full amount when your statement comes. Going into credit card debt is not going to help you achieve your goal of becoming a stay at home
mom.

Once you have every cup of coffee, every grocery trip and every pair of new shoes accounted for, it’s time to write it into a budget worksheet. Use a budget spreadsheet that will add up all of your expenses and subtract them from your income.
When you have the form filled out, look at your bottom number. Hopefully this will
be positive. Now go up and delete your income at the top. Don’t forget to delete any
expenses that occur from you working (dry cleaning bill, gas costs, lunches out,
etc.). Remember also that your taxes will change once you drop down to one income
and you may be able to change your withholdings to bring more monthly income in.
Go to the IRS website and use their tax withholding calculator with only your
husbands paycheck information to see how much you can change your
withholdings. If your bottom number is still positive, then you are fortunate enough
to be able to be a stay at home mom without much fiscal sacrifice. However if it’s
now dipped to a negative number, do not despair, it’s time to look over your
expenses and find ways to minimize them.

Saving on Your Expenses

Saving money doesn’t always have to be painful. Many women say that one of their
biggest jobs as stay at home moms is to seek out bargains and make sure the
family sticks to a budget. Consider this a lesson in what could be part of your new
job description. Below are four big-ticket expenses that most households face. Let’s
take a look at these and see if we can’t save a couple hundred dollars right off the
bat.

o Mortgage or Rent. This is often a couple’s largest monthly expense.
The obvious way to reduce this cost is to move to a less expensive place to live, but
that’s not always the best option for your family. Try looking at refinancing. That
can be a fantastic way to lower your monthly mortgage payment and may make it
financially feasible for you to be able to become a stay at home mom. Plug some
numbers onto an online refinancing company to see if this might make sense for
you. If you rent, ask your landlord if there is anything you can do around the
property that could reduce your monthly rent. Ask if you can help manage their
other properties, take on the yardwork, do other chores or even sign on for a longer
lease for a reduction in rent.

o Credit card, car payments and other ‘bad’ debt. These kinds of
debts you want to try and get out of as soon as possible. Make is a goal to get out
of credit card debt before you decide to become a stay at home mom. There are a
number of credit cards that offer zero percent interest for a specific amount of time.
Take advantage of these offers to reduce your monthly bill and use the amount you
would have paid with your old card towards paying off the principle. Condense your
monthly expenses and throw everything you can towards paying your credit card
debt and car payment off so that your time for being a stay at home mom will be
less stressful.

o Grocery Bill. You can easily reduce your grocery bill by planning a
weekly menu and making a shopping list. Designate one night a week for sitting
down with the grocery ads and your cookbooks. Come up with seven different meals
that take advantage of the weeks grocery sales and write down the list of
ingredients you will need. There are many great website services that will plan your
weekly meals and e-mail you a weekly shopping list too. Make sure to clip coupons
from the Sunday paper and from coupon websites. Also try the generic version of
your favorite brand. Chances are you’ll never notice the difference.

o Utilities. Take Dad’s advise and start turning off the lights when you
leave a room. Replace incandescent lights with florescent, get a hot water heater
blanket for your hot water heater. There are a number of different ways you can
reduce your energy bill. Don’t hesitate to call your utilities and ask how you can save
money on your monthly bill. You phone company can find a more efficient and
cheaper plan for you and the garbage company can suggest a smaller garbage can
size. Also ask yourself if you really need all of the gadgets you’ve become
accustomed to: Do you really need that cell phone now that you won’t be
commuting? Do you really need the fancy cable TV package or can you live without
it for a few years?

Keep moving down each category on your budget worksheet and ask yourself how
you could reduce costs. In this day and age most families have to make sacrifices
for a parent to become a stay at home parent. Remember that it’s temporary
though. Children grow up before you know it and being a stay at home mom may
just be more satisfying than any payroll job you could ever have.

Article by Kurtis Rivers

My husband retired last year, and I have always been a stay at home mom raising the kids. However, our wonderful children have since grown and are living their own lives, so my husband George and I can do what we want to now. Not that we couldn’t when our kids were growing up, but you know what I mean – we can start having adventures again.

I’m always amazed at the fun things George has up his sleeve after all these years. I mean, we’re in our late 60′s and people often mistake us for newlyweds! Can you imagine? George always gives me little hints about our trips and all he would say is that we were going to a Florida attraction I’d never guess. He sure was right! George surprised me just last week on our 45th wedding anniversary with a brochure on Cypress Airboats. Never in my life did I imagine I’d be riding on any kind of open air boat in the midst of snakes, lizards, alligators, and lord knows what else.

I would have thought George might take me to one of the better-known Florida Attractions like Disney World or Busch Gardens. I am so glad he chose an airboat tour instead! It was so thrilling!

George selected an early morning airboat tour, and we had breakfast just before we started. When I stepped onto the airboat, I was really nervous, but George just tucked my arm under his and guided me along like he has all these years. We were able to see alligators, and the only place I ever thought I’d want to see alligator skin was on a purse! It was just so exciting. I felt like I could reach out and touch the alligators, but of course, I didn’t!

The best part of the airboat trip, aside from having a special tour of the Florida Everglades with my wonderful husband, was when we saw a blue heron. One of our first dates way back when was at a jazz club called the Blue Heron. There is no way George could have anticipated we would see a blue heron on our trip with Cypress Airboats, but it made our tour even more perfect.

If you are considering a trip to Florida, I would definitely recommend Cypress Airboats’ private tours over any other Florida Attraction. Sure, you could go ride roller coasters and see how movies are made, but those are common events in a person’s life and will be logged with all the other memories you often forget. I can’t think of any attraction in Florida that is more memorable that the Florida Everglades with their thick vegetation and fantastic wildlife. George and I had such a great time we’re thinking of going again for our 50th wedding anniversary and taking an even longer airboat tour!