Hi personal finance bloggies! It’s ninja’s sister-in-law and I’m so excited to be able to jump into the world of blogging and write my first blog post ever! I don’t really know anything about personal finances, but I am very passionate about health and wellness, and being that I’m a college student, you know I live on a budget. Today I’m going to give you guys some tips on how to be healthy, but not break the bank. You don’t have to have a gym membership to reap the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle!

Take advantage of YouTube

Part of my daily routine is to do 8 minute abs and arms. It’s 100% free and so quick and easy. All you have to do is type in “8 minute abs or arms” into the search engine and 8 minutes later you’ll have a flat stomach and toned arms. (Of course you’ll need to do this more than once to see some results)  Bonus tip: play the video on mute and use your own music for the workout…you WILL be thankful.

 Read healthy living blogs

This past year I have discovered some great healthy living blogs and have learned so much from reading them, everything from different workouts to healthy recipes. You name it, there is a blog that writes about it. My personal favorite is Peanut Butter Fingers, go check her out, she’s funny , totally personal, and has the best workout advice and yummy healthy meals that anyone could whip up in a kitchen.

Take advantage of your environment

I know that we are not all lucky enough to live in beautiful San Diego, where the sun seems to shine everyday, but wherever you live, it is not hard to get outside, lace up a pair of running shoes, and go for a run. If you give it a chance, running can become one of the most rewarding, and free exercises you could ever do. Anyone can become a runner, believe me. Three years ago I loathed running, and now I’m running marathons, once you start, you just fall in love.

 Find free workout classes in your community

There are always deals going on at different gyms, yoga studios, plates classes, ect. Core Power Yoga offers a week of free classes for new students, and gyms are always giving out free week passes for new people to come check out their facilities with the hopes of luring them in to a membership. If you’re willing to hunt around, you could potentially never have to pay to use a gym or take a fitness class.

Obviously there are a million different ways to incorporate healthy choices in to our daily lives. Hopefully you’ve found some of these tips/tricks helpful, but what I’m really hoping is that you share with me some of the ways you make healthy choices on the cheap. How (or where) do you workout? If you have a gym membership are you getting your monies worth? If you read any health blogs please leave them in the comments below so I can start following

Today’s post comes from my homegirl Sandy. She blog’s at firstgenamerican.com. She loves reading about personal finance and frugal living. Her frugal side comes from her immigrant mom who definitely falls into the camp of the frugal extreme.  She currently goes by Sandy L in my blog comments. Here’s her post….

I have two children now, so I’m often thinking about how not to screw their lives up.  I’m also wondering what they will be missing out on by not having things as tough as I did growing up.

Looking back, I bet my mother was wondering the same thing.  She grew up during WW2 in Poland and was often malnourished, hungry and cold.  She did have a roof over her head but had no electricity, no running water, limited education, and limited heat in the winter.  I often complain to my husband about how our electric bill is 3x what my mom’s is. He quickly retorts: “It’s not fair comparing ourselves to someone who grew up without electricity.”

So, the question is again, what’s more powerful, a positive role model or a negative one, or do you need both?  I see people who have positive role models who turn out a mess and vice versa…so in the end does anything you do really matter or is it all genetics?

For years, I had little empathy with the people in the hood who would cry their sob stories about how bad their lives are and how they’ll never get ahead, etc, etc.  It just sounded like my dad..and I knew he had opportunities.  He just chose not to pursue them. I also knew there were 8 million scholarships out there for poor people because I got lots of them.   I always thought: I was poor and I got out.  It’s your own fault that you are still destitute.

My perspective all changed when I did grand jury.  They ushered in a young teenage boy for drug dealing.  I soon learned that his entire family had a record.  Everyone he lived with was a convicted drug dealer. His parents, uncle, cousins, siblings, grandfather.  No one in his family ever worked a real job. How the heck are you supposed to know there is something else in life that is meant for you when you have no perspective?  How do you make a future for yourself when you have a record before you even get out of high school?  How do you get off welfare when that’s how everyone else you know gets by?

That’s really when I realized that all people need a lifeline, a ray of hope, a success story to cling onto.   For me, the main one was my mom. For all intensive purposes she was the breadwinner of the family. We lived in an almost condemned apartment building that my parents paid for in cash and fixed up as they got money.  They sent me to private school, I went to college, I always had a roof over my head, I was never hungry. When my mom got laid off about 15 years ago, her gross income was ~$15K/year.  She maintained a lush garden, sewed a lot of my clothes, worked 40-60 hours a week, cooked, cleaned, and did laundry. My mom was very sleep deprived.   I knew that hard work and creativity could at least get me fed and housed.   By most American standards we were poor, but to her, we lived in a house with running water and electricity. It was a giant step up from where she had come from.

I remember when I graduated from college and my job included relo. The woman who lived downstairs from my mom saw the guys packing my stuff and told me I was “so lucky.”   LUCK??  I call it 5 years of sleep deprivation by going to engineering school and working 30 hrs/week. For her, it was easier to look past the hard work and zero straight to the result.

So what did I get from positive role models?  I got a lot of hope and a little bit of an instruction manual.

• Hard Work, not Luck is what makes you get ahead.
• Don’t look to others to make your life better, look inward to yourself
• If you see someone’s success, don’t forget about the steps it took for someone to get there.
• Always keep Goals
• Save part of your paycheck
• Don’t buy anything you can’t pay for with cash.
• Sacrifice is required to make big gains in any situation.
• There are no get rich quick schemes. Most wealthy people I knew spent a lifetime to get to where they are today.  (Now perhaps I would think differently if I knew many young entrepreneurs).

I’m curious to hear who your positive role models have been. Do tell!

Every so often I like to stray from the typical financial mumbo jumbo and write about some stuff I’m sure none of you really care about. As the title alludes, I am currently on a mission of utmost importance… getting sexified for my wedding.

The wedding is tenatively scheduled for August 8th, which leaves me with approximately 8 months to get totally ripped. Just like I got my financial life in order (or at least am trying to) I need to set up a game plan for Operation Sexy Body.

Fortunately my roommate is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach/Personal Trainer so if I need any help or resources he can whip my butt in to shape. I originally planned on joining a gym to help get in shape, but I’m just too darn frugal to pay for the membership (How many of you actually use your gym memberships consistently?). Plus my roomie has a bunch of workout supplies like free weights, pull up bars, bands, and a big giant rubber ball thingy.

Here’s what I think I will be looking to accomplish…

1) Run three to five miles three times per week

2) Be able to do 20 pullups

3) Work on a 6-pack, currently have a 2.5-pack

4) Run 2 miles in under 14 minutes

5) Reach goal of 50 consecutive push ups

6) Not look like this guy…

You’ll notice I did not include a weight loss goal in my list. I’m 6’1 and weigh 175lbs so I am not overweight, so I don’t really need to drop weight as much as I just want to make sure I am lookin hot as H-E-double-hockey sticks come wedding day.

It’s one thing to have a stated goal to get in shape, it’s a whole other thing to actually do it. So mark my words bloggers, I WILL BE SEXIFIED BY AUGUST 8TH. Are you a sporadic worker-outer like myself? How frequently do you break a sweat? Do you practice what you preach when it comes to your health?

A few weeks ago, I briefly mentioned an article at I Will Teach You To Be Rich. It was titled Ugh,why don’t fat people just eat less? I have wanted to talk about my opinions in reference to the article for a while, so I do so today. Here’s a brief passage from the article.

Most importantly, behavioral change is not simply about trying harder. Yes, effort is important, but whether it’s passive barriers or the variety of other reasons that illustrate how personal finance is not about more willpower, let’s be real: Behavioral change is incredibly complex and difficult.
Anyone who believes people overeat and overspend simply because of a lack of willpower is simplistically ignoring decades of research so they can ideologically mislead themselves.

Although I do agree that both nature and nurture play huge parts in human development, I am still skeptical of blaming genetics for all our problems. Few would say DNA has no role in our development, but, and this is a big but, I do think we have allowed our DNA to limit us. It’s become a crutch that too many use as a reason to underperform.

I’m just not buying the “My DNA has cursed debt upon me” argument. People get caught up in the “This research shows….blah blah blah” and never think past it. I would like to remind them of Newton’s third law of statistics...For every statistic there is an equal and opposite statistic (that’s what it was right?) You can also find stats that show saturated fat and high fructose corn syrup are beneficial to the human body. Don’t live a life bound by how statistics tell you to live.

Maybe I am ignorant, but I refuse to subscribe to science that says I am forced in to medocrity. For anyone that disagrees, take a good look at Barack Obama, little (if anything) in his upbringing, would lead anyone to believe he was going to be President. I say, “Be the exception, not the rule.” Do you think I’m ignorant for ignoring scientific research? Well, ignorance is bliss and I’m one happy ninja.

I now can say I have experienced a little taste of hell. As you all are aware, I am currently on a business trip on a very tiny island in far east Asia. I have blogged a few times about my food setbacks when I wrote about packing a lunch and how awkward eating out alone can be on business trips.

Consider those issues trivial compared to the issue I now face. There are only a handful of food options where I’m staying. There’s a burger king, subway, pizza place, one buffet style cafeteria, and a grocery store. After two weeks of whopper juniors, 12 inch subs, and medium pizzas, I’m pretty sure my stomach wants to punch me in the face.

My hotel room is equipped with a mini-fridge and a microwave. I’ve done the peanut butter and jelly thing a handful of times, but I am in need of some nutritional meals that don’t require an oven or a stove. The meals I typically make for myself, back home, all require some type of cooking.

Imagine your oven/stove broke down today and you couldn’t get it fixed for six weeks. What would you work in to your diet? I’ve flirted with the idea of making a salad, but would get pretty sick of it after about two meals. Right now my “mini fridge diet” consists of PB&J, cereal, apples, pears, oranges, and yogurt. That’s all I got. I’m freaked out by cooking things in the microwave (I feel like it makes my food toxic….crazy I know) so frozen dinners and the like aren’t really an option.

Anyone have any crazy delicious sandwich combinations that are easy and never get old? My culinary skills are quite elementary so try and keep it to recipes you would trust a 3rd grader with I may be a Debt Ninja, but I am in no way any kind of Chef Ninja. Oh, and keep in mind the grocery store on this island is pretty ghetto so pre-made sandwiches/salads/soups don’t exist here.