If you have a huge family chances are your most hated chore, and the one you do the most often, is grocery
shopping. The larger your family, the steeper your shopping bill. It may have gotten to the point where
it’s half your monthly budget, and you don’t see a way out. It’s a numbers game. The more happy people
housed under your roof, the more hungry mouths you need to fill. But not all meals or shopping trips are
created equal. There are a ton of ways you can cut your grocery shopping bill without sacrificing the health
and happiness of your family. Here is a quick peek at a couple ideas you can use right away to slash this
month’s shopping bill and rescue a budget on life support.

Try to do the bulk of your grocery shopping at one store, and familiarize yourself with their sale schedule.
Grocery store circulars come out every week, with a new string of promotions roughly every three weeks.
So make note of when your staples hit the sales circular, and buy in bulk your most common household
purchases. If you can pick up all the cereal, meat, juice and fruit your family goes through in three-week
chunks, you’ll realize the highest discounts. Get to know the people that work in the meat department in
your supermarket, and find out when they mark down their short date stock. Each store will have a certain
time of day when they switch out the marked down meats, and by waiting until then to purchase, you’ll be
able to save huge on the best cuts of meat.

Consider what you purchase a bit more carefully. Coupons are fantastic, and can save big on your
monthly food budget. So take the time to clip them, and buy what’s on sale if it is something you need.
The important [Read more…]

If there’s one thing that children are a great example of it’s that they’re such trusting individuals. Their love
for us as parents is so big and the way they see the world is from such an innocent place, that it’s totally
understandable when the news of their parents breaking up leaves them, more times than not, utterly
devastated.

Oftentimes, as a result, a crack in the foundation of that trust emerges. So, as parents try and move on with
their lives, they have the ever-so-delicate balancing act of attempting to do so while trying to avoid having
their children experience any further emotional trauma.

Therefore, it would definitely make sense that when it comes to dating, parents would need to be sensitive
in how they approach the matter while their kids being that they are still trying to adjust to their parents
being apart. If this is a dilemma that you find yourself currently in, consider these three points.

Your children didn’t choose to divorce, you did. Sometimes, in processing their parents’ divorce, what
makes a child even less responsive to it is that while their mother and father may have said, “This isn’t your
fault” or “We both love you very much”, what wasn’t stated was, “We know you didn’t make this decision
and that you’re having to deal with the consequences of our choices. We apologize for that.” That’s an
empowering thing for a child to hear because it sends the message that you’re going to do the best that you
can to help them to adjust to the “new normal” that they never wanted in the first place. And with that kind
of acknowledgement, while you should feel like you have to put your life on hold, as it relates to them and
their needs, it does send the message that you will do all that you can to be aware of your actions and more
importantly, the timing and delivery of them.

Keep the lines of communication way open. This will certainly depend on the age of your child, but as
you’re finding yourself more interested in dating, ask them how they feel about the topics of love, dating
and marriage (again). There are [Read more…]