SUGGESTION ON HOW TO SAVE

1) Charity and Donations

Church goers are supposed to give the first fruits (money that you get from working or from the government given to them  to the Church. This to pay the minister, and expand the gospel as well as support the schools and often the later is put in a separate envelope. After that, there is the collection plate plus charities such as giving to the gospel missions or donating to help the poor. You should give enough so that you will not be able to spend rest of your money haphazardly on what would not be beneficial, such as eating out every day at expensive restaurants, buying things you will throw away after using them just once, buying a computer just to play games, etc. . I believe putting a certain amount each money is best rather then the percentile routine, but then math is not my best subject.

With political donations. It is best to support your political party. And especially if what the present party is going is detrimental to the citizens - such as high taxes, extravagant spending, spending on what is immorality such as baby killing, letting the elderly die without comfort, preference for same sex marriages, etc.  You do get credit for it.

Charities.  This is often overwhelming and if you gave to every charity, you will wind up in debt or in serious money trouble.   I had my mother-in-law as an example.  So give to what charities you consider will do the most help.

2) The Pay Yourself First

Or rather, pay yourself second if you give the first fruits to the church.  Usually it is ten percent the same for tithes considering that you do not want to buy something extravagent.  But in reality it should be ten percent or less after you give the first fruits to the church.  And the goal is six months income. But there is another finance that is added to it also known as mad money.  No its not to pay for the trip to Europe or that diamond necklace. That is if anything happens such as getting ill, going to the hospital, nursing home that will cost quite a bit, funeral, etc.  A suggestion is if you have a few savings accounts (necessary now that Bank of Montreal is becoming anti-Christian) to using the interests towards the Mad Money account.   It used to be you could have a regular bank account and an online account, but now you may need a couple.

3) Saving for the Big  Item

I remember people I know, saying with sadness, "we were saving for a new car," and then added, "but we decided we could not afford it so we will put more on the mortgage."  And I wondered why they said that? Surely if their car was breaking down, they did need a new one.  So I figured it was because they came into money from their tax refund, they had not put any money aside for the new car and that was the problem.  You cannot just wait until after February.   The best thing is to after deciding what big item you need or want-need, is to find out how much you can put together each month so that in a year or two or three, you can buy it.   And then specify.  A caveat.   One item at a time.

4) Told you must give up your cable, your home phone, or both.

The thing is like most it should be your choice and not someone suggesting ways to spend money so you feel you have to give up your cable.   Personally I wish what they used to have in England where you put money in a box to see what was on TV for a certain period of time. There are some shows that do not appear on the basic cable and if you want to get news that is not from a leftist point of view, you may have to subscribe to the second or third tier. And it also may save your life, especially when it comes to Muslim terrorism when the regular tv stations say that all Muslims are peaceful.

With giving up your home phone, if you seldom get toll free numbers and do not make that many calls out of your city that would not make your cost more, by all means just use your cell phone.  But remember that toll free numbers are not toll free on cell phones. There is a cost especially when you get the message, "Your call is important to us," and have to wait a while. Then against if you have phone, cable, and computer included on your Shaw, Bell, etc., you can wait for a while on your home phone and do not have to pay extra.

You see there are advantages and disadvantages.


5)Watch your budget when you shop for food

What not to do is to buy the cheapest unless you are sure they are non-GMO. With vegetables especially frozen, you may not know and unfortunately non-GMO maybe more expensive. It is like when I was younger, that even though margarine contained transfats, and Kool-aid was just flavoured water with lots of sugar, many parents used that because they could not afford butter or real juice and only used fruit in season.  And watch for trans fats or anything that could deliberately harm your health. Often times, this may conflict with your church giving, but  then the elders and deacons do not want you to harm your health, so they will caution you about paying on time for luxuries or things you do not have the money for that will not help you spiritually or others.
The best way to keep your food budget lower is to start a garden.  Even if you can only grow enough food for one week or one day, that besides being invited out, will be one week or one less day of food to buy. It will also make sure you do not buy food that has pesticides or chemicals in.   You can also buy in bulk, etc,

6) Health

If you have a chronic condition, you may have to spend more.  For instance, if you are diabetic, the healthy food are often more expensive and taking herbal medicines, multi-vitamins designed for blood sugar reduction as well as eye healing vitamins cost more then the regular vitamins even ones designed for over 55.   Also if you have bad eyes, there are eye examinations even if you just have myopia or age related, prescription glasses do cost money.

7) Gardening and other outside activities

A rainbarrel is a good idea. And in winter you can water indoor plants with melted snow. You can start plants in pots and then later on enlarge your garden by digging.  You save a bit that way.

8) Insurance and Taxes:

You need this, especially home or rental insurance. Best pay once a year because you get a discount. And of course, there is also taxes.

9) Clothes and other things.

Some are lucky. They can go down to Goodwill or Value Village and pick up something.  I cannot, so I take advantage on the biyearly sales. As well as the other things, do not buy unless there is a sale.

10)For the Old People

Getting help for what you cannot do for yourself, may having you agreeing to pay for someone to fix up your house, do your lawn, shovel your snow, etc.  Some may do it voluntarily, but if you are persuaded to pay them,it is best to do what you can for yourself.  That is, when winter comes, if there is not much snow, you can clean the sidewalk yourself, but when there is a lot of snow, you can pay for it. With gardening, you may be able to plant, but may not be strong enough to dig up the lawn or build one of those boxes to grow all your vegetables.  The same for lawn mower.  You can buy the gas, but someone may have to mow your lawn especially if it is quite large.   So if you can do it yourself, do it, but not if it is too much.

Piano Lessons and other things

I decided to upgrade my piano playing. Well since I am taking singing lessons, I cannot afford to take piano lessons so decided to do it on my own. Except that now my hand spread is not wide enough especially when trying jazz. You know, those seven chord notes.

Then there is keeping the piano in good condition. The humidity has to be right. You have to get it tuned, in some places you can get away with one year, others you have to get it down twice a year, and some places are so bad, it seems they have to have a piano tuner around all the time. Apparently here in Manitoba, you can get off with twice a year to once a year.  So have catching up to do.

Oh and the Hanon Exercises are very good and a must for classical piano playing.
That is all for now.

The iPad

In the last few years, the iPad and other tablets have come into view.  These have made it easier for the writer to get his or her work done when he or she is not at their computer or laptop.  With the iCloud method of saving the work, the writer can write and upload it to iCloud, and then go on the computer and revise the work there without having to put the chapter on a flash drive or email it to the computer.

An iPad makes it easier if one wants to use the computer to write the story, and yet can have other information on the iPad or tablet.   It does not mean that when you get an iPad, you are now fabulously wealthy and you have money in abundance, but sometimes I feel that way.  I will not go into detail, and some of my friends know.   But I do wonder about these who have iPads among those I know and who  are secretive about it, either keep it entirely in their home, and do not take it out work while having coffee.   Perhaps they had gone through the same thing.  

It is a tool.   I doubt that any of us bought it just to play Angry Birds.

THE VOICE

SINGING

In order to sing well, one needs to take lessons.   Now many start by going online and taking the free singing lessons offered.    After that, they will decide to take voice lessons and even though there are good ones such as offered by Singing Success or Singorama, if one is serious, one will look for a voice teacher.   

The thing is by going for  voice teacher, they are showing to those around them or the world in general that they do intend to use the talent that God has given them and in my opinion, it would be rather wasteful to put over $50 in lessons  a month (taking the cheapest rate) and the only singing one does is in the choir, at church in the congregation, or to themselves in their home.    I am not talking about just getting paid for your singing.    I am talking about recitals, solos where at least an audience hears your voice.   

Now preparing to sing for a recital or a concert is not easy.   One has to practice and get the phrases right, and not only that, to show the emotion in the song and get the right tone.   I have several operas and classical pieces and when I go to Youtube and hear Maria Callas or another famous singer, I wonder how did she do it.   I want to be able to sing like them and have the voice that would thrill the audience, but do not want just sing into the mirror.      

It also is not right for someone to say, "Well you are brave to stand in front of the audience."    To a singer that means that they really cannot sing so they are brave enough to make a fool of themselves in front of an audience and that the audience is clapping out of sympathy. 

    

Besides not really wanting to, the reasons why one cannot sing a solo at a recital or a concert should be because a singer's inability to do so and that should be because of her feeling she is not ready at that time,  her own physical health prevents her from doing so, or she has other commitments, a funeral in the family, being somewhere else at the time.   As for physical health, if it is such that her mobility is decreased at the time - a fall, etc. if she cannot get on the stage for that solo performance, why expect her to sing in the choir?  

So what does this mean?    It means it is up to the performer or her voice teacher to decide if she is going to sing.     It is not up to the potential accompanists to determine whether the singer is going to sing or not.    And if everyone she asks says no, or makes an excuse, pretty soon the singer will not bother asking the next time.   The worse would be if they assumed the singer had a cold, was depressed over a loved one, or her voice had gone out so she could not sing and that would not be true.    There might not be a next time.    I remember when my husband was alive if he would be home alive because he worked at a railroad and there were cases of men being crushed between cars, etc.    He died after he retired and it was by a terminal illness by the way.   

   

There is also time.  What if the "once you reach your seventies, you can no longer sing," is true?" Now many will say why did you not start sooner, but we do know people who gave up their dreams to raise a family, my mother being one of them and she unfortunately died of cancer, so there was no chance of her doing what she wanted.   I really did not know if that was true, but I did get the feeling that she had tried and failed because it was not in what she was good at.    She was a very unhappy woman when she died.   And when I first started to look at voice lessons, it seemed that there was an assumption that the singer wanted to be professional or a talented amateur, i.e. if she just wanted to sing in front of the mirror or in her own place, she would not have bothered signing up for lessons.   That is why there may have been if "you are in your seventies, forget it," and of course many youngsters think that was a typographical error and they meant seventeen.    

 Many companies do allow the manager to make cds for their congregation and also for the performers, ;but if they want to sell them outside that area - i.e. for instance suppose there is a Christmas Concert at The Heavenly Church in Bready, Alberta (made that up.) in order for them to sell them to anyplace outside of the Bready area, they have to pay copyright rules.    That means if the Cd appeared at the Holy Christian Bookstore, they did pay the copyright fees for each and every song on the CD.    So be careful    The fines for not paying the fees are extremely high and in many cases have to do with the potential customers or the audience.     

SUPPORT YOUR PUBLIC LIBARY

Those in authority who do not because it cost too much and they got along well without it think only of themselves

WRITING: WORK OR HOBBY OR IT IS ALL IN THE RELATIONSHIP

In order to show that writing is not a hobby, I have come up with a list. …

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WRITERS JUSTIFICATION THAT THEY ARE CONSIDERED IMPORTANT

I feel carpal tunnel syndrome coming on.
My hands hurt when I press the keyboard.
Oh no, a paper cut!
Why do I have to use this long definition when several smaller words would do?
Looking through all those research books with that small print hurts my eyes
I put out my back lifting those heavy encyclopedias.
The small print on my computer screen stains my eyes.
I want to clean the house, go out, but there is this guy with a whip…

The Danger of Political Correctness

What are dangers in political correctness? The Nazis were scum; we all know that. They killed six million Jews. What about the Japanese in World War 11? They put people in prison camps; they worked British soldiers to death. They interred European families in concentration camps who were barely fed enough to survive. Yet we have movies and television shows too numerous to mention about Ayran groups and barely a whisper about a Japanese former commander who was being hunted by a son or relative whose father, grandfather, mother, et cetera died in one of those internment camps. No to write a drama about that, or a mystery story, would be politically incorrect. The Orient has the wisdom of Confucious, non-violence and such! Do not make us look bad!

Now you get a reason why those Cambodians died in the Killing Fields, the Iraqis and formerly Iranians exterminated ethnic groups other than their own, and the Serbs massacred Bosnians, Albanians, et cetera and no one took much notice until it was too late. Why it is as clear as the nose on your face. They were not Nazis, the predecessors of that evil White Man.

Let me continue. The Bible did not say, "Come all ye blessed African Amercans, Native Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese and other ethnic groups, enter ye into the joy of your Lord." nor did it say, "Depart all ye evil white men, into the fire reserved for the devil and his angels.", but the politically correct people would like to think so.