Exercising your muscles not your credit cards...

While enjoying my Sunday paper this cloudy winter day, I noticed that most - if not all - of the sales revolved around weight loss equipment.  Sales on dumbells, kettlebells, ellipticals and scores of workout tapes.  A virtual cornucopia of products you NEED to buy if you want to get in shape. 

 

(Buy me!  cries the Total Gym, right before Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks you into submission.)

 

What these big stores DON'T want you to know is that you can do a lot of the exercises they are pushing WITHOUT the big equipment.

 

 

*******PLEASE NOTE:BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY NEW WORKOUT OR EXERCISE ROUTINE, SPEAK WITH YOUR DOCTOR*******

 

Got a second floor to your house or a set of basement stairs?  Perfect, my own private stairmaster awaits me in the comfort and privacy of my home.  I just turn on my MP3 player and my cardio is done for he day.

 

Have some heavy bottles, cans or boxes?  Free weights for free!  My personal favorite is using the bottle of pancake syrup as a free weight.  36 ounces of buttery muscle building.  When I'm comfortable, I plan to graduate to a 12 pack of soda cans. 

 

 

 

(Beefcaaaaaake!)

 

 

If you are like me, you like people yelling at you to "Keep moving!" and "Don't give up!"  Exercise tapes can be fun and help you be successful, but they can also be expensive!  Most retail somewhere in the $15 range, though some can go as high as $30.  I'm not looking to spend any money on anything, whether I use it every day or not.  My local library is a great resource for all things, including VHS (yes, I know it is 2015) and DVDs.  Borrowing tapes is free, plus I get a variety of different kinds of exercises.  Free is for me!

 

So, my loyal readers (and hopefully you are out there) save some cash this Winter, and get creative while you get in shape!

 

 

 

PS - Still in the market for some "new" equipment?  Check out these sites for some great at home fitness deals and tips for those on a budget

 

 

www.freecycle.com - here you can find exercise equipment and or videos that people are looking to GIVE away.  check here before spending any money in the stores.  but buyer beware, and be careful folks!

 

 

www.youtube.com - a plethora of at home workout videos abound on this free site.  pick and choose to make your perfect workout

 

*****ONCE AGAIN PLEASE CONSULT A DOCTOR BEFORE YOU BEGIN ANY EXERCISE ROUTINE******

Peeking out...

So, it's the new year and we're on track to getting ourselves completely out of unnecessary debt. By that, I mean credit cards. We've depended on them for a while now. Before I got married, I paid my cards off at the end month. Once we got married that changed. We began using cards and that turned ugly. It was "well I'll just charge it" and we got whatever we wanted. Now we are close to 10K in debt. We are a family of five (three of them being children under the age of 4) and it is hard to get everything we need each month without going over our salaries.

It really came to a head when we blew through about 3k in one month, that being December. We basically paid cash for Christmas presents and I sort of went on a spending spree. Luckily we have overdraft on our bank account otherwise we'd be paying a lot more in fees than the 70 bucks they took from us. So i decided no more, and now we are on a strict budget.

We spend only what we have. I've created a budget which will get all of our bills paid each month. Anything that is left over will either pay down debt or go into savings or be a cushion for expenses that I've forgotten. Keep checking back to see how we get ourselves out of debt and into savings.

Wish us luck!