Escaping Poverty

 I know in this day and age we all use Google Chrome. It's just a faster browser and it's now most of our default's on our computer systems. I feel like people are sleeping on Microsoft Bing. Did you know that Microsoft Bing offers point rewards based on easy things you can do on their browser? You can turn those points into gift cards. I'll be honest, I completely forgot about Bing for about a year. I just set up a new account and got started today. I selected a $10 Amazon gift card as my reward goal. That is 13,000 points. I know it seems like a lot but my first day I got 345 points. I am on the bottom reward tier. When I bump up to the next tier I will get a bonus and I will unlock phone searches for points. You don't have to have super specific searches either. I select a word, click search, and click the search bar and fall down the rabbit hole of suggested searches. When I am out of suggestions I delete all but one word in the bar and go again. When I'm on...

 Our family's FAVORITE recipe of all time is very simple and easy to make. My kids have been making this since they were in grade school all by themselves. Smothered Chicken You will need a 13x9 pan, 4 chicken breasts, 2 large cans Cream of Mushroom Soup, milk, rice In a large bowl mix together the cream of mushroom soup and 1 1/2 cans milk. This can be reconstituted dry milk. Take a scoop type spoon and put a scoop 4 times in the bottom of your 13x9 pan. Put a chicken breast on each soup spot. Pour the remaining soup mixture over and around the chicken and bake at 350* for 1 hour 30 minutes uncovered. In a rice cooker make a batch of rice. We usually make the rice when the chicken has cooked for an hour so the rice is cooked right as the chicken is coming out of the oven. Serve the chicken over a bed of rice and use the soup mixture as gravy. If I let my children, they would eat this multiple times a week. Money Saving Tip Shop by the unit price, not the sticker price. It’s not al...

 Getting started for me meant sitting down and figuring out what monthly recurring bills I have. Simple, I know. But for some reason I hadn't taken the time to write them down and things were falling through the cracks. It took getting a disconnect notice to realize I hadn't paid my electric bill for 2 months. I'm pretty sure that I'll have a notice on my internet bill this next cycle. I came up with the following list: Rent, 5 credit cards (trying to build my credit score), Savings, Paying off debt, Emergency Fund, Car Replacement fund, Pedicure (trying something out so this has become a need), Electric company, Car Insurance, Storage Unit (which will become the clothing fund in a month), Internet, Spending for me, Car Repairs, Family Fun, Garbage, Verizon (for my oldest), Household supplies, Tires, and Gas. Each of these has its own envelope with a sticky note on it stating how much it gets paid monthly. I also have a master list that states how much the item is paid ...

 Welcome to my journey, glad you're here. I hope that my journey can help you on your journey. Whether that is escaping generational poverty like I am working on, saving money on your household expenses, finding new recipes here, or getting your finances under control. Whatever your journey is, I hope that I can be of some help. My first step in this journey was to sit down and really think of what I want. Did I want to not stress about bills, have spending money, be able to take my kids to town for a nice dinner on the fly, or not panic every time I took my car in for an oil change. I decided that for me it was all of this and then some. I have never known the joy of paying all of the bills and having money left over at the end of the month. I've also never had the ability to pay my rent early. I am usually paying it on the day that it is due. For me, that's not good enough anymore. I started a tik tok to document my journey and am now starting this blog so that I can look...