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Day Care Business for Work At Home Moms Part 4

[continued from Part 3]

 

The benefits of an at-home daycare business

 

Despite the long start up time, many Work At Home Moms find that owning their own in-home childcare center is a great solution to their work at home problem. There are many benefits to taking care of other people’s children.

Your children will never be without playmates to entertain them. You’ll have access to many fun and exciting programs made especially for daycare business owners, including discounts on supplies, and of course, many of your expenses can be written off on your taxes if you set up your company correctly.

Remember to keeep receipts for everything you buy and note if it was personal, or for your at home business.   You may even be eligible for federal subsidies for food and diapers for the children you take care of.

 

Research your topic

To find out if owning a home daycare is right for you, research the subject. Visit other home daycares and ask how those Wahms are enjoying their business. Find out what your state and local regulations are regarding licensed and unlicensed daycare.

Do a trial run with multiple children by volunteering to look after your friends’ children for an hour or two at a time, say on a Saturday morning so they can go shopping unhindered but not leave you alone with them all day.

Work out what hours your facility is going to be open. My sister in law drops off her son at 7 every morning and picks him up at 6 every night.  That is a pretty long workday for some people.

You need to work out your fees so that they are competitive with other daycare facilities in the area, and also need to decide what to do if one of the parents is running late. It is important to keep the client happy, but you also need to balance your work and family time as well so that everyone is pleased with the arrangement.

Also keep in mind that you will basically be stuck at home if you take on this job. What are your contingency plans if you run out of milk, or in the event of an unexpected emergency?

Working at home affects the entire family, especially your own children having to interact with other children, and share your time with them.  What will your support system be?

Once you’ve done your homework, and are able to answer all these key questions and discuss them with your husband, friends and family, you’ll know if childcare as a work at home opportunity is right for you.

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Coupons Can Be Your Best Friend Part 2

Part 2.

Sort your coupons/span> Use plastic protector sheets to help sort coupons. You can combine them into a single sleeve and even divide them up by date. Labeling the sheets just like the aisles in your favorite grocery store will allow you to pull only the coupons that you need. It can also give you a quick glance at the expiration dates to make sure you are not left stranded at the checkout.

Go for the Big Deals
Checking the weekly flyers put out by your local stores can save you even more money. Many of these sales flyers can be found online or will be delivered to your home. Also check in the front of the store to see what is on sale for the week and buy only the items that match your list, unless it is a staple that you use all the time.

Websites Check around for websites which pool all of the local deals plus great coupons.

Taking the time to do a little sales research before you make the trip to the store is one of the best ways to save money.

Organizing your coupons by type and date will help you save time and money. Using them in combination with sales at the store could just help you build up your savings account significantly at end of each month.

We all need to buy items to eat and to use in the household, but why pay more if you do not have to?

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Coupons Can Be Your Best Friend, Part 1

Part 1.

Ever wonder what it would be like to get paid for buying what you were going to buy anyway? For instance, you walk into the store for a loaf of bread and walk out with a couple of extra bucks as well as your bread?

This is what it is like if you use coupons and also shop the sales in your local supermarkets and also your chain drugstores, many of which are now starting to carry a lot more food items and paper products at really good sale prices.

Combining a coupon with an already low sales price is almost like getting the item for free.

Coupon using can be a hard and stressful work, but thanks to online sites and emails from the manufacturer, plus sale flyers online that allow you to click the items to add them to your grocery list makes it easier than ever before to save money through clipping and using coupons.

The main rule with coupons is only to clip the ones for items that you use regularly. It is nice to try new things once in a while, but coupons are really no bargain if you are spending more in the end than you normally would.

If you do not spend that much time online, now is the time to start. You will also want to get any Sunday newspaper coupon supplements and cut out what you need.

Once you do that, you need to organize them.

Organize Getting a simple binder with plastic pockets, such as 2 pockets per sheet, can help you use all your coupons easily. Be sure to bring pen, paper, calculator to work out a unit price, and your list.

Also consider that when an item is on sale and you are using a coupon, the price may actually be cheaper than the warehouse club price, so be vigilant and look for the best deals.

and also protects your valuable pen, calculator and even cash stored in the nifty side pockets.

Continued in Part 2.

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Are Dairy Products Really Good for Us? Part 4

 

Continued from Part 3

 

As for getting enough calcium, the truth is that is found in almost every food that we eat. Little sesame seeds have a level of calcium, cup for cup, that is almost ten times as much as milk, but the Dairy Board does not like to advertise this fact.

The other thing to remember is that you need vitamin D in your diet in order to absorb calcium. Vitamin D does not come in a bottle-it comes from about 15 minutes of sunshine a day, with sunscreen on, of course. You see, fresh air and sunshine really do work to keep you healthy, and cost nothing.

Dairy is not a bad thing; the process of how it is made, however, is horrible for our bodies and cruelly exploitative to factory farmed animals.

So if you love milk but hate the chemicals and cruelty, try milk from small, traditional farms (look for them on the store shelves), or sheep or goat’s milk to see what nature intended this healthy drink to taste like.

Try other types of dairy, like natural cheeses. They have amazing textures and are extremely rich in flavor. Keep an open mind, a delicate pallet and go try different kinds of dairy.  Studies have shown that it can help build teeth and bones and be a valuable source of protein, and can be healthy for you so long as it is not loaded with chemicals, coloring and flavorings.

Instead of giving the kids chocolate milk in order to ‘bribe’ them into drinking their milk, why not give them a great fruit smoothie. Chances are they will gulp it down and ask for more (see Mara Michaels’ smoothie guides for great ideas for drinks the whole family will love).

Research calcium and make sure you get it in your diet from a variety of sources, and be sure your family is getting a balanced diet that includes all the major food groups each day, including dairy.

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Are Dairy Products Really Good for Us? Part 3

Continued from Part 2

 

With all the chemicals, antibiotics and hormones in milk, it is important to ask if milk is really as good for us as the dairy industry would have us believe.

The truth is that it can be if you are willling to pay more for milk and other dairy products which are produced along more natural and less commercial lines.

Milk is a healthy food choice when it comes from cows that are grass-fed, like Jerseys and Guernsey, not modern Holsteins which are forced to over-produce. The good bacteria and healthy diet in the grass-fed cattle reduce the risk of milk-producing infections.

This milk is usually not pasteurized, killing off all of the benefits of the milk, since the cows are better kept. using modern day hygienic practices to help ensure clean and safe production.

Because this milk is not homogenized either, the calcium remains intact and allows our bodies to absorb more of the nutrients we need. Of course, the milk tastes different than we are used to because all of the nutrients were processed out of it. It will have more flavor and a stronger taste. It will also be full fat, not skim (you can get around this by just adding filtered water to consume fewer calories per glass).

 

Continued in Part 4

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Are Dairy Products Really Good for Us? Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Now that the dairy industry has become so high-tech, it is time to take a look at what we are really drinking and eating when we consume dairy products in the US.

Problems with Milk

Most dairy found in grocery stores is terrible for your health, because it comes from cows that are fed high-protein grains and are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics to increase productivity. Everything they are putting into the cow gets transferred into your milk, for you to consume. The dairy industry stresses the importance of calcium, but are hormones and antibiotics good for us too?

Are we really getting any nutritional naturally from the milk we drink? The answer is no. They are all being added afterwards, using man-made supplements.

Many dairy producers use pasteurized and homogenized milk to produce their dairy products. These processes remove the proteins from milk, and many of the nutrients too, making them un-useful for your body, and in some cases making them even border on being harmful.

Because these enzymes are broken down at high temperatures, they destroy phosphatase, which is an enzyme that helps your body absorb the calcium found in milk. It also destroys the vitamins B12, B6 and C, while killing off all of the good bacteria in the milk.

Homogenization of milk alters the fatty contents and good cholesterol found in milk, making it easier to form free radicals, which can cause cancer (see Carolyn Stone”s guide on Antioxidants and Free Radicals for more information).

Producers homogenize the milk to give it a more universal texture and to keep globules of fat from floating to the surface (think about the layer of film produced on the top of buttermilk). It is all for cosmetic purposes, and really has nothing to do with how good the milk is for you.

Cows are often bred to have an overactive milk supply, so that farmers can get the most out of the cow as possible, exploiting them under harmful conditions. Constantly milking them can lead to health problems and infection in the cows, including mastitis as well as milk duct infections. To solve this problem, cows are just fed more antibiotics and hormones in order to keep producing. But in the meantime, all the infection, antibiotics and hormones are all going into the milk we drink. Does this sound like milk is good for you?

Continued in Part 3

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Are Dairy Products Really Good for Us? Part 1

 

The push for increasing calcium in your diet has been on the agenda of dairy producers for the last ten years. All we have been hearing about is drinking more milk and eating more dairy to increase our calcium levels.

While calcium is good for you, the dairy industry has become just that, a real industry, very different from the once humble farm who used to go out to milk each of his beloved named cows, Elsie, Daisy, by hand.

Now we have huge factory farms in which the cows never see the light of day, let alone a patch of grass, and are being pumped full of all sorts of man-made substances in order to increase their productivity to far more than the usual few gallons of milk a day.

Milk is also a perishable product-that is, it will spoil.  However, rather than cry over spoiled milk, the dairy industry is finding all new ways to sell milk to us, in cheese, yogurt, long life milk, evaporated milk, cheese strings, and even pre-packaged chocolate milk, refrigerated, or in little travel bottles that can be taken anywhere.

Almost all of these forms of dairy that do not come right out of the udder and into your glass will be treated with chemicals of some kind in order to preserve them. Then there is the process of treating even ordinary milk itself before if ever gets to your grocer, let alone your table.

 

Continued in Part 2

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