July 2008 4th Issue
Financial Matters
The Debt of Saving
Saving money is something that happens when you have money leftover after you pay your bills, right – wrong! Saving money actually requires you to make another bill. How? Well, treat this impossible act according to the same rules that apply when paying your regular bills. Saving money (as you have frequently heard before now) can get you out of debt. Uh! You just got a shut-off notice? Well, now you have two shut-off notices and the second one is called savings. That’s right saving money is as important as a shut-off notice (just don’t tell the electric company). Try hard to save money beyond a few days and weeks. The best way to save money when your hand written budget for the month says that you are $195 short is to prioritize the same way you do when you decide to pay part of the light bill and part of the gas bill. Pay some of the save bill, some of the light bill and some of the gas bill. Don’t be scared, the gas bill won’t cut you off; they haven’t cut you off over the past year for partial payments. Besides, by the time they do cut you off, hopefully you’ll have enough money on the save bill to pay what you owe on the gas bill. Happy Savings!
Consumerism
90 Day Return Policy
We all have purchased something from the store and threw out the receipt. You begin using your new lovely product and days or months go by before you notice that your lovely new product is a rip-off, has a new and better model, is broken, or is something longer needed. You think of taking the product back to the store for a refund, except you no don’t have the receipt. You should always keep your receipt for the full duration of the store’s return policy. Different stores have different return policies and different time frames by which to accept returns. You never know when you may need to return a product that you purchased. Having the receipt may not be a guarantee you’ll get a refund, but a receipt will certainly benefit you in your refund attempts.
Tempering Tolerance
Encouraging Yourself
Learning to encourage yourself from within instead of using other people to encourage you is a difficult task. Relying on other people to keep you encouraged may work for the moment, but will not be long-lasting. Developing a relationship with God will help you learn how to encourage yourself. You may not know it is possible for God to give this kind of help, but if you pray to God – he’ll know what to do, he’s God. You must have faith and allow God to do his job. If you feel that you don’t have faith it’s because you need to develop a better relationship with God. Getting to know God will help you to see that having faith in his works makes the impossible a reality. This will be confirmed when God puts you in circumstances that in the past would have caused you to react in a certain way, and all of a sudden you react in a different way. You later realize that you reacted differently and wonder what is wrong with you. You begin to understand that “what is wrong with you” is really what is right with you and God made this so. You are motivated to be the new you because you tried it and it works. You feel encouraged to be the new you more often. The new you no longer gives in to the lows of life. You begin to share the secret of how you got a new you with others who need a new them. More blessings come to you. You’re helping to bring people closer to God through your subtle testimonies. You become encouraged all over again, because you witness through testimonies and are lifted higher. Continue this process, be encouraged!
Relationships
The Good and Bad of Making a List
Listing the good and bad attributes to help you evaluate the “worthiness” of a relationship with a person is something that happens when lines have been crossed. Whether the person is a boyfriend, girlfriend, cousin, parent, sibling, coworker, etc. the problem is that they may no longer be worthy of the angel you are, right! At times, a list can be a good evaluative tool to get you to see the total person or relationship and not just the recent problem(s) that have tested your boundaries. A list can be bad at times because the list depicts what is “wrong” with the other person in the relationship, but does not necessarily focus on YOU. That’s right! A problem is two-sided just as every story and whether you want to accept it or not, no matter how “innocent” you are in the situation, you somehow contributed to “The Problem.” You may have contributed to the problem, by not speaking up when something was wrong months ago, or not stressing the importance of needing an immediate resolution, or because of…whatever. The bottom line is that your reaction to the problem makes your list not as valid as you think. Making a list can still be helpful, but it is important that you make a separate list of things you shouldn’t do vs. things you should do from now on so that you stay part of the solution.
Food Favorites
Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip
1 14-ounce can of artichokes (drain the juice before mixing with ingredients)
1 10-ounce box of thawed spinach
½ cup of chopped onions
1 cup of mayonnaise
1 cup of your favorite shredded cheese
1 minced clove of garlic
½ cup chopped black olives
1 beaten egg
Spray a pie pan with Pam non-stick oil. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl mix all ingredients together except for the beaten egg. Last add the beaten egg and make sure that you stir the mixture well. Pour the mixture into the pie pan and smooth out the mixture evenly throughout the pan. Cook the dip in the oven for 20-30 minutes and let it cool for 10-15 minutes. Serve with tortilla chips, crackers, fresh bread, or vegetable sticks.
Healthy Bones
Miss-Prescribed Medicine
Ever go to the doctor for a foot-ache and end up with a prescription for asthma then wonder why your foot keeps hurting? Maybe you never knew that the prescription you needed for acid reflux was somehow replaced by a prescription for a yeast infection. Mistakes like these happen at the pharmacy and are not always realized in time – if ever realized. As a patient you feel hopeless because the pharmacy should know more than you when prescribing medicine. Yet, who checks behind pharmacists to ensure that mistakes like these aren’t made? You do! The internet makes it easy to check behind pharmacists and doctors so that you know you are getting the right medicine. Once you have been told exactly what is wrong with you, it is a good idea to check the internet before getting your prescription filled to make sure that you have been prescribed the right thing. Once you get the prescription from the pharmacist, it is a good idea to check the internet again to make sure that you have actually been given the prescription the doctor has prescribed. Sometimes doctor’s prescriptions are written for a name brand, but are replaced with similar brands or generic brands due to insurance rules. It is good to make sure that whatever you get is something that has relevance to the treatment of your ailment. In addition to checking the medicine by name, it is good to check the medicine by how the medication looks. Sometimes what may be written on the medicine container may not be what is inside, but if you check the internet to see how your medicine should look, it will hopefully confirm that your prescription is correct. If you think that your prescription isn’t correct, call the pharmacy and the doctor for explanations. Some websites that may be helpful to researching your medications are:
1. www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html
2. www.walgreens.com (click on to the drug information link)
3. www.healthsquare.com/drugmain.htm
4. www.pdrhealth.com/drugs/rx/rx-a-z.aspx
Relaxation
Hooray! Mental Health Day!
Mental Health Day is a holiday than can happen one or more times a year when a person who isn’t physically ill decides they need to use a sick day to distress. Mental Health Days are instrumental in staying mentally healthy. It is like taking a visit to the doctor for a check-up, but going to a place of your choice to have fun for the day. It is an old style high-school ditch day for adults. The best Mental Health Days are those that are taken to do something that you’ve always wanted to do, but never had the chance to do. These days are also great when they are planned with friends. This day should not make you feel like you are doing something wrong, it should make you feel like you are taking time to relax so that the tension inside you doesn’t take over and make you act a fool at work. Acting a fool at work may cause you to take a different kind of a day off which is called a suspension or a firing. So, take this special day as often as you need it. Just remember to request this day off as a sick day and not a personal day.
Legal Ease
Bad Landlords…Legal Solutions…
No you didn’t move where you live because you prefer living in a hell-hole. Yes you do have to abide by the terms of your lease, but you can and should protect yourself against the landlord not doing his or her job. Some things that you can do are:
1. Take email notes on all conversations and send copies to the landlord, friends, or agencies that you contacted for landlord/tenant help.
2. Email all questions, requests, and concerns to the landlord.
3. Make sure all emails sent are a continuous log so that the landlord knows that you are keeping track of every detail.
4. Talk to people and call agencies to keep familiar with the various options that can help you resolve your landlord problem(s).
5. Call the building inspectors for the area in which you live. If a concern is a violation of safety or health, the local inspectors can help you get repairs done in a timely fashion. The landlords are sometimes fined when this happens.
6. Call the non-emergency fire department line to set-up an inspection if you think you have an electrical or fire sprinkler problem that your landlord continues to marginalize.
7. Call your local courthouse to see if there is a legal clinic or a legal hotline that can help educate you further about what to do.
8. Call the local courthouse to find out how to set-up an escrow account to pay your rent. Setting up an escrow account guarantees you will get a court date in which the landlord will be called into question about their management. The landlord will have to show up for court if they want the rent you handed over to the court.
9. Some websites worth exploring for more detail are: www.tenant.net and www.landlordtenanthelponline.org
Workplace
The Non-working Employee
Work is stressful enough at times without dealing with a coworker who does not do their part of co-working. We all know or have known someone who can tell you what their job description is, but does not perform any aspect of their job duties. These people have “valid” excuses (in their mind) and don’t care about how their excuses impact you or the workplace. They are the reason for new stupid work rules that make everyone feel as though they are children or institution slaves. They may intimidate you or make you and others feel like you’d better not say anything to them about what they don’t do or else! The reality is that they are already causing you and everyone else a problem, so you should not have any fear about confronting them and feeling as though you will make the problem bigger. You can try speaking with them directly or with a mediator present. Have a specific agenda ready if you choose to speak with them. Give concrete examples and let them know the impact their actions have on you and others. Make sure that you are not being confrontational, and try to speak with a tone of sincere concern. If you don’t want to speak with them directly, you can show them how best to do their job by modeling for them. Specifically say things like, “if you do the job like this…it is easier.” The non-worker sometimes needs examples for how to best do their job because they feel defeated by the inefficient process that is most familiar to them. Be open minded when attempting to help the non-worker and make helping them fun for both of you. Challenge them to a work-off. Present a reward they can win, but don’t make it easy for them to win it. Bring your A-game. Some other things you may need to do can include taking a few days off from work to make the non-worker experience how it feels to work alone. Also try dividing your duties into a list of your responsibilities and a list of their responsibilities. Switch roles – have them imitate you on the job and you imitate them on the job for one hour or a day. Maybe this will help them to see your perspective. Write a letter to them about how you feel about the non-worker’s actions – don’t tell how you feel about their character. Ask a supervisor to sneak up on you and your co-worker to monitor what is happening. There are many ways to “do something.” Just have the confidence to know that it’s actually better to do something about the non-worker than to just tolerate the problems they cause you on the job.
