From nail biter to nail care teacher - tips that work

I was a nail biter from a very young age. Now, I teach others how they can have beautiful nails, without spending a fortune. All you need is a little basic nail care. Soak your nails in oil for 10 minutes each day for one month. Whatever oil is in the kitchen pantry will do. Massage each nail in a circular motion (not back and forth) with the ball of the thumb. After the first month, this treatment is only needed once a month .

The next step is to treat nails weekly for the next six weeks . Cleanse them with a nail polish remover, again starting at the end of the nail bed and working down the nail to the tip. From here on, apply a simple protective barrier nail polish every day. In the beginning, the nail polish builds up as you are learning - do not worry or be concerned about that - just only do the nails once a week. Every week also file and buff the nails. Only do this once per week, as one can over process the nails (just as you can do with skin and so on).

I have ended up teaching nails care for 20 years and all of my clients who have followed handling correctly as well as the process are the proud owners of beautiful nails and hands!

Cheap MP3 download helped me quit nail biting for good!

I found the answer to quitting my lifelong nail biting habit in a $15 app! Over the years I had tried everything from bitter aloes to spending a fortune paying for regular manicures, thinking if I paid someone I would be too embarrassed to turn up with bitten nails. I do not like acrylic nails at all, so that was not an option for me. Now in my 50's, I shudder to think how much money I have spent on manicures over the years! The only thing that worked for me and worked immediately was hypnotherapy - but not the 'go-see-a-hypnotherapist-at-$300-an-hour-for-five-to-ten-sessions', no way! I simply purchased a downloadable MP3 for $15 USD. I listened to it each night as I went to sleep. Normally it takes about 21 days to change a habit, but I found that it worked for me completely after five days. I have no desire to bite my nails at all. I continue to listen to it from time to time as a "top-up" to maintain the cessation of nail biting. I bought my download online from www.stevegjones.com He has MP3 hypnosis programs for everything from weight loss to writer's block. They vary in price and often he has flash sales from as little as $1 per MP3 program. I am not affiliated with his company at all, but can highly recommend!

How to plan meals for a family of six

I only need to shop for food once a month and am saving $3000 per year on feeding our family of six.

With four children, I was spending at least $800 per month on shopping, so I came up with a plan to try and cut costs. I went through recipe books and chose meals that I was going to cook for dinner. I wrote a list on an A4 page for every day of that month and what I was going to cook for each day. Then, on another page I wrote all the food items that I needed for the recipes I had pre-chosen and that was my shopping list for the month.

The best thing is I now knew what I was cooking every day, without walking to the fridge and thinking 'what am I cooking?' I also put the A4 page of what we were having for dinner on the fridge and the family knew what we were having each day without asking me!

To start with I went shopping every fortnight for food, but now I do it once a month and only spend $550 each month.

Before I began this routine, I was spending $9600 per year on food for four children and two adults - now I am spending $6600 per year! The extra $3000 we save each year goes into our children's bank account, which they just love!

How Simple Savings helped me to save money and lose weight

Here's how to lose weight and save!

A couple of years ago I joined Weight Watchers and went to four meetings. Joining was free from a coupon in a magazine but the meetings cost something like $15.95 each. I couldn't get motivated!

A few weeks ago, as I was bucketing the bath water into the toilet cistern to save water (a tip from Simple Savings), I realised that I am doing the exact same thing that Weight Watchers meetings could not motivate me to do. At WW the main things they encourage you to do are to eat 10% less at meals (this also helps the budget at shopping time) and to exercise more (this comes from carting water between the bath and the toilet and using the rain water tank to water the vegie patch and so on).

I am now losing about half a kilogram a week without even trying and I'm not paying $16 to do it. In fact, I'm making other savings as well - our last water bill was $40 less than that for the same time last year.

What has also happened for me in the last few months is that while saving money I have also become better at time management - planning meals for a month and shopping with a list have cut out a lot of unnecessary trips to the shops (not to mention the extra expense). I have cut $60 from my husband's spending money by supplying his lunch every day, along with some soft drink, a large bottle of water and a snack. He is happy because he still has a small amount of 'sanity money' in his pocket to splurge with every week.

My food budget absorbed this when I switched from a lot of brand name products to BI-LO brand products - I save from as little as $0.10c per item up to a couple of dollars per item. The biggest savings I make come from bulk buying - last month BI-LO had five kilograms of potatoes for $5.00, but when I went to the greengrocers they had them at $6.00 for a 20 kilo bag. These lasted for about a month and I couldn't bring myself to go to the fish and chip shop when I had 15 kilograms of 'free' potatoes in the pantry, so we had home-made wedges instead, saving another $6.00.

The excitement of saving money has also inspired me to do the things that I don't enjoy so much, such as mending and ironing, and I am gradually working my way through every room and cupboard, taking inventory of what can be used and how best to use it in a way that will save me money. I never thought I would actually look forward to going through years of accumulated junk! By organising my house, I am becoming a 'cleanie' and leaving the old 'messy' me behind - and I am enjoying every minute of it!