Joan’s Boomer Blog

I recently discovered Groupon and it’s a great way to save money on restaurants, entertainment, spa treatments and more. How does Groupon work? You sign up for free for the city or cities of your choice and then each day one business offers a special deal which saves you anywhere from 50% to 90% for dinners, yoga classes, massages, bowling, or just about any service or business you can imagine. The deal is emailed directly to you each day.

If you want the Groupon deal, you can purchase a printable coupon and off you go.

The idea behind Groupon is that if lots of people group together and take a deal, it makes it worthwhile for the business to offer it.

Groupon.com is not specifically a senior discount site but it sure helps seniors stretch their dollars. Yesterday I bought a Groupon certificate for a local restaurant. The deal was $25 worth for $12. So the next time we visit Habenaro’s Mexican Restaurant, our first $25 is already paid for with more than a 50% discount.

The only drawback to Groupon is that you have to live near a major city but more cities are being offered all the time. Plus, think of Groupon next time you travel. You always have several months to use the deal after you buy it. You can also buy Groupon coupons to give as gift certificates so if you have a friend or relative in a major city, sign up for their city and view the deals!

Visit Groupon today and save.

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They Can’t Tax Voluntary Simplicity - Yet!

What is Voluntary Simplicity and How Can it Help You Avoid the Coming Economic Crisis?

Voluntary simplicity has a different meaning to each person who practices it. In a nutshell, voluntary simplicity goes against the commercial culture of America which equates material possessions with happiness and fulfillment. Advocates find fulfillment in saving money, downsizing, living simply and finding ways to do for themselves.

Many who embrace voluntary simplicity live debt free, clip coupons, cook from scratch, live closer to nature and try their hand at pass times like gardening and sewing or raising their own chickens.

Maybe this isn’t you but each of us can simplify our lives and focus on saving money, rather than making money. They can’t tax you for saving $20 with grocery store coupons but that is $20 you still have in your pocket.

Is Economic Disaster and Double Dip Recession Coming?

Life as we’ve all gotten used to it may soon end. For the past 20 years, the economy has been booming mostly, real estate prices shot up, the stock market was going great guns. Then it all fell apart. My 82 year old mother recently told me when she hears the term “new normal” in relation to the high unemployment, volitile stock market and near depression-like economy, she can’t help but think that the years of the booming economy were the abnormal years.

Most of the years of my mother’s life, she knew depression, war, pinching pennies. I grew up learning thrift and tried to teach my kids the same thing, but young people really have no clue about living through a real depression.

Are you worried about what the looming economic crisis will mean for you? Are you worried about the huge tax hike coming in 2011 to pay for the exploding national debt and President Obama’s health care plan. Perhaps you have one of those “Cadillac” insurance plans, where your companies’ contribution will now be taxed as income. Dick Morris says America is facing the same financial disaster that is now occurring in Greece.

President Obama campaigned on the promise of tax cuts for those earning less than $250,000 (really all Congress would have to do is keep President Bush’s tax cuts in place - which saved our family $2,000 in taxes each year.) Yet, on June 22, 2011, House Majority Leader, Rep Steny Hoyer, acknowledged that it would be difficult to reduce long-term deficits without breaking President Obama’s pledge to protect families earning less than $250,000 a year. (See New York Times article)

My husband wants to retire. He has a military pension and a good job, which already puts us in a tax above $88,000. Anyone earning over $88,000 will be taxed to pay for the health care of those who cannot afford it. I am trying to earn extra income to supplement our retirement but unfortunately, the more I make, the more taxes we will pay.

So what is our plan? How will we protect ourselves from economic collapse? I’ve decided that I can limit my hours of working on my multiple streams of income (which is pretty much on autopilot now) and focus on pinching pennies.

• I search coupon websites and grocery ads for the best deals, buying only what we need and what is on sale.
• I rejoined our organic food co-op to get fresh organic produce for our green smoothies.
• I planted tomato plants in pots for the first time since we moved to Texas. We are currently buying land where we can grow a bigger garden.
• I dusted off my dehydrater so I can preserve food and not waste anything.
• I bought a sprouter to I can grow fresh sprouts for our smoothies. You can grow tons of sprouts for pennies, providing fresh greens for your diet.
• I am making my own kefir with kefir starter instead of buying sugar-laden and expensive yogurt.
• My husband and I are putting major purchases on hold and going on a spending fast, after reading Jeff Yeager’s Guide to Cheapskate Living (a great book with lots of voluntary simplicity tips and advice)
• We’re buying an RV to put on the land and if we need to live in it for a year or two to save money, we can do that.

We are in the process of purchasing 5 acres of land where we can have a huge garden, raise chickens and build an energy efficient house with wind and solar power. (President Obama admitted that his cap and trade bill will cause electricity prices to skyrocket and trying to break our dependence on oil could cause gas prices to go to $7 a gallon.)

All is not gloom and doom, whether the nation experiences economic disaster or not. What each person must do is be ready to live in the worst of conditions and become more self-sufficient. Try saving, not spending money. Try saving instead of increasing your income. Give voluntary simplicity a try and you will have the satisfaction of knowing you can face whatever happens.

One thing our government officials have not considered is what will happen when more and more people are willing to earn less, do more for themselves and pay less taxes? They’ve made it the sensible solution but how will the government machine survive once they’ve destroyed our economy?

Resources:

Making your own kefir is easier than you think.

Sprouting seeds at Home

Raising Chickens in Your own back yard.

Check out the many coupons and money saving articles on this blog as well.

Learn more about Living Simply

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Being called a cheapskate used to be an insult but now guides to cheapskate living are some of the most

The Ultimate Cheapskate by Jeff Yeager

popular money saving books published. Voluntary simplicity has become a lifestyle to be proud of and Jeff Yeager’s The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches: A Practical (and Fun) Guide to Enjoying Life More by Spending Less is one of the most useful books on cheapskate living that I’ve come across.

If you’re interested in downsizing, saving money and learning to embrace the voluntary simplicity lifestyle, Jeff Yeager’s book about becoming the Ultimate Cheapskate yourself, can be a wise investment.

Do you get enjoyment from buying “things?” Do you tend to buy as an emotional choice? Perhaps you’re stuck in a good paying, but unfulfilling job and buy things, telling yourself “Why not buy stuff? I earn it?” Do you have large credit card debt and were wishing you had none? The Ultimate Cheapskate can help!

I’ve been following the advice of Jeff Yeager for nearly 30 days and I’ve found that many of the purchases I made before were not things I really needed. I love to shop and I pride myself on finding the best prices but when you embrace voluntary simplicity, you learn that it is possible to spend zero money in a week, that being debt free brings more enjoyment than buying things and that being free of “things” brings freedom and fulfillment to your life.

In America, we are bombarded with commercials just about every minute of the day. We are convinced by smart marketers that if we buy their product we will be happier and more fulfilled. If you become an ultimate cheapskate like Jeff Yeager, you can find that not spending money brings even more fulfillment - your quality of life will increase, rather than decrease with each dollar you don’t spend. Plus the book is written in a humorous, lively style that makes it a pleasure to read.

If you’re looking for ways to be happier by spending less money, whether because you’re forced to or because you see it as a better option in life, then The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches: A Practical (and Fun) Guide to Enjoying Life More by Spending Less can help you live in voluntary simplicity in a totally painless way. Order through Amazon for less than $10, plus the order qualifies for free shipping. What a cheapskate deal!

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My Favorite Reading Among the Boomer Blogs

As a baby boomer myself and the owner of Tips For Your Boomer Years, I love a good boomer blog. I subscribed to Google alerts for “baby boomer” and get a listing of half dozen or so boomer blogs every week. Some are a wealth of great information on retirement, senior discounts, senior and boomer issues and more.

Here are some of my favorite among the popular boomer blogs:

Baby Boomer Insights by Marilynn Mobley. Lots of great articles of interest to boomers - aging, retirement, finding new careers and more.

Baby Boomer.com has a cute feature. You can click on the year you were born and find out what happened. When I was born in 1950, Hopalong Cassidy and antihistamines were newly popular, the movie All About Eve came out and Joseph McCarthy warned of communist infiltration of the State Department - plus there were more great tidbits. One article I liked was “Call us ‘Girls’ or ‘Women over 40′ (or 50), Just Don’t Call Us Seniors!

Boomer Living.com I used to have a blog called Easy Boomer Living and was threatened with a lawsuit by Boomer Living for stealing their name so I had to change my blog to Tips for Boomer Years. However, this boomer blog does have good info on careers, finances, travel, health and more for boomers.

Retrovision TV isn’t a blog in the strictest sense but a listing of classic TV and movies from the 1930’s forward. If you click on an episode listed, you can watch the episode, find links to others in the series, and then comment on it in blog form. If you love classic movies and TV, you have to check out Retrovision.

Time Goes By - Boomer blog with various authors. There are also links on the site to an extensive list of other boomer and elder issue blogs that you might want to explore.

A wonderful boomer blog recommended to me recently by a friend is MyBoomer2Boomer. On this blog boomer entrepreneurs support each other, telling you about boomer friendly businesses, job hunting info and more.

When you start searching boomer blogs, it’s terrific to see how many of us have turned to blogging as a creative expression. It’s great to see boomers and seniors embracing technology and offering up their thoughts, knowledge and experiences to benefit others.

Do you have a favorite boomer blog? If so, send me a link. I’d love to check it out.

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How to Earn Multiple Streams of Income Doing What You Love

Six-Figures In Less Than A Year
Do only the things you LOVE to do, and generate multiple revenue streams!

If you could earn multiple streams of income working at home, building a profitable business based on your own passions in life, would you want to do it? Would you like to quit your current unfulfilling job and make your own schedule, doing something you love every day? If you answered yes to these questions but aren’t currently living the life you’d like to live, maybe you may just need someone who can teach you how to set up multiple streams of income, a mentor who has made thousands doing just this.

f you’ve seen the movie “the Secret” you’re probably familiar with Bob Doyle. I’ve been a member of his terrific Wealth Beyond Reason program for about 3 years and I’ve always wanted to take part in his Six Figure Streams of Income Program about building a profitable business on the internet. However, the $1300 price tag was just more than I wanted to spend. Imagine how I felt recently when I opened an email from Bob Doyle and found he was offering this same program for just $97!

The Six Figure Income Course is based on principles of the law of attraction to create multiple streams of income -helping you to find what you’re passionate about and build a profitable business around it. Work becomes play! Even if don’t currently have your own website or a product to sell, or even know how to do this, Bob’s course teaches you everything you need to know to build your own business around marketing information on the Internet.

What makes this multiple streams of income different from other business building courses? An all-important part of Bob Doyle’s course is teaching you how to overcome the resistence you’ve built up in your thinking-resistance that is holding you back from living the life of your dreams. Do you think you have to work hard to make money? Do you think money is hard to come by and only very lucky people “make it big?” These are limiting beliefs that are holding you back and Bob gives you the tools to overcome these beliefs so that anything is possible.

If you could spend your day devoted to any subject, what would it be? What are you passionate about in life? What is your hobby or what subjects are you drawn to? What do you love read about that you’d love to create a business around? Do you have a special area of expertise that you’d like to share with others? Would you like to create unlimited income around these ideas?

Bob Doyle’s Six Figure Streams of Income program helps you to sort through all that information and gives you specifics on creating ebooks, videos, and websites based on what you personally love to do to earn money through multiple streams of income.

If you’re a baby boomer facing retirement, what are you going to do with your time? Wouldn’t it be fun to make some extra retirement income doing something you have fun doing?

If you’ve ever thought how wonderful it would be to work at home and turn your own passions in to a profitable business and earn multiple streams of income, you owe it to yourself to check out Bob Doyle’s Six Figure Streams of Income Program.

Six-Figures In Less Than A Year
Do only the things you LOVE to do, and generate multiple revenue streams!

If you’re interested in the Wealth Beyond Reason program, I can tell you that since joining I’ve used and reused the information. I listen to the audios over and over and re-read the books that are part of the program. It was one of those programs I purchased that I never even once regretted or thought it wasn’t worth the money. The information is something that I use again and again.

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Find Financial Freedom

Are you experiencing a financial downturn? Have you lost your job or seen your retirement account shrinking? “They” say the economy is getting better - has it gotten better for you too?

Here is a great blog posting by the Chopra Center about how to find financial freedom by by Julie Murphy Casserly, a Certified Financial Planner and founder of JMC Wealth Management, Inc. in Chicago. Julie offers a terrific exercise to help you reach your financial goals, no matter what your current financial situation.

Read it here.

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Proper Golf Attire Shows Respect for the Game

Golf is fun and it’s also a terrific form of exercise. If you play golf, you know that part of golf etiquette is showing up in appropriate golf clothes. Many private golf clubs even require a certain dress code, which includes golf attire. Here are some tips on choosing what to wear to the golf course.

Proper golf clothing includes shorts but they must be especially designed for golf. Don’t wear denim, cut-offs or gym shorts to play and they should be cut just above the knee. Ladies may wear a women’s golf skort to play, as well as short or long pants.

Golf pants and shorts both should have cuffs to fill with dirt and a leather belt should be worn, so you need belt loops on golf attire.

Be sure to wear matching colors when playing golf, a pair of classical neutral shorts or pants in tan, black or brown is a good choice. Only on cartoons will you see clashing plaids worn to swing a golf club.

Special golf shoes are made just to play golf. No tennis shoes or sandals should be worn, and most golf clubs require soft spikes, not metal spikes, which tear up the golf course. You should always bring street shoes to change into once you are finished playing.

Be sure to match your socks to your golf pants or shorts too. Wear lightly colored socks if you choose golf shorts and if you wear long pants, the socks should match your golf pants.

Golf shirts, including ladies golf shirts, should have a collar.

Hats are appropriate on the golf course. Either baseball style or a straw golf hat can be worn. Hats are a good idea. They help keep the sun off your face, and may improve your vision. Either baseball style or straw golf hats are appropriate.

If the weather is cold, you can wear golf sweater, or men’s or ladies golf jackets.

Most important of all, proper golf attire shows respect for the game.

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Can Magnetic Therapy Relieve Your Chronic Pain?

Chronic Pain doesn’t have to be part of your senior years. Alternative remedies such as magnetic therapy, using magnetic bracelets, acupuncture, reiki and energy medicine offer hope for chronic pain sufferers.

Baby boomers who suffer chronic pain often just accept pain as part of their lives. They take pain medications that harm their livers - Pop a pill and feel a little better - However, that chronic pain from arthritis, back or hip problems, neuropathy, carpel tunnel or other forms of unrelieved pain are still present. You can try and relieve the symptoms but the underlying cause it still there.

How Does Magnetic Therapy Work?

Magnetic therapy has been around for about 4,000 years. Magnetic healing may work to relieve chronic pain by relaxing the capillary walls of the body, increasing the blood flow throughout your system, working much the same as massage therapy, which stimulates the areas around muscles, increasing blood flow and helping the body to heal itself.

In Magnetic therapy a magnetic bracelet or other jewelry is worn which may help increase blood flow and speed healing of chronic pain, getting to the cause of the pain, not just relieving the symptoms.

Where Can I Find Quality Magnetic Bracelets?

Amega Global offers quality magnetic bracelets, zero point energy wand, an energetic healing tool which can help the body heal from chronic pain - often in minutes), and other energy healing products.

The Magnetic Therapy Industry is a billion dollar business worldwide, with $300 million of that business in the United States If you are looking for a money making home business, we are building a team with Zero Point Energy Technology, just recently introduced in the West. Our products include zero point energy wands and pendants using Amized Fusion Energy. These energetic healing products can help unblock your energy pathways, providing chronic pain relief, often in minutes!

Zero Energy Magnetic bracelets

Zero Point Energy Technology also includes Bio-Energetic products such as magnetic bracelets.

If you would like to know more about Zero Point Energy Wands, pendants and magnetic bracelets, or to read about the demonstrations that are relieving chronic pain, contact me at boomerstreams@gmail.com for more information or read about these amazing energetic healing products here.

If you join our team, you can purchase your magnetic bracelets, energy wands and other products at whole sale prices.

If you’re a baby boomer looking for a home business that is growing by leaps and bounds, you might like Amega Global products. If you’re like me, you know many boomers who suffer from chronic pain and after a demonstration with these amazing products, everyone you know will be clamoring for a magnetic bracelet or energy wand.

Life is too short to live with chronic pain. With magnetic therapy, you can increase your quality of life - no matter how long you live. I’ve seen amazing results in seniors over 80 years old, as well as those in their 40’s and 50’s.

If you live in chronic pain and don’t want to take pain medications daily, check out magnetic therapy and energy healing. You’ll be glad you did.

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Raising Chickens in the City - Have Your Own Backyard Flock

For those of us who were raised on farm fresh eggs, the newest health trend of raising chickens in the city

Learn to raise chickens in the city.

may seem funny at first, but then it makes sense. Why not raise chickens in your backyard and have all the farm fresh eggs you can eat?

My grandfather was a chicken farmer during the depression and I grew up on my dad’s stories of living on an Iowa farm in the 1930’s. One time a flash flood came through and killed nearly every chicken. My dad said, “At the time, I never realized how devastating that must have been.” Chicken farming had it’s ups and downs, that’s for sure.

I guess raising chickens is in my blood because I’ve always loved them. When we lived on three acres in Oregon, one of my first farming efforts was to built a small coop with a sturdy fence and get a dozen chicks to raise. By the time we left there 6 years later, I had two dozen hens.

Raising chickens in your own backyard makes sense, even if you live in the city. Eggs from free ranging chickens provide higher levels of omega 3 fatty acids than conventional eggs raised on commercial chicken farms. You can also feed your backyard flock flax seed meal to increase the omega 3’s even more.

Chickens in the city need very little to be happy. Each chicken lays about one egg per day in the spring and summer. My chickens were very consistent layers, even in winter. We always had enough eggs to supply our family, plus my extended family. I also supplied other people in the community. When I got my hair cut, I “tipped” my hair stylist with two dozen eggs and she loved it!

To raise chickens you need a small coop to shut them up at night and provide them a clean, dry place to lay their eggs. Chickens are smart. Every evening at dusk, they “go to bed” and you just need to shut the door to lock out predators. Even the city has raccoons or other animals that might love to have a chicken dinner.

In your litle back yard coop, you need a couple straw filled boxes for the chickens to lay eggs and a small roost of some kind for them to sleep on. I made my own with wood and dowels going across for them to get their claws around.

You’ll probably also need a fenced area for your backyard chickens. It’s nice to think of them running free, but chickens are very hard on landscaping! They dig and scratch for bugs until your entire yard is torn up.

You can also feed your chickens veggie scraps instead of throwing them in the trash. On cold days, I even made hot oatmeal for my chickens (yes, they were spoiled). On hot days, I ran the hose for them too so they could play in the water and cool off.

You probably won’t save money raising chickens in the city. Your first expenses will be building a coop of some sort, buying a feeder and waterer and some straw for the laying boxes. You need to buy chicken feed and continue to get straw to refresh the laying area and keep it clean.

Still, aside from the money you spend raising chickens, you have the wonderful knowledge of knowing you’re raising your own food and, if you have kids or grandkids, they can see first hand where food comes from. Chickens are friendly creatures too and they will come running when they see you.

If you’d like to raise chickens in the city, I suggest finding out first is your city allows backyard flocks and if so, how many chickens you could have. Then read up on the subject of chicken raising. Here are a few books to get you started:

Raising Chickens for Dummies

Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens: Care / Feeding / Facilities

City Chicks

If you’d like to raise chickens and other animals in the city, try this book:

Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cows

All of these books on raising chickens in the city are available on Amazon.com and got 5 star ratings from readers.

Further reading:

Mad City Chickens - a great website with lots of chicken info.

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Guide to E-Learning Sites - Free Distance Learning Online

E-Learning brings lectures, videos and online courses on literally thousands of topics, right to your computer or iPod. Are you interested in the Civil War? Health? The Russian Ballet? Physics? Economics? E learning can be delivered to you on demand.Here is a guide to free e- learning sites on the Internet where you can pursue any hobby or research any subject from the comfort of your home - all for free.

ITunesU - I’ve had an ipod for over a year but never tapped this terrific e learning resource until recently. Would you like to subscribe to a Sanford University course on Colonial and Revolutionary War history? There are 25 one hour tracks just in this one topic. At last count Apple had more than 100,000 educational video and audio files - all free downloads from universities, museums and cultural institutions all over the world. Just go to your iTtunes account and click on iTunesU. You can learn about landscape architecture from UC Davis or the Origins of America from the Library of Congress from this huge e learning site.

On the Research Channel, you can watch a video lecture from USC with a demonstration of rare musical instruments or get an update on Fibromyalgia. The Research Channel offers a consortium of leading research and academic institutions with more than 3,500 videos for free distance learning online.

Video Lectures.Net offers video lectures by famous scholars and scientists taken from seminars, workshops and conferences from all over the world. Nearly 10,000 videos are available in subjects like architecture, medicine, humanities, mathematics and more.

At Academic Earth, you’ll find thousands of video lectures on anything from a Yale course on psychology to an MIT class on physics. Subjects include medicine, history, international relations, astronomy, political science and much more.

For more free e-learning resources, visit Open Culture, a website dedicated to keeping up with new offerings free cultural and educational media on the Internet. Find links to free audio books, free courses online, free foreign language classes and lots more. Check out their listing of 250 free online courses.

To access these e learning lectures and videos:

1.  You will probably need a high speed Internet connection. Loading large files is very time consuming on dial up connections.

2.  Sign up for free with Apple iTunes, which is a handy way to download and organize from e learning sites. Other ways to download include QuickTime, Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. Basic versions of these offer free sign up.

3.  If you have an iPhone or iPod, you can transfer the files to these by saving them to your iTunes library and then transferring them to your media player.

Don’t let the details scare you away from e learning! Find a video or lecture you like and hit “download!”

Most baby boomers know that to age well, you have to keep your mind actively engaged and learning all the time. With e learning sites, you can keep up with topics you’re interested in or learn something new. The Internet can connect you with free distance learning to fit your schedule.

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