Hand Helpers- DIY Manicures

The next time you are at the salon pampering yourself with a mani-pedi, rest easy because your bill won't ultimately read "$51,000."  That is the price of the world's most expensive manicure known as the 'Iced Manicure' done by Cherish Angula's team of nail specialists. As one might glean from the name, the manicure involves some serious 'ice' studded into each nail-- 10 carat diamonds to be exact.  Bornrich.com sums it up by exclaiming "This luxurious treatment is surely the definition of frivolous!"

Yes-we are going to have to agree.

Even though you probably aren't going to spend the equivalent of a down payment on a house at the nail salon in this lifetime, you don't even have to shell out $30-$50 each week to keep your fingers looking fresh all summer long. This at-home manicure treatment adapted from Donna Perillo, the owner of Sweet Lily Natural Nail Spa in New York City, utilizes items already laying around your house.

A Guide to Budgeting: The 50/20/30 Rule

I am reposting the article "5 Financial Rules to Live By" which is based on a TED talk given by LearnVest cofounder Alexa von Tobel. LearnVest  is a website that provides free financial planning tools for women anywhere in the financial spectrum, from recent graduate to in deep debt (maybe both?).

I thought the most useful advice was the 50/20/30 rule for budgeting:

• 50% of take-home pay goes toward your essentials (housing, utilities, transportation and groceries)
• 20% to debt repayment and future savings
• 30% to everything else

It's simple and easy to remember. Putting 20% towards debt repayment is a good chunk of change, and if you can put some of the 30% miscellaneous spending towards an emergency saving fund, you will have the security of 6 months worth of income in case anything happens to your job.

Why not plan your budget for the next 3 months using it?

DIY Facial Mist and Toner

If you're like me, you can't win with your skin.

Your T-zone gets oily, and when you use cleansers for oily skin you dry out the rest of your face. The weather starts to get colder, and your skin loses moisture. So, you slather on moisturizer and half way through the day you are pulling out oil absorbing sheets and counting down the hours when you can finally wash your face and start this aggravating cycle over once more.

Rosewater controls oil secretion and fights acne

Instead of purchasing $30 facial mists and toners, consider making your own. It's simple to do and can restore, tone, and hydrate your skin in one spritz giving you a dewy glow. Plus making it yourself with items that are already in your kitchen ensures that you don't have to deal with skin irritants like parabens, sulfates, synthetic fragrances, or dyes.

How Far Would You Go for a $20?

That's exactly the question Steve Grant and Richard Cook sought to answer when they created the website PlentyOfTwenties.com.The duo play hide and seek with $20 bills; they hide, you seek. There is no catch, and no scavenger hunt involved. You check the website for the exact location (including city and town) of where the bill is hiding, and if you are the first one to it, you get to keep it and spend it however you choose! As soon as a person reports finding it, the site will mark that particular $20 as "Found." That's it.

Walk it Out: Online Fitness Communities

Becky Luigart-Stayner

Walking is the ideal thrifty exercise; invest in good walking shoes and walk anywhere for $0 in monthly membership fees, with no basic training required. Since the weather is getting warmer, it's easier than ever to incorporate walking into your weekly fitness regimens. If I have errands to run within a 1 mile radius of the house, like picking up prescriptions, going to the post office, grabbing some milk at the grocery store, I will put on my tiny backpack and hoof it. Never underestimate the power of having time away all your electronic reminders and communications, the scent of wood and grass, and enjoying the dimensionality of the color green in contrast to a white computer screen. 

If the thought of walking a long distance feels daunting, incorporate it into your everyday schedule, eg:get off one bus stop before your usual stop on your daily commute and walk the extra block. If the weather isn't ideal, or if you are sensitive to dust, pollen, and other allergens in the environment, there are many walking groups that get together and make use of running tracks in a local university and shopping malls.

I realize not everyone lives in a walkable neighborhood, and that walking alone can get...well...lonely sometimes. That's why I I want to highlight online fitness communities which bring a sense of companionship and accomplishment to exercise. MapMyWALK.com is one such online tool, which can not only be used by individuals, but provides mapping tool for community groups and public health professionals to design walking routes tailored to different fitness levels.  The site boasts millions of existing members and millions of existing routes in their system.

Design a running/jogging/hiking/walking/bicycling map route around your workplace, campus, or home by entering in an address, and using a Google Maps interface to outline your route. You can incorporate off road trails onto your map and view it from "street view" or "satellite view" to see local landmarks. Once you have created a route, you will know exactly how many miles (or kilometers) it is, and be able to log trips which will help keep track of your total miles traveled and total calories burned. For a more detailed tutorial of how to use MapMyWALK click here.

You can save your personal route for future walks, or share it to your friends via Facebook Timeline or Twitter, or join an existing community group with existing maps to choose from. There are over 20,000 listed community walking events, and local races to further motivate you to set distance goals for yourself. An app (of course) exists for MapMyWALK for $1.99 but is not completely necessary.

Tips for Saving Money on Food

Check out my article in the BU School of Public Health student journal, "The Movement!" An excerpt is featured below.

Photo by Aayesha Siddiqui

Ah grad school! You are (hopefully) learning things you want to know; gaining tools that employers want; and making it on your own. Although, it also means the dining hall is not a place you can frequent. Food can quickly become a sizable part of your monthly budget. Here are some tips to reduce your spending on food.

Which Kitchen Gadgets Do You Really Need?

It's November and if you are looking to buy some new kitchen appliances it's the perfect time to do so. New models of fridges, ovens, and stoves are coming onto the sales floor, while older models are heavily discounted. Veterans Day weekend and Black Friday of course, are important dates to watch for.

I'm no Martha Stewart, and sometimes when I go into the Home appliances section of a department store I get overwhelmed with immersion blenders, stand blenders, coffee percclators, drip coffee machines, single-serve coffee machines....you get the picture. Every once in a while, I get caught up with the gleaming, chrome, majesty of a kitchen appliance which could make my life so much simpler such as a mango corer or a Belgian waffle maker. Fortunately, my mother often gives me a dope-slap of reality and reminds me that kitchen space is a precious commodity. Besides, do you really need a pineapple corer? How many times do you eat pineapples anyway? (Beware of a circular answer eg: "Well I'd eat them more if I bought this corer..")

Learnvest created a great slideshow with popular kitchen gadgets that details the amount of  times you'd have to use your gadget to have it pay for itself in cooking time-saved. Of course, certain appliances are necessary, such as a blender/food processor, and if your ancestors hail from the Asian continent--a rice cooker!