Blog - Making Sense Of Cents

10 Easy Homemade Snacks To Bring On Your Next Hike

June 20, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 5 Comments

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10 Easy Hiking Snacks To Make. Going on a hike soon? Here are 10 easy hiking snacks and backpacking food to make. These all look so delicious and will be a great addition for your next trip #hikingsnacks #backpackingfood

Hiking is definitely one of my favorite activities.

I love exploring new areas, going on exciting adventures, and seeing beautiful views, all while getting in a fun and enjoyable workout.

For a good hike, though, you also need hiking snacks. Whether I'm hiking, biking, or something else, I always bring a snack. Lately, I've been making more homemade hiking snacks. Homemade ones are great for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that homemade hiking snacks usually taste better and are healthier than what you may find at the store.

Plus, making them at home means you will probably even save a good amount of money. Hiking snacks at the grocery store are not cheap!

The hiking snack recipes mentioned in today's article can be great snacks for other times too – not just hiking!

Other recipe roundups to check out:

Note: If you're looking for easy weekly meal plans that are full of budget recipes, I recommend $5 Meal Plan. $5 Meal Plan is a meal planning service that sends you a delicious meal plan and shopping list every week for just $5 a month.

Here are 10 easy hiking snacks and backpacking foods to make:

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The Digital Nomad Lifestyle – A Day In The Life

June 18, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 63 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

“What do you do all day?”

I am regularly asked what my average day is like. It's always such a difficult question to answer, as there is no routine day for me. If you know me at all, then you know that I pretty much hate schedules, haha.

My hatred of schedules is probably one of the main reasons for why I love living the digital nomad lifestyle.

Telling people that I work online and travel is always an interesting conversation. Telling people “I'm a blogger” just leads to so many questions, which I completely understand. But, when they find out that I’m a full-time traveler too, they get even more confused!

Now, blogging is a lot of work. I may not work a ton everyday, but there are many days when I'll work 16 hours a day. There is almost always something that needs to be done when it comes to my blogging business, and I have a whole long list of things that I want to do when I have more time. [Read more…]

How Kayla Earns $10K/Month From Home as a Virtual Assistant

June 15, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 20 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

How Kayla Earns $10K/Month From Home as a Virtual Assistant Today, I want to introduce you to my friend, Kayla Sloan. Kayla is a full-time blogger, virtual assistant (VA), and project manager who earns over $10,000 per month while working from home. She is also the founder of $10K VA, her new program where she teaches exactly how you make a consistent $10,000 per month as a virtual assistant too!

Kayla used to work a full-time job as a credit analyst, earning about $2,000 per month. She was struggling to make ends meet while paying off debt, so she started a side hustle as a virtual assistant.

In our interview, she shows how she was able to grow her business from part-time to full-time and now earns 5 figures per month from the comfort of her own home. She also shares how this is a great way to make money on the side or even as a full-time career.

Check out the interview below for more information and be sure to check out Kayla’s course $10K VA to learn further about how to become a successful virtual assistant. [Read more…]

Why Check Your Credit Report and Credit Score? Why Wouldn’t You?

June 14, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

The following is a sponsored post.

By Jeff Hoyt, MoneyTips.com

Sometimes people ignore important warning signs – such as a stop sign, the expiration date on their yogurt, or that rapidly spreading rash. You might ignore those signs and come out okay, but why take that chance?

Your credit report and credit score act as similar warning signs for your financial health. Ignore them at your own risk. [Read more…]

How I Made $136,807 In May 2018 Blogging + Tips For The Summer Blogging Slump

June 11, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 36 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

How I Made $136,807 In May 2018 Blogging + Tips For The Summer Blogging Slump Welcome to May 2018's business income report where I show you how I made money online last month. It's time to look at this month's update and see how I did.

If you're new to Making Sense of Cents, you may be wondering why I would want to publish my income report each month. You can simply skip to the next section if you're not new here.

This all started out as my extra income report because, in the beginning, it was all about the money I was earning from my side jobs. In my side income reports from the beginning, I included all of the income I made except for what I made at my day job.

However, I left my day job as a financial analyst in October of 2013 and now my monthly income reports consist of the many ways I earn a living.

Many have asked why I would ever want to publicly post my income each month. Some think I'm crazy, whereas some are glad I'm open about what I'm doing. Whatever you think, I enjoy publishing my monthly online income reports and I share them publicly for three main reasons: [Read more…]

Is too much house making you house poor?

June 6, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 42 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Is too much house making you house poor? I keep hearing stories from people who, after buying their first home, become immediately overwhelmed by the financial toll of homeownership, especially when they spend more than they can actually afford. And, when buying your first home, it can be so easy to get in over your head.

When we were in the process of buying our first home, we were given a pre-approval amount of $150,000.

If we would have bought a house for that amount, I'm sure it would have led to us being house poor, which is when you buy more house than you can actually afford. While that amount may not seem like much to some, it was more than enough to purchase a good starter home in St. Louis, where we were living at the time.

This $150,000 number seemed high to us because we were quite young, just 20 years old, and we both had mediocre jobs. Yes, we were both working full-time, but our yearly salaries put together were still very low, and I definitely do not think we should have been approved for $150,000. If I remember correctly, our annual take-home income was only around $30,000. [Read more…]

4 Mindsets That Will Rob You Of Your Dream Life

June 4, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 37 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

4 Mindsets That Will Rob You Of Your Dream Life #dreamlife Are you your own worst enemy?

Recently, I read a discussion in which people were talking about the ways they hold themselves back and cause themselves to fail at their dreams.

This got me to thinking about all of the habits and mindsets we use, sometimes unconsciously, to hold ourselves back, and trust me, I’m even guilty of some of these.

This is something I've talked about extensively on Making Sense of Cents – how you are often your own worst enemy when it comes to reaching your dream life.

We all do have things that hold us back, and I don’t want to overlook or underestimate the difficulties people face on a daily basis.

But, today, I want to talk about a few ways people self-sabotage and may fail at reaching their potential, then robbing themselves of their dream life. [Read more…]

Here are 10 easy hiking snacks and backpacking foods to make:

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