Cooking on a Budget

Looking for a gift for both your wallet and your waistline? This weekend, instead of heading to the nearest restaurant, why not fire up the flavor in your own kitchen with friends and family?

“Inviting guests into my home is like sharing a piece of myself. It's a comfortable setting and it allows me to dip into my creative outlet,” says Kelsey Nixon, chef and former contestant on the “The Next Food Network Star” reality TV show. “There is a feeling in a home that you can't recreate in a restaurant.”

If the idea of an elaborate dinner party seems too time intensive and costly, here are a few simpler ways to entertain at home:
Drinks and desserts: Skip the cost of full entrées and limit the menu to all that is decadent. What’s your pleasure: champagne and cupcakes, cocktails and chocolate-dipped fruit? Offer a variety of drinks (be sure to include non-alcoholic options) and sweets for an event sure to delight every attendee.

Recipe exchange: Choose a theme and invite your guests to bring their best dish to share. For example, you could host an appetizer night or one featuring 30-minute meals. Ask each guest to bring enough copies of the recipe to give to everyone in the group.

Theme potluck: A variation on the recipe exchange, you can assign parts of the meal to various friends or family members, all based on a theme. The theme could be as broad as “Cuisines of the World,” for example, with guests bringing appetizers, salad, dessert, drinks and side dishes to represent different countries.

Ready to get started? Here’s a summery recipe that works as an appetizer for nearly any type of gathering.

Fresh Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips

Yield: 10 servings

INGREDIENTS:
2 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 Granny Smith apples — peeled, cored and diced
1 pound strawberries, diced
8 ounces fresh raspberries
3 tablespoons brown sugar
10 (10-inch) flour tortillas
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup cinnamon sugar

DIRECTIONS:
In a large bowl, thoroughly mix kiwis, apples, strawberries, raspberries, brown sugar and fruit preserves. Cover and chill in the refrigerator at least 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spread one side of each flour tortilla with butter. Cut into wedges and arrange in a single layer on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle wedges with desired amount of cinnamon sugar.

Bake in the preheated oven 8 to 10 minutes. Repeat with any remaining tortilla wedges. Allow to cool approximately 15 minutes. Serve with chilled fruit mixture.

—Recipe courtesy Kelsey Nixon

What Should You Say to Your Kids?

April was National Financial Literacy Month, and many parents took the opportunity to speak to their children about being financially savvy before heading to college in today’s economy.

Having those first conversations with children regarding spending on tuition and making out a budget can be challenging.

“Number one is, don’t keep your child in the dark about finances,” says Adam Carroll, chief education officer with National Financial Educators.

“Throw the whole money taboo out the window. It’s okay to discuss what insurance costs. What parents need to arm their children with are realistic costs that they will be faced with when they get out of the house and get out of school,” Carroll says.

Many 18-year-olds have left high school armed with a knowledge of U.S. history and calculus, but no experience with the realities of car loans and college tuition.

Julie Felshaw is the financial education specialist for the Utah State Office of Education. Utah is one of only three states that require a course on personal finance for graduation from high school. The program educates high schools students about financial basics such as checking accounts, investing and risk management.

“The key is making the topic relevant,” Felshaw says. Parents can peak their children’s interest by relating abstract principles to relatable topics, such as saving for a car, creating a budget for prom, or projecting the costs of their first year of college. Many teachers use online stock trading games and in-class investment simulations to let students learn the financial ropes with no risk.

“Kids love to talk about money,” she says, and the more times they discuss it, the better they’ll understand it.

This process can, and should, begin much earlier. Kara Lott, a parent of three young children, is uses trips to the grocery store to teach her three young children basic money principles. While her youngest, Lanie, 5, is eager to spend a dollar as soon as she gets it, 7-year-old Ethan will spend an hour in the toy aisle to make sure he gets the best value for his $5.

“My son will ask me, ‘If I only spend two, do I get to keep three?’” Lott’s oldest, Dane, 10, has started asking her how checks work, and how the ATM knows to whom to give the money. He realized after his last birthday party that if he returned a duplicate gift, he would then have enough cash to buy a video game he wanted.

She encourages her kids to donate a small percentage of their money to their charitable causes, and she plans to open savings accounts for them once they understand the basics of saving and spending.

With the right kind of financial education, both at home and at school, the next generation is bound to be smarter and more secure than its parents. Just think what the housing market might look like right now if we’d all learned the simple lesson Ethan learned with his video game: Don’t buy what you can’t afford.

The Pleasures of Saving

When the recession hit, Americans responded quickly by changing their habits. The savings rate grew steadily in 2008, rising to 2.9 percent in the final quarter, and economists are predicting it will continue to grow as much as 6 percent.

Kelly Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla., is one individual newly converted to the pleasures of saving. “I used to be a real keep-up-with-the-Jones’ guy, especially when it came to electronics and cars,” he says. “But I’m amazed at what a great feeling it is to have some money stashed away. I find there’s even a magic number — as long as my wife and I have a certain amount saved in our saving account at the credit union, I feel a sense of well-being I never had when I was living paycheck-to-paycheck and juggling to make bill payments every month.”

Walters finds that watching his savings grow affects his other financial behaviors. “The more we save, the more cautious I am about big purchases that could erode our savings,” he explains. “Now I feel sorry for my friends when I see them making choices, such as upgrading a car, that are based on status, rather than on what’s best for their families.”

Saving goes hand-in-hand with knowing exactly where and how your money is being spent. So, to help beginning savers launch their savings plan, many financial advisors recommend creating a budget if you don’t already have one. For those who are having particular trouble putting a check on uncontrolled spending, advisors will often recommend a micro-budgeting exercise, where household members track every penny they spend for a week or more, to learn exactly how much every spending habit costs.

These exercises can prove very valuable. But to jump-start your savings plan, the best advice is to simply put some money into savings first before a single bill is paid. Make it the first priority, even if it’s only $5 per pay check. As your savings grow, you’ll find ways to cut spending even more and make the savings grow faster, because you’ll learn the pleasure of saving.

Basic Saving Tips

• Bring lunch to work. If buying lunch at work costs $5, but making lunch at home costs only $2.50, then in a year, you could afford to create a $500 emergency fund and still have money left over.
• Save your loose change. Putting aside fifty cents a day over the course of a year will allow you to save nearly 40 percent of a $500 emergency fund.
• Ask your physician to consider prescribing generic drugs. Generic drugs can cost several hundred dollars less to purchase annually than brand-name drugs. 
• Use only the ATMs of your credit union. Using the ATM of another financial institution once a week could well cost you $3 a withdrawal, or more than $150 over the course of a year. 
• Keep your car engine tuned and its tires inflated to their proper pressure. Doing both can save you up to $100 a year in gas.
• Borrow books rather than purchasing them. Borrowing books and reading magazines at your local library, rather than purchasing reading material, can save you hundreds of dollars a year.