If only the world were ruled by blind 12 year olds like this:

Power of Peace

2010-2011 Lions International Essay Contest Grand Prize

Winner

By Amy Bosko, Age 12, Illinois, USA

There are three simple solutions to peace. The three solutions are,

eliminating war, communication, and respecting people’s differences.

Many of our loved ones have died in wars. And regardless of where

one is from, we can all agree that death is a tragedy that can be avoided.

Soldiers are risking their lives and leaving families in fear wondering whether or

not they will return home safely. There is a vast amount of people from various

countries who have no food or shelter. Meanwhile, we are disputing over

unnecessary topics such as race, money, and cultural differences, which leads

to war! People should not be judged by who they are, what they have, or what

they believe in. For instance, I am a 12 year old who has to cope with and

accept my disability of being blind. I wouldn’t want people to judge me for

only that. I am no different than anyone else.

Everyone needs to put forth an effort to communicate in order to avoid

conflict. Without communication, it would be very challenging to come together

as one, and promote world peace. It takes a team effort to make the world a

peaceful place. It’s encouraging how the world works together in a synergistic

union to make the world part of a more peaceful universe. If we don’t respect

people’s differences, then we can’t have peace. You can’t just look at somebody

and judge them because they are different. For example, if your best friend

suddenly became terminally ill, offer them moral support and try to see things

through their perspective. This might inspire you to treat them more equally.

Most people who are different are more aware with their other senses. I am

blind. However, I have senses that make me see a clear vision for world

peace. I can hear the laughter of families floating across the borders of all

countries. Laughter and communication skills are universal languages. I can

taste the various foods from across the globe, blending seamlessly together,

making their way to the less fortunate. I can smell the clean air from everywhere

knowing that everyone needs air to breath and would enjoy feasting on the

various aromas weaved throughout the world. Most importantly, I can feel the

sense and feel the power of peace when I meet a stranger and offer a peaceful

greeting without being judgmental. People are different. People have much to

offer, whether it be an act of kindness or discovering a cure for an illness.

Joined together, different types of people are a powerful force and could inspire

the world to function more successfully and peacefully. I may be blind, but I

have the power to promote peacefulness on a daily basis.

All the things that I have mentioned should be practiced on a daily

basis. If we all put our best foot forward, then the world would be a better

place. So, as you can see, if we try to avoid wars, communicate more, and

respect people’s differences, we would have a more peaceful environment

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to start couponing, but it doesn't hurt

Actually I'm convinced there must be some kind of couponing gene that a few lucky people inherit. This adventure in couponing all started during my annual tightwad phase where I pick a few areas to cut back expenses, some low hanging fruit if you will. One of those items this year was the grocery bill. Turns out that couponing isn't quite as low hanging as I imagined. Before you laugh and think to yourself, I knew it! I want to say that I have managed over the course of just a few weeks, to actually cut our grocery bill down in half, which apparently is pretty good compared to other newbies.  I have asked myself over the past few weeks though, why am I bothering to do this. We don't "need" at this point to be tight wads. But, like anything else, the less you spend in one area, the more you have for other areas. I'm just saying its not as easy as I thought it would be, and there is a learning curse, um, I mean curve. There are only two of us now, and I've budgeted $120 a week for groceries, what I think should be a generous amount. Over the past year, the amount that actually gets spent has crept up more towards the $200 a week mark. It's no secret, we like food, a lot, and we both enjoy putzing around in the kitchen. The fact that I've been hearing rumors that the cost of food is about to skyrocket after the first of the year, spurred me on as well. When we first got married in 1978, and very low on cash, I tried couponing. I heard about this lady called the coupon mom, who sometimes only spent a couple of dollars at the grocery store for a weeks worth of groceries. I did it for a while back then, but in the end, it just didn't seem worth the trouble. Guess what? That coupon mom is still around, and she has spawned hundreds of other entrepreneurial budget minded women into coupon goddesses. I haven't seen any coupon dads or men yet - I suppose most men have more sense than this - However, I HAVE seen coupon "couples". I am definitely not part of a coupon couple. In fact, I think one of the best pieces of advice from the coupon mom, is to go grocery shopping alone. Armed with the Internet, the coupon moms' methods have been streamlined. Yes! I think, using the Internet, right up my alley, this should be a breeze. Using modern technology, the coupon mom has what she calls a no clip system. In my mind, no clip means, no cutting out of coupons, no printing of coupons, just downloading to an electronic card, and away you go. It doesn't exactly mean that. What the coupon mom means, is that when she gets the Sunday paper, she puts the P&G, smart source, and Red Plum coupons in a box, and dates them, and then only clips the coupons as she needs them, instead of clipping and filing them all from the beginning. Ok, I say to myself, I can deal with that. So, the adventure begins.

Release your Inner Tightwad

As I sit here scrupulously analyzing every monthly expense I have, as I periodically do, I wonder how much company I have. How many other people have these periodic financial cleansing periods? How much money is leaking out, that could be put to much better use? I suppose you need a certain fondness for money, and enjoy number crunching in order to really get into this. It's a bit like the game Clue as a real life scavenger hunt. I made such a dent this time in expenses, that it occurred to me, I should make a point to do it at least once a year. So Autumn, I hereby ordain you as my personal financial cleaning season.

If you really want some new ideas for saving money,  talk with folks who are just starting out on their own, or retired folks with limited incomes. Due to necessity, they have a boat load of tricks you can borrow. For example, I like to eat healthy foods, which can be expensive if you are not careful. I knew I had been paying a lot to use a healthy oil butter called Smart Balance. I can afford it, but these things tend to add up and make the overall grocery bill too high. Reading my cousins (first cousin once removed to be exact) Mary's blog (yes, it runs in the family) Marys Blog regarding food, (and to clarify, I really don't know if she has a little or a lot of moola, I just picked this up from her) where she mentioned she would never buy Smart Balance, because of its cost. Instead she simply buys olive oil in bulk, solidifies a portion of it, and uses it as butter. Zing! Yeah, I kinda knew about doing that, I just hadn't done it. Both my mom and my mother in law have been the inspiration for countless ways to ingeniously save money.

An interesting side note and a little off the beaten path: Like a lot of other people, when the book and the movie "The Secret" came out - the name, and the tantalizing promise of getting whatever you want in life, proved to be too much for me to resist, and I did buy the book, (on sale at least). I have to admit, I never did read the book from beginning to end, as a lot of it just wasn't making sense to me. I remember getting stuck on one portion regarding reciting affirmations to manifest what you want in life. The instruction was that if your desire was to get out of debt, that your affirmation had to be something along the lines of seeing money come into your life, and never ever to affirm that you wanted to get out of debt, because if you did, then the "universe" would only hear the word debt, and return only more debt to you. How much stock you want to put into this, is up to you, but I thought I would be remiss, if I didn't at least mention it. I do have a certain amount of belief  that your thoughts can at least direct your destiny in life. My confusion about it, was that I like to eliminate debt, and expenses to free up money for other uses, and in order to do that, you kinda have to think about it. So, just to be safe, I don't think of it as eliminating debt or expenses, I think of it as a means to simply redirect the flow of money in and out of my life every now and then. My philosophy is that it's really not bad to spend money, it is however, not so good to spend money you don't yet have.

The final outcome for this season, is that we will be reclaiming $255 a month to be sure, by switching from Vonage to Magic Jack, reducing the amount we contribute to our health savings plan, removing a monthly fee for a web site we no longer use, and since we have installed a whole house water filter, we can eliminate having spring or filtered water delivered to the house. I am also feverishly working on eliminating DISH TV. We have a 2 year contract that will be up next year, and I believe we can do just fine using hulu, and netflix. I have also been a bit irked by how high the garbage removal bills are. Between recycling and composting, we really don't have that much waste that goes out. Then I read an article   Zero Waste  regarding an idea some businesses have put into practice.   I can't see exactly how the average household could accomplish that, personally. But, I sure would like to reduce or eliminate that bill. And something else I've been noticing, is that the grocery bill seems to keep climbing up. It's time  to make some changes there, and maybe utilize some of those coupon sites.

One year, I discovered I was spending an awful lot of money for books at Amazon, with the result of a lot of books piling up and taking space in my house. Somehow, somewhere along the path in life, I had forgotten about one of my favorite hang outs, the library. So, sorry Amazon, you were convenient, and I love you to death,and I still use you on occasion, but the library is quite fun and less costly to use.


A couple of final notes, and links. My favorite financial authors, speakers, websites:

1.Dave Ramsey FB page
I read Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace book  many years ago.  I was hooked, and followed his advice. I understand now he has greatly expanded, and even has a Financial Peace University.I don't feel too bad about not giving you money directly, as I see you have done quite well, without my contribution.
2.Clark Howard
My mom turned me on to this one. He has a radio show, TV show, and blog. I subscribe to his blog as well on facebook. I like his common sense approach, and he is always on the look out for good deals.
3. Debt Proof Living
I picked up a facebook page, debt free living, from my cousins wife Meredith, that looks good, but I think is more geared toward families with young children.
4. The tightwad gazette
Some real out the box thinking on this site. What intrigues me is the founder has been doing this for a long time, and became quite wealthy from not only being a super saver, but turning her passion into her livelihood.  

One last note. I've been hearing a lot lately about investing in precious metals, gold, silver, that kind of thing. Dave Ramsey actually advises against it. However, I'm thinking a little extra diversity in these strange economic times, might be worth a little risk.  If you have some extra money to invest, you might want to consider looking into diversifying a bit, and seeing if there is anything to this. Just a tidbit to tuck in the back of your mind. 

Until Next Time......

Amy

Trials and tribulations of starting a blog

I'll just come right out with it - I love to write, and the urge to try blogging has been whispering in my ear and getting louder by the day. I didn't jump on the bandwagon at first, because I didn't think blogging was going anywhere. Not the first time I've been that wrong. I do need an audience to be motivated though. Since I now have a bunch of facebook friends, well here goes nothing. Let's face it, (Ha!), facebook doesn't exactly give you a lot of space for creative written expression. This is simply my invitation to you, to be entertained by, and interact with the chaos of thoughts and observations streaking through my brain. The little demon on my right shoulder has been screaming, just do it, while the demon on the left shoulder has been whispering all kinds of nasty and scary things. For quite a while, I got stuck on a name for the blog. The name, kibooki (pronounce kee boo kee), does need a little explanation. I love google, partly because it is fun to say. And who can argue with google's success? Kibooki is kind of fun to say. The name kiki is my alias in a motorcycle club. I came up with ki, as in chi, as in good energy. With the club members, it became kiki, because well, kiki is more fun to say. My husbands (Rick Jenkins) alias is boo. His nickname came from a friends (Tim Brills) daughter (Kristin) who saw him hurt himself, and make a "boo boo". So, she started calling him boo. I put our two aliases together, and got kibooki. There you have it. For now, I'm going Erma Bombeck style, with no particular destination in mind. With that, I pay tribute to some of my favorite silly fun words and rhyming phrases: Honky Tonk, Hanky Panky, Harem Scarem, blogging, google, blitz, binky, boing, bebop, super sonic, silly willy, sassafrass, pinky, super duper and the mother of them all - supercalafragalisticexpealadocious (can there really be a correct spelling of that word?). I'd consider it an honor it if you would follow along this blog. I can think of two good reasons for this. One, if I know you, I may mention you in a blog, like I did Tim, Kristin and Rick above. It'll only be good things I promise, but you might want to help keep me honest and straight. And there's the possibility you might enjoy the subject matter and adding your comments. The kinds of things that'll end up in this blog are the kinds of things that my brain gets stuck on. For instance, right now I'm thinking about how people should not ignore thier psychic abilities and how reading Psalms from the bible compares to reading modern day self help literature, a bunch of thoughts on being gay, and what heros that stay at home moms are. But all that is likely to change by the time I sit down to write again. Have a great week everyone!