WELLNESS TIP: START THE DAY WITH POSITIVE ENERGY. Avoid tackling busy or dreaded work first. While it can be tempting to “warm up” your day with busy work or your least favorite tasks, Rettig says it’s a better idea to start with something important that’s likely to yield a positive outcome. “For example, make the one or two sales calls you think are the most promising,” she says. “Accomplishments motivate you for the rest of the day.” - Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand

Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: AVOID ANSWERING THE PHONE UPON WAKING UP. With caller ID, most of us have some idea who is calling when the phone rings. Unless you’re someone who handles crisis work or makes sales calls for a living, get the most out of your morning by turning off the phone, suggests Rettig. “The phone can be highly interruptive,” she says, adding that even short calls can distract you and take you off track. - Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand

Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: EXERCISE UPON WAKING UP. Procrastination begins in the body, says Rettig, and deskwork helps foster it. Morning exercise gets the blood flowing and makes you more alert. If you don’t like to sweat or can’t fit in a long routine, simply start your day by stretching, twisting or dancing. “It’s important to work out the stiffness in the body, especially if you sit all day,” she says.

Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: AVOID TURNING ON THE TV UPON WAKING UP. For many people, the morning routine looks like this: Take a shower. Watch some TV. Eat breakfast. Watch some TV. Walk the dog. Watch some TV. “The television stretches out our morning ritual and distracts us from our mission,” Rettig says. “Don’t get anesthetized by the TV – leave it off.” If you need background noise, she says music on the radio is better. Save talk radio for your morning commute.-

Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: AVOID GOING ON-LINE UPON WAKING UP IN THE MORNING. Checking email or social media when you wake up is a common way to start the day, but those few minutes you think you’ll spend online often turn into an hour or more. Rettig suggests staying offline until 10 a.m. “It’s easy to get sucked into the vortex of the Internet,” Rettig says. “Protect the morning for the work that’s important to you, then be available for others later in the day.”- Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand

Ways You're Sabotaging Your Mornings - Yahoo Finance New Zealand:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: HAVE A 6 MONTHS EMERGENCY FUND & CONTRIBUTE TOGETHER. Every couple gets hit with the unexpected at some point, whether it’s a job loss, illness or even natural-disaster-related repairs. An emergency situation can put even more stress on a relationship if there isn’t a cushion of money to get you through the ordeal.

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart: "And don’t think it can’t happen to you: In a poll conducted by Bankrate.com, only 24% of those surveyed said they had enough to cover six months of expenses. Spare yourselves the future drama, and commit to building at least six months’ worth of expenses for those “just in case” moments. Figure out how much you can sock away each month, and then contribute together."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: COMMIT TO AN INVESTMENT FUND FOR THE FUTURE. Now, for a Valentine that represents your long-term goals. There’s nothing that says commitment more than saving up for a future home or the globetrotting you’ll do in retirement. Whatever the ultimate objective, starting an extra nest egg outside of your retirement savings helps you to both picture a future together.

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart: "As with your special-occasion fund, connect the account to a specific, future goal and determine when you want to accomplish it. This will not only remind you of the goal, says Faherty, but it will also help determine the best investment vehicle and asset allocation to fund"



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: WHEN DONATING, MAKE IT A BOTH DECISION AS A COUPLE

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart: "Love begets love, and giving back can be a gift that warms both of your hearts. Have a heart-to-heart about the societal ills that concern you both, and then research charities that are working to address those problems."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: GIVE HIM / HER A GIFT CARD REDEEMABLE TO CASH THIS VALENTINE'S DAY!

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart: "Often one partner assumes the heavy lifting when it comes to managing household finances. If your significant other is typically the one who makes sure that the bills get paid on time, Faherty suggests offering a Valentine that lets you switch roles for a period, so you can both be involved in money matters."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: SET ASIDE A HONEYMOON FUND. "What’s more romantic than having an account labeled “Second Honeymoon” or “My Sweetheart’s 40th Birthday Bash”? Once you’ve set up a separate bank account for a short-term goal that you share, create a priority goal folder for it in your LearnVest Money Center, so you and your honey can watch the money grow. After all, those shared experiences could be what gets you through the challenging times."

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: GIVE HIM / HER YOUR LIFE INSURANCE POLICY. Ensuring that your partner is taken care of in the event that something happens to you—and vice versa—offers the gift of peace of mind. “You never know where the road of life will take you, and planning ahead for illness or death as well as having life insurance can help couples be ready,” says Mitchell Adel, a certified elder law attorney and managing partner at Cooper, Adel & Associates, a law firm specializing in estate planning and elder law.

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart: "Life insurance is especially important if you think that your loved one might have difficulties meeting monthly living expenses and paying one-time costs in the event of your death, like funeral expenses, as well as such longer-term bills as a mortgage—not to mention just the general cost of raising children."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP FOR COUPLES: BE BOTH INVOLVED IN FINANCIAL DECISION. That’s because fighting about money is why most married couples split up, according to a study by Kansas State University researcher Sonya Britt. She found that couples who argue over money early on in their relationships were at a greater risk of divorce—regardless of their income, debt or net worth levels. By meeting with an adviser, you’re making sure that both of you are involved in financial decision-making, and that you are on the same page when it comes to your bigger goals and how you’ll reach them. - Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart

14 Financial Valentines to Give Your Sweetheart: "Normally, telling your significant other that you both need professional help isn’t a great sign for the longevity of a relationship. But signing up for a couple’s consultation with a financial planner may be a gift that actually increases your relationship’s long-term staying power, says Jennifer S. Faherty, a Certified Financial Planner™ and founder of Redbird Partners."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: "Instead of asking yourself how to fix what you’re doing wrong, ask yourself how you can expand what you’re doing right."

5 Secrets to Better Life Habits: "How It Can Work for You: The Heaths explain that our default setting is to look at the negative. In fact, they tell us, a psychologist once analyzed 558 common emotion words used in the English language and found that only 38% of them were positive. Just like we tend to remember bad gossip over the good, we harbor more on the wrong results than the right ones."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: TO BREAK BAD HABITS, BREAK DOWN RESOLUTIONS TO MICRORESOLUTIONS. “or setting goals that are so realistic and manageable that you could not possibly talk yourself out of them. Arnold stresses that the microresolution should be a precise, explicit action for it to be successful. Example, “I want to become fluent in Chinese” gets broken down into “I will learn two new Chinese words every day on the subway on my way to work.”

5 Secrets to Better Life Habits: "How It Can Work for You: Find a way to break down your financial goals to go from aspiration to execution. “I will be better with money,” may become “I will take a Money Minute on my iPhone every morning before I leave the breakfast table.” And don’t go overboard by piling on the microresolutions. Practice only one of them for the next two weeks. Once that one becomes more automatic, add a second, such as “I will walk two extra blocks to go to the non-fee ATM.”"



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: MAKE A RIGHT DECISION BASED ON ONE GOOD REASON. TRUST YOUR INSTINCT! "Your gut, your instinct, or your intuition is helping you come to a conclusion based on heuristics (the fancy way to say rules of thumb) that your brain has absorbed as a result of time, experience and evolution."

5 Secrets to Better Life Habits: "When you go with your gut, you’re not just working off emotion; you’re actually disposing of information that your brain instantly and intuitively deems unnecessary. In other words, you’re unconsciously separating the wheat from the chaff in order to make a lightning-fast decision. (It’s how baseball players, for instance, know to catch a ball). Gigerenzer tells us that the theory that you can make a right decision based on one good reason, rather than many, is dubbed “take the best.”"



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: MAKE IT HARDER "NOT TO DO" THE SMART THING. Example: If u want to eat healthier, achieve this by simply moving the healthy food to to your eye level and puts the unhealthy food further back and out of reach. According to the authors, changing how the foods are displayed could up the consumption of healthier food by as much as 25%.

5 Secrets to Better Life Habits: "Best of all? It’s actually the easiest move. She hasn’t eliminated anyone’s freedom of choice; she’s simply made a small tweak that makes the healthier food decision a little more user-friendly. Thaler and Sunstein call this “choice architecture,” or influencing decisions by changing the context of how the choices are presented. They argue that, in a similar fashion, we can “nudge” other people, and ourselves, to make the best decision simply by making, or “architecting,” small tweaks to our own environments."



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: Practice "IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION. One key to adopting a better habit is to create a connection between a specific situation and a resulting action, and then practice repeating that process. One way to do this is to put the desired outcome into an “if … then” statement. For instance, if you’re trying to be a kinder person this year, say, “If I see a person struggling with a stroller, then I will offer to help.”

5 Secrets to Better Life Habits: "How It Can Work for You: You can apply implementation intention to just about any money habit you want to adopt. Just make sure the “if” trigger is not so specific that it gives you few opportunities to try out your new habit, says Dean, and not so wide that it it’s too vague. For instance, if you want to chip away at credit card debt, try something like this: “If I am buying something that is less than $30, then I will use cash.”"



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: Be Happy, Eat Dark Chocolates. "That warm chocolately hug you feel inside every time you give in to the sweet stuff isn’t just your imagination. A study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that participants who consumed a chocolate infused drink every day felt happier and calmer than a control group who didn’t have the drink. The reason chocolate makes you feel so happy is it increases the production of serotonin in your brain, which is a hormone commonly found in antidepressants. If you want this mood boost without feeling guilty, opt for healthier natural dark chocolate without added sugar or milk." - 5 surprising foods that can affect your mood - Yahoo She Philippines

5 surprising foods that can affect your mood - Yahoo She Philippines:



'via Blog this'

WELLNESS TIP: Be Calm, Eat Brown Rice. "Brown rice is the perfect food for people who regularly suffer from mood swings, and that’s because it’s high in soluble fibre. Fibre slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream, which serves to stabilise your mood and decrease mood swings. Mood swings commonly occur during high-stress periods of your life, and can severely impact on both your career and personal life. If you’re not a fan of brown rice there are plenty of other foods whose high fibre content means they’re great for calming your mood, such as oats and Brussels sprouts." - 5 surprising foods that can affect your mood - Yahoo She Philippines

5 surprising foods that can affect your mood - Yahoo She Philippines:



'via Blog this'

Wellness Tip: Avoid Sugar to be Sweet! Because "Sugar can make you feel angry Just as fibre can calm you by stabilising your blood sugar, consuming too much sugar can cause fluctuations in your blood sugar and have the opposite effect. Although you might crave sugar and experience an initial mood boost when you first have it, over time it will lead to mood swings and make you feel angry. Researchers at Princeton University found that these mood swings are amplified by the fact that sugar can be as addictive as some drugs. They found that the body can become dependent on sugar if enough is consumed, which leads to mood altering cravings. And when you finally give in and have a sugary snack? The whole cycle starts over again, and your mood swings worsen." - 5 surprising foods that can affect your mood - Yahoo She Philippines

5 surprising foods that can affect your mood - Yahoo She Philippines:



'via Blog this'