Cost of Shakeology

I’m sure that most of you are thinking “Shakeology sounds awesome, but it’s so expensive! There’s no way I can/want to pay $130 a month for it!” I definitely had the same reservations when we first heard about it. Not to mention, Brian and I BOTH drink it, so that equals TWO bags of Shakeology every month. You do the math. ouch. Since I’m a coach, I get a 25% discount, so that helps a little.

You have to approach it a little differently though. If you take $130 divided by 30, it means that you’re spending $4.33 per day for your Shakeology (If you have the coach’s discount, it’s only $3.25). I want you to think about something unhealthy or frivilous that you spend about $4 per day on. Do you run into Starbucks every morning? McDonalds during your lunch break? Do you waste money on little snacks? Cigarettes? Alcohol?

“Shakeology costs just over $4 per serving for high-quality antioxidants, powerful vitamins and minerals, more than 70 superfoods, super-greens/ phytonutrients, crucial proteins, essential amino acids, prebiotics, digestive enzymes, good carbs,and low fat. If you purchased each ingredient separately, it would cost more than $700. So while Shakeology might seem expensive at first, really there’s no way you can eat healthier and spend less.”
(Shakeology Product Training Guide)

I completely understand that some people can’t afford to spend an extra $130 per month no matter how they budget their money. But I think that for a lot of others, it’s about their priorities. If being healthy is a priority for you, I would recommend taking a look at what you spend your money on and see if you can make room in your budget for Shakeology.

How we save money on our phone bill

One way that we found to save a chunk of money every month is by switching our cell phone service. We had always used Verizon and didn’t have any problems with them- except the cost. Our monthly bill was around $95 for our two phones- which I think is pretty typical for most people. Last summer, my sister and brother-in-law told us that they had switched over to using Ting. Uhhh...what’s Ting? We certainly hadn’t heard of it before.

We looked at their website and decided that it would be a good option for us. There are no contracts and you pretty much pay for what you use. Since Brian and I aren’t on our phones all the time, our monthly bill is usually under $40. It saves us $55 per month, which is $660 per year! The big difference is that Ting doesn’t do the “get a free phone with a 2 year contract” bit that most companies do. So, the catch is that you have to pay full price for a phone. Since we are trying to save money, we don’t care about having the fancy expensive iPhones. I got my little refurbished android phone for $70.

Ting works through the Sprint network, so the coverage isn’t as good as with Verizon. But if you’re like us and just need something basic without killing your budget, you should definitely check out Ting! Use this link to sign up and get $25 off of a device:

Yes! I want to save $25!

Getting Out of Debt- Part 2

We were already on our road to paying off loans, when we discovered Dave Ramsey and his “Total Money Makeover” program. Beside just our student debt, we also had a car payment and a huge medical bill that we were stuck with. We knew that if we wanted to become financially secure, we needed to knock out these debts. Dave’s philosophy is:

Living like no one else = living cheap and not caring about the fancy things that everyone else has. Honestly, I don’t have a problem living poor. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, so I’m kind of stingy as it is. But we felt like we needed to make some changes to be able to pay off our debts even faster. We moved into a rental that was $200 less per month than the one we were currently in (hello extra $2,400 per year!), changed cell phone carriers, and actually started budgeting our money each month.

We paid off our car back in August after owning it for less than two years! We’re still working on that medical bill (only $8,000 left to go!) and we’re down to just $24,000 on our student loans. Sometimes it can be a little depressing when I’m sitting on my crappy sofa and I realize that I could have bought a new living room set with all of the money that I just threw at the stupid helicopter company. But I know that pretty soon, we will be debt free and we can spend our money on the things that we really want. It’s a good feeling.

Getting Out of Debt- Part 1

After Brian was finished with graduate school, we were $120,000 in debt. sigh. We did what everyone else does, and consolidated our loans and began making our minimum monthly payments. We knew that we didn’t want that huge debt hanging over us for decades, so Brian got a job working at a Native American health clinic. The National Health Service Corps (NHSC) has a wonderful loan repayment program that we were able to get into because the health clinic was considered “underserved”.

Basically, he commits to a certain period of time working at a specific location, and the government gives us a lump sum of money to go toward paying off our student loans. His first commitment was for 2 years and we were given $50,000. After that, his contract was renewed annually for $30,000 and then $20,000. If one clinic isn’t working out, you have the option to transfer to another clinic as long as it is also on their list of approved sites. According to the website, “This program is open to licensed primary care medical, dental, and mental and behavioral health providers.”

Now, there’s a reason why these specific clinics/sites are on the underserved list and they aren’t exactly ideal, but we have paid off a large portion of our student debt because we were/are willing to go where others might not. For us, it is much better to sacrifice now then to have the burden of debt our whole lives.