I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. Like so many others, my wife and I are concerned about the state of the economy and have made some moves with the family checkbook to prepare for a bumpy ride. We are by no means a family that slices and dices each expense comparing it to the same period from a year prior like managing a business. But, we do operate a family budget focusing mostly on fixed expenses vs. variable expenses. Historically, we have used our shared MasterCard for day to day living expenses like groceries, dining out, gas, haircuts, clothes for the girls, etc. Basically anything that isn't a recurring monthly bill like a mortgage, cable or utility bill.

Our approach was to start the month with a set number and simply subtract each charge that was made on our MasterCard with the intent that we would end the month at $0, or close to it. It essentially made us more aware of how much we were spending. We've been using this approach for about a year now so it's part of our routine.

As a test, we decided to exchange our credit card for good old fashioned cash. I candidly didn't have much of an expectation and thought we would go over if we were close like we often did when using our credit card. Drum roll, please...we moved to cash 5 weeks ago and have reduced our spending by 20% without a meaningful change in lifestyle. And it gets better.

Welcome to the new and improved JumpSnap Nation! Today marks a very exciting day for me because we are growing up and expanding our healthy living wings. As you can see, we’ve taken a fairly traditional blog and transformed it into an interactive community where readers can listen, learn, discuss, and ask questions about all things healthy. Whether it’s weight loss, nutrition, which foods to eat or which ones to avoid, exercise tips or simply voicing your opinion, we have it covered.

Some of the biggest changes to note are the following:

Community and Success Stories: This section allows people to share their success and band together to overcome their failures in order to pursue healthy living. We also highlight one magnificent success story each month to help inspire us all.

JSN Marketplace: As most of you know, I believe sustainable healthy living is a combination of exercise and proper nutrition. That means the solution is not one thing,  but a collection of many smalls things that help you achieve your goals. Naturally, I think JumpSnap is a great way to burn calories and lose weight but I also think it’s important to share with you some other products that get the JSN Seal of Approval. In many cases, we’ve arranged for a free trial or member discount as a thank you for your support. I want to stress that customer service is very important to all of these companies or I would not be recommending them.