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Food for Thought: 20 somethings

FitSugar — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 02:30:00 PDT

The folks at Fitness, the magazine that is, are savvy to our changing nutritional needs. As we age our bodies and our lifestyles change. Curious if you are meeting the nutritional challenges of your generation? If you're a 20 something here's some food for thought.

Eat Protein
Since your life is likely to be hectic, you are generally looking for food on the run. Make sure that you are making healthy choices and not skimping when it comes to protein. Missed meals and dieting can lead to falling short of meeting the RDI for protein - the building block of muscle. So don't short change yourself and fill your quota with chicken, fish, eggs and lean meat. Here's a helpful breakdown of protein amounts in popular foods.

Eat Potassium
According to the USDA, the majority of women in their 20's eat less than 50% of the RDI of potassium. Potassium is an essential mineral that helps muscles, including the heart, function properly. If you are eating your 5 fruits and veggies a day, you are getting enough potassium. So eat your veggies!!!

Eat Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Since women are especially susceptible to depression in their 20's, it is a good idea to boost your serotonin levels. Once way to do this is by eating foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids. This is really the fat you should love. Find it in salmon and other cold water fatty fish, as well as walnuts and flax seeds. If you eat beef, go grass fed - it is higher in omega-3s than conventionally raised beef.

No longer 20? Check back soon to see what you should eat in your 30's and 40's.

Fixes For These 10 Money Mistakes

Business Insider — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:15:04 PDT

Everyone makes mistakes. Business Insider shares solutions for some common money mistakes people make.

Recently, two friends confessed they live check to check - a revelation worsened by the fact that they only check their bank balance once or twice a month.

We called in the finance experts, and here's what we decided they should do to get on track.

"I check my balance once . . . every two weeks."

The mistake: The more we rely on our debit cards, the easier is to go over budget - and risk having our bank misorder the charges to slap us with overdraft fees. It's the reason my friend keeps paying $39 for that Starbucks latte.

The fix: Get in the habit of checking your bank balance morning, noon, and night, says financial expert Farnoosh Torabi. "Rather than compartmentalizing into a once-a-month chore, make checking statements a habitual, daily thing."

"What, my bank offers an app?"

The mistake: Ignoring your balance can make you "forget" about incoming bills and checks waiting to clear, and not using your bank app is careless.

It also keeps you out of sync with your money, something you don't want to do in an era of rampant identity theft.

The fix: Download the app!

Read on for more.

The Best Time Investments You Can Make

LearnVest — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:15:57 PST

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

We all agree that time is more valuable than money.

At least, that’s what we say.

Then we turn around and spend hours watching bad TV we’re not even that interested in. Or 45 minutes on the phone with customer service fighting a $5 charge. Or years in a relationship or friendship we stopped feeling fulfilled by long ago.

But I’m convinced it’s not for a lack of good intent that we often end up treating time as our most fungible asset. (Hey, there’s plenty more where that came from, right? Well, not really . . . ) I think we simply get too busy to think about it, or don’t think we have the resources to make more time in our lives. We do have the resources, though. All it takes is a fresh look at how we really spend our days, hours and moments.

I’ve been thinking about time as a tangible asset not unlike money in many ways, and about ways to invest our time to yield higher returns - better memories, more hours well spent, even minutes that nourish us instead of fly by. After much research, experience and reflection, below are what I found to be the seven best investments you can make with your time. Think of these as blue-chip time investments that can’t go wrong - and that will yield high dividends for a more fulfilled life.

1. Invest in “Life-Extending” Time

Investing time in caring for your health is an obvious one that will certainly yield you more time, literally - in days, months, if not years tacked on to your life. Yet we often take our health for granted until we experience a wake-up call. Proactively invest your time in your health by eating well, exercising regularly, getting plenty of sleep and regularly seeing your doctors. Invest heartily in those non-physical markers of well-being as well: emotional, mental and spiritual health - you will reap many hours of well-lived life from them. Learn the habits of the Blue Zone people, from the regions in the world where people live the longest. Some common lifestyle traits they share? Building in natural movement and activity, lowering stress and being part of a faith-based community.

Read on for more great time investments.

Financial Habits For 20-Somethings Entering the Workforce

Anna Monette Roberts — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:05:51 PDT

If you haven't already guessed it, money slips away much easier than it used to in college. Your part-time job used to see you through eating out, going to bars, and buying new clothes galore. However, once you enter the workforce, all those leisurely spending habits need to come to an abrupt halt. Miss Independent, you've got bigger bills to pay! I remember laughing at my older sister, who was living paycheck to paycheck in her early 20s, but now I completely understand. Here are a few financial habits I wish someone had told me to implement after I graduated college. See my financial tips.

Q and A With Jane Fonda on Boyfriends, Sex, and Being a Teenager in Your 70s

Yahoo Shine — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 04:00:08 PDT

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo! Shine:

Jane Fonda doesn’t lie about her age. She’s 73 and happier than she’s ever been. That’s saying a lot when you consider her 20s: sex symbol and rising star in Hollywood. And her 30s: Academy Award winner, blockbuster romantic heroine, and controversial activist. And her 40s: exercise guru, comedienne, and movie mogul. These days, she’s a mom, a grandma, a cancer-survivor, a best-selling author, an ex-wife times three, and a girlfriend. She’s also a sexpert. In her new book Prime Time, a memoir-style self-help guide to embracing your “third act," Fonda gets frank about life in your 70s. Her book offers financial advice, funeral-planning straight talk, mental health and exercise, and lots of sex. We only had a few minutes with the living legend, so we went straight for the last item on the list.

Shine: Is life really better in your 70s?
Jane Fonda: As I was going through my 60s and entering my 70s, I realized I was happier than I’d ever been. I didn’t expect to live this long, much less to be happier; I wanted to know if this was unique to me. For this book, I spent four years interviewing doctors and researching this very subject. I came to understand a majority of people in their 60s and over feel the same way.

S: So you're saying those of us in our 30s can look forward to a better time?
JF: My life is much better now. My "good old days" were really more so-so old days. The 30s and 40s are very hard. If you have kids, you have figure who you are in relation to them and to your husband. I was not a very good parent, I suffered eating disorders and I had a hard time in my marriage. The 40s, you have perimenopause and you don’t know who you are anymore. In my research, I discovered that in your 30s and 40s you’re still experiencing the effects of an unhappy childhood. But an unhappy childhood has very little effect on you at an older age.

Learn Fonda's frank advice when you read more.