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Nigella Lawson and the High Cost of divorce

Celebrities

Nigella Lawson Eats A Banana
Nigella Lawson Eats A Banana (Photo credit: Kaptain Kobold)

Heartache and heartbreak are hard enough to endure but imagine having to go through the loss of a relationship while the world looks on. Such is the high price of celebrity divorce and the latest victim is the beautiful and talented television chef, Nigella Lawson. Shocking photos of Nigella apparently being choked by her husband, Charles Saatchi, surfaced in the media following the June 9th dinner at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, London, where the incident occurred. Saatchi’s advisors urged him to humble himself and admit a public apology for the assault. Saatchi denied any wrongdoing, saying he never assaulted her and in fact, was actually removing mucous from his wife’s nose. Nigella was stunned by the admonition of “nose-picking” and his refusal to apologize. She left Saatchi and their family home in Chelsea.

The two sides continued to disagree about the pictures; Saatchi claiming it was just a “playful tiff” and Lawson hurt and humiliated by the public’s assumption of her as victim of domestic violence and her husband as her tormentor. Insult was added to injury on July 7th, when Saatchi announced his intent to divorce his wife in the media instead of directly to her. Lawson, who had been waiting for a public apology, was blind-sided by his cruel divorce announcement. Lawson and Saatchi have been married for 10 years; Saatchi has claimed that the couple had become “estranged” the last few years. Saatchi claims that he had no choice but to act publicly since his wife “failed to defend” him with a statement to the media. In fact, Lawson has remained silent at the advice of her publicist so as not to further affect their children. Lawson (53) and Saatchi (70) have three teenage children from previous marriages that they were raising together.In addition to the “he said, she said” controversy, Lawson and Saatchi will have to fight over $150 million in shared assets, including their $12 million Chelsea, West London home. Both brought substantial assets into the marriage. Charles Saatchi is worth $100 million from the high-profile, highly-successful New York advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi. Nigella Lawson is a celebrity chef, bestselling author and television star with a net worth of $15 million. By the time lawyers for both sides duke it out in court and attempt to untangle the shared assets, those net worths will be considerably less.But it’s not just a monetary cost to this celebrity divorce. Saatchi had grown increasingly resentful of his wife’s high-profile career that he helped established. It’s a common theme in celebrity couples; one partner becomes the higher earner or the more recognized celebrity and the other gets bit by that green-eyed monster, jealousy. In Nigella’s case, there is the public humiliation at the hands of someone she loves to endure. It seems that Saatchi is determined to do whatever he can to make her suffer in the media. And then there are the children; children always suffer in a divorce. It can be lessened when parents work together to keep it private and amicable. But it’s incredibly painful to have your lives dragged through the media. In this case, it is Nigella and Saatchi’s children that are paying the ultimate price.

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Meal Plans

Finance

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

When we don’t have a meal plan, food costs more.

Our regular plan is to build a menu for the week and go to the grocery store on Sunday.  This allows planning, instead of scrambling for a a meal after work each night.   It also give us a chance to plan for leftovers so we have something to eat for lunch at work.

We work until about 5 every weekday.   When we don’t have the meal planned, it’s usually chicken nuggets or hamburger helper for dinner.   Not only is that repetitive, but it’s not terribly healthy.  It is, however, convenient.   If we plan for it, we can get the ingredients ready the night before and know what we are doing when we get home, instead of trying to think about it after a long day of work.

If we don’t plan for leftovers, we tend to make the right amount of food for the family.   When this happens, there’s nothing to bring to work the next day, which means I’ll be hungry about lunchtime with nothing I can do about it except buy something. Buying lunch is never cheaper than making it.   I can get a sandwich at Subway for $5, but I could make a sandwich just as tasty and filling for less than half of that, using money that is meant to be used for food.   All during wrestling season, we make 30-inch sandwiches on meet nights for a cost of about $5, feeding ourselves and at least a couple of others who didn’t have time to make their dinner before the 5:30 meet.

No leftovers also means no Free Soup, which is a wonderful low-maintenance meal that leaves everybody full.  Nobody ever gets bored of Free Soup.  (Hint:  Don’t ever put a piece of fish in the Free Soup, or the flavor will take over the entire meal.)

Unhealthy, repetitive food for dinner.  Over-priced, low-to-middle-quality food for lunch.

OR

We plan our meals right and have inexpensive, healthy food that doesn’t get boring for every meal.

It seems to be a no-brainer.   Except, I don’t have lunch today because we didn’t plan our meals and used the last of the leftover hamburger helper for dinner last night.

Update:  This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

6 Ways to Stretch a Meal

Finance, Recipe

Various fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains; ...
Image via Wikipedia

You eat.

Right?

Sometimes, we have more money than month and wonder how we’re going to avoid going hungry at the end of the month.   When the grocery budget has run out and the cupboards are almost bare, how do you keep the kids fed?

The secret is to keep some staple stocked all the time.  If you have these ingredients, you can stretch $1 of beef into a meal for 10 people.  Almost.

Rice

We buy rice 20 pounds at a time.   I try to keep a bowl of cooked rice on hand at all times.    When we cook a soup, stew, or hotdish, we add a cup or two of rice to the dish.   If we’re running late for dinner(a painful situation with a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, and an 11-year-old who’s about to hit 5′ 7″), we’ll dump a can of soup over the top of a bowl of rice.  A quick trip through the microwave, and we’ve got a reasonably healthy meal in 2 minutes.   Another trick is to add some to ground beef, whether it’s a meatloaf or sloppy joes.

Beans

This is another ingredient I try to keep on hand, cooked, and in the fridge.    We use it like we use the rice.  We add a cup to soup, or almost anything else.   Throw some barbecue sauce on them, and you’ve got pseudo-baked beans for cheaper than you can buy a can.  Mash them with taco seasoning and you have refried beans.    Add a cup to scrambled eggs for a filling breakfast.

Potatoes

There are so many ways to use potatoes to stretch a meal.  Shred them to cook with eggs or slice them onto a hotdish.   Cube them into soup or dice it as a thickener in stew.

Pasta

Yet another item that can go into almost anything.    Before I met my wife, I’d make a dish that consisted of nothing more than whatever pasta I had on hand, with a can of soup, cooked until the pasta was done and most of the liquid was absorbed by the noodles.  I learned how to wield spices like a crazy Neptunian ninja.

Soup

Whenever we cook, whatever we eat, we make enough for leftovers.   When the leftovers are no longer enough to make a meal for anyone, they go in a bag in the freezer.   When we have enough, we put them all in a slow-cooker with some water and a ton of seasonings.     When we get home from work, we have a delicious soup waiting for us–free soup.   If we want stew, we throw in some rice.   By the end of the day, the rice has completely dissolved, transforming our delicious freaking soup into yummy dang stew.   Everything we make tastes good, so combining a dozen dishes into one soup should also taste good, right?   The exception: fish.  Never, ever add fish to free soup.  Trust me.

Bread

I don’t use bread to cook much, though it’s harder to get much cheaper than a grilled-cheese sandwich.   I like to serve a slice of bread with dinner.    It just makes the food feel more filling.

That’s how I make a meal for two stretch to feed my family of five, without sacrificing taste or nutrition.    How do you make a meal stretch?

Black Friday Eve

Finance

Today is Black Friday Eve.  It’s the day when people gather around the table and gorge in preparation for the mighty battle to

Black Friday shoppers at Walmart
Ick!  Who thinks this is fun?

come on the fields of Wal-Mart.

We won’t be participating this year.    My wife got laid off 3 weeks ago and I started a new job on Monday.   The new job has a 2 week delay between pay period and pay check, so I won’t see a check until the middle of December.

We aren’t hurting but we are tapping into our savings to bridge the gap to paycheck #1.   I just transferred $1200 to cover the gap.   With that, the money we have to cover things not in our regular budget is $36.    You can’t go too crazy on Black Friday with $36.

That isn’t draining our savings.  We took some, but not all of it.

It isn’t raiding our Christmas present fund.

It isn’t taking money out of the braces fund.

Or any other fund.

This isn’t pain and we won’t be tasting poverty for Christmas.   We just have to de-prioritize blind consumerism for the holidays.

Instead, we’ll sleep in a bit, then cuddle with a couple of little girls who will want to watch something horrible like Horseland first thing in the morning.   We’ll follow that up with a leisurely breakfast, maybe a walk around the neighborhood pond and Thanksgiving-A-Day-Late with my wife’s family.

And a bit of remodeling and repair work on our rental property whenever my Dad can drag himself out of bed and come over.

It will be a good day and shouldn’t cost a cent.  That’s what I’m thankful for.

 

 

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ROI for Life

Finance

How often do you examine the return on your investment of time and money? A dear friend once spent 3 hours in the waiting room of an auto shop to save $15 on an oil change. When I asked, she refused to sit quietly in the corner for an hour in exchange for $5. That’s an inefficient exchange of time for money.

Last week, a close relative spent $2000 repairing a car that’s worth about $500…after buying the replacement car. That’s a poor exchange of money for value.

Why do people make decisions like that? They seldom take a look at the values being traded. My friend knew she would have to work to replace the money she wouldn’t have saved, but didn’t think about the time she could never get back. My relative was emotionally fixated on the sunk costs of the repairs she had already put into the older car and couldn’t bear the thought of losing that “investment”. Neither was an example of rational decision-making, but rather a case of allowing emotions to rule. [Read more…] about ROI for Life

Ten Easy Ways to Cut Spending at Home

Finance

With the sorry state of the economy over recent years, most home-owners are looking at ways to cut down on monthly spends without being frugal. These are ten simple steps to save your household £100s without missing out on home comforts;

  1. Invest in ISAs. Taxes are becoming a bigger pain than ever before, the only way to avoid the sting in the governments tail is to invest in ISAs. Although there are standard cash ISAs, Stocks and Shares ISAs offer the opportunity to invest for less. This can be risky so only invest what you could afford to lose in the worst case scenario, however if you invest wisely you could potentially bring in a handy amount of cash at the end of your ISA investment term. [Ed.  For my American readers, ISAs are tax-sheltered savings or investment accounts.]
  2. Do the weekly shop online. A site like mysupermarket.co.uk offers up all your regular shopping goods but compares the price from all major supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Ocado and Sainsburys) to make sure you pay the best price for your weekly shop. It saves you the time and effort of battling through supermarket crowds and paying over the odds for your weekly shop.   Sites such as Topcashback offer money back on your total bill (up for 10%), giving you something for nothing, which these days can’t be ignored!
  3. Homemade not Homepride! It might be the easy option, but ready meals come with a large mark up. By ditching the meals in favour of freshly prepared food you can save yourself a packet and learn a new skill to capitalise on in the future perhaps. Visit local markets for your produce at a far lower price than the local supermarket. So overall, you’re saving money and benefiting from the best, freshest local produce.
  4. Satellite vs. Freeview. When it comes to your TV package you must choose wisely. Packages range from around £50 a month for those who demand all the sports and movie channels, to £13 one off cost for Freeview, dependant on what box you chose. Weigh up if you really need most, hundreds of channels you never watch or an extra £50 a month. [Ed.  My basic currency conversion is £1 = $2.  It’s not perfect, but it is close enough.]
  5. Household insurance shouldn’t cost the earth. Although this is a safety net, not a legal necessity, most households prefer the security of knowing that if disaster strikes, it won’t strike your bank balance. With sites like moneysupermarket.com it is simple to find the cheapest policy for you, only taking a few minutes but potentially saving hundreds.
  6. Ditch the DIY bodging. With the majority of households carrying out regular DIY, hardware stores are raking in the profits when it all goes wrong. We can’t all be natural born handymen and women but with the help of local courses you can be trained in the art of household maintenance for around £100, a bargain when you compare the costs of getting in the professionals to fix DIY disasters. [Ed.  Youtube is also a great resource to learn DIY repairs.]
  7. Auction your clutter. If we’re being honest, we all have that cupboard at home filled with things we really don’t need and will never use! It’s time to be cutthroat and unemotional, get the laptop out and auction everything that hasn’t been used for a year. Don’t use the excuse of ‘it might come back into fashion’ or ‘that’ll come in handy one day’, it won’t and by getting rid you benefit from extra cash and extra space – win/win.
  8. Swap top brands for own brand. I’m not saying settle for foods you dislike, but often you can benefit from supermarket own brands without your taste buds suffering. Items like tinned fruit and veg, bread and butter all taste extremely similar, weather you penny pinch or splash the cash. So trade in your £1.25 loaf of bread in favour for one costing 20p and see if you notice the difference.
  9. Stick to a shopping list. By shopping for a list and sticking to it, it cuts out impulse buys that are responsible for the shock you receive when you get to the tills. Plan your weekly meals and simply buy what you need, cutting waste and potentially cutting your waistline! Also try to avoid 3 for the price of 2 deals on products with a shelf life, as often this results in a bin full of gone off food!
  10. Invest in Skype. To cut down on costly phone bills, use Skype where necessary. An internet let service, it allows you to call and video call people with Skype for free, or phone normal phone lines for a fraction of the cost of using your usual phone line. With free to download software, you would be silly to throw away money on costly phone bills.

Article written by  Moneysupermarket.com.

 

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