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Get 8 Hours of Sleep for Increased Sex Drive

September 24, 2015 By Alexa Mason Leave a Comment

The benefits of getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep each night are numerous. Regularly getting enough sleep improves your mood, improves your brain function, and increases your energy. The most surprising benefit of getting the recommended amount of sleep is an increased sex drive. A recent study has found that a one-hour increase in sleep correlates to a 14 percent increase in libido.

It may seem like it should be easy for a person to get 8 hours of sleep for increased sex drive, but many people find themselves wasting time in bed night after night trying to get to sleep. While having trouble getting to sleep can be an indication of an undiagnosed medical condition, it is more likely to be due to stress or being active close to bedtime. Here are some techniques you can use to increase the likelihood that you will get 8 hours of sleep each night.

Develop A Bedtime Routine

Routines help condition our bodies to what we should be doing at different times of the day. Having an established bedtime routine trains your body to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer, increasing the chances that you will get 8 hours of sleep each night. Your bedtime routine should involve a relaxing activity, like a hot shower or reading wrapped in a blanket, before laying down at a set time and setting your alarm clock to wake you at a set time.

Slow Your Mind

Many people have trouble sleeping at night because they are thinking about all the things that need to be done the next day. They spend the time they should be sleeping going over scenarios in their mind and trying to think of solutions for problems that haven’t even occurred yet. Machines that create soft, subtle background noise may help you take your mind off of your concerns and slow your thinking enough that you can relax and go to sleep.

Make Yourself Comfortable

You will always have trouble sleeping if you are uncomfortable. Your mattress should be supportive and soft enough for you to lay on for hours. Your pillows should be firm enough to keep your head slightly elevated above your body. Most people report being more comfortable when laying on their back or their stomach. Side sleeping puts pressure on the shoulders and hips, which can lead to tossing and turning at night.

Avoid Light

Humans are conditioned to want to be asleep when it is dark and awake when it is light. Avoiding light in your sleeping area when it is time to sleep will help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. The blue light emitted from electronic devices such as televisions, laptops, e-readers, and smartphones is designed to activate areas of the brain, making it hard for you to fall asleep, so avoid these items close to bedtime.

Drink A Glass Of Water

Many people wake in the middle of the night because they are too hot or they have heartburn. Drinking a glass of water before bedtime can alleviate both of these issues. Drinking cool water lowers your body temperature and provides the hydration your body needs to repair itself during sleep. The water will also reduce the strength of the acid in your stomach, reducing the chances that heartburn will strike in the middle of the night.

More Sleep and More Sex Go Hand in Hand

September 24, 2015 By Alexa Mason 1 Comment

If you want to have more sex, the answer may be to get more sleep. The amount of sleep you get each night can have a considerable effect on your sex life. Sex hormones like testosterone tend to rise with sleep and fall when there is a lack of it, causing erectile dysfunction in men and loss of libido in women. People that get more sleep report having more satisfying sex more often than those who regularly have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.

Getting more sleep and more sex can be accomplished with some simple changes in behavior. Modifying your daily routine can make more room in your schedule for sleeping and prevent you from engaging in activities that inhibit sleep before bedtime. Here are some great techniques for getting more sleep and more sex.

Go To Bed Earlier

Many people remain active far into the night trying to get as many things accomplished as they can. They do not go to bed until they are exhausted and even then, they lay in bed worrying about all the things they must do the next day. Going to bed earlier so you can relax before it is time to fall asleep can reverse this trend. You should also ensure that there is at least 9 hours between the time you get in bed and the time you must get up so you can get at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Snuggling up to your partner before you are both exhausted can also lead to being intimate more often.

End The Day With A Relaxing Bath

Taking a bath or shower at the end of the day is a great way to relax your mind and your muscles to prepare for bed. Using scented bath products containing lavender, chamomile, vanilla, or jasmine can also help you relax and unwind. Having a glass of wine in the bath is not recommended, as alcohol can inhibit your ability to get to sleep.

Have Your Last Meal Several Hours Before Bedtime

Digestion has a rude way of interrupting your sleep with discomfort, so it is best to have your last meal of the day several hours before you are planning to go to bed. Having a heavy stomach when you get into the bed also reduces the chances that you will feel like rolling around in the sheets with your partner. Give your final meal of the day plenty of time to digest before you head to your bed.

Make Sure Your Bedroom Is A Relaxing Place

If your bedroom is filled with electronics, work projects, and hobby supplies, it will be difficult to stop thinking about them and think about sleep instead. These items in the bedroom are distracting and take away from the bedroom’s primary purposes of sleeping and making love. Remove these items from your bedroom and start conditioning yourself to use your bedroom for its main functions. You will find that more sleep and more sex come quickly.

How to Play McDonald’s Minion Mania for FREE

July 7, 2015 By Will Lipovsky 2 Comments

This post is about how to enter the McDonald’s Minion Mania contest for FREE. There are tons of prizes offered including food, cash rewards ($1 million will be given in total), and trips to Universal Studios.

Moments ago, I finished testing this method. It works.

Yesterday, McDonald’s had a claim code on their website. By using it, a person could get two free submissions into the Minion Mania contest. I went to the site today and it was taken down.

But the fine print still says, ‘No Purchase Necessary to Play.’ When you click ‘How to Win’ it says you need a claim code – which the site says can be found on food containers upon purchase. That doesn’t make any sense without first reading this article. How can you play for free without buying something? There’s a way.

Luckily enough, I remembered the free claim code advertised on the site yesterday before it was taken down. I also have the information that says it is good until 11:59:59 p.m. EST on July 13, 2015. With this code, you get 1 entry for the week 1 drawing and 1 entry into the final drawing. Yes, this one claim code will earn you a chance to win $500,000 ($250,000 for week 1 and $250,000 for the final week’s drawing) + other prizes like trips and food!

Step 1

Go to http://minionsatmcd.com/ (link opens in new tab)

Step 2

Enter MINIONMANIA and hit ‘submit’

Step 3

Fill out the necessary information. The form does require you to input a telephone number as well as email. That’s the only annoying part. Leave the box about promotional emails unchecked if you don’t want McDonald’s sending you mail on a regular basis. The form takes approximately 20 seconds. Submission complete.

Incentives to Do This

The McDonald’s Minion Mania contest is similar to McDonald’s Monopoly. The contest is time limited and there are TONS of prizes to win. In fact, there are 361,295,467 prizes to be claimed in just one month. The contest is also limited to the United States, Guam, and Saipan (an island near Guam). The odds of winning at least something is 1 out of 6. Go to McDonald’s just a few times this month and your chances of winning one of those 361,295,467 prizes are pretty high. Granted, McDonald’s openly states that most prizes are food items. Here’s what you’re most likely to win:

Premium Chicken Sandwich
Quarter Pounder w/Cheese
Small Fries
Chicken Snack Wrap
Small McCafé Smoothie
Fruit ‘N Yogurt Parfait
Large Iced Coffee
Sausage McGriddles
Sundae
Medium Soft Drink

How to Keep Playing after Using the Free Code

You get 10 code submissions per day. Here’s how to get the codes.

Remember, the free code only gets you two submissions. If you want to improve your odds, you must buy McDonald’s food. While this doesn’t make for much of an investment (you’ll likely spend more on food than you’ll win) if you’re eating at McD’s anyway, you may as well play the game! Here are the food items to buy in order to get the codes to play the game:

Big Mac
Egg McMuffin
Sausage McMuffin with Egg
Egg White Delight McMuffin
10-piece Chicken McNuggets
20-piece Chicken McNuggets
Large or Medium Fries (your best choice if you want lots of chances to win)
Premium Salads
Large McCafé Frozen Beverages

But EVERYONE should enter the free code given above. It takes less time to enter that code than it does to order a Big Mac.

More posts coming about other tips and tricks for playing McDonald’s Minion Mania.

Enjoy playing – just don’t win my $$$! 🙂

Five Important Questions

February 22, 2011 By Jennifer Derrick Leave a Comment

This year I’m making more of an effort to make my actions meaningful. This comes after a couple of years where I’ve found myself wondering, “Where did the time go?” I find myself getting distracted by the Internet or some other mindless entertainment and whole hours are suddenly gone. It’s not like whatever I was doing was important, or even interesting. It was simply wasted time. Since I want to get more out of every moment, I’ve started asking myself five questions when I catch myself in an activity that might be wasting my time.

As I’ve been doing this, I’ve realized that it can be applied to those who are trying to get their finances in order, as well as anyone trying to reach many other goals like weight loss or starting a business. When you hold your actions up to the five questions, you can really see where your time might be better spent. If I can’t answer yes to at least one of the five questions, I know I’m wasting time. Here are my five questions:

Is this action moving me forward toward my goals? I ask myself if whatever I’m doing is helping me reach my goals. Is it something like exercise, which is helping me get fit, or something like spending time on my book that never seems to get written? If you’re trying to get your finances in order, is your action something that’s helping that such as balancing your books, writing up a budget, or looking at insurance options? Not everything has to involve your goals, but if you’re just wasting time, switch to an action that will help you achieve something.

Is this action improving my life? I try to determine if what I’m doing is improving my life. Is it helping me bond with my family, or improving my living circumstances (reducing clutter, doing home improvement projects)? Is it helping me improve my health, like exercising or preparing a healthy meal? For those looking to improve their finances, actions that will improve your life might include looking for another job or going back to school. Some of the most valuable actions you can do are those that improve your quality of life.

Is this helping someone else? Helping someone else is rewarding and I try to do it often. If whatever I’m doing isn’t benefitting myself, I ask if it’s benefiting others. Am I helping others with their finances, am I helping a neighbor repair a fence, or am I volunteering? If I can’t be doing something for myself, I can easily be doing something for someone else.

Is this fun? We all need fun in our lives and I check to see if what I’m doing is fun. By fun, I mean really fun, not simply distracting. Am I really enjoying whatever fun thing I’m doing, or is it merely passing the time? If it’s really fun I’ll keep doing it, but if it’s just passing time it’s time to find something else to do. Things like playing board games with family, playing sports, reading a good book, walking with the neighbor, or watching a good DVD are fun to me. Things like surfing the Internet, playing online games, or watching TV are sort of fun, but I know there are better things I could be doing. What’s really fun for you will be different, but take the time to learn what is fun for you and what is simply passing time. Stick with the fun and shed the rest.

Is this necessary? There are things we have to do in life that aren’t fun or thrilling but are necessary. Work, cleaning, laundry, home maintenance all fall into this category. If what I’m doing is necessary, I keep doing it even though I may not be loving it. No matter how much you want to do other things, sometimes the necessary parts of life have to take precedence.

If I can’t answer yes to any of the five questions, it’s time to find something else to do. That means I need to get up from the computer and stop mindlessly surfing the Internet, or turn off the TV and go for a walk. If you’re trying to get your finances in order and you find yourself wasting time, try to do an action that helps your finances. Research investments, read a book about money, figure out a budget, or make that phone call to your insurance agent about your deductibles. The five questions give me a concrete way to check the value of my actions and to help me stop wasting time. As a result, I’m making much more progress toward my goals and I go to bed tired every night. But it’s a good tired.

Summer Fun on a Budget

August 1, 2008 By Cortni Marrazzo 3 Comments

Summer is already half way over, but you still have at least one more month of fun in the sun to enjoy (depending on where you live). So whether you’ve already maxed out your summer budget, or are simply looking for some inexpensive activities to fill the rest of your summer with, here are some ideas to get you started.

Camping

Camping is a summer staple for many families because it remains an inexpensive alternative to an expensive vacation spent in a hotel. By camping somewhere relatively close to your home and sleeping in a good old fashioned tent instead of an RV, you can take your family camping while keeping the costs to a minimum (mainly camping fee, food and gas). If you don’t have camping gear, borrow some from a friend!

Picnics

Especially when children are home from school all summer, eating at home can be boring. Make the inexpensive option of eating food from the fridge vs. eating out more fun by taking your food from home to a park and eating it there. All you need is a blanket and some plastic silverware (or even regular silverware if you don’t mind doing the dishes). Add a Frisbee or some kind of outdoor game and you have a fun date with your kids- or your spouse even! Even if you don’t have kids it can be fun to spend some quality time with your spouse and get back to your childhood roots by playing Frisbee. I have a friend who keeps a blanket and a Frisbee in the trunk of her car for impromptu picnics anytime!

Bike Rides

If you already have a bike and a helmet, then going for a bike ride can be a great free way to enjoy the nicer weather. You can explore a new area you’ve never been to or visit a popular park. It will save you gas and help you work off those extra summer calories.

Explore New Sites

There are bound to be many different sites and activities in your city that you’ve never seen before, especially if you haven’t lived there all your life. Get online and search for your city and see if you can find some new sites to explore. When you find something new in your city, it can be as exhilarating as being on vacation in a different place. I drag my husband to new places all the time. Most of the time he’s never been to them even though he grew up in the city we live in!

Neighboring Cities/Towns

If you’ve already explored most of the sites in your own city, or are feeling a bit more adventurous, you can go to a neighboring city or town and see what they have to offer. Often times another big city is less than an hour away and offers many activities and sights that are different from those in your own town.

Visit Friends & Family

If you have friends and/or family that live a reasonable driving distance away, summer is a great time to take a trip to see them. You get the benefit of seeing your loved ones and exploring the sites of a different city (which they likely know very well) but you also don’t have to pay for lodging if you can stay with them.

Swimming in Lakes and Rivers

Not everyone lives near a lake or a river to swim in, but if you do, take advantage of it! It’s free and the cool water feels great on a hot day. Just be sure that where you decide to swim is clean and safe.

Grow Your Own Garden

If you start in the spring, you can have vegetables and fruit growing in your very own garden by summer. Not only does maintaining the garden give you something to do, it can also produce exceptional tasting produce and help you save on your grocery bill.

Pick Your Own Fruit

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of growing your own garden, you can go pick from someone else’s. See if you have any farms/patches around you that grow different foods and allow you to pick them for a price. We have an area by us that has many different fruits during the summer and vegetables in the fall. We recently picked 11 pounds of strawberries for only $.99 a pound! Plus it was a lot of fun and we got to pick the berries we wanted, so no moldy ones for us. We froze the majority of them so we can enjoy them for months to come.

Parks

Become familiar with the parks in your area. If you have kids, parks are a great place for them to run and play and meet other children to interact with. If you don’t have kids, parks can still be a fun place to hang out at and sit in the sun or in the shade and read a book, people watch, or just have time to think.

It’s easy to let summer slip away and at the end of it realize that you hardly enjoyed it at all. Summer fun doesn’t have to be expensive or extremely time consuming. Plus, a day relaxing at the park can be a lot better for your health (and budget) than a full day at an expensive amusement park.

Turning Finances into Financial Fun

February 21, 2008 By Jennifer Derrick 3 Comments

Most people don’t associate personal finance with fun and it’s hard to blame them. There’s a lot of doom and gloom, especially these days. Writing out a budget seriously stinks. Really, who wants to find out they can’t afford the things they want and see it on paper? And it’s certainly no fun to do the things you have to do like make a will, shop for insurance, designate your power of attorney, and create a trust in the event of your incapacitation. Who wants to think about their own mortality or the disasters that my befall you? Not fun at all.

I am not a numbers geek in any form, but despite all of the above, I find personal finance fun. I hear you asking, “How can this be fun? There are a thousand other things I’d rather do than figure out my 401K, get out of debt, or do my taxes.” (Well, I’ll agree on the taxes part because even I don’t find that fun. With tax season looming, I’m hiding under the bed with the rest of you.)

Disclaimer: I haven’t always found personal finance to be the entertainment I do now. Because I had to learn about it to plan for my future and start a business, I decided it would be better if it were something I enjoyed. I’m all about fun and not very big on pain, especially not self-inflicted torture, which is what it looked like personal finance would be for me. At first I worked very hard to make it fun. I went out of my way to find the fun in personal finance. But the more I learned, the easier it became to find the fun, and the more fun I found. It became a continuous cycle. Learn more, have more fun. Repeat.

I’ll admit that not everyone is going to find finance fun, no matter how much they learn and what they do to make it fun. Some people have a phobia of numbers (or reality) that makes personal finance sheer torture. But for those willing to give it a try, to attempt to escape from the world of finance that is all about doom and gloom, hard core stock trading, and branding you a failure if you have debt, no emergency fund, or whatever your obstacles might be, here are the ways I’ve transformed finance into fun in my own life.

1. Try sanctioned couch surfing. Tune into to networks like CNBC, Bloomberg, and FoxBusiness. When loved ones accuse you of wasting time watching TV, you can honestly declare that you’re educating yourself. And you will be. These channels used to be the province of the hard core investor and a lot of the material was over the head of the average Joe. However, they’ve all made great strides in gathering information that’s relevant at the personal level and presenting it in a way that’s easy to understand. The more you watch and form your own opinions about financial matters, you’ll find your fun increasing as you yell at the TV and throw things at the boneheaded announcers who’ve got it all wrong, in your opinion. What could be better than watching TV? Throw in some snacks and you’re well on your way to fun.

2. Find others like you and form a club. It’s not hard to find other people who want to learn about finance but are intimidated. Gather up a group of people and have dinner. Talk about finance in a non-threatening environment. Watch documentaries like “Maxed Out.” Trade tips and ideas. Learn from each other’s experiences and challenge each other to reach financial goals. Tackling things that aren’t much fun is automatically more fun if done in groups.

3. Read. Okay, so I’m the rare bird who finds reading enjoyable, but maybe you’re like me. There are personal finance books for every taste and agenda. Some authors are charismatic and entertaining to read. Some are dry and stuffy. Pick your poison. Head for Barnes and Noble or your library and cruise the shelves. You’re sure to find something that speaks to you. The benefit of reading lots of different books is that you’ll be exposed to a lot of different ideas and methods, all of which you’ll get to form opinions on and then spout them to friends like you know what you’re talking about. To make reading social, start a personal finance book club or introduce books to the group you gathered in number 2.

4. Make it a game. Games are fun, chores are not. Turn your financial chores into games or competitions and you’ll make them more fun. Have to shop for insurance? Then try racing the clock. Set a time limit and see how many quotes you can get in that period of time. Actively compete to get the best coverage for lowest price. If you get a low quote from one vendor but really want to use another, brazenly declare the other quote you got and ask them to match it. Repeat until you get what you want. Then do a victory lap around the room. Play buzzword bingo. Every time and agent/accountant/lawyer spouts off some overused buzzword, mark it off on your card until you get bingo. Paying off debt? Draw up a thermometer like the ones charities use to track giving, except draw yours so that the money “fever” goes down rather than up as you pay down debt. Or do this for savings and draw it the correct way. Every time you reach a goal or finish a chore, do a victory dance. You earned it.

5. Compete against people you can’t see and don’t know. There are literally thousands of personal finance message boards on the Internet. Many of these offer challenges (cut your grocery bill, reduce your debt, etc.) that you can compete in, either actively by posting your own successes and failures, or passively by lurking on the forum and doing the challenge on your own. There are also lots of great tips to be found in threads like this.

6. For some “lift your spirits” fun, try comparing your situation to other posters on Internet forums. (Silently, in your head, please-never, ever be mean or judgmental where people can hear or read your thoughts, that’s just mean.) You’ll probably come out feeling downright superior. There’s always someone worse off than you and it can be strangely fun to revel in misery that’s not your own.

7. Set it to music. Create an iTunes playlist that is full of peppy pop, angry heavy metal, or soothing classics-whatever gets you ready to tackle your finances. Play it when you have financial work to do. It makes it less painful than total silence, trust me.

8. Invoke your creative and playful sides. Personal finance can be highly creative and playful. Why settle for a boring black and white spreadsheet for your budget when you can do something more colorful on the computer? Throw in some fun pictures, colorful text, print it on neon paper, and the whole thing doesn’t seem like such a downer. Hang out in the office supply store and get colorful notebooks, files, or paper to make record keeping fun. Give in to your inner child and get some stickers or other artwork for your filing system. Label it in crayon if you want. Fun check styles are available for probably less than the boring ones your bank sends out. Get some fun stamps to make bill paying more entertaining. Get a cool novelty bank in which to keep your spare change. (Think favorite comic book character, car, or animal. There are all kinds of banks to choose from. Some even talk!)

9. Deal with it. Part of making finance fun is dealing with it in a timely matter. The longer you put off balancing the checkbook, dealing with the bills, or reducing your expenses, the more out of control and painful it gets until it’s almost impossible to find any fun, anywhere. Part of keeping finance fun is staying on top of things. It makes things easier, which is automatically more fun. It also makes it possible to turn things into games or challenges because the stakes aren’t so high. When it’s not so overwhelming, it’s easier to laugh and smile at the whole business. (See number 10).

10. Don’t take it so seriously. Yes, your financial life is serious business. It requires serious attention to make sure you can retire comfortably and that your loved ones will be taken care of if something happens to you. But really, it’s not that serious every single day. Unless you’re living in poverty, then most likely you can relax and have at least a little fun. If you screw up, so what? Who hasn’t? Chances are good it can be fixed. If you’re in debt, you can probably get out with some effort and sacrifice. If you’re facing a mountain of chores like taxes, insurance quotes, making a will, etc., take them one at a time, work on it until you can’t stand it any more, and then move on to something else. Don’t know what to do to solve a problem? Educate yourself and ask questions of others.

There are lots of things in life that can and should trigger a good panic attack. Finance generally isn’t one of them. Most financial stuff falls under the heading of “Hassle,” rather than “Life or Death,” although some media people and advisors try to make it feel otherwise. Make everything as fun as possible and relax. What you don’t do today you can do tomorrow. Don’t take it all so seriously, lighten up, laugh, and move on.

If you’ve managed to carve a little fun from this list, great. Sorry I can’t suggest anything to make those taxes more fun, but that’s stretching it, even for me. If you are a hard core fun seeker and can tell me how to make even taxes fun, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I’ll be hiding under the bed with all you other tax payers.