A lot of people consider their fashion choices to be very important—they are a reflection of who you are as a person after all. So, it goes to say that a lot of people are inclined to spend quite a bit of cash on their clothes. But what happens when life gets in the way, and your budget for clothing plummets?

It might be that you’re simply not making enough to afford the styles you desire, or maybe you’re saving up for a big purchase, like an engagement ring for your fiancée. If you find yourself on a tight budget, there is no need to worry that your style will slip. In fact, it’s not that hard to stay fashionable while you are on a budget using these tips:

Invest in Staples

You’re probably thinking “How is investing going to help me save money on fashion?” Well, listen up, because this is a very important lesson. There are some staple fashion pieces that will never go out of style—they serve as the base for your wardrobe and constitute the outfits that you wear every single day. If you invest a little extra cash in these pieces, then you will save some money in the long run by not having to replace them as often. Plus, it’s a good way to supplement some of the cheaper options in your wardrobe with some nicer pieces.

A lot of people have different ideas about what are and are not considered “staples,” and that’s okay! It all depends on your body shape, personal style, and what you feel most comfortable in. Here are some examples of what a lot of people consider to be “staple” wardrobe pieces:

• Jeans
• A leather jacket
• Black slacks
• Black flats
• A little black dress

These don’t have to be name brands or cost a ton of money. You can get a great pair of jeans for $20, and a great leather jacket at the thrift store. The idea is not to spend a lot of money, but instead to spend your money wisely on classic pieces that will remain in your wardrobe for a long time.

Stay Ahead of the Trends

Any true fashionista understands just how truly cyclical trends are. This means that everything that was once in style will most likely come back into style, for better or for worse. This is great news for those who stay one step of the trends, however, because they can always catch the next fashion trend before it becomes expensive.

If you read blogs, pay attention to fashion week trends and stay on top of what is hot in fashion. Not only will you be able to be one of the first on the fashion bandwagon, but you might also be able to find some trendy pieces for dirt cheap in thrift stores! This is due to the cyclical nature of trends and people’s tendency to dispose of their unwanted clothing without realizing those fashions will come back in style.

Have a Clothing Swap

This is one of the most fun options on this list. If you find yourself getting tired of your current wardrobe, then it’s time to throw a clothing swap party! This is a fun and innovative way to spice up your wardrobe for free.

All you do is clean out your closet of gently-used clothing that you no longer want or wear and encourage all your most fashionable friends to do the same. Then, grab some drinks and snacks and invite your friends over. Pick and choose new pieces from each other’s unwanted clothing until you have some awesome new additions to your wardrobe!

Shop the Menswear Section

With the fashion industry today being what it is, men’s clothing is generally less expensive. This is great news for the smart fashionista who knows how to rock an androgynous look and for every sale-savvy, fashion-forward gentleman. A menswear garment can easily become one of your best statement pieces with a little fashion know-how.

From bold blazers to basic white t-shirts, the men’s sections of stores have a lot of great clothing to offer at a lower price point. Here are some other great pieces that can be found in the men’s section:

• Button-ups
• Sweatshirts
• Graphic T-shirts
• Flannels

Of course, this last bit mainly applies to the ladies. If you’re already a man who shops in the men’s section though, there are still things you can do to stay within your budget while looking good. Sometimes, it means making changes to your habits outside your clothing. Do you find yourself buying new razors every month? If so, it might be time to invest in a beard trimmer Not having to make repeat purchases monthly can save you in the long run. It can also mean thinking ahead to prevent yourself from incurring future costs. Find your eyes straining from staring at a computer all day long? It’s not a good look. Instead, save your eyes—and your wallet—from having to buy glasses later down the line with a pair of sleek anti-glare shades.

Adjust Other Factors in Your Budget

Sometimes, after all this, it still might seem like your budget is still too small to accommodate the styles you really want. If that’s the case, it might also be time to sit down, look at your budget, and see if there are other unnecessary costs that you can cut out.

If you’ve recently started a home renovation project that leaves you little money for clothes, maybe you can determine where to make more affordable purchases. Blinds at low prices, or even DIY furniture allow you to make a great home space without leaving you in rags. If you find yourself spending exorbitant amounts on a chiropractor and massage therapist for back pains every month, have you considered that it might be a new mattress is what you need or a back-friendly stand-up desk to reduce shoulder and lower back pain? Or if you travel frequently for work, and you have to pay out-of-pocket until your company reimburses you, maybe you need to look into affordable car rentals and hotel expenses. You’ll be amazed at all the ways you can free up more of your budget by eliminating or diminishing repeat expenses with smart choices and quality products.

Conclusion

Fashion is a fun expression of what you feel on the inside. It helps you create a visual representation of who you are as a person. While sometimes it can be expensive, it doesn’t have to be as unaffordable as it seems. With some smart thinking and some expert tips, you can be your most fashionable self while still adhering to your budget.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science with a Sports Management minor.

Are you interesting in learning more about your health? Perhaps you want to understand how to get your body in better shape, or maybe you’re fascinated by what makes your body tick. If that’s the case, there are a few different paths you can take to gaining more knowledge about your body and your health. But before we get to the right paths to knowledge let’s consider one that you should avoid.

Make sure that you don’t start by conducting research online. If you type in any symptoms or signs of health issues online within five minutes, you are likely to diagnose yourself with a dangerous, perhaps life-threatening disease. The reason for this is obvious. Some of the most basic symptoms can crop up for no reason, or they can be the first sign of a fatal illness. But unless you have expert knowledge in this area, there’s no way to tell which it is. This brings us to the first pathway you can take to learn more about your health.

Study Medicine

If you want to learn more about your health and your body the best option is always going to be to study medicine. You probably think that you need to get great grades in school and have a massive IQ to study medicine, but that’s not true. Indeed you can take an RN to BSN online course with very little experience or existing knowledge. This will provide you with key information and give you the chance to get first-hand experience working in a hospital with patients. It is easily one of the best ways to learn more about the human body and your own health.

Talk To A Nutritionist

Of course, if you are interested in the state of your health specifically, you might want to think about speaking to a nutritionist. After all, ninety percent of health issues can be resolved by fixing your diet. You really are what you eat and whether you’re eating too much dairy, have an undiagnosed allergy to gluten or need to cut back on the red meats a nutritionist will be able to help.

Celebs regularly start by speaking to a nutritionist when they want to lose weight. So, if you are eager to get in shape, this could be a great place to begin.

Pick Up A Book

We definitely think that you need to stay offline if you want to learn more about the health. It’s impossible to ignore the scaremongering articles, and even positive health posts could lead you to weird sections of the web where you’ll be self-diagnosed with a fatal illness. However, you can still research and read. The books and resources that intern doctors read each night are readily available from sites like Amazon. So, if you’re really interested in how your body works, why not read a few? Who knows it might encourage you to pursue a late career in medicine.

I hope this advice helps you find your own path to more knowledge about your health.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science with a Sports Management minor.

Every year almost 1 in 5 (around 42.5 million) American adults suffer from some sort of mental health issue, including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. This is a scarily large figure, which only becomes more scary when you realize that it doesn’t take into account the huge numbers of cases of mental health issues within teenagers and younger children too. This large figure means that, although there are a lot of people suffering from mental health issues, there are also a lot of people that are suffering or have suffered, and want to use their experiences with mental health to help others. If you have suffered from a mental health issue, you will be able to better understand the person whom you are trying to help – You can also share your own experiences, so they don’t feel alone. Many people do this, and I have listed a few different ways in which you too can take your experience with mental health to help others. Of course, none of these options are a replacement of professional help, they are simply others forms of support, and forms that often help a person to realize that something may be wrong, and that they may need professional help.

Mentoring

If you are still of school or college age, then mentoring might be a good option for you. It allows you to engage one on one with people the same age as or a little bit younger than you and provide them support and guidance. Most people, when they first realize that something may be wrong with them do one of two things – They either search for their symptoms online or talk to a friend. As we all know, Googling symptoms is never a good idea, as it always says somewhere down the line that you’re dying of some rare disease that you don’t even find in your country. Talking to a friend, however, that is helpful. Friends are there to provide you emotional support, so are often the first people you tell about a mental health issue, even before family. However, some people may feel as though they don’t have a friend they can truly trust, and confide in, which is why peer-to-peer mentoring is such a good idea – It provides you with a confidant, who you can trust to listen to you and try to help you if they can.

Blogging

Blogging can assist you in helping others on a much wider scale than one to one mentoring. Depending on your experiences, you can write about a range of topics from self-help and techniques on coping with stress, to any medication you may be taking. Many people with mental health issues feel completely alone, but simply sharing your experiences can change that, and help them have a much more positive view of themselves. Blogging allows you the option to remain anonymous, and with plenty of useful tools and websites online, setting up a blog nowadays is relatively easy, so there’s absolutely no reason why this couldn’t be an option for you.

Vlogging

In the past few years watching your favorite channels on YouTube seems to be more popular than watching your favorite channels on an actual television, so if you wanted to aim your support and guidance at younger adults and teenagers, vlogging is a brilliant idea. There are many wonderful YouTube channels based solely on mental health, which have videos based on the suggested topics of blog posts from above. Many of the bigger YouTubers, such as Zoella and JackGap, also use their channels as a platform to talk about their own experiences with their mental health. This allows young people with mental health issues to feel more ‘normal’, by knowing that their favorite YouTube star also suffers from the same things as they do. There are many helpful guides online that explain to you how to set up a YouTube channel, which can make the whole process a lot easier – All you need now is a camera.

Become A Therapist

A therapist is a mental health professional, who assists their patients in reducing their symptoms of mental illness, by improving their emotional and cognitive skills, and teaching them how to cope with various challenges from everyday life. Granted, this isn’t the easiest way to share your experiences concerning mental health, and it certainly takes a lot of dedication, but if it’s what you want to do, then it is definitely possible. By taking an online psychology degree, you can study and get the qualifications you need to commence in higher education, while still having the time to hold down a full-time job.

Join A Therapy Group

If you don’t want to become a therapist yourself, joining a therapy group is another great way to share your experiences with mental health. Not only will it help you, as you can share you problems, hear others advice, and hear other people’s own experiences, but you can also help out other in the group in the same way. This is a lot like mentoring, except it’s not on a one to one basis, which in the long run might be better for some people – It provides you with a group of people who understand you, rather than just one, which could provide you with a sense of belonging.

All of these are great ways of using your own experiences with mental health to help others. Many of them could also help you improve your own mental health at the same time, as they provide you with an audience to which you can let out any feelings and emotions that you may have been keeping bottled up. However, you must always remember that, although you may want to help people, and although you may have in-depth experience of your own mental health problems, unless you do train to become a therapist, you are not a professional. You can certainly provide advice and support, but you need to know when to let a person know that you are out of your depth and that they need to speak to a professional.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science with a Sports Management minor.

We all know that eating right and exercising is the best way to stay healthy, but there are so many things in life that can damage your lungs. Your lungs are one of the main parts of your body that keep you alive, so looking after them is imperative. In this article are going to be some examples of things you should avoid to keep your lungs as healthy as possible.

Smoking

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. Smoking cigarettes is probably the most dangerous thing that you could put into your body. Not only can it harm your lungs and cause you to contract lung cancer, but it can cause many other cancers too. Did you know, that every cigarette that you smoke can take 10 minutes off your life? If you suffer from an illness like asthma or COPD too the effects of smoking can take it’s toll faster than someone who doesn’t suffer from any lung diseases.

It’s not just tobacco that can be harmful if you smoke it either, smoking any form of drugs can harm your lungs just as much as regular tobacco. Not only that, it can cause dozens of other health problems, including things like psychosis.

If you’re trying to quit smoking, visit your local pharmacist for help on quitting. It will save your wallet and your life.

Bonfire Smoke

There’s nothing quite like huddling around a bonfire and watching the flames engulf the firewood until it burns to glowing embers. However, breathing in bonfire smoke can do serious damage to your health. Even though it may smell nice, the smoke contains dangerous particles that can penetrate the walls of your lungs and cause breathing problems, headaches, runny noses and wheezing. If you are attending a bonfire, try not to stand too close so that you’re at less risk of reaping the damage that can be caused by bonfire smoke.

Asbestos

Asbestos is something that’s been around for centuries and is typically used in buildings for insulation. After the discovery of asbestosis, it was discontinued in the build of new houses. However, many homes all over the world still contain asbestos and can pose a threat to anyone who has a lot of exposure to it. If the asbestos is untouched, it shouldn’t harm you but if it is broken or removed the small fibre particles can enter your lungs and cause damage over time. If you’re in the industry of home improvements, make sure that you wear a face mask when working with asbestos to make sure that the particles aren’t accidentally breathed in. If your company haven’t been providing face masks, you could call a mesothelioma attorney for compensation because being exposed to asbestos could have potentially put you at the risk of cancer. Make sure you get yourself checked out if you’re experiencing tightness of the chest, shortness of breath and deformities of your hands.

Cleaning Chemicals

Even though we want to keep our homes clean and hygienic, using bleach without proper protection can lead to lung diseases like COPD, asthma, and can even cause people with current lung conditions to have even worse symptoms. Anything that contains bleach, chlorine, and ammonia is potentially dangerous. The warnings on the side of the product normally advise you to cover your mouth when using it to prevent the fumes from these chemicals harming your lungs. Like with working with asbestos, make sure that you wear a face mask when using these chemicals to prevent any damage to your lungs, even if you are only bleaching the toilet.

Carbon Monoxide

We’ve probably all heard that carbon monoxide is dangerous for the body, but why is that? Carbon monoxide is found in cigarettes (one of the many reasons you shouldn’t smoke) and it’s a gas that prevents your lungs from taking in enough air, therefore suffocating the lungs and making it difficult to breathe. Unfortunately, we are even at risk of carbon monoxide in our own homes, so it is definitely worth investing in a carbon monoxide meter which will tell you if any is detected in your home. Having appliances that use fuel in your home serviced regularly should decrease the chance of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Avoiding these 5 things should keep your lungs healthy so that you can concentrate on keeping healthy through a good diet and exercise. If there is anything else that seems like it would be hard on your lungs like dust or particles in the air, make sure to cover your mouth to prevent damage to your lungs.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science with a Sports Management minor.