Achieving the life you want hinges on two things: sticking to a PLAN and being ORGANIZED about how you spend your money. Without a plan, we make impulsive decisions that undermine our long-term plans. Rubbingnickels.com is here to help you plan and organize. We’ll post articles on a variety of topics including money management, the “frugal family”, becoming “eco-thrifty” and how to get “good deals” every day.

Our mission at Rubbingnickels.com is to help you get the best out of life. Many of us have become more careful with how we spend our money. We’ll offer strategies to assist you in reaching your goals. This time in our history is an opportunity for all of us to: simplify and slow down our hectic lives; get back to basics; be creative; and prioritize our values. We hope to lead a shift in the focus towards the material things in life to a focus on our families, relationships and keeping the earth healthy for future generations.

Darcy Ratner, Rubbingnickels.com Co-Founder & Creative Director, is a community health educator, wife, and mother of boys who are 8 and 10. She is originally from Indiana, resides in California and has family on the East Coast and in Florida. She learned her “can-do” attitude from her grandmothers, Dorothy and Jean, who did their own sewing, cleaning, cooking and home repairs as long as she can remember. She has worked on many community-based programs and is a leader with her public school’s PTA. She loves to read, sew, quilt, bake, play tennis and play the slots at Las Vegas (“nickels”, of course). If this website makes it big, she’d love a cottage in Cannon Beach, Oregon and to go to Nordstrom and spend freely with no thought of the price tag.

Julie Arnheim, Rubbingnickels.com Co-Founder & CEO, is also the CEO of Arnheim Enterprises. In her “day and night” job, she oversees the logistics of a family of three girls, ages 13, 11 and 8, one husband and a Portuguese water dog. She has wanted to re-enter the workforce for some time, but her duties as chauffeur, laundress, chef and maid have kept her from doing so. She has always “rubbed nickels” by cooking family dinners and bargain hunting, which were mainstays of her upbringing. Her passions are her family, yoga, running, volunteering and books. Her wish jar is being filled for family travel adventures and to help her husband retire one day.

Jeanette Aladjoff, Rubbingnickels.com CTO, has over ten years of experience working as a developer, analyst, and senior manager of E-Business, and experience in web design. She used her business and technical background to create our web site and assures that it’s professional, credible and easy to use. Jeanette has a M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering and has her PMP (Project Management Professional) from PMI (Project Management Institute).

Contributing Writers

Debbie Togliatti has had her hands in the soil since growing up in Gilroy, California, the garlic capital of the world! Besides having her own gardening business, Weed it and Reap: Garden Restoration and Design, in which she encourages her clients to use low water plants as well as using edibles in their landscapes, she has been an early childhood teacher for more than 25 years. She feels very fortunate to be able to combine her 2 passions: working in gardens and teaching young children.

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