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Meditation

Life

Life is crazy.

 “Really, Jason, that’s news?”
I spend so much time going in so many different directions.
Cleaning out our inherited hoarding house, managing the remodel, work, side hustles, kids, friends, family, relationships, maintaining our house, maintaining a relationship with my wife, garage sales, school starting, junior high football season, insurance policies, probate, rush hour, insomnia.
Some days, I feel insanely scattered.  I can’t focus.  I have a hard time making decisions.  I waste time.
Those days, I need to clear my head.
That’s where meditation comes in.
I don’t do the money hum. (Om mone padme, Om)
Instead, I have three activities that demand a total focus.  They drive out any scattered thoughts or unimportant concerns.
They have to because, quite frankly, they can be dangerous if I don’t concentrate.
1. I shave.  I use a double-edged safety razor, so bleeding for the throat is a real concern.   For 10 minutes, nothing else in the world matters.   It has only recently struck me how valuable this is.  That value makes me want to start shaving every day, with a straight razor.  More focus, more often.
2.  I ride.  For the past couple of years, it’s been hard to find time get my motorcycle out.   Small children seem to want attention every day.   It got to the point where I was ready to sell my bike.   This spring, it was seriously misbehaving.  Finally, at the end of the summer, a friend got it running better than it ever has.   I took it out for a couple of hours and came back feeling more clearheaded than I have in a long time.  I won’t be selling my bike until I have its replacement.
3.  I shoot.  Shooting involves a series of simple actions that require concentration to do well. Load the gun, line up the sights, which eye is dominant, breathe, don’t breathe, squeeze the trigger, hole in the paper.   Again, it’s not an activity that’s conducive to worrying about the bills or work.  It’s a way to shut out the world for a few minutes.
For me, a few moments or a few hours of shutting down everything except one thing is the way to stay sane and focused.
How do you deal with it when the world comes crashing in from every direction?
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Babies Are Expensive

Finance, Parenting

From the comments here.  The discussion is on how much it costs to have a baby.  Edited for clarity.

 

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Actual birthing costs vary. We’ve had three kids over ten years and birthing costs have varied from $250 out of pocket to $8500.   Our highest and lowest price births were 20 months apart. The highest price birth involved induced labor with an epidural. For the lowest out-of-pocket price, I added my wife to my policy before the birth, so she was double-covered. If one of your policies is less than ideal and there are multiple policies available, I recommend doing this. It saved us thousands.  All told, If things go well, you could slide for as little as $1500 total.

For the highest price birth, we threw ourselves on the mercy of the finance department. They have a charity fund to pay the bills of the less fortunate. We qualified…barely.  If you have a medical bill you can’t afford, ask if there is a grant or donation you can apply for.  Always ask if there is some way the bill could be lowered.

Breast-feeding beats the heck out of formula, financially, but breast-feeding doesn’t always work. Ignore the boob-nazis who insist you are slowly killing your kid by using formula. I’ve got 3 kids, and each had different feeding issues.

Baby formula runs $19 for a big container at Sam’s Club, or a large percentage of your soul at most other big box stores.  Formula alone will pay for your membership in under a month. For a big eater, that’s $20-30 per week. For a normal eater, 2-3 weeks. For planning purposes, assume $100/month in formula costs for the first six months, when food starts coming into play heavily. After that, the formula expense goes down, but not away for at least 6 more months.

Diapers are painful. Not just the smell–though that hurts, too, sometimes–but the expense. I currently have 2 in diapers; one is potty-training. Our monthly costs for diapers, now, are about $75. It was easily twice that when they were younger. Figure at least $100 per month in diapers.  Unless your baby has irritation problems, go with cheap diapers. Leak-guard is a joke.   If you are relying on leak-guard to keep the contents inside the diaper, you aren’t changing your baby often enough.

I couldn’t begin to guess at how much you’ll spend on baby clothes.  I have never bought clothes for our kids. Whatever didn’t come free from friends and family walked into the house of it’s own volition, following my wife home from the store.

Toys are an almost purely voluntary expense. You’ll get as much as the kids needs free, as presents. You’ll go overboard and give the kids 10 times that, without realizing it. Don’t. For the first four to five months, its fingers and toes will be entertaining enough. After that, if there are more than about ten toys, it’s too many; the kid will never get attached to any of them. Keep it small. It’s better for the kids and the budget.  Little kids prefer boxes to toys, anyway.   Give the kid a shoebox instead of a Leapfrog.  Really.

Portraits suck, too. If you have to get them done professionally, get a membership that covers sitting fees, and use coupons. I recommend JC Penney’s. Using judicious coupons and the membership, we get portraits for under $20.

Baby food is probably cheaper to make in a food processor, but you can’t beat the convenience of the little jars. If you watch sales, you can stock up affordably. Mix every meal with some rice or oatmeal mush to stretch it, without making it unhealthy. Depending on your kids, and how much you listen to the “experts”, this is a nonexistent expense before six months. Our kids started eating baby food in their second months, at least a little bit.

Babies are expensive. Don’t doubt that for a second, but ignore the polled averages when it comes to expense.  Hand-me-downs, thrift stores, and good sales cut the expense a lot.

How do you save money and value with a baby in the house?

 

Saturday Roundup – Happy New Year!

Misc

This week, my daycare provider has taken off to have surgery.   That means I have 10 days off in a row.  I haven’t done that since I was laid off at my last job, four years ago.  I’m really looking forward to the time with my brats.

Happy New Year!  Here’s hoping 2011 beats the pants off of 2010, no matter how 2010 went for you.

Best Posts

Free From Broke has a monster post with the best personal finance articles of the year.  If you need something to read….

Lifehacker posted about a service that will grade and critique your resume for free.  I’m not looking for a new job, but it looks like a great service.

Have you ever considered the similarities between hookers, doctors, and TSA agents?

Here’s an interesting analysis of the huge stimulus package that was supposed to revive the economy.  With all of the red tape and deadlines involved in getting the stimulus money, only projects that were going to happen anyway and already had permits and approval actually happened.   Private enterprise held off starting projects, hoping to get stimulus funding, only to find out they couldn’t possibly jump through the hoops in time, which is when they lost investors.   Huge fail with nothing accomplished beyond packing a ton of taxpayer money in a fat .gov bong and watching it go up in smoke.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago.

I wrote a post on the dangers of hypocrisy.   It’s a good post to re-read whenever I start feeling judgmental.

I also started my budget series.   Lesson 1 detailed my discretionary budget category.

Finally, I asked what you’ve done to improve your situation.  Every day, you can do something.  It may not be a big thing, but even small steps in the right direction will get you where you need to be.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader.  I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook.   Facebook gets more use than Google.  It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter.   This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of.   I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

That’s all for today.   Have a great weekend!

Teaching My Child about Money in a Way I Was Not Taught

Finance

When I was in high school and working 15 to 20 hours a week, my mom gave me free rein to use the money I earned as I would like.  Actually, she said nothing to me about saving for college or putting some money into savings.

When I had friends who complained that they had to put away some of their earnings, I commiserated with them.  How unfair of their parents to make them save some of their money!  They worked hard for their money, often at crappy part-time jobs.  They deserved to spend the money any way they saw fit.

The way I saw it, why save for college?  According to financial aid rules, if the student has any savings, she would have to use the majority of it to pay for college.  How unfair.  To add insult to injury, if prospective college students have some savings, they would qualify for less financial aid, which often meant fewer student loans.

The injustice. 

Yes, it was better to spend my hard earned money than save it and be penalized.

No one told me differently.  In fact, many people in my family agreed with me and encouraged me to buy a used car to get to and from my job.   Of course, I paid the loan payments for the car, the gas I used and my insurance out of money from my job.  That was a responsible use of money, but I also went out to eat with friends, a lot.  At 16, I was going out to eat with my friends twice a week at least.

However, my plan worked perfectly.  When I went to college, I didn’t have to use any of my hard earned cash.  No, not me, because I hadn’t saved anything.  Instead, I left college with nearly $20,000 in student loan debt.  I took two years off and paid down as much student loan debt as I could, getting it down to about $8,000, but then I went to graduate school and took on more student loan debt.  I graduated with nearly $25,000 in debt total.  I am still paying on it today, 13 years later.

Now that I am the parent, I am one of those “awful” parents who makes her kids save.  My son knows when he gets his allowance, some goes to save, some goes to donate, and some goes to spend.  True, it makes me cringe when he uses his spend money on little trinkets like temporary tattoos, stickers, and gum, but I keep silent.  He did the work to earn the money, and he can spend it as he likes.  However, I am inflexible with saving; that money must be set aside.  When he goes to college, I expect that he will have to use the majority of that money.  Rather than seeing it as a waste, I see it as an important component of his financial education.  Spending his money to pay a portion of his college education will hopefully make him take college more seriously.

Meanwhile, I have already begun having chats with him about money, spending, and budgeting.  He watches his dad and I work hard to pay down our debt with gazelle intensity.  He sees me use a calculator at the grocery store to see how much our groceries will be.

Ultimately, he will make his own financial decisions as he grows up, but I plan to teach him throughout these important years so that even if he turns into a spendthrift, he will have a firm financial understanding to revert to as he ages.  While my mom taught me how to stretch money further, she never taught me how to save; I hope saving is a lesson my son takes with him throughout his adulthood.

How do you teach your kids about money management?

Melissa writes at Fiscal Phoenix where she encourages people to rise from the ashes of their financial mistakes as she and her husband are doing.

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The heat(er) is on! 5 winter home energy saving tips

Finance

This is a guest post.

Turning the heat on can strike fear into the hearts of many a home owner. Rising heating bills are not a thing of the past. They are present and there is no end in sight. Relief for high winter heat costs can be found in every leaky window, poorly sealed storm door, inaccurate thermostats and many other locations in and around your home. Seeking out the cheapest gas and electricity prices from local suppliers can help reduce total energy costs and should include home energy audits and payment plans to equalize summer and winter energy bills.

Top 5 Tips for Year Round Home Energy Savings

1. Obtain a free energy audit kit from your local electric or gas provider. Approach your home energy audit as a family. Involving children is one of the best ways to decrease overall energy consumption. Teach the kids about leaving doors open, leaving lights on and the television on when not in the room. Appoint an energy officer for the house who will be responsible for reminding family members about energy conserving activities.

2. Install a digital thermostat, which can be programmed to automatically raise or reduce home temperatures when the house is not occupied such as when parents are at work and the kids are at school. Lowering temperatures to 60 degrees on mild winter days for just six hours during the work day can save on your heating bills without compromising comfort. By limiting the time not to exceed six hours the cost for bringing the home back to acceptable living temperatures is minimal; much longer and the bounce back time is increased sufficiently to mitigate any daytime savings. Reducing overall temperatures by one degree Fahrenheit can save as much as three percent on the total heating bill. Reduce the household temperature by five degrees Fahrenheit and experience a 15 percent saving which is a number most families can easily live with.

3. Comparison shop for the cheapest gas and electricity from local private energy suppliers. Ask about payment plans, adjustable billing cycles and energy reform programs. State and local governments have options for lower income homes, providing subsidies for high winter heating bills. Grants for home improvement along with energy conservation tax credits, which can be applied to heating costs, are another way to reduce budget impacting heating bills this winter.

4. Close vents, use energy efficient space heaters and alternative heat sources for additional energy savings. Closing vents to unused rooms will reduce energy consumption for the entire house. Heating less square footage will require less energy. When closing vents, be sure to seal those rooms well. Install thermal window coverings to reduce heat loss and temperature fluctuations and reduce air exchange at door thresholds with the use of a draft dodger. Using an energy efficient space heater in cold rooms can improve comfort without increasing overall heating costs. Spaces such as basements and laundry rooms can benefit from temporary use of space heaters to increase temperatures for those rooms temporarily. Consider alternative heat sources such as wood stoves and fireplace inserts. Fireplaces are generally inefficient as heat sources. However, wood stoves using catalytic converters can have energy efficiency ratings that rival high tech heat pumps.

5. Appliance energy hogs such as hot water heaters, washers, dryers, ovens and dishwashers should be evaluated each season. Lowering the hot water heater temperature and insulating the water heater and the pipes can reduce energy consumption of this one appliance by as much as seven percent. Wash clothing on cold water settings whenever possible, reserving hot water for only items needing sterilization, such as sick room bedding or cloth diapers. Never start the dishwasher if it is not completely full. The same amount of water and energy will be used to wash five plates and three glasses and will be required to wash a full meal’s worth of dishes for a family of six.

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