This is a conversation between me and my future self, if my financial path wouldn’t have positively forked 2 years ago. The transcript is available here.
What would your future self have to say to you?
A Brighter Future: 3 Simple Things Parents Can Do to Make a Difference
[Editor: This is a guest post from my good friend Terra. I’ve know her for–jeez, really–20 years. If you’re looking for a staff writer, hit her up. Seriously. She’s good people.]
Who doesn’t want a brighter future for their child? Book store shelves overflow with parenting advice tomes and how-to guides to make “uber-kids”. Eager parents lap up promises to raise their children’s I.Q., increase their chances to get into college, and improve their social skills.
From books to apps to specialized software, there is a dizzying number of products available to help your child grow into the genius you know he or she is.
But what if I told you that the secrets to increasing your child’s likelihood to succeed in life were absolutely free. Simple things you have complete control over. No batteries or special upgrades required. No matter your income, education level, or what country you live in, these deceptively simple tips offer powerful results.
- Make Mealtimes Sacred
Food connects people. From the dawn of time, our species has gathered around the fire, to break bread and share our stories.
In modern times, our schedule can be crazy (between work, social activities, and, you know, life) so having dinner on the table at 6 o’clock every night is not always possible. However, studies consistently show that having a family meal at least 3 times a week has huge benefits for children (from teenagers being less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, to increased academic success, to reduced risk of developing eating disorders or becoming obese, the implications are impressive). And it doesn’t have to be dinner, any meal will work. Consistency is the key.
Far from being boring, children find the predictable routine of family meals reassuring, promoting warm, fuzzy feelings of closeness and comfort (though teenagers will never admit it). Whether it’s take-out or made from scratch goodness, nothing says “I care about you” like sharing a meal.
Quality matters here, so remove distractions during meal time (turn off the TV, ban phones) and focus on each other. Take this time to reconnect and talk about your day and ask the kids about theirs. Make this time sacred. It matters that much.
- Hug Frequently
“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.” – Virginia Satir, psychotherapist
Receiving a loving hug feels wonderful. But beyond feeling “nice”, hugs literally have the power to heal us and improve our lives.
Hugs have superpowers. A hug has the power to release a “happiness hormone cocktail” of oxytocin (natural antidepressant, promotes feelings of devotion, trust and bonding), dopamine (intense pleasure), and serotonin (elevates mood, negates pain and sadness) in both the giver and receiver. Bonus, hugs are naturally gluten-free, organic, and have no unpleasant side effects.
To get the most benefits, prolonged hugging is recommended, around 20 seconds. A full-body hug stimulates your nervous system while decreasing feelings of loneliness, combating fear, increasing self-esteem, defusing tension, and showing appreciation. However, this hug fest only works its magic if you’re hugging someone you trust. Since children love to be held and cuddled, this is ideal for family bonding. Not so much with that new client you just landed (awkward…).
How does hugging effect children specifically? Children who aren’t hugged have delays in walking, talking, and reading. Hugging boosts self-esteem; from the time we’re born our family’s touch shows us that we’re loved and special. All of those cuddles we give to our children are imprinted on them at a cellular level and will still be imbedded in their nervous system as adults. Hugs today equal the ability to self-love as adults. That’s an awesome gift.
- Create a Home Library
We all know how important reading aloud to children is, from infants to teenagers. Reading is one of the most important factors affecting the development of a child’s brain. But reading skills are not hardwired into us; we don’t pop out of the womb quoting “Pride and Prejudice”. Reading skills need to be taught and encouraged.
Parents are a child’s first, and most important, teachers. While children can learn from flashcards and workbooks, nothing is more powerful than seeing your passion for reading. Whether you like it or not, your children are learning from your every move. What you find important, they will find important. No pressure! Teaching reading to your child requires attention, focus, and motivation. It also requires access to books, lots and lots of books.
Libraries are a great resource for developing a love of reading in your child. Most have a thoughtfully arranged children’s area offering story-time and other enrichment opportunities. However, nothing beats having a book to call your own, to hold and cherish, until the edges are worn with love.
Having a well-stocked home library, it turns out, matters. A lot. This study found that having a 500-book library was equivalent to having university-educated parents in terms of increasing the level of education their children will attain. That’s pretty powerful. It doesn’t matter if your family is rich or poor, from North America or Asia, if your parents are illiterate or college-educated, what matters is that you have books in your home.
Don’t’ have the space for 500 books? No worries. Having as few as 20 books in the home still has a significant impact on propelling a child to a higher level of education, and the more books you add, the greater the benefit.
Having a variety of books available makes a difference; especially important are reference books, with history and science texts having the greatest benefit.
No money for books? No Excuse! Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a great resource for free, high-quality children’s books. When you sign up, your child is mailed a new book each month until the age of five, addressed to them (a very special thing indeed).
I hope these tips empower you to take action. Small changes can have a big impact on your child’s future. Just remember, it’s not the money you make or the tutor you’ve hired or the new app you’ve installed that will catapult your baby Einstein ahead in life. It’s the quiet moments with you at home, eating, hugging, and reading that will carry them through whatever life brings their way.
Are these things you would like to focus on in your family? Do you have simple parenting tips that have made a difference in your child’s life?
How have you improved your situation today?
Every day, in some small way, it’s important to do something to improve your situation. Whether it’s paying down debt, researching inexpensive alternatives to your existing expenses, or something as simple as hugging your spouse or playing games with your kids.
Educate
I was once told that every day, you either get smarter, or you get dumber. Don’t do the latter. Never pass up an opportunity to educate yourself. Make the day good for you.
- Read a book. There are hundreds of personal finance books available. Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover is a great place to start.
- Read a blog. Once again, lack of choice is not a problem here. There are thousands of choices. My favorites are in my sidebar, to the left.
- Find a mentor. Failing that, get a PF-Buddy. Find someone you can call when you need the moral support to make an appropriate or difficult financial decision.
- Take a class. Whether it’s a personal finance class, or some other way of improving yourself, do it. Many cities offer affordable community education classes. Ad Hoc college courses are another option.
Elucidate
It’s incredibly important to understand your situation. If you don’t know where you are, how can you control where you’re going?
- Examine your finances. I heartily recommend Quicken to track your finances, but Mint is a great place to see where your money has gone.
- Know your debt. It’s important to know your debt. Own it. Know your fees and your rates. Know every cent you owe. Get a spreadsheet or a notebook and write it all down. Keep it updated. Mint is great for this. I update my debt-sheet monthly.
- Know your spending. This is another plug for Mint. There’s no better way to see where your money has gone in the past. I use Quicken for the present and future, Mint for the past and snapshots.
- Find your waste. Do you have the cheapest plans that meet your needs for television, internet, phone service? Do you have AAA and roadside assistance through your insurance company?
- Talk to your spouse. Discuss your finances. Make sure everyone is on the same page and there are no surprises or hidden bills. Plan together.
- Eliminate problems early. If you see a problem, eliminate it before it gets out of control. The earlier you identify a problem, the easier it is to eliminate.
- Family meeting. Get the family together so everyone can participate, even the children. Young eyes sometimes have a clarity that a lifetime of habits has clouded. If your kids understand the concept of money, they are old enough to participate and even help. Brainstorming means that no idea is a bad idea. It may not be implemented, but everything is worth hearing.
Eradicate
What’s left? Eliminate baggage. Kill your bills. If you’re paying for something you don’t want or need, get rid of it!
- Unnecessary items. Do you have an extra cell phone or an insured motorcycle in the garage? Time to cancel.
- Unused items. Do you really use the movie package in your cable bill? Are you saving money with Netflix, or would Redbox be a better option?
- Forgotten bills. Did you sign up for an identity protection scheme or an appliance repair plan for an appliance that no longer exists? Cancel!
- Fees. What fees are you paying? Do you have an annual fee for your credit card or minimum balance fees at your bank? Find new institutions. Loyalty to your bank may be costing you money.
Unused or unnecessary bills are nothing but unhappiness generators. They don’t provide value so trim the waste and get rid of what you don’t need.
Budgeting Sucks
Budgeting kind of sucks.
Filling out a budgeting spreadsheet, putting in all of your expenses, listing all of your income, tracking all of your spending. Yuck.
Balancing the fact that you may have $200 to spare, but if your gas bill is a bit lower one month then you have a some more money, but if your electric bill’s a little bit high, then you have a little bit less. It’s too much work.
Here’s the new plan:
I just opened up a new credit card. This credit card’s got a fairly high limit, not that I care since I’m never going to come close to the limit. It’s got an okay interest rate, not that I care–it’s going to be paid off every month. It also has a good travel rewards plan, so our family vacations can, to a large extent, be paid for.
Now, with this card, I’m taking all of my regular bills, and setting them up to be automatically paid by the credit card. It’ll get automatically charged every month. I won’t have to think about it. Once a month, I’ll just log on and pay off the card. All I have to do is make sure the balance stays under my monthly budgeted amount. I already know what I have to be paying each month, so, no problem.
This will make it easier to budget and track my actual spending. It’ll even make it easier to balance my checkbook, since right now, I’m logging into my bank account a couple of times a month to compare it to Quicken. Any budget helper is nice.
After this plan takes effect, my bank account will only have any ATM withdrawals that I need to make–which shouldn’t happen more than once or twice a month–and my checks to day care. There should be just six manual transactions every month plus all of my miscellaneous transfers to and from INGDirect, which should also be minimal– there should only be two of those each month.
This will simplify everything while at the same time giving me the maximum amount of travel rewards I’ve been able to find. Hopefully, it will work as well as I think it will.
Carnival Roundups: The Weaponized Syphilis Edition
Last weekend, I was in Denver for the Financial Blogger Conference. Last week, I had a sore throat that got worse each day until my tonsils started touching on Friday. I could barely talk, so I went to the doctor, then to bed.
It apparently wasn’t strep throat, but beyond that, it could be anything from motaba to weaponized syphilis*.
This is one of those occasions when I’m happy to be living in the future, where a quick trip to the clinic can knock out what would have been hopeless and fatal and few hundred years ago. Antibiotics and a day spent in bed watching super hero movies made me better. That beats bloodletting any day.
Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:
Yakezie Carnival: FINCON Edition hosted by Finance Product Reviews
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Retirement #36 hosted by Making Sense of Cents
Carnival of Personal Finance #377 hosted by Money Life and More
Yakezie Carnival: Labor Day Edition hosted by Stock Trend Investing
Yakezie Carnival: The Best of Summer Edition hosted by On Target Coach
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Simple Finance Blog
Carnival of Retirement #34 hosted by My Family Finances
Lifestyle Carnival #17 hosted by The Free Financial Advisor
Yakezie Carnival: Dog Days of Summer Edition hosted by Frugal Portland
Carnival of Money Pros: Back to School Edition hosted by See Debt Run
Nerdy Finance #7 hosted by Nerd Wallet
Yakezie Carnival hosted by The College Investor
Yakezie Carnival – Rescue Edition hosted by See Debt Run
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #45 hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Aaron Hung
Carnival of Retirement #32 hosted by Young Family Finance
Thanks for including my posts.
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* Weaponized Syphilis
This involves giving each of the syphilis spirochetes an M16 and a Manifest Destiny indoctrination before releasing them into the wild. The transport mechanism (the “insertion method”) remains as fun as ever.
Have a great weekend!
5 Things to Do in the New Year
- Image via Wikipedia
CNN Money has an article up on 5 things to do this year. After posting a similar article a couple of weeks ago, I thought it’d be interesting to post about someone else’s perspective.
1. Shop for a no-fee checking account.
If you are paying fees for a checking account, go somewhere else. There are so many alternatives available that you shouldn’t be throwing money away. Ally Bank has a great no-fee checking account, as does INGDirect, though ING won’t let you write paper checks against the account. The same principle applies to credit cards. If you have a card with an annual fee and you aren’t getting some monster services or rewards to go with it, run away.
2. Save your raise.
I don’t necessarily agree with this one. If you are in debt, it’s better to use the raise to pay off that garbage, first. When I got my last raise, I immediately boosted the automatic payment for my car to use every new penny. I’ve never had the money available, so I haven’t missed it. Whatever you do, fight lifestyle inflation. Just because you have some more money doesn’t mean you need to spend it. At my last job, I got a substantial raise, so I bought a new car, only to get laid off a few months later.
3. Go for a checkup
Wealth doesn’t matter if you squander your health. Go get a physical. Every disease is easier to treat if you catch it earlier as opposed to later. Don’t make the mistake of running your body into the ground. You will regret it later. Effective this year, most health plans will cover a physical with no copay, co-insurance, or deductible allowed.
4. Score a better rewards card.
B***-****. If you’ve still got debt, don’t concentrate on using more of it. Get that crap paid off. If you’re out of debt, look into getting a rewards card that aligns with your goals. If you like to travel, get a card that gives you frequent flier miles. Otherwise, I’d go with a cash-back rewards card.
5. Use your vacation days.
37% of Americans don’t take all of the vacation to which they are entitled. That’s insane! We work harder and better when we have time to recuperate and relax. Unfortunately, I usually fall into that unfortunate 37%. My vacation resets on February 1st, and this will be the first year in a lot of years that I haven’t had to roll it over or even lose some.
What is your financial plan for the new year?
