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Family Bed: How to Make It Stop

A young girl kisses a <a href=baby on the cheek.” width=”300″ height=”199″ />
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For years, my kids shared my bed.

When my oldest was a baby, I was working a graveyard shift, so my wife was alone with the baby at night.    It was easy to keep a couple of bottles in a cooler by the bed and not have to get out of bed to take care of him when he woke up once an hour to drink a full bottle.

Then he got older.  And bigger.  And bigger.

We tried to move him to his own bed a few times, but it never worked well.    He’d scream if we put him in a crib, so we got him a bed at 9 months old.  That just meant he was free to join us whenever he woke up.  Brat.

We finally got him to voluntarily move to his own bed after his sister was born.    Shortly after she was born, I woke up to see him using her as a pillow.   To paint the proper picture, this kid is 5’9″ and wears size 12 shoes.  At 11.  When I woke him up to tell him what he was doing, he decided to sleep in his own bed.

Method #1 to get your kids in their own bed:  Have kid 1 try to crush kid 2 and feel bad about it.

Method #1 isn’t a great solution.

Soon, baby #3 showed up and we had 2 monsters in bed with us again.    Once they started getting bigger, it became difficult for the 4 of us to sleep.   We tried to get them into their own beds.   Unfortunately, even as toddlers, my kids had a stubborn streak almost as big as my own.   Nothing worked.

Eventually, they got big enough that I was crowded right out of the bed.  At least we had a comfortable couch.

Sleeping on a couch gets old.

When the girls got old enough to reason with, we had a choice:  We either had to find a way to convince them they wanted to sleep in their own room, or we had to have a fourth brat for them to attempt to crush at night.

We went with bribery.  Outright, blatant bribery.

We put a chart on the wall with each of their names and 7 boxes.  Every night they slept in their own beds, they got to check a box.   When all of the boxes were checked, they got $5 and a trip to the toy store.

It took 10 days to empty our bed and it’s been peaceful sleeping since.  That’s $5 well-spent.

Have you done a family bed?  How did it work?  How long did it last?

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Sunday Roundup

Eye of horse.
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My girls have been riding in horse shows lately.  Sometimes, it seems like that’s all we’ve been doing on the weekends, but they love it.  My wife’s favorite hobby now matches my daughters’ favorite pastime.   As a bonus, we’ll never have to paint their room again, with the way they are accumulating ribbons.

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I wholeheartedly agree with Tam, “You don’t need to make any excuses for crashing things into each other at the speed of light in an underground tunnel longer than Manhattan that’s had the air pumped out and been chilled to a couple degrees above absolute zero. That doesn’t need a reason. “

Carnivals I’ve Rocked 

Credit Cards: My Failed Experiment was included in the Best of Money Carnival, the  Carnival of Wealth, and the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

My niche site article on how to Make Extra Money with Keyword Research was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

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Make Extra Money: A Niche Site Walkthrough

Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction

Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites.  When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%.  Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete.   I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.

Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection

These three topics have been making people rich since the invention of rich.   Knowing that isn’t enough. If you want to make some money in the health niche, are you going to help people lose weight, add muscle, relieve stress, or reduce the symptoms of some unpleasant medical condition?   Those are called “sub-niches”.

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

My niches site are all product-promotion sites.  I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it. Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

Make Extra Money Part 4: Keyword Research

If you aren’t targeting search terms that people use, you are wasting your time.  If you are targeting terms that everybody else is targeting, it will take forever to get to the top of the search results.  Spend the extra time now to do proper keyword research.   It will save you a ton of time and hassle later.  This is time well-spent.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting 

In this installment, I show you how to pick a domain name and a website host.

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

A niche site doesn’t amount to much without, well, a site.   In this installment, I show you how I configure a site, from start to finish.

Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use.  This explains the “Why” behind Part 6.

More to come….

 

 

 

 

The Unfrugal Meal

A Teppanyaki chef cooking on a modern gas powe...
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I spend a lot of time talking about how to save money here.  It’s kind of what I do.

Not today.

Today, I’m going to talk about the best way I’ve wasted money during my vacation this week.

First, so my feelings are completely understood:  A vacation is about experiences and memories.   I could spend all day at the park with my kids, or I could spend a memorable meal with them.   Which will they remember longer?

It ain’t the park.  They are there almost every day.

Of course, if the restaurant is McDonald’s they wouldn’t remember for long, either.

Tuesday, after a long day of hands-on, interactive museum-going, we took the kids to a Japanese steakhouse.   Teppanyaki, where they cook the food at the table, complete with fire, spatula spinning, and airborne food.

I’m the only one in my family who has seen that before.    Honestly, watching the art, the skill, the banter, and the giant fireball leaves me as wide-eyed as my kids.

They loved it.

Watching the chef throw a bowl full of rice across the table made my son’s jaw drop.

Seeing the chef carry fire from one side of the grill to the other on his fingers made my youngest squeal and beg for more fire tricks.

Getting squirted by the chef when he was putting out a flare-up made the middle brat giggle, possibly because the squirt gun was a little kid, dressed up as a fireman, with his pants down.   She got “peed” on and loved it.

Aside from cooking-as-a-show, the service was fantastic.   There was always a waiter nearby to keep our water glasses full or to provide “little kid” chopsticks, which are modified with rubber band to remove the need for skill to eat.   They had the courses perfectly timed.   The minute the salad was cleared, the soup was delivered.   When that was done, the chef rolled up to start on the rice.  My two-year-old was eating white rice without complaint for the first time.

Giggles and squeals.  Three days later, they are still talking about it.   My 11-year-old, who’s trying so hard to be an unimpressible teenager, says it was the coolest restaurant he’s ever seen.

Frugal, it wasn’t, but the memories were worth the money.

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