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?
Budget Lesson, Part 8
This is a continuation of the budget series. See these posts for the history of this series.
This time, I’m looking at our discretionary budget. These are the things that don’t have a fixed cost. Any individual item is largely optional, and, ultimately, we don’t track these purchases closely. At the beginning of the month, I pull this money out of the bank in cash, except for 1 category. When the discretionary budget is gone, it’s gone.
- Groceries/Dining – At the beginning of the week, we sit down with a meal planner and (Can you guess?) plan our meals. The planner we use has a weekly calendar with a checklist below each day to build the grocery list. At the bottom of the page is another checklist for staples that don’t apply to a specific day’s meal, like milk or snacks. We build the list, then transfer it to another sheet, broken out by grocery department. That keeps me from having to criss-cross the store. I make one lap. When I go to the store, I only bring that week’s grocery budget in cash, so I keep close track of how much is going into the cart. Recently, we’ve gotten so good at making our meals cheaply from scratch that I reduced our monthly food budget by $50. I enjoy good food, so I wouldn’t reduce this budget item if it was a sacrifice in quality. For example, the Rainbow Foods store-brand chips actually taste better than Lay’s for half of the price. We stock up when things are on sale and cook creatively. Sometimes, if time has been too tight to make a meal plan, we eat solely from the pantry for a week, buying nothing but bread and milk. By sticking to the list, and not fearing the store’s brand, we are able to feed our family of 5 1/2 for $450 per month and still eat well.
- Discretionary – This is for the random things that come up, and some of the not-so-random. Toiletries, activity fees, admissions, and fund-raisers all come out of this fund. At the end of the month, whatever is left gets tucked into a box and forgotten. When the box gets full, it goes to the bank to be applied to debt. There isn’t a lot to cut here, since this line-item is only $200.
- Baby stuff – This category is continually shrinking. Our middle kid is recently potty-trained and our youngest is trying. There is no baby food and no formula, just 1 pack of diapers every month. In 6 months, this category will be eliminated.
- Gas/oil – This is the single category that isn’t cash-based. It makes no sense to take the kids out of the car to pay inside, especially in the winter. Also, all of the temptation is inside. It’s much better to spend the money at the pump. There isn’t much we can do to reduce this, at the moment. Our next car won’t be a full-sized pickup, but we are several years from that purchase. We’ve started clipping oil-change coupons to keep this down to the minimum amount possible.
- Clothes – We only allocate $15 per month for clothes. In a good month, we don’t spend it. We can’t eliminate it completely, because things do come up. Over the summer, I’m hoping to completely leave it alone to save up for a new(used) winter jacket for our older daughter, who doesn’t get hand-me-downs.
- Blow Money – This is the safety valve. It can’t get reduced and still work.
We’ve now addressed out entire budget, including what we can do and have done to keep our costs under control. Looking back, I don’t see too many cuts I’ve missed.
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.
Budget Lesson, Part 5
I’ve explained my budget in some detail already. See these posts for the history of this series.
Now, I’m going to go through each section, reviewing ways that I can reduce, or have reduced, my spending. I’ll be starting with my monthly payments.
- House Payment – I’ve mentioned that we have a small house payment. A few years ago, when the interest rates dropped to almost the lowest point they reached in that particular cycle, we refinanced and got in under 5%. There is nothing to cut. We won’t refinance again, and the loan will be paid within 7 years, according to the lender’s schedule. I’m aiming for 4 years.
- Netflix – We’re on the 2 DVD/unlimited plan for $13.99. We could drop down to the single DVD plan, but I’m worried that will trigger a rash of movie-buying. 2-at-a-time scratches that itch well. I don’t think we’ll be reducing this plan in the foreseeable future. [Read more…] about Budget Lesson, Part 5
Three Ways to Make Christmas Cheap
We failed Christmas Budgeting 101 this year. I haven’t totaled the damage, yet, but we have spent at least $500 more than we had planned.
It hurt.
Next year, we’re going to handle the Christmas budget differently. This year’s model isn’t working. It’s a lot like pushing a car down a hill to get it started, but ignoring the cliff at the bottom.
1. Use cash. A huge part of our problem was that Capital One is helping us celebrate. It’s horrible, because we both know we shouldn’t be using a credit card, for exactly this reason, but we can’t seem to make the transition back away from the plastic. Part of the reason is that Amazon and ThinkGeek don’t accept cash, and part of it is convenience. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not carrying a balance on the card, but it’s still far too easy to overspend.
2. Communicate! If our gift budget is $500, and I spend $300 online while she’s busy spending $300 in stores, out budget is shot. Worse, if we spend that money buying stuff for the same people, our budget is shot before our shopping is done. A little bit of this happened to us this year.
3. Explore atheism. There really is no more effective wa
y to cut down holiday expenses than to eliminate the holiday completely. This may not be the best answer for everyone, but it’s effective. On the other hand, I know several atheists who celebrate Christmas as much as anyone else. This probably isn’t a good alternative for most people.
3, Take 2. Cut back on “stuff”. My kids have more toys than they can play with. My kids’ parents have more toys than they can play with. Do we really need more? Wouldn’t it be better to spend the money I’d normally use to buy my wife a present on a series of date nights, spread out through the year? I could take my kids to Feed My Starving Children so they can understand how privileged they are and how much the things they take for granted are really worth.
There are so many other ways to celebrate a holiday that has turned into a national orgy of consumerism. Next year, we’ll be trying some of the alternatives.
