Kids Ain't Cheap

But They Sure Are Worth It

Priming for a Windfall

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What would you do if you suddenly won the lottery? Would you get a luxury car, travel the world or maybe invest in the best performing unit trusts or investments. Bonuses are often seen as a prize. We tend to spend our bonuses long before we get them and very often make poor decisions on what to do with the money.

Maybe it is time for you to think about these windfalls a bit differently. Receiving a bonus, or any unexpected income for that matter, allows you to take a moment to evaluate your overall finances. Are you saving enough for the future? Are your debts under control? Allocating a portion of a windfall to save or pay off debts will help maximize its effect. Self-control, reflection and planning can dramatically increase the longevity of a windfall. In the end it’s your long-term happiness that counts.

Reflection

Reflect on instances where you received a large sum of money: How did you spend it and did your choices benefit you in the long run? Think about all the effects of your past decisions and it will help you make better choices in the future. Usually all we’re left with after large purchases is buyer’s remorse. Tap into the consequences of your past financial decisions and it may help you resist any impulsive purchases.

Make a plan

Things rarely just work out and relying on fate is a poor strategic choice. Make a detailed plan on how best to spend your money before the ever-intoxicating holiday season arrives. Always consider your future well-being: Pay off debts, make new investments or make additional contributions to your existing investments. Take care of the important things and can happily spend what’s left.

Don’t totally ignore your desires. Small treats can make the bigger sacrifices a bit easy to handle. We often see saving as a sacrifice, but really it just allows us to continue spending comfortably in the future. Delayed gratification now will lead to a better lifestyle when you retire.

Avoiding the dangers of the festive season

The festive season has become all about spending. It is often difficult to control your spending habits when you’re surrounding by the buzz, the lights and the people. Retailers know this and will try and target you at every corner. Here are a few things to look out for:

  • Putting baskets/trollies at the entrance

We tend to want to fill up a basket. It happens subconsciously. If you’ve come to the store of one or a few things then avoid the baskets.

  • Stores are designed so that you will spend

There is a reason why all the expensive chocolates, snacks and tidbits are in the cheque out aisle. Stores are designed to make you stop and buy. The long and constant exposure to items tends to lower our self-control. By the time you reach the cheque out those treats just seem to make sense. Make a list and stick to it.

  • Targeted shopping

Online shopping is convenient and often cheaper than their physical counterparts. It also affords retailers to target products specifically to you and have a greater chance of getting us to open our wallets.

Take a moment

Theory often doesn’t hold up in practice. It will take some discipline and thought. What happens when that new item you desire overrides any logical plan you formulated? Well, all you need to do is pause.  Break the stimulus/response mentality. Take some time and step away. It will help set you on the right path to wealth creation and financial security.

The Key Things to Know About Depression in Kids

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Depression isn’t typically an illness that we associate with children, but many mental health professionals believe that it should be. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), around one in every twenty children in the U.S. suffers from depression today. For parents, it’s important to understand the signs and be able to determine whether their child is simply unhappy, or whether their symptoms are a sign of something more serious. As a parent, you will, of course, hope that depression is something that your child never has to go through, at any stage in their life. However, it’s good to be aware of what to look out for, so that you can be there for your child and offer them the support that they need should they ever become depressed.

Depression Can be Genetic

If you or a close family member suffers from depression or has suffered from this mental illness in the past, then it’s worth bearing in mind that depression can run in the family. Studies show that around 25% of children with a parent who has suffered from clinical depression will experience symptoms of their own. If both parents have suffered from depression, then the risk of the child also becoming depressed rises to around 75%. However, bear in mind that even children with no history of depression in the family can become depressed.

It Can Manifest as Other Problems

Many adults who develop depression can find it difficult to manage the feelings that it causes, so for children, it can be even worse. Parents should be aware that depression in children can often manifest as different problems; it’s not enough to assume that if your child is depressed, they will simply be sad all the time. Children with depression may suddenly become more anxious and clingy, their grades at school may suffer, or they may become more irritable with their siblings and friends. It’s also worth bearing in mind that a large percentage of children who suffer from depression also suffer from other disorders, such as anxiety disorder.

Early Diagnosis and Treatment is Important

If you suspect that your child may be suffering from depression, then it’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to getting a diagnosis. Taking your child to see a mental health professional who can assess them as early on as possible will help them to recover quickly since treatment can then be provided to help them manage their symptoms and get back to normal health. There are a variety of treatments available for children who are suffering from depression, including counselling, antidepressant medication, and in some cases, TMS therapy such as the depression treatment Los Angeles offered by Smart Brain and Health.

Depression is a mental illness that can affect people from all walks of life, at any point in their life. Although it is not an illness that we commonly associate with children, it’s entirely possible for a child to become depressed. As a parent, it’s important to know what to look out for and what to do to ensure your child enjoys good mental health.

Free Pet Adoptions

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free pet adoptions

Kids have a way of asking for things that don’t come cheap, but fortunately there are some cute exceptions: free pet adoptions.

This year, humane societies across the U.S. are offering free pet adoptions on August 19, and including some $200 worth of free pet services with the deal.

The free pet services typically include free spaying or neutering, vaccinations, a voucher for a free first visit to a veterinarian and a coupon offering a one-time discount on pet supplies at a participating retailer.

All of this has been coordinated across the country by a group called Clear the Shelters, which publishes a map of participating humane societies posted online on its website.

Even More Free Pet Adoptions

Numerous participating shelters are extending the promotion throughout the entire weekend. Others have additional free adoption dates throughout the year, based on whenever local supply verges on exceeding facilities’ capacity.

Spring and summer are common times of the year for free adoptions – based on prevailing patterns in puppy and kitten births along with when people typically relocate to homes that don’t allow pets.

For all of these reasons, about 6.5 million animals enter shelters each year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. About 3.3 million them are dogs and 3.2 million are cats.

Help Rein in Overpopulation

Like their names suggest, humane societies strive to prevent cruelty to animals by addressing overpopulation – from sterilization to finding homes. Unfortunately, the number of animals who enter shelters exceeds the number who are adopted.

Each year, roughly half of the animals who enter shelters each year are adopted – 1.6 million dog and 1.6 million cats this past year. Another 710,000 million animals turned out to be strays who got returned to their owners.

No one likes to talk about what happens to the animals who don’t get adopted – even at shelters that have no-kill policies. And that’s why we hope to see continued growth in free pet adoption days. It’s can be cheaper in the long run for shelters to give more pets away than have to allocate resources to euthanization.

Fortunately, adoptions and returns to original owners has driven down the euthanization rate from 2.6 million in 2011 to 1.5 million in the most recent year tallied as of this writing. Even among animal shelters with no-kill policies (like San Francisco), some pets are still put down due to failing health or behavioral problems.

The Best Gift You Can Give Your Family

Let’s steer this article back toward happy things, shall we? Adopting pets benefits society in addition to your family. This is one of the cheapest and longest-lasting gifts you can give your family.

Free adoptions represent cost savings well beyond the $100 to $200 you might pay to adopt a pet at other times during the year. It costs considerably more to buy them from a pet store and substantially more from a breeder – the latter putting even four-digit price tags on them.

We wish that the cost savings would inspire more people to adopt than buy from breeders. Ultimately no pet is free because you still have to feed them and provide at least a minimum of medical services.

One estimate puts the total first year cost of owning a dog at $1,270 and a cat at $1,070 – thereafter annual costs for both typically run about half that. In multi-pet households it can be even more affordable per animal due to economies of scale.

We Already Own Pets

Over two thirds of U.S. households already have at least one pet. As many as 47% of U.S. households have at least one dog and up to 37% of them have at least one cat, says the ASPCA.

The American Pet Products Association says that 34% of dogs are purchased from breeders, while 23% of dogs and 31% of cats are obtained from an animal shelter or humane society. By contrast around 27% of cats are acquired as strays.

Interestingly, about 40% of dog owners and 46% of cat owners learned about their pets through word-of-mouth, according to APPA. While the organization’s survey results don’t spell out whether the word-of-mouth scenarios were free adoptions or discounted sales, the implication is there.

Foster Pets

And that leads us to one other great way to obtain free pet adoptions year-round: foster-to-adopt. This might be one of the best-kept secrets among shelters – foster kittens or puppies and then if you decide you want to make a permanent home for any of them, the shelter usually waives the adoption fees.

Best of all you don’t have to choose between temporary fostering and permanent adoption – you can do both. And you can continue to foster new incoming animals even after adopting. This is a great option for households that already have pets and want to help out with overpopulation in their respective areas.

Bringing home animals from your local shelter can help instill values in your children surrounding compassion, thrift and responsibility. When you stipulate that your kids care for the pet, the learning can be profound. And watching them grow up with pets is priceless.

How to Shape Your Child’s Money Personality

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child-1073638_640Children need our guidance for everything they do. Children cost us a lot of money and it seems they always need something, even well into their college years. You may not think of fiscal responsibility when describing your children’s needs, but this too is something they’re going to learn from you — whether you intend to teach them or not.

It’s important to start teaching financial responsibility to your children as soon as they start noticing and asking about money. It is common for children to think money is plentiful and infinitely available. “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” we will all tell our children at one time or another.

How are they going to learn this? Regardless of your income, you should start teaching your children the value of money and help them develop financial responsibility. Here are a few ideas you can employ to help you accomplish this.

Create Want and Need Lists

Help your children learn the difference between needs and wants. Have your children identify things they need in life — like food, clothing and shelter — versus the things they want, like video games, electronic devices and spinners. Teach them that needs come first and that wants can be assessed and evaluated before purchasing anything.

Teach them about doing without in lean financial times and what compromises a limited budget might force you to make.

Teach Earning

Teach your children that money is not given, but earned. Let them learn the value of a dollar by giving them paid assignments in addition to their expected chores. Don’t overwhelm them. Give them something they can accomplish, like cleaning the yard up after the dog or raking the leaves into yard waste bags. Putting dishes away is a simple chore. Make it a challenging but reachable goal which pays off for them.

Teach Spending

Talk about wise spending and mistakes you have made. Share the story about blowing your crisp $5 bill on a stuffed rabbit you had to have on an impulse buy. Let your children know you can’t buy everything you want and show them some of the sacrifices you have made. Go shopping and look at things you would love to have but can’t afford, or that simply wouldn’t be a good idea to buy considering your budget.

Teach them that buying a car means buying gas, insurance, paying for maintenance and a host of other things they won’t automatically think to budget for.

Teach Saving

Buy a piggy bank or some other bank or jar to throw coins into. Have them guess how much money they have. Make goals for an amount to save. Help them identify something they can buy when they reach that goal. Counting money teaches them math skills, and the more they save, the less they’ll want to spend their money.

Teach them the importance of having an emergency fund for unexpected expenses, which will inevitably arise. If the money starts building up, go to your bank or credit union and set up their own savings account.

Teach Charity

Have your children go through their toys and clothes and determine which things they no longer want or need.

Talk about the potential use and appreciation still offered by the item and why it should not be thrown in the trash. Let your child decide to make the tough decisions. Practice this regularly to teach them to avoid clutter. Have your child accompany you to a Salvation Army or Goodwill to donate the items.

Encourage Work

You might pay them for doing a little extra around the house, or maybe you are a family which offers weekly allowances. At some point, a neighbor or friend may need a helping hand with some task they don’t want to do themselves. Shoveling snow from the driveway, cutting the grass, raking leaves and babysitting are common first jobs for children.

If you feel they’re ready and responsible enough to do such tasks, welcome the opportunity for them to earn money. This will give them a sense of accomplishment and further teach them the value of money.

Double Their Money

Perhaps your child has earned some money from babysitting or doing yardwork. Birthdays can produce a windfall of $20 bills from family and friends. Rather than watch all of that money get squandered on candy, iTunes gift cards and impulse buys, give your children a chance to double their money.

Offer to deposit all or any of the money they wish to save into their savings account and match it with your own funds. Let them work it out themselves. Let them decide whether giving up their money is worth doubling it for the future. Maybe they will come up with a plan to deposit half, so they will have the full amount in the bank and the rest to spend.

Whether you end up with a saver or a spender may not be entirely up to you. Children have their own personality traits and obviously inherit the best and worst from you and your spouse. As with any other lesson in life, all you can do is teach and lead by example. Help them make decisions, but try to make sure they’re deciding for themselves. This will teach them responsibility — financial and otherwise. Maybe your children will be role models for you some day.

Anum Yoon is a personal finance blogger and writer who runs Current on Currency, a blog for anyone who is seeking friendly money advice. 

Raising A Child On A Budget: How To Save Money And Be A Happy Family

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father-daughter-1476167_640Today we have a guest post from Jon, a personal finance blogger and father.

I’ve read the stories about how much it will cost to raise a child. The latest information I found was from 2013 and that number was $245,000. Of course, having a family is priceless so the cost of raising kids shouldn’t even enter the equation, right? But what if you and your spouse have grand dreams of retiring early? You both want to leave the 9-to-5 behind as soon as possible. How will that dream be affected by having children and raising a family?

For my wife and me, so far it has not impacted us greatly. Granted we only have one child and she is just 7 months old. But we have been smart with our finances while still providing for her needs. Last year, we were able to save over $30,000. This is with my wife not working for 4 months while on maternity leave.

How have we been able to buy things for our daughter and still save money in the hopes that we retire early one day? Below are the things we have done to save money. This list will be changing as our daughter ages and when we add another one into the mix, but some of the tricks we use should continue to work for years to come.

Tricks We Do To Save Money Raising Our Child

Clothing

This is probably the biggest expense for most first time parents. You get sucked into the cute outfits and buy, buy, buy. We don’t. At first we did. But she grew so fast, 90% of the clothes we bought she outgrew before she could wear. So we learned quickly that it’s just not worth it.

When we do buy clothes, we buy what is on sale or clearance. We also tend to put her in some clothes that are a little too big for her and just roll up the sleeves. You can easily get 3 onesies on clearance for under $10 at most places.

For special occasions, like holidays, we look for a cute dress on clearance. If that doesn’t work, we go to a Mommy Market and find clothes there.

Food

When it comes to food, we have gone the old-fashioned route and breastfeed. My wife also pumps and we freeze anything extra. In fact, our freezer has more milk than any other kind of food!

We just started to try out solids and our plan is to make the food ourselves. We head to the local grocery store that has the lowest prices on produce and buy what is on sale. So far, we have been feeding peas, bananas, sweet potatoes and carrots.

After we buy the food, we steam it, mash it and freeze it. It’s a little more work, but a lot cheaper in the long run. For example, a bag of baby carrots is $0.99 and that gets us 3-4 meals for her.

Diapers

We were considering cloth diapers before we had our daughter. But the thought of washing them just turned us off so we use disposables. How do we save money on diapers?

First, we comparison shopped. We figured out who had the lowest price for Pampers in our area. It is a grocery store. So we buy them there and always use a coupon. Most times the package of diapers has a coupon inside. We also find coupons in the ads that come in the mail. We combine this with our American Express Blue Cash Card and get 6% cash back at grocery stores.

In some cases, we turn to Target as well. Every so often, we get a magazine from Target in the mail with a $5 or $10 off coupon. We combine this with coupons we get in the mail for Pampers, along with our Target Red Card and get another 5% off.

Toys

Just like with clothes, we limit this area of spending too. We have a bunch of toys that she plays with and don’t buy new until she starts to show disinterest in some of them. Then it is off to yard sales, consignment shops or Mommy Markets to find toys in good shape for a low price.

How We Save The Most Money

But there is one thing we do that has helped us really save money. When we had our registry, people bought us a good amount of stuff. We had doubles of some things and singles of other things that we just weren’t going to use.

So we went through everything and really thought about the gifts. Anything we weren’t 100% committed to, we returned. We got store credit and have used this credit strategically over the first couple of months.

For example, we bought a good amount of clothes without spending any of our money. We still stick to the clearance racks, just to stretch the money farther.

We also opened a credit card at Babies R Us where our registry was. It allowed us to get our daughter’s crib and dresser for 50% off. How did we do this? We used the discount we got from completing our registry, plus the discount for opening up the credit card, plus the discount for using the card on a certain day of the week.

Lastly, we take advantage of coupons. There is a Buy Buy Baby near us, which I didn’t know about. I also didn’t know you could use the Bed Bath and Beyond 20% off coupons there since they are owned by the same company. That is where we bought her car seat and were able to save 20%.

Final Thoughts

The costs for raising a child are significant. But if you are smart about things, you can save money so that you can still reach your goals, no matter what they may be. For us, the goal is still early retirement. But not for the same reasons as before.

Now we want to retire early so that we can be around for our daughter and any future children. We don’t want to be stuck behind a computer screen until 9pm and miss out on our child’s life. After all, they are only young once.

Jon blogs at Money Smart Guides, a personal finance site that helps readers pay off debt and start investing for their future.

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