Category Archives: family

charity for Russian children

letters_happychildhood_rcwsI originally wrote this post a couple of years ago, but in the Christmas spirit I decided to update it a bit. At the time I took place in a group writing project over at Babylune. The project asked bloggers to highlight their favorite charity. I thought it was a great chance to offer a little support to my favorite charity, and support a very positive writing project.

I came across the Russian Children’s Welfare Society a few years ago through an Internet search trying to identify a charity for the benefit of Russian children. Having lived in Russia for several years in the mid-90s, I’ve always had a soft spot for the country. In addition, I’ve always been very moved by the plight of the most helpless people in any society - the very young, the very ill and the very old. The RCWS has been in existence since 1926. The primary purpose - to help Russian children - has become especially critical after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia now has nearly 700,000 children in orphanages, a sad total, but nothing compared to the estimated 2.5 million homeless children. The RCWS directs its giving in several ways (from the website):

  • Medical care, the education of the Russian doctors that provide it, and supplies
  • Orphanages and homeless shelters
  • Rehabilitation centers for the disabled or mentally challenged
  • Educational scholarships
  • A Moscow “Yelka” (New Year) party during the holiday season for over 2,000 children. We believe it is the most important celebration of its kind in Russia. Each child receives a gift. For many, it is the only one they will receive for Christmas.

There are also programs specifically benefiting the survivors of the Beslan massacre. The Beslan massacre took place September 1, 2004 at a school in the North Caucasus. A group of terrorists took the school hostage, and on the third day of the standoff a gun battle broke out with Russian security forces. Over 300 civilians were killed, including 186 children. For a town with only 35,000 residents this was a horrific blow, and the need for psychological and emotional support is critical.

Most Westerners have never had to see the horror of children begging and stealing in the streets. It is truly one of the most awful things you can see, and it affects me even more deeply as a parent now. The thought of children meeting Ded Moroz (Santa Claus/St. Nicholas) at the RCWS Yelka (basically the Russian equivalent of a Christmas party) for the first time in their lives and receiving what may be for many of them the first present they’ve ever received in their lives always makes me tear up.

RCWS also helps with scholarships for older orphans, reconstructive surgery (cleft palates, etc.) and many other programs. There’s simply so much to do that I’m sure even if they received millions every year they’d still spend it all without spending a minute worrying about HOW.

RCWS spends more on direct aid to children than it takes in (as of 2005, the latest available public data). You can read more about them at Guidestar (registration required).

I know there are many important and desperate causes in the world, and everyone has to decide what is important in their own mind. Here is the contact information for the RCWS.

Russian Children’s Welfare Society, Inc.
200 Park Avenue South, Suite 1617
New York, NY 10003
1-888-732-RCWS
1-212-473-6263
Fax: 1-212-473-6301
main@rcws.org

Note 1: RCWS does not assist in adoptions in any way, shape or form. They are not an adoption agency, so please don’t assume they will help in any way, shape or form with adoptions!
Note 2: I am not in any way affiliated with RCWS other than as a donor.

And the happy ending to this post can be found here.

a moment without

winter spiral

My kids go to a Waldorf-inspired preschool. Not because we send them there for childcare or because we both work, but because I got inspired by Waldorf philosophy and then Bubelah did, too. We felt our children needed to experience some time with other kids outside of playgroups, and so we settled on a Waldorf-inspired school, first for Little Buddy, and this year for Pumpkin. Both of my children have responded well to it – the environment is warm (for lack of a better word) and creative, and it’s provided them with some magical childhood moments.

One such moment was this Saturday, the Winter Spiral – basically an Advent ceremony. The single most important element in the Winter Spiral is the mood. It is supposed to be a quiet, dark, calm ceremony. The room is laid out like this: a large spiral created of pine greenery and interesting branches is decorated with pine cones and other seasonal natural items. In the center stands a large pillar candle, lit, on a stump. Outside of the spiral someone stands with a tray with one red apple per child. The apples need to have been cored and a small candle put into each. In turn, the kids stand up and take an apple with a lit candle from the person holding the tray. The room is dimly lit, and Christmas carols are being played on a harp or lyre.

Each child walks the spiral, slowly. The child approaches the candle in the center and lights their candle. Each child then turns back and finds a good place to put their candle amongst the greenery. Then they return to their seat. That’s really the whole ceremony - light a candle, place it, listen to some gentle Christmas music.

Now, I know this sounds a little new-age-y. There’s no educational purpose to it. But I’ll also add that it’s the first child-centric activity I’ve been to since I’ve had kids where ALL the adults listened to the request of the Waldorf teachers NOT to record the event with cameras; to keep crying babies or restless siblings out of the room; and to really respect an attempt to make a magic moment for the children.

In my opinion, it did. It was a beautiful moment in a quiet, small space, and the children seemed properly awed by the ceremonial nature of the event. It’s true – it’s a pagan-inspired ritual, it’s a gimmick, it’s a primitive recognition that the lifegiver Sun is at solstice and the year is at its darkest point. I get all that. I’m a rational person. But I think childhood can also be made of beautiful moments – even if invented – and removing the flash of lightbulbs and chatter of adults and babies and siblings can render a fun moment breathtaking.

So that was our Winter Spiral. As I said yesterday, I get a little frustrated with the consumerism surrounding this season, and so I’m positively predisposed to enjoy something non-electronic, non-consumerist and simply calm. I’m the target audience for this type of activity. But even if it’s simply a brief respite, it’s a welcome one, and something that most kids (and parents) should experience; that or something similar.

Photo reprinted without permission (but I hope they don’t mind) from The TARREMAH STEINER SCHOOL

how kids (can) make you poor

Raising a child can cost up to $250,000 - and that’s from a study done almost 20 years ago. That’s only the cost through high school - college is another problem entirely, unless you don’t plan on paying for your child’s education (and I don’t). Having a kid is expensive. Having a second is less expensive - hand-me-downs and shared costs can reduce the individual costs - but a larger family is going to cost a fortune. The simple fact is that you won’t become AS rich with kids.

I’ve seen the question of children play out a dozen different ways with friends and in my own life. My parents had kids (my brother and me) when they were barely out of their teenage years. I have friends who waited until they were almost 40 to have kids. One couple fervently and frequently insisted they would never have kids - and show no signs of changing their minds. In each case, the decision to have a child (or children) was deeply personal, and made for a number of reasons - but seldom considering the cost. The simple fact is that you’ll be better off financially without kids. Kids are expensive.

It’s a potentially sensitive topic … and most people don’t want to have that conversation. “Kids bring so much joy into your life!” “Kids are their own reward!” I’m biased - the cliches are all true. My son’s a supernova of energy, creative and amazingly verbal. My daughter’s charming and almost impossibly cheerful. They are joys. But to be realistic, I have to admit that because of them I will not be as wealthy as I could have been. I regret nothing, but I also understand that I’m going to have to work harder accumulating wealth than I would have without children.

So how do we plan to compensate? If you have kids, how can you avoid spending more than you need to? It’s not the nature of my blog to talk about ways to save money on Cheerios by buying the store brand - although you should. But I do have a few “big ideas”:

  1. I’m not paying for my kid’s PRIVATE college education. If Little Buddy or Pumpkin want to attend a private school, they’d better develop tennis skills or become world-class scholars. I’m not paying for Pumpkin to attend an Ivy. I’ll help, but if they can’t pay for a private college, they can go to a public university, just like Mama and Papa did. We did just fine.
  2. We will readjust our lives around their education early on, though. We moved to Florida to escape crappy public schools in Jersey, and made sure we landed in a school district considered one of the best in the state.
  3. I will strive to teach independence. This sounds stupid, but I have seen so many of my colleagues in corporate America talking about their mid-20 (or even mid-30) year old children living at home. I know I can talk big now, but I left home at 18 and my children will too. If they can’t afford a home, I’ll tell them to move to a cheaper locale. An unmarried 35-year-old living with their parents needs to experience life.
  4. We will resist consumerism. A couple of years ago, one of my neighbors bought one of those big car-battery powered cars - with a working FM radio - for their daughters. Little Buddy loved it. I was tempted to get him one. He didn’t, and doesn’t, need it. I have fallen victim again and again to the urge to buy toys. Sometimes it makes sense: I bought him a farm set that he plays with daily. Sometimes I fail: I have bought a half dozen balls (football, baseball, soccer) and he is utterly indifferent to all of them that don’t have Spiderman on them. But I see a sickness in most parents around me: the need to buy distractions. I struggle to remind myself that learning to pretend my wooden blocks were race cars taught me to IMAGINE things. My parents would have done me a disservice by buying me Leapfrog, or whatever the 70s equivalent was. Learning how to live with less - at least as far as toys - is a gift, not a burden.

But none of these cost-saving ideas can compensate for the fact that a childless couple (or a single person) will simply be much better off than a couple with kids. I won’t recommend one choice or the other, because it’s such a personal choice. But don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: in the short term, having kids is no big deal. You can afford formula, diapers, baby clothes. But in the long run, having kids will change your career choices, affect your ability to save and limit your choices about almost everything. Make sure you’re comfortable with the long-term cost before you take the leap.

teaching and being taught, and links

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this on this blog or not, but I spent a fair amount of time as a part-time schoolteacher for both middle school and college freshmen as a substitute teacher and later as a graduate assistant. I taught intro to calculus and accounting in grad school and substituted for math, gifted ed and other subjects when I was still chasing my starry-eyed dream of becoming a math professor. I was good. My students liked me and I don’t recall if I’ve ever had a negative review or bad experience teaching (I don’t think I have). I continued my teaching/training throughout my corporate career, leading new employee classes and training in software for over 15 years. I like training and teaching. Nowadays I do little of that as a corporate consultant - nobody wants me to train, they want me to DO. And now, if not yesterday.

Well, I get glimpses of the past and flashbacks now that I have kids. I spent a couple of days at my children’s preschool/pre-K school where Little Buddy attends pre-K and Pumpkin goes to daycare (or preschool or whatever you’d like to call it). I do realize from time to time, when I self-analyze my abilities, that I do have one ability if nothing else: kids like me. I can engage them in learning and don’t make them nervous as some other parents do. I probably would have made a decent grade school or middle school teacher if I could have supported a family on that salary. That’s a sad observation, frankly, but one for another post.

I’ll make one other observation, too, unrelated to personal finance or careers: my children’s school concentrates heavily on play, and I like it. Not learning, but play - directed, but not with any intention towards teaching any specific subject. It’s interesting as a parent to process the conflicting emotions that arise from watching this: you want your kids to learn but I also (mentally) slap myself and say “Pumpkin’s not even 3 yet - she deserves play time.” I’m a firm believer in the concept that kids need play time - creative time, self-directed - to develop themselves. They’ll have plenty of time to be crammed into desks and forced to learn times tables later, I guess. Just my parental opinion, I guess.

MonaVie Blackmails Me?: Stunning that a company, or a rep for a company, would stoop this low. Read the article to see how low a supposedly ‘legitimate’ company can stoop. You can also read MonaVie: Multi-Level Marketing Gone Haywire for more idiocy. I can’t believe anyone falls for MonaVie’s crap after I’ve read stuff like this.

Blue Cash Rewards Increase: I’ve owned a Blue Cash card for years, so this is good news. I’ll take it…

Social Lending Arbitrage Beats Projections: I still think Lending Club is a good bet - if you’re interested in trying it they have a $25 signup bonus right now. I’d treat it like any other investment - it has its ups and downs, but it can serve as a reasonable diversification strategy versus the market.

Personal Finance the Krav Maga Way: Since I’ve seen all the Krav Maga signs up around my neighborhood, I thought this was an amusing - and timely - post.

Small but Alarming Indicator: This is unpleasant - but not unexpected - anecdotal news. On the other hand, Bubelah just attended a small business workshop where they barely had enough room for the interested attendees, and I remarked that it must have been all of the laid-off people thinking about launching small businesses (and good for them if they were)…

Life After Debt: What It’s Like in the Third Stage of Personal Finance: Just an interesting read, on many levels (fitness, travel, etc.)

and more…

  • The Downside of Owning REITs
  • Talking about Deflation
  • The Key to Effective Budgeting – Master The Yes/No Factor
  • Book Review of Leah Ingram’s Suddenly Frugal
  • How Much Mortgage Can I Afford?

the passion of the hobbit

It’s a subject I waffle back and forth on – the idea that passion needs to rule your life. It seems obvious, of course, that you should have passion for your spouse, children… then maybe a bit less obvious but still reasonable to have the same passion for relatives, friends and interests. Even less obvious would be the very abstract things like country, career, sports teams and so on. If you’re passionate about something lower on the list like that – say, American Idol – reexamine your priorities. I was passionate about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I recognize that it wasn’t a good direction for my passions. I got a lot of entertainment out of it but my life is exactly 0.0% improved because of it.

But if you can’t focus on something, it’s a shortcoming. In my case, I don’t have a lot of passion for my work. I view it as a mechanical activity that provides food, shelter, clothing and Netflix for the family. I wouldn’t view this as ideal, although I realize at the same time that 99.99% of the human population wouldn’t view sitting in a quiet, air-conditioned cubicle for 8 hours a day for an income in the top 1% of the planet’s population as a hardship. Many of the “seize your passion” bloggers do – they assume that everyone can seize their internet business bliss – nobody has to make the computer, only to live off of them.

But that’s fine – of course some can and some can’t. Whether any of us choose to do so is of course a choice; if you love taking care of horses and instead choose to pursue a career as an account receivable manager, you’ve made a choice. Whether you can live with it or not is the problem - many can, and a few can’t. I’d guess that the time when all of this questioning really came into play was when the social contract that said companies would handle retirement broke down. If I worked for IBM for 25 years and knew they’d take care of me during those 25 years, and after, I’d be a lot more inclined to give up on the need for passion. But nowadays, that’s not true; just recently a colleague of mine got laid off from a company he’d worked for over 20 years without even a thank you. Your future is not secure.

I realized all of this tonight while reading to my son. For about a week we’ve been reading a few pages of “The Hobbit” by J. R. R. Tolkien every night. I’ve explained the general story to him – a little hobbit goes with a bunch of dwarves to steal back their gold from a dragon – but I don’t have many illusions about how well a four-year-old can follow Tolkien’s esoteric prose. It’s not exceptionally complicated, but it’s not Goodnight Moon.

But tonight when I asked him if he wanted to try something easier, he said no. I asked whether he understood most of it, and he said no. I asked then if he wanted to stop, and he said no. I asked why, if he couldn’t understand all of it, and he gave me an answer that should make things clear (to paraphrase): I’m excited about it because you’re excited about it, Papa. He liked listening to it because I liked reading it. Something was in my voice that wasn’t there when I was reading Goodnight Moon or I’m A Truck.

Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of my father reading The Hobbit to me from the same book at a slightly older age. I remember being a little confused by the language and the complex plot, but loving the fact that my dad thought I was ready for something so amazing. That passion translates easily, and makes reading something like The Hobbit far simpler than struggling through Goodnight Moon for the 100th time. Sitting down at the desk in the corporate office for the 100th time is much like that; coming up with new ideas, starting new jobs or developing new ideas is much like picking up The Hobbit.

I don’t like to think that work – and through that, life – is bleak without purpose. It’s not; other things should put life in balance even if there isn’t purpose in one’s work. But work and parenthood and friendship and one’s relationship with parents, community, school and whatever else are, in fact, intimately tied up with passion. Without the passion to pursue something – church, charity, community, work, parenthood, etc. – life is going to be a little less exciting. Excitement is its own reward.

infant swimming

People have certain basic skills they need to acquire. The ability to feed yourself, clean yourself and shelter yourself are obvious. Past this come a whole list of “really ought to acquire” skills: understanding money, literacy and so on. However, living in New York for more than a decade I noticed that two skills were often never acquired by many city people: driving and swimming. The driving is easy enough to understand: if you’ve ever visited New York or a similar big city you’d know that driving your own car is more expensive (parking, tolls, insurance) and public transportation makes it very easy to get anywhere without driving. Swimming can just be attributed to the cold weather and the lack of nearby pools for learning to swim.

But starting from an early age, Bubelah and I have taken pains to make sure that both of our children are not only able to swim for recreational purposes, but able to “rescue” themselves if they fall in water unexpectedly. With Little Buddy we started when he was less than 1 year old, and with Pumpkin we started just after she was 1. The necessity for the training moved from a mild concern to an urgent one when we moved to Florida. You can’t go 100 feet without seeing a pond or a pool or some other body of water - let alone the fact that we’re in an oceanfront town.

We signed both of our kids up for the Infant Swimming Resource, and to get an idea of what that was like, watch this video (if you’re a parent, it’s fairly amazing).

You might think that’s some kind of trick, but my son (a little older than 3 when he took the course) and daughter (a little more than 1 year old at the time) could do exactly the same, even in full clothes with shoes on. It’s a shocking thing to observe - in a good way. I still wouldn’t trust either of them to spend even 1 minute unattended around a pond, but it does give me the confidence that they wouldn’t panic if they did fall in water someday, which - in the minute it might take me to reach them - they wouldn’t do something that would result in drowning.

No parent (or spouse or friend or anything else) wants to contemplate the mortality of their loved ones. Jan commented on my post about making time for details about my lack of a will:

No WILLLLLLL?????? and you have children? This is really bad. Just jump on line and go to a simple legal site and download one. In fact- write one yourself and take it to your next party. Line up four people to sign that they saw you sign it. Do the details later. Appoint guardianship! Do it- TODAY!

Jan was of course right. Just like it was difficult to talk about why a survival swimming course for our children was necessary (because we don’t want them to drown), it was difficult to talk about how our children’s lives should be handled if we died before they were at least young adults. After I had written about not having a will, though, I realized it was time for us to answer the ugly questions finally - it was irresponsible parenting to teach children to swim but not worry about what would happen if they were thrown in the water, figuratively speaking, by their parents’ deaths.

Infant swimming is a good metaphor for many of the life skills we want for those we love to acquire, and for many of the actions we can take on their behalf to give them the ability to react in a crisis. We teach kids to recite their names and address from the time they can talk in case they are lost. We teach them to survive falling in a pond. We set up wills to protect them (frankly) against the system. So many of these actions are small, but they require asking yourself “what’s the worst that can happen” - and being honest with yourself about the answers.

Note: This month, ISR has been selected to compete in the Pepsi® Refresh Project. ISR needs daily votes for FLOAT during the month of August to “Help Eliminate Childhood Drowning” at this link www.refresheverything.com/InfantSwim.

Voting opened Sunday, August 1st, and is open for just one month! ISR supporters can vote daily to help provide ISR lessons to families in need. The Pepsi projects with the most votes receive the grants. If you feel so inclined, please vote to help a worthy cause: stopping childhood drowning.

Finances are Fun: 5 Ways to Encourage Your Child to Embrace the Spirit of Enterprise

We live in a capitalistic society. Many say this with a sigh and a shake of the head, but there are some upsides that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you start early enough, it is possible to rise to unfathomable heights of success. Unfortunately, it’s also possible to destroy your credit and your life quite early in the game by not having a clear conception of how to manage your finances.

kids in belfast

American young adults and children are notorious for their lack of financial know-how. In a society that practically forces you to get a credit card when you turn 18, this ignorance can be deadly. Here are five ways to teach your children how to excel in a competitive economy and to avoid the pitfalls along the way.

1. Teach the idea of financial self reliance early on.

There are times when everyone could use a helping hand, and there’s nothing wrong with that. With that said, there’s nothing wrong with teaching self reliance as a preferred choice. From a very young age, help your child differentiate between needs and wants. If the thing they’re asking for constitutes a “want”— assuming you can/will give it to them in the first place— set up a system where they can work to earn it. Even if “working for it” only means doing extra chores for a couple days, they’ve learned that work is necessary and beneficial.

2. Learning about compound interest is crucial.

When your child first learns about interest, start to talk to them about credit. Explain the pitfalls of taking out too much debt. At the same time, open up discussions concerning investment. Show them the potential for making money if they invest early in life. Compound interest can work for you, or against you. Teenagers are more likely to be interested in these discussions than younger children, so keep the conversations age-relevant.

3. Teach them about other financial perspectives.

Every society and individual family has a unique financial policy. Discussing other viewpoints allows your child to pinpoint the crucial financial questions that any functional philosophy seeks to answer. Here are some examples:

“Is private property a good thing?”
“Should we allow extreme divisions of wealth?”
“How much influence should governments/companies/individuals have in making financial policy.”

Accept that you might not agree with their answers. Keep any debate friendly and informative.

4. Encourage early attempts to start businesses.

When I was 8 years old, I started a business selling golf balls and cans of soda on the golf course next to my house. These early experiences taught me the basics of running a business. This knowledge was carried into my adult life, and inspired me to become a freelance writer.

You never know how far a child’s chosen small business will take them. A close friend in high schools started a lawn-mowing business. By the time he was 18 and had graduated high school, he was able to sell the business for 500K. Now, he manages a department of 100 people in a Fortune 500 company.

5. Allow your child to enjoy the fruits of their financial success, and, if applicable, controlled financial failure.

Saving for college is important, but don’t’ demand that your child put every penny they earn from a high school job into a savings account. Help them save a certain percentage, and allow them to spend the rest how they see fit. Never feeling rewarded for your work can foster an attitude of futility.

Finally, allow them to make manageable financial mistakes. If they don’t save ahead-of-time for a desired item, it’s “ok” to allow them to go without the item. Now is the time to make small mistakes so that larger, life altering, mistakes won’t be made down the line.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of accredited online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Photo by larbelaitz

dea(ovzo1!DD

green shame

I wasn’t ready for the poop. Or the diarrhea, the green stuff, the smells and even the appearance of a steady stream (sometimes literally) of crap. I liked to think of myself as a ‘green’ consumer, but after a couple of days in the hospital after the birth of my son I knew I would be a disposable diaper parent. He had me at ‘meconium.’

Using disposable diapers was slightly inconvenient in New Jersey. First, they were expensive: but problem solved, order in bulk online. Second, we had a townhouse and we weren’t going to run the diapers down to the garage at midnight. Problem solved: buy a diaper genie-type thing that had an “airtight” seal. Third, I did have to trundle them over to the community trash compactor, which was fine in the summer but a bit of a pain in the winter. But in general, disposables seemed to work. I felt bad about tossing that much garbage away, but not really: if you throw away two or three diapers a day, it doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things.

Jump to 2010, and clan Brip Blap relocated to the outer edge of a small town in a fairly rural county in Florida. No more community trash: just a once-a-week trash pickup service. One kid off diapers but another stubbornly clinging to the last luxurious days of poop-on-the-go diaper service. And finally, one papa, flinging plastic bag after plastic bag (and yes, I know that’s bad too) into the trash waiting for Wednesdays.

That’s a lot of poop from one small toddler; that poop (and pee) is wrapped up in even more vaguely scented, children’s-TV-brand imprinted diapers. The first time I looked at the trash can on a Wednesday morning as I dragged it to the end of the driveway for pickup I was appalled. Almost four years of diapers in landfills. The thought of it made me realize that, along with continuing to drive my ten-year old poor-MPG Pontiac on a long commute daily, I’m not nearly as green as I should be - or would like to be.

It’s a tough choice on many levels and, of course, not being the stay-at-home parent it wasn’t really my call anyway. But like with many life lessons - learning to control spending, eating well, staying away from drugs, and learning to root against the New England Patriots - it’s worth reflecting on for a while. I won’t be having any more children, and now that my daughter, Pumpkin, is almost trained it won’t be an issue in my family again. But there will be a poop-and-diaper equivalent, and hopefully someday I’ll develop the backbone to match rhetoric and actions.

babies in bars

Late in Bubelah’s first pregnancy, we stopped in at a bar after a visit to the doctor for a routine checkup. I had a beer and she had a seltzericon. It was a mild winter day, mid-afternoon and we were savoring some quiet time together before the main event, due a few weeks later. As we chatted, I was slightly surprised to see a couple walk in with a stroller and a baby who appeared to be about two years old.

As they sat at the bar, with their baby parked behind them, I stewed. I had a lifetime of bachelorhood behind me; the main interaction I had with children before I had my own was glaring at them when they cried on airplanes. My just-recently born niece and nephew were - as far as I can remember - the first and second babies I had held in my life. I hadn’t been around people with children much at all; my life in New York and Moscow before that was centered around singles life. Babies and toddlers were a vague, distant afterthought.

So when the toddler at the bar started fussing, my passive-aggressive fury mounted, and I threw the parents a nice rough glare. They seemed to shrug it off. Being midafternoon, the bar didn’t have any smoke in it, wasn’t crowded and except for a few patrons around the bar and towards the front watching a soccer game on TV, it was quiet. My glare cut like a knife hurled in the parents’ direction - or at least I imagined it did. They probably thought I was squinting at the TV.

I am more sympathetic now, of course, since I have two toddlers of my own. It’s tough to avoid “grown-up” places when you have kids. Just because I have kids doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to visit an adult-oriented establishment from time to time. The obvious answer is to have a babysitter, but it’s tough to leave two small toddlers alone in the evening with a babysitter unless you have a great deal of trust in her (and yes, I’ll be sexist and say “her”). And now that I’m a parent, I’d like to expose my almost-four-year-old son to a nice restaurant once in a while. I’m not sure my daughter appreciates the difference between McDonald’s and the Olive Garden and Morton’s yet, but why not let her enjoy french fries from Morton’s, too?

But. There’s a but.

Kids don’t belong in bars. There are two reasons: first, they aren’t 21. What’s the cutoff? If I bring my 12 year old to a bar, is that OK? Is it fine as long as they don’t drink? If so, can a 16 year old stroll in? 19? Second, I think other patrons have a right to a “no-children-allowed” bar experience, just as they do to a “no-kids-at-R-rated-movies” experience or a “no-kids-playing-in-the-office” experience. I have seen both; I remember going to see the movie Alien Versus Predator at a matinée * and sitting there with my jaw on the ground as stroller after stroller rolled in filled with (understandably) shrieking babies. I’ve seen quite a few single mothers who work in accounting over the years bring their kids in to the office in an emergency (babysitter sick, everyone else at work, etc.). It’s not fair to everyone else to bring kids there.

This may be an Americanism. Europeans don’t worry much about children at bars. Maybe most cultures don’t care. I’ve sat on enough beer garden benches with rugrats playing tag in the aisles while in Germany to know that. Americans may just be more prudish, or more considerate, or less (or more) family oriented. I’m sure the argument can be made that exposing children to the drinking of alcohol isn’t healthy, but you could make the same argument (in my opinion) for exposing them to TV, junk food, pop culture, toxic big cities and even various political philosophies.

I’m not sure when I’d start feeling comfortable bringing my kids to a bar at happy hour. The article I read that prompted this thinking (here) seemed to be centered on the parents’ need for socializing. I view that as selfish. If you want to socialize, get a babysitter. Have lunch while your child is at day care. Take turns as parents staying home while the other goes out. It’s not ideal, of course, but many of the comments were dead on: you are a parent now. If you miss hanging out all afternoon drinking sangria at the local watering hole with friends: tough. If you’d like to pop into the local bar for a beer with the kid in tow on the way home from work when your child is sleepy: too bad.

So if you go to TGI Friday’s with the family in tow, fine. They’ll put you near the kitchen, give you some crayons and a kids’ menu and tolerate the tossing of forks. Should you go to O’Hallorans at 7 pm with your two-year old? Nope. Head home, read Runaway Bunny and suck it up. There’s a happy medium, and I’d rather not be the guy pictured on CNN with an obviously crying baby on my lap and a half-drunk glass of wine in front of me (look at the article).

* I love science fiction. I loved Alien. I really loved Aliens, one of my favorite movies ever. I loved Predator, too - how can you go wrong with two future governors (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura) fighting an eight-foot-tall invisible rastafarian bug-man? I was really excited about Aliens versus Predator before it came out. I did NOT love AvP. Way to stick a fork in both franchises, people who made AvP.

photo by Penningtron

small human regrets

About four years into the business of managing new humans - i.e. raising kids - I’ve realized I have some regrets, unsurprisingly. You might not think four years with two kids (Little Buddy, almost 4, Pumpkin, almost 2) is long enough to develop a list of regrets, but it is. My feeling is that the time-frame for regret is compressed more and more as your children get older. The end result of teaching your children to eat right might not be apparent when you are forcing them to eat vegetables when they are two, compared to denying your 16-year old the right to drive by himself. The types of regret become more significant, as well: not teaching them to stay away from drugs is on a different level than not using cloth diapers, for example.

Focusing on the negative is never a good way to produce positive change, so before I catalog on the regrets I can toss out a few things that have made me proud of Bubelah and myself: our children have a fluent understanding of a second language, able to understand both English and Russian. We have instilled a love of reading in Little Buddy (uh oh, foreshadowing a regret here). They are healthy, verbal and happy, other than the usual little toddler outbursts. They are adorable kids (don’t worry, I’m being neutral, they are definitely the cutest, sweetest, smartest kids on the planet).

I won’t focus, either, on meta-regrets or things that are still in process. A good example? The kids have not yet been exposed to even 10 seconds of volunteerism or community work. That’s bad. On the other hand, I think there will be opportunities to do so. I also don’t focus on regrets that I call “meta-regrets” like circumcision - who knows whether I should regret that or not.

As a general bit of advice to new parents, in other words, here are a few fairly simple little regrets that I’ll just pass on, even though I know new parents - like we were - hear so much advice in the middle of sleep-deprived conversations that much of it becomes a big, fuzzy blur.

Toys with batteries

Since we send our son (and soon our daughter) to a Waldorf school, we’ve been exposed to the Waldorf philosophy regarding toys: all toys have to be natural materials and non-branded (i.e. no Dora or Batman). Battery-powered toys are forbidden (so no cute wooden trains), as are violent toys: no wooden guns. All of that is fine, but at home our kids have a vast area of beeping and booping Dora, Handy Manny, Sesame Street and LeapFrog devices. Cars honk. Alvin, Simon and Theodore chirp away. Dora blares out Spanglish. I don’t mind plastic toys so much; my brother and I spent countless hours playing with plastic cars and planes and bears and dinosaurs. I do, on the other hand, regret SOME of the branded toys and ALL of the battery powered toys.

Battery powered toys are horrible. I regret not placing a ban on them as gifts, buying them myself or allowing even “educational” ones like LeapFrog into the house. They have an unintended side effect: I have more than once snatched away a toy from my kids after one too many electronic shrieks of “GO! DIEGO! GO!” The noises make me grumpy. Plus, after a few years, the real problem is obvious: battery-powered toys crush imagination. My son or daughter can take a handful of toys like Smurfs, dinosaurs, even little action figures, a couple of little houses or castles and play fascinating, original little games. They can build cities, make up “families” from a bear, a duck and a smurf, and so on. But once a battery-powered toy is introduced, a bit of a rat-getting-cheese-by-pressing-a-lever takes over. Battery-powered toys are TV on a small scale.

Television

Now this one is funny. I hate children’s TV. It serves no purpose for children. I am as convinced today as I was four years ago that a child would be infinitely better off if he or she didn’t see a television program until their fifth birthday. All of the so-called “educational” programs are, largely, garbage intended primarily as branding tools for a line of merchandise. TV is garbage.

BUT - there’s a big but - TV serves a purpose that has nothing to do with the kids. It does serve as a babysitter. I am going to out myself as a bad parent, but you know what? When it’s 6:30 am on a Saturday, both kids are up and bouncing around ready to go, and Papa hasn’t had his coffee, Dora can turn them into the quiet little couch monkeys that give Papa 30 minutes to make breakfast and drink coffee. So it helps.

So the regret is not TV so much, but failure to take much more aggressive action to control the medium in this way: absolute avoidance of just turning the TV on at random. I wish I had recorded 100s of hours of Sesame Street videos. I wish I had recorded things like “Go Go Riki” - but edited out all of the commercials. And I wish we had purchased a Roku sooner, which has a nice little collection of things like Caillou. The TV experience then could have been limited to complete shows, commercial-free and consistent. Instead, far too often we’ve just flipped on the TV and said “hey kids, what do you want? Handy Manny or Curious George?” The kids then watch the last 10 minutes of a Curious George episode and 15 minutes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, mixed in with commercials (and believe me, PBS and Disney Playhouse can blather on all they want to about being advertising-free, but I still see Chuck E. Cheese popping up a lot between shows).

Reading

As I mentioned above, this is one of my few “split” regrets. I read to Little Buddy in the womb. I propped his wobbly little noggin up and read “Oh, the Places You Will Go” and “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” to him endless times. We read Mercer Mayer books, Richard Scarry, Russian classics, English classics nonstop. And then we had a second child and reading to Little Buddy became much more infrequent. That was fine - he had already developed enough of a love of books to keep him going. A few books a day hold him, and he can pick up a book and leaf through it, identifying letters he knows and even reciting stories from memory. That’s fine.

Pumpkin’s another matter. In the chaos of dealing with two small kids, too often she was left to play and entertain herself while we chased Little Buddy around. Reading to her was the exception, rather than the rule. That sounds terrible, and it’s not as bad as that: Little Buddy was probably read to far more than was necessary, and Pumpkin’s still had her fair share of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. But already the difference in the two of them is obvious; Pumpkin’s far more likely to squirm away from a book than Little Buddy was at her age. She enjoys a few favorite books but gets bored by new ones. I know we still have years to correct that, but I wish we had approached it differently. I regret our approach more with one of our children than with the other.

Food

I am sure many parents could write “War and Peas” about their children’s eating habits. Again, I won’t go into meta-regrets about, say, vegetarianism or 100% avoidance of fast food or anything like that. I might wish that foods like chicken nuggets had never been introduced, but that genie is out of the bottle.

But what I do regret, and still hope to change, is the eating schedule and atmosphere. I insisted - and still do - that the TV be off while we eat. But what I should have paid more attention to is the idea that meals are meant to be shared. It’s very easy when you have four people in a family who are not only on different schedules but have different metabolisms to slip into an “eat-when-convenient” mindset. I rise earlier than everyone else. Little Buddy goes to school. I go to work. Pumpkin takes three hour naps covering lunchtime. I get home at 6 most days but the kids are hungry at 5. The result has been that we almost never eat together. We still have time to fix it, but it’s a regret because I wonder if the mental building blocks (“grab food and run”) have already been laid.

Regrets - I’ve had a few

That’s a long enough list of regrets for me to bear for today. The unifying factor of all of these regrets is that we worried about one thing but ended up regretting the unintended side effects, or something unanticipated For example, we worried about diet, but the problem hasn’t been diet (they eat fairly normal and non-junky diets) but the structure of mealtime. This is true of so many things in life; young people worry about where to go to college more than they do about what to study once they are there, even though that makes a far, far greater difference in the direction of one’s life.

Regrets are not productive. My dad sent me a birthday card years ago when I was in a bit of a down period that had a little guy standing at a fork in the road. In the forward direction a sign pointed with the inscription “the future.” The sign pointing in the direction headed back said “not an option.” The past is over and immutable. The future is the only thing that can be changed, and the only purpose of a regret is to help you improve in the future. Even if your regrets impact others, you can’t make the past any worse; you can only make the future better.

photo by broma

the two-income myth

My wife is an intelligent woman who decided to quit her professional career as a management-tracked analyst with a huge investment bank in order to be a stay-at-home parent when our son arrived, and to remain home even longer when our daughter arrived. I would have willingly stayed home in her place but being older and further along in my career I was making twice as much as she so it would not have made sense. She has now been at home for more than four years and I have noticed that there is a subtle campaign against her choice, and it makes me angry. Despite all of the talk about mothers making the ‘tough choice’ to go back to work, I think the tough choice is staying home.

First of all, before I’m jumped upon…I know there are single mothers and poorer families who have no choice. I would maintain this is a small proportion of the population, though. Single mothers definitely have no choice as the primary breadwinner, of course. Some families may have special circumstances that require both parents to work - health care costs spring to mind. I wonder, though, how many times the choice to work is the choice to support owning a second television, or keeping the premium movie channels, owning the house with the extra two rooms, or leasing a nice car - versus staying home with a child.

My family took a big hit to our finances when my wife quit work. We went from two people living in a two-bedroom apartment on two salaries to three people living in a three-bedroom house on one salary. We did it by making huge changes in our spending, and after a couple of years those changes have - surprise - become fairly routine. We understood that we could not afford as many luxury vacations or idle purchases of gadgets and jewelry and so on. The reward was that our children have been able to stay at home with their mother and be in a safe, healthy, fun environment.

This setup has not come without cost. My wife misses adult companionship and the sense of validation that you get from a professional position. We miss having the second salary, which for a while was all being plowed into savings and made for a relatively large down payment on our home. And of course my wife worries about her future job prospects once both of the kids are in school and don’t need a stay-at-home mom. But the worst thing in the past were the assaults on her decision by other women.

Bubelah relayed conversations to me from her friends and ex-colleagues and so on where the subject was inevitably “when are you going to get back to work?” Aside from the obvious insult that caring for a child is not “work”, this had a very negative effect on her state of mind. She usually laughed it off, but the simple fact is that she doesn’t really interact on a daily basis with anyone but me who supports her decision to make child care a full-time job - although since we’ve moved to Florida the support has been a bit warmer. We never felt that the trade-off of getting another salary was worth having our kids in day-care 10 hours a day before they were two years old, but that’s what we felt was expected, sometimes.

Do we need the money? We may not be able to spend freely like our friends do (particularly since we also don’t take on any debt) but we really don’t NEED any more money to meet our current expenses. I understand that sometimes both parents want to work. That is fine, but just be honest about that choice. Many people claim to be “forced” to work two jobs to make ends meet, but is it really “making ends meet” when you drive a new car and have premium movie channels and take a vacation to Aruba every year?

what my grandparents taught me about money

old couple going for a stroll

Most of my relatives have divergent ideas about money and its place in our lives. By relatives I’m including the wide range from my wife to my parents to my in-laws, etc. I realized a long time ago that it is a trivial undertaking to pick out the flaws in other people’s philosophies or actions - while at the same time failing to recognize them in your own thoughts and actions. However, I still find it a fairly useful exercise to try and determine the how-and-why of people’s good decisions and bad decisions. Even more important is trying to understand the ‘why’ behind those decisions.

My mother’s parents (my grandparents), for instance, were always quite frugal. They were both raised on farms in the 20s and 30s and suffered through the Depression. My grandfather left home to join the Army pre-World War II, serving in the horse cavalry – and yes, it’s hard to believe the US still had a horse cavalry less than 80 years ago, isn’t it? Here are some of their views towards money that I think are interesting, both good and bad, and my take on them.

  • Investing, a good habit. My grandfather was an early fervent believer in investing. Coming from a rural background and suffering through the Great Depression you might expect him to be very wary of investing, but he was quite the opposite. He invested heavily in the market, and on a schoolteacher’s salary did quite well over the years. He invested in the market although he had a state pension, and could have chosen to spend that money on other things. From him I learned a very conservative study-buy-and-hold approach. Although I didn’t know it at the time I learned it from him, his approach was basically the same as Warren Buffet’s. While it didn’t make my grandfather a billionaire, it did make him a huge ‘extra’ retirement fund on top of his pension and my grandmother’s.
  • Never selling, ultimately a bad habit. My grandparents maintained an almost emotional attachment to some of their stocks and held them year after year, even in times of declining prices, shrinking dividends and their own advancing age and deteriorating health. They saved these stocks thinking that they would be passed on to future generations (for example, me). But as they moved into more and more expensive housing (nursing homes are much more expensive than regular apartments, obviously) until he passed away, it became obvious that all of that money would not outlive both of them. Had they moved it into a savings account paying 5% ten years ago they could have been earning steady income and perhaps avoided some of the market fluctuations that ate away at their net worth.
  • Never really spending, good and bad. Although they amassed a modest “fortune “, during retirement my grandparents never spent much. They constantly talked of wanting to pass it on to my mother (an only child) and my brother and myself. They never traveled, although my grandfather dreamed of returning to see a peaceful France and Germany, where he had spent years during the war. They did ‘live large’ in some senses - they ate out frequently (albeit modest restaurants), they bought new cars for cash every few years while they could still drive, and they were extremely generous to everyone in their family. They gave us stocks, cash and other gifts for years. However, it is hard for me to look back on their 20+ years of retirement together before my Grandfather passed away and think that they never really did much after retiring. I know that part of that is my perception, since I love overseas travel, but I am not sure retirement was meant for watching TV and eating out. That’s a judgment each person has to make individually, I guess. But to view it in a more positive light, when my mom was younger and living at home they were very frugal, and even late in life my grandfather’s frugality could be amazing. A heavy, heavy smoker for his entire adult life, he quit cold turkey one day because he thought cigarette prices had finally gotten too high - and didn’t ever smoke again (17+ years). He never worried about the health aspect as far as I know, but paying $3 for a pack of cigarettes instead of $2 was apparently one dollar too much.
  • Avoiding debt, extremely good. My parents and grandparents gave me one gift that I realize is invaluable after I read many personal finance blogs: the fear of debt. I have been convinced since an early age that going into debt is practically a mortal sin, a stain on your character, a flaw. While I think it may have been overstated a bit, this philosophy has made me somewhat unique in a sense: I have never carried a balance on a credit card, EVER. I have had only two debts in my life: a car loan one time and a mortgage on my current house. Other than that, I have never bought anything I couldn’t pay for with my existing funds. So debt has never been a headache for me, which is a great gift. Possibly the greatest one you can get, because with debt so little else is possible.
  • Charity begins at home, mixed. I know this may run counter to many people’s beliefs, but another closely held belief of my grandparents was to take care of themselves and their own before others. This philosophy meant that there was no ‘automatic giving’ to charity until everyone in the family was taken care of. They gave generously to their church every week, but I am sure (without ever having seen it put to the test) that had I been in need for some reason they would have given that money to me, instead, for as long as I needed it, and forgotten the church. Give when you are able. Get your own financial house in at least minimal order before trying to help others. I do not subscribe to the Christian teaching that I should give ALL I own to the poor, and apparently from the number of late model SUVs and families in nice clothes I see in church parking lots I’m not alone in rejecting that teaching. It doesn’t mean you can’t give to charity - I certainly give to several children’s charities - but take care of your family first.

Those points are really just highlights. The important lesson to remember is that anything your family or your friends teach you about finance is valuable. Sometimes you may learn by avoiding their mistakes, sometimes you may learn by taking their advice to heart - but it’s all learning. From my maternal grandparents, I learned to save and to avoid debt but also that sometimes you need to spend money, too, because there ARE things and experiences in life worth the money. The truly important thing was never the money, it was the security the money bought, and being able to give back to their family, that mattered to them.

(another reworking of an article originally appearing on brip blap in 2007)

photo by Ghostboy
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