Children, Internet and Money

This morning I got an e-mail from my 10 year old nephew PeterJacob. Every now and again he sends me some internet project that he and his friends are experimenting with. It always fascinates me to see the things that they come up with and their courage to experiment and “put it out there”.

About a year ago, I got a mail from him letting me know about his best friend’s blog (I remind you that they are ten years old). His best friend loves baseball and set up a blog with trivia and current events and commentary. It was nice to see the kid’s initiative, but what even impressed me more was his use of Google Adwords advertising campaigns which is based on what the industry calls Pay Per Click (PPC). Google pays out to advertisers for each click that is generated from their website – an excellent way to generate passive income. I take off my hat the this little boy for his entrepreneurial spirit  (Lesson number one in this post).

The e-mail that I received today blew me away!

The subject line was: My Charity  - with a subject line like that I of course opened the mail immediately and this is what was written:

Hi Everyone!
My best friend Brandon has a sister named Arielle who recently created
a charity to cure pediatric cancer. Her charity is called, A Dollar
Campaign. Visit to her website at: adollarcampaign.org. Arielle's
charity that she confounded with her best friend only asks for one
dollar from everyone. If everyone donated one dollar- imagine!
Arielle's mission is to find the cure to pediatric cancer one dollar at
a time. Join her effort! If you can, please sign up for her free
newsletter and leave a comment!

I surfed around in Arielle’s site for a while. I read about Arielle and her partner. I looked at all the tabs and I was sorry that there was no electronic payment option, because I would have given my Dollar happily.

Neomi and I really, really, believe that “money” is not just about the money that you bring home or the amount written on your balance sheet. Money is a resource that you can and should use to enrich your life and the lives of others around you. (Lesson number two ).

Arielle found a great way to enrich her life and the lives of others around her.
How can you use your money to enrich your life?

Mindy

If you don’t take care of small problems, they turn into BIG PROBLEMS!

For all sorts of reasons, people put off taking care of problems: There’s no time to deal with the problem right away; it is not fun to take care of problems so we would rather ignore them (maybe if I ignore it, some miracle will happen and it will go away); I don’t have enough money to fix the problem right now… I could go on and on with more excuses.

Well, I want to let you know that if you do not take care of small problems while they are small (and it really doesn’t matter what exactly the problem is) IT WILL TURN INTO A BIG PROBLEM.

I want to share with you a small problem that I had, that for many reasons (some mentioned above) I didn’t take care of and it, and of course it turned into a BIG PROBLEM:

It started a couple of months ago (maybe even a year). I had a leak in my kitchen faucet. It was manageable. A little water here and there, but I could clean it up easily. Once a friend was over and even managed to tighten something which stopped the leak for some time, but as I should have expected, the leak returned after a while and I kept on looking for how to tighten it again, with no success. The leak made a bigger mess this time, but I was able to manage it by putting a small bucket under the sink - which I didn’t always remember to empty before it overflowed.

While all this was happening under the kitchen sink, the toilet in my master bedroom broke – the water continuously flowed into it. It didn’t really make a lot of noise and "I wasn’t really sure if there really was a problem", so I ignored it (and I am an avid conservationist). That is, I ignored it until the city sent me a letter saying that my water usage is unusually high.

Do you think that the universe was trying to tell me something?

For this I was also had a temporary solution - I turned off the faucet each time the toilet filled. This worked well until the faucet broke. The bathroom was out of order and we were reverted to the kids’ bathroom (much easier than calling a professional and dealing with the problem).

Now back to the kitchen sink.

Last week I saw water on the floor near the kitchen sink, thinking that I forgot to empty the bucket (which now I was emptying into the master bathroom toilet), I opened the cabinet door and saw that the bucket was relatively empty!!!!! I tested the flow of the water and found to my dismay that there was a leak in a different place.

THE UNIVERSE WAS SCREAMING and I was still looking for a Band-Aid. I tighten something and it stopped leaking.

Then, this past Friday, I was preparing Shabbat dinner and the kitchen sink started to leak in a place where no Band-Aid would work and I was forced to call my plumber (who I actually like and gives me great service).

After working for 3 hours on ALL the plumbing issues I had, Tzuriel explained what he did and how much it cost and also explained what he would have needed to do and how much it would have cost it I had taken care of the minor issues when they began – a savings of about 2 hours and 400 NIS! Not only did I lose time and energy (and piece of mind) taking care of all the leaks, I also lost money! (The shoe repairman goes barefoot).

 This story reminds me of how I used to take care of my overdraft and financial issues. Always cleaning up the mess and getting stressed out trying to find a Band-Aid that would last.

People! Fix any and all problems when they are small! Your plumbing problems, your marriage problems and your financial problems!!! Little problems generally have easy (and inexpensive) solutions. It is better to invest your time in finding the professional who will help you solve the problem is the best way possible instead of wasting your time grasping for Band-Aids.

What can you fix today?

Mindy

My Mother is a Financial Coach

I have to share this with you. It is one of those things that as a parent, you can sit back is your chair with a sigh and a big smile on your face and say "Wow, they actually hear me and it makes a difference."

That was exactly the feeling that I had!

This is the story:

Both of my kids were going on their yearly school overnight at the same time. And hand in hand with overnights are snacks. I highly recommend not fighting this one. We generally don't have "popular" snacks at home. I try as much as possible to prepare regular meals and keep healthy snacks in the cupboard, so I sent the kids to the local grocer to buy some.

As much as I say "don't fight the popular snacks" in this instance, I also don't think that you (or the kids) should exaggerate. I only had a 100 shekel bill in my wallet so I gave it to them and told them that I wanted them to spend only 50 Shekels – 25 Shekels each. I didn't want them to be too pressured about the cost so I also told them that they don't have to be exact, its OK if the go over the 50 shekel limit a little but to try to stay as close as possible to the goal.

The kids came back from the grocer about a half hour later with a big bag and big smiles on their faces :-) :-). Wanting to share in their pleasure, I asked to see their treasure. (Ha, ha, it rhythms)

They poured out all the goodies onto the coach and started to explain: "We both got one of these", "I got this and he got that – they are about the same price", "We bought a bag of mixed chocolate and a box of Oreo Cookies so we can share", "We checked all the prices – some things were really expensive so we decided to get other things instead", and so the explanation went one.

Then my daughter saw the receipt lying on the coach and picked it up. With a huge smile on her face she said, "Mommy! All this cost us only 59 Shekels! We knew exactly how to shop and get the most out of our money. After all, my mother is a Financial Coach!"

All I could do at that point was eat them up – the kids that it !!!!!!! The best snacks that I ever had :-)

Bless the Money that you Spend

Did you ever receive a birthday card from a loved one with money in it and a short note wishing you good health and happiness?

Do you often frequent stores that give you small gifts when you make purchases of one kind or another?

Whether done consciously or unconsciously by the givers of these gifts, their acts of associating money with good wishes and gifts are the ABC’s of the attracting prosperity; these are the ABC’s of the Law of Prosperity.

The money and good wishes that you received with the birthday card, made you feel great and maybe you bought something with that money that added to your personal wealth (and happiness) and added to the vendor’s financial wealth. Or maybe you invested that money and the initial amount invested increased in value.

And

The store that you frequent because of its generosity is actually increasing its business because you and other like you want to return and make more purchases. We all like the warm feeling associated with receiving gifts and being appreciated.

Generally, when people think or pray for money and prosperity, they direct their thoughts on receiving money. We would like to suggest that you also focus your attention to the money that you spend as a way of creating prosperity; Bless rather than curse or resent the money you have to pay others; bless rather than curse or resent the recipients of that money.

This is not an easy task since our automatic, subconscious response is to resent our bills or the “hard earned” money we must give to others. How many times have you cursed the taxes authorities or your mortgage broker? If we stick to the theory of “what comes around goes around”, then if we send out thoughts of resentment, anger, jealousy and suspicion we will draw back to ourselves more of the same (resentment, anger jealousy and suspicion).

One of the ways that you can attract prosperity is to give respect to paying bills. Schedule a time to do it. Do it in a pleasant and confortable environment. Pay your bills with thanks and gratitude to all those who supplied you with goods and services. Every time you pay your mortgage, see it as a blessing on your home. Treat your taxes as a way of supporting and blessing all those who use the services that are created with that money.

Whatever you give or put out there, returns to you tenfold.

Why do all girls hang up on me?

This is a subject that I have wanted to address for a long time but because it is not directly related to money, I have been putting it off, but I can’t put it off any longer because I think about it all the time.

First a little background: My children are of the age where they have cell phones and their friends call them directly on their cell phones (the monthly expense of each phone is calculated and managed well within our budget – this is not the subject). Sometime when one of their phones ring and they are not in the area, I answer. When it is a boy who is calling, he is usually polite, says “hello” and asks to speak with one of my kids. When it’s a girl, she hangs up!

Why?! What is it in our cultural climate that causes the girls to hang up? I’m a girl. Was I like that?

Now, my kids are both male and female, so you can’t say that the girls are embarrassed to ask for the boys – this is not the case (and in addition, even though they usually are, they shouldn’t be).

Beside that fact that it is unpleasant to have someone hang up on you, I write about this because I am truly concerned. I really want these girls to grow up and dare to have challenging goals and be confident that they can achieve them. Not that this kind of automatic reaction dictates that they won’t, but…

I think that we should encourage confidence and assertiveness in our children – boys and girls alike.

I think that they should be ready for little and big “surprises” and know how to react quickly and confidently – boys and girls alike.

I see that even at a young age, the boys are already confident and assertive – they are already there - with no special effort. It’s the girls that need to work on it (and unfortunately it is work and not natural).

I wish that these girls were confident enough to know that they have a right to call their friends and that they were assertive enough to ask their rights.

A person’s rights come in all sizes and forms. The right to speak your mind or speak to someone (anyone) or ask for things that you want or learn things that you want or even manage your own money…

Girls ! Don’t hang up! Ask for what you want. The worse thing that could happen is that you get it J

Mindy

To stare temptation in the eye

How do we do it? How to we stare down temptation. This is not an easy feat and there is no easy solution.

This morning I went to a networking meeting with Biz Makes Biz. There were a lot of participants and there were quite a few who bought with them wonderful products for sale. The ones that most tempted me were the “thinking games” for children, the glass jewelry and the accessories for giving massages. There were other products there for sale, but thankfully, not all tempted me as the ones that I mentioned above.

Why did those three products temp me so much? Well, I will start with the thinking games. I love thinking games and my kids have a closet filled with them and believe it or not we do play with them. I was never one for pretend but offer me to play a board / thinking game – I am in and even though my children are not that young anymore, we find ourselves sitting down to play a game a couple of times a week.

The jewelry tempted me on a less emotional level but still I felt a strong need. My son is in the 6^th grade and the Bat Mitzvah celebrations have begun. The mode today is to give money. My son insists that we give money, but I would prefer to give a present. I think that a present is more personal and will have more meaning an use for the Bat Mitzvah girl. Money, at best, gets put in the bank for a later date and in many cases is used to pay for the extravagant production. Also when giving money there is a feeling of competition – “how much did you give” becomes the question of the day and sometime “how much did you get” is the second question. Not for me. I have been looking for a nice piece of Jewelry, which fits into our "Bat Mitzvah budget” and I think I have finally found something to fit the bill.

The other products that tempted me were the accessories for massages. The developer of these products demonstration one on me and it was great. With very little physical effort, I got a great massage!

I had a real problem. The temptation was great. All the more so because each item had a strong connection with my values – education, family and loving myself So what could I do to face the temptation?

First, take a step back and think! No purchase needs to be made immediately. Speak with the sales person, collect information on the product and the price, thank the sales person and then go sit with myself for a couple of minutes and ask myself if I really need the product? If the answer is yes then the next question I should ask myself is if I have the budget for it – was the planned for. If the answer is yes, then I can go for it! Easy, huh?

What should I do if the answer is NO? Meaning either I do not need it but really want it or I need it but it is not within my budget? Here, the answer is easy, too, but it requires discipline. I should start saving for it. It may require that I do a little shuffling of the budget for the next month or two (or three, depending). If I REALY want it then shuffling will be worth it.

There are 2 other possibilities: 1. I might realize that it is not really worth it and that I do not want it as much as I thought, or 2. I might find a substitute that meets my needs to the same (or better) extent and is more economical.

Well, what do you think that I did in the face of such temptation?

Mindy

How to decide on what to spend your hard earned money

Your buying options are endless and there are so many pushes and pulls! Industry spends so much on advertising, some direct and some subliminal, and there is NO way NOT to be influenced. And if you manage to maintain some level of discipline, you can’t guarantee that those in our family will. Ever heard of the children’s book "The Bernstein Bears Get the Gimme’s"? Well, I know that my little bears get the gimme’s all the time and it is not so easy or pleasant to be the one to say "no". More than that, maybe you do not want to be that kind of person. Maybe you want to be able to get yourself and your family whatever they want as long as it is within reason.

OK. So the first thing to do is to determine what is within reason and what your limits are. You can look for the answers in your monthly budget. How much disposable income is left over after all your fixed expenses are paid for? Also, you should include a category in your budget for purchases that you want to make "Just Because".

Once you determine how much you have to spend, you can then focus on priorities.

Deciding on priorities is easy: Determine if the item is NEEDED or WANTED. A NEEDED item is one that you can’t manage without and a WANTED item is one that is "Nice to Have" or "Just Because. Of course, the items that are NEEDED have a higher priority than those that are just nice to have.

Once you have determined that the item is NEEDED, then check if there is an alternative. An alternate can be a different item that has the same function or the same item by a different manufacturer or supplier. Always look for the best deals with the best quality for price ratio (a lot of times something cheap turns out to be quite expensive in the long run) – but don’t spend too much time exploring your options. Time is money, too.

If you determined that the item is "Nice to Have", then check how much money you budgeted in the "Nice to Have" category of your budget. If you have enough money then go for it, but remember that if you do buy it, you may not have enough money left over in that category to buy something else that is "Nice to Have". What are the opportunity costs for spending now? Is it worth it?

It may seem as if this is time consuming process, however it’s not. Mostly the matter is solved as soon as you ask yourself if the item is NEEDED or WANTED.

Happy spending!

Mindy