Four Words of Advice

Parental advice too often sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher. All the kids hear is "Wah wah wah wah...." The more I talk, the less they hear. With emphasis on brevity, here is the most succinct advice I can offer my children:

Dental Hygiene: Brush and floss daily.
Driving: Blessed are the merciful.
Investments: Buy low, sell high.
Heaven: Despair not; presume not. 
Food: Gluttony is a sin.
Dating: Keep your pants on.
Gratitude: Be the tenth leper.
Authenticity: Be who you are.
Moving on: Don't forget to write! 
Always remember: You are blessed indeed!

 

You Can't Always Get What You Want

This is for the Carnival Triumph passengers, and anyone facing a bitter disappointment right now.

You go on a cruise for relaxation, adventure, pampering even.

You get power outages, malfunctioning toilets, food shortages.

Hey, this isn't what I signed up for!

Sometimes the thing you cursed turns out to be your greatest blessing.

Did you learn that you are capable of surviving something you never knew you could? Did you learn the importance of keeping a good attitude in spite of adversity? Did you see the cream rise to the top and people come out in droves to help others? Did you get to wave to your mom on CNN? Did you bring home memories that will sustain and encourage you next time the power goes out at your house for 20 minutes?

You can't always get what you want. Sometimes you get something better.

What blessing did you curse today,
and how are you going to change your attitude?

Wealth vs. Status

I went shopping for a purse last week. My first mistake was to even set foot inside the Coach store. Oh they had purses, alright. Lots of them. And they were made with excellent craftsmanship. And there were about 4 clerks for every shopper, falling over each other to curry your favor. Wow.

The bags were on sale, most of them. "Only $300" on this group, and "30% off!" (off of what?) on another, and so on. I did find a few I liked. The one that was most exactly what I was looking for was a tiny little thing with an over-body strap and (sigh!) a dog leash clip and yet still came in at almost $70. Ouch.

It didn't pass the hungry baby test. (How many hungry babies could I feed for $70?) Or, as my mom was fond of saying, "Quid ad aeternitatem?" (What does this have to do with eternity?) It's not that this was the most expensive bag in the world, nor even of the whole store. It was really quite economical in Coach terms.

Even so, I have to put purchases in the context of wealth vs. status. Wealth (property, investments, etc.) provides for our future. Status drains our wealth and compromises our future. Status might make us look and feel important (until the next newest biggest best fashionable thing comes along...) but it does not sustain happiness nor security for the long term.

I ended up buying a Kim Rogers purse at Belk. With a sale and a coupon, I spent less than $20, and the purse does everything I need it to do, except make me "look" important. And that's ok, because I have a future. I have wealth.

What status-seeking (and wealth-compromising) behaviors will you forgo today?

A Place For Wrestling

We've all heard the adage, "a place for everything, and everything in its place."

I contend that wrestling is a thing. So is singing. So is crying.

If my boys want to wrestle, like exuberant boys are wont to do, I don't say "stop wrestling." I say "Take it outside in the grass so that you don't break things or get hurt on sharp corners."

If my daughter wants to sing, I consider that a "Happy Noise" and welcome its intrusion in my day. If I'm in the middle of a tv show, I  pause the dvr, and resume it later. Or I figure I'll catch the rerun next summer when my daughter is gone, when I would give anything to hear her sing once more.

Crying is allowed, too. Yes, we are allowed to express our emotions, even painful or angry ones. However, if it devolves into whiny, obnoxious attention-seeking, we take it to our room and shut the door while we compose ourselves and figure out a better way to communicate our feelings.

Don't tell me not to feel. Just tell me where I can go to do it while respecting the rights of others.

What feelings will you express (in a socially appropriate way) today?

Kids "Unfit to Inherit" ???

CNBC published an article by Robert Frank a few months back, about parents who are leaving their millions to charity instead of their children. "Only 32 percent of baby boomers are confident their children will be prepared emotionally and financially to receive a financial legacy."

Whose fault is this? Let's assume this is not inherited wealth. (I assure you, multigenerational high net worth families groom their children for succession. It's what keeps the wealth in the family.) Boomers, who perhaps built a business from scratch and worked hard to become wealthy, focused all their attention on the business, but stopped short of pondering the fact that they may die one day, and planning for eventual maturity of their children to take the baton.


Frank's assessment:

In the end, however, the phenomenon outlined in the survey boils down to a simple problem: The baby boomers have raised kids who are unequipped to inherit large amounts unearned wealth. The kids have been given most of what they want since childhood and have followed their parents model of generous spending. And the job market isn’t exactly conducive to college grads making it on their own. [...]

Whose fault is all this? The parents, in part. Only half of the respondents had told their children about their family wealth. When asked why, they said the children would become lazy, make poor decisions, squander money or fall prey to golddiggers.

We can call it the Rinehart Paradox. Wealthy parents aren’t raising kids to be good with wealth, so they refuse to leave them wealth.

In the end, the biggest losers here are the kids.

That's tantamount to tying your kid's shoes because it's easier than teaching him to tie them himself. Really? You're going to be around when he is 30, still tying his shoes? You will cripple your children emotionally when you FAIL to teach them about your finances, financial strategies, where the money comes from, where it goes, and WHY you made the decisions you did with it. 

Whose shoes will you stop tying today?

Trust Fund: Iceberg Ho!

Most people don't understand the Alabama Trust Fund and don't really know how to vote. Quin Hillyer  explains it pretty well. For those who still don't get it, let me try to simplify it:

Let's say you won the lottery. You invest in annuities and live off the interest, never touching the principal. Then you overspend on Beemers and coach bags, and decide you can't live off interest alone. So you raid the principal. Now, because of its reduced size, your fund is going to earn less interest EVERY year, and you will run into the "problem" (self-generated crisis) again and again until you have no choice but to sell your coach bags on eBay and get a job. Sad.

Poor results come from short-sighted thinking.

Solve the real problem (overspending), don't just put a bandaid on this hemorrhage. 

What wise spending decisions will you make today?

Too Many Factors Beyond Our Control

The Chicago teachers are on strike today. I am sad that they were not able to negotiate a contract and that it had to come with this. I do see both sides, really. I read articles from both sides, to make sure I wasn't just reading one slant.

Here's a passage that stood out for me:

“Another concern is evaluation procedures. After the initial phase-in of the new evaluation system it could result in 6,000 teachers (or nearly 30 percent of our members) being discharged within one or two years. This is unacceptable. We are also concerned that too much of the new evaluations will be based on students’ standardized test scores. This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator. Further there are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control."

 There was a 4th grade boy who was struggling over a "practice test." I was helping him, without feeding him the answers. One set of questions was analogies. "Yellow is to lemon as green is to ____." He must have spent 10  precious minutes, even with my help and hints and explanation, to understand what the question was asking for. He just didn't know. When I finally told him the answer so that we could move on to the next question, he asked, "what's a lime?"

This child had never seen a lime, did not have a clue about its similarity to a lemon, did not know what color it was; it was just not something that was part of his culture. He never would have answered that question correctly.

Should the teacher be evaluated poorly for that?

Striking for reasons of extortion and greed is one thing. Getting a poor evaluation / losing one's job because of factors beyond your control just seems wrong. 

Over what injustice are you indignant today?