Showing posts with label Family Finances. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Finances. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Ten Fantastic College Values Too Many People Probably Overlook
Beginning early last summer, our family embarked upon a labor of love to help Philip find a great value to study biomedical engineering. In the process, we came across some great values worth sharing with our broader readership. While you should certainly look at your state’s university system as well as prestigious private colleges that offer generous need-based and merit scholarship, here are some hidden gems that are also worth investigating.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
How Kids Are Resilient
For the past few months our family has been volunteering at a local family shelter. Over the next two years, Philip will be journaling about his experiences and interactions there to meet one of the requirements for his honors program at Hermes High School. Today we spent about ninety minutes at the shelter decorating cookies with kids between the ages of four and nine. Like Philip, I volunteered at a family shelter when I was in high school. It gave me a view of life I would not otherwise have seen. Some thirty years later, I am viewing life at a family shelter with an older set of eyes.
What strikes me the most about the family shelter is how much fun the kids seem to have and how happy the kids seem to be. There is a large common playground and a large common kitchen and dining hall. A cork board displays a calendar of activities for the kids, including both weekly and one-time events. At the three events we have helped with so far, the kids seem not only happy but committed to one another’s happiness. One seven-year-old girl Tracy takes particular interest in the younger children. While I sat outside repairing bikes one day, a pair of boys wanted to sit close to me and watch. Tracy helped the boys overcome their hesitations and explained everything I was doing. She also made sure the boys didn’t touch anything that might hurt them. When we managed the Easter Egg Hunt, all the older children took it upon themselves to make sure each of the younger children filled their baskets. There was not the slightest evidence of bullying.
The adults at the family shelter are a different story. Whether they are there as a result of bad fortune, bad choices or some combination thereof, living at a family shelter rather than in a more common living situation is frustrating and embarrassing. I have never seen an adult overtly take out that frustration on a child. In fact, the parents at the shelter seem to be going the extra mile with their kids. But I can see the weight of their situation on each adult’s face. The men seem to take it the hardest.
Recently, my wife Amelia read Farewell to Manzanar, the memoir of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston who spent a window of her childhood living at one of the internment camps established for Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Despite the unfair treatment, economic challenges and restrictions on freedom, the years at the internment camp proved to be this woman’s happiest childhood memories. There was something special about the closeness and the effort to band together. It was a sense of community she wanted to find a way to recreate for her own children but never fully succeeded in her own mind.
Kids enjoy going to the playground, making quick and possibly short-lived friendships and simply playing, especially in large groups. They love being on sports teams together. Even the ones with less athletic prowess love being part of sports teams. Events with lots of kids like birthday parties, beach trips, camping trips and barbeques are thrilling for kids.
As adulthood approaches and takes hold, the desire for autonomy becomes progressively stronger. Philip now spends hours inside his bedroom with the door closed. While young adults are comfortable sharing apartments in cramped quarters, older adults do not merely want their own home, they want a house: ideally a house with lots of square-footage and lots of acreage.
As I look at Tracy and the other kids living at the family shelter, I expect they are forming great memories. But I also think they are burying various forms of stress to process later in life. No matter how much parents want to protect their kids from adult troubles, some always manages to penetrate. But at manageable levels, the buried stress does not need to emerge in the form of unhealthy behavior. And when offset by the joys and benefits of community, Tracy and her peers are probably much better off spending a few months at the family shelter than most would expect. I’m looking forward to future interactions at the family shelter and also to reading Philip’s thoughts as he journals these experiences.
What strikes me the most about the family shelter is how much fun the kids seem to have and how happy the kids seem to be. There is a large common playground and a large common kitchen and dining hall. A cork board displays a calendar of activities for the kids, including both weekly and one-time events. At the three events we have helped with so far, the kids seem not only happy but committed to one another’s happiness. One seven-year-old girl Tracy takes particular interest in the younger children. While I sat outside repairing bikes one day, a pair of boys wanted to sit close to me and watch. Tracy helped the boys overcome their hesitations and explained everything I was doing. She also made sure the boys didn’t touch anything that might hurt them. When we managed the Easter Egg Hunt, all the older children took it upon themselves to make sure each of the younger children filled their baskets. There was not the slightest evidence of bullying.
The adults at the family shelter are a different story. Whether they are there as a result of bad fortune, bad choices or some combination thereof, living at a family shelter rather than in a more common living situation is frustrating and embarrassing. I have never seen an adult overtly take out that frustration on a child. In fact, the parents at the shelter seem to be going the extra mile with their kids. But I can see the weight of their situation on each adult’s face. The men seem to take it the hardest.
Recently, my wife Amelia read Farewell to Manzanar, the memoir of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston who spent a window of her childhood living at one of the internment camps established for Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Despite the unfair treatment, economic challenges and restrictions on freedom, the years at the internment camp proved to be this woman’s happiest childhood memories. There was something special about the closeness and the effort to band together. It was a sense of community she wanted to find a way to recreate for her own children but never fully succeeded in her own mind.
Kids enjoy going to the playground, making quick and possibly short-lived friendships and simply playing, especially in large groups. They love being on sports teams together. Even the ones with less athletic prowess love being part of sports teams. Events with lots of kids like birthday parties, beach trips, camping trips and barbeques are thrilling for kids.
As adulthood approaches and takes hold, the desire for autonomy becomes progressively stronger. Philip now spends hours inside his bedroom with the door closed. While young adults are comfortable sharing apartments in cramped quarters, older adults do not merely want their own home, they want a house: ideally a house with lots of square-footage and lots of acreage.
As I look at Tracy and the other kids living at the family shelter, I expect they are forming great memories. But I also think they are burying various forms of stress to process later in life. No matter how much parents want to protect their kids from adult troubles, some always manages to penetrate. But at manageable levels, the buried stress does not need to emerge in the form of unhealthy behavior. And when offset by the joys and benefits of community, Tracy and her peers are probably much better off spending a few months at the family shelter than most would expect. I’m looking forward to future interactions at the family shelter and also to reading Philip’s thoughts as he journals these experiences.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Kids and Their Parents' Finances
I was roughly the age Philip is today. I was home from school when my mother came home early from work. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “I’ve lost my job.”
We were a single parent family: Just me and my mother. We lived in a small apartment in an upscale East Coast town. The recession at the beginning of the Reagan administration had begun and the economic fallout had forced my mother’s employer to cut staff. We had fixed financial support from my father and his family, but our income had just been cut in half. Savings? Yeah, right. And with the market being down, things looked grim.
I’m certain my mother felt all kinds of pressure in that down economy. Who wouldn’t? But somehow I never felt it. As a child and as an adolescent, my happiness did not depend upon how big the paycheck was. When I speak with peers who had bad experiences as a result of their parents' finances, it was never about the lack of money. The bad experiences were the anger and rage and/or the withdrawal and depression.
Today there is a new recession looming. I'm giving myself a fifty percent chance I'll be among the unemployed before the week is out. With that, our family will take a 75% hit to our income. And we're still recovering financially from the post 9-11 recession. We're hardly alone. The parents of Chloe's friend Samantha were over the other evening. We'd always considered them wealthier than us, given their vehicles and their clothes. But all of it was at least four years old. We learned Samantha's father's business had earned close to nothing these past four years. Their savings were completely drained. Their recent move from an upscale development in Hermes was not to a bigger home, but instead to the home of an elderly relative where they are now renting space. Samantha's father was particularly demoralized that evening. And her mom was feeling the weight too. We told them about our looming situation — which truly doesn't come close to theirs. We talked about our concern for the kids. And that is when Samantha's mom and dad set us straight.
Samantha and her siblings have been fine. It is just the parents who are suffering. They are suffering quietly. When they left the upscale home for shared space in an older, smaller home away from neighbors with whom the kids could play, all the kids could say was, "Mom! This house has a tire swing!" When the elderly relative got sick, their high-school-age daughter spent several hours a week taking care of him. Not only did that save the family the cost of a home health aid, but it also allowed the teenage daughter more quality time with the elderly man than the rest of her life beforehand. The kids — Samantha's parents report — are just as happy as they were before the finances collapsed. Their grades in school are just as good as they had been. And they enjoy their friends just as much as ever.
At the time of this writing, I do not know what this week will bring. But Samantha's parents have helped me to be ready for the worst. Back during Reagan's presidency, my mother quickly found a better job. And admittedly, there is one company with which I have already been interviewing that may have a better job for me. But nothing is certain. I could find myself employed at the end of the week, or I could be among the unemployed. The company with the better job might extend me an offer. Or it might not. This recession could prove uneventful for us. Or it could be a long difficult road. Like Samantha's family, we have options. Houses don't sell in this recession, but they do rent. We could rent out our spare room. Or we could rent out our whole house and move into a small apartment. My wife could increase her hours at her part time job, and I've had some success before getting short term consulting assignments while between jobs.
I'm choosing to be optimistic. It keeps me at my best with the kids. And as long as I stay that way, the kids will never care whether or not I'm gainfully employed. Either way, I plan to spend a lot more time with Samantha's dad. Some day his business will recover. And some day (hopefully for the rest of 2009 or at least most of it) I’ll be gainfully employed.
As for the kids, my goal is they won’t need to recover from anything. I didn’t when I was that age.
We were a single parent family: Just me and my mother. We lived in a small apartment in an upscale East Coast town. The recession at the beginning of the Reagan administration had begun and the economic fallout had forced my mother’s employer to cut staff. We had fixed financial support from my father and his family, but our income had just been cut in half. Savings? Yeah, right. And with the market being down, things looked grim.
I’m certain my mother felt all kinds of pressure in that down economy. Who wouldn’t? But somehow I never felt it. As a child and as an adolescent, my happiness did not depend upon how big the paycheck was. When I speak with peers who had bad experiences as a result of their parents' finances, it was never about the lack of money. The bad experiences were the anger and rage and/or the withdrawal and depression.
Today there is a new recession looming. I'm giving myself a fifty percent chance I'll be among the unemployed before the week is out. With that, our family will take a 75% hit to our income. And we're still recovering financially from the post 9-11 recession. We're hardly alone. The parents of Chloe's friend Samantha were over the other evening. We'd always considered them wealthier than us, given their vehicles and their clothes. But all of it was at least four years old. We learned Samantha's father's business had earned close to nothing these past four years. Their savings were completely drained. Their recent move from an upscale development in Hermes was not to a bigger home, but instead to the home of an elderly relative where they are now renting space. Samantha's father was particularly demoralized that evening. And her mom was feeling the weight too. We told them about our looming situation — which truly doesn't come close to theirs. We talked about our concern for the kids. And that is when Samantha's mom and dad set us straight.
Samantha and her siblings have been fine. It is just the parents who are suffering. They are suffering quietly. When they left the upscale home for shared space in an older, smaller home away from neighbors with whom the kids could play, all the kids could say was, "Mom! This house has a tire swing!" When the elderly relative got sick, their high-school-age daughter spent several hours a week taking care of him. Not only did that save the family the cost of a home health aid, but it also allowed the teenage daughter more quality time with the elderly man than the rest of her life beforehand. The kids — Samantha's parents report — are just as happy as they were before the finances collapsed. Their grades in school are just as good as they had been. And they enjoy their friends just as much as ever.
At the time of this writing, I do not know what this week will bring. But Samantha's parents have helped me to be ready for the worst. Back during Reagan's presidency, my mother quickly found a better job. And admittedly, there is one company with which I have already been interviewing that may have a better job for me. But nothing is certain. I could find myself employed at the end of the week, or I could be among the unemployed. The company with the better job might extend me an offer. Or it might not. This recession could prove uneventful for us. Or it could be a long difficult road. Like Samantha's family, we have options. Houses don't sell in this recession, but they do rent. We could rent out our spare room. Or we could rent out our whole house and move into a small apartment. My wife could increase her hours at her part time job, and I've had some success before getting short term consulting assignments while between jobs.
I'm choosing to be optimistic. It keeps me at my best with the kids. And as long as I stay that way, the kids will never care whether or not I'm gainfully employed. Either way, I plan to spend a lot more time with Samantha's dad. Some day his business will recover. And some day (hopefully for the rest of 2009 or at least most of it) I’ll be gainfully employed.
As for the kids, my goal is they won’t need to recover from anything. I didn’t when I was that age.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Friend at Our Kitchen Table
When my wife Amelia went into the hospital for spinal surgery in January 2006, we discovered what a caring community we had here in Hermes. Between the neighborhood, our church and Amelia’s book club, Amelia enjoyed no shortage of friendly visits in her hospital room, and I barely noticed the fact that there was one less adult in our home. Depending on the day, my refrigerator was stocked with anywhere between two and four days worth of meals prepared and delivered by our community of friends. On top of that, Philip and Chloe had all the rides they needed to and from school, sports and other kid events and a nice family to stay with until I was able to pick them up.
The biggest contributor to the aid given our family was Rita. We knew Rita because she ran our community gardening club, but before Amelia’s surgery was scheduled we had considered Rita on the periphery of our community of friends. That changed rather quickly. Rita not only joined the ranks of the many who prepared a meal, she also became our kids’ primary ride to and from school, plus normally kept them at her home until I was able to pick them up. The evening right after Amelia’s surgery, she and her husband hosted me and my kids for dinner. Over the course of my wife’s hospital stay and recovery, we all became great friends. Then the awkward moment came.
The kids’ summer vacation had just begun and we had invited Rita’s kids to play with our kids that day. Amelia was out on one of her first post-surgery shopping trips when the doorbell rang and Rita was at the door with her kids. Within moments a flow of four kids moved from the front of our house to the back yard. Still standing at our front door with Rita, I began the usual chit-chat before working out the logistics of when and how she’d get her kids back, but then she changed the subject. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she began. “Last night my husband informed me that he no longer loved me, that he was leaving me, and that he would be filing for divorce shortly.”
I was stunned by the news. I took in and let out an audible deep breath. “I’m so sorry. Would you like to come in and chat for a while? I’ve just put on a fresh pot of coffee and Amelia should be back from grocery shopping any minute.”
“That sounds really nice right now.” So we closed the front door and she followed me back into the kitchen. Rita was and still is cute, smart, thin, sensitive, full of energy and always has interesting things to talk about. Admittedly, I felt a little tension being alone in my kitchen with a beautiful, distraught and technically no longer attached woman I’d come to care about. I did my best to relax and just let her just talk. Within ten minutes, Amelia was home. I let Rita tell Amelia everything I’d just heard while I brought the groceries in and put them away. I boiled water for Amelia to enjoy some tea. Rita’s second cup was tea as well. I sat down with what had been left in the coffee pot and the three of us talked for about two hours with Rita doing the bulk of the talking.
In the months that followed, we learned Rita’s husband executed every venomous act that can be tossed into the divorce process. He filed a restraining order. He demanded his wife take a psychological exam. He pursued full custody and made every effort to provide as little financial support as possible, though prior to separation, he had urged his wife not to pursue employment. According to Rita, there was one good thing. He had become much more active in the kids’ lives.
Fast forward two and a half years. Thanksgiving 2008 was just a few days ago. Our family was taking a long break between the turkey that had filled us and the pumpkin pie we didn’t want yet. I was upstairs when the doorbell rang. It was Rita. She had an opportunity to work the following day and was wondering if we could watch her two kids. Amelia had the day off and they had just worked out the details as I headed down the stairs. She looked up at me. “Do you have a good command of financial stuff?”
“No,” I said, not feeling comfortable discussing investment options.
“I need to refinance the house once it is mine,” she said.
“We just refinanced. That I can help you with. Do you want to sit down and chat with us in the kitchen while the kids play?”
The three of us were back together in the kitchen. Rita was distraught again. This time it was over her finances, instead of her marriage. It was awkward asking her questions about her income and debt situation. It was even more awkward hearing her answers and then speaking to her plainly about what her answers would mean to a financial institution. Divorce, as almost everyone knows, is a financial disaster.
Earlier that day we had promised to play a board game with Philip after dessert. We invited Rita and her kids to join us for dessert and the board game. They accepted, but Chloe and Rita’s daughter wanted to play upstairs. Two hours later Rita’s son had won the board game and her daughter didn’t want to go home to bed.
Having read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I know the leading predictor of divorce is evidence of contempt. We’re teaching Philip and Chloe not to ever indulge the temptation to feel contempt. We’re also teaching them to have no tolerance toward those who exhibit contempt toward them or their friends. It is amazing how many young adolescent girls at Philip’s school have already developed the habit of freely exhibiting contempt toward their boy-peers.
Today, Rita can look back objectively and see the early warning signs. “Shortly after we started dating, he told me straight out, ‘Don’t you ever cross me. If you ever cross me, I will pay you back with double.’"
“You stayed with him after he said that?” was Amelia’s reply.
“I should have known better,” said Rita soberly.
Rita is cute, smart, thin, sensitive, full of energy and always has interesting things to talk about. If anyone can repair her finances, find an emotionally healthy romance and teach her kids to do likewise from the get-go, Rita can. Meanwhile, we’ll always remember Rita’s help when we were in need, and our kitchen table will always be available.
The biggest contributor to the aid given our family was Rita. We knew Rita because she ran our community gardening club, but before Amelia’s surgery was scheduled we had considered Rita on the periphery of our community of friends. That changed rather quickly. Rita not only joined the ranks of the many who prepared a meal, she also became our kids’ primary ride to and from school, plus normally kept them at her home until I was able to pick them up. The evening right after Amelia’s surgery, she and her husband hosted me and my kids for dinner. Over the course of my wife’s hospital stay and recovery, we all became great friends. Then the awkward moment came.
The kids’ summer vacation had just begun and we had invited Rita’s kids to play with our kids that day. Amelia was out on one of her first post-surgery shopping trips when the doorbell rang and Rita was at the door with her kids. Within moments a flow of four kids moved from the front of our house to the back yard. Still standing at our front door with Rita, I began the usual chit-chat before working out the logistics of when and how she’d get her kids back, but then she changed the subject. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she began. “Last night my husband informed me that he no longer loved me, that he was leaving me, and that he would be filing for divorce shortly.”
I was stunned by the news. I took in and let out an audible deep breath. “I’m so sorry. Would you like to come in and chat for a while? I’ve just put on a fresh pot of coffee and Amelia should be back from grocery shopping any minute.”
“That sounds really nice right now.” So we closed the front door and she followed me back into the kitchen. Rita was and still is cute, smart, thin, sensitive, full of energy and always has interesting things to talk about. Admittedly, I felt a little tension being alone in my kitchen with a beautiful, distraught and technically no longer attached woman I’d come to care about. I did my best to relax and just let her just talk. Within ten minutes, Amelia was home. I let Rita tell Amelia everything I’d just heard while I brought the groceries in and put them away. I boiled water for Amelia to enjoy some tea. Rita’s second cup was tea as well. I sat down with what had been left in the coffee pot and the three of us talked for about two hours with Rita doing the bulk of the talking.
In the months that followed, we learned Rita’s husband executed every venomous act that can be tossed into the divorce process. He filed a restraining order. He demanded his wife take a psychological exam. He pursued full custody and made every effort to provide as little financial support as possible, though prior to separation, he had urged his wife not to pursue employment. According to Rita, there was one good thing. He had become much more active in the kids’ lives.
Fast forward two and a half years. Thanksgiving 2008 was just a few days ago. Our family was taking a long break between the turkey that had filled us and the pumpkin pie we didn’t want yet. I was upstairs when the doorbell rang. It was Rita. She had an opportunity to work the following day and was wondering if we could watch her two kids. Amelia had the day off and they had just worked out the details as I headed down the stairs. She looked up at me. “Do you have a good command of financial stuff?”
“No,” I said, not feeling comfortable discussing investment options.
“I need to refinance the house once it is mine,” she said.
“We just refinanced. That I can help you with. Do you want to sit down and chat with us in the kitchen while the kids play?”
The three of us were back together in the kitchen. Rita was distraught again. This time it was over her finances, instead of her marriage. It was awkward asking her questions about her income and debt situation. It was even more awkward hearing her answers and then speaking to her plainly about what her answers would mean to a financial institution. Divorce, as almost everyone knows, is a financial disaster.
Earlier that day we had promised to play a board game with Philip after dessert. We invited Rita and her kids to join us for dessert and the board game. They accepted, but Chloe and Rita’s daughter wanted to play upstairs. Two hours later Rita’s son had won the board game and her daughter didn’t want to go home to bed.
Having read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I know the leading predictor of divorce is evidence of contempt. We’re teaching Philip and Chloe not to ever indulge the temptation to feel contempt. We’re also teaching them to have no tolerance toward those who exhibit contempt toward them or their friends. It is amazing how many young adolescent girls at Philip’s school have already developed the habit of freely exhibiting contempt toward their boy-peers.
Today, Rita can look back objectively and see the early warning signs. “Shortly after we started dating, he told me straight out, ‘Don’t you ever cross me. If you ever cross me, I will pay you back with double.’"
“You stayed with him after he said that?” was Amelia’s reply.
“I should have known better,” said Rita soberly.
Rita is cute, smart, thin, sensitive, full of energy and always has interesting things to talk about. If anyone can repair her finances, find an emotionally healthy romance and teach her kids to do likewise from the get-go, Rita can. Meanwhile, we’ll always remember Rita’s help when we were in need, and our kitchen table will always be available.
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