These past few weeks have been quite challenging for me as it’s summer vacation and the kids are not in their regular schedule. Now don’t get me wrong, I love having my kids home for the summer and they definitely need it but it’s hard to keep them busy all the time. Therefore I do things I probably shouldn’t do to keep them busy and happy …maybe too happy, in fact. You see, during the school year we have RULES – make your bed, use your manners, clear your plate from the table and absolutely NO TV before homework and piano and there is to be NO ice cream or candy during the week. I guess you could say that I’m one of those “delay gratification moms.”
I know what drives me to be like this – my past. I remember my father always said, “Pumpkin – do you really think you need that? Why don’t you wait for a few days? You know, patience is a virtue.” And boy, did that ever cause me to get angry and have a temper tantrum – even when I was teenager. However, now I can truly appreciate why he always wanted me to wait and practice patience.
I am just like everyone else – I like nice things a lot, new shoes and handbags – but this important life skill of self discipline and delayed gratification that my dad helped me with has kept me from making poor choices and piling on significant amounts of debt. Waiting to purchase those things that I truly coveted and thought I “needed” has been one of the best financial lessons I was taught at a very young age.
So much comes to our children so easily – they rarely need to wait anymore. A lot of this has been driven by technology (instant messaging, email, music downloads, etc) and the commercialization of our society. All fosters an attitude of “you can get what you want, when you want it.” Children, including mine, grow up thinking that instant gratification and acquisition of a want – usually a toy or some type of sweet— is the way to happiness!!
Discover the critically acclaimed debut album, Bible Belt from new artist Diane Birch. Her music is sinfully soulful and her single of the week, “Rise Up” is already one of the 10 top albums on iTunes – and it was just released yesterday. But the best part of the story, in my opinion, is that if you purchase her album through the link provided below, $1 will be donated to charity - automatically.
S-Curve Records and Diane Birch are proud to present Discover & Donate. You discover Diane Birch’s soulful debut album, “Bible Belt” ,then you choose one of six charities to receive a $1 donation from your purchase. The charities are: SOS Children’s Villages, Autism Speaks, March of Dimes, Keep A Child Alive, Share Our Strength or Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Additionally, you can download the Discover & Donate widget to your site – wherever that might be and who ever raises the most money for charity through their widget by June 23, 2009, will win a FREE PRIVATE PERFORMANCE in the winner’s hometown!! How cool is that? Click here to start sharing.
Please do one of 2 things to support Diane Birch, her music and cause:
Download the Discover & Donate widget to your site here – and when someone clicks through that widget to buy the album, $1 to charity will be made in YOUR name and who ever raises the most $ - wins a Free Private Performance with Diane Birch.
Or just click below at the banner and BUY the CD to support one of the charities.
When my friend Jacki and I meet – which is quite often, we always invariably leave with this burning question: why are women less likely to take responsibility for their financial wellbeing? The question came up again because I ran across a statistic that states:
Only 15% of married women feel responsible for their financial lives, planning, or retirement.
Source: The National Center for Women and Retirement Research
One of my friends thinks that maybe it has to do with women’s relationship with perfectionism, how we hate to appear inadequate or ignorant on any front. When she was going through the process of buying her first apartment, she despised how frequently she didn’t know terminology or ended up feeling intimidated by all the ins and outs (especially in the New York market). “Most of the time,“ she explained, “I feel pretty competent, so not knowing what the heck I was doing was a feeling I really hated.“ I wonder if some women avoid taking those first difficult steps to understand finances because it simply makes them feel dumb.
A friend of mine, Leslie Bennetts, author of the “The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much” wrote a piece in Elle magazine titled, “The Upstarter Wife” a story about Gigi Levangie Grazer and how she triumphantly approached her divorce, that I feel compelled to write about. Levangie, a very successful women and author approached divorce much differently, I believe than women who quit their careers when they get married or have children. After reading the article, again I am questioning why women sacrifice their financial security for motherhood and wonder whether we are giving up too much? Is the media in part to blame? Does the media only give us one side of the story? Is the dream of the white picket fence so strong that we ignore the reality of the “what if”?
Leslie argues that most women who have quit the labor force to be full time mothers are being lulled into a false sense of complacency about relinquishing their financial autonomy – which I wholeheartedly agree with. The media gives lots of coverage to women who quit the labor force to become full-time mothers, and treat this decision as if it were simply a lifestyle choice. The media never seems to mention the “risks of economic dependency – or the myriad benefits of work.” As a result, Leslie argues that women have been lulled into a dangerous sense of complacency about relinquishing their financial autonomy? Why hasn’t the media or anyone else told the truth about how much these women might be sacrificing—or what the consequences could be?
The other night as I was watching the news, yes Fox news, I heard an attorney from Case & White talking about how his clients (the Chrysler bondholders) were being asked to take a deal for .33 cents on the dollar and they were being chastised (bullied was the word that was used) by the Administration for holding out. Now bondholders are secured creditors and should get paid more in a bankruptcy than unsecured creditors (including the union). Now the assets of Chrysler are being sold to a new company controlled by Fiat and the union!! I just can’t believe some of this stuff we are hearing and that is going on in America and give alot of respect to those that can speak out, specifically Cliff Asness, a hedge fund manager at AQR Capital. Here is an excerpt of what he has to say:
“Here’s a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It’s not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders’ contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times.
These past few weeks have been quite challenging for me as it’s summer vacation and the kids are not in their regular schedule. Now don’t get me wrong, I love having my kids home for the summer and they definitely need it but it’s hard to keep them busy all the time. Therefore I do things I probably shouldn’t do to keep them busy and happy …maybe too happy, in fact. You see, during the school year we have RULES – make your bed, use your manners, clear your plate from the table and absolutely NO TV before homework and piano and there is to be NO ice cream or candy during the week. I guess you could say that I’m one of those “delay gratification moms.”
When my friend Jacki and I meet – which is quite often, we always invariably leave with this burning question: why are women less likely to take responsibility for their financial wellbeing? The question came up again because I ran across a statistic that states: 
A friend of mine, Leslie Bennetts, author of the “
The other night as I was watching the news, yes Fox news, I heard an attorney from Case & White talking about how his clients (the Chrysler bondholders) were being asked to take a deal for .33 cents on the dollar and they were being chastised (bullied was the word that was used) by the Administration for holding out. Now bondholders are secured creditors and should get paid more in a bankruptcy than unsecured creditors (including the union). Now the assets of Chrysler are being sold to a new company controlled by Fiat and the union!! I just can’t believe some of this stuff we are hearing and that is going on in America and give alot of respect to those that can speak out, specifically 
[get this widget]