Better Road Trips

Slate.com asks Do Family Road Trips Have To Be Horrible?

1. Plan the trip together - let the kids contribute ideas & make last minute suggestions based on road signs or GPS recommendations
2. Make plenty of stops - stop and smell the roses along the way. Aim for a ratio of 40 minutes sightseeing for every 60 minutes of driving.
3. Check out  Roadside America for quirky things to visit like the Jolly Green Giant statue or the Future Birthplace of James T Kirk of Star Trek.
4. Stop for factory tours - pretzel makers, chocolate, cheese, etc. Made in the U.S.A.
5. Avoid fast food - seek out local eateries and sample regional specialties like fried mac & cheese
6. Take nature breaks - not just a potty stop but get out of the car and toss a Frisbee around.
7. Make the car ride entertaining with music, games, and family talks

A Summer Swim

As summer nears, thoughts turn to playing at the pool or the beach but did you know that drowning is the second leading cause of accidental death between the ages of 5 and 24? A backyard swimming pool is 100 times more deadly to children than a gun at home! Swimming lessons are available for all ages - even infants! Teach your children to swim today - it may save a life.

Every Cub Scout is taught to "Buddy up!" when swimming. Always swim with a partner, every time — whether you're swimming in a backyard pool or in a lake. Even experienced swimmers can become tired or get muscle cramps, which might make it difficult to get out of the water. When people swim together, they can help each other or go for help in case of an emergency.

When swimming, watch out for the dangerous “too’s” – too tired, too cold, too far from safety, and too much sun activity. Never swim so far into a lake or ocean that you haven't enough energy left for the swim back. Body temperature can drop quickly in water. If a child is shivering or experiencing muscle cramps, get him or her out of the water immediately.

Don't assume that a child who knows how to swim isn't at risk for drowning. All kids need to be supervised in the water, no matter what their swimming skill levels. Set water safety rules for the whole family based on swimming abilities. For example, inexperienced swimmers should stay in water less than chest deep or be required to wear a life jacket.

Pushy Parents

This weekend our cub scout pack will be racing their pinewood derby cars. This is supposed to be a learning experience for the 8-10 year old boys. We've devoted the past 6 weeks to drawing a cut-out template on the cars, sanding them, applying a base coat, a prime coat, and racing stripes. However one boy has had nothing to do because his dad made his car in the very first week. It looks great but the son had zero involvement in its creation. Tragic.

NPR tells another story of parents doing too much, Easter Egg Hunt Canceled Due To Aggressive Parents. "Organizers of an annual Easter egg hunt in [Colorado Springs,] Colorado attended by hundreds of children have canceled this year's event, citing the behavior of aggressive parents who swarmed into the tiny park last year, determined that their kids get an egg." Ropes had been set up for a kids-only area but parents jumped the ropes to help their child get the most eggs. The egg hunt was over in seconds, with many tots finding nothing.

"Parenting observers cite the cancellation as a prime example of "helicopter parents" — those who hover over their children and are involved in every aspect of their children's lives — sports, school, and increasingly work — to ensure that they don't fail, even at an Easter egg hunt. .. (The parents) can't stay out of their children's lives. They don't give their children enough chances to learn from hard knocks, mistakes."

Bottom Line

Have you observed aggressive parents?

Things that are Worth the Money

“Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Typical financial advice tells you how NOT to spend money. But I like the list at wisebread.com of 11 Things That Are Worth the Money.

1. Insurance - spend a little to avoid having to pay a lot
2. Culture - I'm all for culture, my wife & I love museums and visited one just a few days ago. But it's also easy to overspend here. We don't do Broadway Plays - I'd love to but the cost is ridiculous. We also save money by renting CDs instead of going to movie theaters.
3. Doctor Visits - your health is worth spending a co-pay for
4. Education - maybe. There is much talk of a "higher-education bubble" where the cost of college now exceeds the benefits. Education is great - but look for cheaper ways to get a college degree.
5. A Haircut - it is important to look nice, people do judge by looks. Just don't overspend at post hair salons.
6. Health - buy healthy food and do what is necessary to get some exercise
7. Home Maintenance & Repair  - a home is the most expensive thing you own - treat it well.
8. A Sharp Interview Outfit - see #5
9. Well-Made Shoes - Not sure if the list is thinking of dress shoes for looking good, like #5 and #8, or well-made shoes that won't hurt your feet.
10. Travel - Don't go into debt but travel is a great form of education. And fun too.
11. Visiting Family & Friends - "maintaining those relationships is something you can't afford to not do"

Bottom Line

What items do you think are worth the money?

Do you know where your family is?

Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones of them.

- Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome (121-180 AD)

Here's some preparedness advice from FEMA at Ready.gov

Your family may not be together when a disaster strikes so it is important to plan in advance: how you will get to a safe place; how you will contact one another; how you will get back together; and what you will do in different situations. Read more about Family Communication during an emergency.

Ready.gov has made it simple for you to make a family emergency plan. Download the Family Emergency Plan and fill out the sections before printing it or emailing it to your family and friends.

You should also inquire about emergency plans at places where your family spends time: work, daycare and school, faith organizations, sports events and commuting. If no plans exist, consider volunteering to help create one. Talk to community leaders, your colleagues, neighbors and members of faith or civic organizations about how you can work together in the event of an emergency. You will be better prepared to safely reunite your family and loved ones during an emergency if you think ahead and communicate with others in advance.

Bottom Line

Identify a contact such as a friend or relative who lives out-of-state for household members to notify after an emergency. Local phone lines can become overloaded so it may be easier to make a long-distance phone call than to call across town. An out-of-town contact may be in a better position to communicate among separated family members.

Be sure every member of your family knows the phone number and has a cell phone, coins or a prepaid phone card to call the emergency contact.

If you have a cell phone, program that person(s) as "ICE" (In Case of Emergency) in your phone. If you are in an accident, emergency personnel will often check your ICE listings in order to get a hold of someone you know. Make sure to tell your family and friends that you’ve listed them as emergency contacts.

Teach family members how to use text messaging. Text messages can often get around network disruptions when a phone call might not be able to get through.

Subscribe to alert services. Many communities now have systems that will send instant text alerts or e-mails to let you know about bad weather, road closings, local emergencies, etc.

What's a first cousin twice removed?

Cousins are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.
- Ed Cunningham

Knowing your family history can help you to remember all those relatives that you met yesterday with Thanksgiving dinner. Doing genealogy online is another way to discover distant relatives.

I recently received over 20 pages of family data on relatives of my grandmother's mother, a Sanderson. The individuals listed are my 2nd and 3rd cousins many times removed.

What is a 'removed' cousin? Let's start with siblings. A person is your brother or sister if you share the same parents. (For this blog I'll ignore half-X relations where just a single relative is shared.) A person is your cousin if you have a pair of common grandparents. Your second cousin if the nearest shared relative is a great-grandparent. Third cousins if a shared 2*great grandparent and so on.

But what if the two people comparing family trees are not of the same "generation"? The 'removed' tag indicates how many generations the separation is. My cousin's children are called my cousins once removed. My cousin is also a grandparent so her grandkids are my 1st cousins twice removed.  My parent's cousins are also my cousins but once removed.

Bottom Line

How many cousins once removed do you have?

When to take a pay cut

"No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home."
-Benjamin Disraeli

There's a interesting article at Penelope Trunk Blog about the times in your life when it's OK to take a pay cut.

1. For emotional Independence. Yes you could make more with a large firm but you want to be your own boss and run your own business.
2. When changing careers. You're doing something new for you, why should you still get the big bucks.
3. When you're over 40 years old. Salary peaks at age 40! (that's a rude shock to learn). There are exceptions - lawyers, surgeons(?), and those who succeed in climbing the corporate ladder.
4. If unemployed for six months.  You'll most like need to take a pay cut to get hired again.
5. If changing jobs to be close to family. Relationships trump money.
6. If you get a great boss.
7. If you can not cope with the stress of not working.
8. If you need better insurance.

Bottom Line

Penelope has an excellent conclusion,

You are not your salary. You are not worth less in the world because you are paid less in your job. Get your self-worth from a wide range of things and a pay cut won't matter to you. Focus on the components of a good job: learning, personal growth, friends at work, and a good family life. All those things are worth a lot more than a pay cut.

Are You Better Off Than Your Grandparents?

My current commuting book is called Aftershock. It's thought invoking but not the book I had intended to listen to. I was expecting Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown  by David Wiedemer but what I got from the library was Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future  by Robert Reich, Labor Secretary under President Clinton.

The book I got is 100% Democratic-Keynesian economics which believes that one person's spendings goes towards anothers earnings, who in turn spends and supports anothers earnings. This circle continues on and helps support a normal functioning economy. Recessions/Depressions are difficult to break out of because unemployment leads to less spending, so business produce less and hire less, which increases unemployment, and around we go. Keynes advocated government spending to break out of this cycle and this was adopted (reluctantly) by FDR during the Great Depression and enthusiastically by Obama in the Great Recession with the Trillion dollar Stimulus.

Nancy Pelosi was criticized by Conservatives for saying unemployment checks were part of the Stimulus and good for economy but she's right according to Keynes. Unemployment checks allow the unemployed to keep buying and creating demand for goods and services. Ditto for Social Security with helps the elderly and disabled to continue to spending. Personally I now favor the government putting money into the hands of impoverished individuals and letting individuals determine how to spend it, a bottom-up money flow. The alternative Stimulus of shovel-ready projects and funding from the top-down has not worked. Stimulus to companies has created a limited number of jobs but often at a cost of $80K to $100K per job created. We might have been better off giving $20K to 4 or 5 families instead of a single (temporary) job created. [Conservative agree that individuals must spend but argue that if we lower taxes then families will have more money to spend and we won't need the government to act as a middle man and redistributer of cash.]

Reich claims that the economy is better off when money is widely distributed. The one family with a new job can only eat and spend so much whereas 5 families with $20K handouts will spend more collectively and create a larger economic boost. From Reich's viewpoint the problem with the Super Rich is not that they earn too much but that they spend too little. If you earn $500 million a year you'd have $240,000 to spend EVERY hour of the working day to use it up (ignoring taxes). Conspicuous consumption and a fleet of servants is a good thing because it puts money back into the economy. If the vast sum of money is not spent, where does it go? In the good-old days the money might go to an endowment or matching fund for a college or hospital, or invested in a company. Or the money might have gone into a bank, giving the bank the funds to make loans to businesses and families so they can improve themselves. But now the cash goes into hedge funds or investment banking whose purpose it to make a great returns by gambling on "sure-bets"; investing in precious metals, foreign currencies, or stock in proven, successful companies. The money won't typically go to the risky new business.

How did we get into the current economic mess? A key point to Reich's book is that the middle class has not benefited from America's growth for the past 40 years. The money has been diverted to the upper 2% or less of families and does not flow back into the economy as described above. He compares it to a poker game where one player wins most of the chips and everyone else must bow out of the game. During the golden age of prosperity after the great depression, average income for families rose from $15,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars) to $40,000 by 1970. An almost 3-fold (300%) increase. So most families could afford to buy TVs and fridges, a car, etc. But since 1970 the household income has risen to only $45,000, a measly 12% increase over 40 years.  So there's no money for a better lifestyle. We are stuck at the same standard of living as our grandparents.

Is this because the American economy flat lined for 40 years? No. Real income for families in the top 75% and 90% brackets did increase by 60% or more.

The book also suggests that the reality for average families is worse than the graph shows. While household income was increased (slightly) Reich claims that Individual Income has declined and households have been forced to use "coping" methods. I've not been able to find support for a decline but I did find one table where individual average earnings for males has not improved since 1976. Real wages for women has improved and for many households the "increase" in earnings is due to having both parents working. Also both husbands and wives put in longer shifts, creating a species of family Reich calls DINS — “double income, no sex.”  According to some estimates, Americans sleep an average of one or two fewer hours per night than did their parents in the 1960s; in 2007 they spent a whopping $23.9 billion on sleep aids, from white-noise machines to medications.

The household situation is like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass; one must run as fast as one can just to stay in the same place.

Bottom Line

Is there a solution? Reich favors stronger unions, taxing the rich, and other traditional Democratic ideas which I don't buy into. He also recommends government support for research and infrastructure which I do agree with. What's missing from his book is the Conservative idea that business must WANT to hire. When government regulations become extreme businesses won't expand and may even shut down and leave. I recall an account by a Surfboard maker who described how regulators in California drove him out of the state. Or a recent government raid on Gibson guitars (over the wood they use?) Or raids on bunny farmers. Reagan rightly realized that government must encourage business to grow and hire. And not with temporary stimulus handouts or tax credits. These are short-term fixes. And subsidizing the public with money to maintain demand will only last so long if there are no profits being made to flow back via taxes.

We need to find ways to hire more people in productive work. But how?

Things to do this Weekend

“Hey Boo Boo, let's go get us a pic-a-nic basket” -Yogi Bear

On weekends my wife & I often have this dialog,
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know, what do you want to do?"
"I don't know ..."

If you're stuck in this same loop of indecision,
WiseBread.com suggests 47 low-cost ways to have fun this weekend.

1. Go to a local Park

2. Watch the Sunset

3. Pack a Picnic Lunch and find a Shady Spot to Enjoy
We saw one family having a picnic under a tree in the parking lot of a mall.

4. Play Board Games

5. Play Card Games
My grandparents used to invite a few friends over and have a card night. I've never done that.

6. Do a Road Rally With Friends

7. Go on a Digital Scavenger Hunt

8. Throw a Bring Your Own Everything Party

9. Have a Bonfire or Campfire in Your Backyard

10. Get Ice Cream

11. Make a Romantic Dinner at home

12. Grill Something New

13. Go to the Museum or Zoo
Take advantage of free or discount days.

14. Scan Your Old Photographs

15. Pretend You're a Tourist in Your Community

16. Organize a Neighborhood Cleanup

17. Go to the Farmers Market

18. Pick Strawberries or Other Fruit

19. Bake a Pie

20. Volunteer at a Soup Kitchen or Homeless Shelter

21. Invite Your Neighbors Over

22. Go Fishing

23. Go to the Beach

24. Go to the Library

25. Host a Classic Movie Marathon

26. Rearrange the Furniture in Your House

27. Write Out Your Bucket List and Pick One to Do

28. Put Together a Jigsaw Puzzle

29. Volunteer to Babysit for Someone Who "Needs a Break"

30. Clean Out Your Closet and Donate to a Thrift Store

31. Watch for Shooting Stars

32. Go on a Bike Ride

33. Take a Free Online Class

34. Write Out Your Life Plan

35. Set Three New Goals for Yourself

36. Find a Community Play to Attend

37. Help Someone in Need

38. Buy Food for the Homeless and Listen to Their Stories

39. Go Bowling

40. Visit Garage Sales and Look for Deals

41. Tour the Local Fire or Police Station and Thank Them for Their Service

42. Visit a Local Nursing Home and Engage With the Residents

43. Plant a Garden

44. Go Dancing

45. Walk Through the Craft Store and Start an Art Project

46. Host a "Minute to Win It" Party

47. Write a Letter to a Family Member You Haven't Talked to in a While

Bottom Line

There's lots to do! Get going!

25 Documents You Need Before You Die

"Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live."
Henry Van Dyke

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 25 Documents You Need Before You Die.

• An original Will (be sure it is legal and notarized) stored with your attorney or in a courthouse.
• (optional) A revocable living trust can be changed anytime during your lifetime. You can transfer ownership of various assets to the trust and serve as the trustee on behalf of beneficiaries you designate.
• A "letter of instruction" is a supplement to a will that lists the names and contact information of your attorneys, accountants and financial advisers as well as "instructions" to follow upon your death. The letter of instruction is NOT a legal document and is not binding upon your heirs. It expresses your preferences and should be readily accessible, especially if it contains instructions on funeral arrangements.
• A durable financial power-of-attorney form. Without it, no one can make financial decisions on your behalf in the event that you are incapacitated.
• List all safe-deposit boxes owned. Have one or more family members registered so they can open the box without a court order. When my sister and I were registered recently BOTH my parents had to approve the change since both were registered with the bank for the box.
• Include a copy of your marriage license and divorce decrees. Include the distribution sheet listing bank-account numbers that accompanied the divorce settlement to avoid disputes about ownership or payments due. Also include a copy of the most recent child-support payment order. In the majority of states, the obligation to pay child support still exists after death.

Proof of Ownership Documents

• Provide documents for all home and land owned, cemetery plots, cars, boats, stock certificates, savings bonds, brokerage accounts and escrow mortgage accounts. If you fail to tell heirs
  what you own (with proof) the assets could be lost forever.
• List all banking accounts and CDs. Include the online log-in information so family can notify the bank of your death. Abandoned accounts become the property of the state.
• Loans you made to others are assets which should be listed along with a copy of the loan agreement.
• List all debts you own and include the contract. This may include mortgages, car payments, bank loans, stocks on margin, etc.

Health-Care Privacy

• Provide a durable health-care power-of-attorney form so your designee can make health-care decisions on your behalf if you are incapacitated.  Otherwise federal health-information privacy laws will prevent doctors, hospitals and insurance companies from speaking with your designee. You may also need to fill out an Authorization to Release Protected Healthcare Information form.
• Write a living will detailing your medical wishes. Do you wish to be revived if your heart stops?
• Terminally ill patients may wish to have their doctors sign a do-not-resuscitate order.

Life Insurance

• Include a copy of all life-insurance policies. Family members need to know the name of the carrier, the policy number and the agent associated with the policy. Don't forget to include corporate life insurance you earned with retirement.

Bottom Line

These documents are useless if your heirs don't know about them. Or if they are locked inside a safe deposit box that they don't have the key to. Make sure your heirs know these documents exist and where to find them. Store copies outside the home in case you and your documents are lost in a fire, tornado, etc.

Why don't people prepare?

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
~Ogden Nash

My wife found an article (sorry I cannot locate the link) that lists several reasons why families are not prepared and set the reasons to the Acronym FAMILIES.

F (Fear) - It's just too much to think about. Or, what's the point, I'll be dead.
Solution: think of the positives - the peace of mind of knowing that you are ready should some misfortune happen.

A (Attention Span - lack thereof) I'll get around to it when I have the time. Or I'm just too busy.
Solution: preparedness can be done in little steps like buying extra cans of food when it is on sale, setting up an automatic deposit to emergency savings, etc. Lack of time can also mean that your life's priorities should be reexamined.

M (Media) The news, especially TV, creates a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario where every storm is urgent, breaking news and then turns out to be minor. People burn out and stop believing the warnings. Just how bad can that hurricane be if the newsman is outside standing in the middle of it?
Solution: if you have food storage and water storage you can "weather" most storms. The exception will be when ordered to evacuate the neighborhood.

I (Ill-informed) I have a 72-hour kit so I'm prepared. Or - the only way to be prepared is to learn survivalist skills and move to a farm.
Solution: the truth is in the middle. A 72-kit is not enough but you can be prepared without moving to the country and learning to live without civilization.

L (Lifestyle) I don't want to change how I live, I'm comfortable and happy as-is.
Solution: It's great if you want to learn to make your own bread but you can be prepared in little steps as described above and modest changes like filling up the gas in your car more often so it never goes below a half.

I (Income) I can't afford it.
Solution: I'm not a big fan of spending thousands to buy a year's supply of freeze-dried food for the family. Stock up on items you use during sales and you'll save money in the long run.

E (Ego) I'll just call 9-1-1 and I'll be taken care of.
Solution: during an emergency thousands of others are calling 9-1-1 also? What makes you think that you're at the front of the queue?

S (Selflessness) I'm not worried about me; I want to take care of others.
Solution: if you're not prepared you'll be a burden on others who will need to feed you. Only if you have extra supplies will you be in a position to help others.

Bottom Line

Don't delay - prepare today!

30-day Challenges

Matt Cutts

"30 days is enough time to build a habit"
- Matt Cutts

About a month ago on one of my favorite blogs I read about a recent TED talk regarding self-improvement through 30-day challenges. I showed it to my wife who thought it was a great idea. Then a few days later we tried to find the post and could not find it. We tried Google and searched the archives of blogs we frequent but no luck. Today I tried Google again and found it. When an idea becomes popular it will rise in Google ranking so it pays to retry.

The talk was by Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s Webspam team, at TED University. The presentation is not online yet but Matt keeps a blog on the topic at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/30-days/.

The first entry is June 2009,

30 days is enough time to build a habit. Last month, I started trying to walk 10,000 steps a day for 30 days. I didn’t walk 10K steps every day, but I did keep at it until I’d walked over 10K steps for at least 30 days. In the process, I discovered that walking to the grocery store can be a relaxing way to unwind and get some exercise. I’m just now wrapping up an effort to not watch any television for 30 days.

Each month Matt sets a new personal challenge. They have included:

- Biking to work
- Reading 15 books in 30 days (he managed 12). His wife tries to read 50 pages every days and loves it.
- Not using Microsoft software (find alternatives to everything MS, can you tell he works for Google?)
- A digital cleanse, no twitter, no facebook, no email outside of work
- No iPhone
- Write a novel in 30 days
- meditate 10-15 minutes every day
- 30 days with no caffeine
- 30 days with no sugar. Matt says, "That was hard. My wife and I did this one together and it was the roughest."
- get my finances in order
- Take a picture every day
- A new word a day

Future ideas include:

- 30 days as a vegetarian.
- read the Bible (or the Qur’an) in 30 days
- 30 days of trying to learn to play guitar.
- try one new thing a day for 30 days.
- draw something everyday for 30 days.
- try polyphasic sleep for 30 days.
- go 30 days spending as little money as possible.
- learn as much of a new language as possible in 30 days.
- no complaining
- learn to sing

Bottom Line

We're going to try this at my home. For April we have picked home improvement. A task everyday to clean-up or straighten the house and prepare the garden for spring planting. We recently had some interior rooms repainted which led to changing the furniture arrangement, different items hung on the walls, and disorder in all the other rooms where stuff was put while the living room was painted. We hope that the house will sparkle by the end of April.

Common Money Mistakes

Picasso, self portrait

“I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”
- Pablo Picasso

The website GetRichSlowly has a guest post from Money Girl, Quick and Dirty tips for Richer Life that describes Common Money mistakes at different stages of life.

Your 20's - You've graduated college and are good making money (hopefully). Don't spend it all! And don't get cocky:
- Avoid accumulating credit-card debt: don't fall into the trap of spend and pay later
- Do participate in a 401(k): yes retirement is far away but it takes time to build a nestegg that will last for decades of retirement. Start now!
- Seek professional advice: admit it, you've new to managing money. Learn how to do it right with an advisor or financial coach.

Your 30's - at this stage you most likely have a family and home to care for. Watch out for the following:
- Emergency Fund: you should have emergency savings to cover at least six months of living expenses like rent, groceries, and utilities. Given the current economy, unemployment is lasting for more than six months so go for a year of savings if you can.
Be honest in what a month of expenses is. Look at your bank account and credit cards to see what you really spend monthly.
- Don't skimp on retirement savings: invest all you can for retirement, you won't regret it.
- Insurance: be fully insured to protect yourself from financial disaster if you lose your house, your car, or suffer extreme illness with huge bills.

Your 40's - the kids are leaving the nest, retirement is only two decades away
- Don't ignore retirement:  use online retirement calculators to see if you are on track or falling short. It is not too late to invest with 20 or 25 more years of employment
- Don't accumulate debt: Debt is the opposite of retirement savings. It eats aways at your net worth with interest payments. Aim to be debt free ASAP.
- Don't raise financially ignorant children - teach your kids to manage money. Don't let them become adult leeches that will suck you bank accounts dry. And don't pay their way into an expensive car or home. It took you years of hard work to get the lifestyle you have. They should not expect to start at your level. Also be careful with loaning money - loans to relatives are the cause of much bitterness

Bottom Line

"Taking the time to learn about money and wealth pays off whether you’re a young student, a grandparent, or somewhere in between." - Money Girl

Greatest Risks for Children

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas”

- Paula Poundstone

The Consumerist reports on an interesting story from the NPR.

According to a new survey, the top five calamities parents fret over happening to their kids are (starting with the highest concern):

1. kidnapping
2. school snipers
3. terrorists
4. dangerous strangers
5. drugs

What parents should be concerned about are the top five ways children actually get hurt and/or killed:

1. car accidents
2. homicide by someone the child knows
3. abuse
4. suicide
5. drowning

Why the difference in these two lists?

"Parents fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news or from a friend without stopping to think about the odds the same thing could happen to their children," reports NPR.

Bottom Line

Buckle up in the car!  And beware of friends, not strangers.

Family Communication Plan

-I've exceeded my unlimited texting.

When preparing for emergencies, you might think of flashlights, radio, water, food and first aid but few people think about planning for how to communicate. Suppose your child is at school when an evacuation notice is issued. The local phone lines will be overwhelmed. How will you find out where your child is at and how can they communicate to you?

Fortunately new technologies provide many options for social networking like texting, Facebook, and email. For the old fashioned, try calling a relative that is long distance. These are separate phone circuits and often work then local calls can not connect. Make sure everyone knows which relative to call.

To help you create a plan and share it, here are two sites...

1. Create a family contact plan online at http://ready.adcouncil.org/beprepared/fep/fep.do
This site prompts you for descriptions and contact information for all family members, plus work, and school, and police, etc and then location and phone for emergency family gathering sites. The information is NOT saved online. Instead you will print out wallet sized cards with this information for family members to carry.

2. The web site http://ready.adcouncil.org/beprepared/quickshare.html  prompts you for emergency contact information and then displays this back so you can copy and paste the information to friends (and your Bishop and EPS) via email. The following information is collected...

Emergency Plan information for <person X>
My Emergency Contact <a local person>
My Out-of-Town Contact <a distant person>
My Neighborhood Meeting Place <place>

Bottom Line

I hope you find this helpful. There are few things worse than not knowing the status of a loved one during/after an emergency.

Rent or Buy?

Our house, is a very, very, very fine house.
With two cats in the yard ...
- CROSBY, STILLS and NASH

Today I encourage you to read the article, The Renting Alternative Will Undermine The Housing Market For Years, from BusinessInsider.com. Ignore the misleading title. What the article is really about and covers well is the increasing tendency of successful individuals and couples to choose renting an apartment over buying a house. As one person put it,

"With a pool I don't pay for, a gym that's open 24 hours a day, and emergency plumbers on staff at 2 a.m., I have enough responsibility in my life that I don't need a home."

A commenter from Chicago says,

"I think we might be renters forever. My husband and I love sitting ... in the park reading the Sunday New York Times while our landlord is stuck fixing the garbage disposal. Time is priceless. And we are nowhere nearly as freaked out about finances as our friends are."

Bottom Line

I knew a man who worked as a school teacher by and a troubled youth counselor overnight in order to raise the money for a home for his family (this was back in the days you needed a real deposit on a new home.)
At the time he lived in a beautiful apartment complex with a tennis court, rec center, swimming pool, green fields, etc. but he felt it essential that his kids had their own lawn to play on.

Personally I'd be very happy to give up lawn care, etc. (I'm grateful my wife mows the lawn.)

Social Steganography

"I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited." - Oscar Wilde

Today I recommend the article, Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight. I have a friend with a 13-yr-old daughter and the daughter loves facebook (FB). The mother is concerned about FB and carefully watches her daughter's page for inappropriate topics and language. And issues have come up - one boy asked for sexy photos for example.

In the article cited above, the author describes a similar situation where a mother comments on her daughter's every post which "scares everyone away". The daughter, Carmen, has to think - How will my mother respond to my post? Will she freak out? So Carmen has learned to comment in "code" using references her mother will think is safe but her friends know differently. The example given is quoting lyrics from Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" a happy song on the surface but if you know the story, "Life of Brian", it's sung by men being tortured to death by crucifixion.

The art of hiding secret messages in plain sight is called Steganography. Youth are forever creating new slang words to hide what they are saying. It's fat, or cool or bad. Parents are meant to be confused - does bad mean good?

Bottom Line

This gives a whole new spin to comments on FB. I often see song quotes or odd statements that have no context (for me). I'll have to start looking past the quotes to find the hidden message.

Avoid College?

“You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does..."” - Guitarist Tom Petty

DailyFinance.com has an interesting article titled, Seven Reasons Not to Send Your Kids to College. I was recently talking with my wife about the NY state HS exams in which 30% more students failed under new grading rules. It's horrible, she said, that so many HS graduates are not prepared for college. I countered that perhaps not everyone should be expected to be college ready. Before WWII, college attendance was mostly for the very rich or those on professional tracks like law and medicine. Everything changed with the GI Bill that paid WWII veterans to get a BA degree. By the next generation it became normal, even expected, for children to go to college and a college degree (of any type) became required for many jobs.

So is college worth the cost? The Seven Reasons article says no.

1. More than 60% of students require more than 4 years to graduate so the cost may be higher than you expect. I wonder if this includes summer classes to makeup low grades?

2. The rate of inflation for college expenses is 10% a year! Since 1976 tuition has increased 9-fold versus 7-fold for health case and three-fold for general inflation. There is fear amongst university administrators that the tuition bubble is about to burst. College is no longer affordable, especially in this great recession.

3. A college graduate can expect to earn $800,000 more over a 45 year career. But if you invest $200,000 at 3% instead of spending it on tuition, room & board, and text books, you'll earn $851,000 over 49 years (45 working + 4 college). So if you put your money in a trust for your child, they may come out ahead.

4. The average debt burden of a graduate is $23,000, up from $13,000 ten years ago. Debt for a professional degree (graduate work) can exceed $200,000. That's a horrible way to start your career.

Not paying for college does not mean encouraging stupidity or idleness. Here are options to consider:

- Send them to a trade school or apprenticeship for profitable work in plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc.

- Allow them to enlist in the military and let it teach your child a trade and pay future college bills.

- Have them apply for a union job. Auto union workers and government union workers are doing quite well financially without college degrees. I know Iraq war veteran who is second generation garbage collector for NYC and is quite happy with the salary and benefits.

- Invest in your child's business venture(s); but require them to present a business plan first. Most attempts will fail - that's normal and they'll learn from the school of hard knocks. Thomas Edison was famous for his many failures but when he succeeded it was big. Ditto for Babe Ruth - he was the strike-out king but when he connected he was also the home run king.

- Give your child money to travel the world or hike through Europe. They'll learn much more about the world than they would from a book or lecture.

- Encourage them to get a blue collar job. They'll learn the value of honest work and the value of money. After a few years they may decide that they want to attend college for a business or management degree - but now they have a goal with experience to back it up. I know a mature TV studio technician who has decided he wants to be lawyer so he can sue his former bosses. He's just completed his BA and will begin work on the law degree. I also know a legal secretary who was sponsored by the law firm she worked at to get a law degree.

- Encourage them to volunteer full-time or go on a mission. The Peace Corp and foreign missions are other ways to see the world.

- Encourage them to educate themself! College level text books can be checked out from the library or purchased used online. There are many excellent online university courses for free. With computer programming there are free code compilers and many free tutorials online. You can teach yourself coding and have all the tools you need for free (except for the computer).

Bottom Line

There's nothing wrong with delaying college until a person is mature enough to appreciate the value of what he/she is getting for the vast amount of money spent. For the self-starter, create a business or product; but be sure to do some reading on business principles or hire good managers. The computer industry is filled with stories of startups who created a great product in their garage, achieved national success, and then failed or were forced out of the company because they had no experience running a large company.

Here's a book on the same topic:
Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids---and What We Can Do About It

And a related story I just read:

For-Profit Colleges Caught On Video Encouraging Financial Aid Fraud
Investigators found that all 15 colleges investigated "made deceptive or otherwise questionable statements to GAO's undercover applicants," and four of them "encouraged fraudulent practices."
The investigation also found that for-profit colleges are often a waste of money because the same associate's degrees and certificates are usually available at nearby public colleges and community colleges for significantly less. For example:
“A student interested in a massage therapy certificate costing $14,000 at a for-profit college was told that the program was a good value. However the same certificate from a local community college cost $520.”

Money & Marriage

"Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money."-anon

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article entitled, Questions to Ask After 'I Will' but Before 'I Do'.

“Couples don't fight over love. They fight over money. They fight because one person didn't balance the checkbook or made a bone-headed investment without consulting the other.” - WSJ

Here are topics to discuss with your fiancee before you marry:

1. What are your Assets and Liabilities?
Don’t wait until after the wedding to discover your partner has a huge school loan. Or skimp on the wedding and then discover she/he is independently wealthy but also cheap. Or has a huge portfolio of stocks but refuses to sell them for any reason.

2. What are your long-term monetary goals?
Is there a debt you want to pay off ASAP? A car or big vacation you want to save for? Make sure your spouse is in agreement.

3. What are your money habits?
Do you max our your credit card and then make the minimum payment while your partner to be abhors debt and pays for everything in cash upfront? If your spending habits clash, expect some heated fights ahead.

4. How will you divide financial duties?
Who will balance the checkbook, pay the bills, decide on which bank, CDs and other investments? Who will deal with insurance companies and medical bills? How will you decide on large costs like home remodeling, a new car, new suits, etc.

5. How will you divide the money?
If you both work will you keep separate accounts or pool the money together? If you share, will there be limits on individual spending? Imagine a spouse who enjoys a $50 lunch each day at work or with friends. Or has an expensive hobby that drains the account dry.

Bottom Line

From WSJ - “What couples don't always grasp is that money is rarely the real culprit. It's the lack of communication, often stemming from a lack of knowledge about each other's personal financial quirks and beliefs.”

What’s in your First Aid kit?

“It would be terrible if the Red Cross Bloodmobile got into an accident. No, wait. That would be good because if anyone needed it, the blood would be right there.”-unknown

For the Cub Scout Readyman activity, boys are required to inspect a First Aid kit and explain the contents. So what exactly should they expect to find inside? If you buy a First Aid kit with “100 pieces”, you can bet 80-90% of the content is just generic “Band-Aids” in various sizes. A kit should contain so much more.

First, a short digression. Do you know the difference between a dressing and a bandage? A dressing covers the wound – typically an absorbent gauze. A bandage holds the dressing on the wound and keeps it from falling off. It could be tape or an elastic wrap. A Band-Aid is a product by Johnson and Johnson that combines a dressing with an adhesive bandage.

So yes, item #1 in a kit needs to be several sizes of adhesive bandages to cover your basic cuts and scratches. These can be bought cheaply in bulk at dollar stores or drug stores.

For large wounds, buy several packets of sterile gauze (four inch squares are best). Again buy a large package and share with friends. You’ll also need medical adhesive tape or elastic bandages to hold down the gauze. I favor elastic bandages since these can also be used as wraps for a sprained foot or knee or hand or elbow. You might need to include a small pair of scissors if your bandage roll resists tearing strips off.

Before applying the dressing, you’ll want to clean small wounds with triple-antibiotic ointment. Don’t try to clean or wash large gaping or profusely bleeding wounds. Cover large wounds immediately, apply pressure to stop the bleeding, and see a doctor.

Clean your hands with an antiseptic hand cleaner before (and after) applying First Aid. For First Aid kits in your car or other situations where you might be aiding a stranger, wear rubber gloves to prevent blood borne disease contamination. Include a plastic bag or garbage bag to safely dispose of blood soaked items.

If you’re trained in CPR, add a barrier mask to your public kit to block germs (and vomit) when doing mouth-to-mouth.

Don’t forget to include items for pain relief like insect bite swabs (Hydrocortisone to prevent itching) and child-safe acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Aspirin is discouraged for children under 19 as it can cause Reye’s Syndrome. Chewable aspirin is encouraged for adults who may be suffering a heart attack.

Tweezers are essential for removing splinters but potentially harmful for insect bite/stings. Scrape away, never tweeze, a bee stringer. Tweezing will push more venom into the body. Likewise use tweezers with care when pulling away a tick. Pull gently and slowly to avoid breaking off the tick’s head and leaving that embedded in the skin to cause an infection. Never squeeze the tick's body when it's attached as this will push more tick germs into the bloodstream increasing the chance of Lyme disease.

Include one or more large triangular bandages (like the Scout neckerchief) as a splint for injuries. You can make these yourself out of old sheets.

For extra credit, include an instant cold pack. These can reduce swelling with sprains.

In cold climates, an instant heat pack might save you from frostbite. Stuff it in your shoes or between layers of gloves. Do not apply directly to skin.

For kits outside the house, add a space blanket. Keep victims warm and covered after trauma to prevent shock.

If you have the space, add some Calamine lotion for Poison Ivy.

Last but not least, include a good First Aid book (or booklet) that you like and can understand.

Bottom Line

Your need at least one well equipped First Aid kit in your house. Another for each car. Your workplace should have a kit (required by law?) - do you know where it is?

Customize your kits for your activities. If you camp or hike or play sports you'll want more protection from insects, poison ivy, sprains, broken bones, etc.

Resources

http://www.redcross.org/images/pdfs/code/First_Aid_Kit_Contents.pdf
http://www.redcross.org/services/hss/lifeline/fakit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_aid_kit
http://kidshealth.org/parent/firstaid_safe/home/firstaid_kit.html
http://www.survival-center.com/firstaid/kit.htm
http://youthsports.rutgers.edu/resources/administrative/recommended-first-aid-kit-contents