Are you possibly looking for more ways to better help your children understand the rather unnatural concept of money and also perhaps looking for ways to better maintain financial and emotional harmony in your household? Do your children sometimes seem to want everything they see at the store and are you trying to find a way to convey to them that it just isn’t financially feasible and yet also keep them happy and materially appeased at the same time? There are many ways to accomplish this and it is best to employ all of the methods together in concert for the best results.
Allowance
One common way to help your children understand your own financial situation and also provide them with funds for their own purchases is by setting up a smaller model of a regular adult income for them to better understand such basic concepts as a regular and periodic input of funds available for their use. Give your child a weekly allowance for purchases such as toys and video games and comic books. This will foster a real understanding of what is involved in a regular income and will also allow them to make their own purchases. You may want to approve the purchases if they are under age 5 and also help them to keep a basic budget by tallying their purchases on a small notebook or similar.
Rewards for Goals
Another motivating and enriching method that you should also likely consider in addition to a basic allowance is helping your children to set and reach their personal goals is by offering them significant rewards for their efforts and successes. While you should be sure never to set the goals too high as this can discourage them in the future, you should still make them significant enough to give your children a feeling of true success. The reward you give them should also be truly significant as it will give them something to achieve beyond the goals you set together, as they themselves may not consider as important at the moment. For example, learning to play the piano is a wonderful skill that your children may not appreciate until much later, but they will likely appreciate a weekly toy purchase or ice cream sundae which coincides with their piano lesson. In addition, a major purchase or a trip to a theme park may be appropriate for their first recital. This may sound silly or excessive, but this is how adult monetary systems generally operate.
Encourage Entrepreneurial Ideas
One more really great gift you can give your children is to help them to make money by doing various things like running a lemon-aid stand in the summer or some other similar small business of their own. You should act as an investor to better encourage their initial business ideas, since they will likely be reluctant to spend their allowance on lemons and sugar.
These are three simple gifts you can give your children to really provide some truly rewarding understanding of the monetary system and gifts like these will keep on giving throughout their lives.
Even though there are millions of American without life insurance coverage it is coming apparent that some of the expenses that would come with these benefits are not worth the costs that are attached to them. After reviewing the total package on some life insurance companies and other insuring companies, the time to take a last ditch effort may be now.
Our lives are full of insurance claims and coverage. We are made to carry mandatory coverage for each vehicle we own and even for our homes. The health coverage we have comes with insurance, the boats we have, the life insurance policies, even insurance to cover our credit. There are so many items that we have access to but are they all necessary? Most of them are not and when times get tough it’s time to decide on what can go and what must stay.
The car insurance and unpaid homes must carry insurance at all times. Once loans for your personal property are paid in full you can decide on the actual amount of coverage that you feel is necessary for your home and belongings. Do some shopping on auto and home insurance when your renewal comes around. It is worth it to move to a different company if the coverage is the same and the rates are lower. Consider raising your deductibles when/if you switch companies. Having a lower deductible, around two hundred dollars, can raise your premium by several hundreds of dollars each year so just raising your premiums to an average of five hundred can easily help add money to your pocket now, and help cover you in an emergency.
There are such insurance policies as ones that cover your credit on installment loans. Most people that have these loans actually posses the assets to cover and protect themselves in the event of disability, death, or unemployment. So you may want to reconsider these insurance rates as well. Your savings can equal around five hundred dollars a year on a four year term.
Life insurance policies are another situation all together. It is up to you to assess your need on a personal basis. If you have no children, or they are grown, this is a positive outlook if you are deciding to lower your costs. If your spouse works you have another advantage on lowering your life insurance needs. If your employer offers at least fifty thousand in coverage highly consider canceling your own policy temporarily if your assets do not exceed five hundred thousand total.
Tightening the belt lately? A lot of families are these days. It’s no surprise to a lot of people that the time has come to put the credit cards away and begin trying to pay on them instead of spending more with them. The frugal family is being smart and doing the right thing in this tough economy.
It may be different, but putting back a few dollars towards savings, and controlling your families spending will pay off when you realize you’ve become ahead of the game instead of dragging behind it.
A few simple tips can make a huge difference when it comes to thrifty living and simple savings. Begin paying cash for your gas purchases. Even if it means stopping weekly at an ATM before hitting up the local gas station, that two minute trip to the ATM could save you hundreds by the end of the year. When you pay for gas with a debit/credit card you automatically get charged an extra .10-.20 cents on every gallon. That’s up to $4.00 for every twenty gallons. Be prepared and keep a little cash on-hand. To make the gas last longer, keep your tire pressure accurate.
Drop the take-out. When you look at the added cost of eating out and average it with the cost of groceries you’ll see the lost cause of restaurants. It may be convenient having someone serve you, but you are certainly paying for the gratuity and the service. You can save money and get the same quality family time around the dinner table. Plan your meals in advance and buy in bulk for easy freezing and storing. Buy frozen and non-perishables while on sale and store for later meals.
Talk to your boss about a FSA. A flexible spending account is available through most employers and if yu have a family it can save you hundreds, even thousands of pre-tax dollars on health care every year. It just makes sense. The government is offering this plan to help people on health care costs and it is one of the best plans yet. Using a FSA can save you from paying any taxes on any medical expenses that you pay using the FSA. Plus you get up-front access to the full account balance at the beginning of each year. It pays to be frugal.
Recycling is a wonderful way to do your part in the quest for ecological balance and sustainability. To recycle is excellent, but there is yet another level of conscious ecological awareness that you will likely still want to introduce into your family’s daily life. What is additionally wonderful is just how much money you might actually save by doing it. Re-using takes many forms and it’s really up to you how far you want to go with your new ecological and money-saving project!
So how best to get started into your new green adventure and start saving money today? Here are a couple of ecologically-friendly money-saving ideas for your family!
Children’s Clothing
One way parents can really save a bundle, and possibly also do a service to the environment at the same time, is by handing down clothing from one child to another if their births are in relatively close succession. Also, accepting clothing from and giving clothing to friends, relatives, or organizations that distribute clothing to people who need it is a truly wonderful way to make sure that clothing stays in circulation. A general rule to go by is that if the clothing isn’t stained and has no holes or visible signs of wear, then it is possible that someone else will want it and wear it. Some people even prefer clothing that is second hand because of ecological reasons or simply personal style. In recent years second hand boutiques have been sprouting up all over. Some cater to the grass roots concept and are usually best, since paying top dollar at a boutique for a second hand piece of clothing is a bit ridiculous unless it is truly a beautiful antique. Your children may not be as open to the concept beyond a certain age, depending on their peer group. Keep this in mind and make sure they have the clothing they need to feel as confident as possible. In the “real world” the social skills and confidence they have will be at least as important as their education, so if they feel less confident in hand-me-downs then don’t skimp at their expense.
Washable Diapers
Yes, diapers are a likely topic of consideration in any discussion about families and ecological awareness when it comes to re-usability. Cloth diapers made of organic cotton are soft, comfortable for the wearer, and washable. While this may not sound most convenient, the alternative is a lot of disposable diapers in the course of a childhood and this is possibly not the most ecologically wise approach to the situation. As an additional bonus, the savings on your family budget could be rather immense. Imagine what you could buy for your child with all of the money you save on diapers!
Hopefully that is plenty to get you and your family started on an ecologically friendly re-using habit that should save you a lot of money also. Remember to listen to your children most of all. If they don’t feel comfortable then it isn’t worth it unless everyone on the planet agrees together.