I get a lot out of your financial insight!

Chris

My sister is 30, I am 25. She is not married, lives with my parents and has not stayed at a job for more than 3 years since graduating college. Since each of us graduated from college (respectively), we have both received financial help at different times from our parents, who fortunately have the ability to help us out. The money doled out is recorded in the back of a notepad in a central location in my parent’s house. Whenever I want to know how much I owe them or how much my sister owes them, I can go there an look. My sister’s amount is much higher than mine. It has gotten to the point that when they give my sister money, they simply subtract that from what I owe them. I like this idea since it works in my favor and I’m not in a position of needing the support from them.

I think this works out best. My sister needs to learn how to manage her money, just I had to (or sometimes still have to) learn to do it as well. This has been fairly constant while growing up as well: in high school, my sister went on a school trip abroad so they knew when I wanted to go too, they couldn’t/shouldn’t refuse. There are no hard feelings better my sister and me about money. We were raised under the same set of rules and understand that.

Trent, I jumped over to Flicker and read all about your garden. I laughed at how the fence is not 2 year old proof. I love your newsletter the most out of all of the ones I receive. Thank you.

Re: Sibling Equality: One of my sisters is a hand surgeon (I am so proud of her, and throw it into conversation whenever possible.) Apparently, there is a note in my parents’ will that she receives nothing, “and she knows why.” We all laugh about it, and I am sure my folks have helped her out quite a bit. I am ok with that.

Re: Mortgage Crisis: I think I read in the NY Times about a town in Europe that was in big financial trouble (no money for schools) because of some of those bad bond purchases. Not to defend the lenders by any means, I did see an interview with the president of some company stating that the mortgage companies are not set up for customer service and helping those who are defaulting. They were unprepared for the deluge of calls – did not have enough staff, and no training. I do think the added fees, that commented on here, are terrible.

If you are a healthy 30-year-old who supports a family, the risk of your death in the next 10 years is pretty slim. However, the financial consequences of your death would be catastrophic for your family. Thus, you purchase life insurance.

The risk of your child dying before adulthood is even smaller. And, in the cold world of numbers, the financial consequences are, in the long term, positive. You no longer have to pay child care, extra food, clothes, college, wedding. For the funeral, use the kid’s college savings that now won’t be needed. That’s a very harsh assessment I know. But buying life insurance for your child is a purely financial decision.

Yes, there’s a very small risk that your child will develop a condition that makes him/her uninsurable as an adult. But to mitigate that risk, you have to keep paying for the same policy without fail for the rest of the child’s life. The risk of you (or your adult child) failing to make all those payments is probably greater than the risk that your child will end up uninsurable.

Life insurance sales brochures present you with the problem: how much would it cost if your child died? But… was that problem already on your mind? Would you have ever thought about that cost in detail if you weren’t presented the opportunity to buy a product?

The short-term costs of a child’s death are roughly equal to the costs of replacing a vehicle after the sudden loss of yours (mechanical failure or uncovered loss). The latter is much more likely to actually happen.

Save your money for a new car and enjoy your child’s life!

I also agree about the points about being unable to work due to emotional suffering.

@all:
How does Trent make money from The Simple Dollar?
More people are interested in personal finance than you think More people read this site than you think.

What do you think of the coupon use at drug stores like CVS and Walgreens, which bring about free items with their Extra Bucks and Register Rewards programs.

Some people seem to do very well with them and have a stockpile of items, but it seems to me that they are spending money that they would not ordinarily be spending. Any thoughts or comments?

However, re: payday loans. I’m seeing an advert for a UK payday loans company in your google ads – I guess that you can’t see this.

Actually, I doubt they’ve cost you income in the long run. I think you’d lose a fair amount of your traffic if you said “yes” to either of the first two, costing you a lot more money in the long term. Not so sure about the payday loan ads, though. That stand may very well cost you money since I’m guessing most of your readership never even looks at the ads (I know I don’t) and wouldn’t even notice if you allowed payday loan places to advertise.

In regards to the Vegan question/comments from last week: You frequently state that the sign of a good book is one that makes you think repeatedly about it after reading it, even if you don’t agree with the main premise of the book. I just finished Gary Francione’s book “An Introduction to Animal Rights” and I think that it would qualify as a good book under your criteria. I’m guessing that based on your reading speed you would be able to read it in a day or so. It’s worth checking out from your library if they have it.

Back to the Vegan argument from last week. You frequently state that the sign of a good book is one that makes you think repeatedly about it after reading it, even if you don’t agree with the main premise of the book. I just finished Gary Francione’s book “An Introduction to Animal Rights” and I think that it would qualify as a good book under your criteria. I’m guessing that based on your reading speed you would be able to read it in a day or so. It’s worth checking out from your library if they have it.