Today, I’m going to talk about my daughter.

In many regards, she’s a pretty typical four year old girl – at least judging by her peers. She likes to play dress-up – in fact, we have a dress-up tub in our basement just for her. Her favorite place on our property is the sandbox, and the part about winter that she hates is that she really can’t play in that sandbox. She loves to sing and dance, and we can rarely drive more than two minutes without her bursting into song in the back seat. Her favorite toys are building blocks, from which she can build giant towers and crazy sculptures. She seems to believe that a day isn’t complete without an art project, preferably one that involves paper and glue and markers and pens and clay.

Of our three children, she’s often the one I have the hardest time relating to. I grew up in a household that held nothing but boys. All I have is brothers, and all of their friends and most of my friends growing up were boys. The only children close to my age that lived near us were boys. I’m used to the “boy” experience and I understand how boys respond to most situations. The behavior of my oldest child and my youngest child – both boys – makes sense to me based on my own experiences.

My daughter is a bit of a different story. I find myself often watching how she acts more than the other two simply because she often reacts and does things in ways that I don’t expect. She’s a beautiful enigma to me at many times.

After her fourth birthday, we started giving her an allowance, just like her older brother. They both use Money Savvy Pigs and divide up the small weekly allowance (paid in quarters) among the slots.

My oldest son has always taken the “invest” slot in the bank for granted. He puts the minimum amount of quarters into that slot and, although he occasionally asks about it, he actually focuses more on the “save” and “donate” slots. He’s not much of an impulse spender, as he’s already been able to save up for a few very expensive items, and he’s proud to be saving his nickels and dimes for Jump for Joel.

My daughter, on the other hand, was immediately curious about that “invest” slot. What will we do with that money? Will we spend it? What does “I-N-V-E-S-T” mean?

I told her that the money in that slot was for saving for things when she was much older, like college or a car or something like that. We talked a little bit about how many quarters would be in that slot by the time she was sixteen.

Then, I set the hook. “You know, the money in that slot has the power to grow on its own.”

Her eyes lit up. I explained that we could take that money to a bank and put it in a savings account, and for every four quarters she left in there for a while, the bank would give her a penny. I mentioned that there were other things you can invest in where you might even earn more than that, but you might also lose some money, too.

She was fascinated. She wanted to start “invess-TING” right now. Right now.

Before I had a daughter, I didn’t know what to expect. Now I do. This girl is a thoughtful, intelligent, quick-witted, vibrant person who deserves every chance in the world to take it all by storm. She has all the ability in the world and a skill set that is different from but at least equal to that of her siblings.

When I hear that there is still a pay discrepancy between genders, I shudder. She’s growing the passion and skills needed to take on practically any job thrown before her, so why should she not receive equal pay?

When I see that an opportunity discrepancy still exists (whether in fact or in perception), I shake my head. She’s incredibly capable of taking on impressive challenges, even at her young age. Why shouldn’t she get that opportunity as she reaches adulthood?

One of the personal goals that Sarah and I have for our children is to ensure that they can follow any educational path after high school that they wish and they won’t be limited by money or economic opportunity. Part of achieving that goal is to make sure that they have every skill and every piece of knowledge that we can give to them as they grow up. I want every single one of them to swing for the fences, and the biggest thing I hope for is that they’re each judged by and are given opportunities by the level of their skills and the content of their character, not by their gender.

How do we do that? We have well-funded 529s for each of them. We spend a lot of time engaging with them on educational endeavors – a trip to the Science Center of Iowa is a family event, for example, and we’re constantly doing writing activities and math activities and science experiments together as a family. In contrast to a lot of what we see around us, we’re encouraging our children to take control of tasks and projects and assert their independence. For example, our six year old can find his clothes, take a shower, get himself dressed, brush his teeth, pack his backpack, and get out to the bus stop in the morning (I’m around to converse with him, but he does this himself).

This little girl (and her two siblings) deserves every opportunity in the world, and it’s our job to make sure they have every tool we can give them to grab ahold of those opportunities and run wild with them. Doing that is a financial commitment and a time commitment and an energy and patience commitment, but it’s one that has giant rewards: independently functioning and thinking adults who can make a positive impact in the world.

That, to me, is “invess-TING” at its finest.

I have a question I think it would be interesting for you to attempt to tackle. You approach so many decisions with a methodical and disciplined calculus that often leads you to great time and money savers…Can you address what I’ll call ” the children paradox” and maybe provide some insight that I am not seeing.

Children paradox: “Children cost lots of time and money, so maybe on an individual basis we have incentive not to have them. But in the aggregate, we need them (to sustain the species, economy, etc.)”

On a personal basis, I see having children as a money and time drain. At the very least, it will be an alteration in lifestyle. I question the return on investment in going down to one income (for at least some period, up to five years), incurring the cost of child care, inconveniences to lifestyle, increased living expenses, and paying for college. Where is the upside? I don’t see what my incentive is for having children. How is this in my personal best interest?

I have thought about it in terms of national duty, as in perhaps an educated person of means has a duty to help support the country’s population and pass those “striver” genes on to the next generation. I have even thought about it in vainer terms, as in some kind of personal legacy. I have even considered the need for a much older and senile future self to have someone (my offspring) check me into retirement home. I just can’t get on board with my wife, whom I believe just wants to have a child out of evolutionary instinct. She wants the experience of pregnancy and motherhood. I wouldn’t want to deny her anything, but having children seems such a weighty thing to do in order to “have the experience”. It is a huge commitment.

I know you have children that are clearly a priority for you…but how do you reconcile that investment/opportunity cost with others (being able to travel, own your home sooner, etc.)?

I think there are a mix of answers to the questions you’re asking.

For one, I think some number of parents simply fall into parenting. Being a parent isn’t really something they hold as a deep personal value, but when the child arrives, they feel a natural obligation to do the best that they can to care for that child. It’s a big responsibility and one that comes with quite a lot of emotional reward along the way, so it’s not surprising that when some people become parents, they try to do a good job. (Of course, as we all know, there are a good number of parents out there doing a poor job, too.)

Simply put, as long as there are males and females around in sufficient quantities, there will be children around in sufficient quantities. It’s just a natural outcome.

I think what you’re asking, though, is why would people choose to and plan to become parents? Obviously, parenthood is something Sarah and I thought a lot about and made a conscious choice to take on in our lives.

In many ways, it simply comes down to what’s personally important to you. For some, the process of being a parent is an important life goal. I believe that part of what I was put on this earth to do is to raise three productive and capable people who will have a positive impact on the world. The privilege to be a steward to these children as they grow into adults is a privilege I’m very proud to have and that I enjoy very deeply.

Other people have other things that are personally important to them. Some want to see the world. Others want to start a business empire. Still others work to make the lives of others better. Yet others seek to accumulate personal wealth. There are a lot of personal goals that others have that I frankly don’t understand (much as you seem to feel about parenting), but I see such goals as a positive (assuming the passions aren’t destructive to people who don’t choose to be involved in them).

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for some people to not want to be parents and to have other things that are important to them. The key thing is that you’ve found something in your life that is important to you, whatever that may be, and that you’re investing your resources into it because it fulfills you. Without that, life would be a pretty empty place, I would think.

Most of us spend our lives working for those things that are important to us, whether it’s parenting or something else entirely. It’s the motivation to get out of bed in the morning. It’s the motivation to push ourselves a little bit more.

Is choosing to be a parent an economically challenging choice? Of course it is. However, most of the things I listed above are economically challenging choices. If we hadn’t had children, for example, Sarah and I probably would have traveled a great deal more than we have, which would have eaten a lot of the money we “saved” by not having children. Instead of having our oldest son, for example, I might have memories of visiting the Temple Mount (a place Sarah and I have always wanted to visit).

Simply put, people invest their resources (time, money, energy, skills, and so on) into the things that are personally important to them. For me, one thing that’s very important is my children, so I invest my resources into caring for them. For others, children might be of little or no importance, so they choose to invest their resources elsewhere.

The purpose of The Simple Dollar is to look at ways to be more efficient in investing your resources, particularly in areas that are less important to you. For example, no one wants to have a high energy bill, so energy savings is something that all of us can use to reduce the resources we invest in our energy needs and thus raise the resources available for the other things in our lives.

Whenever I see someone doing something they obviously love, I usually think to myself that it’s a pretty awesome thing (I was actually just thinking this the other day when I watched a skilled person making sidewalk art). Most of the time, when you see a parent, you’re seeing someone doing something they love (even if it might be frustrating in the short term, which parenting can often be). Use it as inspiration. If they’re doing something they love, even when it’s challenging, why can’t I?

One of the most powerful books I’ve read since starting The Simple Dollar is Juliet Schor’s Born to Buy. The book discusses the tactics and impact of marketing consumer goods to young children, turning them into buyers at a very young age. I found the book so compelling that I eventually wrote a nineteen part series discussing the book in detail.

Recently, I came across Buy, Buy Baby by Susan Gregory Thomas, which seems to focus on a similar topic. How pervasive is marketing to small children? How much of an impact does it have on them as a budding consumer? What kind of long term effect does it have?

Even more so than Born to Buy, Buy, Buy Baby focuses specifically on marketing targeting infants and toddlers.

Learn Something New Every Day
The book opens by examining the marketing of “learning” toys, such as the products of LeapFrog. Many parents tend to happily buy such products because they believe that they foster children into learning something new every day. However, the evidence that such products actually bring about learning beyond a level that children would get from an ordinary environment is very thin. Many learning toys merely package together things that can be found inexpensively or for free elsewhere, promote them with a heavy dollop of parental guilt and desire for their children to be intelligent, and sell the items at an elevated price.

“There’s a New Mom in Town”
Another tactic that often attracts parents – particularly mothers – to particular products is the promotion of motherhood and other “relatable” mothers as product salespeople. Simply by showing a mother who “has it all” in the product pitch (usually meaning cute children and a happy family with a few relatable minor foibles), the product becomes simultaneously relatable and aspirational, which makes mothers like this powerful salespeople. This is a big reason for the huge connection between “mommy blogs” and marketing promotions. If you read many “mommy blogs,” you’ve probably noticed the huge number of products given away on them. That’s why – “mommy bloggers” make great spokespeople.

“It’s Like Preschool on TV”
The idea that school is a good thing is a deep cultural value in America. Not only does it provide the children with education, it also gives the parents the free time with which to work and create income for the family. Turning that very thing into a product makes great sense for marketers, and the television provides a great medium for this through videos like Baby Einstein and shows like Sesame Street. It gives the parents some time to do household tasks and “educates” the children. The problem with this is that much of the value of preschool comes from interaction with peers and with the teacher, something that’s impossible to do with a video. Even with interactive toys, the “interaction” is scripted and limited. It’s not really preschool on TV, no matter how it’s pitched.

A Vast and Uncontrolled Experiment
Even more disconcerting is the deep connection such programs tend to build with the onscreen characters and children, which is followed by the characters becoming pitchmen for everything from toys to toothbrushes. Children tend to relate with onscreen characters during the learning programs and build a positive relationship with that character, who seems to be heroic and/or loving and/or caring and/or funny. Then, when they interact with that character again, it tends to be in a commercial environment that’s tightly controlled, such as seeing Big Bird toothpaste on the grocery store shelf or Pokemon toys in their fast food restaurant. They want to continue that emotional connection – heroic and/or loving and/or caring and/or funny – but now the emotional connection they desire requires a purchase. Is it any wonder, really, that young children get very upset when their parents say “no” to buying an item depicting their favorite character? Often, it’s not the item they want. They want heroism, love, care, or laughter.

Elmo’s World
Continuing with that train of thought is the idea that a child’s interaction with a particular character (which represents some set of deep emotional connection) is becoming present in more and more forms. It’s not just the show and a toy. There’s clothing. There are ordinary products with the character on it (toothpaste or snacks, for example). There are games. There are books and magazines. There are live shows. The connection is available in many different facets of the child’s life, enabling that emotional connection to continue and, to some degree, deepen. If Elmo represents the fulfillment of some emotional need that your child has, then that same emotional connection (and need for fulfillment) will pop up again and again and again in more and more situations, usually connected to products. It’s not just true for Elmo, either – there are countlesss characters that show up in a diversity of media and consumer products.

The Princess Lifestyle
Such characters are sometimes even tuned to specific “lifestyles” that often have deep connections to product lines from other companies. In this chapter, Thomas focuses on Disney Princesses (which create an impression of a particular type of glamorous lifestyle) and Barbie (another particular flavor of glamorous lifestyle) and how these lines not only connect themselves to many other products that reinforce that lifestyle (princess shampoo!) but also help set the stage for products that the children will want as teenagers (jewelry, makeup, etc.) and even as adults.

Anything to Get Them to Read
Some people advocate using these types of deep emotional connections that the young foster with these characters as a tool to get them to read and to engage in other learning opportunities. If a book about your child’s favorite character convinces them to read, isn’t that a good thing? The problem is that the children often see such books as mere continuations of their relationship with the character, not as a compelling experience on its own. Thomas digs into this phenomenon and shows that such character-specific books often focus little on the literary or educational content and instead focus on protecting and furthering the brand, with hundred-page documents outlining every little detail about the marketed character and almost no attention paid to the plot or values in the book itself.

Developing Character in Preschool
Corporations have even taken this to the point by supplying large amounts of the type of reading and educational material described earlier in the book for free to preschools that are often starved for materials. The packages often include videos, books, and other materials for the kids that do include some degree of educational value but often strive to reinforce or build the connection to a particular character.

A Defense of “Nothing”
So, what can you do? The author’s general recommendations revolve around minimizing or eliminating emotional connections to characters. Minimize television watching – or eliminate it. Buy toys that are open-ended and not based on specific characters. Avoid products that depict such characters. You can’t do these things absolutely without being a hermit, but each choice you make is a step in the right direction.

Is Buy, Buy Baby Worth Reading?
For me, this book really differentiates itself from Born to Buy is that Buy, Buy Baby focuses on an even younger age group than Born to Buy. They’re both very thorough in their research and frightening in their implications and conclusions of how the emotions of young children are tinkered with for the purpose of altering the buying patterns of both them and their parents.

They’re both tremendous books that cover some similar ground. However, I think I’d recommend Born to Buy to parents of children that are already three or four years old (or older), while I’d probably suggest Buy, Buy Baby to the parents of younger children (or parents-to-be). Honestly, I’d probably give either one of them to thoughtful parents as a baby shower gift depending on which one I was able to easily find. They’re both tremendous books that happen to cover a similar topic area.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Buy, Buy Baby on Amazon.com.

That system, new, costs $100. We can find reliable used ones with a warranty for $60 (sometimes) or $70 (most of the time).

His allowance – at least, the portion he’s able to use to save for such a purpose – is $2 a week.

Here’s the amazing part. He’s already hit the $35 mark and he’s quietly putting his $2 a week away into a bag for that purchase. That’s several months of not buying anything else with his allowance, with several months yet to go.

A five year old is so focused on a savings goal that he hasn’t spent a dime of his allowance on candy or inexpensive toys in several months.

(At the same time, incidentally, his younger sister, only three, isn’t spending her tiny allowance either, though she doesn’t have an explicit goal. She has about $20 saved up for some future splurge.)

Something’s going right here.

This Sunday (since Sundays are allowance days), we had a conversation about this as allowance money was being handed out. My five year old was putting his money away into his savings pouch when I asked him how he felt the savings was going.

“It’s taking a long time,” he said.

“Have you ever thought about spending it on something else?” I asked him.

He mentioned a few things that he thought about spending his money on.

“But why haven’t you?”

“Because if I buy that stuff then I will never get my DS.”

That’s the heart of saving, right there. If you buy the inexpensive stuff now, you’ll never put the pieces together to get the big thing.

“You know, Mom and I are doing the exact same thing you are. We are saving for a new house.”

He looked at me with big eyes. “Do you guys get an allowance?”

“No, Mom has her job and I have my writing business. We both get paid every so often. We take some money out of that pay and use it to save for the house we want to build. So, what you’re doing with your allowance is pretty much the same as what Mom and Dad do with the money they make at work.”

He sat there for a little bit, then asked me a great question. “Can I do some work to make some more money?”

At this point, I’m trying to devise some tasks that my five year old can pull off that’s useful to the household in some way. I can think of a lot of things that he’s just on the cusp of being able to do (washing towels, loading the dishwasher, etc.) but he still makes little mistakes at them.

Still, the lesson is there. My five year old son understands the connections between earning money, saving, and the big things in life better than many adults that I know.

How did we reach that point? Money is never a taboo topic at our house. The benefits of saving and financial responsibility are a constant topic at our kitchen table, and we as parents try as hard as we can to show good financial responsibility to the children through our own actions.

We also make an open point of every good financial practice we can think of. When I get a new item, it’s usually via a trade or through money I’ve saved. When I read a new book, it’s usually from the library or a used copy I got from somewhere or from the “free” Kindle book selections. We spend time engaged in hobbies that are low cost, like reading or playing those used board games with our friends. We make meals at home. When we have something expensive that we want, we save for it. We plan many of our shopping trips around sales and coupons. None of these factors are hidden in any way from our children. In fact, we talk about it with them quite often.

Our children seem to be absorbing these things and we couldn’t be happier about it.

On Twitter, Pinco shared this thought: “I love your articles about parenting. People enjoying parenting are hard to find, nowadays.”

I genuinely enjoy the process of parenting. I love teaching them new things. I love molding their behavior from the charming anarchists of toddlerhood into socially stable children. I love reveling in their crazy ideas for play. I love introducing them to new foods and new places and new experiences. I love encouraging them to refine their skills and watching as they try very hard to do just that. I love watching them assert their independence and handle tasks on their own. I even relish the harder tasks, like correction of behavioral problems.

I love all of these things.

At the same time, I don’t think everyone does love all of these things. I don’t think everyone is meant to. I think many people are swept away by a romantic idea of parenthood only to find that such a romantic view doesn’t match the reality of being a parent.

For some, the nonstop nature of parenting becomes a burden. They’re very good parents in bursts, but when it comes to the long slog, they beg for a break from it. Other parents are distracted by other interests. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a child begging for the attention of a parent but that parent is distracted by work or by checking sports scores or by texting. Others have been molded into a state of seriousness by their careers and their earlier life so that it’s hard for them to relate to children. I have witnessed all of these things (possibly within the last week).

If you’re considering becoming a parent, I encourage you not to become a parent unless the following ideas really excite you.

Parenting of a child that will turn out well requires regular focus. That means turning off the cell phone and paying attention, even if what they’re saying or doing doesn’t match your personal interests. That means caring about the castles they’re trying to build out of blocks. That means understanding what the current challenges in their life are, who their friends are, and what they’re struggling with – all the time. If the intricacies of a castle that your five year old built out of blocks sounds much more dull than a night at the club, then stick with a night at the club. I’d rather hear about my daughter’s epic princess castle that she spent an hour building out of magnetic tiles.

It also requires being willing to talk to a young child. By talking, I don’t mean the cutesy “child talk” voice that people constantly get when they’re talking down to a child. I also don’t mean treating your five year old like your drinking buddy. I mean genuine conversation with children, where you listen to what they’re saying and respond to them seriously. My kids eat this up. They feel valued, they feel as though they can tell me what’s going on, and they know that I’m listening and that I care about what’s important to them. Children aren’t incompetents that you need to talk down to, nor are they your drinking buddies. They’re people with feelings and thoughts, and you’re one of the most important people in the world. Put yourself in a five year old’s shoes for a minute and imagine if your parents did nothing but talk child talk to you or else did nothing but treat you like a drinking buddy.

There’s also a requirement that you’re willing to abandon many of the habits of your previous life. I’ve dropped most of my hobbies and shrunk my social circle significantly (though it’s grown a bit as well as we’ve made friends with other parents) since becoming a parent. Guess what? You don’t have time for a lot of the things you used to have time for. At first, parents tend to just sleep less and try to maintain as much of their old life as possible. Eventually, that doesn’t work.

It’s easy for these things to seem like burdens. Here’s the thing, though: they’re only burdens if you don’t like what you’d be replacing these things with.

On an average day before kids came along, I might go golfing with some buddies and out for drinks afterward. I might go out to the movies with my wife. I’d do some extra work in the evening. I might spend four hours laying in bed reading.

On an average day today, I build a giant castle out of blocks. I cut a chicken breast into tiny pieces for easy eating. I listen to a young child wonder why their old friend won’t play with them any more. I bandage a wound. I roll down a hill covered in grass. I change a dirty diaper and listen to a baby make noises and watch him smile as I replace the diaper. At best, I might get an hour to read for personal enjoyment just before bed, but I don’t go golfing and I very very rarely go to movies at this point.

Is that change a positive? For me, it certainly is. For others, it might not be. That’s fine.

The fantasy of parenting sounds appealing to a lot of people. The reality of parenting is fun to a smaller group than that. Make sure you’re in love with the reality and not just the fantasy before you bring a child into the world.

Trust me, the reality can be a lot of fun and very rewarding, too. Even if it involves changing some disturbingly full diapers.

On Facebook, Edita asks an entertaining question: “which parenting books you found most valuable?”

I’ve read a lot of parenting books over the last several years. I’m quite deeply committed to being the best parent I can be and I want to do everything that I can to raise creative, self-reliant children who blossom into creative, self-reliant adults who feel unafraid to tackle anything that the world throws at them.

Of all of the books I’ve read on parenting, six of them really stand out for me in terms of making me think specifically about approaches and angles on parenting. These books were so profound to me that, in many ways, they also changed my approach to my own life.

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
I first read this book shortly after my first child was born, expecting to mostly be a primer on reading aloud to children along with some suggested books for each age group. It turned out to be much more than that.

The book recast the simple act of reading to children as a central part of their intellectual development, from teaching them basic verbal skills, basic reading skills, presentation skills, and eventually abstract and creative thinking. Because of those changing needs, your techniques also need to change as your child ages so you can continually challenge them intellectually. It also provides a daily opportunity to sit down and simply relate with and connect with your children.

Not only that, it also (as a secondary theme) carried the idea that reading effectively to children amounts to working on the same skill set that can make you an effective presenter to adults. The same skills – clear speaking, impromptu interactions, expressing complex ideas simply – are at work in reading to children and presenting to adults.

I actually wrote a detailed review of The Read-Aloud Handbook several years ago.

Bringing Up Geeks by Marybeth Hicks
The key realization of this book is that many of the traits that we would like to see in our own children as adults are traits that will make them appear to be a “geek,” particularly while in school. So why not embrace that idea and just go with it? Are you raising someone whose societal and intellectual success will peak in high school or will peak in adulthood?

The book’s central premise is that you should encourage your children to pursue whatever they’re passionate about, even if it’s “different,” and also be ready to help them deal with the inevitable conflicted feelings they’ll have in the culture of adolescent children, where “different” tends to be ridiculed. Encouraging conformity isn’t the answer here. Instead, the answer revolves around techniques for handling those situations effectively.

I honestly wish my parents would have had a copy of this book twenty five years ago. It might have made a profound difference on my middle school and high school years.

NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
I was given this book as a gift a few years ago, shortly after the birth of my second child. The book’s primary focus is on how, in an attempt to nurture our children and make an idyllic childhood for them, we often create adults that aren’t ready to handle the realities and demands of the real world.

The book is broken down into chapters that focus sharply on specific issues. One chapter, for example, focuses on why you shouldn’t over-praise your children and, when you do, you should praise the hard work they put in, not the result. Another chapter focuses on the value of an early bedtime, even one other parents would consider strangely early, because children tend to intellectually thrive when they get plenty of sleep. In other words, using later bedtimes as a reward is going to backfire and eventually cause worse results.

The writing is backed up by a truck load of psychological studies that support the points made, but it’s not particularly dry. Most of the ideas are translated into a very conversational style that makes this book a surprisingly quick read for the number of powerful ideas in it.

Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck
The idea behind Mindset is that there are two fundamental mindsets that people address the world with.

One is the “fixed” mindset, where someone believes that the person they are is already defined and the outcomes produced by that person are indicative of the person they are. A person with a “fixed” mindset can’t change, in other words.

The other mindset is the “growth” mindset, where people recognize that a failure isn’t necessarily a poor reflection on them. Rather, it’s an opportunity to see where exactly they fall short and what exactly they need to work on and a reminder not of where they cannot go, but an insight as to what they need to do to get there.

Obviously, a “growth” mindset leaves a person more prepared to deal with the ongoing diverse demands of the world, and the focus of Mindset is on how to cultivate that type of perspective not only within your children, but within yourself.

I actually wrote a detailed review of Mindset a few years ago.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
The premise behind Emotional Intelligence is that we are driven much more by our emotions than we even realize, and that success in many avenues of life come from not only controlling our own emotions, but also understanding how much others are driven by emotion.

Most of the actionable ideas in this book boil down to simple skills that we often fail to practice. Listening to what the other person is saying. Being able to calm yourself down quickly when you’re upset. Giving constructive and non-hurtful feedback. Controlling your short-term desires.

Virtually everyone has problems doing these things, but with practice, all of these things do become much more natural and easy, and with that comes success in many different dimensions of life – even unexpected ones.

The biggest challenge with Emotional Intelligence is that it’s not really written from the perspective of a parent wanting to instill this in their child. Goleman co-wrote a separate volume focusing on this angle, Building Emotional Intelligence, which is sitting in my to-be-read pile as I type this.

Born to Buy by Juliet Schor
Children are inundated with marketing messages from their infancy. It is virtually impossible to raise a child today without them being constantly faced with extremely clever marketing, from the use of toys and collectibles as an element of peer acceptance to the arrangement of packaging on the shelves of a grocery store – and don’t even get me started on television.

Born to Buy focuses on the almost shocking depth of these messages, which can deeply alter the entire worldview of a child if they’re not prepared to handle them. They can easily lead to a distorted value system and an inability to distinguish between wants and needs.

Much of this book focuses on exposing the depth of the messaging, but the latter portion of the book offers some very strong advice for minimizing the impact of media messages on your children. It was very powerful and eye-opening.

I wrote a series of posts covering Born to Buy a few years ago.

I consider these six books essential reading for any parent. If you’re a new or expecting parent, now’s the time to hit your local library or use that gift card you received at the baby shower.

On Twitter, Robert asked “How about “Family outings that dont cost and arm and a leg” ?”

This is obviously a major goal for our family, too. We have three young children that have a need to explore the world, but many excursions outside of the house are expensive, particularly with five people in tow. Even a simple trip to a movie theater can easily set a family of five back $60 to $100. That’s painful!

Because of that, my wife and I have strived to come up with family outings that won’t cause our budget to explode. Here are some of our most-loved ideas.

State parks
There’s an abundance of state parks within a fifty mile radius of our home. Even within a twenty-five mile radius, there are several such parks. We make an effort to visit all of them, often once a year. We’ll pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and explore what’s on offer there. Different state parks offer vastly different things: lakes, forests, prairie land, fishing, hiking, canoeing… they’re all on offer at different state parks. The best part is that most state parks are free for day trips.

Bicycle rides
When we have an hour or two to kill, we’ll go on a bike ride near our house. When we have several hours to kill, we’ll load up our bikes and take them to a bike trail elsewhere. We’ll park in one place, ride the trail a bit in one direction, then ride back. Usually, we’ll stop for a while at this point and have a picnic lunch, then we’ll ride in the other direction for a while, then ride back. The rides are leisurely and there’s a lot of nature observation involved in the process. We don’t ride like we’re Lance Armstrong, just a family leisurely enjoying the day together.

Volunteer experiences
This is something that’s limited due to the youth of our children, but we still find ways to do it. We’ll spend a day or a part of a day involved in a volunteer activity of some sort. Not too long ago, we helped package canvas bags full of food that were to be delivered to shut-ins, then went around and delivered them to those shut-ins. Not only is it a very inexpensive way to spend a day, it also gives our children a chance to see how our actions can positively affect other people.

City passes
This is probably the most expensive option on our list, but it’s a good one. Many cities offer “city passes” which provide entrance to a number of cultural spots around the city over a period of time (a month to a year, usually). This is a great one-time pickup for your family, as it gives you a chance to fill quite a few outings with stops at such places. For a birthday gift, for example, my wife received two adult “city passes” to Seattle for the next time we visit there, since we’ll be visiting family there and will have several days to explore.

Community festivals and fairs
We tend to hit a lot of these on weekends during the summer. They can be expensive if you don’t go to them with a little bit of advance planning. First, we try to hit them during the day so we can see the free activities, demonstrations, and parades that are going on. To avoid the overpriced fair food, we usually pack our own lunch and snacks. These moves turn such an excursion into a fairly low-cost affair for the whole family.

Outdoor games
All you need for this is a park with some open space and maybe a bit of simple equipment, such as a frisbee. Just take over some space and play some games with your family, like simply tossing a frisbee around, playing ultimate frisbee, playing touch football, or anything else that you can think up. We spend a lot of afternoons and evenings doing this, usually accompanied (again) by a picnic meal.

Potlucks and round-robins
If you have other parents in the area that you’re friends with, engage in some meal exchanges with them, either one-on-one or as a larger group. You can either have one family “host” and provide the meal and the location each week, or do it “potluck” so that each family brings something each week. If you plan this with families that have children your age, not only do you get some time to socialize with people with overlapping life experiences (being a parent in that area), but the children have a chance to play with their peers, too.

Cultural events
Always check the community calendar in your area for free cultural events, many of which are happening without your notice. We try to enjoy a diversity of such events, from going to a free classical concert in the park to watching a chess tournament. There are all kinds of things happening in your community if you just take the time to look for them, and almost all of them are perfect for a rich, new experience for you and your children.

Between all of these things, our calendar is as packed as we allow it to be. Simply put, there are more opportunities to do low-cost things than there is time to do them in.

This past weekend, I was cleaning out a drawer in my office when I came across a stack of photos from my early childhood. My parents, my brothers, and my cousins were constants in these pictures, all looking stunningly young, all of them depicted in that slightly washed out style that thirty year old snapshots take on.

It was the little details, though, that really resonated with me. I’d see my mother in the background of one picture, standing near a large pot on the stove, and I could practically smell chicken and dumplings cooking. A picture of my father standing in rubber hip boots immediately calls to mind the sounds and the aromas of freshly-caught fish. A picture with a cousin or a sibling smiling would bring about the sound of their laughter in my ears.

We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but my childhood was filled with things that were far greater than money.

A sense of security I always felt safe and secure at home. Sure, my parents argued once in a while, but there was never a moment when I doubted my own safety or security at home, and there was never a moment that I doubted that they both loved me. When I needed them, they were always there for me.

Compassion for others My family constantly gave of themselves to help others, particularly my parents. I can’t remember the number of times that people would unexpectedly show up for supper and my mother would find a way to get that person a full plate of food. There wasn’t a summer that went by where my father wasn’t giving away a large chunk of what our garden produced to our friends and family and other people who needed it.

A desire to learn My parents read constantly in front of me and encouraged me to do the same. They also constantly reinforced the value of learning new things and my father was always discussing the events of the day with me. I was raised to learn and to know things.

An entrepreneurial and self-sufficient bent My father ran several small side businesses, particularly small-scale commercial fishing and gardening to sell excess produce, as well as providing plenty of fish and vegetables for ourselves. He channeled a lot of his spare time into this and often recruited his children (and others) to help as well. I particularly enjoyed the gardening aspect of it and fondly remember taking charge of watering the gardens.

A strong sense of community and family There were seemingly always people at our house beyond our immediate family. Socializing and a sense of community were constants during my childhood.

All of these elements are things that shaped me deeply as a person, and they’re elements that I want to provide for my own children. What was missing, though?

Channels for learning Beyond reading, the channels for learning often felt narrow. Many of the things I wanted to learn about required some significant startup cost, such as learning a musical instrument. As I mentioned, there was not much money to be had when I was growing up. Even beyond this, my parents were often uncertain as to how to channel things beyond taking me to the library and giving me books as gifts.

Understanding of money Basic money lessons were something else that I missed out on in my childhood. From my perspective, it often felt as though there was barely enough money to get by, except that my parents would have occasional windfalls. During those windfalls, we’d splurge on things – that’s how I wound up with a Nintendo and quite a few games with it – but at other times, there was a sense of not having enough. Money felt chaotic to me and I had a sense that when you had money, you needed to spend it soon.

My youngest son, approximately eight months, delighting in an opportunity to play with a wristwatch

Today, I find myself in the shoes of the parent, with three children looking to me for guidance. How can I address the seven concerns I see above?

A sense of security We need to provide a stable home for our children, and the best way to do that is to constantly work on our marriage. If my relationship with my wife is strong, the foundation of our family is strong, too. Another key point in this equation is to spend time individually with each child, as well as collectively with them, so they have security in their relationship with their parents and feel limited jealousy toward their siblings.

Compassion for others Lead by example. Give to charity, and involve our children in that process. Respect people and care for them regardless of their religion, sexual preference, race, disability, or anything else. Luckily, we have opportunities in our life for our children to meet people of other religions, races, and lifestyles and see that they’re normal people who have ups and downs, joys and sorrows, talents and weaknesses, just like everyone else.

A desire to learn This one comes naturally, as my wife and I are both voracious readers and voracious debaters of the issues of the day. We are starting to strongly engage our two oldest children in these debates, and they’re both picking up reading as well.

An entrepreneurial and self-sufficient bent I run my own business. Almost all of the parents of my children’s friends are employed by others, but they have an example of entrepreneurship at home. We also try to do a lot of things ourselves in front of the children, like making soap and laundry detergent, growing our own food, repairing the toilet, and so on.

A strong sense of community and family This is perhaps our weakest area, and it’s the one we actively work on the most. We have a circle of friends that we interact with often and we know many more people in the community on a more casual basis. We participate in a number of community activities and we strive to use community resources as much as we can (by going to the park, participating in youth sports leagues, and so on).

Channels for learning We have a savings account set apart for this, so that we can channel whatever growing passions for learning our children have. On top of that, we try to create educational experiences all the time that allow them to dabble in different areas, from art to paleontology.

Understanding of money We have an allowance system in place. Beyond that, we’ve started to discuss the concept of bills and income to our oldest child on a conceptual basis. I write about personal finance, of course, so this is something that’s a pretty regular topic for us.

Here’s the thing to note, though. Most of the stuff I mention above doesn’t cost money. Instead, it takes time.

Time is the deepest cost of parenting. The ability to do all of these things, to make sure as many doors are open as possible for your child, takes a lot of time.

Many parents are willing to step up to the plate when it comes to money, but the investment children really need is time.

Simply put, children are far better off if you work a minimum wage job and can spend a few hours with them a day than if you work a high-paying job and are constantly absent from their lives. Sure, you might be able to buy them expensive toys and take them on great vacations, but that’s not when they need you. They don’t need your stuff and they don’t need a ton of you one day and an absence of you for a long period. They need you steadily as they grow, because these lessons don’t take root overnight.

Almost all of the things I named above require no money or very little money. Instead, they require some planning and some time investment.

If I learned one lesson from my childhood, it’s that good parenting is about time, not about money. I try to apply that every day of my own parenting journey.

We had a lot of fun looking through the book together, cuddled up on the couch. He told me about many of the things they did over those two years. He talked about some of the things he learned, some of his favorite art projects, and which teachers he really liked (he actually seemed to like all of them quite a bit).

When we got through the book, I looked over at him and asked him what he thought would happen next. He was quiet for a bit and then he told me that he’d ride the bus and go to school in August. He thought school would be like his preschool, except with more time spent learning and not very many recesses (I told him I thought that was probably pretty close to right).

I told him that, in thirteen years, he would graduate from high school and we’d have a big party. After that, he might do anything. He might have started his own business, for one, or he might go to college. I told him that college was like school except that you didn’t live at home any more and you have to pay a lot of money to go there.

He looked at me. “I don’t have a lot of money.”

I put my arm around him, pulled him close, and told him that he’d have more money than he thought and that we’d help him pay for it.

And I meant every word of it.

I was extremely lucky that I wound up having more opportunities in life than my parents had. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they gave me the things they had to give. For example, my mother kept my nose to the grindstone and didn’t let me waste away my time getting into trouble as a kid. My father showed me the value of human relationships and connecting with other people.

I’ve taken the things that they’ve given me and built a life on that foundation, and now I have children of my own. Can I give them a foundation even better than my parents gave me?

I want the world to be their oyster. I want them to wake up when they’re in their twenties and feel like the world offers them an abundance of opportunity.

What do I need to do to get them there? I need to make sure that they have every opportunity possible to succeed along the way. They need to never worry about having the things they need to grow, like a musical instrument or money for a field trip. I need to expose them to the world through travel and experience. I need them to not worry about money when they’re considering what college to go to: the question should be which one puts them where they want to be in four or five years?

Those things all require money. They each require you to have some degree of financial stability, most likely in the form of both a steady income and a significant amount of savings. The only way to get there is through good financial behavior.

Which brings me back to that interaction with my son as we’re both kicked back looking at his portfolio. When he asks me about his future with a bit of worry in his heart, I can look at him and, with complete honesty, I can tell him that I’m doing everything I can to make sure that his future is everything he hopes it will be.

Good personal finance tactics simply underline my ability to be a good parent. I can give my child the honesty and the emotional reinforcement he deserves, simply because I’ve learned to keep my spending in check and I’m prudent with the money I have.

That’s a big win in a dimension that I never really expected when I first sat down five years ago to address that pile of debts in front of me.

I’d examine one garment, say “This is dirty,” and throw it in one pile. I’d look at another, sniff it, and then decree “This one’s just fine,” and put it in a second pile. I invited them to join in, too (though I kept an eye on the items they were passing judgment on, especially ones they decreed to be clean).

Soon, the hamper’s contents were sorted, leaving two piles. I threw the dirty pile back into the hamper, then began folding the clean pile. As I did this, I also described what I was doing: “Many of the shirts and pants and dresses you wear aren’t really dirty unless you get dirt or other stuff on them. You can wear them again.” To illustrate this point, I let them choose their clothes for the day right out of the clean pile.

As they were brushing their teeth and getting ready for the day, I did a similar sorting of my own clothes right in front of them, retaining some and putting others aside for washing.

Obviously, this sorting technique cuts down on the number of laundry loads that we have to do, saving money and time.

Perhaps just as important, though, is involving the children in this and explaining to them what’s going on so that they view such tactics as the normal way to behave. If this is simply how they do things as they grow up, then they’ll spend less of their money on unnecessary things and have more of their money for other (ideally better) purposes.

Here are some other things we do around our house to encourage our children to think frugally.

At the end of a meal, if there are items still on the table, I’ll ask our kids what they think we should do with it. They’ve learned that what we do with extra food is save it for leftovers, which we have for dinner roughly every other night.

When it’s time to drink a beverage, I encourage them to drink water because it’s both cheap and healthy. Our oldest child now simply gets water whenever it’s time for him to drink a beverage.

When it’s time to read, we use library books and accentuate their usage. I’ll almost always mention that this book came from the library for free or that we need to go back to the library soon to get some more great free books when I’m reading them a book that came from the library.

When I utilize one of them as a helper, I’ll point out things like the types of lightbulbs we use and why we use them where we do. “This is an LED bulb, which is perfect for outdoor use. It’s a little more expensive, but it uses very little electricity and it’ll last for a very long time.”

I also utilize them as helpers for things like garden work (something I’ll depict in a bit more detail later this week), which is almost purely a frugal project.

Life is full of moments to make better spending and time choices. If you’re a parent, those moments are often also teachable moments.

The argument against marriage for men is pretty straightforward. The most common reason given for men not to get married is that the financial outcome of divorce proceedings is seen to be unfair. As the argument goes, the average male salary in the United States is higher than the average female salary, yet when couples are divorced, the splits are often 50/50 – or, in some cases, skewed towards the partner with greater financial need.

Usually, along with this, issues and concerns about children are brought up as well, along with other concerns about losing the freedom to make life choices and so on. Generally, these issues fall much more into the realm of the emotional than the financial and vary so much on a case-by-case basis that they’re difficult to reasonably discuss.

Instead, I’m going to stick with the financial side of the equation.

Along with that, I’m also going to make a fairly bold statement for the anti-marriage folks out there: it’s financially beneficial for both men and women to get married. There are a lot of reasons for this.

Almost always, you’re both going to be bringing in an income. There will simply be more money coming in than before. Often, it’s a lot more money, approaching a doubling of income for both of you. That’s a lot more money to live on, day to day. There’s also the fact that you’ll have two sets of benefits to choose between. If one of you has better insurance, then you both have better insurance, for example.

You both benefit from economies of scale, meaning your expenses won’t rise as much as your income will. If you’re living in a one-bedroom apartment, it’s often very easy to get married and stay in the same place. Rent doesn’t go up, and the utilities will barely budge. Even if you do need to upgrade, your housing costs likely won’t double (like your income did). You’ll also be sharing electricity, phone service, internet service, and so on – one bill for each of these things instead of two. While food and household items will jump a fair amount, having both of you at home means that bulk buying makes more sense. Buy a gallon of milk instead of a container and you’ll be spending less per glass of milk, for example.

You have greater earnings stability. If you lost your job while single, there’s suddenly no income coming in. Panic time, in other words. If you’re married, you have a partner that will still be bringing in income, a partner that has a real stake in your survival and continued success. While it’s an urgent situation, it’s not a panic situation.

You have greater earnings potential, too. With a partner at home handling some of the household needs and providing emotional support, people can often use that as a springboard to achieve even greater success. This is often particularly true for males with children.

You have the “stable home” factor. Married couples often find greater success with things such as applying for mortgages and so on, particularly if they’re manually underwritten, because such family units are usually more stable than single folks.

But what about the pain of divorce? Most of the fears that men have about getting married are actually fears about divorce. The truth is that you can alleviate most of those fears by simply taking a few steps right now.

First, don’t get married until you’re absolutely sure. If you’re not sure, don’t sit on that reason, either. Don’t be afraid to talk about your concerns and make it clear to your partner why you don’t want to get married. If you can’t have that kind of open conversation about marriage, either you’re not emotionally ready for marriage or your partnership isn’t ready for it.

Second, if you have assets you want to protect, get a prenupital agreement. Part of a good prenupital agreement is a base understanding that you’re both going to financially benefit from this marriage for many of the reasons stated above. An agreement that says that one of the partners takes nothing away from the marriage in case of divorce isn’t a healthy agreement for either party to sign. One approach is to use your current individual net worths as part of the equation, perhaps setting aside the assets you entered the marriage with before dividing up the rest in some fair fashion. Remember, if you’re coming into this marriage with no net worth but big dreams of getting rich, a big part of you getting rich is the support of your partner, who has earned that stake because of the support provided.

Finally, look at your behavior and your partner’s behavior honestly. Are you engaging (or seriously considering engaging) in activities that would lead to divorce when you’re engaged? Is your partner? If you find it easy to engage in patterns that would lead to divorce while you’re seriously considering marriage, then your relationship has problems deep enough that you shouldn’t get married. In short, don’t ever put yourself in a situation where divorce looks likely.

What about children? The decision to have children is a complicated one and, in my opinion, is a very distinct one from the marriage question. Many of the concerns that men express about marriage tend to actually be concerns about becoming a father, and I think that becoming a father is a decision guys should never enter into lightly.

My opinion is that many people fear marriage for emotional reasons, but often find financial ones easier to state. Modern marriages usually are financially beneficial to both people involved.

I’ll certainly say that, in our case, marriage has been an enormous financial benefit. It was because of my wife’s stable job that I was able to make the leap to turning The Simple Dollar into a sustainable business, and it was because of that sustainable business that my wife was able to leave work for most of a year to be a stay-at-home mother. After all that, the only debt we have is our home mortgage. None of this would have happened without our marriage and the stability it has given us.

When we first started doing this, we expected our children would save for small goals. Since their allowances were on the order of $2, we assumed that they would set relatively modest goals out of a lack of patience.

Saving Big
Instead, they both took the opposite approach. Instead of saving for small items, both of our children chose to save for big items – or, to be more accurate, item lots that save them money per item.

Our son is a big fan of Dragonball Z (an animated series), but the action figures are a bit hard to find around here. Since he’s wanted to use his allowance to buy the action figures, we’ve had to turn to the internet to find figures for him.

While we were searching various sites for figures, I found that time and time again, he was more interested in buying a bundle of used figures over anything else. This was the best way for him to get a low per-figure price, even if the total cost was quite high.

The amazing part? He didn’t grow impatient with the process. He kept saving week after week for a big lot of used figures (with a requirement that two specific characters be a part of whatever lot he wound up with). Eventually, after saving for many, many weeks, he bought a six-figure used lot.

Interestingly, our daughter (who is a bit younger, only three) did almost the exact same thing with the princess dolls she’s enamored with. Rather than going to the store the first second she could afford anything, she waited because she understood that she would get more for her money by waiting. Similarly, she wound up purchasing a mixed lot of dolls at roughly the same time as our son’s action figure purchase.

The patience and willingness to bargain hunt exhibited by both children during this process impressed me greatly. I could not be happier with their progress in terms of setting goals and saving for them, particularly considering the children are five and three years old, respectively.

Making This Work
So, how did we get to this point? Here are some of the tactics we’ve used along the way to get our children on a good path for saving for the future.

“Do as I do“ We don’t have a practice of telling our children one thing, then doing another. We save for goals, too, and often do this visually right in front of the children. I actually have a savings jar that I put money in to save for a goal, and that jar will often sit for months, slowly accumulating money.

Very regular goal discussion We talk about goals of all kinds all the time. What do we want to accomplish this week? This month? Where do we want to be in a year? What are we saving for? All of these questions come up very regularly in discussions with our children. We share what we’re doing and encourage our children to do the same.

Visual money use As often as possible, we use money in a visual fashion. We pay their allowance in quarters. We allow them to swap quarters for dollar bills, so that they visually understand that connection. We also count the dollars they accumulate. The money doesn’t just disappear into a savings account or a checking account. Even on the occasions when we pay using a debit card or a credit card in front of the children, we immediately relate to them that the card is just telling the store that we will pay them the money later so that it’s easier to pay.

Minimizing focus on material acquisitions Our children don’t feel the need to have something new every week because we don’t put much of an emphasis on acquiring more material things. We already have lots of things to enjoy, so why should we have more? We’re far better off waiting around for something we genuinely want instead of spending money on an impulse.

Imaginative play As often as possible, we channel play in imaginative directions. We have a “dress up” tub that our children delve into for things to wear. Quite often, we’ll pull out building blocks and build something entirely new. We’ll make up games or play simplified versions of others (like the current favorite, “Dad Is a Zombie”). Such play doesn’t require material things – in the cases where material things are used, they’re incidental. Doing this as often as possible shows that fun and joy and the good things in life do not have to come from material items.

I can’t guarantee that my children will be financially sensible as adults, but I can be sure that I’m doing what I can to give them the tools to be financially sensible as adults.

Our kids? Not so much.

Here’s the challenge with our children. My parents have traditionally gone way overboard on all of their grandchildren for birthdays and Christmas. On the other side of the family tree, our children are the first grandchildren of my mother- and father-in-law, and the first nieces and nephews of my sisters-in-law.

They all want to give our children memorable Christmas presents – and, frankly, I completely understand that. Our challenge comes in when we return home with all of these gifts and wonder where we’re going to put them all. They fill up multiple toyboxes and spread across the living room. The vast, vast majority of them are gifts from various events – birthdays and Christmases, mostly.

There’s a double challenge here.

The first challenge is simply finding the places to store these things. Our children are of three distinctly different ages and levels of cognitive development. Our oldest loves playing and building Lego sets, for example, and has a penchant for action figures. Our middle child loves building towers out of Magna-Tiles. Our youngest? He’s pretty content with a few stuffed animals and baby toys. As they grow, though, their interests change. Soon, our youngest will want to have his hand in the Magna-Tiles. And what if we have another child?

The second challenge is the implied lesson: teaching our children that less is more from an early age, that there’s great value in having a smaller number of toys that you play with extensively, that you don’t really need a mountain of toys. A mountain of toys stands in direct contrast to this lesson.

For us, the second challenge is perhaps more important than the first. The idea of having more stuff than you can possibly ever play with seems heavily tied to a sense of rampant consumerism as adults, where they buy more stuff than they possibly have time for. When you’re buying like that, you’re begging for financial difficulties.

Here are some of the solutions we’ve come up with for dealing with these concerns.

First, we’re starting to do “toy rotation.” Simply put, when the children are out of the house, we take a bunch of the toys at the bottom of the toybox and put them in a tub to store in the garage (temporarily). Occasionally, we’ll take some of the toys that are in storage and rotate them back into the mix, often pointing them out in a “Remember that toy? You haven’t played with that in a while” way.

Obviously, if they miss a toy that we’ve stored, we retrieve it for them. However, that hasn’t yet happened.

In the spring, we’re going to have a yard sale. Not only will we sell off almost everything in the garage tubs, we’ll involve the children in selecting toys that they’re willing to sell off. Our goal is to save a small number of toys for each child – the ones they enjoy the most – and sell off the rest of the toys.

The money from this yard sale – all of it – will go into a “family fun” pool which will pay for all of us to do something fun together (likely largely of the children’s choosing). Our best idea so far is to go to a water park that’s about two hours away from where we live, using the proceeds of the yard sale to pay for it.

In essence, we’re trying to turn excess “stuff” around our home into a fun family experience. The idea, of course, is that experiences trump stuff, and if stuff is just sitting around, it’s not an experience for you. It’s just dead weight that might as well be used in a better way.

We’re going to donate the yard sale leftovers to Goodwill. This way, once it’s decided that toys are going to go, they’re out of the house for good.

For now, though, as we look around our living room, we can’t help but notice the excess of kid’s stuff. Thankfully, now we have a plan for dealing with it.

Let’s roll back the clock to November 2009, when our children each received piggy banks and the allowance adventure got underway:

Our son received a Money Savvy Pig for his birthday, which has four slots to designate savings of various kinds. The bank featured a “spend” slot (you can spend that on whatever you want), a “save” slot (you’re saving up for a larger item), a “donate” slote (you’re donating that money to a charity), and an “invest” slot (you’re going to invest that in the future).

In order to minimize sibling rivalry, we gave his younger sister a single-slot piggy bank.

We decided to try a weekly allowance for each child, giving them each two quarters for each year of age they were. For the older son, we made a requirement that at least one quarter of his allowance had to go into each slot. The allowance was not tied directly to chores, but we occasionally gave them both opportunities to earn a few extra quarters through helping with chores that were above and beyond the usual household expectations for them.

What did we learn after a year of this? Did our children learn anything about money?

The younger one is a saver! Each week, our daughter would put her quarters into her bank and then put it back in the cabinet. We allowed her to decide when and how to spend the money inside, but almost without fail, she never wanted to spend it on anything. She likes that her bank is getting heavy. She has only used her allowance twice, both times on individual large toys, and neither time did it empty her bank. She doesn’t have any specific savings goals for the future at this point and seems to mostly enjoy having lots of quarters in her heavy bank, even though she understands she can use them for things that she wants.

The older one often lost focus on savings goals. Our son has no problem with the actual saving process. His problem is that he gets heavily into saving for specific goals, but by the time his savings starts to approach a goal, his interests have changed and he ends up having a new target for his savings. Thus, when he actually reaches a goal, it’s usually for an item that he’s just recently decided on.

He typically does not use his “spend” slot for small things, as he prefers to be patient and use it as part of his “savings” slot. He has expressed a desire to give the money in his “donate” slot to Jump for Joel, but that hasn’t occurred yet. The “invest” slot is going to eventually turn into a savings account at our local bank, perhaps around his sixth birthday.

Not using the allowance as a form of punishment or leverage has worked well. We want to establish that the basic things we expect from them around the house, like clearing the table after meals, basic politeness, and so on, are not tied to any form of compensation. Such basic behavior is expected. Their allowance is merely a tool to teach simple money management. Our children seem to respond better when there are not bribes involved – bribery works well the first time, but after that, would you really expect them to do that thing you want them to do without compensation?

The children anticipate allowance day. Typically, allowances are doled out on a Sunday, and both of our children anticipate it and request it. They’ll often ask on Saturday if that day is “allowance day” and an allowance request is usually out there by noon on Sunday. It doesn’t seem to be a money-grabbing thing; I think they just have fun putting the coins in their bank and then lifting them up to feel how heavy they are.

Our oldest child is starting to understand prices and what they mean. This not only builds on his allowance, but upon many of our discussions when shopping. He now understands that things have different prices and different costs. You have to spend more of yourself in order to acquire a more expensive item. Spend more of yourself? When you spend money, you’re really spending time and energy. In my son’s case, it’s time.

He doesn’t always ask how much it will cost; he often asks how many weeks he will have to save to pay for the item. He already has a basic understanding that money represents your invested time and effort. Money is simply a piece of paper that says I’ve invested a certain amount of time and energy in this. Deeply understanding that changes your relationship with money. It makes the money less abstract than before and much more real. It makes debt more frightening and good choices more appealing. Invested money, which earns interest, seems almost miraculous.

These are exactly the lessons we want them to learn from this allowance experiment. These are small, early steps, but they’re all signs that they’re heading down the right road, one that will put them in a place where they won’t repeat the money mistakes of their father.

I was pointed to this ad by longtime reader Beth and the AutoAdOpolis blog.

If you’ve been reading The Simple Dollar for long, you’ll know that this ad takes a swing directly at a lot of different ideas I’ve shared over the years about parenting, money, materialism, and other things. I thought I’d run through them again in light of this ad.

First of all, if you’re a parent, your kids shouldn’t have any influence over your buying decisions. This commercial only really works if you believe that your kids should have any significant input over what automobile you purchase. If you’re letting your child have that much power, particularly in an effort to not seem “lame” to them, you’re abandoning your ability to actually be a parent to them.

Buying a car really can be a teachable moment. You should absolutely discuss why you’re buying a car and what your buying criteria are. However, what a child thinks of as a great criteria for a car (it’s shiny! it’s got a DVD player!) should have little or no direct bearing on that purchase.

At the same time, why is the father washing the car all alone out in the driveway while the kid is sitting inside alone? My kids – even my three year old – would have been out there washing the car with me. Why? That type of thing is the perfect opportunity to build a positive relationship with your child, the kind that fosters long-term trust and rapport.

I can understand parents and children both needing some solitary time. A child sitting alone inside while a parent is outside washing a car, though, is a perfect family time.

This, of course, might point to why the kid thinks his parents are “lame” – he doesn’t have a deep relationship with them.

The child also has no idea why their family has an older minivan or why that has value. Obviously, the family is saving money on a vehicle here – no payments, low insurance cost, and so on. That vehicle is obviously going to last for a long while because it’s being maintained.

That has value. That’s $500 a month that isn’t going towards payments on an expensive new car, let alone the insurance.

There’s no reason not to spell that out for your kids. The inherent value in buying and owning used things is because, quite often, their purchase price and maintenance costs are lower. That means you have money for other things, like a family vacation or the house you’re living in.

Yes, children won’t be able to fully understand that, but they should at least be aware of it so that such ideas are like an oversized glove that they will eventually grow into.

One last thought: if my child had a routine habit of calling the things we did “dorkiness,” referring to us as the “Geek family,” or directly calling his parents names, that child wouldn’t be headed out for a fun afternoon with his friends.

There are a lot of things you can’t control in life: your income level, the bad things that befall you, the financial largesse of the people around you, and so on. However, you can control your day-to-day choices, and among them is how involved you want to be as a parent and how involved you want to be in parenting your child (and parenting doesn’t mean “being their pal”).

Good parenting means teaching them not only how to behave, but how to be responsible and sensible with their money and time.

Some might say that I’m thinking too much about this commercial. However, the commercial is just loaded with things that would point a family away from good financial planning and parenting and towards some pretty awful choices. When such things are considered par for the course on television, there’s no wonder that some people consider it to simply be the way things are.

My twelve year old daughter and I are having a money war of sorts. At the start of the school year last month we went shopping for clothes together. I said she could spend $250 any way she chose as long as she got a certain number of items – some underwear, some socks, some jeans, some shirts, and so on. I told her that she could spend more, but it would come out of her allowance. She proceeded to buy only the minimum amount of socks and underwear so she could buy another shirt that she liked. Now she’s having to do laundry twice a week and is complaining all the time about it. I told her to use her allowance to buy the underwear and she says that’s completely unfair. What do you think?

I think this is an experiment that had great intentions that went badly, but there are a lot of interesting pieces worth discussing in here.

First, I really like the idea of using this situation to teach your child about budgeting. In the end, that’s what’s going on here – good old fashioned budgeting. This experiment takes the concepts of budgeting and puts them into something concrete that the twelve year old can really understand and take part in. The idea of using additional money for budgeting

Second, I think you should buy her the necessary underwear and socks. This might surprise some of you because it’s obvious that the child made the mistake of spending that money on a shirt instead of the undergarments. The key thing to remember is that an obvious mistake to an adult isn’t an obvious mistake to a pre-teen, and forcing the child to get by on three or four undergarments is not exactly a great choice from a hygenic angle.

Instead, chalk this one up to a bit of a lesson learned for both of you. The idea is good, but the undergarment requirement from you as a parent should have been higher. If someone is required to do laundry twice a week because their undergarment count isn’t high enough, they should consider more undergarments. Not only will they last longer, but they’ll save on water and energy use by not requiring the user to run laundry loads with only a few items in it.

However, this question leads into a much broader one: what items should a child pay for out of their allowance – and what should their parents pay for?

While it may seem like a black-and-white rule for some, the line between the two can be extremely different from household to household. For example, in Melinda’s household, the child is being encouraged to spend their allowance on undergarments, whereas in my own household, this would never even be a question – we would buy such items for our children.

Where is that line?

For us, the rule of thumb is simple: the parents take care of basic needs, period. Basic needs means food, water, clothing, housing, school and field trip fees, and so forth. While our children remain at home before college, we will provide these things for them without any impact on their allowance.

However, we will often provide for just the basic needs. My children will always have clean clothes, but the shirts might just be generic t-shirts and denim jeans. My children will always have food, but that might come in the form of a sack lunch instead of $10 to spend at McDonalds.

Expenses for “wants” either come out of their allowance or are earned in some fashion. We give our children a small allowance each week that’s not tied to chores, but our oldest child now has the occasional opportunity to do more things to earn money. For example, if I’m out in the yard raking leaves and he spends an hour and a half filling trash bags with those leaves, I may give him a few dollars for his extra effort.

What about those “unexpected” situations? If something unexpected comes up, they may get a very small allowance advance to cover the minimum cost, but that’s all – and by minimum, I mean $3 if they’re going to stop at a fast food restaurant with some friends or something similar to that.

But I don’t want my child going without! Going “without” on small things is a valuable teaching tool. It teaches them that they can go without things that their friends have. It also teaches them the value of not spending their allowance all at once. (Of course, these lessons have to be coupled with involved parenting and discussion. That’s an assumed part of the equation.)

Remember, your job as a parent is not to be your child’s “pal.” It’s to take care of their basic needs while teaching them the skills they’ll need to survive outside of the relative safety of your home. One big part of that is personal finance, and lessons like these build that groundwork.

But rather than demanding it this minute, he asked how much it would cost. Then, he asked how many allowances he’d have to save to be able to afford it.

He waited the necessary six weeks’ of allowance (plus some pocket money put into his bank by Grandma), then happily went to the store and bought himself a Zhu Zhu Pet. The weird little electronic hamster has spent the last few weeks constantly running around on our floors – and I couldn’t be prouder.

No, I’m not proud that he got a Zhu Zhu Pet – my primary concern there is that I’m going to accidentally step on it and hurt my foot when he’s sending the toy all over the place and I’m walking through the entryway or the dining room.

I’m proud of other things.

I’m proud that he didn’t have a meltdown in the toy area, demanding one now, which is something that we witnessed two other children doing that very day.

I’m proud that he didn’t simply ask for or expect for me to just buy that toy for him.

I’m proud that he knew to save diligently for it and not to spend money along the way – he even pointed out that if he saved his “pocket money” too and went without the small stuff, he’d get the pet sooner.

I’m proud that even though he was really into saving for the toy, he still put money from his allowance aside for college and aside for his favorite charity.

How did we get to this point? I really attribute it to three things.

First, we bring home the point time and time again that everything costs money and that Mom and Dad have to work to earn the money they have. Whenever we consider any purchase of any kind, this is an idea that’s brought up. We also talk about how the more money we spend, the more Mom and Dad have to work, and we also point out that as he gets older, he’ll also be working for money.

Second, we do not give in to any sort of meltdown, crying, or whining. We leave, period. Neither Sarah nor I have any problem with just walking out of the store if either of our two older children melt down, particularly over a material desire. (Our youngest one is four months – the only reason he melts down is when he wants milk or a diaper change.) Our older kids have learned that crying and such only makes their case and their situation worse, so they’ve largely abandoned it. Yes, they still do it sometimes – they’re four and three, after all – but it’s not something that happens often, and it’s usually when they’re tired and acting more on raw emotion.

Third, we help them mark their progress towards specific savings goals. For example, when saving for the Zhu Zhu pet, we made it clear to our son that he would need $8.50 for the pet ($8 for the item, $0.50 for taxes). Each week, they get a small allowance – $0.50 for spending as they wish, $0.50 for saving for a goal, $0.50 for a charity, and $0.50 for college. Each week, he diligently chose to put the free spending money and the saving money into the saving for a goal slot in his bank. Then, he would ask how much more he’d have to save and he started to get quite excited when he was close to the goal. The clear marking of progress – talking about it, seeing money build up in his bank – excited him far more than the delayed gratification brought him down.

It works. If you want your kids to learn how to save, start young and be diligent. Our four year old gets it – it can be done!

Delayed gratification means that you hold off buying that new cell phone for a while so that you can pay cash for your car in a few years.

Delayed gratification means that you spend the evening reading a book or learning a new skill instead of merely watching television.

Delayed gratification means that you immediately save some of your paycheck instead of even giving yourself the possibility of spending it now.

The more often you practice delayed gratification, the sweeter the gratification becomes later and the more possibilities unfold in your life. Delayed gratification brings financial stability and with it, lower stress. It brings the realization of bigger dreams, too.

It’s one of the things that I most want to integrate into the lives of my children.

The question is obvious: how do you possibly teach delayed gratification to a four year old?

Over the last few years, I’ve been saving little tactics I’ve heard about here and there for just this purpose and, lately, I’ve been putting them to work on Joe. Here are some of the tactics – and how a four year old boy has responded to them.

The Treat Test
I often do this with both Joe and his two year old sister at the same time. I sit them both down and say, “Who wants an M&M?” (one of their favorite treats!)

I then say, “You have a choice. You can either have one M&M now – or you can have two M&Ms in three minutes. Which do you want?”

(I’ve altered the delay a few times.)

My daughter always chooses to have one right away, but she’s just two. My son, on the other hand, usually chooses to wait. Sometimes, if the timeframe is too long, he’ll ask for it now, but he’ll usually find something else to do to distract himself until he can have more M&Ms later on.

Mister Noodle
I essentially do a variation on the “Mister Noodle” sketch from Sesame Street, in which the children give “Mister Noodle” step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task.

Together, we come up with some sort of large project that we want to accomplish. For example, we might decide that we want to make a giant birthday card for Mom that includes a rainbow and pictures of all of the family members in it.

From there, we go through all of the steps we have to go through to complete the project. First, we need to get out the supplies, but we need to get all of the supplies out before we move on. Then, we think about what we’re going to draw – and perhaps even sketch it out lightly in pencil first. Once we have the design, we do all of the painting. Then, if we wish, we add collage elements by looking for the elements we want in old magazines and cutting them out. We then glue on the collage elements. We then leave the card out to dry and put all of the supplies away.

If we focused entirely on just our goal, Joe would turn out a lower-quality card than if we focused entirely on each step as we went along. If we spend some time now delaying the “gratification” of slapping paint on the card and instead think about what we want in the end, we wind up with a much better card.

Joe is just now beginning to see the benefits of this type of planning. I’ve seen it pop up in his thinking about other things recently, particularly in terms of buidling projects with the Magna-Tiles.

focus on the individual steps towards a long term goal

Visual Savings
One big thing we’ve done is focus strongly on what we call “visual savings.”

As I’ve mentioned before, we gave our son a translucent piggy bank for his fourth birthday and instituted a weekly allowance – a small amount of money given to him each week that’s not tied to any specific chore or action. He just receives it as a way of learning money management skills.

A portion of that allowance is “saved” for a known goal. He’ll identify a toy that he wants. Each week, he saves a portion of his allowance for that toy. Recently, for example, he had been saving for a particular Iron Man toy.

We identify how much it costs and tell him how much he’ll have to save up for it. He puts his allowance in each week and also sometimes adds some “found money” to it. He watches the money build up. We talk about the toy he’s saving for and how much it will take to reach that goal.

At first, he was very impatient and would change his goals all the time so that he was saving for a lower-cost toy. In the last few months, though, he’s really started to see the benefits of saving for a better toy. He saved for months for his current Iron Man toy and, for him, the patience really paid off.

Reward Hard Work Instead of Results
My son spent most of an hour picking weeds from our front garden over the weekend. He didn’t do a perfect job by any means – he missed some weeds and picked a few flowers in the process.

But rather than criticizing his results, I just complimented his efforts. “Wow, Joe! You spent a ton of time weeding and now, because of your hard work, the garden looks great!” I then bent down with him to help him finish and simply showed him which ones were flowers and where some of the missed weeds were, not in any sort of a scolding way, but in a “Hey, Joe, check this out!” kind of way.

The focus is on the effort, not on the results. I fully intend to do the same thing when he’s in school. If I see him studying his school materials, thinking about what he’s learning, and asking questions related to them, then I know he’s learning and that earns the praise. The report card? That’s not nearly as important to me.

But don’t we want our children to have great results? Of course we do, but great results are a reward unto themselves. Plus, great results are often the endgame of a lot of hard work. If you’ve worked hard, you will get great results as a matter of course. Our focus is in making sure our children learn the value in working hard, not just chase results.

Working hard builds great things. Chasing results ends up like Wall Street, circa October 2008.

When well-meaning relatives give gifts to your children, do you always allow your children to keep those gifts? My mother-in-law (who lives 20 hours away and only sees us a few times a year) not only gives gifts that are not age-appropriate or do not meet our standards for marketed characters or quality of play, but she gives so many at birthdays, holidays, and throughout the year that I feel like the boys would drown in toys, even before the other family members add to it. My mom has happily adjusted by providing ‘experience’ gifts for the grandkids- swimming lessons, zoo pass, etc., but my MIL really likes new things and does her absolute best to instill the love of something ‘new’ in our kids.

My sister in law thinks we are excessively prohibitive when it comes to toys and sweets. Rather than talk to us about what kind of toys or gifts we would like our kids to have, she gets mad when she finds out we get rid of some of the gifts after a couple of days. She also ignores what tips I’ve tried to provide in the past. I know they both love our kids dearly, and I know they are frustrated by the different priorities and values my husband and I are trying to instill in our kids.

The worst part of this is that they both seem quite willing to do what they think is appropriate even when it is at odds with what we’ve told them we allow or don’t allow. Neither of them have taken the kids on her own because I can’t even trust them to follow our guidelines when we are present. I feel like my SIL is just itching to sit my son in front of a DVD to show me that he really does like it; i know he probably would, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t better things he would like as much or more.

Right now, our kids are young enough that they aren’t attached to most ‘things’ they encounter. We openly or quietly give the excess away to friends and sell or donate what our friends don’t want. I know this will become more difficult as they get older.

How do you deal with gifts for your kids that don’t fit in with your lifestyle?

This is actually an issue in our own life, something we’ve puzzled over quite a lot.

Our two (very soon to be three) children have a lot of relatives who adore them. They have four grandparents, a great grandparent, four aunts, two uncles, and a small army of cousins who just adore our kids. Many of them give them gifts at a seemingly constant rate.

Here’s the thing, though. These gifts are given out of love. People give our kids gifts because they love them so much and it’s their way of expressing it. For me, telling them not to do so is akin to saying, “Please don’t express your love and caring for our children.”

I’m just simply not going to do that. I might not particularly like the method they use to express their love for our kids, but it’s not a harmful way of doing it.

Instead, I focus on passing my values on to my kids. My children both choose what they most enjoy playing with and play with that, but part of that equation also involves what toys they’re likely to see Mom and Dad playing with and approving of, too. I often play ball games in the yard with the kids. I also will get involved in a lot of the more open-ended toys, like Legos and craft/art projects.

Unsurprisingly, over a long period of time, my kids prefer these toys. My son loves nothing more than playing with a football out in the yard, throwing it around. My daughter – at two years of age, no less – will literally spend periods of an hour or more playing with her Magna-Tiles.

Why? We encourage our kids, more than anything, to play with open-ended stuff that encourages their creativity and their engineering skills or gets them physically active. That’s what we value and thus we focus on it ourselves.

Hand in hand with that, we explain to everyone who gives them gifts that we often off-load the toys that wind up in the bottom of the toy box. If my daughter keeps choosing the Magna-Tiles, then other toys are going to slowly wind up at the bottom of the toy box – and will eventually head to Goodwill or to a charity that will accept them. When they come to visit, let them witness what stuff is on the top of the toybox and what is on the bottom.

With regards to sweets, we follow the same philosophy. If a grandparent gives them a sweet treat, they can eat a bit – no problem. However, we don’t give them such sweets on any sort of regular basis. We have a “candy tub” that gets filled with candies from such events (like Easter and Halloween) and we allow them one piece a night if they remember and if they behaved well and ate adequately at supper. The result? We still have candy from Halloween.

From there, we carry it forward. We talk to the grandparents and other relatives about what our kids are obviously enjoying.

“Our son’s favorite food is black olives.”
“Does he eat candy?”
“Not really. You like bananas, don’t you, Joe?”

“Kate really, really likes her Magna-Tiles.”
“What are those?”
“They’re kind of a building block toy. She just gravitates to those kinds of things.”

“What did you do this weekend?”
“We let the kids choose and they wanted to go to the Science Center and the zoo. They just love going out and experiencing stuff instead of playing at home all of the time or just watching videos.”

“Don’t they like watching movies?”
“On rainy days, maybe sometimes. But if the weather is nice, we’d rather be out in the yard. Even on indoor days, we usually wind up making pictures and building stuff.”

Repeated over and over, attentive grandparents and relatives start to get the hint. We value open-ended toys. We don’t value sweets beyond moderation. Experience-oriented things are really loved around here, while passive toys aren’t valued as much.

This accomplishes a lot of things at once. It includes the people who care about your kids in their life. I know that both sets of grandparents – as well as the aunts – constantly want to know more about what our kids are up to, so we tell them. It also reveals in a pretty strong way what the kids enjoy – and what they don’t enjoy.

Perhaps most worthwhile (in relation to The Simple Dollar, anyway), it saves everyone money. The relatives know what kinds of toys our kids like and value, so they get them things in line with that. Thus, they aren’t spending their money on toys that won’t get played with much (and thus get quickly sent to Goodwill).

I have no objection with (almost) any of our relatives watching our kids, even if I know they won’t necessarily encourage the optimal activities I might want. Why? I know my kids. When they go there, they’re going to gravitate towards the stuff that they like – playing in the yard, playing with building-oriented toys, and so on. They might be encouraged to do other stuff and they might go along, but I’ve seen my daughter gravitate to the building toys many, many times and I’ve seen my son ask for paper to draw on and crayons many, many times.

There’s also another key lesson here that will help you in other areas of life: talk positively about what you value without talking negatively about what you don’t value. You can actually have a civil discussion about politics or money or religion or parenting if you never go negative and just don’t respond to negativity. The same is true with this discussion. Talk about what you value in a positive light without painting other viewpoints in a negative light and other people will be engaged. It works, I think, partially because people so rarely do it.

Instead of criticizing the gifts that your family gives, thank them for the gifts. At other opportunities, though, use positive comments to talk about the types of gifts that are in line with what you value. You’ll be surprised how much positivity can help any situation like this – or in any situation.

My wife and I have two children, ages 2 and 1. We’d like to have more; we both think that four would be a great number, although there’s no particular logical reason for that number. The problem is the expense. With daycare costs, adding each additional child will cost another $260 a month. If we stopped paying extra on our student loans and cut our savings per month to $145, we could afford the daycare for the third child, but a fourth would require more painful cuts. We already live frugally: buy used clothes, drive used paid-for cars, make almost all of our food at home, etc. I’ve looked into second jobs, but there’s very little IT work in the area, other than what I already do. And with our county having the highest unemployment rate in the state, I suspect even paper-route jobs and that sort of thing would be hard to find.

My job pays decently and is very secure: her job also pays well and is less secure, but still not much in jeopardy. In Michigan, that’s significant. We can’t sell the house without taking a loss, but it is big enough—barely—for two more kids. If we need to upgrade the car to a mini-van, we’ll have enough in our car fund that we can pay cash, so that’s not an issue.

I hate to make children about mere numbers, but purely by the math it seems like more children is unwise. On the other hand, I constantly hear stories from other families about how they it “somehow just worked out.” Any advice or suggestions?

Much like you, my wife and I have two children – ages four and two – and another one due to arrive within the next few months. The issue of escalating child care costs is one that we’ve dealt with many times throughout our child-rearing process and, through it all, we’ve come to some conclusions about that very occurrence.

First of all, the idea that it “just worked out” is a bit misleading. What often happens in that situation is that people go through a period of re-prioritizing after the child (or children) arrives, and it’s often a shift that happens without a lot of conscious thought. You choose to eat at home more because it’s easier to corral children there. You don’t go out as often as you used to because of the cost of babysitting. Over time, these shifts just seem completely ordinary – parents adopt a new normal along the way and often feel like it “just worked out.” Our memories often work to make things seem smoother than they actually were.

At some point if you continue to have children, the cost of child care will likely eventually meet or exceed the net cash benefit of one of your jobs. If you have three preschool-aged children (as we will soon), your weekly costs are immense. If you, at the same time, figure up the true take-home of one of the people in the household – after taxes, commuting costs, vehicle upkeep, wardrobe upkeep, and son on – you’ll often see that working outside the home is a financial net negative. Add on top of that the financial benefits of not working (even less reason to eat out, more organized grocery shopping, etc.) and you create a compelling case for one partner to leave the employment scene for a period of time.

What if you can’t afford to do this because you’ll be burying your career path? At this point, it’s really a values thing – your career is more valuable to you than more progeny. It’s one of those value comparisons where there is no real right or wrong answer – however, because it’s such an emotional one, people often convince themselves that one answer or the other is absolutely right for them and thus absolutely right for everyone. It’s not. You have to decide for yourself what you value.

If you decide that more children are the real priority here, then plan for it. That may involve selling the house and moving elsewhere – even to another part of the country. It may involve selling a vehicle. It may involve leaving a job. If your children are your priority, then sacrifice those life elements that aren’t directly benefiting the children.

If you decide that your continued career trajectory is the priority for you, take precautions to not have another child.

Your situation – much like our own – is basically asking you to choose between the two paths. Choosing one path doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the other one, but it does mean postponing it to a later point in your life and it may mean that you’re unable to pick it back up again.

It seems to me from the email that you’re having a hard time choosing between the two. Right now is the time to sit down, talk with each other frankly about it, and make a choice. Is it career maintenance as the top priority or is it more children?

Give the decision time. Also, perhaps most importantly of all, give each other respect here. There is no right or wrong way to feel about the question and if you disagree, that’s okay. You both have reasonable perspectives on the issue.

You don’t have to make a decision tomorrow on this, but whichever way you choose, it doesn’t hurt to take a serious look at your spending and find ways to minimize it now. Build an emergency fund. Learn to live on a little less. No matter which path you end up choosing, doing that now will help you with the ramifications of that choice.

Good luck.