Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book. In 2005, my son was born. To say we were unprepared for it is an understatement. We bungled through the entire thing, not saving appropriately for expenses and not really understanding how much this little child would change our lives, financially or otherwise. With

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal productivity, or other book of interest. The New Global Student by Maya Frost is one of those books that takes what you think you know about a subject and flips it on its ear. This time around, it’s the standard route that most high

A long time ago, I wrote a brief article about creating a visual debt reminder, something that will help motivate you towards getting rid of debt. Since then, I’ve found myself using such reminders all the time for keeping my finances in order. The Psychology of the Reminder A reminder? If a goal is really

As I’ve mentioned before on here, my family did not have a lot of money growing up. My parents were always able to make ends meet and keep dinner on the table, but there was never really a sense of getting ahead. Instead, there was always a sense of just barely enough. That’s not to

This question has been on our minds quite a bit recently, as our three and a half year old son continues to grow and mature. We’ve long planned on giving our children small allowances that are not tied to household chores, and now we’re actually faced with a child that’s nearing the maturity level to

Yesterday, I mentioned offhand the value of having things on hand to entertain and create special moments for children. Things like this are easy to plan ahead for, easy to bargain hunt for, and can really come in handy on a rainy day or other unexpected event. It can also be useful to have on

Fairly regularly on The Simple Dollar, I mention that I’m investing in 529 college savings plans for my two children. Each month, I automatically contribute $100 to each of their plans – and I’ve considered contributing more than that. But what’s a 529? Erin writes in with a typical query: You write all the time

A reader recently pointed me towards an interesting article at MSN MoneyCentral on the topic of restricting the access that teenagers have to credit cards. Much of the article discusses the proposed Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009 (S. 414, sponsored by Chris Dodd, and often called the Credit CARD Act of

As I mentioned before, I started saving for my children’s college education as early as I possibly could – in mid-2005 for my son and in mid-2007 for my daughter. In each case, I opened up a 529 plan with myself as a beneficiary as soon as we knew the child was coming, then I

Over the last two weeks, at least three longtime readers of The Simple Dollar plus a close friend of our family had new babies enter their life. Congratulations are in order. The addition of a baby to anyone’s life is a major change, to put it lightly. Your life changes in countless little ways because

Over the last few months, my three year old son has received quite a few $1 and $5 bills from relatives for various reasons – his birthday and Christmas chief among them. Prior to the past few months, we would simply allow him to “spend” the money in a very simple fashion. He would take

Several months ago, I wrote an article entitled The Guardianship Question, where I discussed at length the challenges that parents face when making the difficult decision about guardianship in their estate planning. It’s a very challenging thing to think about – who can possibly take care of your children if something unexpected were to happen

My three year old son has officially graduated to the “Why?” stage. Most parents – actually, anyone who has spent much time around a three year old – know exactly what I’m talking about. He’s basically asking “Why?” about everything that happens, from the simplest mundane household things to complicated issues like the nature of

After my recent article about new restrictions on used children’s clothes from the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), I received a flood of correspondence from angry and confused readers who were quite upset with the proposed changes. I compiled a number of these emails and forwarded them on to a few email addresses at

Seth Godin pointed me towards this video of children opening Nintendo Wiis on Christmas morning (it’s well worth watching at least the first minute or so of the video): Here’s the original page if you can’t see the embedded video. While I was watching it, I was caught up with two strongly conflicting feelings. At

I was recently browsing a comment thread on Lifehacker when one particular comment stood out to me: Having kids is one of the most expensive poverty-inducing things you can do right now. – kalibar I understand completely where kalibar is coming from with this comment. Many estimates with regards to the cost of raising a

Between Christmas and New Year’s, we’re taking a look at five common New Year’s resolutions that people often adopt for their finances, evaluate some of the traps that people fall into with regards to that resolution, and come up with some real actions that can turn a challenging New Year’s resolution into a success. We

One of the best ways to really extract the value from a meal is to utilize every bit of the leftover food instead of merely throwing it away. Not only does this reduce waste, it also drastically reduces the cost per meal in your household, and over the long term, that can add up to

The routine is familiar to many parents. You have an out-of-town school or extracurricular function, whether it be a sporting event or a club meeting or something else, and after the event, your child is quite hungry, so you solve the problem quickly by stopping at the nearest restaurant and buying some quick (and fairly