Teaching Kids the Value of Money

Earlier this month I took the kids to watch a theatre version of Peppa Pig – their favourite TV cartoon.  They were so excited to be going along, the air in the car was electric with anticipation as we drove there.  After spending about 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot that allowed us to stay longer than 2 hours, I was keen to get settled in our seats when we arrived, and so we skipped through the foyer in a flash.  But not quick enough for the children not to notice the merchandise stand set up conspicuously along the path to the exit.  As we got ourselves seated, both my children started looking around at other kids whose mothers had already made piggy purchases.  Then the hard squeeze started. 

Now I had already spent quite a bit of money on the tickets themselves…. Not much change from $150 for 3 tickets, so it was quite a treat.  My youngest had her eye on the girl-across-the-aisle’s spinning colourful light-up toy which looked particularly stunning as the lights dimmed and the theatre darkened.  She was totally mesmerised.  “I want one of those spinning things, Mummy”.  Hmmm…. The show was enjoyed by both the girls, who participated in the audience participation parts, and clapped and sang their way to find the hidden treasure with Peppa, her little brother George and her friends.  As we descended the stairs back to the foyer, my eldest chimed in with my youngest that their lives would be so much the better if it included the spinning, colourful, light-up thing.  I braced myself to find out the price of the toy as we neared the merchandise stand …..$20 each. The kids  were pleading and begging, and it had been a delightful show so I was in a treating mood and I gave in and bought them one …… to share…. They were definitely NOT having one each!

It got me thinking that my kids have no concept about the value of money (although they are only 7 and 3).  They don’t understand when I tell them things are expensive.  How do you get the concept of expensive across to your children? 

Then later on in the week I heard a snippet on the radio talking about exactly this.  One of the ideas discussed was to use monopoly money to show the kids how much money we bring home each month.  Then take out money for the mortgage, for food and utilities, for the car and other bills.  There’s little left for savings and discretionary spending.  It’s a good idea and a tangible way to demonstrate to kids that while Mum and Dad go to work to earn money, there’s not an unlimited pot to draw from and choices about what to send money on to get maximum value are important.

I’d love to hear your ideas about how to teach children about money and making wise money choices.  Send me a post or email me at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com

By the way, the spinning, light-up toy lasted 2 days and broke when the kids took it to Nanna’s.  Not one of my wisest purchases!

Living Within Your Means

Over the Christmas period, I picked up a great book from the library titled “The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less” by India Knight.  It gave all sorts of tips to help you stretch your dollar further and was split into chapters on

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Food

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Clothes

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Crafts

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Community

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Having Fun

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Beauty

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Holidays

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Home

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Money

India writes in down to earth, plain language and in a humorous way that makes the book an easy read as well as entertaining!  Most the shopping references were from the UK, so not so relevant to me in Australia but for the most part the principals can be adopted and local shops/farmers markets/organisations can be sought.

While it made for interesting reading and got me thinking a bit about my spending habits, it was the last page of the book that struck me with a bit of an “ah huh!” moment.  

It went like this:

“Appreciate what you’ve got, even the really small things.  For me, those really small things are often domestic, and I hope this book has communicated my enthusiasm for the nourishing significance of the very small.  Everyday happiness, as opposed to one-off great bursts of pure ecstasy, is intricately tied in with tiny everyday events: the jaunty-looking teapot that pours without dribbling, the children’s bath-time, blossom in spring, an especially good book.  These things aren’t sexy, or glamorous, or envy-making, but they are the fabric of all our days.  Concentrating on them, and on all the small joys they provide, can be intensely fulfilling.  Moaning because you can’t afford a $300 pair of shoes is not.  

Be happy. We are all blessed, in thousands of different ways.  There is enormous beauty in everyday life and it doesn’t cost any money to look and it and feel glad to be alive.”

If you’ve read any interesting books on being thrifty, I’d love to hear about them.  Send a post, or email me alivewelllivesmart@gmail.com .

More on cultivating a balanced life....

I find it so interesting that time and again, when I plant a seed of a thought in my head I immediately find that events and people come into my life that provide more direction, more information and sometimes the answers to the questions I have been asking.  It simply reinforces the phenomenon I have recently been reading about where when you ask for something the Universe finds a way to provide it.  I also think the saying “when the student is ready, the teacher appears” is so true.  Since my post on my goal for 2014, being to find a balance in all elements of my life, I have come across two very useful strategies to maintain focus on this balance.  This blog entry addresses both of those.

The first is the idea of the “Wheel of Life.”  I had seen this principle before – possibly while doing a Meyer-Briggs course as the principle is a trademark of the Meyer Resource Group Inc.  It involves mapping the various aspects of your life on a wheel and then charting how effectively you focus on each of these elements.  It allows you to visually see the areas of your life that you are neglecting but would like to put more focus on or improve.  Life aspects to include are suggested as:

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Relationships

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Mental attitude

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Finances

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Health

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Society

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Career

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Spiritual

The structure of the wheel is circle, with up to 7 lines from the radius out to the rim representing the various facets of our lives.  The centre of the wheel represents total dissatisfaction and the outer rim on the wheel represents 100% satisfaction.  For each facet of your life place a dot along the satisfaction axis, then join all the dots. You will then easily see where the wheel becomes ‘wonky” and unbalanced and where you might place greater emphasis to improve that facet.  This can be done once or twice a year, and is a good way to see at a glance how in-balance you feel your life is at that moment.  More information on the Wheel of Life can be found atwww.mindtools.com .

The second idea, is that of developing a weekly framework or structure around the most important roles we hold in our lives; the roles of mother, wife, daughter, employee, friend etc.  This suggestion came from Angie “Speedy” Spiteri’s book “The Secrets on Mastering Time”.  Angie suggests that by getting time for all the things that are important to you, you will feel well rounded, more satisfied and happy in the now.  Sounds like exactly what I’m after.

The first step in the framework is deciding on what your roles are.  The second step is to decide on the goals for each role.  Eg. As a mother I would like to help my children each evening with their school work.  The goals could cover a 12 month period, which is ideal for me as the timeframe for my  personal goals then coincide with my career and work objectives.  The third step is to start moving in the right direction by asking yourself “What is the single most important step I can take in each role this week to have the greatest and most significant impact on my goals.”

Then the idea is to translate the outcome of the third step into a schedule (using Outlook) for a week.  I can colour code the activities by role, so that when I look over the week I can see at a glance which colours are dominating and where I am placing my focus.

The framework should include

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Time for important project and roles: what you need to do and when you are going to do it

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Cyclical work and regular meetings: aim to do the same type of activity at the same time every day.  Group similar tasks together.

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Time for unplanned events

I may need to train others to support me (eg. by not scheduling appointments before I get into the office, or on my working from home day).  Angie suggests that “people get used to what you do.  If you say you are going to cll and then call when you say you will, many will stop emailing-ringing-visiting and will wait for you to get back to them.” Angie has encouraged her readers to share their ideas and frameworks as www.facebook.com/time.equals.moneywhich is where I’m headed now to have a squiz!

If you have any suggestions for building a framework to maintain balance in your life, or to help you to review whether or not all the important facets of your life are in balance I would love to hear them. Send me a post of drop me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com

Keeping life in balance

This year my New Year’s resolutions have been easy to articulate.  For me, it’s all about focussing on cultivating a good and balanced life.  To not let any of the bits get out of balance, and to keep reminding myself that this balance is important and I need to strive to maintain it.  The “bits” include:

Work

-       Family

-       Friends

-       Spirituality

-       Learning and training

-       Fitness and health

-       Personal space and stillness

I’ve found an excellent website at www.everydaysuccess.com , which says that finding balance is about setting priorities for all the different aspects of your life and then being clear about how you will set boundaries for what you expect of yourself for each priority.  When you know what actions will fulfill your priorities to your satisfaction, that’s when you’ll begin to feel balance.  Until you are clear about your priorities and how you want to fulfil those priorities, you’ll always feel on edge and out of balance.

Then, the glue that brings balance to your life is planning.  Plan your life daily.   Plan your life weekly.  Plant your life monthly and even annually.  You’ll enjoy your life more when your balls are balanced and your ducks are in a row.

How do you achieve balance in your life?  I’d love to hear your life experiences and ideas.  Drop me a post or send me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com

Following Omens

We celebrated a really wonderful Christmas with my husband’s extended family.  His Aunty put on a lovely Christmas dinner (with everyone contributing to the meal) and played some festive games like pass the parcel and a treasure hunt for the kids.  For the adults we had Secret Santa, with the option this year to trade our gift for another that had been opened… it was a hoot!

Then on Boxing Day I developed a sore throat, which got worse throughout the day until it felt like razors that night.  During the night I had a fever, and right through the following day I felt like doing nothing at all.  It’s a horrible state to find myself in -- the middle of summer, when daughter 1 has just been given a surf board and can’t wait to get out and learn to use it.  Daughter 2 wanted to go to the beach to try out her new bucket-and-spade set which came with an awesome watering can…… Mum felt like a party pooper.

So, I grabbed a book that has been on my must-read-again list and took it to the beach to lie in the sand while the kids and Husband played.  The book was the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  And reading it now was a revelation.  The last time I read it was about 15 years ago, and while I got the general gist of the moral of the story I didn’t pick up nearly enough of the messages along the way. 

Just so I don’t miss and forget them again, I’ve listed them here:

-       It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting

-       The world’s greatest lie is that at a certain point in our life we lose control of what’s happening to us and our lives become controlled by fate.

-       Everyone when they are young knows what their destiny is.  At that point in their lives everything is clear, everything is possible.  They are not afraid to dream and to yearn for what they would like to see happen to them in their lives.  But as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it is impossible for them to realise their destiny.

-       Whoever you are, and whatever it is you do when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.  It’s your mission on earth.

-       People are capable, at any time of their lives, of doing what they dream of.

-       There is a force that wants you to realise your destiny.  It whets your appetite with a taste of success.

-       God has prepared a path for everyone to follow.  You just have to read the omens.

-       When you want something, the entire universe conspires to helping you to achieve it.

-       You must always know what it is you want

-       There is a language in the world that everyone understands.  It is the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose and as part of a search of something believed in and desired

-       Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.

-       Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.

-       We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property.  But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.

-       If you pay attention to the present you can improve upon it.   And if you improve on the present, then what comes later will also be better.

-       If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil.  And one can always come back.  If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.

-       People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams because they feel they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.  The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.  No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.

-       Before a dream is realised, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way.  That’s the point at which most people give up.  Every search begins with beginners luck and every search ends with the victor being severely tested.

-       There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve – the fear of failure.

Working out what one’s destiny and purpose for life is can be a difficult thing.  To be honest I don’t know that I have found mine yet, although I’m sure my purpose has something to do with being a Mum, a wife and living in the beautiful beachside city of Perth.  I definitely believe in omens – the year I met my husband I had birds poo on me on three separate occasions!  Before the three occasions, this had never happened to me before and has never happened to me since (thankfully!).

Have you had any experiences with Omens that have lead you along a certain path of life?  Do you feel as though the life your living is the one that you’ve been destined for?   I’d love to hear your experiences – please send me a post or write me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com

The importance of sleep

I am fortunate to be on annual leave now for three entire weeks, and boy have I been looking forward to it!  After only three days I have begun to catch up on sleep, and in being able to wake up without my alarm clock, I've realised just how sleep deprived I had become.  I can remember being a new Mum and getting used to being in a sleep deprived state after about 4 months of interrupted sleep, night after night.  Towards the end of this year I found myself getting back into that state again .... Driving bleary eyed to drop the kids off at school and daycare.  Looking forward to that first cup of coffee at work to kick start the cogs in my brain.  Although I had known I was tired, I got into the habit of going to bed later than I should .... Staying up to do just one more thing, to save time in the morning.  

The reality is that I was losing sleep time, and therefore losing focus and the ability to wake up fresh in the morning, the most productive hours of the day.  If I am to work smarter and not harder next year, one of the strategies I will employ will be to get ample sleep.  A study at Harvard found that sleep is important to the following functions:

1. Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later.
2. Metabolism and weight: Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our appetite.
3. Safety: Sleep debt contributes to a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and road accidents.
4. Mood: Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too little sleep can also leave you too tired to do the things you like to do.
5. Cardiovascular health: Serious sleep disorders have been linked to hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and irregular heartbeat.
6. Disease: Sleep deprivation alters immune function, including the activity of the body’s killer cells. Keeping up with sleep may also help fight cancer.

In order to get more quality sleep I have googled recommendations which include turning off all backlit screens 60 mins before sleep. This means iPads, Tas, laptops etc. Reading a paper book is an ideal activity to do before bed. And limit coffee intake to one cup a day before 11am. Apparently it takes 6 hours for caffeine levels to drop by half in your system ..... So it can remain in your body for quite some time. Well, I'm off to find a book to read to get me in the mood to sleep. Good night! If you fave any tips for getting quality sleep, or starting good sleep routines, please post them, or email me at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Today was my last day of work this year.  I now have three weeks of leave to look forward to, and I’m hoping to really wind down and spend all my hours with my lovely family.  Luckily my husband was also able to take off the same amount of time, so we have  a long stretch of holidays to spend together….. just thinking of it is like bliss!

But although technically I am on leave, I still have two tasks to finish off on Monday and then I’ll officially be on holidays.  This week was particularly hectic, as I was managing a colleague’s patch while they are away, as well as finish off many tasks for the year from my own customers.  It was a rush to the end, with a performance review and Professional Development Plan training thrown in.  So much to do, and so little time….. it’s no wonder I feel zonked now at the end of the week.  And I’m not the only one.  In his Christmas email message to his staff, our Vice President mentioned looking forward to taking a break, including a week of sleep!  Why have I found myself in this position where there are so many tasks to complete now that the year is drawing to a close.  Could I have managed my time better and completed these much earlier in the year? 

You bet.  And 2014 is going to be different.

I am determined that there’s a better way to work, rather than the reactive mode that I have been in for most of 2013.  There were some times in the middle of the year where I was thinking more strategically and planning trips to see customers in regions, and keeping my focus on the important things.  But somehow by the end of the year I was back to my old tricks of working in a responsive way, not a proactive way. 

Next year, my focus will be on working smarter, not harder.  I don’t need to put any more hours into my day.   In fact I really want to be taking less work home than what I have been doing this year, particularly in the first half of the year.

Jordan Bates has an excellent website:  http://www.refinethemind.com Jordan says “Managing my time isn’t about squeezing as many tasks into my day as possible. It’s about simplifying how I work, doing things faster, and relieving stress.  It’s about clearing away space in my life to make time for people, play, and rest”  Sounds exactly what I’m looking for!



Jordan’s 21 tips for time management include:

1.     Complete most important tasks first

2.     Learn to say ‘NO’

3.     Sleep at least 7-8 hours

4.     Devote your entire focus to the task at hand

5.     Get an early start on work – don’t procrastinate

6.     Don’t allow unimportant details to drag you down

7.     Turn key tasks into habits – for me using a CRM tool

8.     Be conscientious of TV/internet/gaming time – for me searching for properties on www.realestate.com.au can take up a lot of my time!

9.     Do less – create more value, rather than more things

10.  Unsubscribe from emails you don’t need to receive everyday

11.  Batch related tasks

12.  Find time for stillness

 These are all things I will commit to implement from now on.  I can start on the internet subscriptions immediately!  How I have ended up getting more than 15 emails a day from retailers I don't know!  By eliminating them, I'll not only have less email traffic, but I'll also avoid spending money on items I really am not looking for and don't need.

What tips do you have for working smarter, not harder?  I'd love to hear about them.  Drop me a post, or send me an email to livewelllivesmart@gmail.com .