Father Sez

 Picture Credit: Azah. The stuff we bought. We have a few more packs of the garden soil.

I first read about square foot gardening in Lynnae’s post on Building a square foot garden. It seemed to be a cool way to grow some greens in not too big a space and without too much heavy activity. 

Lynnae also gave links to Frugal Dad’s take on square foot gardening. And he has written his journey into this in no small detail. 

We have some land around the house and this approach looked very doable. And besides, this looked great as a family project, something that cannot but have positive returns. 

I bounced this idea off my second girl and she agreed to read Lynnae’s and Frugal Dad’s posts. Which she did. And the project was officially launched last Saturday. 

We had some reservations on the issue of the boxes. The recommended or suggested manner seemed to be too much of a major engineering issue.  I discussed with my daughter about using baskets. After all they were about the same size and could be moved around easily. They had small holes at the bottom so drainage would not be a problem. They were so easily available, and besides we had a couple lying around at home. And secretly I was wondering as to why we could not use pots. And we had a number of available pots. 

Last night I read Jim’s post on his version of the square foot garden, the Blueprint for Financial Prosperity Garden Project. And he used garden pots!  

For now, my daughter has planted some seeds. They have been planted in polybags. (The leftover polybags bought for the incubation of the petai belalang and the geti trees for the goat farm.)  The idea is to transplant the plants into pots (for tomatoes, lime and chillies) and baskets for the vegetables.  

So far the money spent on the project is negligible. A total of about Ringgit 25 which is about USD 7.80 or so, which was spent on buying seeds, some garden soil and a couple of gardening implements.    

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Our family has never been all that great with pets. 

Like many other families with young children, for years my wife and I have had to fend off requests from the children for cats, hamsters, rabbits and the like. We have succeeded all these while. 

Last year, a hen (yes, a hen) wandered into our house and stayed on for about a year. We never found out who the real owner was. We bought a small pen for her and she was quite happy. One day, she disappeared for about 3 days and then came back as if nothing had happened. We never found out where she went, but apparently her female instincts had called. She then laid eight eggs in quick succession and valiantly tried to hatch them. But none hatched.

We have been told that for this type of hen, another should be the one that hatches the eggs, not the mother! I have no idea whether this is true.  Sadly, this hen was bitten and killed by a dog. 

Then it was a pregnant cat that sauntered in. We took her in and she gave birth to 3 kittens. We took them to the vet and he gave us some instructions on how to look after the family. Unfortunately, the mother and one of the kittens died. They died the same day my mother passed away. The two remaining kittens were given away to the Government animal centre where they give them away to animal lovers. 

And that’s the closest we have come to keeping pets. 

Yesterday, my second daughter managed to cajole her mother into buying a couple of rabbits. You can see them in the picture. The white one has been christened as Snow whilst the other is Bobo.  The kids are all excited. And it is difficult for parents not to be infected with their excitement.  

As expected the kids have sworn to look after the rabbits. Time will tell.  

For now, the rabbits are welcome as the latest additions to our family. 

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Cameron wrote an excellent article on the American industrial system being “unfriendly” to continuous improvement and hence losing their leadership role. He mentioned Kaizen, the Japanese science of continuous improvement as one of the main keys that allowed the Japanese to take leadership.   

I am no expert at Kaizen, but I absolutely love the concept and the clear and simple process by which continuous improvement can and is being achieved. 

Kaizen is not a system where someone puts an idea in a suggestion in a box and the box is opened after 6 months. It’s more of a continuously ongoing carnival within the organisation. A massive living and breathing machine that comes out of ‘000’s of improvements every year, year in and year out. 

The book, Kaizen: The key to Japan’s Competitive Success gives some of the art and science of Kaizen as it is applied and practiced in the very biggest of Japanese firms.

You have to read the book to appreciate the number, type and quality of the suggestions thrown out by the system. We are talking in millions here! The prize money given is sufficient to help workers fully furnish their homes! It’s incremental improvement, little by little, step by step.

Kaizen is part of Total Quality Management (TQM), a concept, ironically, first mooted by an American, W. Edwards Deming who is also considered the father of modern quality management.  Reading Cameron’s article, something sparked in my mind.

Why can’t we apply the principles of TQM in our lives? And in our personal finances? Or are we already applying it sub consciously? 

The five pillars of TQM are:-

• Management Commitment

Yep, my wife and I are fully committed to improving our lives. For us, our children and our extended families.

• Employee Empowerment

If we take the family members, including all our children, as “employees of the family organisation”…..I have to say that we are empowered.

• Fact Based Decision Making

This can be simplified at the family level. We don’t need statistical stuff. But things like the Pareto Principle and Cause and Effect Diagrams have to understood by all the family members, aka employees.

• Continuous Improvement
• Customer Focus

Some of the issues to be improved upon may have to be an adult issue, though children sometimes can shock us with their insight.

 This page from Mind Tools shows how to use Pareto Analysis to select the biggest issue that we should try to solve or the biggest expense that we should try to reduce.

And this page shows how we can use Cause and Effect Diagrams to help us to think through causes of a problem thoroughly. The C & E diagrams guide us to consider all possible causes of the problem.

See how Pinyo demonstrates the use of the Pareto Principle to improve personal finance.

Can we use these methods to try to reduce our commute costs, our grocery costs, our mortgage bills, increase our online income……….….or whatever?

I have not applied these rules in a formal manner at home. I have just used my own analyses and ran them with my wife before implementing some of those “frugalizing” steps that we have taken.

Now with rising costs of food that affects every single family member, maybe TQM Family Style’s time has come.

I humbly thank Shaefer’s Blog for the inspiration for this post. 

Picture Credit: Google Images

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We have five children, a boy and four girls. The boy, at number 3 is sandwiched between his two elder and two younger sisters. Since his birth, my wife has given him the title of Tuan Muda of our household, which in our language means Young Master.

He is now 14 years of age. Isn’t it time he started becoming a Gentleman? I read up and asked around for some advice on what I could do to help instill in him this very important skill.

I have read that boys imitate and emulate their fathers.

Boys want to grow up to be like their fathers. “The human brain is wired for imitation. Every boy loves his father and wants to be able to do what he does, both to honor him, to earn his praise, and to compete with him. . .

Men are extremely important in giving boys messages about being a man,” notes Geoffry Canada, President of the Harlem Children’s Zone. “Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models. And boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers search the hardest to figure out what it means to be male.”

It appears clear that I would be the first role model my son would be looking up to.

I searched within myself and did an inventory of whether I was being a good, or rather not bad, role model to my son. Though I am no Theodore Roosevelt, I do believe that I have not done any serious damage in this area.

Being a good role model is the foundation for preparing my son to be a man.

And here are five things that I can and want to do to be the role model my son needs as well as to bond better with him.  

1. I have to spend more time with my son.

I have to tweak my time management a bit. Though I take pride in being an organized guy, it is clear to me that I am not scheduling my priorities as well as I should. My weekly calendar has no specific provision for activities with my son. I’ll have to work on this.

It’s not going to be a case of finding or creating more time, rather I have to focus on how I can do some of my planned activities for the day together with my son.

For example, recently I took our son along when my wife and I went to the Land Office to collect a title deed for one of our properties. On the way back, we talked about title deeds (I was a little surprised, but it seemed that it was the first time he had seen a title deed) in general and I explained to him how our land title system worked. (This chore is something I would have done on my own. I am happy that my son agreed to join me.)

My son helped me draw a map showing the way to the farm we are setting up, a distance of about 90 kilometres. I drove, while he marked down the key landmarks and distances etc. This map has been distributed to the guests we are inviting for the opening of the farm.

2. I must take him out more often

By this I mean not only taking him out for outings like picnics or vacations. I also mean bringing my son along for my chores and duties as a husband, father, and friend in order to show him how a responsible and dependable man behaves.

Examples could be visiting a recently bereaved family friend or relative, going to the bank to sort out some issues etc.This approach is based on advice given by a friend. He remembers that his father took him out often and he learned a lot about manly duties and responsibilities watching his father during these times.

My son has often joined me when I visit the goat farm and the rubber smallholding. I hope that as the goat farm develops further he would agree to shoulder some of the small responsibilities.

3. Treat and respect him as an adult and reason with him rather than adopting the “I said so!” approach

I already do this and I believe that my son appreciates it. Having conversations with him at a reasonably adult level will help strengthen his confidence and make him more open with me.

4. Make him read motivational and inspirational books

Here my wife and I are lucky enough to have found a system. My sons (and his two younger sisters) have to write a couple of pages from a book on Saturday and Sunday. They then read out to me what they have written. Our intention is for the children to have a better grasp of English.

By making my son write and read pages from a motivational / inspirational book, like Anthony Robbins’ “Notes to my Son” and Sean Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens,” I am hoping some of the ideas and good advice will seep into him.

5. Learning some life skills jointly with him

This is an interesting thought that has just come to my mind. Maybe I should sit with him when he is in a talkative mood and try to find out if he is interested in picking up some skills. It is possible that he may say no. I just have to work on this.

This blog was started so that my kids could learn on managing their personal finance and some other aspects of life from the mistakes I have made. While he is not an active follower of my blog, I am sure he will read those articles written specifically with him in mind.

My son is now entering a stage in his life that can be classified as a little tricky for parents and young teens alike. This is the called the “My Mommy has no clue” stage. I did not do enough to strengthen my relationship with my son when he was at the much more malleable of “My Mommy knows everything” and “My Mommy knows most things” stage.

Nevertheless, I believe I still have a chance to make amends and make him a better man than I am. 

Photo Credit: Bendis

Popularity: 39% [?]

Sometime ago I wrote about our family’s goals and experiences on allowances for the younger children.  

There appear to be differing views on kids’ allowances. NCN prefers to let the children earn their allowances. This would help in teaching responsibility and build self esteem. Wise Money Decisions has an interesting twist, and he also writes about another family that practices the free market system on allowances.  

There are so many articles on this clearly popular (rightfully so) issue. For some examples you can go to this site. 

All my wife and I want to achieve is for the kids to understand money, learn how to live within a “budget”, save some of their “earnings” and keep reasonable records. Achieving this woould be enough of an accomplishment.  

The primary rules of our system are :- 

a)    The allowances will be paid every Sunday,  

b)    It’s currently only for our boy (14 yo) and 4^th girl (13 yo). The youngest may be getting hers from next year, 

c)     The children have to keep accounts of their receipts and payments, 

d)    At least 10% must be saved and put into their piggy bank, 

e)    I have promised topping up their savings at year end. 

We have not tied the allowances to any chores and neither have we decided to make any deductions for mistakes, “felonies” etc. 

So far the system seems to be working well for the girl.

The boy on the other hand seems to be spending nothing. He also seems to have no interest in the allowance, and the whole amount is just being socked away in his piggy bank.

At first I thought it was because he had a stash hidden away, cash gifts from us and his uncles and aunts for the festivals. His mother collected the whole amount and banked it into his savings account. Still no change in his spending habits.  

When I talk to him, I get the famous teenager monosyllabic answers.  Last week he told me he wanted to change the accounting system. Which he didn’t. This Sunday, both of  went over the book keeping required. He had also spent some of his allowance during the past week. Maybe now we are getting somewhere.

I have told both of them that the allowances will be changed to a monthly one with effect from 1^st June. This would allow them to budget over a longer time horizon and allow me to start talks on salaries, savings, budgeting and such. 

And I know just the way to do that, thanks to D4L’s idea of weaving an interesting story into these lessons.

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It has been quite sometime since I posted about this exercise I am doing with my girls.  

Just to recap, my two elder girls are almost ready to join the rat race. I am trying to discuss with and suggest to them the things they can do to better position themselves to get the job of their choice from the employer of their choice. And not to repeat the major mistake I have made of not managing my career.  

In Part 1, we covered an overview of the process. 

In Part 2, we covered the additional employability skills they would have to familiarize themselves with.

In Part 3, we looked at the realities of life as an employee as compared their past years as students. 

The plans for Part 4, 5 and 6 were for:-

a)    My girls to understand the career options available to them,

b)    The preparing of a good resume and identifying the companies and  

c)     The seeking of the interviews and doing well at them.

Well, that is still the plan. And though I keep referring to “girls”, the eldest has yet to complete her final exams which are due in mid May 08. I am sure she’ll understand the principles, as I go through this with her younger sister.

For our second girl, Azah who did Accounting and Finance, the resources used to learn about her career options (in addition to what her University Counselors had talked to her) were basically :

a) Clever Dude’s very useful post on why people work and some of the attributes of career selection and

b) The informative articles in About.com on the definitions of the Finance Function and the Financial Services Industry, the advantages of a career in Financial Services and the differences of the producer and support function in Financial Services.

I also chipped in with the almost exponential growth in Islamic Finance where Malaysia is  acknowledged as being at least one of the world leaders. The International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) which offers courses in Islamic Finance is based in Malaysia and is widely accepted as a pioneering teaching institution in this field.

Lately, too, Squawkfox has started a series on finding our career calling and discovering the five paths to our perfect job. I have also given the links to my daughters and I am sure they’ll find it useful. (Having worked in ten companies and with seven different career paths, this lady is eminently qualified to be a career counselor.)

Perhaps it’s a little too much to expect my daughter to be able to clearly define her career choices immediately. She is still a little unsure of her career choices. For a start, we have agreed upon that she should concentrate on companies that offer good opportunities for training and personal and career development.

Note:

My daughter has already prepared her resume and submitted it to some institutions which fit the above general description. She has also applied to a few other companies that had adverts for vacancies in the financial support functions. So far, she has attended one interview. We shall write about this later.

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Selling a house is not just a simple dollars and cents issue. Emotions do play a major role. Just ask Emily, she’ll tell you. 

The house we have just sold is so intricately intertwined with our family history.  

a) This is the first house my wife and I bought.  

b) This is the house I came back to one day after work. That morning I had left for work from our rented house. During the day, my wife with our two elder girls (who were then about 6 and 7 years old) handled the complete shifting assisted by some hired help. Even though we had much less “stuff” than we have now, this accomplishment by my wife still astonishes my friends. 

c) This is the house where three of our kids were born. There can be no more important memories than those of our kids when they are at the “My Mommy knows everything” stage.  

d) This is the house we were living in when I suddenly realized that my corporate career was not what I really wanted and just quit. Without proper planning and preparation, it was a bad move and I had to jump back in not too long after.  

e) This is the house, where we discovered after moving in that our opposite neighbor was the father in law of a dear friend. This created instant friendships and made the easing into a new neighborhood so much easier for us. 

f) This is the house where we planted our first tree, a neem. This tree is almost a given in every Indian home which has some land. Reading what Wikipedia says about the neem tree, one cannot be surprised. The tree is now a healthy strapping 20 footer. 

We have treasured the house ever since we moved in. We have looked after the house and maintained it well.  Perhaps the house’s rough patch was when we first rented out the house. Our first tenant cannot be classified as an ideal one. We did up the house after he vacated and spent slightly more than the sum total of the rental he paid during his tenure. 

The house is presently tenanted by a truly wonderful family, with admirable housekeeping habits. (We made an offer for them to buy the house, but they were otherwise committed.) My wife will be meeting with them on Tuesday or Wednesday to tell them about the sale.  

The buyer seems to be a good person. He has said that he wants to buy the house because his mother and sister stay not too far away from the house. (I do suspect the neem tree might have played a small role in helping to tilt the decision.) 

This house has served us well. It has also worked hard and created some financial equity for us.  

For this and everything else, my family and I shall always remain grateful. It is unfortunate that we have to sell the house, but we really could not see any other way out of the financial hole that I had dug my family into. We can only say that we are confident that we are passing over the house to someone who will treasure and look after the house as well as we would like the house to be looked after.  

And this house will always retain its illustrious role in our family history.     

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Ron over at the Wisdom Journal wrote an interesting article titled “My worst decision ever” and that everyone should learn from the mistakes he had made. 

Ron detailed that the two lessons that his worst decision ever had taught him were :- 

a)    Marry a good person and 

b)    Never to take a job because of money. 

I want to talk a little about Lesson (a). 

Marrying a good person may be a little easier said than done, as I am sure that though all of set out to do exactly this, the divorce statistics do not bear testimony to our outstanding success. 

Courtship and marriage are two different stages in life. It has been said that man is deaf and the lady blind during courtship and these senses come alive again after marriage.

Last November, my wife and I celebrated our 23^rd wedding anniversary. When one of my younger colleagues asked me about my secret to this long marriage, I answered, (a little tongue in cheek, perhaps), that all I did was to keep saying “Yes, dear”. 

This morning, I received an email from a friend, titled “Trust”. In this mail, there was a paragraph on accepting and forgiving our spouse’s shortcomings. (As usual, we are more receptive and forgiving of our own shortcomings.) 

The advice given was:- “Never criticize your spouse for his/her shortcomings or when he/she does something wrong. Always bear in mind that because of the shortcomings and weaknesses, he/she could not find a better husband/wife than you.” 

These are great words of wisdom. Words that should automatically run in our minds as soon as we feel the urge to open our big mouths and start saying things that we would most probably regret. 

It’s not just a matter of chance that we marry a good person. There is “work” involved in making the marriage work. Work to be done by both husband and wife in showing appreciation and respect for our significant other. 

Ron’s article may give us an assumption that he simply married a great, thoughtful and understanding wife.  But I am sure he has put in more than his fair share of work in ensuring that this is so.

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I have written earlier that we have cancelled our cable TV subscription as part of our austerity measures. As expected there were some wails of objection from the younger three children, but it died off after a while. 

After all, they had the trusty computer and the endless list of websites they could surf and otherwise waste their time. 

Then the computer went down! 

This machine was bought a long time ago. It has been repaired and upgraded a number of times. The latest repair was having its power source replaced.  In a recent thunderstorm, the computer went down again, and this time, I refused to send it in for repairs.  

Each time, I came home from work; I would be met with sullen looks from the three younger kids. I used to joke that our neighbours would think that I was mistreating them.

They used all the tricks up their sleeves to work on their mother who also managed to fend them off. 

Sigh…..I finally gave in. Though I had read Brooke’s post on “no video games till her son got straight “A’s”, and thought that was the right way to go, I just succumbed.  

Last night, my wife went with my son and youngest daughter and brought home a fancy desktop. It has a wireless keyboard, a 17” LCD screen, a sleek looking black CPU and fancy looking speakers. 

The children are ecstatic. They have promised their mother that they would use the machine wisely etc., but I have my doubts on this. I am sure there will be a fair amount of video games and such. 

My budget had no provison for this purchase. I just have to somehow sort this out.   Sigh…..children. And what parents have to do to keep them happy.    

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I was still on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Chennai when my mother passed away. The first message I received as I switched on the phone after landing at 9.30 pm, Indian time, was from my wife, informing me that my mother has passed away, at 7.40 pm. 

The journey home took a lot longer than expected. It was the Easter break; the Muslims had the Prophet’s birthday celebrations whilst the Hindus had also some festivals. In addition, the Indian Highways Authority was widening the arterial road between Chennai and my hometown. All these converged to create traffic levels I had never before seen and I finally arrived home at about 4.45 pm, after a delay of about 8 – 9 hours. 

Muslims have to bury their dead as soon as possible. My thoughts, as I was on the bus trapped in the never ending jam, were on this. I talked to my eldest brother on whether he should tell my other brothers that they should carry on with the required prayers and go ahead with the burial. He told me not to think about this and just pray that I would make it in time for the prayers. 

When I reached home, my mother’s body had been prepared for the prayers and burial. I am grateful; I had a few minutes with her before the body was taken way. 

God was kind to us on that day.  It had been raining heavily for days and all the so called roads in our small town were full of mud and almost impassable even to foot traffic. But on the 20^th March, the sun shone brightly. There was also a major Hindu festival in our town on the 20^th, where a chariot would be pulled around the town. Roads would be blocked off to traffic as huge crowds would accompany the chariot. The mosque as well as the Muslim burial grounds was on the planned path of the chariot. The chariot got stuck in the mud and it took a full hour and a half for the chariot to be freed. During which time, the prayers for my mother and the burial went without a hitch. 

The prayers were very well attended.  

I thank God; my mother passed away with three of her children and a large number of relatives and loved ones beside her. My two brothers and sister saw her drawing her last breath. 

My mother, Madam Fatima Beevi, raised us against tremendous odds. An illiterate lady, she taught us basic values about trust and honesty. She managed to see the family slowly claw ourselves out of poverty, and gain some respectability. A week or so before her death, she got to see that the Indian side of the children had their own financial base. I am sure this was a source of great comfort to her. 

On the Friday before her death, she spoke with my eldest brother. Words that my youngest brother says were clear indication that she knew of her impending demise. She focused only on asking my eldest brother to ensure that we, in Malaysia would not forget our brothers and sister in India and to remain united no matter what the circumstances. 

Tears and lamentations will not bring my mother back, nor be of any use to her.  There are only 3 things on earth that would be of any use to my late mother now.

a)    Pious children who would pray for her, 

b)    People who have benefited from her assistance, and  

c)     People who have benefited from her knowledge and teachings. 

My siblings and I will do all we can on (a), whilst I am confident that my mother has left more than her fair share of (b) and (c). 

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