Father Sez

These are the posts, I found interesting, useful or different, from the blogosphere this past week. They are listed in no particular order. 

The Dough Roller wrote about the 7 habits of wealth, where he lists the 7 things if done by us repeatedly should make us wealthy. I   strongly suggest that we should all take a look and rate ourselves. (I am very low on some of DR’s rules. I really should buck up.) 

My Money Blog, in turn speaks about the 9 traits of the middle class millionaire. These 9 traits summarized from a book “The Middle Class Millionaire” make interesting reading. As a working stiff, I may identify more with this list than the DR’s list above.

 Sometime back, a number of selfless bloggers (here’s the full list of the bloggers and their respective articles) worked on a group project laying down suggested ground rules for managing money for people at various age bands. These series of posts have now been condensed into an E-Book which is being distributed free.  

As a not too financially competent father of 5 children from ages 9 – 22, this book will be a great help and guide for me personally as well as my children. 

I downloaded mine from Ana’s blog (yep, she’s the one from the “I’ll climb mountains and swim oceans, but credit cards and debts never!!!” school).   Thanks again, guys! 

Steward at My Family’s Money makes an astute comparison between NINJAS and Ninjas. Most of us would immediately think of the invisible at will Japanese fighting machines armed with an array of odd weapons. Pop over and find out what the other NINJA means. I am sure you would agree with Steward’s observations.  

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary made an observation that his net worth was increasing, and at the same time the US$ was falling. I have no idea what the economists would say or do about this. However, when working in Ghana, I was told that 9,500 Ghanaian Cedis could have bought a house around 1980 – 85. In 1998/9, it could not even buy a bag of cement. 

A falling currency, if not managed, can extract some serious financial pain. 

Is there a bug going around?  Hot on the heels of the Simple Dollar and The Digerati Life, One Snarky Chica with Issues also seems to decided to do away with her full time job. In her case, it may have been a little involuntary, so she is addressing being a problogger with caution. Her academic qualifications seem so right for being a problogger. I have every belief that she may decide to remain pro.

The Mighty Bargain Hunter suggests we approach high priced seminars with caution and instead invest time. I do agree with him. No amount of seminars and books will be of any help if we do not invest time and energy putting into practice what we have learnt. However seminars do have the added advantage of meeting like minded people, and perhaps joining a network or peer group. I took the calculated risk of sending my daughter for a property investment seminar to learn as well as to meet people. (And this was after reading some of the presenter’s books and deciding that this guy was all right.)

Jeff of Wise Money Decisions talked about how his dad paid him and his siblings allowances. I liked the way that his dad had a family meeting when the allowance was distributed. It also seems that Jeff’s father had a secret formula for calculating the allowances….rounded to the nearest cent. 

Jeff also mentions another family that used an open bid system to determine amounts to be paid for chores.  

Compared to Jeff when he was younger, my children seem to be having a gala time. Since we started the allowance system, only one child has ever done any extra work for additional money. Hope my kids change their thinking. 

The 4^th of March is going to be special for Mrs. Micah.  On this day in 2008, she became a member of the M-Network. On this same day, she launched her Finwikian, a wiki on all things dedicated to personal finance on the Internet. This is a great undertaking, and I am sure, all of you will join me in offering our heartiest congratulations to Mrs. M.  

The 142^nd Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by the Baglady. A gifted writer, she has interspersed a number of little known facts about the homeless amongst the many great posts that are being exhibited at this Carnival.  

Even if you are too busy to read blogs daily, I would strongly recommend that you read the Carnivals, at least.        

This is all for this week. I am looking forward to the weekend when my wife and I will be casting our votes as part of the process of choosing our next Gomen.

To all of you, have a great and enjoyable weekend.

I used to do my round up posts on Saturday evenings. This is now being changed to Thursday evenings.  

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Broke Grad Student. A certainly gracious and stylish host, BGS included my post which questioned whether windfalls could change people’s lives. 

From elsewhere in the blogosphere, the following posts caught my fancy. 

Mrs. Micah reminds us that though our journey to debt reduction may have stoplights, detours, slow drivers and even construction blockades, we should stay the course. We should keep on reminding ourselves that we are on the road that gets us to where we want to go. 

I completely agree with her. I motivate myself by reminding myself of an aircraft carrier making an “U” turn.  

Trent at the Simple Dollar announced his decision to quit his full time job. He has outlined his reasons why he wants to quit and how he has prepared himself for this paradigm shift. 

I am truly inspired by posts like this. Though I do not feel that I am in a position yet to make this really significant move, the pull factor is strong. I am grateful that Trent, who is clearly a polished wordsmith, has eloquently written about the preparatory work he has put in, before making the big decision.  

Almost as if on cue, another favorite blogger of mine, Ms. SVB of Digerati Life has announced that she, too, is leaving her job to pursue her dreams. She has previously written about her plans for her future plans as well as the steps she has and is taking to prepare herself for this move.  

To both Trent and Ms. SVB, I offer my heartiest congratulations and best wishes. This is the stuff we read about in books, except that this time it’s from real life people that I feel I almost know.   

The Glbl guy puts a 15 month period of pain to rest. He tells us about the sad times of November 06, when he had to pawn off some of his wife’s jewelry and by mistake, an item of tremendous sentimental value had been pawned off….the engagement ring he bought for his wife with his entire savings as a college student. Happily he has now bought for his wife a new ring. 

And the Glbl guy has also managed to weave a useful section on buying from Amazon.com into this touching story.

I am so happy for him. Pop over and read the full story here. 

Moolanomy writes about the systematic process he went through in assessing how much insurance he needed. This post will help a lot of us who are not sure if we are adequately insured and are, for any number of reasons, reluctant to seek an insurance agent or company to find out. 

Free Money Finance wrote about the merits of paying children an allowance for them to read a book and then explaining it to their parents.  I have to respectfully disagree with this idea. We have a system in place for the kids to improve their command of the English language, where the kids write a couple of pages a week from an English book and then read it out to me.  

I have on occasion had to cajole them into writing, especially the youngest girl, but I never considered offering any rewards. Instead, I would like to instill the idea of the children doing additional work / chores at home for money. 

This is all for the week. Have a great weekend, folks!   

This week has been a hectic one. The design of the blog has been changed and now shifted to our new site. Hope you like the new design.

For news from elsewhere in the blogosphere:- 

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by the Financial Blogger.  Tastefully interspersing cool pictures of Prison Break, the FB did a great job hosting. Pop over and see for yourself. The Carnival offers a great opportunity to get a great variety of useful articles all at one place. 

Two particular posts that struck a chord with me were : -        

The Digerati Life’s thought provoking “What price are we paying to have it all”. SVB makes the statement that she does not believe that we can have a life that just constantly expands to accommodate anything that we bring into it. 

I agree with her completely. There are only 24 hours in a day.As more and more responsibilities are piled into these 24 hours, something has to give. And when we explore this honestly, we’ll find that we end up giving up the really important things…like exercise, time with the kids, time alone etc. What we take on and what we give up have to carefully balanced.  

The Honest Dollar’s equally thought provoking post, the Parent Trap on the saga of adult children still expecting and getting financial assistance from their parents.  She has laid down in plain words a really telling statement 

“What About Paying Yourself First?

I don’t have kids, so I suppose I can’t yet fully understand the lengths to which parents will go to help their children succeed.  But I buy the conventional logic that a child can get loans for school, for a car, for a house - a parent cannot get a loan for retirement.”

Sound advice indeed for both the parents and the adult children. I hope this situation does not arise in our family.

From the other blogs that I follow: 

Millionaire Mommy in the Making is mulling over making her first investment property purchase. The +’s of property investment are many, and so are the –‘s. It will be good to get ourselves well and truly educated before we launch. At least we should be able to mitigate the mistakes.   

Money Myths reminds us that we should be in control of our money, not the other way around. I agree completely with this statement, as money just like fire can be a great servant, but a terrible master.  

The Simple Dollar reminds us that we should invest in ourselves and one of his best ever investment in time and money was to exercise. He also gives some tips to those of us who have yet to start. 

The Frugal Duchess had once of those “work” or “family” decisions to make. And she planned well to make the right decision, without compromising her work commitments. All of us working parents go through this dilemma frequently. Let’s hope that all of us make the right choices all the time.  

I got introduced to a great Malaysian blog, Saif Improvement, through a link from my friend Azrina.

Thanks a lot, Rina. 

Saiful has a really vibrant and cool blog with very useful and motivational articles. Do check him out.  

In line with her moniker Dollar Frugal, Brooke’s frugality clearly covers only the Dollars. In terms of sharing of knowledge and helping others, she overflows with generosity. I asked and she freely emailed me a copy of her insanely massive blogroll, which I am using to add further to my blogroll. Am still working on it. 

Thanks again, Brooke.  

That’s it for this week. Have a great and productive week ahead.  

The week started off in a great fashion.  

The Art of Manliness, a really interesting blog “dedicated to uncovering the lost art of being a man”, highlighted my post on what should I tell my children on choosing a spouse, and this drove in a nice stream of traffic.  

Thanks again, Brett.  

Some of the posts from the blogs that made me sit up are listed below. 

Get Rich Slowly’s conversation with one of his readers which gave birth to the question on what motivates people to pursue smart personal finance. For people who are already shouldering heavy debt loads and become slaves to servicing these debts, maybe the source is clear. It would be pain. 

What are the identifying factors that give equal or stronger doses of continual motivation to those starting off in life now?  This is what I am searching for, as my daughters approach the day they would start their own financial and life footings. 

The Simple Dollar listed 9 simple ways to stand out in our careers. Well, I am guilty of not having managed my career well, but this advice will stand in good stead for my children.  

I could not help smiling as I was reading this. I Have Paid for this Twice Already had an accounting dilemma on her hands. She was sure she owed somebody $800 for her car repairs and everyone seemed to say, “Nope! You don’t.” Luckily it did not escalate into an ethical dilemma, and it has now been finally resolved. 

My Dollar Plan has neatly analyzed her time to see if her work/life balance is what she would like it to be. Her pie charts gave me quite a jolt.  She has (whilst juggling 89 credit cards et al) managed to devote an astounding 33% of her time for the children. This is truly incredible. Even when she starts going back to work, it would still be a remarkable 22%. Well done, Madison.  

I have to look harder at some of my time wasters and see how I can squeeze more time for the children and the family.

The Carnival of Personal Finance – the Valentine Edition was hosted by My Dollar Plan. Though I did not participate in this Carnival, there are lots of useful and interesting articles listed.    

This week has been a little hectic with considerable travelling. I have also not participated in Carnivals for some time. I really should get my act back together.

I must thank FMF for making mention of my blog in his weekly roundup.  

On the positive note, I have finally managed to “google reader - ize” most of the blogs that I follow. Using my previous bookmark and read, which was “upgraded” to email was quite time consuming. Now it is a lot more manageable.

Some of the posts that I found interesting this past week are listed below.

- The Digerati Life’s take on teaching our children how to handle debt and credit.  This guest post by Tisha Kulak will come in real handy for the compilation I am doing for pf lessons that my children should grasp and understand.

- The outstanding “How to manual” for pf management applicable all ages, bringing together the knowledge and experience of 17 pf bloggers whose work I enjoy and respect. 

- RocketC talks about heading in the right direction in reducing his deficits after starting his budget. I know exactly what and how he feels. My wife and I have also just started on this journey after a long, long time of ignorant bliss.

- Wise Bread wrote about getting free lectures from renowned Universities, like MIT and Yale, even though it does not come with any credits. My eldest daughter who is doing psychology may find this tidbit of information very useful.

- Lynnae’s declaration on behalf of all ladies to those of us clueless husbands (self included) on the 7 things that women want us to understand about money. Man, this makes a lot of sense - after seeing it in writing.

Here’s to a great and productive week ahead!