General Patton, Iraq and Iran

This video from Youtube.com was mentioned on foxnews.com today. If you haven't seen it already, watch it now. Turn down the volume, some of the language might not be appropriate for all the ears that might be around you. Funny at times, but truly provoking. Let me know what you think.

Frugal Parenting

In todays world of immediate gratification, we need to teach our kids to keep a level head and to be patient when it comes to material things.

Today I posted on Money and Credit the fifth of five posts about frugal living, this one called The Frugal Parent. Take a look at it and please feel free to leave comments with any more tips and advise that you can offer.

Listenin' to music with my boy...

All day I work. Toil with the day to day demands of the boss and clients. Then, totally spent, I come home. What a supreme pleasure and honor it is to be with my two boys. To see them playing in the yard, having squirt gun fights, getting totally soaked and laughing and loving! It's an awesome privilege to be their dad!

Now, at the end of the day, I'm sitting here with my oldest, listening to music from The Fray, "Over My Head" is playing, and he's helping make sure that my punctuation is correct!

Every day is Father's Day for me!

What do your kids think they'll earn?

On Money and Credit, I wrote about a recent survey recently released by Charles Schwab called "Teens and Money", a poll of 1,000 Amercians aged 13 to 18 from a variety of backgrounds, which found that 73% believed they would earn "plenty of money' when they were adults.

Liz Pulliam Weston had an article today talking about this report, a very good article I might add. It's called "Why your kids expect to be rich".

In the article, Liz suggests 3 things that parents can do:

Talk with your kids about their career aspirations. Once they get beyond the "I want to be a ballerina-veterinarian-astronaut" stage, you can start having real conversations about their interests and what jobs might suit them. Research together what those jobs actually pay, advised Kristine Dixon, Schwab's director of consumer education. You can get average hourly earnings for different professions from the U.S. Department of Labor's National Compensation Survey (this is a .pdf file; data for specific jobs start on Page 7) or see typical salaries across the country with Salary.com's Salary Wizard. Contrast that with what people typically spend on shelter, food, transportation and other living expenses in your area. (If you're comfortable revealing details of your family's finances, you can show them what you spend.)
Give your kids some hands-on experience with money. If your children's only money skill is knowing how to successfully nag you into buying something, they will be woefully unprepared for the real world -- either that, or you'll still be supporting them when they're 50. Better to start turning chunks of cash over to them now, either in the form of an allowance or in payment for work around the house, and let them make decisions on how to spend it. As one poster on the Your Money message board put it, "Let them learn when a lesson is cheap." By the time they're in high school, they should be assuming more responsibility for their own living expenses, as I wrote in "Why allowances don't work."
Adjust your own attitudes about money. Recognize that even if you do win that raise, or that lottery jackpot, you'd adjust pretty quickly to the improvement in your circumstances and would soon want even more. That's not to say you shouldn't be ambitious or want to improve your family's financial circumstances -- far from it. But expecting money to be the magic-ticket solution to all your problems is just as unrealistic for you as it is for your teenager.

Get Ready For School!!!

I can't be the only one out here with 'issue's' around getting ready for school. Every single day, its just one thing after another... "I'm still eating my breakfast" or "I can't find my sneakers".

We need to be in school by 08:10. How much time do you think it should take to get ready for school? Half hour, forty-five minutes, an hour?

We've been up as early as 06:15, and we were still running out the door nearly late!

Oh well! Why worry? It's not that big of a deal I guess. I'm just glad to be a dad!

They got this all wrapped up!

Okay, so what does this have to do with being a dad?

Well the owner of this truck is supposed to be moving on in life, leaving for another adventure. His friends didn't want him to leave, so they shrink-wrapped his truck in plastic, anchoring it to a tree.

Obviously, its not going to be so easy for the owner of the truck to leave; his truck is wrapped in plastic. But more than that, he will see how his moving on effects his friends, how much they wish they could keep him... how much they'll miss him.

Certainly they're glad for him, happy to see him happy and looking forward to the opportunity that awaits him.

It makes me wonder about the day that my kids will be moving on in life, leaving for another adventure. How will I react? Who will I take to baseball and basketball? Who will go to the dump with me? Who will come downstairs and give me a hug in the morning? Who will I take fishing?

Surely, I'm not going to want to see them go, but I will be happy to see them happy, looking forward to the opportunity awaiting them.. such a huge part of my life... how does a parent prepare? Maybe I should start stocking up on plastic wrap...

They're watching

How many times have we heard that we ought set an example, and not be an example? How often is that advise unheeded?

I know that it is hard, but when we have young impressionable people looking to and counting on us to teach them how to be adults, we really don't have the luxury of acting how we might feel.

We learn to socialize by watching how others socialize. We don't learn social skills by having heart to heart talks or by asking to 'do as I say, not as I do'.

What are we doing when our kids are watching? How can we expect them to do anything different when we're not watching?

Let's remember as we go about our days, our kids will copy us... We are mentoring our kids whether we want to or not.