Big Brood

Just found this blog entry entitled “You might be a big family if…” over at Mama Archer’s Blog which is simlilar to our “You might be a big brood if…” series and I can totally relate…though, when we get the question “Are you Catholic or Mormon.” we can always answer: “Catholic….why?”

While not really a story of a big brood itself, this story about a pediatrician who is a father to a big brood does talk about how a big brood can help you to be more sensitive. I have certainly experienced this in my own life. I’m naturally pretty self-centered but when you have 2-3 voices at a time needing something, you tend to learn that you might not be center of the universe.

Quoting the article:

“I’m a pediatrician. I practice what I preach.” Having a large family helps him understand what his patients are going through, he added.

“When you have seven children, you probably have seen it all - from tantrums to trouble sleeping. Your empathy level is more aware.”

His philosophy as a pediatrician is to treat each child as if that child were his own, Schaefer said.

“If you treat people (of all ages) how you would like to be treated, in general things go fairly well.”

While a smaller family can give you a lot of great experiences I have to say that I’m constantly amazed at the range of personalities that we have in our own house.

This post by CNNMoney entitled Top Tips: Reasons for Optimism is a nice dose of sunshine in an otherwise dreary news stream. In this article they talk about 3 good reasons to be optimistic.

1. Low mortgage rates, which can help those of just considering refinancing as well as those that may be stuck in some of those nasty sub-prime loans.
2. Consumer Incentives: Look for deals on larger cars, furniture and electronics as retailers and dealers look to clear out slow moving inventory. Bad news: Compact cars are less likely to have incentives. Good news: We need a LARGE van.
3. Now is a good time to buy in the stock market. For those of you with the extra cash, it’s time to go nuts!

These things are good news for us, but I hope that this tumble ends soon.

How do you feel about the economy right now? Do you think we’ve hit the bottom?

Now that my red wiggler herd has arrived, I need to find a more permanent home for them. They came in the mail before I was ready, so I made a quick home for them out of a rubbermaid container that we had available. However, experience has shown that an unmodified rubbermaid container isn’t a good home for worms as they get too moist and eventually drown. Let’s take a look at our options:

Read the rest of this entry →

… you feel like you’re attending a kid’s party, at all times.

From the last article, Investing 101, we talked about how we invest our money to make more money. This makes our “money work for us.” One of the essential tools for accomplishing this is “interest” and it’s more powerful brother “compound interest”. Here I intend to go through basic definitions of both and show some examples including and example of how you might help to guarantee that your children are taken care of.

Read the rest of this entry →

Investing is defined by Merriam-Webster as:

to commit (money) in order to earn a financial return

So, we give someone else our money, in order to make more money. When I have extra money, I can choose to spend it in several ways. I can spend it:

• buying things that bring me immediate pleasure
• buying things for other people that bring them immediate pleasure
• leaving it in the bank to be immediately available to me
• invest it, making it grow to provide more money for me.

If I buy things for myself or others, I have paid my money for a passing moment. I may have fond memories of that moment. I may find the things I buy useful, but at the end of the day, the money is gone. I have a “return” of immediate pleasure.

If I leave it in the bank to be immediately available to me (I’m thinking a simple checking or savings account in this case) then I get neither the immediate pleasure nor the “extra” money that I would have from investing it. I have no “return” except perhaps to feel safe in an emergency.

If I invest it, my hope is that I will gain more money. That money in addition to my original money can then be used to buy me or others things at a later date. I have a “financial return“.

A phrase I have heard often is that investing is like “making your money work for you.” This is a nice sounding phrase but what does it mean? It essentially means that the money you give for investing is working, like you work. It does it’s job making more of itself, just like I do my job at the company I work.

The problem I have with this phrase is that it makes it all seem too easy. It doesn’t mention how that “financial return” comes. It comes because you take a “risk“. There is no investment vehicle where you give your money to someone else and make more money, without risk.

How is this different from gambling? It doesn’t seem to be different at its heart to me. However, investments sites consistently claim that the money they get back is real. In fact, I consider investing to be like a game. In any game, you need to risk to find reward and you need to manage those risks to survive. It’s the same here. That’s what this whole series is about. Managing those risks.

So, to summarize:

• we invest to get more money.
• we do this by giving it to someone else
• we take a risk that we may not get that money back.
• we work to manage those risks so we have a better chance to get our money back

I hope you’ve enjoyed my babbling about something so basic. Sometimes working these things out in writing really help me to keep them in the forefront of my mind.

I do plan on doing many other posts but do you think I missed anything here? Am I off-base in any of my statements?

If any of you have taken a look at our “About ” page, you’ll see that we admittedly have not done the right things with our money. What the right things are, well, we don’t really know. This is the first post in a series of posts I am putting together to discuss investing.

One thing that you learn very quickly when teaching, is that the best way to learn is to teach! If you can’t teach, then the second best way is to try to write things down. Blogging is a great way to do that.

Here’s a bit more background on me, so you know where I’m coming from. I am in my mid 30’s and have spent most of my life spending. Whenver I wanted something, I got it (within reason). However, now what I really want, is to be able to retire someday! To reach this goal, I know I need to become much smarter about our money.

So, I come to this with a fairly fresh mind. Fresh meaning, ignorant when it comes to money. However, I do have one thing going for me. I love to learn and ask questions.

So, we began this blog to begin to better understand our own finances, motivations and possibilities. What CAN we do with our money so I can retire someday? What options are available? How much money do I need to dedicate to this goal? Can we do this without hurting our family life?

All these questions lay before us, and I hope in this series to begin to answer some of them.

Hopefully, you learn something too. If nothing else, look for things to NOT do. I’m pretty good at finding those.

The oldest gosling found this today in our yard!  Even if it is 40 and windy, it can’t be denied any longer spring has arrived!

I was wandering around wondering about my grocery bills and I ran across this great piece from the UIUC Farm Gate. The summary:

“The relationship between corn, ethanol, and gasoline prices has resulted from the federal ethanol production mandates, and they will have an impact on corn prices particularly if a short corn crop results from weather issues. The reduction in production will raise corn prices to levels that ethanol refineries cannot afford to operate, and either the ethanol production mandates will have to be relaxed or refineries will have to be heavily subsidized to be able to buy corn at nearly $8 projected prices.”

This article really hits home with us because, of course, we worry about fuel prices, food prices and our environment. It appears as if La Niña is likely to cause some drought conditions in the U.S. this year, leading to higher corn prices. NOAA’s drought monitor seems to back this up.

Corn prices are also higher this year because of government mandates around ethanol and a generally “greener” focus on ethanol in our country. All of this comes together to push commodity prices up. That is, farmers who want a better crop to sell, will sell corn because of its higher price. That leaves less land available for wheat and soy beans, which also pushes their prices higher.

In the end, the combination of government mandated use of ethanol, our focus on corn-based ethanol and looming drought conditions mean higher prices for our groceries based on these commodities. Also, don’t forget that much of our corn goes to feed our beef.

Have you seen the effect in your grocery bill yet? Do you see any counter-trends?