Staying at home to care for children (and older parents in the future) has normally been part of the woman’s Caretaker role. In our current economy, caretaking is low-income work or unpaid. This means that when a woman takes on the Caretaker role full-time, she misses out on potential earnings, skill development, and networking opportunities. A lack of earnings means lower Social Security benefit accumulation and a decrease in savings and investments. A double whammy!
Negotiation skills are crucial in various aspects of life, including parenting. Whether you're trying to convince your toddler to eat their vegetables or discussing important decisions in the workplace, effective negotiation can make a significant difference in getting effective results. In this blog post, we will explore the importance of good negotiation skills for parents and highlight the top five negotiation books to help you become a master negotiator. Additionally, we'll provide you with valuable tips for negotiating with both toddlers and business counterparts.
“When moms first come back to work they need someone to tell them, ‘You are going to feel crazy. It’s ok to feel crazy. You won’t always feel crazy.’”
With Mother’s Day coming up this week, I wanted to write a post specifically about how motherhood affects the financials of women. This article comes from my perspective as a new mom, but I know there are other people out there (dads, aunties, grandparents, etc.) playing the role of mom so this article goes out to you as well.
The Motherhood Penalty is defined by AAUW as the “phenomenon by which women’s pay decreases once they become mothers”. This is a contributing factor to the current gender pay gap.
There continues to be economic and social benefits to having children, but women should stop being penalized for having children.
“A woman who dies without adequate life insurance should have to come back and see the mess she created.”
Momma (and dads out there), I want to talk about life insurance for a sec. I know it’s not easy to talk about life insurance because we associate it with death and death is never an easy subject, but this is real life and part of a good financial plan is to protect your loved ones should something happen to you. I’m not an insurance salesperson but here’s my perspective on it.
One of the big questions that many parents ask when it comes to funding a 529 Plan is, what happens to the funds if my child doesn't end up going to college? So imagine all of these years, you’ve been saving for college. Family and friends have contributed to the account. The account has grown thanks in part to your early saving and the stock market growth. Then the time comes for your child to go to college, but they end up not needing the funds for a host of many reasons. One may be that they have received a full scholarship and have no need for the funds, or they’ve decided not to pursue the traditional 4-year university route and instead go to trade school, or they’ve decided to take a break from school so that they can figure out what they really want to do. The good news across all of these scenarios is that you don’t have to forfeit any of the funds in the 529 Account.
I opened a 529 account 3 months after my husband and I tied the knot in 2013. Call it intentional planning. Call it planned savings. Call it whatever you want, but it was just something I felt I needed to do given where we were financially. Having children also felt like our next big step after marriage.
It's important to keep this mind especially when it comes to money. Money conversations must start at home. Parents and guardians must accept the responsibility of exposing their kids to money concepts before media and peers influence that money mindset. If there’s fear, secrecy or anger in the money conversations now, that can get carried over to adulthood.
In a few weeks, many families will start receiving an advance of the Child Tax Credit. This advance can mean having extra cash to help with raising dependents each month for the rest of the year. Alternatively, you can opt-out of receiving the advance payments and wait until you file your taxes next year to receive the full amount. If your income changes in 2021, there could be a possibility that you will have to repay a portion of the advance. You can head to this tool to make adjustments to the payments or other income info. Note: this tool will need to verify your ID so you’ll need to provide some sensitive information to do so.
It’s a good idea to have a plan for this money. If you have the means to and are fairly sure you won’t have major income changes to affect the payment, it may be wise to plan to invest this money for the sake of your child’s future.
In this post, we will review a few options on how you can invest the money you will receive.
It’s important to realize that our kids need parents who are physically, emotionally and financially stable so by extension, we need to take care of ourselves first and that means investing in our well-being. Here are 7 financial moves that will benefit your children.
“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
Since most companies are doing their benefits enrollment period in the next few week’s, we though we’d share some of the most common retirement savings options. Even if you are young and have just started your professional career, it’s important to start saving and planning for retirement now so that you can use the power of time to build yourself a hefty next egg when you are older.
This week’s guest post in our Teach Kids Money Series is from Tasha Danielle of Financial Garden. Tasha is a CPA based in Michigan. She founded Financial Garden to help spread financial literacy for all ages. In her book: Amina’s Bracelet: A Kidpreneur Story, both parents and kids can learn about entrepreneurship. Tasha stresses the importance of starting the money conversation early before someone else influences your kids.
This week for our Teach Kids Money Series, we have Maya Corbic, CPA, CA from Dinarii Financial Education Academy. Maya stresses the fact that financial literacy begins at home and that parents already have the basic knowledge to teach their kids the basics of money.
I see financial literacy as a collection of skills and mindsets which when learned and practiced often enough become habits. A child is not born financially literate, they are raised by us their parents, families, communities and schools. There are literally hundreds of teaching moments every day that are brand new but often confusing for children. The parent is already occupied with the ‘moment’ so it won’t take any extra time to turn it into a financial lesson
As the effects of COVID-19 are being felt globally, many leaders have asked citizens to self-isolate and self-quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus even further. Self-quarantine can seem scary as it means being isolated from people and things that we love. Instead, let’s look into self-quarantine as an opportunity to catch-up on the things we’ve not had time to do due to personal, professional and familial obligations. I think the biggest opportunity here is the time you’ll have to review and manage your finances. Now is the time to act. If you have a bit of downtime, instead of fully engaging on Netflix marathons (which is fine in moderation), may I suggest taking a look at this list of items you can do to strengthen your finances for the days ahead.
This post is part of the #MommyMoney Series. A series that explores money, motherhood and financial independence. The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke is written by Elizabeth Warren with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi. This month’s book is not your typical personal finance book. It doesn’t espouse the same list of recommendations on how to save, what accounts to open, etc. Instead, it is a well researched book about the American family, its American dream and challenges of being middle class in the current financial and government system.
Talking to kids about money does not make money hungry kids.
I’ve been doing a lot of reflection lately about where I first started to learn about money and how best to talk to others about money. I’ve also been doing a fair amount of research and found a few books I thought were worth mentioning if you are a parent or an adult that is looking for ways to talk about money to your kids or your students. The reality is that the money conversation should start at home. It think it is the responsibility of the parent to expose kids about money concepts, otherwise, media and peers will create money influences that may lead to a distorted money mindset later on.
"How can we be the future if you're not going to teach us about money, which is our future?"
I don't have kids, so this will sort of be my manifesto for when I do. It will also serve as a snapshot of my thoughts at this point in my life. I know perspectives often change especially when there is an actual human being in the picture so I hope this helps me navigate how I want to raise kids that understand what money can do so that I may set them on a good financial path. These are my thoughts today. It could be different tomorrow as the world changes and I change. My husband's perspective and plans will be different. At some point, we will have to compromise as our goal, in the end, is to provide a good financial background for our future kids.
“When you invest, you are buying a day that you don’t have to work.”
There's many reasons why I wanted to start this site. You can find that here. After reading many personal finance books for women, written by women (and men), I don't think these five reasons are addressed enough. While I am all for equal gender pay, there are still some areas where men and women differ and these reasons are why we need to be addressing women's personal finances differently.
I picked up another personal finance book from the library. Another oldie, but a goodie from Suze Orman: Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. There's a section in there where she talks about Saving for Your Kid's College vs. Saving For Your Retirement. Suze, like she always does, keeps it real.
The reality is that if you retire without ample money to support yourself, you will become a financial burden on your children. So understand that the most generous decision you can make today - for yourself and your children - is to build as much financial security as you can, so that down the line the only thing you ask your kids for is more time with them and the grandkids, not financial aid.
