Green Minded Wallet

Earlier this week I expressed the opinion that even if you can’t fully pay for college, you can still ‘do right’ by your children. I believe there are many life lessons that you can teach to your children even if you can’t fully support them through college, that can help them be successfully in their adult lives. Here are a few things that can help a child do well even if they can’t make it through college with full financial support.

They can learn how to behave. In most cases it doesn’t take a lot of money to teach a child to behave well. Yes, kids can learn poor behavior in schools, but if it’s discouraged and punished at home instead of ignored, it can really help later on in life. If really doesn’t matter how smart a kid is, or how much money her parents can throw at a university, if she doesn’t behave. What good does it do to save up hundreds of thousands of dollars for schooling, only to have your child expelled from high school from cheating? What chance does your child have of getting into school when they’re serving jail time for drunk driving or assault? If we don’t teach our children to be respectful, responsible adults who can get into college and successfully complete it than how much money we’ve saved for college is irrelevant, since they won’t be able to enjoy the benefits of that education.

They can learn to take responsibilities for their own actions. At a certain point we all need to be responsible for our actions. Sometimes I like to read the little career articles on the Yahoo! homepage. I have actually seen a few that talk about parent’s covering for their adult working children, calling bosses and all. Is that really necessary? Children need to learn that their homework, their finances, etc are their responsibility and that there are consequences to the choices that they make.

They can learn that life is not always fair. While it may seem harsh to a fifteen year-old to learn that his parent’s aren’t going to be able to pay for college while his friend’s parents are, the truth is that just being able to go to college is a way to expand opportunities that that many people in the world who will never get to experience. And even some of those from poor, rural areas who are able to eventually make it to America and other nations for college, often walk days just to get to public transportation. Days. Of walking. Instead of looking at the financial support they won’t have, children can look to the opportunities and emotional support that they will have.

So when is all this taught? See, that’s the kicker. These are lessons that kids will learn as they are growing up; they’ll learn them based on how they are disciplined and praised. But they’ll also learn them for observing their parents and other adults in their lives. The truth is education is so much more than college, it is so much more than school. As parents, neighbors, family friends, etc. the children in our lives are watching us, and they are learning from us: getting an education on social behaviors, financial behaviors, etc. If we litter, we teach our children that they don’t have to respect our environment or our communities. If we call in sick and then go fishing, we teach our kids it’s okay to lie, if there’s something else we’d rather be doing. These are the lessons we teach them every day for eighteen years, and they are not going to be easily erased by four-years of higher education. If children are surrounded by loving, responsible, members of their community, they will learn these lessons, they may not always practice them, but they’ll have been exposed to them. College can certainly open a lot of doors, but in and of itself it’s no guarantee of success. And while money can certainly help kids out quite a bit, it’s not a guarantee for creating productive members of society (just look at young adult celebrities).

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As I was walking to the bus stop this afternoon I started pondering some of the similarities between grad school and personal finance, and how to make the most out of both of them. Here are a few examples that struck me.

Big goals, a ways off. I think the case can safely be made that saving for retirement and writing a thesis are both two very large tasks that take a concerted amount of resources and dedication for years. Like a thesis, retirement is a huge goal that can often seem insurmountable. If you look at other people’s theses or retirement portfolios, you may find yourself wondering, “How am I ever going to get there?” Yes, they are big goals, but they can be conquered!

What helps me: I set small goals, sometimes I have to set tiny goals. Instead of saying, “oh, this person have 317 references for her dissertation”, or “my friend already has $350k saved toward retirement”, say “I will read and outline 5 articles this month”, or “I will save an extra 25 dollars this month”. No in the scheme of things, these are just tiny drops in the bucket. But remember every drop helps. Just ask these guys.

I also find making a list of accomplishments helps, sometimes being as detailed as writing down what I’ve gotten done each week. Then when I’m feeling stressed out, I go back and look at what I’ve already accomplished. Maybe you haven’t fully-funded your emergency fund or you still have over 900k left you want to accumulate in your retirement portfolio. But haven’t you reached 50% of your emergency fund goal and paid off one of your credit cards? To reach the top you have to build up over time. No one (I hope) sits down in a weekend and reads 317 papers. There are probably very few people who save up $1 million over three years. Take your time and appreciate the progress that you’ve made so far.

Things do not go as planned. Today I spent about 20 minutes explaining to one of the other graduate students why the experiment that he wanted to do would not work the way that he wanted to set it up. While I’m sure it was a rather frustrating experience for him, we were able to come up with some potential ways around the problems. I can’t say right now how it will all work out, but in the end there is a good chance that he will be able to find the information that he needs even if his original method might not work.

What helps me: Remembering that things often don’t go the way that you would like them to. If you’re flexible and willing to learn from your setbacks and failures, it is possible to still get where you want to be even if it takes you a little longer to do it. The advantage in personal finance is, a lot of the same temptations and challenges will show up again, but you’ll already know how to handle them.

Got nothing done. Okay, some days I come home and I’m just not sure why I even bothered to get out of bed, because I accomplished nothing. Similarly there are times when it feels like my net worth is in a holding pattern, or there are continuously unexpected little bills that thwart me from advancing my savings.

What helps me: I evaluate the situation and see if I really didn’t get anything done or if I’m actually experiencing more of a latent energy situation? If it’s a latent energy situation, I try to come up with a tangible goal that will help make things seem like I’m making progress. For example, sometimes I need to read really long dissertations that are very dense, but are important to my research. So my plan of attack is to read a chapter or two here and there, but set a goal of when I want the have the whole paper read. While reading a chapter doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment sometimes, I know that once I’ve finished putting it all together, it will really help me move forward. The same thing can be said in personal finance, especially since I’m currently at a point where my net worth (a common measure of personal finance gain) seems to be crawling along. I’m good about saving, but since much of what I save goes back out in a short time-frame towards school and other expenses, the net worth ticker doesn’t move very fast. However, I know that this experience should positively affect the rest of my career life and knowing that I’m not going into debt for it, I have to take heart. And in the end, I should still be able to hit one of my major personal finance goals by the time I finish grad school. (Woot!)

If I’m in the situation where I truly haven’t gotten anything done, then I remind myself that each day is an opportunity to make progress, and each day that I don’t take that opportunity I lose it and it doesn’t come back (the same can easily be said about incoming monetary funds). So since I don’t like to waste opportunities, I rarely have more than one dead day for a good stretch of time.

So why bother with either grad school or personal finance? Well for some people grad school is worth it and personal finance is important for everyone. It may take a long time to get where you want to be, but the feeling of success is great. If you’ve ever gotten the signature of your final committee member or paid off a student loan or car note, then I think you’d agree with me that the time, effort, and frustration were well worth the outcome.

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If you’ve stayed at a hotel recently, you may have discovered that they have started putting these little cards in your room about how much water and energy is spent on cleaning hotel room linens and they encourage you to reuse your bedding and towels. Well the hotel I stayed at last week had some of these cards. As much as I think that this is a good idea, seeing as I don’t personally feel the need to change my sheets or towels when I’m at home once a day (though I know people that do), there was a major flaw in their system. Here’s the problem: this (up-scale) hotel had absolutely no place to easily hang a towel to dry. There was a tiny rack above the sink that was holding a number of folded towels, which meant that there wasn’t enough space to spread them out to dry. There was no (real) hanging space on the back of the door, and the shower rod was inaccessible to shorter people (in fact the bathroom looked like it was designed for college basketball players). I can see how it could have worked if there was only one person in the room, but since there were two of us, it was impractical. So my suggestion would be, if you’re going to encourage people to conserve, make sure that there is a feasible way for them to do so. There are some of us who would like to help, but aren’t willing to go so far as reusing damp hotel towels.

Have you ever experienced this or other impractical conservation attempts?

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I’ve read a lot of articles at Yahoo! Finance and Bankrate (and similar sites) that stress the importance of parent’s taking care of their financial lives versus worrying about paying for college. Yet it seems to me that when I read blogs or other venues with discussions, there are a number of people who seem to think that parents should do whatever it takes to pay for college. Some feel so strongly on this topic that they feel that you are not taking care of your child if you do not cover the cost of higher education. This post is to address my feelings on the topic of not being able to (fully) cover your child’s higher education. Here are some of my thoughts.

Just because people can’t pay for college doesn’t mean that they don’t truly love and care about the well-being of their children. I would think that I’m just stating the obvious here, but I think in light of some of the discussions that I’ve witnessed I believe it bears repeating. There are many wonderful loving people in our society, who simply can’t afford the cost of college tuition. I shudder to think of a society where we (openly) discourage the janitor married to the grocery store clerk, or the minister married to the bus driver, or the social worker married to the teacher that they shouldn’t have children, because they wouldn’t be able to contribute much to the cost of their child’s higher education. What about those who may have limited means, but welcome other people’s children (by birth) into their homes? Sometimes I hear people going down this train of thought and I think that it’s important to step back and put everything into perspective.

There are people all over the world who are barely surviving. There are places were if children can get some education at all, there have a tremendous advantage. I truly believe that the parents of children in those countries and lower income people in more affluent nations love their children as much as people in more privileged areas and classes do. We all want to do right by our children, our nephews and nieces, grandchildren etc. But to me that means being a good steward of the resources we have available to us, be it money, time, etc. and being honest with our children about our limitations. If we teach our children that love transcends financial resources, then no matter what level of support we can afford to provide, we can have loving healthy relationships with our children.

As a child of a family that wasn’t able to contribute much to my education, I am very thankful to my mother for my upbringing and feel that she did right by me. While my college wasn’t completely paid for by family funds, work studies, grants, and scholarships requiring me to take out loans, I am still deeply indebted to my mother and our family friends for the lessons that they taught me that I could never learn in school, and which will take me farther than the big name school written on my diploma.

If you’re curious as to what those lessons are, check back later this week.

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This is the second installment of eco versus frugal. Last time I looked at body soap (hopefully a common hygiene item), this time I will look at black beans, one of the staples of my diet.

I find that both black bean purchase and preparation need to be considered in the eco versus frugal comparison. On the purchasing side, loose/raw black beans are generally cheaper than their canned counterparts, whether it be organic or conventional. However, I find that it can take significantly longer to cook raw black beans, so I would count energy costs in the equation. Of course considerations have to be made for the initial cooking costs of canned beans, as well as the packaging, and the potential for cans to be discarded instead of recycled. Additionally there are a number of ways to cook raw beans, blanching is certainly more energy efficient than using a crockpot.

I’ve tried cooking raw black beans, both organic and conventional, as well as a variety of different canned beans, again both organic and conventional, and this is what I’ve found: I like conventional canned beans the best. I know that might sound weird, but I think that my laziness has something to do with it. I’m very bad about paying attention to how much time raw beans should soak. Because of this, it seems like the beans end up either horribly oversoaked (we’re talking days here) or undersoaked (spend too much time cooking in the pot). As such, I find that canned beans are the way for me to go. I’ve tried some canned organic beans from my local co-op, but I didn’t care much for the flavor. Since this is the only brand of organic beans in my area (that I’ve seen), there’s not much I can do about that.

While conventional canned beans may not be the cheapest option (blanched raw conventional may be less expensive), at 59 cents a can, I’m definitely on the lower end; score one for the frugal team.

This makes the current score: eco: 1, frugal: 1

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I recently got back from a professional conference. I had a great time hearing details about some of the current research on pressing environmental concerns such as biofuels, stream restoration, and nutrient management. Our group also had a chance to hear Former President Clinton speak. It’s pretty cool to be in the same room as someone who was once a world leader! We were even allowed to take pictures (though the lighting from where I was sitting made most of my pictures rather fuzzy). All this to say that I’m pretty wiped out; I hope to get a real post up in the next day or two once I am fully rested and back into the swing of things. Hopefully we won’t have any more tornado sirens to shake things up again; what a week.

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