Blog - A Fine Parent

4 Ideas for Saving Money on Family Essentials

by guest_author.
(This article is part of the Wisdom From the Trenches series. Get free article updates here.)

Imagine how your life could change if you were to discover extra money in your family’s monthly budget. What would you do with it? Could you pay down debt? Start, or add to, a savings fund for your children’s college educations? Get a pet?

Let’s discuss 4 smart and viable ways you can save substantially on everyday family essentials, freeing up money you could better allocate in other ways.

1. Stop Using Disposable Items

Have you ever stopped to calculate how much your family is spending on disposable items? If your family is like most, you’re spending a bundle on these conveniences.

If you have two children wearing diapers, you might be spending anywhere from $100 to $200 a month or perhaps even more just for their diapers and baby wipes. Cloth diapering can save you hundreds or possibly even thousands of dollars in the long term. Your total savings depends on how many children you have and how long they’re in diapers before successfully potty training.

Cleaning wipes, paper towels, paper napkins, tissues and other paper items can all drive your grocery costs up. Going paperless in the kitchen can create substantial savings.

Here are a few suggestions for a variety of disposable items you can easily replace:

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Empowering Your Kids to Develop Skills Future Employers Will Covet

by guest_author.
(This article is part of the Wisdom From the Trenches series. Get free article updates here.)

Preparing Kids for Future Career Opportunities A significant percentage of today’s workforce is now working at jobs that didn’t exist twenty years ago. Technological advances have provided the greatest drivers prompting the changes in the nature of work. Considering that technology is always hastening to advance, there’s a high probability that the nature of work will also continue to change. This means that many of our kids will need to figure out how to train for jobs that don’t even exist yet.

This isn’t even the greatest challenge facing kids today. An even greater challenge: Experts at some of the world’s most prominent organizations, including the World Economic Forum, are predicting that automation technologies will most certainly reduce the numbers of employees required to do the world’s work. That means it is likely to be increasingly difficult for today’s kids to find viable work in the future.

We’ve already witnessed the rise of self-checkout service at retail stores and self-service food and beverage kiosks at casual dining establishments. By all appearances, we’re in the beginning stages of an automation revolution that will transform the entire way the world does business.

It’s unclear what the results of all this will be. Some experts predict that human workers will inevitably no longer be needed in the future. Many predict that the nature of work will simply change – and that in the future, humans will be able to focus on creative, compelling work, leaving the dangerous or tedious tasks for robots to handle. This will be the likeliest outcome in the near future as today’s kids transform into adults and enter the workforce.

So how do you empower your kids to gain the skills she’ll need to be successful at a job that doesn’t yet exist? This is one of the major challenges facing today’s parents.

This is a question that has been on my mind as I help my daughter prepare for her future. I’ve become uncomfortably aware that many of the historically “safe” career choices such as accountant, lawyer and paralegal are likely to be automated out of viability soon.

I find this to be a scary thought, and I won’t lie; I’m anxious for my daughter. It would be all too easy to fixate on my fear that she will choose the wrong career. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on the things I can actively do to help my girl develop the mindset and skills she needs for navigating an uncertain future. Here are some of the action items we came up with:

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How to Respond When Your Children Start Swearing

by Shaly Pereira.
(This article is part of the Positive Parenting FAQ series. Get free article updates here.)

There is nothing like hearing your child yell the dreaded F-word for the first time.

It’s especially nerve-racking when it’s in front of the entire extended family. Including the grandparents.

At a family dinner, my eleven-year-old nephew was deliberately jostled by his younger brother, resulting in his half laden plate tilting. With hot curry spilling over his hand, he yelled the F-word as loudly as he could.

Amidst the cacophony of family banter and the clattering of cutlery, you would have thought the word would have gone unnoticed but nope! There was complete silence around the dining table as if someone had pushed the pause button. Several pairs of eyes (including mine) zeroed in on the culprit.

Like a well-rehearsed play, the scene played out.

The youngsters looked down and snickered. Some of the adults (including me) tried to ignore what we had just heard. But not the grandparents!

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How to Nurture Strong Friendships When You are a Busy Parent

by Katerina Manoff.
(This article is part of the Positive Parenting FAQ series. Get free article updates here.)

Close your eyes and imagine your child all grown up, savoring a free weekend. What do you see?

Is your daughter grabbing brunch with her pals? Is your son joining his pick-up basketball team on the court? Or perhaps you envision your kids enjoying a hike or a museum exhibit with a couple of close friends?

Regardless of what your vision for your child’s future involves, I bet it doesn’t include him or her sitting miserably at home, feeling lonely and friendless. As parents, we want our children to thrive socially, forming close bonds with their peers.

So, we encourage our children to make friends from the first years of their lives. We sign them up for baby classes and send them to preschool. We arrange playdates and nudge them towards other children at the playground. We tell them to share, organize group games, and teach conflict resolution skills to handle any inevitable skirmishes that arise between them and their new buddies.

But as we work to support our kids’ fledgling social lives, how many of us nurture our own friendships? How many of us are focused on our own social bonds with our own peers?

Too often, the responsibilities of work, home, and parenting take priority over our own social lives. We spend our days chasing down Hydra-esque To-Do lists – for every item we cross off, two seem to grow in its place.

We lose touch with friends who aren’t parents because they seem to be living in a different world. And we lose touch with friends who are parents because they’re as insanely busy as we are.

Making Friends for my Child’s Sake

A shy and awkward kid, I went through a lot of social drama. In school, I felt that no one understood me and often struggled to make friends. As a nerd, immigrant, and scholarship student at a fancy private school, I was objectively very different from my classmates.

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The Science of Flowers as Gifts, and Its Impact on Family Happiness

by guest_author.
(This article is part of the Uncategorized series. Get free article updates here.)

bloomsybox_1_ds There is something very special about receiving flowers. For generations, they have been seen as a traditional gift to make people feel better when they’re ill, to say sorry or simply as a sign of love and affection.

Of course, the giving of flowers on Valentine’s day is a well-publicized event. However, they are actually given throughout the year because it’s an easy and effective way of showing affection. It doesn’t matter if this is to a partner or a child; to celebrate a birthday, or even to simply show you care.

In fact, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of children giving flowers to parents, or other family members and friends. It doesn’t just make the receiver feel good, watch your child next time you do it; they’ll light up.

Whether flowers are a one-off gift, or you give or receive flowers every month, they spread happiness and a feeling of well-being. But, why is this the case?

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