We took a day to think about our response.  We formulated an e-mail that stated our concerns and what we would like to see happen.  We received a prompt reply apologizing for the incident.  The teacher that read the book said she would not use it again in school.  We were satisfied with the interaction and resolution.  We also talked to our daughter about the book and why we found some parts of the story to be problematic.

We  found out that this particular book was read to our daughter as a complete coincidence.  We actually didn’t think our daughter was telling the truth when she told us that book had been read to her because we could not imagine any teacher would really read that book in a public school.  Almost without our knowledge, a teacher in her school delivered a message to her that “it’s just like a girl to cry” when she is hit.  As if it’s unacceptable to cry when hit.  Or unacceptable for a boy to cry when hit.  Or even acceptable to hit at all. 

What other, more subtle messages do our daughters get about behavior?  What messages do they get about learning?  At what age do some children decide they are “good at math” or “not good with numbers”?  And what do we need to do to make sure our daughters know what they need to know to be competent with money?

I don’t have all the answers, but I know it starts with not telling them that it’s “just like a girl” to anything.

• Have a budget. I really believe that to really manage your money effectively, you must have a budget so that you can decide how much of it you want to spend on what items in advance, in writing every month.
• Get out of debt. There is a lot of information about how to do it and why, but the key is realizing that you can not buy things that you can not pay for, period. That includes cars. If you didn’t have debt to repay each month, you’d have a lot more money, right?
• Shop around. Go to different stores, do research online, know when things go on sale and don’t be afraid to ask if a store will price match, especially on a big ticket item. Don’t just walk into a store and buy the first thing you see.
• Eat out less. Cooking at home is much less expensive. For an occasional treat, get take out and at least save yourself on drinks and tip.
• Use cash. Withdrawing cash and using that will help you stick to your budget both because you know how much you have to spend, and because people tend to spend less because of the emotional component of handing over cash that is not there when you swipe a credit card. Try this for your problem areas. If you spend too much on dining out, set your monthly budget amount, withdraw it and put it in an envelope or even paper clipped together in your wallet. When you eat out, use that cash. When it’s gone, you’re done eating out for the month. It’s simple, and it will make you stop and think before you walk into a restaurant.
• Embrace the difference between a want and a need. You need shelter. You want a 4 bedroom colonial. You need clothes so you’re not naked. You want to buy a $150 dress from Macy’s. There are many ways to meet your needs that fit into a variety of budgets. Your wants may fit your budget, they may not. Being honest about the difference between the two will help you achieve your financial goals beyond today.
• Try some alternatives. For example, the store brands of many food items are just as good as the name brands. You can get really high quality used items at second hand stores, yard sales and online for much less money than new. Water out of your faucet might be just as thirst quenching as the kind you buy in a bottle. Imagine that…

• pay their credit card balances in full
• pay their bills on time
• have a handle on their cash flow so they spend less than they make
• have an emergency fund
• have confidence in the allocation of their investments
• have general knowledge of stocks, bonds and mutual funds

I find this frightening. Whatever social factors lead women to believe they are less qualified or less entitled to manage money effectively really have to be counteracted by the time we become Mothers. In 2006 there were 10 million single Mothers in the US living with children under the age of 18 and about 2.3 million single Fathers doing the same. There are also about 5.6 million stay at home Moms compared to 140,000 stay at home Dads. Moms are more likely to lose time in the workforce being home with the kids (a decision I support if that’s what the Mom wants to do), and more likely to end up taking care of the kids alone. We have to be able to manage our money just as well.

This is not to say that Dads don’t want to stay at home. It’s not to say that Dads don’t want to have custody of their kids. The facts as I know them to be today are that women seem to be less effective at handling money and more likely to be in the position where their children are relying soley on them to do it. We have to change this, we have to share our ideas and our support so that Moms are good Managers Of Money too.

Camping in an RV or camper is not the same as a tent. There is a bathroom with running water, a stove, a sink, lights and many of the comforts of home. If you have all the hook-ups, it’s like driving your living room around complete with TV and internet access. Doing this with 2 kids under 5 years old is not without its challenges. Nothing in the great outdoors comes childproofed. This is both awesome and stressful. It’s a great experience, there’s just not a lot of relaxing going on for the parents.

In checking out the other campers, we saw everything from a small pop-up being pulled by a family station wagon to a giant RV that had a flat screen TV over the driver’s seat bigger than the TV we have in our house. There’s also a range in terms of campsite pricing depending on where you are and what you’re looking for. But if camping seems palatable to you (as it does to me), and you buy a camper you can afford (read: you save up and pay for it outright instead of financing it), it can be a good way to make vacations and weekends away more affordable.

Like anything else, I can see where someone can get started down the road thinking this is a financially wise decision, and wind up in a completely opposite place. You get into camping thinking it’s a good way to save money on family vacations. But then you get into financing a camper so you end up paying twice what you would have spent on it over the course of the 15 years it takes you to pay it off. And then you find out your minivan can’t pull it after all (who would have thought the camper salesman would have “steered” you wrong on that? ) so you end up buying an SUV that costs you more on gas on every trip you make not just the camping ones. And you didn’t factor in the cost of storage or winterizing if you live in a climate that requires it. Plus once a year your husband wants to take a trip where you don’t take the camper so you end up using it just 3 times a year anyway. When you look at it that way, doing those 3 trips a year by driving to the Motel 6 instead instead of camping might just save you a few bucks. It’s like anything else, the idea is good, but it’s all in the execution.

So at this point, I’m thinking about saving up for a camper, but believe there will be a spreadsheet with a break-even analysis done long before any purchase is made.

We asked my daughter what kind of party she wanted. We also explained that there would be limits. For instance, one of the options was a party where you make your own pottery. Well that place charged $22 per child. So if she chose that, she’d have to pick just 5 friends. If she wanted to invite her whole pre-k class to her party, we would do something at our house. She opted for a “games party” at our house.

My husband has hand-drawn a fantastic Disney Belle on a large piece of cardboard for “pin the crown on the princess”. I am making the bean bag toss game complete with a photo of my daughter with her mouth open in the middle as the center hole. We’ll do a pinata and have a mummy wrap race where the kids have to wrap each other in toilet paper. We’ll have our sand table and water table out for the kids that don’t want to join in the games. I will make the cake and a few other snacks and desserts. We’ll do prize bags but something simple – I hate goody bags full of little crap. I’d rather give one usable toy than 5 pieces of junk.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the party outsourcing route at all and if that’s what my daughter wanted, we would have done it. But it would have been done with a limit that fit our budget. Could she have anything she wanted? Sort of. Could she have everything she wanted? No. If she wanted the pottery party, she could have had it. If she wanted a party with all her school friends, she could have that. But she can’t have both. I think that’s reasonable. She’s getting the message that her birthday is important, we’re planning for it, we’re excited about it and we’re working hard on making her party great. Hopefully we’re sending that message without undoing what we try to teach her the other 364 days of the year about making choices and being responsible too.

As an aside, I am actually really happy that she picked a party at our house I love all the preparations. It’s exactly the kind of thing I looked forward to about being a Mom.

1. Gather your historical data
If you already use Quicken, MS Money or a tool like these, this should be easy. But even if you don’t, take a few minutes to put together what you can. Get your bank statements for a few months so you have your debit and credit card purchases. Get your utility bills so you have average amounts of those expenses handy. You need to base your estimates on reality, and if you’re like most, you probably spend more than you think.

2. Choose your weapon
I use Quicken but I know people that use MS Money and Mint.com (which is free). You can even just use Excel or a paper and pen, although I can’t imagine why you would. I suggest using software made for managing your budget and personal finances. It’s so much easier to create and update your budget, track spending and run reports when you are using the right tool. Remember M.O.M.s – this job is important. So take a little time, learn how to use a new tool (they aren’t that difficult) and set up a system that is going to serve you well.

3. Make an annual budget
I start by creating the budget for the year. Look, there is no name you can call me that I haven’t called myself already with pride, so I will just say this. So I am a nerd and I excitedly create the first draft of the upcoming year’s budget sometime in the fall. I can’t wait to start looking at what the new year might bring so I start playing around with the budget right around the time we lock in on our oil heating rate. This culminates in a week long budgetfest that I hold every night after the kids go to bed during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, complete with end of the year budget reports and forecasts for the new year. Yes ladies, my husband is a lucky man. But I digress.

I create a placeholder budget for the year, and you can do this now for the current year if you are creating a budget for the first time. Just start with this month and include every month remaining until the end of the year. If you have been using budgeting software already you create a copy of the previous year’s budget and work from that. If not, you will use all the data you’ve gathered in the next few steps to estimate your amounts.

4. Estimate your income
If you earn a salary or have fairly standard hours this should be easy. If not, take some time to try to figure it out. Do you work on commission? Is your business seasonal? What did you make last year? Be reasonable, but be conservative. I don’t count on raises or changes in tax laws that are said to be coming. I would rather be pleasantly surprised with a little extra money mid-year than be expecting something that never materializes.

5. Estimate your Mandatory/Fixed expenses
Start with the expenses that are Mandatory and/or Fixed. These are things like mortgage/rent, utilities, food, insurance, childcare, car repair and gas. You need these things, and for many of them, you know what the amounts will be. In some cases the amount is the same each month like a mortgage payment. In some cases the amount may fluctuate, for instance your heating oil payment would be higher during winter months if you were not on a budget payment plan. Estimate the amounts accordingly. Don’t just put in the average amount for each month if you can predict that in December your bill will be twice what it is in July.

6. Estimate your Discretionary expenses
Now that you have your Income and Mandatory expenses estimated, you can look at what’s left for Discretionary. Discretionary expenses are things like entertainment, dining out, clothes (I know you need clothes, but I put clothes here because usually the amount spent is flexible – you can shop at the mall or you can shop at Walmart – big difference), gifts, personal care and household items. Again, some of the categories will have placeholder amounts that are the same for each month, and some will vary based on the month. For example, dining out is not a necessity or something we predict in advance so I put $100 in each month for the year as a placeholder. But gifts I can predict to a large degree. So I make a list of the people I buy for and the amount I typically try to spend (say $25 per person). Then I look at my list by month and see that in January I have 2 birthdays so I put $50 in the Gifts category for January.

For Discretionary categories, you want to be realistic. Look at what you have actually spent in recent months. If this is the first time doing a written budget, take some time to add up what you spent in recent months on things like clothing, restaurants, entertainment, and ATM withdrawals where you can’t account for where the money went. You may not continue this going forward, but most people don’t know how much money passes through their hands on these things until they sit down and add it up. It’s important to see that you were spending $400 a month on restaurants because you need to know that the money you will soon be putting into your children’s 529 account can and will come from somewhere.

7. Check your annual total
OK, so where did you end up? Are you spending more than you will make this year? If so, you’ve got to go back and cut some of the items in discretionary expenses. Learning to spend less can take a few months and there are a ton of resources available. So if you need to reduce your spending, don’t freak out. In fact, rejoice Be glad that you are looking at your reality in advance so you can change it. The negative number at the bottom of your budget is debt you are about to avoid, if you choose to. And if there is a positive number at the bottom of your budget, congratulations, but don’t run out and buy yourself a new Prada handbag just yet. Remember, this was just part 1. We’re not done with the budget yet.

The excitement leading up to the trip is key, and free. We did a countdown on the chalkboard in our kitchen. We started recording Sesame Street and watching it together. We talked about which t-shirt Daddy should get, Bert or Telly (he didn’t get either, we just talked about it). Sometimes I think half the fun of a trip is the anticipation.

I searched high and low for discounts on the Elmo 2 Day passes but couldn’t find anything I could use other than the AAA discount my sister was able to get for us. So that saved us $3 per person for a total of $12 off for my family of 4.

The kids go to bed earlier than we do (yay!) so we wanted a room with a living room/bedroom set up. We opted to stay at a Residence Inn that is actually about 15 miles away from the park. The exact same 2 bedroom suite at the Residence Inn closest to the park was about $200 more per night, so for us it was certainly worth the 20 minute drive to the park. By staying at the Residence Inn, we had a room with a full kitchen so we brought groceries from home. We ate breakfast at the the hotel before we left (it was complimentary), we packed a lunch and snacks each day, and then for dinner we were back at our room where we prepared something quick and easy with what we’d brought from home. Not eating in the park really helped us save.

I bought a case (24 bottles) of water for $4 at the grocery store before we left. At night we put a few in the freezer. We brought some cold and some frozen waters into the park in our bag. The frozen ones kept the cold ones cold, and by the end of the day, the frozen ones were just pleasantly cold themselves. We had enough water for all of us all day, and we needed it because it was hot. Bottles of water sold for $2.79 at the park, so I got 24 bottles for less than what it would have cost me to buy just 2 bottles inside the park.

We skipped the character meals and just met characters throughout the park (I wasn’t impressed with their availability this year compared to when we’ve gone in the past, but I still wouldn’t have paid for the character meal). The only things we bought in the park were ice cream just to have a treat, and a small souvenir for the kids. There is a souvenir store where everything is less than $10.

Including gas and tolls, we spent about $500, so it’s not a cheap trip considering it was a total of 3 days. But bringing food and staying a little farther from the park definitely helped us save.

How much will you make this month? Write that down. What are your expenses this month? Write those down. The expenses are usually harder to remember, they tend to sneak up on you if you haven’t been doing a budget long (the good news is that once you have been doing a budget for a while, there will be almost no unforeseen expenses). Here are some categories to jog your memory: mortgage/rent, grocery, childcare, retirement account contributions, food, clothing, car payment, gas, car insurance, tolls, health insurance, other insurance, charity, entertainment, dining out, gifts to buy, home repair, household items, liquor, personal care (hair cuts, dry cleaning, etc), car repairs, pet supplies, vet visits, medical co-pays, cell phone, cable, internet access, telephone bill, trash removal, utilities like natural gas/electric/oil, upcoming classes/activities for kids, transfers to savings, vacations, credit cards, repayments of debts to family, student loans, any other loans, and don’t forget to allocate some “walking around” money just have something in your pocket.

Do you have anything left over? If you do, that’s great, you’re starting off in a good place. Are you short, and if so, how short? If you’re short, you will need to look at what can be reduced. A budget isn’t done unless it’s balanced, meaning income and outgo are equal. That doesn’t mean you have to spend every dime you earn, you can and should put some into savings. But if you are putting things on a credit card every month (or taking money out of your savings) because your expenses exceed your income, you’re living beyond your means.

So where do you start to cut? It depends on how extravagantly you live now. Do you spend a lot eating out? You might need to stop doing that. Do you go out to bars, movies, amusement parks, etc? You might need to cut back. Do you get pricey haircuts? Do you buy expensive clothes? You have other options. Try the library for books and DVDs instead of buying everything new or renting. Invest in a travel mug and bring coffee from home so you can bypass Starbucks in the morning ans save yourself $5 a day. Get a refillable water bottle and bring it with you instead of buying bottles of water every day (good for the environment and your budget). Lots of people can save big on their grocery bill and still eat healthy, balanced meals.

The first step in getting your finances under control is getting to where you are spending less than you make. You won’t get anywhere until you make this happen. I am all for earning more, but you have to earn more first, so right now we have to start where we are, and that is by making sure that our expenses are lower than our income.

People will say “I’m on a budget” as a way of letting others know they can’t spend a lot. The “budget” version of anything is almost always the least expensive one. Therefore people think budget = cheap. We need to change how we think about having a budget.

A budget doesn’t make you cheap, it makes you responible. Would you invest in a company that operated without a budget? Of course not. A company like that could never be sure it would make a profit, or even make payroll. If you work hard, earn money and then spend no time planning where your money is going, you’re making a much bigger mistake.

Living on a budget also does not have to mean you buy cheap stuff. Your budget needs to reflect what you can afford. You might have $1,000 a week in your dining out category (you probably won’t or shouldn’t if you’re like most people, but it could happen). Having a budget does not mean that suddenly you can not go anywhere or do anything. It just means you are planning for the things you want to do.

Don’t fear the budget. It is there to serve you. In fact, you may find you can afford things you didn’t think you could if you stopped wasting money on things that you don’t really care about. Budgets help people align their spending with their priorities. If you have priorities, and money (and hopefully you have some of both) you need a budget.

That is the short and sappy answer to my own question. It was a fairly common scenario. My husband and I both worked. We had a baby. I wanted to be home with the baby. So we needed to figure out a different way to do things. I learned a little about how to manage money and then I started to actually manage ours. Suddenly we had what we needed to live on PLUS money to save, and I was able to go from working full-time to working 10 hours a week. We could not have done this without Managing Our Money.

The other answer is, I really just love personal finance. One of my favorite things to do is update our data in Quicken. I love looking at other people’s monthly income and expenses to help them see where they can change spending (or where the black holes in their spending exist). It’s become a hobby. But there is only so much I can do with our family budget. So maybe doing this will give me a way to extend my budget pleasure.

And if I’ve learned something that someone else reads and finds useful, that would awesome too.