Recession - Teach your kids to save

Economic recession is taking its toll on the country. Many Americans right now are feeling the heat of these tight times as more and more people are losing their jobs and losing their homes. High prices on basic commodities is also making it harder for American families to survive without additional income.

During these times, people are thinking of ways on how to save. This is especially true with families that support one, two or more children. Between feeding them and sending them all to school, these families will surely have to scrimp on some areas in order to survive.

But parents should not be the only ones who should be scrimping. When it comes to saving money during economic recession, your children should also play important roles. In fact, you can use these tight times to teach your children about saving for the future and saving money. This will help them deal with tighter times in the future should they experience it when they have families of their own. Below are some of the ways that you can teach your children about saving up.

1. Explain to them
You may not realize it but kids do know what is going on and when you explain the situation to them clearly with examples that they can relate to, they will be able to understand the situation. Some will even help out of their own volition without you telling them to do so.

Telling them why they should do something is more effective than telling them outright what they should do. The latter will sometimes antagonize them or will cause them to rebel because they feel that you are ordering them. Kids, as you well know, do not want to be "told" what to do.

2. Give them piggy banks.
Having coin banks may seem outdated in this digital age but it is nevertheless still effective in teaching kids how to save. Tell them that saving will allow them to have some money should they need to buy something that they really want. A portion of their "chore" money, for instance a quarter or two, is a good way to start.

3. Get what they need
Controlling what they put on their plates during dinner will help control the urge to get more than they eat. Ask them to clean their plates every time. This will teach them about saving and buying only the things that they need. This is a great training in the future so that they will not grow up with maxed out credit cards, buying things that they do not really need in the first place.

4. Being a role model
Face it. Whatever your child does is only a reflection of what you yourself are doing at home. So if you want the kids to start saving up, make sure that you are also doing your part in saving in this times of economic recession.

Although when it comes to your kids, in bad times or good, they should learn how to save.

Customer Service Secret

Family: It was a great day and I am very tired, but all and all it was okay. We went to the zoo on Thursday (my 3yr old was finally feeling a bit better). It was a great day, a brown bear played peek-a-boo with us, we got to see a baby gorilla and other fun zoo stuff. Friday was just a day of funning around, and then date night. My husband and I went to a concert with some friends of ours. It was tons of fun and the theater (Sears Center - Hoffman Estates, IL) is really a nice place to go and is only 15 minutes from our house. But that is where all the fun ended, my 2yr old started getting sick and I was up with him from 11:30 till 2 or so, then back up again at 6:30am. It has become Murphy's law in my house that when mom goes out, the kids are up all night. It's not anyones fault, just my darn luck. I had a Lia Sophia party planned at my house that had to be canceled, my 2yr old seems to be better and we did get outside for awhile today, so hopefully we are back on the upward swing again.
My plan is to start the master cleanse on Monday, I will keep everyone up to date on my progress.

Secret of the day:
Secret Customer Service: Don't let this be your secret
Calling customer service these days if pretty hard to do. Customer service is said to be so important these days. So why is that it is so hard to find contact aka customer service information these day? Sure they will be happy to hand out a email address...
Check out this article from the Chicago Tribune, it says it all.

Calling customer service no longer a viable option

Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.
So the question is are we providing the best service to our customer when we they can't contact us????
I have experienced this many times, I have a question about an online only company and have been unable to find anything but email or help ticket type customer service. So I go through all the faq, still no answer. I finally give in and send an email and 1 or two things happen
1. I never receive a respone
2. They don't actually answer my question
at this point, I generally remove my relationship with that company.
So the secret in this bountiful online market world, give the customers a way to contact you, that doesn't involve a computer. You shouldn't get than many calls, but you will build confidence - it works for me!

Seven steps to remarkable customer service - Joel on Software

Customer Service – 8 Rules For Good Customer Service

Don't forget about those special dads in your life - Father's Day is coming.

Save 15% on all Father's Day Gifts with Discount Code: Dad15

Secret to Success and update

Of course I'm going to do the update first. My son finally seems to be doing better. He ate three meals today without getting sick. We also made it outside for an hour to play, although I could tell the nights of no rest were catching up to him. The poor little guy didn't get to see David Cook win American Idol (first season I ever watched). So hopefully tomorrow will be a new day, with new challanges, like accepting the fact my younger child has allergies like me. I on the other hand had a very bad and negative day, nothing seemed to be doing right!!!

So here is a different look at some ideas about the secret to success.

Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior highschool student.” It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success.

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.

NLP

NLP is used effectively for everything from achieving professional success in your chosen career to improving the quality of inter-personal relationships.


Success with NLP

Don't forget it's time to start thinking about fathers day.

Study: Many moms are making infants dumber w/ TV & DVD's

It wasn't long ago that Baby Einstein DVD's were attacked & now studies say TV viewing of 2 years and under is dumbing down America. Social, motor, behavioral, cognitive and neural skills are being hurt by TV and DVD. On 5/5/08 Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine study released figures that mothers were not interacting w/ infants at TV time.

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