Leaping From The Box

Could you use a $100 bonus? I know we could!

Our monetary situation and financial goals have been subjects in our household recently. Better employment opportunities for my husband was one of the reasons for our move to Tallahassee, with the goal of seriously augmenting savings and retirement funds. Our eldest child has been trying to sell her house for many months and we all know how painful the housing market is right now. Our middle child is a full-time college student (living at home) who, whenever gas prices go above $3.00 per gallon, has been required by mom and dad to use the city bus system rather than the family van to get to class. (Gas prices here in Tallahassee jumped from $2.89/gal. last Friday to $3.17/gal. yesterday!) And our youngest child is job hunting and discovering just how difficult it is to get that first job.

I am always looking for ways to save money or earn more money. I cut costs where I can and can hold my own amongst the best of penny pinchers. The last three months I have been on a “turn off that electricity consuming device when not in use” campaign and lowered our monthly electric bill by close to $100. So when I saw an opportunity to make an extra $100 while at the same time accomplishing one of our long-term goals, augmenting savings, how could I pass it by?

My Money Blog gives the details of Suze Orman’s SaveYourself promotion. Open a TD Ameritrade account by March 31, 2008 and set up an automatic deposit of at least $50 per month for 12 consecutive months. At the end of that 12 months you will receive a $100 bonus, as long as you have not withdrawn any money from the account in that time.

Since one of our goals is to save more money, I set up a TD Ameritrade account yesterday. I choose the money market fund option rather than a trading fund and have until the end of March to fund it. I can wait until the next payday (which only comes around once a month here) and then set up the automatic deposits. My thought is that I won’t be tempted to dip into a savings account that is not connected with our regular checking account at our regular bank. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And at the end of the first year we will have at least $700 tucked away, $600 of our own and $100 bonus (plus whatever interest accrues between now and then). Cool!

As unschoolers, learning things on our own is not a novel idea, but it does seem to be making the rounds on a few blogs. Last week PickTheBrain had a guest blogger, Scott Young, who wrote about How To Set Up Your Personal University. Scott wrote, “While regular university is expensive and stops when you get a degree, your personal university continues indefinitely and can be run for free.” Unschoolers have known this all along!

I have been reading Scott’s blog for a few months now and enjoying his perspective. Scott is a college student, writing about his thoughts and experiences as he navigates college, life and setting goals.  Many of the issues Scott mentions in his blog I see my own college student grappling with also.

Check out Scott’s Keeping To-Learn Lists post. I have often had lists in my head of things I would like to learn in the future, but never really wrote any of them down on paper. I do have a list of books that I want to read, but not things I want to learn to do. Maybe it is time to commit my list to paper. Here’s a start:

• Play the banjo
• Read and speak Italian
• Sail a boat

Do you have a “To Learn” list of your own?

You just never know what topics we will cover during our Friday Homeschool Chat. This past Friday we spent a good share of the morning discussing the pros and cons of a plan one member had for fostering her son’s entrepreneurial spirit. The plan involved providing snacks in an office environment, taking over an existing service that had continually lost money. We floated ideas about how to minimize the shrinkage of product and the resultant loss of income, discussed how much financial involvement the parents should have at start up, business licenses, child labor laws, sales tax licenses and much more. Since many members present Friday had experience in some of those areas, the parent in question came away from the chat with some answers and more questions to research. I am sure she will want to discuss the topic again in coming weeks.

Fostering an entrepreneurial spirit in our homeschooled children is a recurring discussion topic on Friday chats. Homeschooling often leads families (parents and children) to question the “worker” model that public schools teach their students. Many of us hope that our children will be able to avoid the “worker bee” mindset and find ways to make their interests and passions also provide their income. The question becomes, how to foster this entrepreneurial growth in our children, especially as they enter the teen years and (hopefully) begin to define their passions and focus turning them into career goals.

It seems as though we have always had a side business in addition to my husband’s main career income, businesses in which one or more of our children could participate. When they were very young, I had a two-acre garden in which I grew vegetables for sale. The children worked side-by-side with me in planting, weeding, harvesting, marketing and sales. Their favorite, by far, was the selling and collecting the money, which was fine with me, as I enjoyed the other aspects more. Unfortunately, after we moved from New York, that sort of business venture was no longer a possibility. But I believe it laid the seeds of an entrepreneurial spirit in at least two of our three children. Today, as teens and young adults, those two children have stated goals of owning their own businesses. The recent purchase and playing of Cashflow 101 (see my January 4th review) has only intensified that goal in the eldest.

I would love to hear how you have fostered entrepreneurial spirits in your children. Leave me a comment.  If I get enough ideas, I will make a future blog post listing all of them!