Yesterday was Father’s Day and of course the blogs abound with stories of great fathers, terrible fathers, and absent fathers.  I dedicate this post to the brave men and women who take the choice of bringing children into this world seriously.

I won’t write about the epidemic of children left fatherless because of a lack of responsibility, or of the joys of growing up with an awesome father.

I want to celebrate and thank those people who by whichever means have chosen not to have children when they knew they were not prepared to raise them.  Whether through abstinence, contraception, or abortion, I salute those who consciously stay child-less for the sake of said unborn child.

Some people are deservingly praised for raising children despite harsh circumstances or changing their ways to become good parents, etc. I praise those who know their circumstances or themselves well enough to know that a child would not benefit from them.

I respect those who rather than fix a problem, avoid the problem altogether. The people who abstain from children until they are well-prepared to handle them. Some people say that women who have abortions are selfish, som emay be, but I say many are self-less. If you believe that a child is a blessing, then said woman is foregoing a blessing in order to not bring a child into unworthy circumsances.

For some women, it is not financially viable to raise children, and although some may argue that you can work 3 jobs and get government assitance, I say not putting a child through that hardship is better than just scratching by and through a hardship. The same goes for marriages that are on the rocks or people simply not emotionally prepared to raise children. Why have them and hope that you can figure it out later? Rather, make the tough choice, don’t have the child. Choosing to abstain from having children is more responsible than just working the situation out, or hoping it will work out.

Happy Non-Father’s and Non-Mother’s day.

I vividly remember one summer retreat I went to with my church. I must have been about 15 years old.  At the time, I had very clearly defined goals for my life and headed towards them like a torpedo. The “youth group” from my church consisted of approximately 20 youths ranging from about 14 – 21 plus our youth pastor. About half of us went to the cafeteria for lunch one day and sat around a long table to talk. Our youth pastor decides to go around the table and ask each person “at what age do you want to get married and how many kids do you want to have?”

Each kid responded w/ some age range of about 20-25. When it was my turn, I confidently and proudly answered, “I’m not having children or getting married!” All eyes on me widened as the youth pastor gasped and exclaimed “don’t say that! how could you not want kids or marriage!?” The man even asked me if I had family problems or what was wrong in my life that would make me say something like that!

I have to say that at the moment I felt embarrassed and very put down, but a few minutes later when my brain kicked back in I got angry! How dare he! I had spent my life (albeit short as it had been) pouring my heart and soul into academic excellence! I started taking advanced classes in the fourth grade and my hard work had placed me in one of the most rigorous high school programs in the country. I pulled all-nighters with Eastern European history, John Donne, French, German, Japanese, and Jeffrey Sachs. I had bigger plans than marriage and kids. I was going to go to a top-tier University. I was going to go to law school. I was going to travel the world!

How dare he gasp at the thought that a young girl might wish for academic and career success over marriage and children?

I’m not saying that wishing for marriage and children is somehow un-feminist or unsuccessful. I’m also not saying that you can’t have both.

What I do want to get at is why society seems to think that a woman who does not share an interest in marriage and children is somehow unfeminine. That is unfair! It is as unfair as some feminists saying that stay-at-home moms are not progressive.

My life has taken many twists and turns since 15. I am still chasing down academic excellence, with dreams of law school and world travels and I will not cease until I attain all of my goals. I do find myself married now, happily blissfully married. But, I could have done without it. My husband and I were blissful in our relationship before marriage too.

Now that I am a newly-wed, the inevitable question continues to pop up incessantly: “When are you having kids?” as they point at my tummy. “Nope, we don’t want kids,” we answer. And the gasp returns. My mother, as she has always done, acts as though I am cursing myself every time I pronounce those words. My friends laugh it off and say “we’ll see”. It is infuriating. I am happily married. I have goals other than sitting at home with a baby. It does not make me any less of a woman than the lady down the street running behind her four kids.

So to society I plead: respect each individual’s choices. I don’t gasp at stay-at-home moms or ask them if they are unfulfilled. So, next time you meet a woman who proudly replies: “I don’t want marriage or children!” Don’t ask her what’s wrong with her, applaud her courage for going against the grain and respect her goals. Careers can require just as much time and nurturing as a child. Womanhood is not measured by a ring on one’s finger or the ability of one’s womb!

Colombianitos Bingo

Press Release

COLOMBIANITOS Annual Bingo Extravaganza 2009

Saturday April 18th 2009

On Saturday April 18th 2009, from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, COLOMBIANITOS non- profit organization will host its 8th Annual Fundraising Bingo to raise funds for children victims of violence and extreme poverty in Colombia. The event will take place at the Auditorium of the Atlanta International School. Address: 2890 North Fulton Drive, Atlanta, GA 30305. Following you will find directions to get there.

Purchasing a game board for $50.00 will enable participants to play 15 times to win fabulous prizes such as, airline tickets, hotel stays, restaurant gift certificates, tickets to Atlanta area attractions and much more.

COLOMBIANITOS is a non profit organization that offers comprehensive programs that cover education, sports activities, soccer, music instruction and rehabilitation for children who have been displaced and affected by violence and extreme poverty in Colombia.

Thanks to all the contributions received and the money raised, the following has been achieved: 3,800 boys and girls benefit from its “Goals for a Better Life” program in Bogota, Puerto Tejada, Cartagena, Sincelejo, Barbosa and Medellin; 25 children victims of landmine explosions have received physical and physiological rehabilitation; 329 children attend school through the child Sponsorship Plan, 29 youngsters graduated from high school and 9 more are enrolled in various universities with scholarships.

In 2008, the coverage of the music and dances program expanded from Puerto Tejada to Medellin, Cartagena and Barbosa reaching 616 children; the school reinforcement was implemented in all the communities where the program operates, 1,485 informative workshops were given to families and 150,806 meals were distributed to children participating in its programs. Without a doubt, this has been possible thanks to the support of people like you, interested in the development of our Little Colombians.

To buy tickets or get more information about our programs, you can contact us at (770) 541-1131 or by email at aarizabaleta@colombianitos.org You can also visit www.colombianitos.org.

Marriage is great because it brings you together forever with that one special person that touches your heart. You get to share every morning and night together. Every thought and every experience. Marriage is difficult for the very same reasons.

Marriage puts you in one shared house where everything is shared from time and space to food and things.  Now I love my husband and thoroughly enjoy spending time with him. However, I also thoroughly enjoyed having my own place and living alone. I was never one of those women who wished she had someone to come home to. I was the one that rushed home to the peaceful quite of an empty apartment. It was blissful. Everything was done the way I wanted because I did it myself. Everything was right where I left it when I came home. I ate if I was hungry, I didn’t if I wasn’t. I cleaned when the mood would strike me, sometimes from 9pm to 4am. I left a mess when I felt like it. I watched what I wanted on tv. I  shopped for whatever I wanted, budget with my own priorities, sometimes savings was no. 1, sometimes new shoes were top priority. When the mood would strike me to plant a garden I drove to the store picked up a gardening book and a bunch of plants and spent a week doing that. Basically, I lived on my own. On my own time, my own money, my own terms, my own moods, etc.

Now, I am happily married, but painfully aware of my husbands needs. I can’t do my own budget, I have to wait until we both have the time. I can’t ever put new shoes as priority no. 1, savings always goes first. When I got the urge to garden, I had to wait a week until we could re-analyze the budget to create a gardening budget. Then, I spent 2 weeks researching gardening and real estate markets to come up with a gardening plan that would make the house more profitable when we decide to sell it. Then, I waited forever to go plant shopping with the hubby and in the end: Gardening never happened.

Compromise and teamwork can be great in a marriage, in fact it’s indispensable, but I gotta say, I’m a little over it. I get these bouts sometimes where I just want to break free! I imagine myself going back to my old apartment and finding it just the way I left it: perfectly alone. Alas, no such luck. When I want to retreat, I go into our shared home office, until of course, my husband needs to do something and comes in or simply misses me and comes looking for me.  Poor guy, he’s gotten the brunt of my cabin fever frustration this week. he cleaned the office for me and that put me on edge as it was all my paperwork I wanted to clean and organize myself. Again, I’m not a fan of people touching my stuff or doing things I already had a plan to do. And yes, people includes my husband. Then, he tried to be nice and help with something else, but only wound up creating a mess.

My conclusion: I need to lighten up on the “I want to do everything myself” deal. I also need to find a space all of my own where I can retreat to. I let him have the guest room. He has all his stuff in there, I don’t touch his stuff or bother him when he retreats in there for whatever reason. However, he is not like me and doesn’t feel his own room is necessary. This week I will be on the hunt for a space to call my own.

One…we bew our budget when we bought our new cars. 

Two…we didn’t take into account insurance

Three…budget has to be revamped entirely.

Four…budget has no room left in it now. For anything. This is not good!

Five…hubby and I agreed to deposit all of our paychecks into our joint account and transfer a small “allowance” into each of our personal accounts for things like lunch, gas, etc. Hubby decided to just have 66% of his check deposited to joint account and keep 33% rather than set up a transfer. That was fine. This agreement was made in January. His checks or even 66% are not being direct deposited to the joint account. He just deposits a set amount when he remembers, or more accurately, when I remind him 3 times! this week he got paid for overtime. I though whoohoo we will have extra money to cover things. I was wrong. Extra money stayed in his personal account. He is also avoiding putting the money in our newly set up joint savings. I’m beggining to lose my patience. We have had this conversation 5,000 times. I even offered to not have a joint account and we split the bills 50/50. He said no, he wanted a joint account. What is the deal with his hesitation! I’m ready to scream, but it’s so difficult to ask him about his money when I’ve always been so independent. I just want to know where things stand. I want to have one decision we both follow through on!

I was gone for a few weeks because things got hectic at home and at work. We finally bought our new cars. They are quite lovely and we are very hapy with them. We wound uo going over our planned payment by about $100/month on each car, but decide it was ok because we can afford it and they’re great cars.  What we had not considered was the insurance premiums. We figures they would obviously go up somewhat, but for all of our reasearch into the car buying process and all of the math we did, neither one of us thought to get an insurance quote for our desired cars. It turns out that our insurance payments will go up by $350 per month. We were prepared for a rise of $100 – $150 only. This really caught us by surprise and we almost choked. 

Anyhow, after the initail sticker shock, I took a look and saw things we could dispose of.  We bought a warranty for my car that includes a loaner car while mine is at the shop and roadside assistance, so I removed the rental reimbursement and roadside assistance and raised our deductible for collision and that rdeuced the total premium by $280, which reduces the monthly payment by about $46.  Since we have a few grand in the savings account, we figure we can safely assume that we can pay the deductible if it came down to it, and would rather save on the monthly payment. 

Either way, it still rocks our budget quite a bit as we had planned on saving about a grand per month. then, we decided to bite into that a bit to get nicer cars with warranties and now we’ve ate most of it up with this insurance increase. Thankfully we refi’d before we bought the cars and reduced our mortgage payments . My husband did not renew his gym membership, opting to run outside and make use of the bit of gym equipment we have at home, this gave us a little morein the monthly budget. Thankfully though, the hubby is also doing extra work on the side of his 9-5 job, so that money should cover the rise in insurance as well as the overage in car payments, so hopefully we will be about even and able to still save a nice chunk each month. 

I’ve been searching for some sort of virtual assistant job that I could take on in the evenings, but have had some trouble finding a legitimate offer. I’ll keep on it. 

We will be keeping a very watchful eye on our budget in the coming months so that we may adjust as necessary. I think Starbuck will be quicly going out the window along with random shopping in order to stabilize the budget at least until we figure out exactly how our monthly budget works out with all the changes we’ve made.

We sponsor a child through the Colombianitos Foundation.

Colombianitos

She is provided with school tuition, school supplies, and lunch daily. She is also a part of theirs Goals for Life Program, which all sponsored kids participate in. The program aims at keeping children off the streets and providing them with life skills through soccer academies. They are found in the lowest income areas of Colombia where the children are at the highest risk. All for only $25 a month which is debited from my account automatically and tax deductible!

As part of being a sponsor, we get letters from our kid and we are allowed to send her gifts on Christmas and her birthday. I contacted the local program coordinator and asked if the Christmas gifts could be sent late, she said that would be fine. I also got information on the family, the home situation, and her size. I found out that she has 3 youger sisters. All in all it is 4 girls ages 12, 11, 8, and 6. They were recently moved into a home provided by the municipality as their home was destroyed in a mud slide. 

My original plan was to send some housewares such as sheets, etc. However, it became to difficult to find out what they really needed. So, last night I hit up Wal-Mart.  I got some great deals for the kids. I chose to buy for all 4 girls because even though I only sponsor one of them, I would hate to imagine one of the girls getting gifts and not the other 3. I tried toi buyt things they needed that might be difficult for their parents to buy. things that I remembered thinking were “so cool” at around 11. I also wanted something that all 4 girls would enjoy. I bought them school notebooks at 97 cents each. I bought them a pack of about 25 pens at about $1 and 25 pencils with the cool earaser topper and grippies and sharpener the pack cost $2. I also bought them the cool gel glitter pens that was about $2 too (not a bargain, but it has the “cool” factor). I got a 75 pack of colored pencils along with professional sketch books and the professional earasers for the older girls to practice drawing (total of about $10) and construction paper 100 pack of crayolas and kiddie sketch book for the little ones (total of about $7) I also bought them a calculator for $1. Then came the fun stuff: a pack of 10 puzzles (100 – 500 pieces) for $10, Uno Cards for $5 and Dominoes for $5. As I walked out of the store, I walked by the girls section and noticed the clearance section. I found shorts for each of them for $1 and t-shirts for $3! I also picked up really cute bookbags for $15, $10, $10, and $7 for each kid and two jumpropes that were $1 each. All in all I spent about $100. I will also spend about $40 to ship it. My original total budget for this was $100, but both my husband and I know that when it comes to gifts and charity, I always blow the budget.

I am excited to know that I will have provided these 4 girls with clothing, school supplies, and games for $100. TO me, that is a bargain, specially considering that it will be tax deductible.  Shipping will be between $40 – $50, just because shipping to Colombia is expensive, but I’ll deduct it from the taxes and make peace with that. 

If you think you cannot afford to give to charity, just add up your trips to the coffeeshop or the bar. Personally, I spend $100 monthly on Starbucks (and that’s after cutting back) and about $75 on liquor a month. So, if you can cut that in half, you would have more than enough to Sponsor a Child. Everytime you want that extra cup of coffee, you can just think that you are feeding and educating a child that would otherwise not have that opportunity.

BUDGET

My husband and I had agreed to get together at the end of each month to create our budget for the next month. I have to admit that we’ve been slacking and we generally wind up doing it in the middle of the month, which is crazy because it means we’ve spent half the month without a budget. Anyhow, last night I began to organize my office and realized that we hadn’t sat down to do our budget for February. This happens to be monumentally important because we are currently looking to buy new cars and although we knew how much we had a s a down payment and about how much we could afford monthly, we had not sat down to look at the hard numbers. It turns out we have a nice chunk of change left over at the end of the month, so that takes a little of the stress away where we thought adding two car payments to the budget would be tightening thing up a lot. 

Also, it seems that each month that we are married there are more and more line items in our budget. I know that I used to always forget a few line items when I did my single budget. I think it was almost intentional because I knew those were things I should try not to spend money on. However, it seems like there is a lot of extra in our budget now (ie: gym, coffee shops, alcohol, dates, etc). At the same time, it seems as though we have a nice cash flow coming in form random places. 

REFI

I wish I had a whole post about our refi. However, I’ve let my husband handle this entirely. He bought our house last year before we were married, so he went through the entire process alone (we had broken up at the time). He talked with his dad about the car buying process and fears of budget strains and his dad suggested we refinance at a lower rate to find extra money each month. My husband called up the same lady who did his original mortgage loan and apparently this is a perfect time to refi. Depending on when we finish the process our rate will drop between 1.5 to 2 points, which is awesome. This will bring us a savings of approximately $80/month. Also, she found a different PMI company which will crop our PMI cost by $20/month. All in all we will save about $100/month with the refi. We originally wanted to refi with a non-HFA loan company so that we would be able to do away with the PMI alltogether and according to my husband that would drop the mortgage about $100/month. However, our credit isn’t exactly there yet, so we have had to go with a new HFA loan. We keep all of the house docments together, so the coument gathering process consisted of him grabbing a file folder out of the safe and cleaning his room to find two other documents — pretty painless. 

CARS

New cars. Ok, I drive a Honda Civic which my dad gave me as a graduation gift 5 years ago. However, that car is committed to my sister when she gets her license. My car that I bought is a ten year old Taurus. My husband drove a Mazda Tribute. Two months ago he was in an accident and totalled the car. At that point we got the insurance money and decided to get him a new car. In the meantime he drove my Taurus. We got $6K for his car. He spent about $500 to fix up the Taurus and wanted to use $3K to buy a used car. My first instict was that he would buy a crappy car that would cost us a bundle in repairs and maintenance in the long run. I nixed that idea and suggested he use the $3K as down payment on a quality used car. He wasn’t quite convinced (even though the Taurus I bought 3 years back for $1.8K had already eaten up arond $3K). Then he drove the Taurus to the office one Saturday morning and I had to pick him up because the alternator (we think) went out. Since my sister is close to getting her license soon, we decided we needed to get cars for both he and I now. At that point we decided to use the $6K as down payment for two quality used cars. My first idea wa to get another Civic or a Corolla and call it a day. He, however, wanted a nice car. He wanted an Acura. Iargued that that would be too much car for us. We don’t need large interiors, heated leather seats or wood grain panels. But he insisted. Then he had me test drive one. I fell in love! so then we started to try to stretch the original budget to buy two used Acuras. As I looked at cars in the Acura price range, I found a used Lexus and went to drive it. I ell in love even more! So it stands now, we are looking to buy a used Acura and a used Lexus both hopefully with under $50K miles and both at around $14,900 hopefully less than that. It is possible, we just have to wait on the right deal and pounce on it.

Well now that the budget is all worked out, I just have to post it on Google Docs and then next week we can get started on tax prep! fun times.

It’s a brand new year and the Blog has a brand new look. Not to mention we have a brand new awesome president! Sorry, I can’t help myself. 

My Goals for the Year:

• Organize my home office
• Eliminate my debt (except cars and house)
• Buy new cars
• Increase income 
• Start School again!
• Create building blocks for my marriage (ie: better communication, date nights, etc)
• Blog more frequently
• Create a savings plan
• Create a retirement plan
• Begin depositing in my sister’s college fund

The End. Let’s see how I do.

We’ve heard more news from the financial sector in the past two months than we’ve ever paid attention to before. Here are some lessons we can all take from the recent news

AIG Bailout

AIG announced that it was going under about one month. This was due to overly risky investments and bad assets.

Lesson: Be very careful with your investments. Risky investments can bring higher returns, but they can also be lost, thus they are riskier. when investing, be sure to draw a line to how much you’re willing to risk.

We, the taxpayers, gave them an $85 billion loan.

Lesson: Don’t make or accept loans that may not be repaid.

AIG took their tax executives on an extravagant vacation.

Lessons:  When you take out a loan, someone else is trusting you with their money. If you get a loan from family/friends, realize that it is their hard-earned money that you are being a steward of and thus, it should be used wisely and repaid responsibly. If you take a loan from a bank, realize that you are borrowing money from the bank’s depositors, just like gov’t loans come from taxpayers. The bank compiles our deposits and loans them out and that is why we get interest rates on our savings accounts. So, again, use loans wisely, you are borrowing from everyday people and your choices should be made with a sense of gravity.

Also, if you are in financial trouble, you should tighten your belt and use every extra penny to get out of debt and back on your feet and to plan for your future. Don’t spend money frivolously. That’s likely how you got in this mess to begin with.

If you loan someone money, and you feel that they are not being good stewards of your money, you have every right to recall that loan. It goes back to how much risk you’re willing to put your money under. It’s your money, you can loan it out, but you can also ask for it back if you think that the road the borrower is on will guarantee that you will never see your money again.

The Gov’t gave AIG another 37.8 billion

Lessons:  When someone else is screwing around with your money. DON’T GIVE THEM ANYMORE!

Don’t borrow more money if your existing loans are already weighing you down!

Sheriff Halts Evictions

This Sheriff In Illinois has chosen to no longer carry out evictions.

Skipping past the right/wrong and legal/illegal discussion, the lesson is that in these tough times, we need to rally around one another as communities and help one another out.

Passive Dad gives some great ideas to help friends facing a foreclosure

Other ideas are:

• offering to babysit every now and then if you’re home while they work — it will cut down on their daycare expenses.
• Pass along good advice/finds/coupons. I always forward Sale email or interesting articles to a group of friends.
• Split bulk buying trips. If your household won’t use 25lbs. of rice and neither will theirs, you can go to Sam’s or Costco together, split the 25lb. bag and you both save money.

Learning to Live with Less

These IReporters are cutting back

Re-evaluate what your needs vs. your wants are. Cut out things you could do without in your life. Whether or not you’re experiencing financial trouble right now, it’s time to reduce debt, and save money. You never know what tomorrow will bring, and that’s all too true today.

Cut back where you can and put your money away or cut away at your debt. Be as wise as you can be with the money you have.