Found Not Lost

Parents know all about drama and meltdowns and not necessarily all from the kids. That’s what Scott Gale had when when he lost his cool on a Mother’s Day and ended up walking home for twelve miles.

We’ve all have our meltdowns but we’re too embarrassed to talk about it. Scott Gale was not embarrassed by it, the experience opened his eyes and it’s the catalyst that  lead to his book, Your Family Constitution - A Modern Approach to Family Values and Household Structure.

In this book Scott walks you through, mostly by example, the process of evaluating your household and identifying hidden signs that your family is becoming ‘out of control’. Oh, I know, most of us are in that river in Egypt and won’t readily admit that something is wrong with our dynamics. Us? Of course not. That can’t be us.

Read on and you’ll start seeing glimpses of yourself and your family in the examples that Scott cites in Your Family Constitution. I mean, my children are in their teens now and Scott’s are still young yet I saw so many similarities that it was uncanny. When he talked about ‘losing it’ with his son I couldn’t help but cringe at the memory of either me or my husband hovering over our daughters and just going off on them. It’s not a pretty  vision and it felt even uglier. We always felt like jerks after wards.  We too went through a process of evaluating and revising the way we deal with our daughters but we didn’t quite go as far as Scott Gale did with his family.

He established a written constitution that they live by and it grows as they grow. We have one too in our house, but it’s not written down. It’s something that just hangs over us lol! It’s an unwritten code but I suppose as long as everyone is in agreement it could work. Every family probably has a constitution and don’t even know it. Well whether you have one or not, you will benefit from reading this book. It will give you tips on resolving not just everyday family issues but it will help you reconnect with your kids and enhance your family communication.

Visit the Your Family Constitution website if you’d like to learn more about the author and the book. The website also provides you with additional tools to get your started on strengthening and structuring your household. You can also buy the book directly from the website.

OR

YOU CAN WIN A FREE COPY RIGHT HERE!

THIS GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED AND WINNERS NOTIFIED. WINNERS ARE:
Loretta of Just Not Martha and Monica of First Time Mommy. Congratulations! You have been contacted via email and the publisher will be sending your copy of Your Family Constitution.

Thanks to Vered of Mommy Grind who contacted me about this book, I can giveaway two copies to my readers.

Winning the book is easy, just leave me a comment and tell me:

DO YOU HAVE A FAMILY CONSTITUTION? HOW DOES IT WORK?

If you’d like additional entries you can also do one or all of the following:

1. Twitter - tweet about this review and giveaway by re-tweeting. Use the button at the end of the post to make it easier. Add me as friend @JMom and leave the link to your tweet here.
2. Share - you can also share this post on Facebook and other media using the share button at the end of this post (leave me a separate comment with a link to it if you share it with more than one media)
3. Blog - blog about this review and giveaway or include it in your giveaway list and you’ll get another entry (please come back and leave a URL so I can verify)

You have until July 12, 2009 to enter this giveaway. Winners will be chosen by Randomizer.org and will be notified by email and announced here as an update.

The publisher will be mailing the book directly to you, so you must contact me within 48-hours or I will select another winner.

I was talking to my sister the other day and she told me that my dad is out 30K because of the last slump in the stock market. My dad doesn’t have a lot, he’s retired and on a fixed income. He really couldn’t afford to lose that money. That means at least a year’s worth of living expense for him. Do you think he deserves a bailout?

My retirement fund is barely worth anything to speak of right now. I was kind of hoping we’d have more time to fund it after we take care of the girls’ college fund first. But with the way everything has been sliding down lately, my balance hasn’t been looking good. It’s on a downward slope too. I think I should get a bailout. But are we going to get it? Highly unlikely.

Of course, the big banks who probably did worse than we did as far as making financial decisions, they got bailed out. That would have been OK if we knew that the bailout is going towards getting the rest of us out of the hole too. But no, we’ve been hearing about how their executives got their usual fat, end of the year bonuses. It doesn’t seem fair. I’d like to know who the genius was that orchestrated a bailout with no accountability. Because now that the banks have our taxpayer earned money, they are not very forthcoming about how they are putting it to use.

Regular, hard working people are getting the end of the year pink slips instead of bonuses unlike the Wall Street folks with investment banker jobs. They’re safe, thanks to all those workers holding the pink slip. It doesn’t seem fair.

I’m just saying…

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The best thing about this deal is, it costs you nothing to join the network, but all sales generated from your site can easily earn you 60% of the commission! If you have questions or need more clarification, visit www.answerco.com or call 214-ANSWERS and speak to one of their representatives. I haven’t had a chance to try them out yet, but the deal sure sounds promising. A no hassle revenue stream is hard to pass up.

The days when you had a credit card, paid relatively low interest on your balance and you went on your merry spending ways are over. A credit card is no longer just any Credit Card . It is smart to first do your research and compare companies. Determine the type of credit card that works best for you and your style of spending, what purpose will you use the credit card for, and what fees and interests are involved in a particular card.

For instance, a Business Credit Card will give you totally different benefits from say, a Student Credit Card or Prepaid Debit Card. The interest rates will vary and the fees charged will too. Extra Credit Cards is full of useful information regarding credit cards. Whether you’re an old pro at credit cards or just thinking about getting your first one, Extra Credit Cards is a great place to start. There are several articles on their website worth reading: Credit Card 101, The Mechanics of Credit Cards, and Common Myths regarding credit cards. Extra Credit Cards.com can help you find low interest rate credit cards, and even improve your credit score.

If you have bad credit, they can even help you get Bad Credit Credit Cards. Yes, believe it or not, there is such a thing as a credit card for people with bad credit.

Visit ExtraCreditCards.com and take advantage of credit card deals. They have cards that provide extras to go along with your credit card such as cash back and air miles. If those incentives don’t interest you, check them out anyway and see if their low APR credit card offers compare to what you have or have seen elsewhere.

Some people call them rewards, I call them bribes. Sort of like the kind you give kids so that they would do what you want them to do. Just like when they give you a high limit credit card. They just want you to spend more money. I happen to like my low limit credit cards. It’s low enough that I won’t be tempted to go on a shopping spree but high enough to bail me out if I ever get into a bind and need to use a credit card.

I’ve learned my lesson with credit cards. There was a time when I had a store card for every major department store and even a few minor ones. I had gas cards for every station. I had VISA, MC, AMEX and Discover. Did I really need all those? No, definitely now. All they accomplished was to get me to spend more. Spend money I didn’t really have or could afford. I was buried in debt! That was almost 20 years ago now, thank got. It took me almost ten years to get out of debt. So you can be sure I don’t want to get ‘rewarded’ anytime soon.

My budget, I pretty much can work out within my check register. It’s sad, I know. But if you have more to budget than I do or if you have a small business, this budget software may be helpful to you. If you need to track your budget items, make projections or have to do any other complex financial functions, you’ll probably need some sort of software. I don’t have any experience with these types of software, obviously; and anything that has to do with accounting usually gives me a headache but if it helps you and you can understand what they’re talking about, then more power to you.