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Quite a few parents choose to stay home because their entire salary would go to daycare if they went back to work full time after the birth of their child. If you are one of the stay-at-home parents who loves kids and wants to make money from home while taking care of your own kid, have you thought about starting your own home daycare? I have. I did some research and interviewed a mother of two who did exactly that. Unfortunately, she burned out and closed her daycare even though it was popular among the parents. I believe this is what will happen to me as well; so after giving it some serious consideration, I decided not to pursue it. Still, I thought it would be interesting to share the interview I had with the mother, in the hopes that it will be beneficial to other stay-at-home parents who are interested to earn income while they stay at home with their children.

Have you ever watched the popular television show “Shark Tank”? In it, entrepreneurs pitch their young businesses to five rich tycoons (the “sharks”) in hopes of attracting an investment from one or more of them. Some entrepreneurs are youngsters with a great idea, some are savvy veterans, and others are ordinary families hoping to turn a great idea into a million-dollar business. Not all get an investment. When you do get an investment, it usually takes one of two forms:

• An equity stake in your business
• A royalty on gross sales

The sharks don’t invest in every business that gets pitched to them. They especially don’t invest in businesses where where the pitch revolves around a tear-jerking story. They don’t care that you had hardships, no opportunities, or that you’re the most upstanding citizen on Earth. They only care about two things:

With the unemployment rate recently edging below 6 percent, the job market is starting to look healthier than it has been since before the Great Recession. While that market does not yet favor employees the way it did during the 1990s, it has recovered enough to justify a more ambitious focus. People who had to scuffle to find a job can now start thinking about their next career move.

Climbing the Career Ladder

How you handle your career is one of the most important financial tasks you will ever tackle. Think of it this way: Your career is an income-generating asset, and unless you become very wealthy, it is probably the biggest income-generator you will ever have. Beyond that, though, it is how you spend most of your waking hours, so handling your career correctly has a huge impact on your happiness as well.

Talk to anyone 19 to 90, and they’re likely to have very clear memories of their first experience going steady. Mine came at the decidedly ancient age of 17, and I can recall that star-crossed life chapter like it happened last week.

My perky, mahogany-haired, 16-year-old inamorata and I didn’t have much in common other than a passion for hours-long sessions in lover’s lane. When we stopped long enough for a conversation, I became aware that her hopes for the future centered on a single day — her wedding day.

It didn’t matter that we had no money. It didn’t matter that I was headed to my freshman year of college and she still needed to matriculate from high school. It didn’t matter that there was no way in hell to support ourselves as newlyweds.