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Almost every weekend, particularly during the summer when I’m working at home and Sarah is on break from teaching, we plan some sort of family “adventure.”

The goal of these “adventures” is to either visit some location or engage in some large project at home that will teach the children something useful. They might learn a life skill or learn about how some element of society works. We also try to pick things that can be fun for all of us at the same time.

Naturally, Sarah and I want to encourage our children to be smart about how they spend their money and their time, so some of our activities are geared toward financial improvement. Some teach about saving money, others teach about entrepreneurship, but one big theme is frugality.

If an emergency arrived in your life, could you come up with $2,000 in cash to cover that emergency?

Believe it or not, if you’re an American, it’s a coin flip as to whether or not you could pull this off. According to this study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “approximately one quarter of Americans report that they would certainly not be able to come up with such funds, and an additional 19% would do so by relying at least in part on pawning or selling possessions or taking payday loans.”

At some point in our lives, almost all of us are going to face some sort of financial shock that’s going to require us to come up with $2,000 (or more) very quickly. Half of us are going to be unable to do that, which puts that group in an extremely precarious position.

Could you do it? Are you in the “safer” half of that question? Or are you in the more dangerous half?

During a given day, I spend time on a lot of things.

I usually spend quite a bit of time doing things to earn an income – writing posts, sending emails, doing research.

I spend some time doing household tasks, which generally don’t earn much money but don’t cost much, either.

I spend some time engaging in personal tasks, such as eating and hygiene, which have some costs associated.

I also spend time engaging in hobbies and entertainment, which can vary a lot in costs.

The same is true for almost every employed person. You spend some time working – earning money – and the rest of your time revolves around expenses.

Now, as I’ve said many times, my fundamental rule of personal finance is to spend less than you earn, which breaks down to two pieces: spend less and earn more.

There’s a fundamental connection between those pieces and how we spend our time.

When I was a teenager, I went through a period where I was obsessed with card tricks. I learned a bunch of them – some that relied on preparing the deck beforehand, some that relied on a bit of sleight of hand, and some that relied on mental math. I was always better at understanding the tricks than performing them, though, and I was always better off at the ones that required me to think than required me to use dexterity.

Like any curious kid, I eventually wound up at the library. I checked out several books on card tricks and magic and devoured them, learning the inside tactics of many different card tricks and coin tricks.

One element that always stuck with me is that many tricks are never guaranteed success. Quite often, when you see a magician doing a card trick, they’re not sure that the trick will actually work. Usually it involves some serious uncertainty.