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I’ve been a musician for most of my life.  I play piano in two church services each week.  I doubt I could quit if I wanted to.

For most of that time as well, I’ve been a bit of a closet drummer.  Lately I’ve also had the chance to hit the kit at church as well.  (I’m still too loud.  I need to be more like Steve Gadd and less like Animal.)

The drum set I bought at a pawn shop a while back is at the church.  I finally got some new heads for the drums so that they didn’t sound like #4 washtubs.

Guitar Center … for drummers?

I got the heads at Guitar Center.  They had a clearance bin with some decent deals, and I loaded up.  The guy working there helped me out a lot with my questions, and the heads work great.  A few days following the purchase, I got an email from him asking how the heads worked out.  That was a nice touch!

As humans, we’re very good at putting on appearances, even when they don’t match our reality.  If we have a lot of money, we can appear as if we don’t.  If we are just scraping by, we can “put on a good show” and try to appear more affluent than we are.  Unless your neighbor gives you a peek into his investment portfolio, it can be really difficult to tell how they’re doing financially.

The disconnects are even bigger when trying to wrap your head around the finances of someone who is worth many times more (or less) than you are.  The financial decisions they make, or don’t make, are completely different, because their context is completely different.

Shutter a $125 million acquisition

As the father of a daughter, I’ll likely be thinking about wedding costs a lot sooner than I want.  I’m reminded of this every day as I watch my baby girl grow up at record speed.

Unless tradition reverses course, I’ll be expected to foot the bill.  That’s what happens when the coin toss shows up “female.”

The link on the MSN homepage to this article was titled “How much does the average wedding cost?”  Curious, I clicked through.

The article compared the average cost of a wedding today, with what it cost 80 years ago (in the middle of the Great Depression).  After adjusting for inflation, we spend more than four times as much on our weddings as we did 80 years ago.

Bargaining at its most refined

Giving children solid grounding in money management is crucial.  Budgeting, saving, frugality, and financial planning are important components of living on one’s own and taking responsibility.  It’s unlikely that personal finance skills will be taught in school to any appreciable degree, so it’s up to parents to do this.

We give our daughter an allowance.  It’s the same introduction to money management that I got when I was a child.  It’s what I know.

But, in order to this be a series of teachable moments, there needs to be structure and purpose.  Here are five key features of how we’re going about it: