Money Tips Network

For the most part, my domestic and professional lives run along quite smoothly. However, there are a few times a year, namely April through about mid-June and late August through the end of October, that tend to be quite stressful. Our schedules compress for a number of reasons and we find ourselves often with more things to do and more things to get done than we have time to complete.

This leaves us feeling overwhelmed and often exhausted, which means that we’re much more prone to looking toward convenient options to handle some of our life’s needs. We consider eating out more often, something we rarely think about outside of those crunch times. We think about things like laundry services or even hiring a one-off housecleaner. We used to look at hiring babysitters on occasion.

As a parent or guardian of a young adult with disabilities, you know full well that your child may or may not need help making important decisions, financial or otherwise. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to special needs guardianship, but there are there are degrees of need when it comes to guardianship. 

This guide will help you know what to expect financially if you do decide to become a guardian of your child or loved one. It’s sometimes tricky to be sure you’re making the right decision for everyone, but this article will guide you through how parents and other interested parties can become legal guardians of a young adult with disabilities. 

The following is a guest post from Marc at VitalDollar.com.

Have you ever wondered what separates those who are successful financially with those who are not? Have you felt like your income should allow you to live a much more comfortable life than what you are experiencing?

Personal finance doesn’t have to be complicated. There are a few basic rules that you should follow, and if you do that, everything else falls into place.

This article covers some of the most basic and most powerful financial rules that should impact your everyday life.

1. Spend Less Than You Earn

I hate phones.

I hate answering phones. I hate making phone calls. I especially hate doing business by phone. Maybe it's a part of my social anxiety, but I will go to great lengths to not use my phone. (The phone “app” doesn't even live on the homescreen of my phone!)

If I ever have a question for my bank, for instance, I will get in my car and drive to the bank before I'll pick up the phone.

Kim thinks I'm crazy. She's just the opposite. She loves the phone and prefers it to doing business in person. Every week, I listen as she makes two or three calls and uses her charm on customer service agents. I have no charm, and I hate the phone.

Let me give you a more detailed example of why I find phones frustrating.

For much of the past two weeks, I've been wrestling with my mental health. I could sense a crisis coming, so I scheduled some time away. I didn't want to have to be worrying about blog posts while I was worrying about everything else. Thus, my “summer vacation”.

Long-time readers are aware that I've struggled with depression for most of my life.

In sixth grade, I missed five weeks of school with what my father called “parrot fever”. (We had parrots, and he attributed my issues to a parrot allergy.) After our family physician could find nothing wrong with me, Dad took me to his therapist. Hushed conversations followed the appointment. The verdict: I was dealing with depression.

Toward the end of her life, my grandmother's doctor told her to avoid a number of her favorite foods — including ice cream.

Join our Tweetchat this Thursday at 12:00 pm Pacific for lively conversation and a chance to win one of two $10 Amazon GCs! Use #WBChat to participate.

This week's topic: Having a Frugal 4th of July!

Most of the time, my process for acquiring food and cooking at home looks something like this:

I recognize that we’re at the end of our planned meals, so it’s time to go to the grocery store. I download a grocery store flyer from the website and then start to assemble a meal plan based on that flyer, choosing recipes that incorporate a lot of that on-sale stuff. I check the pantry to make sure what other ingredients I have for those recipes, then make a list to cover what I don’t already have. I head out to the store, buy the stuff on my list, and head home. Throughout the next week, I make meals based on that meal plan, until I hit the end of the meal plan.

But what if I took a different approach, an ingredients-first approach, one that looked more like this:

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Using rewards card for everything
2. Thoughts on Monat
3. Work, motivation, and retirement
4. Campfire cooking advice
5. Using 403(b) loan for debt
6. Uses for old spices
7. Easy beginning investment book
8. Cast iron worth the work?
9. Libra?