Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Blog, page 11

Best Evah Onion Soup

I’ve eaten great onion soup and I’ve eaten really crappy onion soup, but up until the cold and snowy March of 2015, I’d never made it. I remember being in New York City with my daughter when I had one of the best bowls ever. Alex and I were at The Russian Tea Room and the French onion soup was sublime. Just the right balance of sweet and salty.

But it wasn’t until I read (somewhere) that the secret to great onion soup is the stock that I developed the desire to try making my own. So I bought soup bones, set a rather large pot on the stove, and boiled. And boiled. And boiled. I boiled those puppies for 17 hours. Lid on to avoid too much evaporation. Gentle rolling boil (bring it to a boil and then turn down to low to just keep the roll going). I didn’t add another thing to the pot… figured I’d get to that in the recipe.

I have it on good authority that some restaurants will take up to three days to make a veal stock. Me, I don’t have that kind of patience. Seventeen hours was my limit.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely!

Here’s the rest of the recipe:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 large sweet onions, halved and thinly sliced
4 leeks, thinly sliced (just the white and light green parts)
4 shallots, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 heaping tablespoons tomato paste
1 tsp thyme
½ tsp oregano
2 tsp rosemary
3 bay leaf
1 ½ cup dry red wine
1/4 cup wine vinegar
10 cups beef stock (if you want to skip making your own, use low sodium broth and adjust the salt accordingly)
3 tbs salt

Warm the olive oil, then add the onions, leeks, shallots and a generous pinch of salt. Cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until very tender and caramelized, about 45 minutes.

While the onions are caramelizing, add the garlic, tomato paste, thyme, oregano, rosemary, bay leaf and half the remaining salt to the stock. (You will add the remaining salt in small increments until you have as much salt as you you like.)

Add the wine and vinegar.

Once the onions are caramelized, add them to the stock. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the soup’s flavor is well developed… plan for about an hour.

This is the point at which, after cooling, I decant and freeze.

I serve the soup just like this, usually with some form of grilled cheese sammie on the side.

If you want to turn this into traditional French onion soup,

In a large skillet melt some butter.
Add the baguette slices and cook until golden and just crisp.
Preheat the broiler and position the rack at the lowest point in your oven.
Ladle soup into heatproof bowls, top with the baguette and about ¼ cup of Gruyere cheese.
Broil until the cheese is melted and just browning.

 

Status Symbols

We use all kinds of things as status symbols these days. Do you have the latest apple product in its latest version? Is your car domestic or foreign? Do you have melamine kitchen counters or granite? Our ability to convince ourselves that things have value far beyond what is intrinsic is a-maz-ing. Remember beanie babies? How about livestrong wristbands? PDAs? House flipping?

Can I interest you in some rotting pineapples? In the 1600s, pineapples were a status symbol valued at 5K pounds. Would you eat a $5,000 pineapple? Neither would they, so these spiky prizes would be prominently displayed for months — yes, rotting away — while others oohed and ahhed. And if, like a Dior dress today, you couldn’t afford to buy, renting for an evening was always an option.

Pineapples weren’t the only vegetation with verve. The Dutch were tipsy over tulips in the 17th century and it almost destroyed Holland’s economy. Playing “whose tulip garden is better” lead to tulip craze that turned into bulb speculation, with a single bulb priced at more than a year’s income for a skilled worker. Bulbs changed hands daily ending in panic when buyers failed to show for a bulb auction and the bottom fell out of the tulip market.

I personally know women who have laid out thousands of dollars to buy shoes with red soles. While it might be just pennies to a superstar, these women had mortgages! Scratches head.* Footwear has long been used as a status symbol and the red-soled high-heels haven’t been the only ones that are tough to walk in. The Crackowe was popular in the late Middle Ages. The tip of this long pointed shoe was 6 to 24 inches long. Yup, that’s right… a shoe with a tip that was two feet long. It was the very impracticality of these shoes that proved their wearers didn’t have to work.

While sugar is in almost everything we eat today, it wasn’t always so. Rare and expensive, and only available to the fancy pants of society, it became a status symbol to have huge displays of the white stuff. By the Victorian era people were actually blackening their teeth, as a witness to conspicuous consumption of sugar.

What’s Your Future Plan?

Imagine you’ve retired. There. You’re done working. Now you have all the time in the world to do all the things you’ve always wanted to do. You can sleep in late. You can have lunch on the deck, take a stroll to the park, volunteer at your local school or hospital. There’s time to knit, time to garden, time to putter around in the workshop or craft-room.

It’s nice to paint pictures of what life will be like when we get to the stage where we can do what we want when we want. No more boss. No more 9 to 5. No more paycheque.

Yah, that’s a fly in the ointment isn’t it? It will be if you haven’t given any thought to how you’ll pay for life when the paycheques stop showing up.

One of the biggest challenges for the young-and-just-getting-started is balancing setting money aside for the future with all the other stuff competing for attention. The student loan has to be paid off, there’s a wedding to plan, and the downpayment for a home is a priority. Besides, retirement is decades away.

You do have time. Unfortunately, the longer you take to start saving, the more you’ll have to sock away. Start in your 20s and you can save as little as 6% of your income. Wait until you’re in your 30s and you’ll have to jack it up to 10%. Delay until you’re in your 40s and you’ll need to squeeze 18% out of cash flow to have enough to retire.

Saving takes discipline and planning. It’s so easy to pick up the phone or run through the drive-thru at the end of a killer day. But eating out costs about 10 times as much as cooking at home. So this weekend, do some meal planning and cook a couple of big-pot meals like chili, stew, soup, or spaghetti sauce. Freeze a few servings for those busy nights when you’re exhausted and just don’t want to cook. Now you won’t be tempted to say, “I have nothing for dinner, where’s the take-out menu?” That’ll leave you with money so you can eat in the future.

Finding ways to cut costs so you have the mone y to save is as easy as increasing your insurance deductibles. Would you really make a claim on your car insurance for under $2,000? Do you know what that would do to your premiums? Same goes for similar claims on home insurance. If you want to save on insurance, combine your home and auto insurance and save up to 15%. Next, raise your car insurance deductible to $2,000 and watch your premium drop. Stick the difference between your newly reduced premium and what you were paying into your emergency fund until you’ve saved your deductible. Once that’s done, roll the difference into your retirement savings. Yes, it takes a little work, but it could save you hundreds and hundreds every year, particularly if you never have to use your deductible.

Small changes can mean huge savings over the long term. Switch to an accelerated weekly or bi-weekly payments on your mortgage. You’ll make the equivalent of one extra monthly payment every year, which could save you four years’ worth of interest. And since that extra payment is spread over the whole year, your cash flow never feels pinched.

If you have kids, don’t ignore the free money. When you put money into a Registered Education Savings Plan, the government gives you money to help with your child’s education. If you put $2,500 in the plan for Little Susie, the Feds will add $500. That’s an immediate 20% return. Hey, the less you have to fund Susie’s education from your own pocket, the more you can sock away for your own future.

Use your RSP tax savings smartly. Pay down your mortgage; the objective should be to get to retirement debt free. Boost your next RRSP contribution so you save even more on taxes. Or use your savings to max out your Tax Free Savings Account.

Finding ten bucks here and twenty there to sock away each month. Think about extending the time between when you do routine things: get your hair coloured/cut/relaxed every six weeks instead of every four, cut back on your lawn maintenance/home cleaning service from once a week to once every two. And then there are the frivolities you’ll want to eliminate completely: borrow your books and magazines at the library instead of buying them, and borrow DVDs from friends and family, learn to shop in the thrift stores.

The closer you get to boarding the retirement train, the more prepared you need to be to deal with the changes. Perhaps the best way to save for the future is to practice living as if you’re already retired. What better way to see how the retirement shoe fits than to try it on? Figure out how much income you will have and use that to calculate what you’ll spend for expenses like food, entertainment, utilities, clothes, gifts, cable/cell, and travel. Use the money you’re no longer spending as a last big push to boost your savings for the future.

 

How Do You See Yourself?

It’s funny how different our self-concept can be from the perception other people hold of us. Have you ever found yourself rubbing up against a perception that you felt was not really of YOU… the YOU you know? I have. It happens to me all the time. People have a sense of who I am and then predict how I’ll behave. When I don’t do as they expect, they’re shocked, even offended.

This isn’t just a public figure issue. This used to happen to me even as a young woman before I was ‘famous.’ Back in the day, I was a skinny girl, five foot seven and about 120 lbs soaking wet. When I dated, men would comment on my voracious appetite: I could put away an appetizer, a 12-oz steak, baked potato, veggies, salad and still have room for dessert. They’d watch me eat, nodding and smiling. They just didn’t expect me to pack it away.

I get the same reaction when I swear like a sailor. People are more used to it now, I think, so I don’t often get the same kind of response. Or maybe it’s that I’m older. But back when I was a pretty young thing people were rocked back on their heels when I let loose with my favourite swear words.

People also seem to think I love rules, which I do not. I know rules are important, and that they make life easier. (You don’t have to weigh every single thing that happens when you have some rules you can pull out.) But I believe rules are only important when they serve you. If a rule gets in my way, I’m not above going around it to achieve the end I want. It can be off-putting to many people. But more deadly to me would be to blindly follow a rule that I know is not going to get me to where I want to be.

I don’t much care what people think of me. Some people like me. Some people don’t. I’m okay with that. What I’m not going to do is change who I am in the hope of getting more people to like me. Those people who know me and love me for who I am are all I need. The rest can criticize, comment, condemn. You can only please some of the people some of the time, and I’m fine with that.

But what about you?

How much do you find yourself adapting your style to the people in your life? How often do you quash something that wants to tumble out of your mouth for fear of offending or, worse, making someone angry? Have you ever changed what you were planning to wear when you considered what someone you were meeting might say? Have you guided conversations away from topics you didn’t want to discuss because you knew your opinion would not be appreciated?

If someone were to give you five words that they thought best described you, how close would they be to the five words you would use to describe yourself.

I recently did this experiment with some friends on Facebook. First I wrote on a piece of paper the five words I would use to best describe myself: outspoken, honest, loving, joyful, smart.

Here are the first 10 lists I got:

Loving, driven, resilient, fun, loud
Smart, loving, funny, bold, beautiful
Loyal, funny, artistic, wise, thoughtful
Funny, frank, creative, adventurous, generous
Funny, industrious, curious, brilliant, insightful
Creative, funny, outgoing, thoughtful, generous
Funny, ballsy, industrious, thoughtful, boisterous and joyful (some people just will not follow the rules, y’know!)
Hilarious, fierce, adventurous, honest, brilliant
Self-assured. Knowledgeable. Hilarious. Warm.
Smart, practical, determined, generous, blunt, kind (I know that’s 6 so sue me) HA!

Now these are my friends, so I get why there aren’t more derogatory terms in the lists. What I really like, though, is how many of my words show up on their lists. How they see me and how I see myself are similar. Some use words I, too, would use if my list were longer, like loud and curious. But there are big differences too: It turns out a lot of people (including my kids) think I’m funny.

Try this experiment. You might be surprised at how similar (or not) your word list is to those of the people whom you ask to describe you.

 

This & That: My Husband & I Edition

H Wrote: My husband and I have a life insurance policy that we took out 20 years ago. It is set to hit the 20 years and I have been told that the premiums that we currently pay will more than double if we want to continue having this coverage (face value $350,000.00 for my husband and $125,000.00 for myself). I was wondering if it is wise to pay the new premiums as we are now mid 50’s and it is harder to get life insurance and we could not invest this money and get the same return. Our current premium is just over $200 monthly and it will be going up to around $540.00.

Gail Says: Let’s deal with your two issues separately:

Insurance: While term insurance seems much less expensive in early years, the premiums on renewal can be a shock, which is why I suggest people think carefully about why they’re buying insurance. If you want to have a policy in place for the really long haul (until you croak) then permanent is often cheaper in the long run. Having said that, do you still need insurance? Are you still trying to protect someone who is counting on that income or would need to have a significant debt paid off (like a mortgage)? If the answer is yes, then you’ll have to buy the extension on your policy.


Investments. Your insurance is not an investment (except in peace of mind). If you let the policy lapse tomorrow, and next Thursday one of you dies, will the $540 you invested cover your needs? How about 2 years from now when you’ll have invested $13,000…would that be enough to make the transition smoothly? If the answer is no, then you still need your insurance. Sure, it feels like you’re pissing away money on premiums. What you’re actually doing is shifting the risk from you to the insurer. If someone dies early, the insurance company pays more than collected. If you both live long, lives paying lots in premiums, the insurance company makes more money. In both cases you protected your loved ones from financial shock or, worse, potential destitution. If you feel like you have a big enough asset base to not need the insurance, then don’t renew the policy.

 

J Wrote: My hubby is a grad student and does contract work for a company that does technical writing. He does around 45 reports a year and takes home $4500 a year as additional income. A friend suggested that he register this work as a business; and I was wondering your thoughts. Could you recommend any books or websites?

Gail Says: For an income of just $4,500 a year I’m not sure what the point of registering as a business would be. For now, he is just earning freelance income. It’s not even enough to report for HST purposes since it’s under the annual limit of $30,000 in sales. He can still write off expenses against that freelance income (internet, biz supplies, etc.) but his expenses cannot exceed his freelance income and must be connected to the work he is doing to pass muster.

 

H Wrote: My husband just came to me about a week and a half ago and informed me he has a gambling problem. He has spent our savings, borrowed against his RRSP and the kids RESP, and borrowed money from family and friends. I have calculated that he has spent/borrowed over $117,000. He took out a small loan from Money Mart that we were able to pay back from borrowing money from his family. He also took out an unsecured loan from CitiFinancial back in September 2014. The money he borrowed is $23,000. I noticed on the statement today that his agreement states that he is paying 24.99% interest on this loan, meaning that he will be paying over $17,000 in interest fees. I have since taken over all of the finances. I am appalled that a lending company can charge this high interest rate. Is there any way to get this interest rate lowered? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Gail Says: Yours is a story that’s all too familiar to me. It’s one of the reasons I strongly advocate that both people in a relationship be involved with the money from the get-go.

Lenders can charge whatever they want. We have a usury rate in Canada: 60%+. But the pay advance stores get around that by charging extra fees on top of the ridiculous interest rate. I used to recommend that people reduce their interest rates, but that’s becoming less and less of an option as lenders tighten up their lending (because they’ve seen the writing on the wall.)

That being said, if he signed the paperwork for the loan, then he’s on the hook unless he goes into bankruptcy. I strongly recommend that if you have any equity in your home (which will be taken in the bankruptcy proceedings) that you file for separation and divvy up the assets (if you intend to separate) BEFORE he goes bankrupt so that your share of the assets are not also at risk.

Above everything else he must seek help for the gambling since he will get his hands on money, by hook or by crook, and you and the children will always be at risk, if he doesn’t. I’m sorry. This is a tough thing to live with.

 

C Wrote: I wish I knew about you 8 years ago when my husband and I were deciding to buy a house. We got into a foolish ‘cash back’ mortgage at a high rate (his credit score wasn’t great at the time). If that wasn’t bad enough, we continued to live the ‘high life’ with trips, dinners out, weekends away etc. We continued to rack up our credit cards.

Four years ago we re-mortgaged, but the penalty to get out of the original mortgage was so high, we couldn’t consolidate any of our other debt. Two years ago I entered into a credit counselling agreement in order to pay off my credit, which amounted to nearly $28,000. My monthly payment is $600, but my husband has a couple of small credit cards with monthly payments totalling $250 or so. We’ve been scrapping by (barely) with overtime and on-call for my husband, and last summer I took on a part time job too. Yet each week we see the paycheques gone on the basics (long gone are the Starbucks trips and expensive salon visits!) We’ve been following your budgeting advice but life is more expensive than you think it will be! Basically, the stress of living so bare bones is getting the better of us. We finally decided to see our mortgage broker to consolidate everything into the mortgage, but because I’m in the credit counselling program, my once decent credit score is too low. She’s looking into a ‘B’ lender, which means higher rates (although she says they’re still pretty good right now). Because we had already re-mortgaged, we really haven’t paid enough off so the amount of money available might cover the remainder of my loan to the credit counsellor but nothing more.

SO, finally the question.   Is it advisable to re-mortgage with a B lender at a higher rate, get rid of the credit counselling loan so I can start re-building my credit earlier (I have another 2.5 years before the full amount is paid) and live with the ‘Band-Aid’ mortgage for 2 years, in the hopes that after that we would be eligible for a better mortgage OR do we sell the house, pay the mortgage and whatever debt we can after the fees and taxes, rent a place and start over? We have 2 children, aged 12 and 5, so university is on the horizon. Is renting an acceptable place in a good neighbourhood, which will cost us $1400 plus utilities, a better financial option? Everyone says keep the house for the investment, but honestly, there is no investment right now when the bank owns nearly every penny of it! I’m 42 and want to enjoy life with my family. I feel like the last few years have sucked the enjoyment out, we are living the very definition of the RAT RACE! HELP!

Gail Says: There is nothing wrong with renting as a lifestyle choice. However, if you’re not going to be building assets in land, then you must make sure you’re saving. If you don’t have a pension plan at work, you will need to be setting aside about 18% of your net income for the future if you’re just starting out to catch up for time lost. As far as the rent of $1,400 + utilities, to put it in context, I owe my home outright and it costs me about $1200 a month to carry: property taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance. So your $1400 doesn’t look so bad from here! 

 

If you do decide to keep the house do NOT do the B-lender mortgage. You’ve come this far, so suck it up and finish the credit counselling program. I hope they are helping you to create a realistic budget and set some goals for the future as part of the service. And you’re running out of time to grab all the RESP free (grant) money available to your first child, so you best make some decisions about setting aside some money for post-secondary lickety-split. 

 

Books, Books & More Books

Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen I love Carl Hiaasen’s books. Laugh aloud funny, they are a great holiday between two books that are a little heavier in tone. In this fun read, investigative reporter, Jack Tagger has been punished by being made to write obituaries for a South Florida daily because he insulted the new owners of the paper at a shareholder’s meeting. Jack is “plotting to resurrect my career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff.” That’s when Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, turns up dead in a fishy-smelling scuba “accident. Jack needs to figure out what actually happened. Standing in the way are [among others] an editor who wants Jack to “break her cherry,” an ambitious pop-singer widow, and the soulless, profit-hungry newspaper owner. Will Jack Tagger get the chance to trade obits for a story that could hit the front page, and give his career a new lease on life?

 

The Memory Game by Nicci French was terrific. Jane Martello is going through a midlife crisis. She’s thrown her devoted husband to the curb, taken up smoking and drinking, and can’t figure out why she’s so unhappy. So she goes into therapy. She’s also trying to figure out how the skeleton of he best friend who disappeared 25 years before ended up buried right under everyone’s nose in the partriach’s garden. It makes no sense unless the murderer is very close to home… As Jane remembers things about her past, she realises she holds the secret to what happened to Natalie. And she needs to know if the memory she has of Nathalie is real or if the images she’s seeing are false recovered memories.

 

The Old Fox Deceiv’d Martha Grimes is an American writing British mysteries and doing a fine job of it. Good crime that isn’t figure-out-able is hard to find. This one involves the bizarre murder of Gemma Temple in a tiny Yorkshire fishing village. Was Gemma the intended victim or was the black-and-white costume she was wearing the reason she was killed? Inspector Jury arrives to untangle the maze of unrequited loves, wrongs being revenged and even more murders, with some help from his aristocratic friend, Melrose Plant.

 

Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner is another interesting entry in the series that started with bestseller Freakonomics and continued with SuperFreakonomics. This book is about following your curiosity and challenging what everyone assumes is true. Cars are deadlier than planes, but plane crashes get way more attention. Counter-intuitive, right? OK, how about this: Who do you think is easier to fool, kids or adults. Most people would say kids – like taking candy from a baby, right. Turns out magician Alex Stone says adults are easier to fool. Why? Kids are shorter so they tend to see the trick adults miss. The book promises to teach you to think like a freak. Maybe

 

The Brothers K by David James Duncan is an amazing, amazing story. This is the story of the Chance family. Papa Chance, loves baseball –he pitched in the minors until an accident during the offseason leaves him without a thumb and unable to keep following his bliss. Baseball and Papa’s love of beer face stiff competition from Mama’s Seventh Day Adventist faith. The Brothers K is about how the children of this family deal with their very different parents and their own individual and unique ways of seeing the world.

 

Sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes tender, the characters are all very real. From the first scene of Papa Chance’s son sprawled securely in his father’s lap, watching cigarette smoke wafting into the air, to the last heart-breaking moments, Duncan takes you deep into this family’s enduring connections and their jagged rending at the hands of the world and their own stubborn natures. Beautifully written, the story is completely believable. not a boring moment.

 

Art & Neuroscience

Ed Connor, professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University is interested in whether we intuitively favor certain shapes over others and, if so, what that could mean for how we experience art.

Connor joined forces with Gary Vikan, then the director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, to set up a two-part experiment to measure how people respond to different surface curvatures. They chose to use non-representational art to keep from being sidetracked by the subject matter.

Connor’s team scanned images of sculptures and the team gradually alter the surface curvatures of each piece from full-bodied and rounded, to elongated and pointier. Subjects donned 3-D glasses to view arrays of these altered shapes on a computer monitor, clicking on the ones they preferred.

The result: participants preferred softly curving shapes as opposed to pointy and elongated ones.

When participants were put in an MRI, softly rounded forms produced a stronger neural response in the higher-level visual cortex, which contains regions that register shape.

Connor says it’s possible that humans have evolved to favor that sort of shape because softer, rounder shapes are more evident in living organisms. “It makes sense for finding mates, finding good things to eat,” he says. For instance, “you are going to eat the grape with the nice curved surface, not the shriveled one that’s not ripe.” (Hey, what about raisins?)

Connor acknowledges that a preference for certain shapes over others is only one part of our response to art. He cites Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, whose long, thin, and pointy sculptures are also extremely popular. “Most of what we call aesthetics is forever beyond the reach of neuroscientific explanation, because it’s simply too high-level,” Connor says. “It draws on history and biography and art criticism.”

Protecting Your Kids

Do you have kids? Have you chosen a guardian for your children just in case? When Alexandra was born, one of the toughest decisions her father and I had to make was deciding who would be her guardian if, heaven forbid, we shuffled off this mortal coil together. We weighed the pros and cons of everyone in our lives and no one was healthy enough, old enough, young enough, strong enough, gentle enough. Eventually we made a good choice … because we made a choice.

The idea of leaving a child behind is so traumatic that most people refuse even to consider the possibility. But what if the worst does happen? Having made like an ostrich and stuck your head in the sand, you will have left your precious one to cope with the implications. For single parents or sole custody parents who must contemplate child-rearing arrangements in the event of their demise, guardianship issues are even more important. If you still haven’t made your choice, this is the week you make a decision!

In choosing a guardian you’ll have to think about what is important to you. Continuity of lifestyle, religious beliefs, and child-rearing values will all come into the equation. Obviously someone who has an on-going relationship with your kids would be best for the sake of continuity.

Put on your Practicality Hat as you make your decision. Thinking about naming your parents? Since it’s unlikely they’ll turn you down you must be sure in your own mind that they’ll be well enough to take on the job, even through the trying adolescence years. Do your first choice also have children? How will your kids fit into the household? Is your choice living close to their current neighbourhood or will this mean moving to a new school and away from friends and family at a time when they most need stability?

If you are naming a friend rather than a family member make sure you talk about it with your family first. Since the appointment of a “custodian”- the legalese for a guardian – is not binding, your wishes could be over-ruled by a court if it feels it is not in the best interest of the child. With your family onside, your kids won’t end up in the middle of a custody battle.

Put some thought into the financial provisions you’ll need to make to ensure your children will be raised and educated without being a financial burden for their guardian. Bring the kids into their household will be tough enough without the additional burden of having to find the money to make more space, feed extra mouths and educate extra minds.

Keep in mind that if you have several children and insufficient resources, you may have to name more than one guardian to spread the financial responsibility around. If the idea of splitting up your kids is an absolute no-no, then you had best take steps to ensure they’re financially able to stay together.

Insurance is one way to build your child a safety net. And if you are actively working towards a secure retirement of your own using a retirement plan, you can designate your dependent children as beneficiaries.

You’ll also have to decide whether your children’s guardian will also be the person who manages their inheritance. You might choose, instead, to appoint more financially experienced people to co-manage your children’s money and provide a regular flow of funds to meet their needs.

Before you officially name your guardian, ask for permission. This is a big responsibility you’re asking someone to take on and you don’t want the person to be “obligated” to say yes. Very often, we ask people to be our children’s “god parents” without ever considering the actual implications of this. It’s a decision that should be carefully considered before acceptance, so don’t take the first “yes” you hear. Ask the person to consider the job, and then check back later for an answer. And be prepared for that person saying “no” if the prospect of managing your crazy brood is simply too overwhelming.

Once you’ve found someone willing to step into the breach, have a talk about the values you would like to see in place, the financial provisions you have made, along with all the little details. And prepare a letter explaining why you selected the guardian you did so courts will have your wishes in writing should a custody issue be raised.

Check back periodically to ensure that your children’s guardian still feels up to the job. Life changes and so can minds. Don’t assume the status quo simply because you’re unwilling to go through the guardianship appointment process again. Part of parenthood involves dealing with all the smelly, squishy, yucky issues. This is just one more of them.

 

Becoming Wise

How do you define wisdom? Is it an ability to tie together knowledge with experience? Is it tolerant understanding and patience? Is it a willingness to accept that life is uncertain, but things will play out as they should over time?

I’ve met a lot of smart people. I’ve seen intelligence shine in the eyes of friends and co-workers. Wisdom has been harder to find because, I think, we’re not trying hard enough. People often associate wisdom with age — give it some time and wisdom will magically arrive. I’ve met too many silly old people to buy that. And I’ve met some very young people who seem wise beyond their years. Old Souls we call them, referring to the fact that they seem to carry the wisdom of the ages from previous lives lived.

One of the things that contributes to wisdom is a willingness to look into oneself — introspection. Years ago when I was reading Howard Gardner’s books on multiple intelligences, I was introduced to the idea that there were many ways to be intelligent. Sports stars, for example, have a body intelligence the rest of us have in smaller proportions. It was from Howard (I’d love it if he’d come for dinner) that I learned of two intelligences that made me stop and really think. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to know others and is sometimes called social intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to know oneself.

Another characteristic of the wise is their willingness to see things in shades as oppose to drawing lines between things. If you can hold two diametrically opposed ideas without feeling like a two-faced, vacillating, shilly-shallier, you’ve got some wisdom in ya! I sometimes look at the fools and fanatics who are dead sure of what they speak and shake my head. There has got to be room for questions for wisdom to grow.

The point of any discussion shouldn’t be to come to indisputable conclusions. The point should be to create greater understanding. The wise know this and are sometimes heard saying things like, “Huh! I never thought of that. I’ll have to think about it some more.”

If you want to find your own wisdom you’ll have to develop the ability to listen without judging. You won’t rush to categorize actions as good or bad, but will try to figure out why people act as they do. And you’ll try to figure out why you act as you do so that you get better and better at being able to predict how others — and how you — will react to changing circumstances.

You’ll also be willing to question rules. This is, perhaps, the behaviour for which I have taken the most criticism in my life. I actually had one woman say to me, “I’m surprised that you didn’t follow the rules.”

When I told my daughter she just about split a gut laughing. “You NEVER follow the rules,” she guffawed.

Well, I don’t ALWAYS follow the rules. I’m always looking for a better path. And it’s one of the reasons I’ve been as successful — and happy — as I’ve been. While others may bristle at my “breaking the rules,” if those rules don’t work for me, I’m all for looking for a different way.

People are quick to leap in with, “If all of us didn’t follow the rules there’d be chaos.” I counter with, “There are a lot of people following bad rules and there is chaos. Chaos is. Our job is to weave our way through with as little damage to ourselves and others as possible.”

I watch parents set all kinds of rules for their children as they were growing up. There were social rules of politeness. There were rules about bed times and eating habits. There were rules about bathing, cleaning rooms, clearing up after dinner. Rules about when to come home and who to bring. Rules, rules, everywhere rules. We only had three rules in our house: you can’t do anything to hurt yourself, you can’t do anything to hurt another, and you can’t wilfully destroy anything. Easy to remember.

I grew up with curfews. My children never had them. I grew up with the edict, “finish the food on your plate.” My children were only required to eat as much of the right kinds of food to stay healthy (do no harm to yourself) and I wasn’t above serving chocolate cake for breakfast. Or for dinner. My mother would have been appalled.

Living in wisdom means weighing things carefully and always keeping your eye on the big picture. It means being willing to see more than one side because nothing substantial has only one side. And it means watching yourself to see how you react, what pushes your buttons, and what makes your intuition tingle.

We aren’t all wise. But we are all becoming.

 

This & That: What to Do Edition

R Wrote: My question is about bank account overdraft protection and the role they play on our credit. I have $500 overdraft protection on one chequing account and $500 overdraft protection on one savings account; my husband has $1,500 overdraft protection on one savings account. I maintain $1,500 minimum threshold balance in my chequing account and my husband maintains a $3,500 minimum threshold balance in his chequing account. We pay off our credit cards bi-weekly and never utilize our overdrafts. Should we eliminate them? Do they impact our overall credit amounts extended when it comes to applying for a mortgage or anything?

Gail Says: You don’t say if you’re paying a fee for this OD protection or not. I’m going to assume you are (what, after all, in life is free) and tell you that if you’re not likely to use it you’re wasting your money. You’re already doing what I suggest people to; to eliminate their OD protection: you’re maintaining a minimum balance in your accounts. If it were my accounts, I’d eliminate the OD protection.

 

M Wrote: My husband and I are setting up a 6 month rainy day fund. Should we account for the fact that if one of us lost our job, we would receive Employment Insurance for one year or not?

Gail Says: You should consider EI a bonus since not all emergencies come with a payout from EI. If you get sick or have to take time off work to look after family, there won’t be EI. And there won’t be EI if you get turfed from your job for cause. Yes, EI can help to extend your emergency fund, but you shouldn’t count on it.

 

M Wrote: My 27 daughter is attending grad school. She had 5000 euros to subsist on for 14 weeks. We are at week 11 and she has only 300 euros remaining. What do I do? I can’t leave her without. In my mind she only needs food, because she cannot afford entertainment. I had suggested a budget of 200 euro a week with a 500 euro buffer for surprises. She obviously has not followed the suggested plan.  Her residence is already paid for.

Gail Says: What lesson are you teaching her by bailing her out? She’s 27 years old for heaven’s sake. If you MUST send her money for food — although I’d let her find a way to deal with this herself — send it weekly in very small increments. And only the barest minimum to keep her from starving. At 27, she is a woman, not a child, and needs to learn to stand on her own two feet.

 

A Wrote: When a child gets money for their birthday or Christmas, do you allow them to keep all the money as mad money or do you have them divide into sharing, saving, spending and mad money?

Gail Says: What was the intent of the money gift? If it was specifically earmarked for saving — like an RESP contribution — then you’d save it. If it was as a “gift” then you should talk to your kid about the “gift” he or she would like to buy with the money received. No need to save it or divvy it up. After all, if the person had sent an actual gift, that would have been that, right?

 

C Wrote: We are about 6 years from retirement and have always had our investments in Mutual funds. It has been suggested that we move our funds to insurance based segregated funds as there is more potential for growth as well as partial security for our investment. I am unsure as to what we should be doing? Could you give us some advise regarding this issue.

Gail Says: The seg fund guarantee comes with a price: since it is created through having the capital invested insured, seg funds are served up with a higher MER than are similar mutual funds without the guarantee. Seg funds do have their moments. They’re a good investment if you’re looking for creditor protection because you’re self-employed or a small-biz owner. Segs also offer unprecedented estate protection. Like other insurance products, money in segregated funds pass directly to heirs named directly as beneficiaries without going through your estate, which means no estate fees or death taxes (where applicable).

Only you can decide if the additional cost is worth it to you to have your principal guaranteed. Please also note that if you’re drawing down on these funds over time, that guarantee may be affected since the guarantee is time sensitive. Check with your advisor to see how this would impact on you.

 

H Wrote: How would you politely word a response for a request (really it was presented as an expectation) that team members of a rep sport sponsor a family at Christmas? It is a good cause, yes, however, the reason I want to decline is that my family has already designated our giving budget to a family at church and to another charitable organization. My kid was told that she had to earn the money and give it to the family. Who is this woman to say that when she doesn’t know our financial situation?

I need your help Gail with your wording. I know what I am doing is right, I’m just too mad to word it properly.

Gail Says: The line I use is this: “I plan my giving every year and I’ve already allocated this year’s giving. I may be able to help next year if you want me to do so, but there is no money for this year.”

This is a good time to educate your kids about planned giving, sharing your good fortune, and not living to anyone else’s expectations. Prime them with the words they’ll need. “We give generously to causes we believe in, and we plan that giving carefully. My parents have already allocated our giving resources for this year. Maybe next year.”

 

N Wrote: Several years ago we have decided to use our credit card to pay for everything, so we could collect points. It’s great as we already have bought several plane tickets with our points but we have noticed that often we spend a bit more than we can pay back because paying with a credit card is sooo easy. We have a hard time knowing how much we spend until it s a bit too late. Any tips on how to not spend too much but still using the credit card?

Gail Says: I, like you, put everything on my CC to reduce my banking fees. I NEVER spend more than I can pay back for 2 reasons:

I use a spending journal so that when I make a purchase (using whatever means) I deduct what I’ve spent from my current balance. This keeps me very aware of the money going down even though I haven’t get received the CC bill, and


I shop with a list. Giving in to impulses is so easy when there’s room on a card. If I see something I think I want, I can’t buy it if it’s not on my list. I have to add it to the list for next time, assuming I still want it.

Putting some “consciousness” into the shopping is what it takes to make it real. When it’s done reflexively, you end up slapping your forehead later when the bill comes in!

 

G Wrote: If a 52-year-old person who has retired and is on a company pension decides to work again, can he buy RRSP’s? 18% of his salary?

Gail Says: As long as you have earned income and are under the age of 71 you can contribute to an RRSP. Make sure you reinvest the tax savings so that when it does come time to take the money out of the RRSP, you come out ahead.