Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Blog, page 17

Language Love from Afar

There are words from other languages that have no equivalent in English.  How many of these do you use? How many didn’t you even know?

Remember the old TV show, Lavern and Shirley? It started:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Sclemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated.

We’re gonna do it!

Schlemiel and schlimazel are both Yiddish. A schlemiel is an inept clumsy person; a bungler; a dolt. A schlimazel is a chronically unlucky person. So the schlemiel is the person who spills the coffee and the schlimazel is the one on whom it’s spilled.

Tartle (Scots) is ?the nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember. Good word, right?

German gives us many words for which there is no English equivalent. Some we have incorporated into everyday use like kindergarten (garden of children) and schadenfreude, which is a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about other people’s woes. How about this one: Backpfeifengesicht: A face badly in need of a fist. I have met those faces but I don’t stand a hope of being able to say that word.

Iktsuarpok (Inuit) is a very useful word if ?you’re waiting for someone to show up you keep going outside to see if they’ve arrived yet?

Pelinti (in Ghana means “to move hot food around in your mouth”) ?so the next time you bite into something hot and then open your mouth while you tilt yourhead and make the sound “aaaarrrahh” this is the word you’ll need.

Faamiti (Samoan) means to make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child. It’s also the sound we make when we are kissing the air.

While you might think there should be a Yiddish word for this, the word that exists is actually Filipino and the word is Gigil, which is the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute. Grandmotherly cheek pinches now have a name.

If Goldilocks had been Swedish, when she got to the Baby Bear’s porriage, chair or bed, she might have used the word, “lagom” which means not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.

We’ve all done this: scratched our heads as we try to remember something. Well, in Hawaii they have a word for that: Pana Po’o.  Hmm, now where did I leave my gloves?” she said, pana po’oing.

I often get caught gazing vacantly into the distance. It’s my mind processing something I’ve seen or heard and I usually have to tell whomever I’m with that I’ll be right back. Well “boketto” is the Japanese word for it. So now I’m just gonna say, “Boketto Break.”

Read to Your Kids

A lot has been flying around the web about how important it is to read to kids. When I first spotted the headline on my FB feed I thought to myself, “Duh!” Why would you have to tell parents that reading to kids is good for them. I guess for the same reason you have to tell people if they aren’t working with a budget they’re working blind. Geeze, so obvious. (But apparently not to all.)

Okay, so if you haven’t heard this groundbreaking news yet, the easiest way to give your sweet darling babies a leg-up in life is to read to them. Every day. Read to them until they can read for themselves and then keep reading to them. You can take turns. Or you can let them read one night and you read the next. Keep reading.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 62,000 pediatricians, says reading to kids should actually be prescribed, it’s so good for their brains. Y’know all that time you spend watching TV or vacuuming, spend it reading to your kids instead. It doesn’t have to cost a penny. With one of the best library systems in the world, Canada has books galore from which you can choose.

Some people say that when infant are very tiny, reading doesn’t make much sense since they don’t understand what’s being said. That’s not the point. To learn language kids need to hear language, and what better way than to listen to your loving voice crooning the beautiful words of a poem, and rhyming picture book or even a song and they lay in your arms enraptured by your presence.

If you’re an old geezer, find a way to volunteer at a local organization reading to children. Or offer to read to kids in a local bookstore. Or at a school. If there are kids who are having trouble learning to read, step up and offer to help.

Did you know that literacy is a huge problem in Canada. Really. We’re a first world country full of opportunity and over 40 percent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 don’t have even the minimum literacy skills to cope with life. How can this even be? You’d think that since literacy issues cost Canada over $10 million a year we’d be doing more to solve the problem.

If you’re still not convinced that the time you spend reading to your children is valuable and will help them long term how about this stat: By the age of four, kids who have parents who read to them, sing to them, talk to them hear about 30 million more words than those parents who do not. By the way, talking on your cell phone while you shepherd your kids places doesn’t count. You actually have to be talking TO them, looking them in the eye, or reading to them, engaging them with what you’re reading or singing TO them.

The famous “Word Gap” study, showed that 86% to 98% of the words used three-year-olds were derived from their parents’ vocabularies. If you don’t have a great vocabulary, then finding beautiful words in books is a wonderful way to enrich your child’s vocabulary. And maybe you’ll learn a beautiful new word or two.

Only about half of kids get read to daily. Stop using the excuse of “not enough time.” It’s the same crap I hear from people who don’t WANT to spend time managing their money. Cut out the rubbish that’s gobbling your life, and prioritize things – like reading to your kids – that are really important.

Don’t know which books to start with? Try some of these:

The very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle, and anything else by Eric Carle
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
If you give a mouse a cookie by Laura Numeroff
The Little Engine that could by Watty Piper
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss… and just about every thing else by him too
Peach and Blue by Sarah Kilborne
And Still the Turtle Watched by Sheila MacGill-Callahan
The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
Edward the Emu by Rod Clement

 

On September 28, on my radio show The Late Shift on NewsTalk1010, I’ll be doing a show on kids’ books. Tune in babies.

Turn Off the Negative Voices

My girlfriend, Kelly, was over one day sipping tea and bitching about her mother. It seems Kelly can’t do anything right. Mommy Dearest always has something to say about how it could have been handled better, whatever IT is. Kelly loves her mom. She just doesn’t like her very much.

“This has been going on forever,” she said, close to tears. She was recounting how she had turned to her mother for emotional support when Jackson, Kelly’s husband, was diagnosed with severe heart problems.  “The first thing out of her mouth,” Kelly said, “was that if I’d cook more at home Jackson wouldn’t eat so much crap and wouldn’t have the weight issues.”

“So what Jackson puts in his mouth has become your responsibility?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “You know, I just needed a place where I could vent my frustrations. I’m so scared for Jackson.”

I’ve watched Kelly dance around her mother for years. Kelly’s mom is a bitch, plain and simple. She always has a better way and is happy to tell Kelly so. Years ago when Kelly was still single, she was in a car accident on the way home from a party. Someone ran into her. Kelly’s mother didn’t have a minute’s worth of sympathy for her daughter. She made it clear that if Kelly hadn’t been out “partying” that night with her girlfriends, the accident would never have happened.

Many of us have people like Kelly’s mom in our lives: people who are happy to help us see our failings; people who point out how we should have handled the situation differently to get a better outcome; people who whine and cry about how hard their lives are even as they infuse ours with criticism.

Parents fill their children with fear in order to ‘warn’ and ‘protect’ them. Siblings manage to never outgrow the rivalries of childhood and are happy to poop on their brother’s or sister’s good fortune, labelling it as “just lucky.” Unhappy friends look for ways to bring others into their unhappiness so they can have a kindred spirit with whom to whine. Ever notice how it’s never the happy people around you who belittle you or challenge your self-esteem?

While matricide isn’t the answer to a mother who just will not let you forget the mistakes you’ve made, limiting how much time you spend listening to the harpies in your life is one of the best ways to improve your own self of well-being. For every minute you must spend parrying the jabs of negativity, give yourself the pleasure of being in company that encourages and applauds you. Over time, you want to reduce the ratio of negativity to positivity until those stabs and slashes become little more than the annoyance of a mosquito buzzing in your ear.

As for the people who would have you compare yourself to others with a view to shining a light on your shortcomings, remember that’s a fool’s game; if you play it, well, you’re a fool. It’s easy to look in at someone else’s life and think everything is peachy keen — “Facebook Happy” my daughter calls it. Since you can only see the bright and shiny people want you to see, you can’t compare that to your life with its real challenges and pleasures.

While you might be tempted to tell whoever is bringing the negativity to your doorstep just what a bitch they are — as I have been with Kelly’s nasty mother — don’t. Be kind. If you behave and think well of those who have no sense of just how horrible they are being (even as you reduce your exposure to them) it is you who will benefit most from that kindness. Judging and criticizing tends to be a circular activity over which we quickly lose control. Don’t let the negative in someone else bring out the negative in you.

Focus on the positives and positivity will be your reward.

This & That: Tough Talk Edition

S Wrote: Should I consolidate my debt with my mortgage? We have 2 LOC’s totalling $55,000. (1. $25,000@7%, 2. $30,000@4%). We can add the $55,000 to mortgage at 2.89%. I’m 45 and married with 3 children. I hope to retire at 55 (10 years from now) with my company pension and the mortgage will be paid off in 11 years. If I do add debt to mortgage I am certain to add at least 5 years to mortgage which may affect my retirement plans.

Gail Says: If you consolidate to the mortgage will you cancel the two lines of credit? Will you stop living beyond your means? That’s how you got into debt. So what will you change about your spending so that this is the last debt you have to deal with? Consolidating to lower your interest costs makes sense, but not if you’re going to carry that debt for 15 years. Do the math and you’ll see that over the long term the interest cost is horrible. If you’re serious about getting out of debt and being in a good place for retirement that you will:

a) do a spending analysis to see how you’ve been using your money,
b) make a budget, cutting back on spending so you can save enough each year to put at least $10,000 against the mortgage as a principal prepayment to offset the extra debt you added

If all you’re doing is clearing the credit lines so you can start racking them up again (you won’t know this until you actually find yourself doing it) consolidation is a bad idea. If you’re serious about taking control of your money, it’ll work for you.

 

D Wrote: We make $6200 a month and our bills come to $6375. We are already working as many hours as possible but I want to get out of debt so bad I don’t know what to do. I have a car with a high car payment that I would love to get out of but I am $12,000 upside down. How do you even start when there is nothing left to even begin with??

Gail Says: You have to be ruthless in cutting your spending. If the car can’t go then something else must. Go over your budget and highlight everything that is an essential expense (housing, food). Whatever is left has to go at lest until your debt is gone. It isn’t easy. It’s what you must do if you want the future to be better than the present.

 

M Wrote: Our 26 year old son just doesn’t seem to want to move forward when it comes to saving money, spending control, planning for his future expenses, budgeting etc. This is very frustrating for me and my wife. We are both good money managers, always have been since we were young. He has had difficulty paying his bills and seems to live in the moment. He is still at home and doesn’t pay rent or board. It’s time for a change for his development and to protect ourselves. We love him dearly and have always supported him in so many ways, always trying to demonstrate the right way when it comes to money. Unfortunately he doesn’t get it. At this point the future doesn’t look very promising. We all want our children to be successful. I feel we either move or he moves.

Gail Says: Like many loving parents who want only the best for your kid you’ve erred on the side of “too much support.” When you are teaching children to walk you initially hold their hands, then let them hold your finger, and then let them step off on their own. They fall. They get back up. They fall again. But you know what? They all learn to walk eventually, some sooner, some later. You’ve been holding your son’s hand for too long.

Why would a person with a job not pay a reasonable amount of rent? In the real world — where you want him to go — he will have to take care of his own shelter needs. By letting him live at home rent free you’re actually teaching him to treat all his money like disposable income, spending it on wants. Needs never come into the mix.

If this were my child — which he is not, so you will do what you will do — I’d insist that he start forking over 35% of his net income — his take home pay — for rent. In the real world, this is what he will have to pay on top of which he’ll have to cover things like food and the rest of the “needs” categories. If your son balks, he can always move out.

If he chooses to stay, you must also insist that he save 10% of his net income. That’s part of the deal. If he balks, he can move out.

We all want our children to be successful, you’re right. But we seem to measure success. I measuring it by a body’s ability to take care of themselves and have a life that is worthwhile. How do you measure it?

 

R Wrote: My husband and I married young and with no money, we stayed within our means as that’s all that we had. When we both found ourselves with good jobs (took a while) we didn’t quite know what to do with all the money so as most people in our situation we enjoyed it. One day I was watching your show and realized that I hadn’t really been paying attention. When I looked we were $41 k in debt and I hit the panic button. We were making a lot compared to some of your guests, over $100k a year between us but I couldn’t believe I was spending with my eyes closed. When I realized we had over $100k available in credit!!! Banks are crazy! It took us a little over a year to get rid of all of our debt. And I mean all of it. A few weeks ago my husband got a new truck. I feel guilty, like I hit the reset button. We now earn closer to $130k a year….and this is our only debt – we own our home and it’s paid for and so is everything else. Am I crazy for feeling guilty about the debt?

Gail Says: Is feeling guilty accomplishing anything? Is the regret adding positively to your life? When we accept the negative into our lives, we end up generating more of that same energy. For better you put your energy into a) fixing whatever problem you’ve created and b) creating a life that is both joyous and meaningful. Whenever you have the urge to beat yourself up, catch yourself, stop and say, “I’ve made mistakes, I am fixing them. I am growing. And I am going to do right by myself from here forward.” Then smile, say thank you for having received the wisdom to do things differently and keep moving towards your goals.

 

D Wrote: To give you some background. I recently moved across the country for better teaching opportunities and, while this has worked out well for me in regards to finding work, it set me back in paying back my student loans. Moving West meant moving out of my parent’s house and off completely on my own. In the two years since I graduated, I have paid off half of my $30k in student debt. When I moved, I had to cut back my payments to almost minimum ($300/month) in order to pay for all of my basic living expenses.

I can’t stand having debt and, as such, have managed to ensure I have no credit card debt. My only debts so far are my remaining student debts and my car. Now, I’m looking at options for buying a home in the (hopefully) near future but have been so focused on putting all extra money towards debt that I have no money saved for a down payment. My income is going to go up by about 25% next year so I will have extra money to use in my currently very tight budget.

My question is…start saving or continue to rent and pay off student debt?

Gail Says: When you take on the added responsibility of home ownership, how will that impact your debt-repayment? Have you thought about what it’ll cost to buy a home? Have you factored in your property taxes, utilities, insurance and home maintenance? Have you figured out how much downpayment you’ll likely need and how much you’ll need for closing costs?

Home ownership is not a small step. You need to do some calculations to figure out how much of your cash flow a home of your own will end up costing you. Will you be able to manage those costs and still get your student debt paid off lickety-split? The longer you take, the more that debt will end up costing you.

 

J Wrote: How do I get out of a payday loan fog? I have 6 at one time and can’t catch up and always have to re-borrow from them. I’m getting no where fast and feeling stressed and depressed from all this debt.

Gail Says: I’m not surprised that you are stressed. After they did the first 1, 2, 3, 4, did you not think it was going nowhere fast? The only way to get out now is to find a way to make more money AND cut your spending back to the bare bones. Ultimately, there’s no easy answer. If you have to work 2 or 3 jobs, so be it. And if you can’t spend more than $75 a month on food, you’ll have to get creative until those payday loans are gone. Hopefully you’ll have learned the lesson.

 

Books, Books & More Books

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones was an absolute delight. Maggie McElroy is a food writer recently widowed. She has to go to China to deal with a claim that has been made against her husband’s estate. While there, she undertakes to interview a Chinese American chef who has gone back to China to learn to cook the traditional way. He ends up acting as her guide, and she observes and listens as he explains the history and behind-the-scenes intracacies of Chinese cooking. I’m a bit of a foodie, so I just loved this part of the story-telling. Wonderfully engaging.

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen is another terrific story that keeps you guessing right to the very end. In an alley lies a woman’s severed hand. On the rooftop above is the corpse to whom that hand belongs. Two strands of non-human hair are the only clues, but they’re enough for to link this death to a horrifying murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant many years before. One woman connected to that massacre seems to be the target of someone, or something, deeply and relentlessly evil. a great murder mystery, seasoned with mystical elements of ancient martial arts, and tossed with the otherworldly to add even more spice of the conundrum.

In the Morning I’l be Gone by Adrian McKinty is perhaps my favourite in the Troubles Trilogy. It’s book three, and McKinty really does up the end well. Set in the early 80’s in Belfast, Sean Duffy is an ex-cop who was fitted up for a hit and run and given the bum’s rush off the force. But his connection to an IRA master bomber – they were kids together at school in Belfast – may be the only thing that can stop the plans of the IRA to make a big boom! And then there’s the mystery of the locked-room murder that Duffy must unravel if he hopes to have a hope in hell of finding Dermot—that IRA guy – before it’s too late.

An Uninvited Ghost by E. J. Copperman was fun. Alison owns a guesthouse. She lives there with her daughter and her mom pops over often. All three are completely unfazed by the two ghosts that share their lives. From time to time other ghosts float in with issues they need resovled. The fact that the guesthouse is haunted isn’t a secret; visitors come specifically to interact with the other-worldly guests, who are a little disdainful of the living humans. Then a television crew shows up to shoot a reality TV show and witness the shenanigans. And a woman is murdered. And Alison, with help from her other-worldly mates, must figure out who dun it. Delightful.

Indelible by Karin Slaughter weaves together a story from the past with a present day hostage taking in a police station to show how everything the characters did and that people thought about them were connected. There’s the good police chief, Jeffrey, who is lying wounded, his ex-wife the brave but distrusting Sara, and Lena who has been newly reinstated to the force. And, of course, there are the crackpots, broken souls who have been driven by misdirected anger. And that’s just in the present. Back in the past are a couple of other mysteries that unfold to show how this whole mess came to be. Nicely paced. If you like Patricia Cornwell’s or Tess Gerritsen’s books, you’ll enjoy Karin Slaughter.

Speaking of Tess Gerritsen, The Mephisto Club was great! When Dr Maura Isles is called to a crime scene she fines a woman massacred and her parts strewn about the house. Her hand is sitting on a plate in the dining room. Her head sits in the middle of the kitchen floor surrounded by burnt out candles. And this won’t be the last victim in this bizarre killing spree. What the hell is going on? And does the strange Anthony Sansone, leader of the Mephisto Club, pose a threat to the good doctor? It looks like a spooky story, with one character on the run from the spirit of a dead man, but Jane Rizzoli won’t have any of this hocus pocus stuff. If you watch Rizzoli and Isles on TV, the books are much better.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. Her best yet, this book was both a story wonderfully woven and well written. It all begins when Alice falls off her bicycle at the gym and hits her head. Then comes the best line I’ve read in quite some time: “That was the day Alice Mary Love went to the gym and carelessly mislaid a decade of her life.” When Alice wakes up in the hospital, she has lost the last 10 years of her life: the birth of her children, the disintegration of her marriage, her new love affair. Gone. Everything. And as she uncovers who she had become in the decade she lost, she is a little uncertain that she likes who she has become. Wonderful, wonderful story, with all the interesting side diversions I’ve come to love in a Liane Moriarty book. The only downside is there’s only one unread book left on my bookshelf by this woman.

Why Can’t I Be You by Allie Larkie had an interesting premise. A woman gets mistaken for someone else and decides to assume that person’s life, embracing her old high-school friends because she’s lonely and, well, Jessie’s life seems so much better. What if you could shed your life and take on someone else’s? What about all the complications with holding up the charade? Jenny, now Jessie, finds the challenges scary, but when love presents itself, she has another good reason to hold on to the life she’s assume. Of course, everything comes to bump… but you’ll have to read the book to see what happens. Good writing. Thoroughly engaging story.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is the first in a trilogy, only two of which have been written so far. It’s a big book… no lie… 28 hours of reading people. Intricately woven, seemingly minor details are part of an intricately woven story. While the world Rothfuss creates is imaginary, it is so precisely executed you feel like you are there. The story features Cvothe who has, as he says, “trooped, traveled, loved, lost and was betrayed”. It’s a coming of age story, in which young Cvothe loses his family and comes to terms with his magical powers. Rothfuss is among a small group of fantasy writers like Neil Gaiman and JRR Martin, who can build an intriguing world while spinning a fascinating story. I did find the early (maybe the first six hours) a bit slow, but I am so glad I stuck it through because the rest of the book was terrific.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd is set in the U.S. Deep South during the nineteenth century. Inspired by real events the story is written in the voices of the two main characters. Sarah is the middle daughter in a white land-owning family and is based on a well-known early abolitionist and women’s right activist. Hetty also called ‘Handful’ is a slave child, a completely fictional character, who is gifted to Sarah on Sarah’s 11th birthday. The book celebrates the power of friendship and shows the cost of seeking freedom while exploring the complex relationships between the owned and their owners. The language is lush, and full of imagery.

 

Hi! I’m Back!

Hello Babies, I’m back! What a lovely summer I’ve had. I know that it isn’t officially over until the kids head back to school next week, but it is September 1, so here I am as promised. I hope you’ve all had a lovely summer. Did you read anything good? Cook anything good? Make a dream come true?

Today is my Baby Girl’s birthday. Alex turns 22 today… Holy Hannah! I couldn’t be more proud of the woman she’s become and I so look forward to the things she will do. We gab a lot, get to see each other a few days a month

when she hikes out to the boonies or I have to be in the city for something. We spent a couple of days in August down in Niagara-on-the-Lake seeing three shows at The Shaw Festival. (Thanks again for the tickets darling Laura.) If you get a chance to go I highly recommend Peter and the Starcatcher and Sweet Charity, which has one of my all time fav show-tunes: Big Spender.

Boyo has headed off to The Shwa to start college. Actually, he moved in the middle of July so he’d have loads of time to get used to his new life before adding the stress of a new school and all those new people. It’s worked out well. When I asked him what the biggest surprise for him living on his own he said, “How easy it is.” Job. Well. Done.

I took time off from writing about money this summer because I wanted to try my hand at children’s fiction… a chapter book for the 8-10 age group. I had no idea how much the creative writing would eat my brain. So much so that I haven’t painted a thing all summer. So I’m looking forward to getting back to the canvases this fall. I’m going to see if I have any “fiction stamina” by doing three books before giving them over to my agent to shop… assuming my daughter says they’re good enough. I trust her to tell me the truth.

The final edits for Money Talks: When to Say Yes, and How to Say No, have been done and now it’s just down to production. (This is my very best book.) I’m doing cover photography later this month. One of my least fav things in the world is having my picture taken (right after root canal) but I worked with a terrific photographer recently – Andy Vanderkaay – who made the process as painless for me as it’s ever been. Happily, he’s taking the next photo too so I won’t have to sweat buckets and scream inside my head while I’m doing it.

I have a couple of interesting side projects in the works and as I get closer to firming things up I’ll fill you in. I can tell you that I’m having a blast. And that empty-nesting isn’t anywhere near as bad and people make out. And that I am so glad I followed my own advice financially so that I now have the time and the freedom to do with my time and freedom exactly what I want!

I’m heading to New Brunswick on September 9 for a talk on the 10th. Here’s the website if you want tickets. Tabitha will get to spend a couple of days with her big brother while I scoot down east, then I’m home pretty much for the rest of the month except for a couple of days in The Big Smoke towards the end of the month.

My girlfriend, Victoria, and I are planning a road trip to New York State at the end of October to attend a Caroline Myss workshop on navigating change in your life. I’ve read several of her book and look forward to the opportunity to be in here sphere for a couple of days to see what I can learn from her.

Well, that pretty well catches y’all up on life at My Little House.

I’ve read your comments and will make sure you get lots of This & That posts, which seem to be your favourites. I’ve also been reading a wicked amount over the summer so I’ll share some of those with you so you can put them on your holiday list this year. There’ll be new recipes. And, of course, money tips.

If you posted questions over the summer, I didn’t answer any… I was on vacay… so if you want to try again, I’ll be answering a question a week (at least) now that I’m back at work.

Money Talks: When to Say Yes, and How to Say No, doesn’t officially release until January 2016, so if you want it in December, you’ll have to jump on the pre-order so you don’t have to wait for the next reprint. (I love this book, and I hope with all my heart that you do too.) I’ll let you know as soon as it becomes available for pre-order.

Hydrate

As the days get longer and hotter you need to make sure you’re drinking plenty of water.

The old rule was to drink 6-8 glasses of water a day. Purists say WATER. People with common sense say, hey, once it hits my belly, my body doesn’t know whether it’s plain water or some other form of liquid, so who cares if it’s plain water (except that plain water has NO calories!)

About twenty percent of our water comes from our food – fruits and veggies are full of water. The Institute of Medicine recommends that you drink about 2.5 – 3 litres of fluid a day. BTW, eight 8-oz glasses of water is about 2 litres.

Dehydration can have some pretty painful consequences. According to an article published in Environmental Health Perspectives, there’s a link between hot days and kidney stones. Since only about 10% of the population is susceptible to kidney stones, higher temperatures only increase the risk of kidney stones in those predisposed to them. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t also dehydrated.

Research led by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia analyzed medical records of more than 60,000 adults and children with kidney stones between 2005 and 2011 and found that as temperatures go higher there’s a increase in the number of patients presenting with kidney stones, mainly because of dehydration.

Signs that you’re dehydrated include light-headedness, fatigue and headaches. Dry mouth and increased thirst are sure signs. Look at your pee. The paler it is the better. If it’s very yellow, you’re dehydrated.

When I was shooting the pilot for Money Moron, one shoot was set up in a greenhouse. It had to be 45 degrees that day, and as there wasn’t enough water or a way to cool down. I tried pouring cold water over my feet with little impact. The makeup was dripping off my face. My pee was almost brown that night. And I had a raging headache that lasted two days. Ah, the glamorous life in TV land. To add insult to injury they didn’t even use the scene the idiot show runner insisted on shooting.

Severe dehydration can result in a drop in your blood pressure, rapid heart rate, poor skin elasticity, lethargy and confusion.

Whenever I get a low-grade headache, the first thing I do is drink a couple of glasses of water. If you perspire because of your work or your exercise routine, you have to increase your water intake. And when the temps surge over the next couple of months, drink more water. Water’s not only important for kidney function it aids digestion and is very important for brain function.

Make yourself a water bottle, keep it on your desk and sip it throughout the day. Vary your liquid intake so you don’t get so fed up you stop drinking. Milk counts, so does tea and coffee, though you have to watch your caffeine intake. I like to mix green tea and lemonade, adding mint or strawberries. And sometimes I use fruit juice and fizzy water to change things up.

You can slice up cucumbers and put it in your jug of water… I’ve been to a few spas that do this and the resulting water is surprisingly refreshing (I’m not a fan of cukes, but this is really lovely.) Or toss some mint lives, sliced ginger or lemongrass into your water. If you like your water cold, freeze berries or grapes and drop them into your water jug.

 

Credit Card Condoms

Have you ever wondered if HOW you pay for something affects HOW MUCH you’re willing to spend? Is it harder to part with cash than to slide your credit card through the machine? You betcha!

A study in The Journal of Experimental Psychology says that shopping with cash discourages spending while using credit or gift cards actually encourages it. Fittingly called “Monopoly Money”, the authors of the study – Priya Raghubir from New York University and Joydeep Srivastava from the University of Maryland — say, “…using a less transparent form of payment such as a credit card or a gift card lowers the vividness with which one feels that one is parting with real money, thereby encouraging spending…”

If you did not have access to credit of any kind — no credit cards, no line of credit, no over-draft protection, no loans – would you be as willing to drop gobs of your hard earned money on stuff knowing full well you wouldn’t be able to pay the rent or mortgage? Or is it the fact that you can defer feeling the pain of payment that lets you convince yourself that you can have that shiny new sumthin’ or ‘nother?

I’ve worked with a lot of people who whine about how much debt they have. They sigh despondently when’s they consider that they may never shake free of the burden. They cringe when they think about how much interest they’re paying. Those same people are quite willing to swipe their cards to buy a snappy new pair of sunglasses or a lovely meal in a restaurant.

People are always promising themselves that they will stop using their credit cards until their debt is paid off. In the end they’re left with a trail of broken promises. If you’re prone to forgetting the reality of your financial circumstances when the Gimmies grab you, this idea is for YOU.

Make yourself one of these and every time you pull out your credit card you’ll be reminded of what you’re doing relative to your current financial situation.

What’s the magic? A credit card condom: an envelope into which your card slips snugly, which carries a pertinent message to stop you from going further into debt. If you’ve ever stayed in a hotel, it looks a lot like the sheath they slip your room key-card into. But instead of a logo, your credit card condom will carry a message designed to make you stop and think.

Do you have the money to pay this purchase off in full when the bill comes in?
You already owe $2,500 on this card.
Is this a Need or a Want?

You’ll have to come up with a message that works for YOU. Perhaps it’s a message that reminds you of your goals.

You’re trying to save $2,600 for that trip down south next winter. Will buying this [whatever] get you closer to that goal?
You’re setting up an RESP. Spend now, or use this money to prepare Baby Kris for the future!
You want to be debt free in 9 months? Instead of buying this, make a payment on your debt!

You can also make your credit card condom something you can use to track how you’re doing. Let’s say you decide you want to have $1,000 saved for an emergency by the end of the year. Write your goal on your credit card condom. Each time you choose not to spend money on the card, move that money to your emergency fund and add it to your total on your credit card condom.

While you’re at it, make yourself a debit dinger (Australian for condom) into which you can slide your debit card so that each time you pull it out to make a purchase you’re reminded of something that is more important than blowing bucks on bull!

If you need more of a reminder than words provide, created a credit card condom or a debit dinger with a picture of whatever it is you’re trying to achieve: a picture of a beautiful house if you’re saving a downpayment, a picture of a gorgeous beach if you’re setting aside money for a vacation, a picture of your son or daughter if you’re trying to build a school fund.

The point of the credit card condom or debit dinger is to keep you conscious of what you’re trying to accomplish so the numbing out that comes with using plastic doesn’t happen to you. It will help you to fend off the impulsive purchases by reminding you about what’s really important to you. It’s shopping with protection!

There’s No Such Thing as a Happy Perfectionist!

If you search on Google for “the secret to happiness” you’ll get about a b’zillion hits. Everyone thinks there’s some secret and if they could just find it everything would be sunshine and butterflies. Ha!

I am a happy person. No, my day isn’t filled with buttercups and song. Well, not the whole day. Psychologists believe that some people have a higher predisposition to happy than others. I may be one of those. Or it may be the many things I discarded along the way that have improved my level of happiness.

First on the chopping block was perfectionism. Hey, we all want things to be just so. When I was a child I would yell and scream at myself because I couldn’t make whatever I was creating perfect. I remember hitting myself in the head with little fists. I remember it. When I spotted similar tendencies in my children, we talked about it. I came up with this mantra: Perfection is the enemy of good. I impressed upon my kids, as I had to impress upon myself as a child, that if I was measuring myself against ‘perfect’ I would always come up short and end up ruining whatever pleasure I was deriving from an activity. I told my kids that the point was to enjoy doing the thing, not be vested in the perfectness — or imperfectness — of what resulted.

Making a card for a friend? Enjoy the drawing, the colouring, the feeling of the crayons or marker on the paper, the smells, the affection you were putting into the creation.

Completing an assignment at school? Focus on what you were learning and how you could use that in other ways. Work to make your project as delightful for your teacher as possible. She would be getting a lot of these, so how would you make her smile?

Cooking a meal? Think about the smells and tastes being combined, the visual richness of the dish. And if you put in too much salt or not enough sugar, remedy the problem creatively. The point wasn’t for the meal to be perfect, the point was to enjoy making, and then sharing, the meal.

These weren’t easy lessons to teach. The children had to be reminded over and over. And they weren’t easy lessons for me to learn when I was eschewing my tendency to criticize myself for every small slip. The Negative in my brain was oh so willing to latch on to every little thing it could to belittle me. But I pushed away The Negative and chose to focus on the good.

I have a girlfriend who is a marvelous writer. She’s so good she’s won awards. She weighs each word carefully. She wants them to be perfect. Unfortunately, each time she reads what she’s written there’s something that could be made better. That constant tweaking, that unwillingness to let her pieces be finished, get in the way of her productivity. Without a delivery deadline, she would be completely lost in a single story for all of her life. Thank heavens for deadlines.

I am a good writer, but I do not strive for perfection in every piece I create. Instead I focus on delivering my message. Some days I write words that make me cringe. I leave them. I’ll get them on the edit pass I do just before I deliver or post the blog. Other days my words are like silken chocolate and I smile, enjoying them as they roll around and melt in my brain. I’ve learned that good enough is my happy place and that if I let perfection become the goal I doom myself to dissatisfaction.

Sure, wanting to be perfect pops up all the time. Living in a world where perfection is captured fleetingly but paraded constantly — think of all that decor porn that comes at you making you feel like your lovely home could use some sprucing — makes us more vulnerable to the vagaries of perfectionism. But if your real life clashes so jarringly with your desire for perfect that it ruins your happiness, what’s the point of that?

 

This & That: Heads Up Edition

J Wrote: I have a car loan with Scotia Dealer Advantage at a high interest rate (not sure what it is but something ridiculous like 17%). I purchased car in 2010. I currently pay just under $400.00/mth and have $14,611.51 owing on the vehicle. If I continue as is – vehicle will be paid off in February 2017. I currently have this amount in the bank and can pay this debt off but then my savings will be completely depleted. I want to be rid of this debt but afraid of having absolutely no buffer in case of an emergency as I am a single mother with 2 children and a baby living with me. What is the best course of action for me to take? Pay off car debt and have no savings or continue as is and hang on to my savings? HELP!

PS – this is the last of my debts. I will be completely debt free when this loan is paid off.

Gail Says: If you keep on as you are, about $200 of your $400 payment is going to interest, but the interest is calculated on a “declining balance” so over time more and more of your payment will go to pay off the car. Over the remaining loan, you’ll pay somewhere in the vicinity of $4-5,000 in interest.

If you were to take half the current money in your savings and put towards your car loan without changing your payment your car loan would be paid off much faster. You could then take the money you were using for your car loan and re-boost your savings.  

I’m not a fan of depleting emergency savings to pay down debt, but at 17% you are paying through the nose! You’ll have to decide what you think will work best for you.

 

A Wrote: I am a doctor working in the UK, divorced and a mother of one child. I am simply can not manage my money. I save and spend it. I have an overdraft; I pay it off and use it again. I am in a cycle and this is increasing my stress level, I feel depressed. I earn a decent amount of money, but I don’t have a car and it has been more than 1 year since I traveled because I can’t afford it.

I want to be a better person for my sake and my child. I need clear guidance with steps that I have to follow. I tried doing it myself by reading books, tips from websites. But because I am very busy with my job and life I think I need an expert to just tell me exactly what I should do.

Gail Says: What you have to do to manage your money is less about time and more about discipline. I’m incredibly busy and I still make the time to do my spending journal and to post those entries into my cash flow budget. That’s The Gail Way. All the tools are at your fingers. Get a copy of Debt-Free Forever and follow the steps. If you don’t have the wherewithal to make your own excel spreadsheet, buy The Gail Way and USE IT. If you’re serious about taking control, making better choices for your child’s sake and being able to enjoy things like travel again, you’ll step up and do the work. Initially it will take you a few hours to do the spending analysis. You’ll make the time. If you don’t, you’ll be pulling numbers out of the air and that’s why your budget won’t work. All the tools are at your disposal. Now you have to find the gumption to follow through.

 

C Wrote: Just recently, in May, I graduated from University (an art university) but had to pay my way through using both a hefty student loan and a nearly as hefty line of credit. The line of credit currently totals $21,000 and the student loan I’m sure must be close to 50 grand.

My question is related to a challenge brought up in your ‘Debt Free Forever’ book. I’m trying to make the list of debts, their minimum payments and their interest rates in order to make an accurate plan to pay the debt off.

However, because I am not quite paying off my student loan yet, as it’s barely been a month out of school, I’m having trouble figuring out what my interest rate will be. The best answer I can find is ‘prime plus 5%’ for Canada student loans, and ‘prime plus 2.5%’ for Saskatchewan student loans.

So question one – how do you figure out this ‘prime’ thing? I think it may be 3% but really I can’t find a straight answer. And question two – do I need to add both of these together to find my interest rate? (Am I paying just one, or both?)

Really appreciate the help! And I’ll be posting in a year as I plan to pay off the line of credit in a year, and hopefully most of the student loan too!

Gail Says: Currently the prime rate being used for the student loans system is 3.875% and, yes, you would add it to the 5% mark-up for a total rate of 8.875%. Canlearn.ca is a great site that can help you figure out what your payments will look like.

 

J Wrote: We currently have a home buyer’s repayment of $75/mth for the next 10 years, a $15,000 loan to my mom and 4% (paying $100/mth) and our mortgage. We are at a point that we have an extra $300/mth to put towards one of these. I am thinking it should go towards to HBP to get it paid back and starting to compound interest. However, others have told me this shouldn’t be looked at as debt and I shouldn’t be in a rush to pay it back. I’m confused! I also have TD shares worth $3,000 and I am wondering if I should cash them out to put towards the debt or transfer them into an RRSP?

Gail Says: The HBP is most certainly a debt, but it’s interest free. You should get rid of all debt with interest first before fast-tracking your HBP. And you should NOT fast track the HBP repayment at the cost of current RRSP contributions. You can contribute your TD shares to your RRSP (or your TFSA) as long as you have a self-directed plan (which has higher admin fees, so be aware). The date you transfer the shares to your RRSP/TFSA, the tax man considers you to have “sold” the share, so you’ll owe capital gains if the shares have increased in value, (or you can take the loss if the share have decreased in value and you have other gains against which to claim the loss). Note that neither a capital gain nor a capital loss occurs inside a registered plan so it’s all treated the same as interest — no special tax benefit.

 

S Wrote: I am currently looking to move out of my family home and would like to purchase a home (townhome) on my own. I have zero debt, net 75,000/year, own my own car and have about 60,000 for a down payment. I’m wondering how much I should spend on a new home? I realize this is a loaded question but I just want to make sure I don’t overextend myself and end up in a financial crisis.

Gail Says: It’s not a loaded question at all m’love. It’s a good question. And here’s how you go about figuring out the answer. First, there’s the cost to buy your home. That’ll include a down payment and closing costs, as well as the cost of setting up your home like curtains, pots and pans, and the like. My rule of thumb is to put down 20% of the purchase price. But you’ll have to allocate some of that money you’ve saved to closing costs/purchasing stuff. So let’s say you set aside $15,000 to cover those costs, that’ll leave you with $45,000 as a down payment. If that’s 20%, then the purchase price of the home would be (45,000 ÷ 20 x 100 = ) $225,000. That’s part 1.

Part 2 involves figuring out the carrying costs of your home. There’s the mortgage payment, taxes, insurance, utilities and maintenance, all of which should add up to no more than 35% of your net take home pay. Since you net $75K, that works out to $6,250 a month, and 35% of that is $2,187. So you should buy anything that eats more than $2,187 of the cash flow when you include all the things I’ve listed above. For arguments sake, let’s say you allocate $350 a month to property taxes, $100 to insurance, $250 to utilities (heat, hydro, water, sewage) and $400 to maintenance and upkeep. That’s a total of $1,100 in carrying costs. Now we have to add the mortgage payment. (BTW, I’ve given you my numbers on my little house because that’s what I know, you’ll have to figure out what the numbers are for your area).

If you buy a $225,000 house and put $45,000 down, you’ll need a mortgage of $180,000 to cover the purchase. If you took a fixed mortgage for 5 years at 5% with a 25-year amortization and paid monthly, your payment would be $1,047 a month. Add your $1047 mortgage to your $1,100 in carrying costs and, violá, you’ve got your monthly payment of $2,147, which comes in just under the 35% mark!

 

C Wrote: I have read some of your books (thanks for great tips about crossed cheques, assigning a contingent subscriber for the RESP, and inching into the market via ETF’s). Which of your books would recommend for my mom? I have recently discovered (your rule about making sure your parents affairs are in order) that she is in serious financial difficulty. My mom is 73, working in retail to make ends meet, and has $49 000 in consumer debt on credit cards and a line of credit. She has a comfortable, cared for home (paid for but now I worry), and is a compassionate and generous person. She has always resisted dealing with financial matters. Her generous nature and her insistence that she does not have a brain for finances are, I think, what have led her into problems. I need to get her to take action. I’ve been reminding her to begin with the spending diary. I thought your latest book was a way to start because she could just read one rule at a time without becoming overwhelmed. But for someone who needs a plan, it is not really the right format.

I really love reading your books; I’m already ‘on your page’ but all the extras I’ve learned are fantastic. When my son sees me coming with your book in hand, he looks like a cornered deer! He’s a good money manager but he knows he’s in for some more financial advice from this stranger named Gail!

Gail Says: If the future is to look any brighter, in all likelihood your mom will have to sell her home, pay off her debt, move to something smaller, or rent and use her money from the home sell to supplement her income through retirement. I’m not sure how she’d get $49K paid off in any other way since she still has to work retail “to make ends meet.”

She will clearly have to learn to live within her means. Will she listen to you enough for you to help her make a plan? If so, get a copy of debt-free forever which not only talks about getting out of debt but how to live out of debt long-term. You’ll need to work through all the exercises with her. If she won’t take your advice then gird yourself for the day when the crap hits the fan.

 

E Wrote: I will be retiring in January and will receive approximately $90,000 in a severance/buyout pkg. I have an indexed pension that provides me with a reasonable income, so does my husband who is already retired. My husband is a member of Omers and we would like to contribute this extra money into their AVC fund. Since I am not a member of Omers the only way we can do it is if I put my money into a Spousal account and then transfer into Omers under his plan. As we make comparable pension amounts is this a good idea? I have approximately 100 thousand dollars of room I can contribute into a RRSP.

Gail Says: Why would you transfer $90K in retirement assets to your husband when you will very likely live longer? How much of his pension will you be entitled to? If it is less than 85% of his benefits it does not serve you well to give up that money. By all means use an RRSP but keep the assets in your name.

 

A Wrote: My boyfriend and I just started living together. He is in the process of filing bankruptcy. Will this affect me if we get married? Meaning will my credit be affected by his bankruptcy married or not? And how long does it take to be considered common law? Help…this may determine whether there will be a walk down the aisle.

Gail Says: Your partner’s bankruptcy can affect you in 2 ways. First, he won’t be able to get credit at a reasonable cost for pretty close to a decade. That puts you on the hook for a mortgage, car loan or anything else you may need. Second, if he doesn’t change his behaviour, his future irresponsibility will definitely make your life a living hell. If he has cleaned up his act and the bankruptcy is a formality to get to the next stage, so be it. But if you have any doubts about how serious he now is when it comes to living within his means, why the hell would you get married. Common-law happens after 1 year or the birth of a child. We may not be able to help whom we fall in love with, but we certainly don’t have to compound the problem by hitching our wagons to a horse headed into a ditch. Keep your separate addresses, continue to love him, and when he’s proved he’s serious about a life together and being a real man, then you can hook up.

 

C Wrote: I have been battling RBC for a month now and I am getting no where. I have a line of credit account that was 5.83% and they raised it to 12% and gave me some lame reason. I have never missed a payment on this account. In the past I was terrible with money, now I have a balanced budget and live within my means and I have been very serious about getting out of debt. I have gone up the corporate ladder at RBC and got nowhere. I have a binder with all emails, calls, and letters I have with RBC. I did not make the payment to the account last month and told them I was doing this to protest them trying to pry every cent from me. Like I told them I have no problems paying my debt, but not when it’s unfair like this. RBC has been calling me everyday even though I’m not even 30 days late yet and they are very rude. I even spoke with the Ombudmans man for RBC and they basically said RBC can charge whatever they want. I refused to make payment so they sent me a letter saying they cancelled my credit card and to cut it up even though I have not missed a payment. RBC refuses to negotiate with me and said it’s their rate or nothing. I said I want to pay them then close the account, lets work out a deal and they declined they made one offer of 11.97%.

I have set up an escrow account to show I have every intent to pay RBC. I have put the last payment into this account. I know this might damage my credit, but I will not be pushed around by RBC. I have contacted the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and they will not help me either. I noticed after I started closing my accounts and made a complaint about a rude employee I have been getting treated different. RBC also refused to let me speak with their CEO Gordon Nixon. They intercepted my letter to him and said he would not be getting it.

My question is this what would you do next?

Thanks Gail because of your books I am getting out of debt, but it seems companies are trying harder to get me down.

Gail Says: Technically RBC can charge you whatever they want. Both a line of credit and a credit card are “callable” and “revolving” credit which means they can demand full repayment at any time, and they can bloody well do as they please in terms of setting the interest rate. THAT’s why I tell people to get the hell out of debt. You do not have a leg to stand on. Pay them. Then blow them the hell off and get a new bank. Sadly, they all have the right to do whatever they please. Yours is a cautionary tale for others. I’m sorry this is happening to you. I know you’re mad. Make it right and then get the hell out of debt as fast as possible.