How to Manage Personal Finances and Not Ruin Your Marriage

Money troubles are one of the top causes of divorce. You have to work as a team with your spouse or partner to manage the budget and plan for the future. This may cause bitter arguments, which results in couples not talking about anything – which can have disastrous consequences. But money doesn't have to ruin a relationship with your spouse or partner...by working as a team, being honest and being flexible, I'd venture to say it can even bring you closer. But it takes commitment and a long-term view. 

Finances have been a continual pressure point in our house and some years were downright miserable. It's taken years for my husband and I to come up with a workable plan, and it's always a work in progress. Yet our goals are the same: save, invest, retire before we are too old to travel and sock away money every month for simple pleasures like dinners out and movies with the kids.

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts to maintain a healthy and profitable financial relationship with your spouse:

DO

Have joint family bank accounts that both spouses can access and view at any time. This builds trust and makes it easier to manage your money.

DON’T

Hide purchases through cash spending or your own secret credit card: hello, that's lying. If you must hide a purchase, you probably shouldn't be making it at all.

DO

Track everything through your online account and minimize cash spending. This helps you know exactly where the money is going, which is key to effective budget management and planning.

DON’T

Nitpick about small things like Starbucks latte’s and beers with the guys. Give each other a little wiggle room.

DO

Manage your money as if it were a business..because it is! Use some type of accounting software such as Quicken or a personal finance site such as Mint.com to track budgets, expenses, and assets. Set regular, weekly meetings with your spouse/partner to discuss your family's income, budget and spending patterns historically and looking forward. The more you communicate, the less chance for overspending and arguing.

DON’T

Give up… If your grocery budget is consistently high like many families today, keep getting creative. There's always room for a new strategy – such as eating more vegetarian foods or creating basic dinners that cost less but are still healthy or shopping less at the organic grocer. Continually review large categories such as insurance and utilities: can you get a better deal by shopping around or calling your providers for a new quote? Probably.

DO

Set money aside for what's important but not "essential" to live: health club memberships, massage, outings with friends or enrichment classes. Prioritize these activities and then determine how your budget will accommodate. You may need to spend less on something else, like clothing. If there is nothing set aside for Fun, you'll both get discouraged and possibly engage in impulse spending to make yourself feel better.

DON'T

Take your kids to Target or Walmart if there's nothing in it for them...because believe me, they'll find something essential you must purchase for them, now. If they must tag along, set the ground rules before getting out of the car and stick to them once inside the store.

DO

Review all assets, investments and savings accounts at least once yearly to evaluate what's working and what's not. Do the same for your expenses. It's enlightening (and sometimes shocking) to understand what were the top categories for spending over 12 months, and this also helps set goals for the next year.

DON'T

Forget to pat yourself on the back for saving more or reducing costs in key areas. It's tough for families to save these days, given the high cost of living, job and career volatility, higher insurance and medical costs, requisite personal technology upgrades, tuition increases, and the pressures of parenting that seem to require more activities, tutoring and enrichment than ever before to prepare your kids for the real world. This is not your parent's world, so make sure not to set the bar unrealistically high for saving and budgeting.

The Big Bummer of a Mobile Society

My parents met at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1953. After my dad graduated, they moved to Boston where he attended MIT. Finally, after getting his doctorate, they moved to Texas. They lived in Dallas until their oldest kid, my brother, was 16. In 1977, they moved to the Denver area for my dad to take a job with the Colorado School of Mines and they have been living there ever since.

Their third and final cross-country move in a marriage of now 58 years was voluntary.  They wanted to live in the Rockies and my dad wanted to work in academia. After a few years of teaching, he founded a company with a friend. That was his last major life change, and it was a wise move, since later, the company was bought out by a much larger corporation in Houston. The kind owners allowed my dad to work from Denver.

Conversely, many of us now in the workforce, whether we are 22 or 62, feel rather like feathers in the wind. I completed my undergraduate studies at UCSB in Santa Barbara and then moved home to Colorado to save money for a year. Next up: Washington DC for my graduate degree. Following completion of this milestone, I moved back to Colorado and worked in Denver for four years, at two different companies. The magazine I was working for was purchased and therefore required me to move to Minneapolis. After not quite two years in that city, I began dating my future husband and quickly found a job in San Francisco to live near him.

As the economy began to sputter in 2000, life became quite chaotic for us. Over the course of the next nine years, due to job losses and job gains, we moved from San Francisco to Boulder, back to the Bay Area, to Seattle and then again back to the Bay Area. Finally, we moved voluntarily back to Colorado to bring our two young daughters closer to our extended family.

We've been in the Denver area now for three and half years and I think we're here to stay, but who knows? Meantime, all of these moves since the year I turned 18 have resulted in friends scattered across the country and even the globe. My best friends do not live in my current hometown. Like most people in my age bracket whom are working with kids, I don't have the money to visit my besties on both coasts every year.

The mobile madness of our society means that having close, connected friendships living nearby is no longer a given. We may have casual acquaintances from the kids’ school, the gym or church, but these aren't the kind of friendships we had in college or when we were first getting started on our careers. They aren't the ones you'll tell about your marriage or money troubles, your insecurities about the future or how your daughter is growing up too fast and it's killing you inside.

Nine months ago we moved to a new neighborhood. We know very few of her neighbors, as nice as they seem from afar. Wrapped up in our busy lives, socializing is rare beyond the requisite wave from the car. I keep thinking that I will organize a neighborhood party of some sort, but it hasn't happened. Maybe I worry about being burned again.

In our last neighborhood, my husband and I tried valiantly to befriend our neighbors. We organized cookie parties for the kids and held wine tastings. The neighbors were perfectly pleasant and mostly friendly, yet real friendships never developed. I suppose they weren’t interested or simply didn't have time to expand their circles beyond the occasional Friday night beer at the mailbox. We felt isolated and frustrated, missing the close-knit group of friends from our former life in California when the kids were tiny and playgroups were the tonic for raising toddlers.

I can't help but think that our highly mobile society is a bad sign for the notion of community and the prospects of long-term, nurturing friendships. As my good college friend Michelle says:

“It’s not possible, as my grandparents did, to have all of your closest friends and family swing by on a Sunday afternoon for pot roast, pasta and wine. It will never happen. It’s really sad.”

So, we rely on Skype, e-mail and texting to develop community. Somehow, it doesn't quite compare to my memories of early childhood on Waldorf Drive in Dallas. Nearly every single family living on that long street knew each other well. There were frequent block parties and family dinners. Children ran free between houses. Mothers knocked on each other’s back doors to exchange recipes and talk about their kids.

True, technology helps us stay in touch with our far-flung friends and family like never before. But I miss the irreplaceable face time with my closest pals, which Facebook will never replicate.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Writers

The other day, my seven-year-old said to me: "Mom, when I grow up I want to do nails or write children’s books."  My guess is that she will pursue something different altogether, but it made me think: do I really want my kids to follow my rocky path as a writer? About a month ago, someone e-mailed me for advice on getting into journalism. She was older, had pursued another career for years, and was ready to make a switch. She was passionate. I did my best to support her with ideas and realistic expectations. She thanked me profusely. Yet, prospects just aren't fabulous out there even for experienced editors and writers.

When I started out in journalism many years ago, it was truly the best of times. I was in technology journalism at the very beginning of the public Internet, working for magazines, and making good coin for decent hours. Those days are over. Since my journalism career I've had corporate jobs and many freelance jobs. I'm now into my seventh year as an independent consultant-- writing, editing, blogging, and handling PR for a lot of different high-tech companies. I love my schedule, because it gives me the flexibility to work around my kids. I get paid well for what I do-- and I don't even work 40 hours.

There's no way I could earn what I do on strictly writing gigs or as a staff writer somewhere. At least half of my income comes from PR. I never thought I would do it (evil PR!) but now that I've been schilling stories for a while, I find it to be fun and rewarding. I still get to work with ideas and write articles and other content. My job is fast-paced and quite intellectual. I work with smart people and for the most part, I have fantastic clients. The journalists put up with me and some even like me.

If I were to do it all over, though, I'm not sure I would've gone into journalism. It's been a roller coaster over the years and even now, running my own business, I am always wondering what my income will be next month and in the month after and so on. Let's be clear: I do not have the benefit of a spouse with a lavish corporate job. We both work for ourselves and sometimes it's just a damn strain. Yet still, I consider myself very, very lucky.

What career would I have pursued otherwise? I haven't the slightest clue, to be honest. Like most writers, I harbor a deep-seated desire to write A Novel—or at the very least, a shallow, wildly successful thriller that's made into a blockbuster film.

Can you do what you love and the money will follow, as these guys always say? Occasionally— but not typically. No one’s paying me to play tennis, drink wine, read novels or play with my kids, inexplicably. Just as my parents did with me, I will steer my children toward the best-paying, intellectually-stimulating careers. Does that make me shallow? Not really. It makes me practical. “Do what you love" is mostly for off-hours, sorry. "Do what you can, do what you do well and try and make it fun," seems like a reasonable mantra to me. What do you think?

Are You Real, Virtual or Robotic?

As someone who writes for a living, I spend hours every week gathering information -- much of it online but definitely by talking to real, breathing human beings. Occasionally, I conduct e-mail interviews, such as when a source is traveling internationally or has laryngitis, as was the case recently. It's tempting, and sometimes quite painless to do all of my reporting and fact gathering through e-mail and social media. Why not?

Yet, this can be a trap. I worry about who’s actually on the other end of that stream of bits. Is it really the expert/executive or their assistant? Is it a bot? Have they said the same spiel to 10 other people in the last month?

I am a closet introvert and love working happily at my desk for hours, switching between different screens and message streams. It's fast, it's fun and better yet, I don't have to stumble over my own dumb words with a stranger on the line. I resist, however, and continue the old-fashioned but much safer method of dialing the phone and speaking English, just like they taught me in J school many years ago.

My husband, a work-at-home investment banker, is on the phone nearly the entire day. At times the constant drone of his voice below me in the basement office makes me batty.  He hates social media and won’t return my text messages unless they have to do with dinner. 

There's something to be said for his obsession with the phone. Live conversations are real, in the moment and active. They have innuendos and inflections of voice that indicate the real story. They promise an invigorating debate of raw, unedited ideas that texting and e-mail cannot replicate.

Can't we all use a little more of the real communication? I have one editor who always calls me before e-mailing. It's refreshing. Sometimes he uses the phone to tell me something that could have taken two seconds online. Yet, I like to hear his gentle Midwestern voice. I think sometimes, he enjoys hearing mine as well.

The human voice is beautiful. Please, people, let’s not forget how to use it.

Grow Up, Ye Small Business!

Social media, blah. Google Docs, blah. Cloud, blah blah. Mobile, blah blah BLAH! 


Do you ever wonder what it is that you actually need to grow your small business? Do you need a Facebook page? Maybe, but probably not. Do you have to belong to 100 circles on Google +? No. Must you hang out on Twitter for an hour every day? Definitely not. Should you buy all of your employees iPads? Quite possibly, yes. But first, let's get back to the basics.


What is the plan, Houston?
In the mad rush to acquire customers, put up the website, make the products or services better,  a startup may forget the value of a few operating principles: such as, creating an operations plan.


Say what?
Yes, this is the document that spells out your short and long-term strategy, core processes and systems: it's the guide for getting work done at your company. If you, as CEO and founder, die tomorrow, will people know how to renew your facilities contracts or what kind of insurance you have? What about information systems? Is there a special feature that only you know how to use? How about dealing with the Top 5 customers: what's the secret sauce to keeping them happy? How about hiring: what are the key personality traits your company needs from a candidate to succeed?


It's time to write it all down, people. I covered this topic recently for Business on Main, where I'm a regular contributor. Check out the article. I weave in the advice of two sharp operations and process consultants who know the pains of small businesses that don't pay attention to the fundamental activity of operations planning. Operations seems so, well, boring compared with updating your Pinterest page. Or, is it?

“Operations is an exciting place to be and it's just as critical as sales and R&D, “ says Jud Barr, CEO of JTB Sales and Operations Consulting in San Francisco. "The market is moving too fast to do business as usual. Companies need to continually probe and be prepared to shift with the times.”

Parenting: The American Way

I'm getting a little tired of reading how parents in (or from) other countries are superior to American parents. First, we had Tiger mom Amy Chua, the Yale professor who practically beat her children on the head with a stick if they didn't practice piano and violin for five hours straight every day. Now, we have Mademoiselle Mama, the American woman living in Paris who marvels at the angelic behavior of French children, in this recent Wall Street Journal article:

“Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French playgrounds, I'd never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn't my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn't their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?”

All right, I get the message about waiting. Americans, and especially their kids, don’t appear to value this skill as much as their European counterparts. Sorry, Parisians. Maybe this proclivity toward impatience is why we've had more success in business. However, whenever I hear a mom saying that her 18-month-old still wakes up for a bottle in the middle of the night, I cringe. That's just not good for anyone. Please, allow the baby to learn how to cry it out a little bit so that both of you can finally sleep through the night.

Later in the article, the author alludes to the fact that Americans spend way too much time playing with and attending to their kids: "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time."

With all due respect, here is my rebuttal to this latest assault on American parenting:

1. Temper tantrums: what's wrong with these? Frankly, I'm glad my kids had tantrums, even in public places. Toddlers are wound-up balls of energy and if those emotions and erratic impulses don't come out now, they surely will later -- when they're teenagers driving your car and out of sight doing God-knows-what. There’s been plenty of research on the positive benefits of tantrums. I’d much rather my child learn how to express their emotions when they are little, rather than grow up to be a passive-aggressive adult with pent-up anger and self-destructive tendencies.

2. Children who interrupt. Yes, whenever I get the phone the kids invariably tug on my sleeve and ask any number of non-urgent questions. Do I get off the phone? No. I simply ask said child to wait until I'm done. And usually, they actually manage to do so, even if they aren’t quiet about it. It's just not normal for Americans to have conversations with no interruptions. I don't think it's normal for Italians nor Greeks either -- and I think that's okay. Can you imagine if it was unacceptable to interrupt people who cannot finish a thought?

3. Living rooms as forts. Kids should engage in free play. They do not understand that such activity is confined to their bedrooms. And really, do I care that they're building a play restaurant in the dining room? Or that every blanket in the house is on the couch, wrapped around various stuffed animals for the "animal hospital"? I love the creativity and it's worth the mess. My couch pillows aren't too nice to be used for "hot lava” obstacle courses on the kitchen floor. It is tiresome that the house is a disaster more than 50 percent of the time, but at least the kids are using their brain in a healthy fashion -- which is more than I can say about playing video games all afternoon.

4. Independent play. I'm a staunch believer that kids need to learn how to play independently. In the evenings, however, when my girls have been at school and in afterschool activities all day and I've been working, I'm ready to hang with them! If my six-year old asks me to play "Trouble" for the fifth night in a row, I'll do it. The older they get, the less time they're going to want to spend with me, so I’m taking it now. I'll get a lot more "adult time" when the girls are in high school.

Parenting is all about setting the right balance for you and your family. I disagree with the Tiger mom philosophy of relentlessly pushing your kids to excel and not allowing them to engage in trivial activities such as play dates, nor the French mother philosophy of pretending that children are mini-adults. We all have different cultures, economic backgrounds and societal challenges -- which means that there's no right way to parent. Most of us do the best we can. There are days when I know I've been an unpleasant, easy-to-anger mother. I try to move on and do better the next day.

Can Americans do better? Well, yes. Americans are often helicopter parents, for one. I'm not sure why -- perhaps from our in-bred colonial ambition but also because our public schools suck. If we don't stand up for our kids, who will? We Americans can be a loud, outspoken bunch, so naturally our kids may seem like out-of-control, spoiled brats to parents in other countries. But maybe, some of our kids are just, loud? Could we push our kids harder and make them more accountable? Well, yes.

A little of the French way and a bit of the Chinese way is fine, here and there. But I'm an American, and I'll be damned if I won't parent the American way-- whatever that is.

Angry Birds

My colleague, Kevin Wolf, just wrote some thoughts on his blog about high expectations from both journalists and clients. I think he has some excellent points here. Highlights:

"Before sending a pitch, I read what I can about the journalist I’m targeting. I have about five minutes to spend on this because, in case you didn’t know, we’re targeting about 50 journalists per client at any given time.The pitches I develop are clear and concise. The journalists I target should be interested.

Often times I get an email response, but many times I don’t.

Reporters don’t like to be called, so when a reporter doesn’t respond to an email, I basically have no idea why the story I pitched isn’t a fit. Which means I have zero valuable feedback to share with my clients.  Oh, and by the way, clients don’t want to hear our feeble excuses. They pay for coverage, not empty analysis, and many have very high expectations. As a PR rep I’m always trying to “manage” expectations, but usually it comes off as sandbagging. I explain that PR is a process, exactly like sales. It takes time to woo a reporter."