This weekend we will celebrate my daughter Tori’s 11th birthday. I can easily see the bits of personality she has inherited from her mother and I. She has her mother’s dramatic flair, compassion for others, as well as her strong will (otherwise known as stubbornness). She gets her work ethic and sense of humor from me. 🙂 She’s seriously one of my favorite people in the whole world to hang out with – you never know what that girl is going to come up with next.
I worry sometimes about how our debt situation affects her, as she (like her mom) tends to take things very hard, and dwell on them almost to the point of obsession. When we tell the kids that we cannot afford something, it’s from her (more than our son) that I sense disappointment. She also asks occasionally to be reminded when we will be done with our DMP. It makes me wonder what’s going on in her head in those situations.
We’re treating her and some of her friends to go to a bounce house where they can spend the evening running around and jumping on inflatable slides and climbers. She didn’t want to have a sleep over with that large of a group because, “Some of my friends never go to sleep,” and like her mother she LOVES her sleep. Tomorrow night she’s going to have a sleepover with one or two of her friends that do like to sleep.
I told you, the girl has personality.
Speaking of great personalities, we should probably get to the posts of the week written by bloggers with equally as awesome personalities. Enjoy!
Posts That Make Me Fist Pump:
- Financial Compatibility Test for Couples from Go Banking Rates
- A Gym Membership, an Auto-Draft, and a Lawsuit from Debt Roundup
- Why I Shop the Perimeter from Blonde On a Budget
- 5 Tips for Overcoming Financial Stress from CareOne Debt Relief Services
- Does Our Culture Promote Debt? from Life And My Finances
- The Budget Reality of Digging Out of Debt from The Get Out of Debt Guy
Shameless Self Promotion:
- How’s Your Journey Out of Debt Going? is my post this week in the Care One Community
Blog Carnivals:
This is a new section you may see from time to time which simply lists the blog carnivals in which TeamEOD posts appeared over the last week.
- Carnival of Money Pros at Master the Art of Saving
Have a great weekend, and wish me luck chaperoning a group of crazy pre-teen girls at a bounce house! 🙂
Happy B-day for Tori! You wrote about her in beautiful words, it made me to ask my dad what he was thinking about me when I was 11 😉 I hope you’ll have a great time celebrating it!
LOL, I’m sure he had equally as beautiful things to say about you, Shovellicious! We celebrated her birthday last night and it was a fantastic time. There may just be a post on Monday about it, so come back and check it out! 🙂
Happy Birthday, Tori! You might worry about her now (ok, you always will) but that girl is going to grow up and be so incredibly proud of her parents. She will know that you worked hard to provide for her and then to teach her and your family about how to be fiscally responsible. You’re setting her up for success, Travis. I hope you all have a great weekend 🙂
Thanks so much Cait, I certainly hope you’re right. Watching her (and her brother) grow into young adults has been so much fun. They both are so full of potential, I’m so looking forward to watching them accomplish great things. I hope you have a great weekend as well, my friend!
Big Hug to Torri! Have a super fantastic special birthday y’all.
T Man, thanks for the mention. Keep up the blogging.
Thank you Steve, and you’re welcome! I’m genuinely honored to have you take the time to stop by EOD – have a great weekend!
Happy Birthday to Tori! I can relate to wondering what might be going through her mind as I think most parents do that. I think that her seeing what you’re doing and commitment to paying off the debt will reap many benefits to her as she grows up learning about money. Being open about it can only help her in the long run…in my opinion at least. 🙂
I agree that being open about our struggles AND our successes will benefit her in the long run, John. As I’ve written about before, have her see that her parents aren’t perfect, but that they work together as a team to overcome is very important to me. Marriage isn’t a fairy tale – it’s hard work – but it’s worth it!
Wait, what? It’s not a fairy tale?
I wish Tori a Happy Birthday. Good luck with the kids this weekend Travis. It should be fun, yet exhausting. I appreciate the mention and I hope you have a good one.
It was definitely fun, but surprisingly it wasn’t all that exhausting – maybe you’ll read about it on Monday ( hint hint)…. 🙂
OK, I wasn’t going to add this in my first comment but here goes.
Your concerns over how your children move through this process of getting out of debt is a real issue to be concerned about. In short, it’s why decisions on how to deal with debt need to be evaluated in more of a holistic environment and take all the factors into consideration and not just the goal of being debt free.
For example, take the family that focuses so much on their debt that they continue to live in an unsafe area, the kids go to poor schools, the home is filled with “no”, stress, and tension. That does have an impact. I’ve seen it first hand.
And more worrisome to me these days are the young parents that rob themselves of millions in retirement income by not dealing with their debt swiftly. Leaving a bigger burden potentially for their children when they retire. I’ve got an online calculator that demonstrates this if anyone cares.
There, I said it.
That’s a great point, Steve and I’m glad you came back and made it. When making major life decisions, parents need to remember that it’s not just them that are affected – they have younger human lives that they will influence.
People do need to examine all the circumstances, and all the options when choosing their path to get out of debt. But they must also keep in mind that they may have gotten into debt by making bad choices – and they made the choice to spend money in the “now” instead of using it wisely to save for the future.
Hope to see you come back and frequent EOD, Steve, I always enjoy exchanging perspectives with you. 🙂
Happy birthday to Tori!! Travis, I can tell that you guys are doing a wonderful job with her. The DMP will be up before you know it, and then you can all celebrate together. And I have a feeling Tori’s the type of girl that will take a good lesson away from this whole experience and be incredibly responsible with her finances. 🙂
Thanks Laurie – Tori is very strong willed, type “A”, play by the rules sort of girl. I have no doubt that if she makes up her mind to be financially responsible, she will do so with passion and tenacity. We just have to help her make up her mind to do so. LOL.