Family is about relationships. And relationships require time, thought, prayer, and intentional and sometimes spontaneous action.  Getting to into the activities just mentioned though will require that you set aside the time, create the margins, and decide to say “no” to some things, activities, and people to be able to invest in your family.  Intentionality can nurtured by creating the space for outside inputs–a book, a talk, a DVD; something new from the outside that creates a new perspetive or a place to stand so that you view your household and yourself from a new place.  Recently I read 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families.  Covey as you may know is all about intentionality or as he writes, “Being proactive.”  Covey highlights ways we can begin to act proactively toward building up our households and creating the space where the members of our household know they are valued and loved.

There are many ways of creating multiple income streams.  You could get a second job.  Rent out a room or a garage, get a roommate, or take a homestay student.  You could put items on consignment, have a garage sale, turn a hobby into sales on eBay, or find a way to turn a skill utilized in your main job into a secondary part-time work for someone else.  Another way of looking at the streams is to consider what is required of you to generate the income on a passive to active continuum.  Healthy living and priorities such as the time you give to the top values in your life–relationships, family, serving others must not be neglected.  It may be possible to bear down for a time, but you need to make sure that a goal is announced and agreed upon with your significant others so that they know with you that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Multiple income streams are most helpful if you determine to live within one income and use the second, third and forth for other goals or needs that fall outside your regular monthly expense.  What creative things have you done to create multiple income streams?

“You cannot win making $18,000 a year.  You have to realize, five years from today I’m going to be making the same amount of money I make now unless I read a book, take a class, get in a program.  I have to have knowledge that I don’t have right now.  You have to be on a heavy personal growth curve to get income up because we’re in a knowledge-based economy, and what you earn is largely based on what you know, not what you do.  So you have to know more.”

Life-long learners will have a more fulfilling life.  Now I’m not one to say that all learning has to pay for itself.  However, if you want to increase your earning capacity or your earning bandwidth you are going to have be a learner.

 One of the most helpful perspectives for my own thinking is the section on stance, tools, and experience.  Stance describes your stance toward life or problems.  Are you open or closed to new information and variables?  Is your stance informed by a view that always treats others as friends or as foes?  Is your stance informed by the aggression of a learner or a know-it-all?  Is it important to act like you have it all together or is it OK to demonstrate that you have more to learn? 

Tools are the actual skills or sets of knowledge that you have about the subject or problem you are having to face.  You can always put more tools into your toolbox as part of preparation.  In a crisis there is little time for putting more tools in.  You have to use what you have.  But if you are able to extend time you can add more tools. 

It is essential that you actually use what you’ve got.  This is experience.  It is the breadth, short or long, of what you have by way of experience.  Experience is essential because it increases sensitivity about the necessary stance and the actual use of the tools you have.  The good news is that as your experience broadens and deepens, your capacity to effectively use the tools you have to integrate divergent information for problem solving in your field of interest or work also increases.  Stance, tools, and experience then begin to feed on each other. 

I appreciate this view of  growing people.  Growing people are gatheres of wisdom.  They seek with an insatiable appetite to increase their capacity for seeking solutions and engaging others in that process in the organizations they lead.  Growing people love truth.  As a growing exercise try the following:

1.  Identify a problem, current or on the horizon.
2.  Explore your stance toward this problem and move your stance toward more openness and active learning.
3.  Explore the tools you have and seek if there are more sets of knowledge or skills (in people, books, etc) that could help you.
4.  Take on the risk and movement toward acting on a plan or course of action for the identified problem.
5.  Evaluate and adjust by examining stance, tools, and experience again.

Life is not as simple as we might imagine when it comes to our money.  Although there are many stable and regular expenses, with each new month there are different expenses.  A yearly budget plan probably is not going to cover these and help you plan.  Just to name a few of the variables, heating and cooling bills, Birthdays, holidays, guests over, going as a guest, school starting, haircuts, vactions…the list goes on and on.

For us the principle of making a new budget every month revolutionized our finances.  In the last few days of each month we revisit our budget worksheet for the coming month.  Now there are some line items that don’t change.  But there are others that need to be discussed and planned for.  And then, we get to talk about it together, planing together, and heading off conflict and frustration in the future.  We both get to agree on our limits for each area.  As an added benefit I get to be more aware about holidays and birthdays and therefore more involved with the family matters.  Now we are telling every dollar where to go.

Try it yourself… but determine ahead of time to stick with it for a year.  Monthly budgeting is like riding a bike for the first time.  You are going to wobble, fall off, and have to get back up adn try again.  There are all kinds of worksheets available to help you get started.  Personally I really like the zero budget plan available at www.daveramsey.com

Making this decision is essential for paying off your debt.  If you are in debt your negative position will only continue to grow if you are using debt machines–credit cards, to create the illusion of staying afloat.  Resolving to spend less than you make creates pain, but it is nothing like the prolonged pain of trying to pay off debt created by not living within this resolution. 

Do not mistake this for just a debt principle.  It is a saving principle for accumulating wealth.  The determination to spend less than you make leaves a balance that can be saved and invested.  To really live this resolution you can “fool yourself” by having your savings regularly drawn away by your employer for your RRSP contributions, but also by yourself into a savings account while you are making decisions for investing or saving to meet a goal.  Saving becomes automatic.  But be careful–you have to keep deciding:

I will spend less than I make.

1.  Find the best time to face each other.

2.  Identify the issue you want to find a solution to.

3.  Discuss the issue rather than attack each other.  Avoid labeling:  “You always…” or “You never…”  Rather use, “I feel… when you…”

4.  Work out possible solutions.

5.  Decide on the best solution for now and try it out.  If it works…great.

6.  Be prepared to re-evaluate.

Most couples argue about money as a presenting issue in their day to day relationship.  No matter what you are in an all out battle of words or caught in a cold-war you owe it to yourselves to continue learning new ways of fighting fair.  The Marriage Course, www.themarriagecourse.org  can be a great course for building your marriage and improving your relationship.  The website will help you locate a course close to you.

You cannot wait for the schools to “do the right thing.”  You cannot “give them a chance” and just hope that the school is going to find a magic potion.  I know, I once hoped.  Without direct governmental intervention for funding and specific legislation that compels school boards to act swiftly and profoundly you remain both advocate and provider for your child.  The recent ruling here in BC seems to confirm this situation.  (See Court deals blow to disabled students.)  The deficit situation in the public schools is further compounded by the idea that “a teacher is a teacher is a teacher.”  Specialized training seems to be undervalued and often not sought before assigning teachers to students who require differing resources and learning plans.  In my opinion, many teachers and administrators care, but the system has been constructed in such a way that it is dysfunctional in its ability to diagnosis, prescribe, and administer effective learning environments for students with dyslexia.  In fact my experience suggests that the administration is creating a culture that rewards a philosophical stance toward both student and teacher that is anti-learning.  If you hold that learning both requires and is change then you can understand my perspective.

Your child for the most part is wired to learn.  Learning can be a mixture of joy and pain.  But if it remains predominantly painful, a child and an adult will often create strategies of avoidance.  Ah, so will school administrations, boards, and governments.  So it is up to you to advocate and provide for your child who has dyslexia.  Find an OG certified tutor…