🤠 How To Complete a 66 Day Challenge

Day 66: Reaching the Finish Line

by Edward Smith

09 Sept 2020

Mission Complete!

In this article I wanted to finish what I started back on 06 July 2020.  By this point it's been sixty six full days from when my challenge first began.   You may be wondering, what is a sixty six day challenge, and does it even work?  

A sixty six day challenge is a line you draw in the sand.  It's you, declaring war on your stupid past self.   It's you deciding to get mad at things.  It's you deciding to figure things out.   

In this article I'm going to tell you what my sixty six day challenge was, and what I learned.  We all have a story to tell.  This is mine.

Reflecting On the Last 66 Days

When I started this whole thing back in July, I had a number of concerns trapped in my head, but I was short on answers.  Back in July I was worried about money, and I had just gotten done reading this awesome book called "Retired Inspired" by Chris Hogan. 

In Chris Hogan's book, Hogan mentions that it takes about 66 days of scrutiny and intentional living to undo and change a bad habit.   That's where I got the idea for this blog.  I figured I'm going to have to face my next 66 days whether I want to do it responsibly or not.   I might as well do it with intention and with a plan.   

So on day one I sat down and decided to figure things out.

My Overspending Problem Defined

When I lived in California I had a nice paying full time job.  The pay was nice, but I worried about getting laid off every single day.   Being scared all of the time made me unhappy, so to make myself happy I began buying things.  It didn't work, but that's what I did.

I began buying large quantities of dvd movies, video games and beer.   I couldn't afford to do it, but I justified it and did it anyways.  I enjoyed receiving the packages, and I enjoyed seeing my collection of stuff.   

Those packages came with a steep price.   I ended up hurting my wife.   She didn't know what to do with me, and she had trouble trusting me after it happened.   It wasn't fair, so I owed her.

Paying Her Back

I knew what I had done.  It was time to rewrite history once and for all.

I love my wife and I'm man enough to know when I'm wrong and when I need to fix something.   

I decided that during the next sixty six days I would really take a hard look at myself in the mirror and put new controls into place that would keep me from repeating old mistakes.   So that's exactly what I did.  Instead of talking about it, I did something about it.

For sixty six days I looked at the whole thing with a critical eye.  I wrote about it, and I thought about it, which meant I often thought about it even when I wasn't trying to think about it.   It sound silly, but the process really helped me to organize and figure things out.   

It turned out, that for me, the money thing wasn't really that hard to fix, I just had to make some adjustments to my lifestyle and determine what mattered the most to me.   I'd done it before on a larger scale with my family and our budget, but I needed to do it again on a smaller more personal scale.  That's really all it took.   The problem wasn't hard to solve, it just took a while for me to actually see it.   Once I got it, it was pretty easy to fix.

 

Conclusion

If you ever find yourself struggling, it's okay.   Instead of worrying, take a sixty six day challenge.  

Identify your problem, and give it continuous love and attention.   You may be surprised by what you learn.   

When you address things for sixty six days straight, it puts pressure on your bad habits.   Your habits are resistant, but they can't hide from you forever.   Eventually you track them down.   They get cornered and they attempt to fight you off, but they're not very good at fighting because they lack conviction.  

Every day you bombard them, and as you do that, the habit begins to lose steam and begins to appear ridiculous.   After enough days the habit surrenders.  You win.   Common sense prevails.      

I encourage you to do a sixty six day challenge today.  It works.  You'll be thankful you did it.   

Sixty Six Day Challenger Signing Off

🤠 How a Family Constitution Declares War on Mediocrity

 

Day 65: You Are How You Live

by Edward Smith

08 Sept 2020

Figure Out Who You Are

In this article I wanted to do something a little different again.  On the second floor of my house hangs a piece of paper in a picture frame.   On 27 June 2019 I wrote this document after reading a book by Steven Covey called the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 

In his book, Covey argues that every person should clearly outline their goals and define their principals.  This is important, because if you don't live according to your deep rooted purpose, you live an incorrect life, and your efforts are in vain.

Once you know who you are, and what you want to be, Covey tells you to write it all down, and hang it up in a place where you see it every single day.   It's like a map.  It reminds you where you're going.   

It's why I take things like challenges so seriously.  None of this stuff is ever just about me.  I'm part of a bigger world.   I have a family.  I live in a community.   

Here is the one that I wrote and that I follow to this day.

My Family Constitution    

Written on 27 June 2019

We The Family,

Agree to Guide Our Lives in Accordance with the following Mission Statement

Our Mission is to Live in Harmony with one Another, to Love, to be Honest, to Practice Integrity, Empathy, Personal Excellence and to Impact the World

To Fulfill this Mission:

I Live in a House of Love and Safety:     This house is a place of learning and of acceptance.   I’m allowed to make mistakes.   I’m allowed to say sorry.   I’m allowed to push back and to grow.   The family will not judge me.   The family will be there for me no matter what and will help me through difficult spots.  I can ask questions.    People will make time for me.    I can express ideas and the household will listen to me and will remain open.   I will not act out in emotion.   I will take a moment and collect myself.   I will not hurt others or myself.  I will not bully.  I see each of my family members as having worth.   My family is a team.   My team values me as an individual and my individuality is worthy of celebration and respect.

I Listen:   Each person in this house has personal dignity.   Each person in this house has a voice and is valued.   Each person will be listened to.   This is a house of open communication.   Attempts to understand and learn from each other will be made.   We will never purposely  ignore or talk over another family member.  We will take turns.   Each person will speak and be heard.   We all matter and our words carry meaning and our words are valuable.   

I am Fair but Firm:   I have jobs to do and people trust me to get those jobs done.   I will be corrected if I do not do my job.   I will ask for help and my family will help me.  I will be fair and my family members will be fair with me.    We will discuss conflicts or concerns openly.   We will respect each other’s privacy.   We will listen to and will value all opinions.    We will not accuse.   We will not attack.   We will not devalue.    We will approach conflict in a calm and collected manner.   

We will Have Fun:   We are all kids at heart.   We work hard so that we can play hard.   

Life is  fun and life is about experiencing joy and laughter.   We will always make time for fun.   Fun is important.   We will laugh out loud.   We will enjoy each other’s company.   We will be silly.   We will be goofy.   We will tell jokes and will tickle one another.   We will have a sense of humor, and will laugh at our mistakes.

Conclusion

In this article I shared my family's constitution with you. I hope it inspires you. I think you have your own set of goals, and that your life is unique and special. Value it. It's important. You were put here for a reason. You need to take it seriously. Figure out who you are. Figure out why you're here. Think about it, and put some effort into it.

Once you know, you'll grow. Life takes guts. Be brave. Stick to your guns, and stay the course. The world needs you. You have something valuable to offer. A family constitution is your chance to put the thing into writing and to define it. It's like a cornerstone. You can build great things once you have it in place. Write one today. Hang it up. Review it. Live it and use it to stay on track. The world will be better for it. This is your chance!

🤠 How To Use Education to Become Even Better

Day 64: Learn to Earn

by Edward Smith

07 Sept 2020

You're Only as Cool as Your School

In this article I want to talk about education, and how education has helped me to become better.   If you read one of my earlier articles entitled  🤠    How to Buy Books Online and Have the Books Pay For Themselves, you would have learned how I make some extra cash on the side doing a thing called Mturk.   That's not really the point of this article.   

The point of this article, is that I thought I knew everything there was to know about MTurk and making side money, but boy was I wrong.

How Education Can Lead to Exponential Gains

What a weird world we live in.   Back on 31 July 2020, I was writing about how I was able to make $1.50 a day doing online surveys on the side.  That's only a month ago.  Thanks to some education, the whole thing changed overnight.   Education is awesome.

Back in July, I was excited that I could open up my door and it was like a buck fifty was sitting on the ground waiting for me every day.   I'm still happy about that, but boy was I shorting myself.  If you put in the work, you can really make good money doing non-traditional things.  You just have to believe in the process and set your goals high.  Once you do that, it starts to happen.

August Was a Game Changer

In the middle of August, I began looking into MTurk again and stumbled upon a reddit feed that actually helps MTurk workers network with one another.  

In this feed I ran across a handbook that this girl created to help people raise money during the Corona virus outbreak.   It was free to use and free to share.   

As you may or may not have heard, many people have lost their jobs during the pandemic.  So people are looking for work, or for ways to raise extra cash to help out.   That is where this reddit post came in.  In the post this lady listed out a bunch of tools and ideas for raising your MTurk earnings.   In her article she claimed she could make $150 to $200 a week doing MTurk.

I had heard statements like this before, but I wasn't really buying into it because I had never done it on my own.   I decided to try out some of her techniques, and low and behold, they work!   

I haven't reached the amounts she does yet, but doing what she suggested has really improved my earnings, so I'm overjoyed.   Here is what I learned.

Working Smarter

In her handbook the author pointed me to this cool little script mod called MTurk suite.   Here is the link.

If you download this script, it embeds itself into your internet browser and it suddenly makes your standard MTurk user interface super smart.   

Thanks to this download I can now view a fancy report that tells me how many jobs I worked and what the future is likely to look like.  It shows me what is outstanding, how much I expect to get, and what I might get for the entire month. It presents this in a very easy to read document, so no extraneous digging is required.   

It also does history reports and lets me download the info and manipulate it within a spreadsheet.

That's not all though.  MTurk Suite also lets you find jobs way faster.  It actually auto looks for everything every 3000 milliseconds.   That doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you are used to manually navigating a website that takes a few seconds to update, you find out there is an entire world of job listings out there that you never saw, because while your website sluggishly updated, the competition grabbed them all up using the script that you weren't using.

MTurk Suite has revolutioned how I interacted with MTurk.   I began to take MTurk very seriously again, and began working the required hours to boost up my income.   I wanted to see if I could hit a goal of fifteen bucks a day.   

Turns out if you aim high, you earn high.   Last week I did this for five days and I averaged over $15.00 a day.   There are peak times and down times, so you have to learn when to walk away, but there are also times where you can make a lot of progress in a short period of time.   It's all about managing your time effectively.

On average I think I worked about 5 to 6 hours a day, but I could have easily walked away during two of those hours each day because there were noticeable drops in work during certain times.   I just didn't know that so I had to stay active during every hour watching for when the work would show up.

Then I learned and adapted.   

Now that I know there are low times, I can schedule around those low times and only show up when the work is around.    As I said, education is awesome.   You know what else is awesome?   Fifteen bucks a day.   Let me tell you about that.

What I Can Do with Fifteen Dollars a Day

Fifteen bucks a day is ten times more than what I was doing previously.   This is a total game changer for me.  

If I do twenty days of work at $15.00 a day I'll  have earned $300 extra dollars for the month.   That's money I can invest in the stock market.   Do that for a year and I'll have an extra $3,600 working towards improving my future me.  It also doesn't affect my household in any noticeable way.  I can do this while I'm doing online classes with the kids for school.

I also can use it to offset our budget and help pay for things that we need.   It's completely flexible.  It's like we got a side gig, and I never left the house.   My entire budget outlook has been flipped upside down.   

Conclusion

Spending time online to learn something new was dramatically beneficial for me.  

I learned about MTurk suite and my ability to earn extra cash for the house blew up overnight.

It's made me look at myself again in a different way.   I've had to review who I am and what I'm capable of.  Instead of settling for $1.50, I can put in the work and earn a substantial amount of money every week above and beyond what I thought I could do working from home.  

$75 bucks a week might not change your life, but in my world, I can do a great many things with that small amount.    That's also assuming that I can't learn something else and boost it up even higher.   This might just be a step to something bigger. 

It's all about perspective and intention.  If you think you have done all there is to do.   Stop what your'e doing, review the problem and try again.  You might be short selling yourself.   Don't settle.

 

🤠 How To Celebrate With Your Kids and Learn Something Important

Day 63: Happy Birthday Mommy!

by Edward Smith

06 Sept 2020

Celebrate With Your Kids

If you read my last article entitled 🤠  How To Make Birthday's Happy Without Expensive Toys, you would have read about how we spent my wife's 40th birthday celebration.   We did things with intention, and my wife had a great day because we made it meaningful.   

My kids though, made it even better for her.   That's what happens when you include your kids.   If you have kids.  Include them.  This is how my kids stepped up and made my wife's birthday better.  I couldn't have done it without them.

Quality Moments Are Made Better With Kids

On the day of my wife's special celebration, my oldest kid woke me up and whispered he wanted to surprise his mom and make the day really special.   So we let my wife sleep in, we crept downstairs and we pulled out a paper crown kit that we had purchased for one of my kid's birthdays last year.   

There were still some extra crowns in the package, so my eldest asked if he could decorate one.   He spent the morning coloring the crown and had it waiting for my wife when she came downstairs.   For the entire day she got to sit around the house as a queen in a crown that her son had built.   

Giving the Gift of a Family Tradition

My youngest son reminded me to hang up the Happy Birthday sign that we've hung up on every birthday since we've moved into this house.   It's turned into a family heirloom of sorts.  I imagine it might be hung in one of my son's house's later on.  

It's become a family tradition around here.   The sign only cost a couple of dollars when we first bought it, but it's worth a lot more then that now.   We usually hang it up on the day of the event, and it might get displayed for an entire week.   

In our house birthdays can last as long as Hanukkah.  Whenever we look up and see the birthday sign we smile, because it reminds us of the good moment we all shared as a family.  It's something fun, and it reminds you to keep having fun.

Pizza Time!

For lunch I was sent out to the grocery store to pick up birthday supplies, and to this really great pizza parlor near our house.   My wife got the single serve chocolate indulgence cake that she wanted, and the boys and I split up a round of chocolate and vanilla cupcakes that we wanted.   

For pizza, my wife likes a pineapple and Canadian bacon style pizza, and we go for the meat lovers pizza with sausage, hamburger, and ham.   

I really like this plan, because the local restaurants have had it pretty tough around here.  It was our chance to help one of them out, and to enjoy a good meal at home.   

The whole thing was pretty glorious.    When you don't do something all of the time, it becomes more special and important when you do it.  You stop taking it for granted.   

Birthday Containers Contain Joy!

There is this joke that parents tell.   It's about how their kid received this super expensive one of a kind toy for their birthday.  The kid then spent the majority of the month playing with the box that the toy came in while ignoring the toy itself.    

After dinner, my wife's special pots and pans arrived.  It was pretty cool.   The whole family got involved.  My wife was giddy with joy because she finally got to own the set of pots she always wanted.

That made them matter more to both of us.   They were no longer just pots.   They were "the" pots.

We had spent the last ten years using the pots we got when we were first married.   They work.  We're not complaining, but over those ten years we had said no to a lot of things, and this time we wanted to say yes to something that we really wanted.   So we decided to use this moment as the moment.

My kids were giddy because the pot set came in a huge box with bubble wrap and they got to play in the box and pop the bubbles and make lots of noise.  

They even built a cat house out of the box so that my cat would have somewhere to live.   Apparently my house cat has had it pretty rough up to this point.   Luckily she now owns a house.   

Conclusion

That's how you win at birthdays.   Birthdays don't have to be complicated.   Meaning doesn't have to be expensive.  

In my wife's case, we did buy some pots, and the pots cost money.   I'm not ignoring that.   The thing with these pots though, is they weren't impulsive.  This idea didn't just show up today.  This was something my wife had wanted for ten years.   We spent ten years not buying them.   

Since we paid the price ahead of time, we were able to do it.  

That being said, the pots weren't necessary.   My kids could have made a card for my wife and she would have been equally as happy.   

Her favorite memories from the day were how her kids acted like goof balls and enjoyed spending time with her.  She was very touched by the paper crown.   She became excited when she saw the birthday sign.   

She got to be a kid again and was made to feel special by those that care about her.     The stuff we bought online was just a nice bonus.  Like the icing on the cake.   We like the icing.   It tastes great.  

Birthdays can be fun.  They should be fun, but don't worry about spending money to make them fun.  

Keep them simple.   Keep the person in the spotlight.   Give them attention, and remind them that they are important.   That's what the day is celebrating.  That's how you make birthdays, great days.  Make birthdays great days today.

   

🤠 How To Make Birthday's Happy Without Expensive Toys

Day 62: The Best Present is Being Present

by Edward Smith

05 Sept 2020

Birthday's Can Be Fun Again

In this article I want to talk about birthday celebrations, and how these things can get completely out of hand if you don't stay true to what a birthday is supposed to be about. 

It's weird.  We celebrate birthday's every year, but for some reason we don't seem to learn from the experience.   

Think about it.   What do you remember?   Do you remember the expensive things your parents did for you, or were you more interested in hanging out with your friends and family?   Birthdays can be exciting.   They're great for bringing people together and having fun.   

That being said, they don't have to be extravagant.  Let's return to the days when kids were kids and kids enjoyed birthdays because birthdays reminded them that they were special.    

My Wife's Birthday

My wife's birthday was last Thursday.   We decided to do something special this year.   She hit the big 4-0.  That doesn't happen every day.

So here is what we did.   Since everyone is in lock down, and trips have been cancelled, we decided to take the money that we had saved ahead of time for the trip and spend it on something she actually has wanted for over a decade.  

Something meaningful, something personal and something she'll really enjoy using every day, whether she is using it or watching others around her use it.

A set of nice new pots for cooking.    I know.   Pots?   Really?

Let's think about it for a second though.  You have to eat every day right?   You have to cook if you're not spending your money at restaurants.   

Pots are both useful at the worst times, and really fun at the best of times.  Pots also teach a valuable lesson.   Eating at home can be fun, and it can bring people together.  

Pots become the glue that holds a healthy family together during meal time.   If you don't own a good set of pots and pans.  You should look into fixing that as soon as you can.   They're extremely valuable.   They even come with a set of great memories.   Bust them out and see what happens.

Choosing Between Pots and Plane Tickets

It turns out plane trips cost more then pot sets.  So if you decide to abstain from the skies, the sky is the limit when you want to go shopping for a good quality set of pots.     

We decided to combine her birthday with our upcoming wedding anniversary.   We figured the lock down would still be going on through October, so why not get something that we can enjoy both now and then.  

Happy Birthaversary?

Want to Know How We Made the Day Better?    

Read My Next Article

🤠 How To Contain Yourself and Your Legacy

Day 61: Help You Help Them

by Edward Smith

04 Sept 2020

Defining Your Legacy

In this article I want to talk about a little thing called a legacy box.  You aren't going to live forever. There is nothing you can do about it, but that doesn't mean things are out of control.   

Wills and a legacy box tell people what to do, and where things need to go.   If you plan to pass away at some point, do so with a legacy box.  It's the greatest gift you can leave your family.   

Having A Box Vs. Not Having One

When I was growing up, I witnessed a grandma that passed away that didn't have one.  Her funeral was messy.  Nobody knew what to do, where to go, or what was going on.    This led to infighting and frustration.  Instead of her passing being about her and her memory, her passing became a chore for those left behind.   That is what they remember.        

I also had a grandfather that passed away, and his funeral was clean and easy, because he had taken the time ahead of time to lay everything out in detailed fashion.   When he passed, things were pretty easy.   

His instructions were clear.   His daughter just had to follow the steps.   Thanks to him, the obstacles were removed.   People were able to find things and take care of things.   He did this with a will and a legacy box.   People got to spend their free time grieving and remembering a good man.

   

   Create a Legacy Box

Think of a legacy box as a shoe box full of important information with a set of easy to understand instructions.  It's kind of like a box of cake mix.    The instructions tell you what to do, and the contents allow you to do it.    You may be missing something, but the instructions bring attention to it and tell you what you need.   No figuring things out.   Follow the instructions, get results.

Legacy boxes are kind of like your third level of defense.   

Your first level of defense is done within your financial accounts themselves.  You need to go into all of them and update your beneficiary list.   That is super important.  If you don't do that, you're going to create a bunch of problems.   

This is how it works.   When you pass, you send each account a copy of your death certificate.  If your account has a beneficiary listed, that person gains control over the account.   If that person is not listed, then they can't do anything.   

You can't edit the names after you're gone, and the people left behind can't change anything either.  Whatever you have listed is how it goes, so make sure the names listed are correct ahead of time.   It's the only way to ensure your wishes are carried out.     

Your will is your second line of defense.  In your will you might state how your estate gets split up and where you want all of your big or important things to go.  It also tells your lawyers who is in charge of doing what.    This ensures you don't have random people mucking up the process, like uncles and aunts that show up unexpectedly to get a piece of the pie.   

Your Legacy box is your third line of defense.  You can think of it like the supplement to your will.   

What a Legacy Box Does

Think of it like this.   If I pass away, and I leave my house to my kid in my will, the kid gets the house.  Awesome.    Except maybe not so awesome.   If you have ever owned a property, you know  running a property is complicated.   There are house payments and utility bills.    These things must be paid on time, and you know who you pay for each thing.  People outside of your house don't, and that includes your offspring

If you fail to pay an important bill on time, the lights and water will go off.   Creditors will get mad and people will threaten to foreclose on the house.   If you don't lay out a plan, your kid could get stuck with a huge headache, and if it's not taken care of in time, your kid could lose it all.  No plan, is usually a bad plan.  Have a plan.  Lay it out for those left behind.

The Legacy Box Keeps Things Working

The legacy box provides people with everything they would need to run your house like you ran your house.   In the box, you provide your account numbers, your log in information, and the schedules for when everything is due and to whom.  

If you have services that need to be cut off, you tell them who to call, and how to cancel things.   The idea here is the person getting the box, opens the box and surprise, they don't have to figure anything out.   No loose ends.  No hidden problems.   Everything has a direction and everything gets handled and paid for on time. 

That gives your next in line some breathing room, a clear path, and it shows them the kind of person you were and are.   Instead of making things difficult, you set the game on easy mode.

Conclusion   

If you are like me, you don't like talking about death.   That doesn't mean you avoid it though.

If you're like me, and you have family, you need to step up and be responsible.   Take some time out of your busy schedule and start putting together a written and easy to find plan.    It's super important.   Your family will be super happy because you did it, and you'll make your passing way easier to deal with once your gone. 

You don't get to decide when your time is up.   

That being said, you do get to decide what information you leave behind and how to manage everything.    Update your accounts so that the right people get your things when you are gone.  Create a will, to let people know where everything is going, and then create a legacy box so that your wishes can be carried out in an organized fashion.   That's how you leave a legacy.  Create a legacy box.   Best gift ever.

 

🤠 How to Not Underestimate the Value of Your Life Hours

Day 60: Sometimes You Get Paid in Better Ways

by Edward Smith

03 Sept 2020

Spending Your Time Wisely

If you read my last article entitled 🤠  How to Choose Correctly When Life Sucker Punches You, you would have read about how I had to make a choice after a job loss between working for money or working for my kids.   In this article, find out what I did, and why.

Daycare is Expensive and You're Not Around

When I was working, the kids went to daycare, or they spent the afternoon at the YMCA.

We paid an average of about $572 per kid per month to ensure our two kids were safe, and being watched.   It wasn't really about education.  It was about keeping them out of harm's way and being safe from strangers.   

That's about $13,000 a year that we were on the hook for regardless of if the service was good or mediocre.   Often the service was mediocre.   We were mainly paying out money to ensure an adult was present.   It was basically large scale babysitting.

After I Lost My Job, Daycare Looked Too Expensive

After I lost my job, we noticed something.    To make daycare work, we would have to come up with $13,000 whether I was employed or not.   That's a big hurdle to overcome when you haven't been hired by anyone yet.   

To put things in perspective, a minimum wage job where I was living averaged about $12.00 per hour.   

So working 40 hours per week every week meant I might earn around $25,000 per year, and I'd keep approximately 85 percent of that or  $21,216.  Not bad, if I manage to land a full time job at full pay, but that situation is not guaranteed and it comes with a number of other risks and problems.   

By working full time, I wouldn't be available to pick up my kids from school if anything went wrong.  I wouldn't be available to take the kids to doctor's appointments.  

I wouldn't be available to attend any of their events, and because my wife was also working full time, this meant that my kid's had two unreliable parents that were never available to be around when they were needed.   I remember trying to organize parent teacher nights.  It was almost impossible.

Some jobs are understanding about child care, but many get tired of having to deal with parents with kids if child care conflicts with work long term.   You're not getting paid to watch your kids, you're getting paid to show up on time and work.

Many jobs expect you to find someone to take care of your kids behind the scenes, and that isn't always easy or possible.   It usually means you need to hire someone to do it, and that can be on top of daycare, which has set hours.   

On top of that, many minimum wage jobs usually require overtime and the ability to work different shifts throughout the week.  Your hours are not guaranteed, and your hours can fluctuate depending on how business is going.   Great when you're starting out, but scary if you are an established household and the money is needed.

How We Resolved It

Our situation was lucky, but the lessons I learned along the way can be applied to other people and their situation.  

Since we were already living below our means, my wife and I were able to review our budget and change some things up.  We decided to drop daycare, and use me as daycare instead.   That bought us $13,000 per year doing that.   That also meant the kids had a reliable parent watching over them every day.

We also looked at our options and determined that we could move cross country to a different work site within my wife's company.   By doing this, my wife's salary was able to do more even though it's number had not changed.   The cost of living in the new place was cheaper so we got more bang for our buck.   That helped offset the loss of my job.  

The point here, is we decided to get flexible with our approach and change some things up to overcome an obstacle.   If you give things a chance, you might have more options then you first realize. Try looking at things again.  You might surprise yourself.

Being a Stay At Home Parent Comes With Perks

Being a stay at home parent has been different, but it's been very rewarding.   I have time to keep our house clean, and to model a clean home for my kids.  I'm like one of those 50's wives but with a beard and a dingy t-shirt.

I also have been available to take my kids on outdoor excursions.   We used our first summer to explore all of the local parks and trails around our area.   That's something my wife has never had the time to really do, even though we've lived here for over two years.

I've gone grocery shopping with them and showed them how to to behave around strangers.   I've attended my son's music and talent shows.   He saw me there.  He remembers it.  

Every day I make my kids breakfast, lunch and dinner.   We play games.   We go on walks and talk about different things.  I learn a lot from them, and they learn a lot from me.  

At the time of this writing, the world is facing the pandemic.  Schools are closed and people are being made to teach from home.   My role has become even more important.  It's a good thing I'm available.  

It could have gone really crazy for our household if I was working full time.  Not to mention expensive.  Sometimes things happen for a reason.   Embrace things when they change.   You might be answering something important without even realizing it.

Conclusion

Life hours are valuable.    They don't always come with a typical dollar amount like working hours do.  You can't say you work for $12.00 an hour, when you are a stay at home parent, but that doesn't mean you didn't earn a wage that day.  My kids have their father.   They can see him.  How much is that worth?   To them I bet it's a lot.

My kids are getting to know me.   I'm getting to learn about them.   No job that I've ever worked at has ever had a perk like that.   Life hours are extremely valuable.   Use them wisely.   If you get a chance to use them.   Enjoy them.    

They're precious.