A little about me, personally and professionally

I am originally from Ontario. I completed my Bachelor of Science in Nutrition at the University of Guelph in 2000. While I was living in Guelph, I got an amazing job working at the Nagano Olympics in ’98 as a tour guide. I likely got the job because I love to talk and I love to travel. It was a fantastic experience and I was able to see loads of Olympic events.

I was very lucky how the timing worked out because the Sydney Olympics started just after I graduated from my Nutrition degree. I was re-hired by the same company and became a tour guide at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. That was a fantastic experience, then I spent three weeks post Olympics traveling around Australia, also loads of fun.

Once I returned from Australia, I moved to Edmonton to complete a one year nutrition internship with Capital Health. This is where I met Liz (Jim’s lovely wife) also a Dietitian. My rotation with Liz was about the same time that she started dating Jim and I started dating Dave. Now, fast forward a few years. Jim and Liz are married, Dave and I are married and collectively we now have 7 children, all boys.

As a Registered Dietitian, I started working with the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada. I had great experiences visiting many First Nation communities to offer nutrition workshops, cooking workshops and generally assist with their health programs. In exchange, I was welcomed into every community and encouraged to share in their culture. I should also mention that I took a short leave from work to be a tour guide at the Salt Lake City Olympics as well. That was fun but it was my last Olympic experience as I had a serious career ahead in nutrition.

Did I mention that we like to travel?

Shortly after my husband and I started our careers, my husband applied for a paid year off (work for four years at 80% salary then take your fifth year off). His fifth year came up when the boys were two and four years. I took a leave from work, we rented out our house, sold our van to our tenants, packed up two large backpacks, got on a plane and left Canada for 9 months. We went (with the kids) to Indonesia, Thailand, Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It was an experience we will never forget and we look forward to doing it again in a few years. We blogged about it here if anyone is interested and has time to kill.

Now that we have three children, life is busy. I have decided to take another year off work from Health Canada and find myself keeping connected to nutrition by doing vegetarian cooking workshops, nutrition workshops, building a facebook page and doing a little blogging. If you would like tidbits of nutritious info and to find out about my workshops, you can get all of the information on my facebook page.

Please let me know if there are any nutrition topics that you would like me to blog about. I will do my best to provide accurate and interesting nutrition information as well as provide practical tips in the kitchen and my favourite recipes.

Cheers!
Audrey

At first, a small business might not need to worry about what types of payments it accepts. However, over time, this can change. You might want to expand your payment options in order to make it easier for customers and potential clients to pay. This can be especially true if you want to expand online. You need to offer a variety of options for your clients.

Accepting Credit Cards

One of the most popular forms of payment, online and offline, is the credit card. Even the most steadfast of small business places often eventually ends up preparing to accept credit card payments. There just aren’t a lot of people carrying cash around anymore. On top of that, credit cards make it easier to do business online.

Weigh the costs associated with accepting credit cards, and consider that you might be able to make up for some of the costs with an increase in volume. Customers who have been moving on because they can’t pay with their preferred method might stop and buy something from you once you begin accepting credit card payments.

There are ways to accept credit cards no matter what kind of business you have. There are attachments and apps that can turn your smart phone into a terminal that accepts credit cards. So, even if your business is small and informal, there is no need to eschew credit card payments. You don’t need fancy equipment, and it doesn’t need to be very expensive. Many small businesses find that with the right setup, it’s possible to accept credit card payments for very little cost and the benefits in terms of increased business can be huge.

Other Forms of Payment

In addition to accepting credit card payments, it’s a good idea to consider other payment methods as well. Technology is making it possible to engage in other types of payment as well. Online, many businesses accept PayPal, as well as other third-party payment processors like Amazon Payments and Google Checkout.

On top of that, there are person to person payment options available now. It’s possible to send money directly to someone else via cell phone. If you are equipped to handled various payment options, you will appeal to a wider customer base, and you will draw in more business and income.

Take a look at your options, and consider what you might be able to offer customers in terms of payment options. Remember that, in many ways, an adaptable and versatile business is one that is most likely to survive and thrive today. Compare costs, and look into low-cost methods of accepting credit card payments and other types of payments. Your customers will be happier with the situation, and you will appeal to more people.

What do you think? Do you accept credit cards? What forms of payment do accept? Why?

If you want to save money, one way to do it is to pay off your mortgage early. There are various ways to pay off your mortgage early, including these two strategies:

1. Bi-Weekly Mortgage Payment: With a bi-weekly schedule, you end up with what amounts to an extra mortgage payment each year. If all months had the same number of days/weeks, a bi-weekly mortgage payment would result in 24 payments each year. However, a year actually has 52 weeks, so paying every other week means that you have 26 payments each year. Since your bi-weekly mortgage payment is half your monthly payment, two “extra” bi-weekly payments a year equal an extra mortgage payment. You can shave more than two years off your mortgage term with this method, and save on interest.
2. Extra Principal Payment: It’s also possible for you to make an extra principal payment when you wish. Paying down the principal can help you reduce your loan balance faster, and save money on interest. You can make extra principal payments at any time, but they are most effective when you make them regularly.

Refinance to a Shorter Term

Another strategy is to refinance your mortgage to a shorter term. In many cases, you can get a lower mortgage rate for a shorter term. Plus, since you have a shorter term, you are done with your loan that much sooner — and you save even more in interest, since you are cutting back the length of time that you are paying interest.

However, there are pitfalls associated with refinancing to a shorter term. You might end up with higher payments as a result of your shorter mortgage term. If you are struggling with cash flow, the higher payments might only cause more problems for you.

Plus, if you lock in the payment associated with a shorter term, you can’t back off if you run into trouble. Many homeowners prefer to keep the mortgage term a little longer, and then employ other methods to reduce their mortgage balances.

One strategy that is common in the United States is to get a 30-year mortgage, but make payments as if it were a 15-year mortgage. The extra payments mean that the mortgage balance is reduced quickly. However, if there is a financial setback, you can stop making the extra mortgage payments and switch to the “regular” payment without incurring penalties and jeopardizing your home.

Finally, before you decide to pay down your mortgage, make sure that it’s really the most efficient use of your money. If you have credit card debt, or other debts with higher interest rates, you are better off getting rid of those debts first. Pay off your higher interest debt before you tackle your low-interest mortgage debt.

Author Bio: Miranda Marquit is a freelance writer and professional blogger specializing in personal finance. Her blog is Planting Money Seeds.

A few weeks ago I asked my Facebook friends what they wished they’d been taught about money as kids. The vast majority of responses had to do with wishing they had a better understanding of credit. We live in a society where we don’t have to wait for anything. We don’t have to save for new furniture, a new gadget, a new vehicle or a nice meal in a great restaurant. We don’t even need to build a contingency fund; money is instantly available to us, regardless of how much we actually have in the bank, as long as we have access to credit.

In the US only 3% of all the money in circulation actually exists in physical form. The other 97% exists solely in computers. Most of our financial transactions aren’t made using real money and yet we can use this mythical currency to buy whatever we want. If it’s managed well then credit can open doors to opportunities that we might never be able to take advantage of but if it is mismanaged then it can sink us into holes far deeper than the ones we could dig by ourselves.

We live in a world where credit cards and credit lines are routinely offered by bank tellers when we visit the branch, pre-approved offers are sent out by credit card companies in the mail and carrying consumer debt is the norm. We live in a society where it’s universally assumed that the only way to build good credit is to use it and that makes our children incredibly vulnerable once they become adults. When our kids see us paying for everything with plastic but never see us pay the bill with real money how are they supposed to understand that what they’re seeing is an illusion? If we don’t talk to our kids about credit, if we don’t educate them on how compound interest is a fantastic thing when it comes to your investments but a nightmare when it comes to consumer debt, then how are they supposed to make an informed decision about credit?

As human beings we’re hard-wired for pleasure and instant gratification is an immensely pleasurable thing. There’s little hope that our kids will ignore the tempting offers that seem too good to be true unless they understand that they actually are. Here are a few facts about credit that I wish I’d known at 18.

Understand How Interest is Calculated

Debt is an amazingly profitable way for retailers and financial institutions to make money. The vast majority of credit products don’t get paid off in full every month and there is a lot of money to be made in compounding the interest charges daily and applying fees for late payment and going over the approved credit limit.

Lots of people who have credit cards don’t know how much interest they’re paying and they don’t realize that the credit card company can increase that rate if you miss payments or don’t make your payments on time. The higher the interest rate, the greater the amount of your minimum payment that is being applied to interest and the smaller the amount that is actually reducing your outstanding debt. I worked with a client recently whose minimum payment on a store card with a $350 balance was $62/month. Of that $62 only $7 was actually applied to his balance – the other $55 was interest (29.9%APR). He could easily have paid it off in one or two months, he just didn’t realize that by choosing to just pay the minimum he was setting himself up for at least four years of payments and more than $2000 in interest to get it paid off!

Similarly, if you buy something on 18 months interest free store credit and you don’t pay your balance by the due date your interest is backdated to the date you made the purchase, usually at a high rate. Suddenly, your $5000 of furniture is costing you $7500 and it’s accumulating interest daily; not quite the bargain it was when you bought it.  Teach your kids to pay attention to their statements and financing agreements and to be fully aware of how much interest they’re being charged and what the due date of their payments is. If you know what the pitfalls are you’re less likely to fall for them.

Pay Your Card Off in Full Every Month

Make sure that your kids are aware that unless they pay off their card balance in full every month they’ll pay interest on the entire amount that was owing. For example; if they owe $4000 and pay $3999.99 they’ll pay interest on the whole $4000 not just the penny that’s outstanding. Those charges can add up and the cost of the charges always outweighs the “rewards” offered by the card.

Know Your Limit. Stay Within It.

If you make regular payments on your cards chances are the credit card company will arbitrarily decide to raise your credit limit. Kids need to understand that the companies are not doing this to be nice; they’re doing it to tempt them into living beyond their means and carrying a balance they can be charged lots of interest on!! If you don’t have enough money in your contingency fund to pay off your entire credit card balance then your limit is too high and you’re in an incredibly vulnerable situation; one missed pay cheque and you could be in trouble.

Credit card companies are especially generous when it comes to the limits on student credit cards. I have one client who graduated from university with a $23,000 balance on her credit card and she wasn’t the only one among her peers to have a limit that high. It’s been seven years since she graduated and she’s nowhere close to paying it off because the interest is crippling. Teaching your kids how to handle credit properly helps them recognise situations that don’t benefit them and gives them the understanding needed to call the company and get the limit reduced back to a comfortable amount.

At the end of the day, the more you can rely on your own savings and the less you can use credit the better position you’ll be in. Used properly, credit can be useful but if it’s misunderstood and mismanaged it’s all too easy to fall into a hole that can take a long time to dig out of. Encourage your kids to get educated about credit and to use it wisely.

But how do you stay on task? There’s something to be said for having a boss on hand to keep you focused on your work. When you work from home, you have to be self-motivated and do what you can to make sure you aren’t always distracted.

Tackling Common Distractions when You Work from Home

There are a number of distractions vying for your attention when you have a home office. Here are some strategies for overcoming them and staying focused:

Internet and social media: When you are connected to your work by the Internet, online activities can be very distracting. It’s easy to just check your email every five minutes, or hop on Facebook.

While you might need to engage in social media activities, and check your email, don’t do it all the time. Instead, schedule these activities for specific times of the day. Check your email first thing, then just before lunch, and then again before you finish up for the day. Turn of notifiers that let you know every time a new mail message is received. That can become distracting.

Apply the same rules to social media use. Relegate social media actions to specific parts of the day.

Kids: Perhaps one of the biggest distractions when you work form home is the kids. Your children want to play with you, and demand your attention in other ways. If you are going to work in your home office, you need to work around this distraction.

You can hire someone to help with the kids for two or three hours when you work from home. This can provide you with distraction-free work time. If your children are older, you can make it clear that you have to work for a set period of time, and then you can play with them.

Others get used to working while the kids are at school, down for naps, in bed, or when they are playing happily amongst themselves. When you have children, you need to work hard when you have the opportunity.

Other household duties: Sometimes, working from home results in distractions in the form of other household duties. You might be distracted by the laundry that needs to be done, or the dirty dishes in the sink.

When you are distracted by these items, it helps to schedule in a time to see to them. Set aside work time, and housework time. Or, if you just can’t stand it, tackle the household chores quickly and get them out of the way.

Turn off the TV while you work from home, and try not to get drawn in by discussions with the neighbors. Make it clear that you have work time, even though you are at home. And, really, that’s about the best thing you can do: Set work time, and then concentrate on it.

What about your health? Do you have to turn to processed foods in order to meet your family’s dinnertime needs?

If these are problems with mealtimes, the solution might be simpler than you think. With a meal planner, you can reduce the amount of money you spend on food, as well as prepare healthier meals.

Get Organized with a Meal Planner

Your meal planner doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A small calendar works quite well. Look at the week ahead, and decide what you want for dinner each evening.

Once you have determined what you want to eat, you can create a shopping list. Your meal planning efforts will help you by:

1. Saving money: Shopping with a list can help you avoid impulse buys at the store. On top of that, if you shop according to a list based on your meal plan, you will be less likely to throw out uneaten food, improving your cost-efficiency. If you want to save even more, create your meal plan based on the coupons and sales at the local grocery store. Finally, when you have a meal plan, and you are prepared for mealtime, you are less likely to have to get take out when you can’t come up with a good idea for dinner.
2. Healthier meals: Your meal plan can make it possible for you to prepare healthier meals for your family. Instead of turning to processed foods, you can prepare fresh foods. Having all the right ingredients, and taking the time to prepare your dinner, usually means fewer calories, and less exposure to harmful ingredients in processed meals.

Meal planning provides you with the advantage of always knowing what’s for dinner, and being ready to prepare it.

Coordinate Your Meal Planner with Your Schedule

As you put together your meal plan, you need to make sure that it coordinates well with your other scheduled activities. If you have a particularly busy day, don’t plan a dish that takes a lot of work. Instead, plan to make a crock pot meal. You can throw everything in the slow cooker in the morning, and let it cook all day while you take care of errands and other business. When you get home, dinner is ready.

You can also help your meal planning efforts run smoothly with the help of a 30-minute cookbook. You might be surprised at the number of meals that can be prepared in half an hour or less. Buy one of these cookbooks, and you’ll receive a bunch of ideas for meal planning, and you won’t have to worry about how long the meal will take to prepare.

Also, realize that you don’t have to plan every single dinner for the week. Sometimes, it makes sense to have a little spontaneity. Consider leaving two or three days open so that you can do something fun, like make pancakes for dinner, or even go out to eat on occasion.

Do You Understand How Currency Trading Works?

Before you trade anything, no matter how conventional, you should know how it works. This is especially true for “exotic” assets like currencies. Before you begin trading currencies, learn how it works. Don’t start using your forex account until you have an idea of how the whole process is executed, and what factors influence currency trading.

Forex is an interesting market. It can be exciting for some traders. The FX market is highly liquid, carries a volume of trillions of dollars a day, and is quite volatile. On top of that, the ability to obtain high leverage can mean the potential for huge gains. However, it’s not as simple as it might appear at first. Successful trading involves understanding the right times to enter and exit positions, as well as being aware that the large amounts of leverage can also mean that your losses are magnified.

Before you beging trading forex, do your research. Know what items influence currency movements, understand how quotes/prices are set, and know how to use the trading platform in question. Most brokers/dealers have their own trading platforms, and you need to be thoroughly familiar with the way it works if you want to avoid making serious mistakes that can lead to huge losses.

Open a Practice Forex Account

The good news is that many forex dealers will allow you to open a free practice or demo trading account before you get started. You can begin with anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000 in virtual money to practice different strategies and learn how the platform works.

A practice forex account is a good idea, since it can provide you with hands on practice before you risk any of your own money. However, you should remember that, no matter how good the practice account is, you will still need to learn some of your trading the hard way, through experience (and possible losses).

Consider Trading More Conventional Currency Products

You don’t have to just stick with the spot/OTC forex market, though. If you want to add currencies to your portfolio, but don’t think you have the risk tolerance to engage in OTC trading, consider currency derivatives.

These are financial instruments that are based on underlying currency movements. Forex futures contracts, currency options contracts, and currency ETFs can all bring you exposure to forex, without the need to try and make OTC trading work for you. Plus, these exchange products are often better regulated than the spot forex market, and you can see more consistent and transparent pricing.

However, you should still know what you’re doing before you invest. You need to have an idea of how the currency market works, and have a solid understanding of the factors that influence the outcome of the market.

No matter you’re trading, a little knowledge can go a long way toward helping you make better investing decisions.

The book includes an interesting questionnaire to figure out if you a financially intelligent parent.  Here’s the questions:

1. Do you have unresolved issues around money? Are you a spend thrift, a miser, a chaotic manager of money?
2. Do you have goals and a plan to educate your children about financial matters?
3. Do you ever consider the values that you are communicating through your money behaviours?
4. Are you uncomfortable talking about financial subjects with your children?
5. Do you have difficulty saying no when your children ask for money?
6. Do you use money as a bribe to get your children to do what you tell them?
7. If you feel like you’ve been neglecting your kids, do you try to make it up to them by buying them things?
8. Do you frequently fight with your spouse about financial subjects in front of your children?
9. Do you harbour extreme money beliefs; such as money is the root of all evil, or money is what makes people happy?
10. Are you neurotically fearful of going to the poorhouse even though you make a good living and there is no basis for this fear?
11. Do you ever talk to your children about the importance of giving money to those less fortunate than your family, or make them involved in charitable activity?
12. Do you give your kids a constant allowance?
13. Do you understand the emotional meaning of money in your life?
14. Do you frequently make disparaging remarks about people who are poor or are less successful than you are?
15. If your child raises a money issue, do you usually make the effort to take advantage of this teachable moment?

According to this questionnaire, I am happy to know that I am considered a financially intelligent parent.  How did you do?  Here are the answers:

1. No
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. No
5. No
6. No
7. No
8. No
9. No
10. No
11. Yes
12. Yes
13. Yes
14. No
15. Yes

According to the Gallo’s, “Few parents receive perfect scores on this questionnaire. If you’ve never given much thought to these issues, the odds are that you had a number of “wrong” answers. Financially intelligent parenting isn’t an inherent skill. Our own parents’ money issues combined with social attitudes have shaped our money beliefs and behaviours, and they have not always shaped them in to ways that benefit our children.”

If you think about it, being a financially intelligent parent is not always easy.  It’s take conscious awareness, ongoing effort and some degree of consistent behaviour.

Based on the research in their book, the Gallo’s summarize financially intelligent parents as people who:

• Are optimistic about their ability to change money behaviours;
• Value the difference between financial savvy and financial intelligence;
• Think long and hard about the meaning of money in their lives;
• Consider the financial education of their children a primary parent responsibility;
• Recognize their unconscious money deeds have as much impact on their children as their conscious money words;
• Feel that no and enough are words that children need to hear as part of their money education;
• Want their children to work more for a sense of satisfaction than for money;

So, are you a financially intelligent parent?  Do you have any other qualities to add?

It’s important to find that balance, though. If you work too much at the expense of your home life and your relationships, you can find yourself in emotional trouble. Part of a good life balance is being able to earn the money, but also be able to spend time with loved ones, and even spend time on yourself.

Quitting Time

If you really want to get that work/life balance right, you need to know when it’s time to quit. Whether you work in an office, or work from home, you need to stop working sometimes. Come home in time to eat dinner with your family and talk to your kids. Come out of the home office for a couple of hours to unwind and relax with your significant other.

There are people who set lunch appointments with their younger children, making it a point to have that time out from work each day to spend with their kids. Make an effort to go out with your spouse once a week. At the very least, spend some time together where neither of you mentions work.

Identifying a quitting time is important. You need that line between work and home life. Even if you have to finish something up a few hours later, that time out matters. Know when to quit, and spend time with your family.

Flexible Work Arrangements

One of the benefits of modern society is that technology makes it easier to make certain work arrangements. With some jobs, you can work more flexible hours, perhaps coming in earlier in the day so that you can leave in time to pick your kids up from school. You might also be able to telecommute one to three times a week. Find out what options there are for working flexibly at your job.

Even if you don’t make as much money, there is a lot to be said for working for an employer that allows you to be flexible in your work. The ability to take time off for school presentations, or to work from home some days, can make a big difference in the way you balance your work life and home life. In some ways, finding the right balance actually means a better blending of the two.

Consider your options, and think about how you want your life to look. Start making the changes, a little at a time, to add a little more home life into your schedule. You might be surprised to find that your productivity at work goes up, and that your life satisfaction improves.

What do you do to balance work life and home life?

Who Are These Guys?

I know the authors – Kyle Prevost and Justin Bouchard – from my blogging adventures and can vouch for the fact that they know what they’re talking about. Frankly, you don’t run into too many 25-year olds that have a clue about finances, never mind having the ambition to throw a book together. Their unique perspective allows them to channel both their somewhat-sarcastic inner teenager, and their research-based professional exterior at certain points. The tone is perfect for young people in my opinion. At the end of the day a book about saving a little money isn’t going to be quite as widely consumed as the latest blockbuster movie, but the guys do a great job of keeping a somewhat dry topic upbeat and fresh by mixing in entertaining anecdotes and making fun of themselves. By the end I couldn’t help reminiscing about my post-secondary days of cold, sudsy bliss!

The $5,000 Promise

Justin and Kyle make the claim in the introduction that if they had read the book before starting out on their respective post-secondary journeys, that they would have each came away at least $5,000 richer. I think this figure is low-balling things a little to be honest. There is tons of great material in this book covering everything from student housing options, to daily cost considerations, and what the current job market looks like and how that might affect your post-secondary choices. One of the best parts about this thoroughly researched book, is the fact that all of the information is up-to-date and completely relevant for today’s student.

Didn’t We All Make Great Choices At 18?

The only problem I can foresee my fellow bloggers having in terms of getting this book into the hands of the people that need it, is that those hands would rather be filled with an actual pitcher of beer than a book with a pitcher of beer on the cover. I know when I was 18 I probably wouldn’t have rushed out to buy any book, much less one about money. Sixteen bucks for information that can be directly applied to their lives and save them thousands is a pretty good bargain. Even if young people only casually flip through half of the chapters or skim the chapter summaries they will get at least 100x the value of the book back in the form of scholarship tips, resume help, and textbook savings.

Great job Kyle and Justin! Apparently the book is available online at Amazon.ca.