We were visiting friends in New York City this past weekend (where I was basically in tears over how much I miss living there, but that’s for an entirely different post) and went into a kids’ book store. Our daughters are the same age, five, and of course after running around for a bit they came asking if they could get stuff. One was carrying a book, the other a science experiment kit.

Our friends were standing off to the side talking to my husband so I ended up being the one who was asked. My first instinct was to say no. I generally think that giving into my daughter’s every whimsy is a bad idea and just because we go into the store doesn’t mean we’re going to buy something there. On the flip side, we were there for a short visit, the girls were behaving really well (despite being dragged around doing adult stuff most of the weekend), and the things they wanted to get were reasonably priced and items I would consider great — a good book and a fun, interesting science kit.

I told the girls to go play some more and that I’d talk to the other girl’s mom and see what we decide. They didn’t whine and left to check out more books — which I think pushed me over the edge towards deciding that it was actually a good occasion to get them each a small gift. But it did get me thinking about the recession and whether it was affecting the amount of things we were getting for our daughter or the amount of stuff she was asking for.
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We met with a financial advisor the other day to get our finances organized. Nothing fancy, but we wanted to make sure we had enough (and the right kind) of life insurance, were maximizing our savings and had a solid plan to save for our daughter’s college.

According to our financial advisor, a year at a private college is projected to cost almost $100,000 by the time our daughter turns 18, which is in 13 years. (I’ll just pause a bit here as we all stare at this INSANE number. My husband and I both went to the same liberal arts college, which seemed insanely expensive at $30,000 per year. Wow.)

This means that a four year private college education will cost nearly $400,000 for one child. (And this is on top of the $200,000+ that it costs to raise a child during his or her first 18 years of life.) The only question that comes to mind when I see this number is how in the world will most non-ultra-rich families be able to cover this? Of course there are scholarships and loans and work study jobs, all of which can reduce this number, but what remains will likely still be scary.
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We just got home from our daughter’s 5th birthday party. It was great — no major meltdowns, everyone had fun, and she came home smothered in chocolate from a cupcake and paint from painting a plaster princess. Mission accomplished.

My friend, one of the other kid’s mom, helped me unpack the cupcakes and remarked on how pretty they were. I told her that we special-ordered them from this great little bakery, complete with purple butterflies and purple flowers, as requested by our daughter. They weren’t cheap and a simple cake would have done the trick, but the birthday girl wanted these and we obliged.

I told my friend that while I’m happy to see my kiddo be all giddy when she saw the special cupcakes, I was conflicted about ordering them. Well, not so much conflicted as it gave me pause for thought. Cupcakes were a bit of a no-brainer — sure, they’re a bit more expensive than a cake, but not materially so. But as our daughter grows, there will be other things that she really, really, reeealy wants, and drawing boundaries will become tougher. I can see it coming.

Generally, I’d say that we haven’t been guilty of extreme spoiling to this point.
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I’ve seen a few articles recently which mention the fact that the layoffs in the current recession are hitting men much harder than women (having something to do with more men being employed in finance and manufacturing, two industries suffering the most). And more than a few news stories and commentators have mentioned that men being laid off is actually good for women. The logic goes like this: Men get laid off. They go home and start taking over more domestic duties, like childcare and cleaning and cooking. This frees up more time for women who then head back into the labor force.

OK, I am sure some very smart people have studied these trends and determined that this is what’s going to happen. And yes, it’s true that more moms are heading back to work or cutting their maternity leaves short during this recession. But I doubt very much that they are doing this because their husbands are doing more around the house. Rather, they are doing this because they need to support their families financially. In other words, they are doing it because they have to, not because they want to.
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Talking to friends about money is always touchy. And as a rule, we don’t do it. Sure, we complain talk generally about stuff being too expensive (i.e. mortgages, vacations, camps for the kids) and vent our frustrations for not getting paid enough for working as much as we do, but there are never any specifics on income, salaries, or anything like that.

But I’ve noticed a trend of more friends revealing more about their financial situation as the economy has gotten worse. And as I thought about it, I realized that I’ve been sharing more as well. I think it’s the stress talking.
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A while ago I wrote about being freaked out about the economy. That was back in September, before the actual collapse of the stock market, official pronouncement of the recession, and then a larger, global recession, mass layoffs, and billions of dollars in government bailouts. It was also before our family was directly hit from every direction, including my husband being laid off and having to look for a job in one of the worst job markets in history or the start-up where I have a daily gig facing a longer road to raising funding (like all other start-ups) than I anticipated. (By the way, if you click that link today you’ll get to see me eating Matzo ball soup on camera, an added bonus:)

In other words, it was before the sh*t really hit the fan, to use my very sophisticated analysis of the economy and our family’s financial turmoil situation.
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OK, I am cheating a little because I mentioned this quote in one of my previous blog posts on being passionate about your work. But I read it again today and it’s good enough for it’s own post:

Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations.

-Tim O’Reilly

Between 80 and 95 percent of people who employ nannies, babysitters, and housekeepers don’t pay employer taxes for these employees, says a recent New York Times article. At first I was surprised and then, embarrassingly realized that we’d been guilty of this ourselves at one point. (I guess I should list my phone number here so that IRS has a convenient way of reaching us after reading this.)

This is a fairly high “cheat” rate, but as I read the article I, along with the article’s author, was shocked at the endless bureaucratic steps that families have to go through to actually do the right thing.  They are truly endless and extremely time consuming and as I think about the hectic daily schedules working families are juggling, no wonder many are choosing to not go through this mess. There are eight steps involved and some of the steps have many mini-steps as part of them.
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I read something yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys. It’s a post from Tim O’Reilly titled Work on Stuff that Matters. If you find a few free minutes in your day I hope you’ll check it out — it’s worth it, regardless of where you are in your career or whether you’re currently working at all. It was one of those things that I forwarded to tons of my friends and colleagues and I very rarely do that.

In the post, Tim writes about a few personal litmus tests that he uses to see if he is working on stuff that matters:

Work on something that matters to you more than money.
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I am going to try and not get too technical here — I am not a finance expert, by any means — but I have to tell you that I’ve been thinking a LOT (too much) about the current economic crisis and who is responsible for it.

On the one hand, it’s now become pretty apparent that the main players in our credit system failed: Banks and credit card companies extended credit to millions of consumers who had no business borrowing that much money to buy cars, houses, or to get high credit limits on their credit cards. One of the most fascinating and scary things I’ve read on this subject is an email from a banker who witnessed the ridiculous degree to which banks and credit companies got lax with doling out credit.
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