Category: Family & Relationships

Wow, has been a whole year since we last spoke about celebrating St. Frugaltine’s Day? I guess so and once again it comes as the challenge of showing our valentine how much we care without going way overboard or appearing to be a cheapskate…our worst fear! Being frugal doesn’t mean being cheap. Let’s make that perfectly clear. Rather, it means a way to show how much you care about the emotional side of an event like St. Valentine’s Day, and not the commercial side.

According to the National Retail Association, the average person will spend $150 this year celebrating and buying gifts for this “holiday”. That adds up to over 19 billion dollars nationally, enough money to make Kevin O’Leary happy and get him “his money” back and more for any valentine Shark Tank investments he’s made! But seriously, 19 million? It makes Frugal Gary shudder…how about you?Continue reading“Avoid Spending a Fortune on St. Frugaltine’s Day”

When you’re a parent, you don’t want to see your children suffer in any way, whether it’s from a boo-boo when they fall off their tricycle, or because they can’t pay their bills after a job loss. But as parents, we also know that we can’t protect them from everything and sometimes those bumps and bruises are needed to teach us things in life.

I have two adult children, a daughter in her thirties and a son in his twenties, and while I don’t hear from them as often as I’d like, my daughter recently called me. She was looking for money to pay some of her bills, and this wasn’t the first time. When your adult child asks for help, as a parent your first instinct is to protect them, but before your heart hits send on that money transfer, there are some questions your head should ask:Continue reading“How to React When Your Adult Child Asks for Help”

We all have the right to be happy, especially when it comes to marriage and family. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t always work out quite that way. Just because it hasn’t happened to you, don’t think that it can’t or that in some ways you may be different or immune. I personally have been through it, getting divorced in 1998 after 25 years of marriage, and I never imagined it would happen to me. I can tell you that from what I know and have experienced, that no matter whether the divorce was your idea or your spouse’s, there really are no winners in a divorce. In fact, the emotional stress as well as the financial stress can be a real wallop to each party, and can damage and impair both sides from the quick and successful recovery that each person truly seeks.

There are some ways to minimize those stresses, but first let me share with you what has changed about divorce recently.Continue reading“Divorce: Minimizing the Financial Impact”