Stop Burying Yourself in Debt by Kevin Oleary

I get a lot of questions about how to get rich, and I always give the same answer.
Don’t spend too much. Mostly save. Always invest.
Seems simple enough, right? Yet so many people do the exact opposite—invest poorly, spend way too much, save almost nothing, and remain willfully ignorant about their finances.
Why? Because they don’t understand their relationship to money.
The first step in changing money habits is taking a cold hard look at your financial input and output. Here’s what you need to do: boil your money matters down to one simple number by adding up all your earnings and subtracting all your expenditures over three months. I call this your 90-day number.

Once you write that 90-day number down you’ll be faced with one of two truths.

1. Your number is positive. Congratulations, you’re one of the few people taking in more money than you spend!
2. Your number is in the negatives, and like the majority of men and women, you spend more than you make.

The good news is that no matter what your 90-day number teaches you about your relationship with money, there’s always room to improve. I’m going to help you do exactly that by pointing out 3 money mistakes everybody makes at some point in their lives, and teaching you how to fix them.

Money Mistake #1: You’re drowning in credit debt.
The Fix: READ THE FINE PRINT
Spending too much is a disease, and credit card debt is a cancer. The first time you get a credit card bill and don’t pay off the full balance, you’ve let the first financial cancer cell into your life.
Next time you get a credit card bill in the mail, put your glasses on and take a good, hard look at the fine print.
Credit card companies are required by law to tell you how many years it will take you to pay off your balance if you pay the minimum each month. In most instances, this number is a monstrous thing to behold.
With typical compound interest rates averaging around 16%, this black hole of debt keeps growing, and growing, and growing.
Once you take a look at the fine print, you MUST start dedicating every spare penny you have to paying off your credit. If you want to get rich, you need to eliminate your debt first.

Money Mistake #2: Spending makes you happy
The Fix: GET A HANDLE ON EMOTIONAL SPENDING
Most men and women who spend too much do so because it feels good, temporarily. But as I always say, mixing money with emotions is a toxic combination.
Don’t go shopping to change your mood. It might make you feel better in the short term, but I promise: the long-term fulfillment of saving and growing your money far outweighs the temporary satisfaction of retail therapy.
Recognize when you’re about to spend with your emotions, and go for a walk, cook, or read instead. Do anything; just don’t head for the mall!

Money Mistake #3: Frugality isn’t fun
The Fix: CREATE A “FUN MONEY” FUND
Many people who commit themselves 100% to eliminating debt and saving money find that a certain joylessness creeps in after a while. The same thing happens to dieters who deprive themselves of all their favorite foods for months, and then cave to late-night binges.
That’s not a way to live, and that’s not what I advocate. Austerity, yes; deprivation, no.
The key is to include spending on fun things in your budget. Set aside a manageable percentage every week in a fund that will let you splurge with cash. Go out for lunch, get your hair done, or use your fun money to go on a vacation—do whatever you want, as long as you pay for it outright. This way you can enjoy your splurges without feeling guilty!
Read more about finding financial freedom in the Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money.

Developing Early Literacy by in Young Children by Deborah Williams

Today’s youth were born into a high technology world; they have always been around electronic screens and had instant access to information.  It is not surprising, then, that many children have been exposed to sophisticated graphics and animations at a very young age, but a recent report on the Science Daily website explains that a new study shows,  “…early writing, preceding any formal education, plays an instrumental role in improving a child’s literacy level, vocabulary, and fine motor skills.”  These findings suggest that parents probably should shift from teaching letters of the alphabet to also helping their children to connect the sounds to the letters on paper.
The study was conducted by Professor Dorit Aram of the Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education of Tel Aviv University and with Professor Samantha W. Bindman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other US colleagues.  Professor Aram studied adult support of young children’s writing.  One type of support, “grapho-phonemic mediation,” involves the adult being “actively involved in helping a child break down a word into segments to connect sounds to corresponding letters.”  Professor Aram studied the levels of parental support for 135 ethnically-diverse, middle-income preschool children during a writing activity at a semi-structured birthday party.
Researchers found that parental support was most useful in developing early literacy skills in young children.   “The thing is to encourage children to write, but to remember that in writing, there is a right and a wrong,” said Prof. Aram. “We have found that scaffolding is a particularly beneficial activity, because the parent guides the child. And, if that parent guides the child and also demands precision in a sensitive and thoughtful way — i.e. ‘what did you mean to write here? Let me help you’ — this definitely develops the child’s literary skill set.”

SAT or ACT

By Deborah Williams

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Adding to the confusion and anxiety of applying to college is the entrance exam.  A recent post on the Edweek College Bound blog reports, “Some students are opting for the SAT over the ACT because they mistakenly believe that the College Board’s exam is favored by colleges.”
A survey of Kaplan SAT students found that one-third thought that colleges accepted the College Board’s SAT exam results more than the American College Test (ACT).  Both tests help colleges to determine an applicant’s readiness for college, but the SAT is more popular in the eastern United States while the ACT is more popular in the western and southern parts of the country.
That probably explains the primary reason for the regional disparity in America: peer influence.  The survey shows that 24 percent of SAT test-prep participants admitted to taking that exam because their friends were taking it.  Paul Weeks, vice president of client relations for ACT, Inc. confirms this in an email:  “Test-taking patterns and behaviors are regional and can be impacted by different influencers ranging from peers to parents. There are still many myths and misrepresentations out there, but we’re glad to see them diminishing.”
The tide is changing because the ACT has surpassed the SAT in recent years and “is now the most popular college-entrance exam.”  The myth has been dispelled:  “…all four-year U.S. colleges equally accept results of an ACT or SAT exam for consideration in the admissions process.

Surprising Keys to Your Child’s Lucrative Careers By Deborah Williams

Let’s face it: Shuttling children from activity to activity and monitoring homework sessions are exhausting parts of parenting.  It’s no wonder that some parents wonder if they shouldn’t cut out some of it.  New research suggests that perhaps all of this activity is helpful to their child’s future—as long as the child has good math skills!
Harvard Business Review assistant editor Nicole Torres reports the findings of University of California, Santa Barbara researchers compared two groups of white male high school seniors—1972 and 1992—to see the impact of their social and math skills over time.  “The analysis found that while math scores, sports, leadership roles, and college education were all associated with higher earnings over the 1979-1999 period, the trend over time in the earnings premium was strongest among those who were both good at math and engaged in high school sports or leadership activities. In other words, it pays to be a sociable math whiz, more so today than thirty years ago.”
It seems that the social skills that children develop through participation in extracurricular activities help to make them more likable.  These extracurricular activities include “teamwork, communication, and general interaction with others.”  Developing these skills when they are children make it more likely that they will be employed “in an occupation requiring higher levels of responsibility for direction, control and planning.”
Technology may be the reason for the demand for math skills in the workplace; however, employers need workers who can work with others well.  So, parents, make sure that your children have good math skills, and know that your children’s extracurricular activities will most likely benefit them in the workplace.

Tricks to Help Your Child Learn Better

By Deborah Williams

A recent radio broadcast on NPR’s Science Friday program centered on techniques to improve memory.   The guests shared their expertise on the brain:

• Distraction helps when you try to solve a problem or remember material.  When you are focused, you can’t think of the answer, but when you relax, the answer comes to you.  Professor Barbara Oakley, Ph. D., author of A Mind for Numbers, explains that when we try to solve a problem, our brains go into a focused mode that “actually blocks the neural networks that we might need to actually answer that problem.”  She further explains that our brains have two states:  a focused neural state and a resting neural resting state.  Just as Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison used to do, it often helps to take a short break to relax a bit; this puts your brain into a neural resting state.
• New York Times science writer Benedict Carey, author of How We Learn, explains that forgetting is learning’s best friend.  It acts as a sophisticated spam filter.  Once you retrieve what you forgot, it becomes more firmly ingrained into your memory.
• Both authors assert that repetition helps us to learn. Oakley explains, “You need to practice and repeat in order for it to become one protected, neural chunk.” Using flashcards is still a great technique.
• Get away from the problem for a while. It is not helpful to study a subject “hour after hour.”  Doing something else allows the brain to work on the problem “offline.”  We can eliminate a tendency to see or approach a problem in one way only; we can gain a new perspective to learning or to solving a problem.  Often, when you come back to the problem, the new brain connections will give you a fresh mind to tackle a problem or new learning.  This is also why you need at least six hours of sleep before a test since sleep shrinks the brain and permits fluid to flush the metabolic toxins in the brain as you sleep, and you wake up with an “upgraded” mind.
• Study in a different place. Learning is enhanced when you move around.
• Incorporate regular physical activity. Exercise allows the new neurons to be better implanted into your brain.  As a matter of fact, it helps to move around (e.g., pace, walk, etc.) when studying or trying to solve problems

The Reading Shift

You may have heard of “The Fourth Grade Shift.”  It’s the developmental milestone that typically occurs in the fourth grade.  It is when students no longer learn to read but switch to reading to learn.  The Shift includes “a change in automatic word processing, a crucial component of the reading shift theory.”  The report on the Science Daily website seems to shut this theory down.
Dartmouth researchers have analyzed elementary students’ brain waves and have concluded that the word processing of fourth graders does not automatically change at that time.  “Automatic word processing is the brain’s ability to determine whether a group of symbols constitutes a word within milliseconds, without the brain’s owner realizing the process is taking place.”  Actually, the researchers found that some of the word processing becomes automatic before fourth grade while others happen after the fifth grade.  That means that fifth and sixth grade students are continuing to develop their “neurological reading system.”
Lead researcher, Donna Coch, found evidence that “…at least through the fifth grade, even children who read well are letting stimuli into the neural word processing system that more mature readers do not.”  She asserts “teachers and parents should not expect their fourth-graders, or even their fifth graders, to be completely automatic, adult-like readers.”
Many states and localities use this time in children’s education to establish policy and interventions.  This video speaks to the issue and provides some tips for parents to help their children read better:

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Mandatory Summer School for Young Students in some School Districts

Gary Stern, writer for Lohud the Journal News reports that the Middleton (New York) school district has issued an unusual mandatory requirement for some of its students.  It has identified 600 of its kindergarten through second grade students and is requiring that they attend summer school.  The students were chosen based on their scores on their most recent MAP tests.  Students who do not attend the classes or who attend but do not progress face possible retention or promoted with extra help.  Superintendent Kenneth Eastwood explained that the district is trying different approaches in an effort “to help students who are in danger of never reaching academic standards.”
This requirement is being met with resistance from some parents.  Some complain that this policy is unfair and shocking since it is based on results from one test, and many had been assured of adequate progress throughout the school year at parent-teacher conferences and report cards.  The district’s officials face greater challenges with the implementation of the Common Core and new state tests for grades 3 to 8.  Superintendents from nearby districts are divided on this policy.  They, too, have similar populations that they have offered summer school remediation, but those were not mandatory,